Journalism & Media

UPDATE! “Wait: Why Did It Take A Congressional Commission To Point Out That A KKK Plaque Wasn’t Appropriate At West Point?” Answer: Because It Was Completely Appropriate…

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

I don’t like to reflexively blame the news media and it biases for my blog’s misinformation and wrong turns, but in this case, it’s justified. In yesterday’s post “Wait: Why Did It Take A Congressional Commission To Point Out That A KKK Plaque Wasn’t Appropriate At West Point?”

I expressed amazement that a Congressional commission had to protest the presence of a bronze artwork apparently commemorating the Ku Klux Klan that had been hanging in a West Point building for decades. “Finding out that a Klan plaque was on display all this time at West Point is like discovering that St. Paul’s Cathedral had a statue of Satan hanging around for centuries without anyone objecting,” I wrote, endorsing the commission’s clear belief that the plaque should be taken down.

My source was the New York Times, which yesterday professed that the origins of the plaque were shrouded in mystery, and which also provided no context or explanation for why the Klan made it into halls of the academy at all. Nice reporting there, Times! Today, in the same article, this appeared:

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Breaking News On The Stolen Election “Lie”

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

I still see it almost every day: a reference to Donald Trump’s stolen election “lie.” Trump, as is his wont, makes this slur too easy by his usual sloppiness of expression. First, he employs the language of certainty to express a belief that cannot be verified, and second, he keep focusing on voter fraud. However, as Ethics Alarms had indicated on many days in in many ways, there is a substantial likelihood that Trump’s second term was stolen from him (and the nation), not by fraud but by the continuous series of deliberate and unethical acts of sabotage committed against his Presidency, administration and campaign by Democrats, progressives, the news media, social media, popular culture, Big Tech, NeverTrump Republicans and the “Deep State.” (As an aside, the denials by the Left that the Deep State exists remind me of the once commonplace denials by Italian-Americans that the Mafia existed.)

This week, two bits of evidence supporting this position emerged:

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What Do You Call Those Who Deliberately Encourage Hate And Division?

/ Jack Marshall / 15 Comments

A much-esteemed member of the Ethics Alarms commentariate alerted me yesterday that he would be eschewing the blog indefinitely because it was making him anxious and depressed. I’m glad he won’t be reading this post. It made me anxious and depressed.

Fresh off of yesterday’s note about the woman who asked “The Ethicist” whether she was ethically obligated to “out” a friend at work who harbored horrible conservative opinions—you know, like not believing that there is a Constitutional right to kill human fetuses—and news of another study showing that Democrats increasingly don’t want to associate with anyone not buying into their progressive, crypt-totalitarian world view (I can’t locate the recent one right now; a similar study from last December found that “5% of Republicans said they wouldn’t be friends with someone from the opposite party, compared to 37% of Democrats,” and “71% of Democrats wouldn’t go on a date with someone with opposing views, versus 31% of Republicans.”), comes more evidence that hate-mongering and Big Lies are working for the Left. They will destroy the democracy in order to save it, and promoting incurable divisiveness and distrust is just the way to do it.

The tough conservative blogger who writes The New Neo reported on a Washington Post opinion piece from last week headlined, “No, Trump voters aren’t incapable of changing their minds about him.” I confess: I saw the article and jettisoned it after this section in the third paragraph:

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Weekend Ethics Loose Ends, 8/21-22/2022: Brian Stelter Does A Cheney

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

Now THAT was an insurrection! On August 22 in 1831, Nat Turner, an educated slave, killed his owner and escaped withe seven followers, planning on recruiting a slave army and capturing Virginia’s Southampton county armory. His strategy was then to march 30 miles to Virginia’s Great Dismal Swamp, where his army could hide out and strike at will. Turner and his recruits attacked homes throughout Southampton County, killing about 60 white men, women and children. The Virginia state militia, with greatly larger numbers, ended the rebellion while killing many of those who had joined him. The episode resulted in vengeful lynching of many slaves, even those who were not involved in Turner’s revolt

Nat Turner eluded capture until the end of October. Unrepentant, he  was tried, convicted, sentenced to death, and hanged on November 11.

I noticed, in researching this story, that apparently the word “slave” is now taboo, and the politically correct term is “enslaved people.“

They were slaves. That is what I will continue to call them. Next we will be commanded to refer to them as “non-volunteer unpaid employees.” The only way to stop creeping Orwellian linguistics is to refuse to tolerate it.

1. Careful…whatever it is that Liz Cheney has might be contagious. Cheney’ s vainglorious self-celebration and presumption of martyrdom after being justly crunched by Republican primary voters in Wyoming was quickly followed by an even more outrageous display of imagined virtue by the ridiculous Brian Stelter, now looking for some other news organization to help pervert. Among a myriad of other flaws, Stelter’s fake journalism watchdog show, “Reliable Sources,” had finally tanked in the ratings (along with CNN in general), perhaps because it no longer even pretended to report informatively on how well (and ethically) the news media was doing its job, and was only repeating anti-Trump, anti-conservative talking points and attacking Fox News.

In his final show, instead of leaving in an ethical and dignified manner, Stelter decided to perform a Cheney on steroids. Among his gagworthy declarations was that “teachers use segments from this show all the time in classrooms, in lessons, guiding and teaching the next generation.”

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Case Study (Not Related To Politics!) Of Our Incompetent News Media: The Murder Car’s Parking Tickets

/ Jack Marshall / 20 Comments

On CNN’s HLN, cheerleader-host Robin Meade was aghast this morning. The story: Bob and Angie Shepherd, who live in my current home town of Alexandria, Virginia, had their car stolen and used in a crime spree, including a murder in Suitland, Maryland. The immediate concern of Bob and Angie, however, is the $400 worth of DC parking tickets the crooks racked up using their car. The Shepherds have been charged with all of them, as owners of the vehicle. (DC is notoriously relentless in collecting parking fines.)

“Are you kidding me?” Bob Shepherd told reporters. “Car is stolen, involved in a homicide, and then you want to charge me for the tickets, even though I’ve given you all of the documentation showing that it’s been involved in a homicide?”

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When Ethics Alarms Don’t Ring (And You’re Incompetent And Stupid Too)

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

The Lawrence County Republican Party in Montgomery, Alabama wanted to post a GOP elephant graphic on its Facebook page, and settled on the charming one above, on which the white spaces between the pachyderm’s legs double as hooded hooded Klansmen.

Naturally, Democrats pounced, as they had every right to do and should be expected to do. “Shame on the Lawrence County Republican Party for this disgusting image,” Alabama House Minority Leader Anthony Daniels posted on Twitter.

“I would like to offer a deep and sincere apology for a picture that temporarily appeared on this page last night. A Google search picture of a GOP elephant was used and later found to have hidden images that do not represent the views or beliefs of the Lawrence County Republican Party,” Shannon Terry wrote in a Facebook post apologizing for the use of the image. “As chairman I take full responsibility for the error,” Terry added.

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Observations On Larry Tribe’s Latest Trump-Deranged Tweet…

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

I can only find out about EA post-worthy tweets second-hand, as I killed my Twitter account after the platform censored the Hunter Biden laptop story. I actually followed Tribe’s tweets before that, because his public descent into demented hackery after such a distinguished legal and academic career had the tragic fascination of gruesome car wreck as well as conveying a useful lesson in mortality: I have asked my wife to bash in my head with a brick from behind should I ever jump the cognitive shark as obviously as Tribe has.

This time, Ann Althouse was my tweet source, though her post’s subject was another, slightly less whacked-out tweet re-tweeting Tribe by author Joyce Carol Oates. Tribe’s tweet, in turn, only quoted a typical piece of furious Trump-Deranged venom from Times columnist Maureen Dowd. Before his brain started to melt, the idea of Prof. Tribe appealing to the authority of the likes of Dowd would be like imagining Henry Kissinger quoting “Mark Trail.”

All clear now? Observations: Continue reading →

A “Nah, There’s No Mainstream Media Bias!” Classic From NYT Refugee Bari Weiss [Updated]

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

Bari Weiss is one of the disgusted former journalists for progressive/ Democratic propaganda organizations who found the remaining sparks of integrity and belief in democracy within made continuing complicity impossible. A former opinion editor at the New York Times who resigned in July 2020 after she challenged the paper’s hypocrisy, Weiss (whose Ethics Alarms dossier is here) horrified Republican U.S. Senator Tim Scott (S.C.) during her recent podcast,”Honestly with Bari Weiss.”

I’m here to horrify you, too.

Weiss explained to the Senator what went on in the newsroom behind the scenes regarding Scott’s op-ed about a police reform bill he was working on, the Justice Act, in response to the death of George Floyd. Democratic support for the bill ultimately failed, and Scott authored a proposed op-ed piece for the Times explaining how the negotiations collapsed. Weiss told Scott,

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From The “Res Ipsa Loquitur” Files: “Fact Check: Chihuahuas Are Dogs, Not Rats.”

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

USA Today really did print a “fact check” of a gag social media claim that chihuahuas are not dogs but rodents. The article by agriculture and business reporter Laura Peters shows no hint of humor or irony: USA Today treats this as if there is a substantial likelihood that a significant number of its readers might be deceived by the claim that “DNA study finds chihuahuas aren’t dogs …Among other findings the analysis determined that Chihuahua is actually a type of large rodent, selectively bred for centuries to resemble a canine.”

Peters also cites Scopes as an authority, because those fools also did a fact check the last time someone posted this idiocy. “According to Snopes, the claim was just a “bit of satirical fun,” Peters informs us.

What the USA Today article actually informs us about—the headline alone is enough— is the degree to which USA Today has sunk beneath Weekly Reader and World News Daily status. Why would anyone possessing more than two  neurons firing trust anything reported by a rag with editors and reporters who think it is necessary to show that chihuahuas aren’t rats?

There is almost nothing substantive in USA Today’s print editions any more; the thin paper is mostly ads, photos, and local news snippets. With all of the important news being buried or ignored by most of the news media, the once handy Gannett paper could at least fill in some blanks–how about those Cassidy Hutchinson texts? No, what USA Today’s editors think its readers have a right to know is that dogs aren’t rats. Are the editors the morons? Peters? Or do they just think anyone who reads USA Today must be a moron?

On that, they have a point.

Poe’s Law In “The Great Stupid”: Which Is Satire And Which Is Woke Derangement?

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

Two stories, both head-explodingly idiotic, both linked to Bizarro World Ethics and pathological virtue-signaling needs in oppressive leftist-indoctrination saturated cultures. One is a gag, the other is a tragedy, yet there is hardly a filament of difference between them in the 21st Century ethics and rationality rot they illustrate.

I read the two in succession by pure coincidence, and Poe’s Law immediately leaped into my mind. Poe’s Law was formulated in 20o5 (by Nathan Poe, not Edgar Allan Poe) and has become an essential concept since. It holds that satirical accounts involving extreme examples of ideological insanity can be impossible to distinguish from actual events, because current ideological extremism defies parody. Let’s cut to the chase, for this isn’t a quiz: the satirical piece was “I apologize for my white baby.”

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