Journalism & Media

Predictable Aftermath To Assassination Attempt #3 That Still Must Be Aggressively Addressed…Somehow

/ Jack Marshall / 33 Comments

Above is the guy who was trying to kill the President and as many of his aides and Cabinet members as possible last night. (I don’t care what his name is.) You can read his “manifesto”  here. The news media is calling it “unhinged.” It’s not unhinged. This is an arrogant, well-educated, erudite narcissist who has been indoctrinated by the Axis of Unethical Conduct’s propaganda over ten years to the point where he believed that assassinating the President of the United States is a patriotic act. John Wilkes Booth believed the same thing. He wasn’t unhinged either.

The key quote in the message is: “I am no longer willing to permit a pedophile, rapist, and traitor to coat my hands with his crimes.” There is no evidence that Trump is a pedophile. There is no evidence that he is a rapist. There is no evidence that he is a traitor, or that he has committed any crimes in office. But the news media and its message-makers within “the resistance” and the Democratic Party have been working hard to convince the weak of mind or narrow of perception that up is down and black is white. Outside the White House Correspondents Dinner, demonstrators carried signs saying “Death to tyrants” and “Death to all of them.” The failed assassin isn’t the wacko outlier that the Trump Deranged want sane people to think he is. He is one of them. He got his news and information from MSNBC and CNN, and believed this…

Last night Richard Grennell tweeted to CNN’s Jake Tapper, “You encourage the mentally unstable to take action against Trump every night.” Grennell is wrong. Tapper and his colleagues encourage normal, functioning Americans to hate and oppose their President every night. Another “X” used wrote, “Most of the people in that Washington Hilton ballroom tonight are morally responsible for what just happened. For over 10 years they’ve pushed the most hateful, vile conspiracies: Trump is a threat to democracy, a dictator, literally Hitler 2.0. They demonized him nonstop, normalized violence in their rhetoric, then acted shocked when the inevitable keeps occurring.” That is correct. So is the Instapundit contributor who wrote that MSNBC is complicit in last night’s attempted murder.

I played Scrabble last night with a smart, passionate, kind neighbor who is a private tutor who does wonderful work for various charities, and who devotes her spare time to helping the poor. She texted me today that she was in “mourning” because President Trump was still alive.

If there aren’t enough sane, principled, informed voters who care sufficiently in November to make sure that the party and the parties responsible for inflicting this hate plague on the nation do not gain control of the government, then American society will have proven that it is no longer worthy of a republic.

Flashback: “Ethics Reflections On The Trump Assassination Attempt Prelude and Aftermath” and Observations on the Latest Attempt

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

Fact: The Axis of Unethical Conduct is 100% responsible for the third serious attempt on President Trump’s life in less than two years. 100%. Denying this is spin.

I’m not tolerating it or allowing the Mad Left to duck responsibility. It has been pushing hate for years, mostly focusing on Trump but also on Republicans, conservatives, the United States of America, capitalism and our founding values. Many on the Left (including Senator Elizabeth Warren) cheered on or rationalized the murderous act of the man who murdered a health care insurance executive by shooting him in the back—you know, evil corporations, evil capitalism. Many on the Left cheered the assassination of Charlie Kirk. The “resistance,” Democrats and their propaganda engines, aka. “the news media,” have been calling Trump a dictator, a fascist, Hitler, a sexual predator, a convicted felon, a racist, a monster, an existential threat to democracy, a practitioner of genocide, constantly and repeatedly. A lot of people really believe these labels are justified; a lot more people are cynically and irresponsibly spreading those accusation because they will help the Democrats achieve their ultimate goal of single party rule.

I believe that a very large percentage of American progressives want Trump dead, one way or another. A Rutgers study, you may recall, found more than half of the progressive respondents to a survey said it would be at least somewhat justified to murder Donald Trump. I believe that this conclusion is inescapable.

It’s too bad for these corrupt and despicable Americans that Trump is really good at reacting to assassination attempt. Then again, he’s had more practice than anybody in U.S. history. In his comments to the media last night, the President said in part,

“This was an event dedicated to freedom of speech that was supposed to bring together members of both parties with members of the press. And in a certain way it did…I saw a room that was totally unified. It was in one way very beautiful — a very beautiful thing to see…In light of this evening’s events, I ask that all Americans recommit with their hearts to resolving our differences peacefully. We have to resolve our differences. You had Republicans, Democrats, independents, conservatives, liberals, and progressives in that room — a big crowd, record-setting crowd. There was a tremendous amount of love and coming together.

“We looked at all of the conditions that took place tonight. It’s not a particularly secure building. I didn’t want to say this, but this is why we have to have all of the attributes of what we’re planning at the White House. It’s actually a larger room and it’s much more secure. It’s got drone-proof and bulletproof glass. We need the ballroom.
 
“This is not the first time in the past couple of years that our republic has been attacked by a would-be assassin. In Butler, Pennsylvania, less than two years ago — you all know that story. And in Palm Beach, Florida, a few months after that, we came close again. We had some great work done by law enforcement.
 
…I’ve studied assassinations. The most impactful people, the people that do the most, are the ones they go after. Abraham Lincoln, the big names. I hate to say I’m honored by that, but we’ve done a lot. We’ve changed this country. There are a lot of people that are not happy about that.”

Trump’s assassination history is flawed, but in his case, it has some legitimacy. Abe Lincoln, of course, fits his narrative, but the other assassinated Presidents do not: McKinley, Garfield, and Kennedy. The President Trump just surpassed to become the failed assassination record-holder with three is Gerald Ford, not exactly one of the “big names.” Nevertheless, the resistance, Democrats and the Axis media have been vilifying this President because he has “done a lot.” and has foiled them again and again. Yes, Trump’s trolling, gloating, deliberately inflammatory rhetoric and defiant style make the target they have placed on his back a bit more vivid, but make no mistake: the Trump Deranged and the totalitarian-tilting Left put it there.

Before I get to the EA post I authored right after the 2024 assassination attempt, I want to quote from the later post on the same topic:

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Ethics Quote of the Week: “Spicy Bits” on “X”

/ Jack Marshall / 27 Comments

“The SPLC orchestrating the Charlottesville event and then pivoting to “endorse” the narrative that Trump coddles white supremacists is the definition of a classic Democrat false-flag operation. They manufacture the crisis, weaponize the media to lie about the “fine people” quote, and use it as a political cudgel to demonize heritage Americans. It’s not just hypocrisy; it’s the standard operating procedure for the Democrat junta regime that relies on fabricated morality and lies to maintain power.“

Honestly, I don’t see how any fair, honest, informed American can disagree with that statement. I’ll even employ the “No True Scotsman” approach: any American who does disagree with that statement is, by definition, not fair, honest, or informed, and perhaps all three.

The Southern Poverty Law Center, which we now know helped plan, organize, and pay for the Charlottesville demonstration, endorsed Kamala Harris, who a month later accused Donald Trump of enabling white supremacists during their debate.

The public now has sufficient information, even with the desperate attempts by the news media to submerge it all, to understand what a dangerous, Machiavellian, deliberately divisive and unscrupulous party the Democrats have allowed their organization to become. Regardless of one’s ideological preferences, it is unethical not to emphatically reject them.

Unethical Headline of the Week: Mediaite

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

“Jeffrey Epstein Lawyer Alan Dershowitz Registers as Republican After 67 Years in Democratic Party”

It’s hard to get blacklisted on Ethics Alarms. Snopes, MSNBC, Gateway Pundit, Breitbart, The Smoking Gun, Media Matters and The Daily Beast all managed to do it through repeatedly dishonest, biased and misleading stories. In other words, a site has to be even more biased and untrustworthy than Fox News, the New York Times, CNN and the Washington Post to end up on mu blacklist.

Mediaite was once barely tolerable when the able Joe Concha worked there as a counter-balance to the mostly knee-jerk leftist propagandists like–-yecchh—Tommy Christopher. Joe is long gone, however, and what is left is unethical human dreck like whoever approved that headline.

The technique is called “poisoning the well,” and it is recognized by journalism ethicists, if there are any now, as a slimy tabloid tactic. Dershowitz authored an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal announcing that he was leaving the Democratic Party and why, despite pretty much opposing most conservative and Republican positions—even, he says, “immigration.” The Dersh” likes open borders? Wow. He also things abortion is swell.

The GOP might want to throw him back, like a three-eyed fish.

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Stop Making Me Defend Jeff Bezos To Totalitarian Progressives! [Updated!]

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

UPDATE: I had multiple sources for this post, none of which, apparently, were accurate. Plus, the announcement above appears to be false. At this link, the paperback version of the book is indeed available at Amazon. I’m going to wait a bit, and leave this post up until I am confident that the whole thing is a hoax, or figure out what is going.

I apologize for the confusion. Right now I hate everybody and everything.

***

See, all you Jeff Bezos haters and Amazon boycotters? There wasn’t anything to get upset about after all. Jeff still cares about your values and the Democratic party, and Amazon is on the right side of the angels after all!

Amazon just censored “Camp of the Saints,” first published in 1973,that portends the destruction of the West as a result of third-world mass migration. Yes, it’s apparently a “Great Replacement” conspiracy theory book.

Never heard of it. However, for Amazon, the most popular and easily accessed book merchant, to refuse to sell a book like “Camp of the Saints” is undeniably viewpoint censorship. Yes, yes, I know, the First Amendment only applies to government censorship. That’s been the go-to rationalization by progressives to control the distribution of ideas they don’t like and find “dangerous” on social media, at college campuses and in the news media for a long time now. But freedom of speech, communication and thought is a core value in this country, or is supposed to be.

All my Trump-Deranged Facebook friends who announced they were boycotting Amazon, and the Washington Post staffers who resigned in protest when Bezos, the owner of the D.C.-based Democratic Party propaganda mouthpiece, refused to endorse Kamala Harris for President, should beg his forgiveness. Bezos is part of their club: he just didn’t want a paper he publishes to look ridiculous by endorsing an idiot.

By the way, I find Kamala’s ghost-written memoir of her run for President to be “offensive content.”

One wag writes on X: “I’m sure all the people who whine about ‘book bans’ when a school board prevents 6-year-olds from reading about gay sex” will be just as upset about this development. Funny, but I doubt it.

This also looks like an excellent opportunity to demonstrate to the unschooled how the Streisand Effect works. As I just noted, I never heard of the book, and wouldn’t have read it I had been aware of it. However, for the real defenders of democracy and our individual rights as Americans, making this book, whatever it says, into a runaway best seller now might teach the totalitarian Left a lesson. Here is what it looks like:

Nah, what am I thinking? The totalitarian Left hasn’t learned anything since it memorized Big Brother’s mottos—you know, like “IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH,” which explains the state of both our educational institutions and our journalism.

Virginia’s Democrats Push More Viewpoint Censorship From The Left (Psst: That’s Unethical. Also Illegal.)

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

Gov. Abigail Spanberger of Virginia has signed into law a bill that ends tax exemptions for Confederacy-honoring organizations in the state.

Huh. Funny, I thought the Democratic Party was the one that was running on a platform of protecting civil right, like freedom of thought, association and speech from that eeeevil, fascist Republican king, Donald Trump. Did I get that mixed up somehow? I guess I did.

“The signing by Ms. Spanberger on Monday is the culmination of a years long Democrat-led push to shake off the state’s legacy as the capital of the 11 Southern, slaveholding states that seceded from the country in the 1860s,” sayeth the New York Times in a sympathetic news story [Gift Link]that again proves there is no Democratic Party initiative so indefensible that the Times won’t try to spin it into virtue.

Awww, is Virginia all sad because of its history, and trying to erase it so nobody remembers? Tough. History is history and facts are facts. It is totalitarians and the followers of Orwell’s Big Brother who try to alter the past to confuse the public. Virginia was at the very center of the Civil War. Its citizens and soldiers were courageously trying to defend their “country” as they understood it. Those alive today who see those patriots as worthy of praise, study and honor have a fully defensible position, and even if it weren’t defensible, it is as worthy of non-profit status as any other position.

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More Trump Deranged Fake News From The Times..

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

I’ve decided that I’m going to keep posting these “Nah, there’s no mainstream media bias!” essays until one of the bias-deniers who hangs out in these parts finally screams, “All right! All right! We’ve been lying! Of course the mainstream media is actively trying to undermine the President, especially the Times!“

This one is especially timely after a prominent member of the Association of Professional Responsibility Lawyers pleaded for support in arguing that Trump should be removed from office because he was mean to the Pope. The member also had the—something—to insist that this was not a partisan issue. I wrote, before refusing to read the many replies supporting the “non-partisan” who wants the 25th Amendment used…you know, like the Axis was claiming during Trump’s first term—to forcibly remove him from office,

“Oh for heaven’s sake. This is not a non-partisan issue, and anyone who thinks otherwise is deluded, dishonest or being paid by the Democrats. 
And it is not a proper topic for conversation here, not that this has stopped the majority Left-leaning political bias on this listserv from leaking out with regularity. Did anyone here ever breathe a bit of concern that the previous President was showing ominous signs of being unfit for office? I don’t recall any, but I’d take seriously their arguments on why this is a legitimate APRL concern now.  Anyone else is prohibited by what I call “ethics estoppel.”

But I digress. Here is yesterday’s headline on a large Times feature (Gift link):

Trump’s Erratic Behavior and Extreme Comments Revive Mental Health Debate

“As the president threatens to wipe out Iran and attacks the pope, even some former allies and advisers are questioning whether he has grown increasingly unbalanced, describing him as “lunatic” and “clearly insane.”

The second I read that, I thought, “Hmmm, I wonder if I can guess who the ‘former allies and advisers’ are. Let’s see if you can guess: I’ll give you 30 seconds..

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Ethics Villains: Yes, The New York Times Again…And Its Biased, Ignorant, Pro-Terrorism Readers

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

The gift link to the NYT article at issue is here.


I’m not going to quote it or summarize it. I will characterize it: the opinion piece, Gaza’s Rubble Is the Grave of Our Future, by Ghada Abdulfattah, “a writer who lives in Gaza,” is anti-Israel, pro-Hamas propaganda that the Times has handed a large amount of space to promote. This is a “poor Gazans being victims of genocide by those inhuman, cruel Jews” essay. The writer never comes right out and says that, but her chronicling of the devastation in Gaza since the Israeli assault began three years ago is definitely aimed at conveying that misleading message.

All right, I will offer a quote:

“It isn’t just the sadness of what was demolished. Seeing endless piles of concrete brings a second layer of violence — the violence of being forced to live with destruction. Rubble doesn’t just destroy the past; it erases the future. It forces your mind to stop imagining, to stop thinking, to stop dreaming about life after today.”

Gee, I guess launching a sneak terror attack on civilians in your neighboring state, killing over 1200 people, including infants, raping woman and taking 250 hostages isn’t such a good idea, eh? Huh. Who knew?

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Ethics Quiz: Investigative Reporting Ethics

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

In this article, (Gift Link) a New York Times investigative reporter explains how he has cultivated a source that he knows is distributing illegal drugs that may be fatal.

He writes in part,

“It was a small-time operation, but one that illuminated a big point for our reporting: A single person, without cartel backing, can order and redistribute potent chemicals.

I wanted to verify his account with others. But I also had to make good on my commitment not to reveal his identity. So I compared the information he was giving me with reporting I’d done with dozens of experts and law enforcement officials who told me what they understood about this market. I also spoke to people in his circle of friends and associates.

All along, I was keenly aware that the drugs Chemical Analyst was selling can be fatal. I asked him about this — as I’d asked other dealers and suppliers — and he professed here to be a libertarian. As a human, I find it terrifying the drugs he sells could kill people. It was painful to watch him use drugs himself, and I often feared for his safety. But as a reporter, I have a responsibility to explain to the public what’s really happening on the drug frontier.”

This is different from most Ethics Quizzes here, because my position is set and unshakable. The reporter’s duty “to make good on [his] commitment not to reveal [the drug pusher’s] identity” must be subordinate to his duty to society as a citizen and responsible human being. Even lawyers are authorized to violate a clients’ confidentiality to prevent death or serious bodily injury to a third party. How many people should die so that the reporter can explain what’s happening on “the drug frontier?” My verdict: none.

The reporter says he’s talked to lawyers and other journalists as well as “experts” and law enforcement officials. I doubt that he has talked with any ethicists.

Your Ethics Alarms Ethics Quiz of the Day(that I have already told you my answer to..) is…

Would it be ethical for the reporter sic the police on this criminal? Could it be ethical not to?

I Just Can’t Give Trump a “Julie Principle” Pass When He Says Things Like This…

/ Jack Marshall / 25 Comments

“For Fox executives only, take Jessica Tarlov off the air. She is, from her voice, to her lies, and everything else about her, one of the worst ‘personalities’ on television, a real loser! People cannot stand watching her.”

….quoth the President in a Truth Social post two days ago. Tarlov is one of the rotating progressive Democrat co-hosts on Fox News’ talk show “The Five” and routinely does what she was hired to do, which is to be the house contrarian on a biased news channel, like Scott Jennings on CNN.

It’s a lonely and crummy job, but somebody’s got to do it. Jennings does it much better, but 1) he’s smart, articulate, and usually has the right side to defend, 2) the wokies and Axis agents on the panels with him are hardly the best and the brightest, and 3) Tarlov isn’t the worst of Fox’s hired Lefties, and I’d rank her as better than Juan Williams, the thankfully departed long-time holder of that role on Fox. Faint praise, I know.

But Ethics Alarms correctly slammed the Biden White House when it dishonestly attacked Greg Gutfield of “The Five” in 2023, so I shouldn’t use The Julie Principle to give President Trump a pass now. Presidents should only carefully criticize journalists and pundits by name if at all, and Trump doesn’t do anything carefully. It is punching down by definition; it looks petty, it makes him look thin-skinned and weak, and worst of all, it hands his principle-free and shameless critics an opportunity to say he’s pro-censorship.

This has been true for years, and yet Trump has a flat learning curve. It’s like a man who keeps smashing his head against a wall without figuring out that it’s not a good idea.

The Tarlov nonsense is even worse that that, in fact. After Trump has “demanded” (he can’t demand, because its none of his business) that Fox fire someone like Tarlov, he’s given that individual immunity from getting dismissed no matter what she does. Fox News has to keep Tarlov or look like Trump is running the network. Fox News is too much of a Trump and MAGA lackey already.

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