Journalism & Media

Democratic Senators Push Google To Limit Information In A Letter That Google Is Burying

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

This is a genuinely ominous story for several reasons. It’s also consistent with a recent theme on Ethics Alarms and in the Left’s increasingly anti-democratic philosophy of governing.

Reuters (and so far no other news source that I can find) is reporting that

U.S. lawmakers are urging Alphabet Inc’s leading Google search engine to give accurate results to people seeking abortions rather than sometimes sending them to “crisis pregnancy centers,” which steer woman away from the procedures. The request came in a letter, whose top signatories are Senator Mark Warner and Representative Elissa Slotkin, being sent to Google on Friday.

The letter was prompted by a study released last week by the nonprofit Center for Countering Digital Hate. The study found that 11% of the results for a search for an “abortion clinic near me” or “abortion pill” in some states were for centers that oppose abortion.

…The letter to Alphabet Chief Executive Sundar Pichai and was signed by 13 senators and three members of the U.S. House of Representatives as of midmorning Friday. All are Democrats.

“Google should not be displaying anti-abortion fake clinics or crisis pregnancy centers in search results for users that are searching for an ‘abortion clinic’ or ‘abortion pill,'” the lawmakers wrote.

“If Google must continue showing these misleading results in search results and Google Maps, the results should, at the very least, be appropriately labeled,” they wrote…

So far, nobody, including Reuters (and definitely not Google), has made the full text of the letter public. If the Reuters report is accurate, however, this effort isn’t just unethical, it is sinister. Continue reading →

Most Unethical Jan. 6 Show Trial-Related Quote Of The Month: Sen. Chris Coons (D-DE)

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

“What Senator Schumer was saying was that he was upset. He was alarmed, he was concerned at the prospect that justices would reverse decades of a well-established fundamental constitutional right in our country. What he did not say was let’s go attack them.”

—–Sen. Chris Coons on Fox News, explaining why Sen. Majority Leader Chuck Schumer’s direct threat to Justices Gorsuch and Kavanaugh that they “have released the whirlwind and you will pay the price. You won’t know what hit you if you go forward with these awful decisions” was not a call for violence, while President Trump’s address to supporters on 1/6/2020 was inciting an “insurrection.”

Yes, I’ve decided to establish a separate sub-category of Unethical Quotes of the Month until the despicable January 6 Committee blight on ethics and democracy has run its course. Virtually every utterance by a member of that committee is a lie, a veiled partisan attack, or a pretense of legitimate Congressional process in the midst of a disgraceful show trial. The contemptible Rep. Adam Schiff, just as he did (falsely) regarding the Mueller investigation, has promised that he has seen “conclusive” and damning evidence without ever producing it. Liz Cheney is unethical almost every time she opens her mouth, and even when she doesn’t open her mouth: for example, the committee has subpoenaed Bill Stepien, a former Trump campaign manager, who is currently advising Cheney’s opponent, Harriet Hageman, for the Wyoming primary in August. As George Costanza would say, “Worlds are colliding!” Cheney has a direct interest in undermining a political opponent, and that conflicts with her duty to serve on the committee objectively and…oh, what am I saying? The whole J6 effort is a obvious partisan effort to smear Republicans in general and Terrifying Trump in particular. Never mind.

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Would You Buy A Used Fact Check From This News Organization?

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

Hey, anyone can make a mistake, right?

Well, some mistakes have lasting consequences, and result in fair and permanent judgments about an individual’s or an organization’s trustworthiness. I winced a bit at comments in the previous post using the term”mistake” in reference to a grown woman who was selling heroin with her boyfriend, and then after he was arrested and asked her to “take care of” his co-defendant, lured the hit-target into a homicidal ambush by another “business partner” of her and her boyfriend. What is the single “mistake” in that sequence? When did it become a mistake—after she was caught? After she was sentenced to life in prison?

The “mistake” in the case at hand isn’t a crime, just a metaphorical journalistic one. The miscreant is the Associated Press. Last week, the AP published a story about a new group buying up Spanish-speaking radio stations. “The Latino Media Network, a startup founded by two political strategists who worked for President Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, reached a $60 million deal to acquire 18 AM and FM stations in ten U.S. cities from Televisa/Univision,” it reported. “The agreement announced June 3 still needs Federal Communications Commission approval.”

The piece included comments about the purchase attributed to Martha Flores, who served for years as a host of a show on Radio Mambi. Flores has been dead for two years.

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Here’s Today’s “Gee, It Would Be Nice If We Had Some Kind Of Profession That Would Objectively Inform Us About Important Events Without Lying, Spinning, And Manipulating” Note: The SCOTUS Security Bill

/ Jack Marshall / 19 Comments

You’re on again, Dana…

Gee, Dana, I don’t know what’s happening, because “journalists” and the untrustworthy, irresponsible, incompetent news organizations they work for refuse to tell us without their own special sauce drowning its essence. The special sauce is arrogance and bias.

Today’s nauseating example: Are Nancy Pelosi and her House Democrats deliberately stalling the special SCOTUS protection measure that passed the Senate last month as part of an effort to intimidate the conservative justices and play politics with their lives?

The National Review reported,

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From The “Nah, There’s No Mainstream Media Bias!” Res Ipsa Loquitur File…

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

Assassination attempt on Justice Kavanaugh? Who’s “Justice Kavanaugh”?

Yes, it’s a Jumbo. But it’s worse than that…

Newsbusters reporter Kevin Tober recorded the relative minutes of coverage on the Sunday news talk shows for the January 6 Capitol riots show trial and the attempted assassination of Justice Brett Kavanaugh. The totals:

ABC: Capitol riot: 19:11; Kavanaugh: 0:00

CBS: Capitol riot: 19:31; Kavanaugh: 0:00

NBC: Capitol riot: 36:25′ Kavanaugh: 0:00

CNN: Capitol riot: 18:10; Kavanaugh: 0:00

We already know that MSNBC wants Kavanaugh dead, so there is no need to include that network’s ration. NPR was little better, twice mentioning the Kavanaugh episode without actually reporting on it: “a man arrested near Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s house.,” and “we learned of the arrest of an armed man outside Justice Kavanaugh’s house.” That was it. This is what your tax dollars get you in timely news reporting. Continue reading →

Lapsed Sunday Sundown Ethics, 6/12-13/2022: Something!

/ Jack Marshall / 28 Comments

[I hate when this happens: I had yesterday’s ethics short (well, shorter) notes almost ready to post,  things got complicated, and now it’s the next day. Well, I like that sundown photo, so to hell with it.]

***

There are not too many speeches that have had a tangible impact on world events, but June 12 is the anniversary of one of them:  President Reagan challenging Soviet Leader Mikhail Gorbachev to “tear down this wall” in 1987.  Two years later, on November 9, 1989, the Berlin Wall came down. Liberals and left-leaning historians disliked Reagan so much that to this day they deny him his well-earned credit for undermining Soviet communism. On the anniversary of his death last week, Twitter was full of ugly, vicious attacks on his achievements and character. Nothing inspires hate more than someone who proves that your fondest beliefs are garbage. Here is what Reagan said to the crowd of West Berliners:

“There is one sign the Soviets can make that would be unmistakable, that would advance dramatically the cause of freedom and peace.” He then called upon his Soviet counterpart: “Secretary General Gorbachev, if you seek peace—if you seek prosperity for the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe—if you seek liberalization: come here, to this gate. Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate. Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall.”

All delivered, as usual, with the skills of a professional and experienced actor.

1. Ugh. Why is the principle of moral luck so elusive? A baseball controversy erupted in Chicago last week because ancient and “old school” White Sox manager Tony LaRussa intentionally walked Dodgers shortstop Trea Turner with a runner on second base  and a count of one ball and two strikesin order to have relief pitcher Bennett Sousa face Max Muncy instead. Muncy promptly hit a three-run home run to give the Dodgers a 10-5 lead in a game they would eventually win 11-9. A live microphone  caught one fan yelling “He’s got two strikes, Tony!” and “Tony, what are you doing?” before Muncy homered. The intentional walk is a baseball strategy that has largely gone into disuse because statistics don’t support it except in very specific situations. The White Sox have been a disappointing team so far this season, and that tactic by LaRussa seemed to catalyze a fan consensus that he is too old, behind the times, and the reason for the team’s performance. (He was booed in Chicago the last two games, and also faced “Fire Tony!” chants.)

So here comes ESPN’s esteemed David Schoenfield to write, “Now, to be fair here, the pounding on La Russa is also a little unfair. If Muncy strikes out, it looks like a good move.”

No, no, NO, you idiot! Whether or not the tactic is a wise one must be determined when it is executed, not after its results are known. La Russa had no control over whether Muncy homered or struck out once he had ordered the intentional base on balls. What a third party, or subsequent events, do cannot change whether a decision was competent or incompetent. That’s just luck. Continue reading →

Should Fox News Broadcast The Prime Time Hearings Of The House’s Partisan Jan. 6 Committee? Of Course Not. And Neither Should Any Other Network…

/ Jack Marshall / 15 Comments

The mainstream media and the usual suspect in the world of punditry are having a particularly silly meltdown over the decision by the Fox News management not to treat the hyped Jan. 6 Committee hearings as anything other than what they are and have obviously been from the beginning: an unethical, biased, last-ditch effort to salvage the November mid-terms by painting the GOP as a threat to democracy—because a bunch of morons and assholes stormed the U.S. Capitol in response to President Trump’s irresponsible claims that the election had been “rigged” and “stolen.”

Meanwhile, Democrats and their legions are trying to intimidate the Supreme Court, undermine the Bill of Rights, legalize racial discrimination,, and bomb anti-abortion organizations. Yeah, these are the people who will “save democracy,” all right.

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A Pulitzer Prize-Winning Journalist Reports A Fake Video As News In The Johnny Depp-Amber Heard Trial

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments
How embarrassing, but more than that, how infuriating.
Richard Winton, a 2011 Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter at the Los Angeles Times, reported on the Johnny Depp-Amber Heard defamation trial that consumed social media,
“At one point, actor Jason Momoa, star of ‘Aquaman,’ testified via live video in support [of] his co-star Heard. Without prompting, he said, ‘Hi, Camille,’ to Depp’s high-profile litigator, Camille Vasquez, a rising star in Orange County legal circles who quickly became the star of the trial as much as Depp and Heard.”

It didn’t happen. What Winton reported as fact was actually a faked video sent out on Twitter as a joke. To be clear, the reporter was pretending to report on what he had witnessed, but really took second-hand information as true, and it wasn’t. I once got a theater critic fired for writing a review of the second act of a show I directed when she had left during intermission. This is worse. The Times issued a terse correction stating, “An earlier version of this article included a paragraph about Jason Momoa testifying by video at the trial. The “Aquaman” actor did not testify.”

And? What is the paper going to do about a reporter who reports imaginary news as fact, when he’s too lazy to attend the event he’s supposedly reporting on? Continue reading →

When Polling Is Unethical

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

Gallup is both one of the oldest polling organizations and among the closest to objective, making it doubly irresponsible when it injects nonsense and ignorance into policy debates. This is what it did with two recent polls, headlined thusly: “Steady 58% of Americans Do Not Want Roe v. Wade Overturned” and “‘Pro-Choice’ Identification Rises to Near Record High in U.S.”

The immediate response here is “So what?” Abortion, at least since the misbegotten Roe v. Wade SCOTUS ruling in 1973, is matter of Constitutional law and individual rights, and neither of these are determined by popular opinion.. Nor should they be. Yet the reflex refrain of demagogues and the habitually dishonest when they are out of legitimate arguments is “the public overwhelmingly supports/opposes [fill in the blank],” a contention that inevitably depends on polling.

The threshold question Gallup asked its respondents on the abortion issue was “With respect to the abortion issue, would you consider yourself to be pro-choice or pro-life?” Useless. Did Gallup define what “pro-choice” or “pro-life” meant? Nope. Do “pro-choice” Americans believe a potential mother should be able to “choose” to kill a viable fetus right up to the moment of birth? Do they believe that abortion involves the taking of a life at any point? Ever? Do they care? Who knows? I don’t think most of those who responded that they were “pro-choice” know. It’s garbage in, garbage out: the poll results are meaningless, but they will still be cited as if they are profound.

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“Oh, That Wouldn’t Happen Here!” Wanna Bet?

/ Jack Marshall / 18 Comments

People always tell me they watch the BBC because it isn’t biased like American broadcast news. It must be the British accents: the BBC is relentlessly, overwhelmingly left-biased. This is a socialist nation that is smothered in political correctness. It’s at least as untrustworthy as any US news source.

Here’s a case in point: the BBC changed the testimony of a rape victim who referred to her alleged rapist as “him.” That was a reasonable choice on her part, because, well, because of the rapist’s “part.” Never mind: Facts Don’t Matter in jolly old England either: the victim’s words were changed to avoid “misgendering” the rapist in an article on the BBC website, which replaced every reference to “he” or “him” with “they” or “them.”

Wait—was it a gang rape? The BBC said in response to the episode was, “Our only intention when deciding on language is to make things as clear as possible for audiences.” Now that’s hilarious! In what universe is calling a single person “them” and “they” clearer than calling a rapist who did the deed with an attached male sex organ “he” and “him”?

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