Journalism & Media

Ethics Quote Of The Week: Ann Coulter

/ Jack Marshall / 17 Comments

Rittenhouse gun

“Any positive comment about Rittenhouse on Facebook, Instagram or Twitter led to an immediate suspension. GoFundMe refused to allow Rittenhouse’s friends to raise money for his defense. People who did contribute were hunted down, doxxed and fired. The same people who wanted to give Guantanamo war criminals civilian trials think an American who refused to acquiesce in his own murder didn’t deserve legal representation. Kyle Rittenhouse is on trial so that no one will dare stand in the way of the left’s shock troops ever again.”

—Conservative performance artist Ann Coulter, doing that voodoo that she do so well, or something.

Once again, let me emphasize that an “ethics quote” is not necessarily an ethical quote, but rather one that raises important ethics issues. Coulter’s last sentence is so coulterish that calling this an ethical quote would be madness.

Kyle Rittenhouse is on trial because two people were shot dead and one wounded at his hands, and such events usually get citizens put on trial for something. He’s also on trial because prosecutors seldom have the courage and principle to refuse to prosecute when large portions of the community are screaming for blood, have approved of a hysterical riot sparked by an ignorant protest over a justified police shooting, and the news media is egging the hysteria on.

But buried in her usual hyperbole and deliberate flame-throwing, Ann has a point.

I’m proud to say that this is the first time Coulter has been mentioned here since 2017. She literally will say anything that will help her get publicity, generate college speaking gigs, and sell books, so there is no reason to take her seriously. Who knows what she believes, or if she believes anything? The last thing I wrote about Coulter was when she was stumping for Roy Moore to be elected Senator in Alabama: “Ann Coulter tweeted yesterday that it doesn’t matter if Moore is a theocrat, it doesn’t matter if the man who calls gays sub-human perverts is, in fact, a pervert himself; it doesn’t matter that he was kicked off the bench twice as a judge for ignoring the law….what matters is that he’ll vote for Trump’s wall in the Senate. Get help, Ann.”

No, she hasn’t gotten help, but she’s never been stupid, and sometimes she is useful because she publishes facts that the mainstream media withholds (I did use one of Coulter’s screeds as a reference point for a Breonna Taylor fact-check last year.) For example, in the Townhall essay that contains the quote above, Ann reminds us…

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The Great Stupid And “The Postman Always Rings Twice” Meet NPR!

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

Abbott-costello-meet-frankenstein-1

Like the classic film starring my favorite comedy team, this is more funny than scary. And it couldn’t happen to a more deserving news organization.

An online NPR article and a tweet promoting the story reported that Michelle Wu, just elected as Boston’s  first woman and first person of color mayor, had disappointed some activists with her victory. 

boston-mayor-npr-03

“While many are hailing it as a major turning point, others see it as more of a disappointment that the three Black candidates in the race couldn’t even come close,” the story, like the tweet, read.  This being The Great Stupid, NPR was quickly accused of being racist. Trapped like a rat, NPR’s Boston affiliate apologized and said it had deleted the tweet which was “causing harm”, though all it had done is report, and accurately, the reaction of others in the city, notably the black community. “We realize we don’t always get things right the first time,” it groveled, saying that the  “tweet/headline misrepresented the story.” No, what NPR was really apologizing for is reporting the story, which exposes the fact that black race-activists only care about one race, their own. They did see Wu’s victory as a disappointment. NPR’s sin was telling the truth, instead of being a reliable propaganda organ and spinning the story to the satisfaction of those who want to avoid letting on that the conservative criticism of the Left’s race obsession is legitimate. What “harm” had the tweet done? The harm was not following the approved script and hiding the ugly hypocrisy at the core of progressivism.

Bad progressive lapdog! BAD!

“The story is still Asians vs. Blacks for some unknown reason. The ‘tweet/headline’ was hardly the issue,” one outraged Bostonian tweeted. Unknown reason? Harvard and other elite colleges are rejecting better qualified Asian-American applicants to admit Blacks with lesser credentials. A disproportionate number of the attacks on Asian-Americans hyped by the media was at the hands of Blacks.

Now the  updated tweet says that “many were hopeful Boston would finally elect its first Black mayor,” with “Black activists and political strategists” left having to “reflect on what they can learn from the 2021 campaign season.” But they weren’t disappointed that Boston didn’t elect a black mayor, you see? 

No, I don’t either. What NPR correctly noted is that “many” in Boston and elsewhere in Progressiveland care about color more than character and ability. Continue reading →

Unethical Tweet Of The Month With Signature Significance: New York Times Contributor Sarah Jeong

/ Jack Marshall / 18 Comments

Jeong tweet2

Most tweets, even the very stupid and vicious ones, are not truly unethical because they are just opinions, and as opinions, simply self-indictments by nasty, bigoted, or not very smart people. However, the tweets of certain individuals—elected officials, scholars, journalists, scientists, experts in various fields and, unfortunately, celebrities—carry extra weight and the potential to persuade. When tweets by those people are dishonest or misleading they are irresponsible, and to be irresponsible is to be unethical.

Sarah Jeong is on the New York Times editorial staff, which means that she is trusted by the nation’s (supposedly) most trustworthy newspaper. Yet that tweet is one more example of the mainstream media denying or distorting reality to bolster the party and administration they put in power. The Biden administration is desperately spinning to deny the seriousness of the out-of-control inflation on its watch, but for journalists and pundits to assist them is unethical and despicable. The consumer price index indicates that, from last September to this September, Americans have seen beef prices rise by 18%; gas prices by 42%; furniture prices by 11%; electricity by 5%; and used car prices by 24%. Consumer prices for October, the most recent month with data, jumped by 6.2% compared to what they were a year prior. That’s the highest yearly jump in three decades. But a Times staffer of some notoriety says it’s a nothingburger, affecting the rich more than the rest.

Twitter, of course, doesn’t regard this as disinformation, since it supports a Democratic President’s disastrous fiscal policies.

Liz Wolf points out the obvious at Reason:

Inflation is not a frivolous concern created by panicking, self-interested rich people; nor are rich people currently “flipping their shit” because their assets aren’t doing as well as they’d like. Inflation is something that’s making things significantly harder for the non–”pajama class”—those roughly 79 percent of workers (estimates vary) who do not work remotely, but must commute to their in-person jobs day in and day out, incurring the burden that comes with the rising price of gas. It’s something that’s making it significantly harder for families to feed their kids. It’s something that’s throwing a wrench in some people’s plans to travel for the holidays, as rental cars and hotel rooms have gotten a good deal pricier than before. And it’s something many Americans probably don’t appreciate being lied to about….choosing flippant tweeting over thoughtful analysis is a bad look for New York Times contributors who really ought to be more concerned with the plights of everyday Americans forced to tighten the purse strings for reasons far beyond their control.

It’s worse that that. Allowing a proven bigot, sexist, anti-white racist and extreme ideologue like Jeong to represent it is signature significance for any news organization. An ethical company doesn’t do it; a responsible company doesn’t tolerate it; a trustworthy company doesn’t have someone like Jeong around at all. You may have forgotten this post, which is relevant to this morning’s first as well, when the Times first hired Jeong: Continue reading →

Well What Do You Know! Andrew Sullivan Finally Sees Clearly That The News Media Is Completely Corrupt And Untrustworthy

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

It sure took a while, Andrew, but it’s good to have you on board. Every little bit helps.

Andrew Sullivan is writing at substack now, the place where disillusioned former henchmen (and henchwomen, like Bari Weiss) of the biased and partisan mainstream news media have retreated after they sensed that somehow the people they were working for were doing more harm than good. Some, like independent journalist/muckraker Green Greenwald, flipped loyalties completely and declared his disgust with fury, even pointing out the news media’s campaign of lies against Donald Trump. Sullivan has, in contrast and until now, been unwilling to admit what has been obvious for a very long time: American journalism has really become “the enemy of the people.”

Oh, he has gradually picked off other and related examples of progressive ethics rot in our societyof many : check out the first 12 Ethics Alarms essays here, going back to 2014. These all must have been hard for him, for Sullivan is a moderate conservative turned progressive (by the gay marriage issue), and he doubtlessly would like to support his newfound companions. Yet he couldn’t quite bring himself to accept what I, to name just one objective analysts, figured out and have been documenting for more than a decade.

Now he has. Whew! I thought it would never happen.

In “Denial,” the film about the lawsuit by British Holocaust denier and fake historian David Irving against American Deborah Lipstadt, Tom Wilkinson as Lipstadt’s barrister Richard Rampton, in the process of excoriating Irving to the court where the case is being tried, says in a memorable speech,

My lord, during this trial, we have heard from Professor Evans and others of at least 25 major falsifications of history. Well, says Mr. Irving, “all historians make mistakes.” But there is a difference between negligence, which is random in its effect, and a deliberateness, which is far more one-sided. All Mr. Irving’s little fictions, all his tweaks of the evidence all tend in the same direction: the exculpation of Adolf Hitler. He is, to use an analogy, like the waiter who always gives the wrong change. If he is honest, we may expect sometimes his mistakes to favor the customers, sometimes himself. But Mr. Irving is the dishonest waiter. All his mistakes work in his favor. How far, if at all, Mr. Irving’s Antisemitism is the cause of his Hitler apology, or vice versa, is unimportant. Whether they are taken together or individually, it is clear that they have led him to prostitute his reputation as a serious historian in favor of a bogus rehabilitation of Adolf Hitler and the dissemination of virulent Antisemitic propaganda.

Note the parallels with Sullivan’s description of the mainstream media in his latest newsletter:

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Did A Defendant’s Lawyer In The Arbery Trial “Cross A Line”?

/ Jack Marshall / 18 Comments

Nothing thrills the soul of this ethicist more than a terrific legal ethics controversy leaping off the page in his morning newspaper on a Saturday morning. Better still, it involved, not the Kyle Rittenhouse trial but that other trial, the one really involving racist vigilantes—the trial of the three white men who shot black jogger Ahmaud Arbery as they attempted to make a “citizen’s arrest.”

Kevin Gough, the lawyer who represents William Bryan, one of the three men accused of murdering Arbery, asked Judge Timothy R. Walmsley to ban “high-profile members of the African American community” from the Brunswick, Georgia courtroom. The lawyer argued that the presence of the Rev. Al Sharpton at the trial last week could be “intimidating” to jurors. “We don’t want any more Black pastors coming in here,” Gough said.

The New York Times this morning headlined its story in the print edition “Cantankerous Lawyer At Arbery Trial Crossed Over A Line, Critics Say.” (The online edition’s version is bit more restrained: “Lawyer for Man Accused of Killing Ahmaud Arbery Draws Scrutiny.”) Of course, all lawyers for defendants in high-profile cases draw scrutiny. Fake news!) Interestingly but hardly surprisingly, the Times print headline is misleading. What “critics” say Gough crossed a line? Well, that would be Al Sharpton and another black pastor. The word “critics” implies objective observors who are disinterested parties. But that’s the Times these days. Sad, really.

Then the Times spends the rest of the piece, 21 paragraphs worth, telling readers what a loose cannon Gough is. Does the article ever bother to explain the legal, ethical and factual justifications for Gough’s request? Not at all. That’s not just sad, that’s journalism malpractice. Incompetence or deliberate disinformation? It’s Hanlon’s Razor time!

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Kyle Rittenhouse Ethics, Part 3: Et Cetera

/ Jack Marshall / 17 Comments

Schroeder

Remaining ethics notes in no special order, (but numbered because numbers work better than bullet points in WordPress’s terrible “block” system):

1. No evidence has surfaced indicating that Rittenhouse is a “white supremacist.” Nonetheless, many news media sources have reported that he is. Worse, Joe Biden has said so twice, once as a candidate and once since his election. Kyle’s mother appeared on Fox News and accused Joe Biden of defaming her son to win votes. That’s as good an explanation as any, I guess.

2. Trump Derangement is embedded in the trial. The Great Stupid moment par exellance: while Rittenhouse was on the stand, a cell phone tone rang out. It belonged to the phone of Judge Schroeder, and was Lee Greenwood’s patriotic country anthem “God Bless the U.S.A.” This immediately sparked deranged pundits and activist to demand the judge’s removal, because Donald Trump likes the song and has played it at rallies.

Morons. What songs a judge likes or doesn’t like isn’t evidence of any bias or conflict of interest whatsoever, and while the news media wants this trial seen as such, it’s not political. However, some judges have punished lawyers for allowing a cell phone to disrupt testimony. For a judge to have his own phone ring is bad.

3. Someone was explaining to me that the judge was biased because he appeared to be “anti-rioter.” All judges and all citizens should be anti-rioter.

4. Judge Schroeder also has been criticized for allowing the defense to use terms like looters and rioters but banning the prosecution from calling those shot by Rittenhouse as “victims.” As for the former, they were rioters and looters. There is no reason to disguise it. I agree with the “victims” ruling as well. I’ve often wondered about permitting the word in such trials: “victim” is an ambiguous term that can imply innocence. One meaning is “someone who is subjected to oppression, hardship, or mistreatment.” Someone who is killed in self-defense hasn’t been mistreated. The word biases the trial against a defendant like Rittenhouse.

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A “Nah, There’s No Mainstream Media Bias!”/ IIPTDXTTNMIAFB / “It Isn’t What It Is”/Jumbo Spectacular!

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

Mediate lie

They aren’t even trying to be credible any more apparently. Wow.

See those words above, in Mediaite’s tweet? Now, if I was doing my best Mediaite imitation, I’d write, “Mediaite didn’t claim Joe Biden didn’t refer to Satchel Paige as a Negro” even while you could read that this is exactly what the media news website did.

In fact, here’s what President Biden, in full bumbling mode, said today at a Veteran’s Day event at Arlington National Cemetery:

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Ethics Pre-Daylight Losing Time Fallback, 11/6/202: So?…Go!…Oops! And More

/ Jack Marshall / 26 Comments

Fall back

At this point in U.S. history, there is no justification whatsoever for not having daylight savings time year-round. The failure of Congress to kill Ben Franklin’s anachronistic brainstorm is pure cowardice and incompetence.

1. So? The NRA Foundation has twice paid attorney David Kopel, a Second Amendment activist, to write pro-gun rights amicus briefs in Supreme Court cases, according to a hacked document released last week. Since 2019, Kopel has submitted two briefs backing an NRA affiliate in cases before the court, including one involving New York’s ban on carrying licensed guns in public. The briefs did not disclose the source of funding, which is being condemned as unethical by the news media and the usual NRA bashers. “Attorneys who author these briefs must disclose whether they’ve taken money from either side to deliver a filing,” one source says.

Well, first of all, an amicus brief succeeds or fails based on its arguments, and who writes it or funds it should be irrelevant. This would be, at worst, a technical violation. However, the applicable rule in the SCOTUS amicus brief memo does not support the description above. “Rule 37.6 Disclosures” states,

“The first footnote on the first page of text of an amicus brief must include certain disclosures concerning contributions to the brief….It should indicate whether counsel for a party authored the brief in whole or in part and whether such counsel or a party made a monetary contribution intended to fund the preparation or submission of the brief. It should also identify every person other than the amicus, its members or counsel, who made such a monetary contribution; the Clerk’s Office views it as better practice to state explicitly that no such contributions were made if this is in fact true.”

This is astoundingly sloppy drafting, especially for the Supreme Court. “Must” and “should” are terms of art. “Must,” like “shall,” means some action is mandatory; “should” means that something is best practice, but not absolutely required. When two “shoulds” follow a “must,” it is impossible to determine what’s mandatory and what isn’t.

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On Climate Change Fearmongering

/ Jack Marshall / 27 Comments

As the United Nations COP26 climate summit among of world leaders proceeded, China continued to pledge coal-reducing actions that it has no apparent intention of actually doing, Joe Biden’s Energy Secretary laughed at the idea that the administration would even try to lower gas prices, and both the mainstream media and Big Tech moved closer to censoring anyone who dared to question climate change chic. Climate change hustlers and doomsayers were, as usual, predicting disaster. We are “quite literally” in the “last chance saloon,” said Prince Charles, though why anyone would pay attention to him is a fascinating question. Even Justin Welby, the Archbishop of Canterbury, condemned leaders for not addressing climate change by accusing them of “a genocide on an infinitely greater scale.” Greta Thunberg accused politicians of not taking “our future seriously.”

Here, climate wackos confronted Sen. Joe Manchin as he stepped off his yacht with cries of “We want to live!” because Manchin has blocked pointless and expensive anti-climate change measures in the trillion dollar infrastructure bill. “Business as usual” will lead to a catastrophic collapse of Himalayan glaciers; and devastating heatwaves in the southern United States, sayeth the New York Times.

Facts Don’t Matter in the Age of The Great Stupid. I’m betting neither the idiots who harassed Manchin, nor “Green New Deal” guru Rep. Ocasio-Cortez, Al Gore, Greta Thunberg or Nancy Pelosi know that the extreme and apocalyptic predictions they are relying on is the IPCC’s RCP 8.5 scenario often described as “business as usual.” “Business as usual” in that scenario literally means no action by any nations whatsoever, so it is already useless—except to cause alarm and panic among those foolish enough to trust the hysterics.

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Wait, WHAT? Joe Biden’s Daughter Wrote That Her Father Showered With Her?

/ Jack Marshall / 50 Comments

Ew.

But more importantly, since this information was published on line more than a year ago, why are we only hearing about it now?

Let’s back up, shall we? The matter came to the media’s attention after Federal agents in New York raided two homes, one in New York City and one in suburban Westchester County, targeting members of Project Veritas, James O’Keefe’s shady guerilla journalism group. The investigation is being handled by FBI agents and federal prosecutors in Manhattan who work on public corruption matters, and relates to the theft of Ashley Biden’s diary in 2020. Project Veritas did not publish her diary, but dozens of handwritten pages from it were posted on the National File on Oct. 24, 2020, a little more than a week before the Presidential election.

I never heard about this, did you? The mainstream media embargoed the story—they were already occupied trying to make sure the public thought Hunter Biden’s laptop revelations were “Russian disinformation,” and even conservative media ducked diary and its revelations. Entries in the diary include Biden’s daughter writing that she believes she was sexually molested as a child; that she shared “probably not appropriate” showers with her father, [Probably???], her struggle with drug abuse and her troubled marriage and multiple affairs, plus entries showing the Biden family’s fears of scandals involving her brother and others that show a deep resentment for her father. 

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