A “misinformation expert” was given a platform by a TV news staff apparently managed by armadillos to pass on the fascinating in formation that opinions and statements that includes these phrases are likely to be passing along “misinformation”:

• “Let that sink in”
• “The media won’t report this”
• “Make this go viral”
• “Do your own research”
• “There are no coincidences”

Oh-oh…Ethics Alarms definitely uses two of these or their equivalents (especially the second one). As for the others, I see nothing wrong or misleading about suggesting that readers circulate an article, and I don’t see anything sinister about suggesting that people do their own research. The last is just a stupid thing to say or believe to be literally true.

Here’s the clip:

I’m trying to find out who this fake “expert” is, where she came from and who was so irresponsible as to give her sufficient credentials that allowed her to claim to be an “expert.” Meanwhile, the TV station that put this garbage on the air needs to have its license pulled for pure incompetence.

It is pretty clear what this woman is doing, isn’t it? Her mission is to convince the public that challenging the narratives of the mainstream media is automatically sinister and seeks to create “misinformation.” This is a misinformation expert spreading the falshood that the news media fairly and competently reports facts and events without delay, spin or distortion, that anyone who tries to challenge these propaganda agents’ primacy is obviously spreading lies, and that the public should trust and completely rely upon a news media that has repeatedly lied, buried stories and actively manipulated what information the public gets to read, see and hear. (The bit about coincidences I take as a slap at the religious Right.)

Let that sink in.

That is how I would answer a question that came into the New York Times’ “The Ethicist” advice column this week. Maybe this is why nobody asks me to apply when the long-time feature is looking for new ethicist. But boy, I don’t think I’ve ever read a letter to Kwame Anthony Appiah that demanded such an obvious response.

Name Withheld, who sends an awful lot of questions to “The Ethicist,” explained that her former live-in boyfriend adopted a dog while they were together. When they parted amicably, they agreed that she would take the pet (she is a veterinarian, after all) and he would have visiting rights. Now she is in a new relationship and thinks this guy may be “the One.” But he objects to her old beau coming by occasionally to see the dog.

“I am at a loss about what to do,” she says. ” I don’t want to upset him by letting my ex have time with the dog. I also feel so guilty about not letting my ex have time with her….My partner says that people he has known have gone through similar things and says they all agree it is unusual to keep my ex involved in my dog’s life.”

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Today is the anniversary of one of the United States’ more unethical international adventures, and one of its more successful ones.

Mexico had threatened to declare war after the U.S. took Texas into the union, but that wasn’t going to happen, and the U.S., under expansionist President James K. Polk, was hungry for more Mexican territories. In November of 1845, Polk sent the diplomat John Slidell to Mexico to bargain for boundary adjustments in return for the U.S. government’s settlement of the claims of U.S. citizens against Mexico. He also offered to buy California and New Mexico.

When the offers were rejected, Polk ordered the U.S. army to advance to the mouth of the Rio Grande, the river that Texas, and now the U.S., claimed as its southern boundary. Mexico had maintained that the boundary was the Nueces River to the northeast of the Rio Grande, so in the absence of a treaty or agreement, Polk was challenging Mexico to start a war. It worked: when Mexico sent troops across the Rio Grande to defend against what it regarded as a U.S. invasion, Polk could declare the Mexican advance to be an invasion of U.S. soil, and on May 13, 1846, Congress declared war on Mexico. The war created widespread resistance and dissent that foreshadowed citizen protests over the Vietnam war, but in the end, the United States got the land it had offered to buy without paying for it, and more.

1. And speaking of the Mexican border, the spin, propaganda and distortions being presented by the news media is staggering, or would be if we weren’t so accustomed to our so-called journalists campaigning for open borders. On local news in Norther Virginia this morning, we were told that “migrants” (they are illegal immigrants) were involved in a “humanitarian crisis” (it’s a law enforcement crisis) and that all the people trying to break our laws were doing was “escaping poverty” and seeking a “better life” for their children. How could any one with a heart oppose such a thing? Then can the interviews with “good immigrants” explaining their “dreams.” No mention of criminals, disease or fentanyl entered the conversation, of course.

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Gee, I can’t imagine what the commentariat might want to bat around today. Freak-outs over CNN daring to host a forum with a the leading candidate to oppose the President in 2024, the news media rushing to dismiss evidence of the Biden family’s access peddling, Rep. George Santos being indicted, the stampede at the border, the Marine who interceded with a rampaging homeless man on the subway indicted, a Squad member holding an anti-Semitic event at the Capitol…yeah, just another sleepy Friday.

Personally, I’m rooting for you to avoid all that stuff and leave me something to write about.

• The mainstream media’s Trump-derangement/hate/obsession/phobia/negative bias is so overwhelming that it is incapable of controlling it or even attempting to be professional. Ann Althouse apparently had the exact reaction to the Memeorandum array of outraged headlines from the most important partner in the Axis of Unethical Conduct this morning as I did: she screen-shotted it all and used it as a post, writing only, “You can see an image of outrage….… if you go to Memeorandum right now, but I’ve saved it for you…” Indeed, this evidence says much more about the state of journalism and punditry in the nation than anything it reveals about Donald Trump.
• The one unstated but implicit message of the media reaction was that CNN was breaching some kind of imaginary, 21st Century journalism ethics tenet by televising the thing. That’s totalitarianism creeping out: like it or not, Trump is the current front-runner to be the GOP nominee for President, and there is an obvious valid news objective in letting the public see him in a spontaneous forum and hear what he has to say. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a fine representative of the Big Brother wing of the Democratic Party, condemned CNN over its programming: of course she did. A depressingly large contingent of Democrats would avoid elections entirely if it could keep them in power, just as Joe Biden avoids press conferences. Too dangerous! The Daily Beast was kind enough to provide almost a parody of anti-Trump spin about the town hall, calling Trump a lair while recycling the mainstream media’s Official Democratic Party Talking Points, like describing the Jan. 6 riot as a “failed coup” and the George Floyd riots as “overwhelmingly peaceful and simply demand[ing] that police officers refrain from shooting and killing innocent Black people.”

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