CNN

Who Do You Trust, CNN Or Don Lemon? (Hint: It’s A Trick Question)

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

Here is how Don Lemon announced his firing from CNN on Twitter…

Here was CNN’s response:

Lemon is an incorrigibly unprofessional and biased pseudo-journalist who has one of the most damning and extensive Ethics Alarms dossiers extant. he’s thrown tantrums, made up fake history, lied, peddled fake news and appeared drunk on the air. I think my favorite inexcusable babbling self-indulgence by Don was this, but I easily could have missed one, or dozens. Anyone that believes anything Don Lemon says, writes, publishes or tweets is dangerously gullible.

CNN, meanwhile, kept Lemon on the air in a high-profile, prime-time slot despite his lack of integrity and journalism competence, because it viewed him as an attractive messenger for its steady diet of biased, slanted and occasionally fabricated news stories serving its management’s partisan objectives. CNN is a little less trustworthy than Fox News, and a little more trustworthy than MSNBC, or, to be brief, completely untrustworthy.

The answer to the question posed in the headline is “Neither.”

More “Good Racism” OK’ed By Network News

/ Jack Marshall / 13 Comments

I want to read or hear a reasonable, intelligent defense of this phenomenon, which is occurring fairly regularly, especially since the George Floyd Freakout, DEI Madness and the Great Stupid descended over the land like the Seven Plagues of Egypt.

Above you see approximately the moment when CNN’s dumb, sexist, racist, biased—but cute!—morning anchor Don Lemon said to Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy, because he couldn’t think of a real argument,

“When you are in black skin, and you live in this country, then you can disagree with me.”

You can read the context of Lemon’s remark, but I don’t believe it matters. There is no context in which that statement is anything but racially biased (not to mention un-American and really, really stupid.) For the record, Lemon was claiming that black Americans don’t have the same rights in the U.S. that whites do, a particularly audacious contention from a guy who 1) hardly rose to his position at CNN from the ghetto or the cotton fields, 2) only has and keeps his multi-million dollar a year job because he is black (though being gay helps) and 3) was debating with another “BIPOC,” but apparently there is a hierarchy in that privileged group in which African American beats Indian American, like rock beats scissors.

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Ethics Dunce, Rabbi and “Rolling Stone” Columnist Jay Michaelson Provides A Depressing Lesson In How “Bias Makes You Stupid”

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

Was this really so hard an episode to respond to competently?

As discussed in this post, the Dalai Lama got himself videoed while pressuring a young boy to kiss him (on the lips) and asking the boy to <cough> suck the holy man’s tongue. Too bad Peter Graves is dead: he could play the Dalai Lama in a movie…

“Joey…would you like to suck my tongue?” was apparently cut. But I digress.

On “CNN Tonight” panel this week, and host Alisyn Camerota asked Michaelson to comment on the disturbing video. Ethics Aalrms frozen solid, the rabbi answered,

“The Dalai Lama is a very playful human being. And we may see this in a weird, kind of gross, sexualized way, but this is about as sexual as a bowl of plain rice. There is nothing sexual … or erotic happening in this encounter. Tibetan culture just has different boundaries…[the tongue] is what we kiss with, it’s sexualized … it’s not seen that way in Tibetan culture. This is a part of the body. It’s something playful….The apology was in order. This was clearly something that was at best, you know, insensitive to how this would be seen by a large swath of the world population. [But]“the Dalai Lama is one of my spiritual heroes. I have met him. Being in his presence is really one of the most powerful experiences I’ve had in my life. And the aura of loving kindness that he has is evident, even here where he’s being playful in a way that in Western culture would certainly be inappropriate.”

Since the rabbi wasn’t defending Joe Biden, Camerota felt free to actually practice journalism and challenge this spin, saying, “the boy doesn’t want to” kiss the Dalai Lama or suck his tongue,” and adding that the Dalai Lama is “taking the boy’s head … just sort of reading the body language here. I’ll take your word for it that it seemed differently there culturally, but the boy doesn’t seem to be wanting to participate in this.”

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CNN’s Desperate, Unethical And Insulting Don Lemon Retention Strategy

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

CNN Morning anchor Don Lemon returned to the show today, after CNN CEO Chris Licht told staff in a memo that the cute, black, gay incompetent has agreed to submit to “training” in exchange for his return.

To “cut to the chase,” Lemon is an ongoing and acute embarrassment to CNN, broadcast news, and journalism. His record of bad journalism and misadventures are documented on Ethics Alarms, and since I would rather have my toes transplanted to my forehead than watch the guy no matter what show he’s showboating in, I know that Ethics Alarms has only scratched the surface of Lemon’s bias, narcissism, lack of professionalism and incompetence. He should have been fired many times over, but since his worst displays have been squarely in service of progressive cant, anti-white bias and Democratic politics, it was only his most recent gaffe, openly signalling his sexism while revealing how well he performs basic research, that seriously jeopardized his continued employment.

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CNN Hasn’t Fired Don Lemon For Being Dishonest, Incompetent, Arrogant, Biased And Drunk. Will Lemon Being Stupidly Sexist Be Any Different?

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

What an idiot. But we knew that. I’m sure CNN even knew that, but Don is cute, black and gay, so he routinely gets a special version of “The King’s Pass” (Rationalization #11). Nonetheless, his latest outburst is special, even for Don, who suffers from the Dunning-Kruger Effect. Apparently Don associates a woman’s “prime” with her child-bearing years, which is the height of sexism: women are primarily breeders, right, Don? The same sources Lemon is evidently besotted with designate the male “prime” at around 19-years-old, if you measure men by erections and their level of arousal.

Can you imagine what Don and the CNN “Get Trump!” posse would have said if Trump told Hillary Clinton in 2016 that she had left her prime—as a woman—behind in her forties? Actually, Lemon’s argument sounds like something Trump might say. He has always been a sexist, but he’s not so much of a compulsive sexist to say something that stupid about women on TV.

We also learned how Don educates himself. It’s on the internet, so it must be true! “Don’t kill the messenger!”

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No Way Back For CNN

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments
Too late. Waaay too late.

CNN broke this story yesterday. Suddenly, under new ownership, the once respected cable journalism channel further retreated from its shameless partisan bias that metastasized during the Obama Presidency and ruined Ted Turner’s creation.

It’s doomed. There is no recovery from destroying trust, at least not when recovery will take years. On one night last week, every Fox News program had better ratings than all of CNN’s offerings for that night combined. This was completely predictable, and is a cautionary tale.

CNN’s abandonment of anything resembling objective, ethical and responsible journalism as it morphed into MSNBC-lite chased away conservatives, Republicans, independents and anyone who wanted to get accurate, complete news that wasn’t slanted, manipulated or censored to favor Democrats and their allies. If they didn’t go to Fox News, holding their noses, they defaulted to the web (like me.) CNN’s viewership was almost completely reduced to 1) old, half-awake traditionalists in denial who fooled themselves into believing that this was the same news source that used to be announced by the sonorous tones of James Earl Jones and 2) leftist partisans for whom the likes of Joy Reid, Al Sharpton, Lawrence O’Donnell and the other hacks on MSNBC were too much for their gorges to bear.

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Unethical Quote Of The Month: CNN Intelligence Analyst Robert Baer

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

“And you know, this freedom of speech is just nonsense because you can’t go in a movie theater and yell ‘fire.’ It’s against the law.”

—Former CIA case officer and current CNN intelligence analyst Robert Baer, arguing that Elon Musk’s allowing banned users—like Donald Trump—back on Twitter and not censoring “misinformation” constituted a security risk.

You know that feeling when you think you have made a persuasive argument, or at least fooled people into thinking you have, and then something comes out of your mouth that proves you don’t don’t know what you’re talking about? No, me neither, but if Robert Baer didn’t have that feeling when he uttered the ethics and legal nonsense above, he should have.

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The Apparent Democratic Party Strategy To Stave Off November Defeat: Lie Their Heads Off

/ Jack Marshall / 21 Comments

The problem is that this plan depends on the full collaboration of the mainstream media, and cracks are appearing in that previously reliable alliance.

During a Democratic National Committee event, president Biden once again indulged some of his favorite pieces of misinformation (Did you know that Donald Trump lied all the time?). Biden said that gas prices have fallen by “$1.30 a gallon,” with the average now being “less than $2.99” in 41 states and the District of Columbia. He also said that the current unemployment rate of 3.7% is the lowest it has been in over half a century.

CNN, in the midst of a course correction (as in “maybe we should go back to actual journalism a bit”) debunked both statements. “Biden’s claim about average gasoline prices was false, as the White House acknowledged by correcting the official transcript after CNN inquired about the claim on Friday afternoon,” CNN reported. “In fact, zero states have an average price under $2.99 per gallon, figures from GasBuddy and the American Automobile Association show. As the correction notes, Biden got a key digit wrong: 41 states and the District of Columbia have an average price under $3.99, not $2.99….“But the price of gas is one of the most important numbers in politics. Even if the President made an inadvertent error this time, his incorrect remark was televised live on CNN and MSNBC.”

Later, Biden changed his story to say that “a few” states had average gas prices under $3. That was also a lie.

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Unethical Euphemism Of The Month: “Anti-Racist/Anti-Oppression Layoffs”

/ Jack Marshall / 15 Comments

Hmmm, why does this concept sound vaguely familiar?

That’s Jeff Lawson above, CEO of Twilio, a “customer engagement software company,” whatever that means. He just announced that because of Joe Biden’s non-recession he’s going to have to reduce the workforce by 11%, meaning that more than 800 loyal, hardworking, not quietly -quitting Twilio employees will be put out onto the streets. But he assured employees (and progressives, and anti-white racists) that the company would make firing decisions through an “Anti-Racist/Anti-Oppression lens.”

Translation: “I’m firing whites, males and straight people first.”

Verdict:: Unethical, grandstanding, discriminating asshole.

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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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