Jake Tapper

Early Sunday Morning Ethics Warm-Up, 11/8/2020: The 2020 Presidential Election Ethics Train Wreck Accelerates…

/ Jack Marshall / 68 Comments

Train-Wreck air

The news media, Democrats and Trump-Haters—are there any Biden supporters, I wonder?—are behaving like—no other word will do— assholes to a degree that even I could not have imagined. They are doing so in such a flagrant matter that one has to ask if they all really are assholes, if they are this way permanently now, and if we can ever trust any of them again. Gloating, threatening, insulting and lying is not the way to heal the damage done to the nation (by them, primarily) over the last four years.

Do not send Ethics Alarms comments about how “this is no surprise.” Just cut that out. Writing that mitigates the offense. It is a surprise. It may have been predictable, but one has to be surprised at such despicable conduct by such a huge component of the population, or one just has to give up.

It’s unethical to give up.

1. I just blocked my first Twitter account, and it was that of the self-banned, former puckish Ethics Alarms commenter Jeff Field, known here as Fattymoon. Jeff was an enthusiastic member of Occupy Wall Street, meaning he was essentially an anarchist and thoroughly deluded, but he was treated well here. Then he went off to Medium to attack me and the blog by name. That’s fine. What’s not fine is the string of tweets he has sent out lately threatening me for daring to point out the same kinds of issues I’m covering in this post. That is signature significance for both an asshole and a totalitarian (anarchists are often totalitarians, as long as they see themselves in charge, and all totalitarians are assholes).

I really thought better of Jeff. I have never blocked anyone on Twitter; I object to it on principle, but I’m willing to be insulted—I know how to defend myself—but threats on social media are intolerable.

2. The news media cannot ethically refer to Joe Biden as “the President-elect.” He isn’t. That’s a fact. They didn’t call George W. Bush “President Elect” when Al Gore and Florida Democrats were searching high and low for any way to flip Florida into the Gore column in 2000, and at this point, the 2020 election is no more decided than that one was. It is a remarkable—and obviously unethical—exercise for the news media to declare Biden the winner and then use its own fake news to proclaim him President-elect. There are sufficient states with their vote totals in question, with recounts looming and lawsuits mounting, to wait. Waiting costs nothing; premature declarations and celebrations make the nation look ridiculous, because at this juncture, it is ridiculous.

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Wednesday Ethics Wind-Down / Thursday Ethics Warm-Up, 10/14-15/2020: The Unmasking Of News Media And Social Media Bias Continues…[UPDATED!]

/ Jack Marshall / 36 Comments

phantom-of-the-opera

1. Notes from The Great Stupid. Here is a passage from a New York Times book review of “The Tragedy of Heterosexuality”:

“In examining the pressure to partner with the opposite gender we find the extortions of capitalism, the misogyny of violence against women, the racist and xenophobic erasure of nonwhite families, and the homophobic hatreds that pervade so much of everyday life.”

Well, that and the biological imperative to continue the species. This brilliance is the work of Haley Mlotek,  a senior editor for SSENSE. Imagine: this is the quality of thought among our intellectual class.

No wonder the political class is so idiotic.

2. So this is a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist, is it? Nikole  Hannah-Jones, faced with a careful and accurate fisking of her fraudulent “1619 project” by Times columnist Bret Stephens (covered by Ethics Alarms here) did not try to rebut him, or make a civil, reasoned argument. She did what her entire generation of prominent African Americans have been conditioned to do, because it works so well. She accused Stephens and the Times of racism, with a dash of sexism for flavor. Hannah-Jones tweeted,

“In 1894, the NYT called Ida B. Wells a ‘slanderous and nasty-minded mulattress’ for daring to tell the truth about lynching. 100 years later she earned the Pulitzer Prize. These efforts to discredit my work simply put me in a long tradition of [black women] who failed to know their places.”

(It is satisfying to watch the Washington Post pounce on the Times over this fiasco. The rivalry between the papers is one of the few factors that ever pushed one of them into practicing actual journalism these days.)

As for Nikole Hannah-Jones, she is a child. Her tantrum was irresponsible and an embarrassment to the Times, and she should, by rights, be fired. She won’t be, because of black privilege, now enhanced in the wake of the George Floyd Ethics Train Wreck. The embarrassment for the Times, however, will linger. This woman was given leave by the paper to create and promote a false historical narrative that was not designed to enlighten but to further a political agenda. In truth, the Times deserves the embarrassment even more than Hannah-Jones deserves to be fired.

Continue reading →

Afternoon Ethics Jaunt, 10/5/2020: Our Unethical Journalists

/ Jack Marshall / 22 Comments

Strolling

1. Multiple head explosion alert from the “Nah, there’s no mainstream media bias” files. In the New York Times book Review section. Times business editor David Enrich reviews a book about Fox News by CNN’s fake news ethics watchdog Brian Stelter. The headline for the review is “Fox in the White House.” One would think a reputable book review editor would assign the reviewing of a book by CNN’s main shameless propagandist to a journalist who was at veery least sort of neutral, but no. Enrich is the author of “Dark Towers: Deutsche Bank, Donald Trump, and an Epic Trail of Destruction, “ and apparently incapable of exploiting  the hilarity when a biased and partisan hack like Stelter writes that “Fox News has become little more than a propaganda organ.” That is exaggerated but close enough for journalism horse shoes. However the man who constantly and shamelessly covers for CNN’s pro-Democratic and  anti-Trump propaganda is ethically estopped from making such  criticism, and Enrich disqualifies himself as an objective and honest reviewer when he writes, after noting that CNN is hardly objective, by writing,

“To be clear, there is no equivalence between the occasionally inaccurate and misleading “liberal media,” which generally owns up to its mistakes, and the highly productive factory of falsehoods at Fox.’

Generally owns up to its mistakes? GENERALLY OWNS UP TO ITS MISTAKES!!!!! Enrich’s own paper is one of the primary offenders. Is the key word here mistakes? Maybe that’s the trick: the biased, partisan, untrustworthy news media Enrich is a part of doesn’t own up, because its distortion of the news, like Stelter’s, isn’t a mistake.

OK, I’m going to start the timer…NOW. It’s 2: 17 PM. How long before I find an item debunking Enrich’s characterization? I think I’ll try Professor Turley’s blog: he’s almost as disgusted with the news media as I am. Annnd, TIME! I found one. It’s 2:21 pm….

“The New York Times on Thursday published an opinion column by Regina Ip, the Hong Kong official widely denounced as “Beijing’s enforcer.” Ip declared “Hong Kong is part of China” and dismissed the protesters fighting for freedom in their city.  I have no objection to the publishing of the column. Ip is a major figure in Hong Kong and, despite her support for authoritarian rule and crushing dissent, there is a value to having such views as part of the public debate. Rather, my concern is that the New York Times was denounced by many of us for its  cringing apology after publishing a column by Sen. Tom Cotton (R, Ark.). and promising not to publish future such columns. So it will not publish a column from a Republican senator on protests in the United States but it will publish columns from one of the Chinese leaders crushing protests for freedom in Hong Kong.’

Of course, the apology for publishing an opinion that was not welcomed by the Left wasn’t a mistake. It was a reaffirmation of the Times’ deliberate bias.

Continue reading →

High Noon Ethics Warm-Up, 9/11/2020: Thoughts While Wondering How Progressives Will Try To Reconcile Honoring First Responders With Their Demonization Of Police Position

/ Jack Marshall / 19 Comments

I know the current Democratic Party and its agents, the mainstream media, are immune from self-awareness, but I would think pious reflections on the bravery of the heroes of 9/11 would be so flamingly insincere coming from them that they would just explode from internal and irresolvable inconsistency.

1. Then there’s the NFL…The current demonstrations by NFL players on the field, resuming yesterday as the pro foot ball season “kicked off,” and the leagues’ pandering to them, are, I read in the Times, due to the “killing of George Floyd” and the “shooting of Jacob Blake, and are meant to address “systemic racism” and “police brutality.” However, there is still no evidence that the death of Floyd was a result of racism, and increasing evidence that  Officer Chauvin’s admittedly brutal treatment didn’t kill him. As for Blake, he was not profiled or singled out for his race, but confronted because he was threatening a black woman whom he had previously raped and assaulted. Although the investigation isn’t complete, there is a significant chance that no “police brutality” will be found to have occurred in Blake’s shooting.

Meanwhile, David Bernstein identified the following people who were killed as a result of the Black Lives Matter/ antifa riots and looting: Continue reading →

Labor Day Ethics Break, 9/7/2020: Ironically, Somebody Needs To be Fired In All Of These Stories….

/ Jack Marshall / 27 Comments

1. “Boy, he’s strict!”* Novak Djokovic, the top seeded player, defaulted from the United States Open after the ball he hit toward the back of the court in frustration hit a line judge in the neck. This violated the Grand Slam rule book’s  “physical abuse” provision, which states that players “shall not at any time physically abuse any official, opponent, spectator or other person within the precincts of the tournament site.” The  fine for this is to $20,000 for each violation of this rule, with the possibility of even more if it is deemed a “major offense.” In a statement, the United States Tennis Association said: “In accordance with the Grand Slam rule book, following his actions of intentionally hitting a ball dangerously or recklessly within the court or hitting a ball with negligent disregard of the consequences, the U.S. Open tournament referee defaulted Novak Djokovic from the 2020 U.S. Open. Because he was defaulted, Djokovic will lose all ranking points earned at the U.S. Open and will be fined the prize money won at the tournament in addition to any or all fines levied with respect to the offending incident.”

As I read it, if the ball bounced back and missed the line judge, the rule wouldn’t apply. If it did hit the judge, even though the result was unintentional, then the player gets the full penalty. What a moronic rule! I guess they’ve never heard of moral luck in the tennis world. Either it should be a serious offense to slam the ball anywhere on the court in anger whether someone is hurt or not, or it should be a violation to intentionally harm and official. The rules is incompetent and unethical.

Naturally, none of the stories about the episode point this out.

2. Oh no! Not this again! Seventh grader Isaiah Elliott of the Grand Mountain School just south of Colorado Springs, Colorado, was attending on online art class when a teacher saw Isaiah’s  toy gun, a neon green and black plastic “weapon” with an orange tip, and the words “Zombie Hunter” printed on the side. The teacher, an idiot, hysteric and bully,  notified the school principal, and Isaiah was suspended for five days. The school also called the El Paso County Sheriff’s Office to conduct a welfare check on the boy without calling his parents first. Here’s the toy:

This is even more idiotic than this story, which was discussed here in June, about the kid whose teacher called the cops on him because she saw his BB gun.

The teacher should be fired and the principal should be fired. Isiah’s parents appear to be raising  hell. Good.  They would be terrible and irresponsible parents if they didn’t. There is an ethical  duty to confront this creeping state child abuse and indoctrination. Continue reading →

He’s An Ethics Hero! He’s An Ethics Dunce! He’s A Hero! A Dunce! Yes, CNN’s Jake Tapper Is An Ethics Hero Again. Sort of.

/ Jack Marshall / 13 Comments

Jim Acosta is the epitome of a CNN anti-Trump hack, one of many. Jake Tapper, once a reliable oasis of integrity in the expanding desert of corrupt and biased mainstream media reporting, has understandably rotted on the CNN vine since joining the network, but now and then Good Jake surfaces.

In a White House briefing last week, press secretary Kayleigh McEnany discussed President Trump’s call for children to go back to school in the fall.

“The science should not stand in the way of this, but as Dr. Scott Atlas said — I thought this was a good quote, ‘Of course, we can do it. Everyone else in the Western world, our peer nations are doing it. We are the outlier here.’ The science is very clear on this. For example, you look at the JAMA pediatric study of 46 pediatric hospitals in North America that said the risk of critical illness from COVID is far less for children than the seasonal flu. The science is on our side here. We encourage localities and states to just simply follow the science. Open our schools.”

Acosta, who was there, deliberately redacted her words  to make it appear that McEnany was dismissing the relevance of science, thus confirming a persistent mainstream media narrative about the Administration being science-deniers.

Other sources and websites followed the same course; here, for example, is ABC social media editor Evan McMurry:

And the shameless Trump-hating site Boing Boing…

I’ve been tempted to see how many of my Trump Deranged, biased media-enabling Facebook friends have passed on the lie to the acclaim of many “likes,” but I have enough aggravation.

Whether Acosta was Liar Zero or whether he got the idea from another reporter doesn’t matter. He circulated  deliberate fake news, and could have no innocent justification.  Later, after being called out on social media, Acosta added the missing context, but the fact is, he was caught.

He should be suspended at the very least for this, and probably fired. A news source with any journalism integrity at all would immediately discipline him. Of course CNN has said nothing and done nothing.

Jake Tapper did, though: Continue reading →

Evening Ethics, 5/5/2020: Women And Hypocrites [CORRECTED]

/ Jack Marshall / 22 Comments

Sit a spell, Take your shoes off.

1. What does this tell you, Elie? Come on, I know you can figure it out...Elie Mystal, the emotional lawyer turned social justice warrior who used to embarrass “Above the Law” with his unhinged rants (like the time he announced that no black juror should ever vote to convict a black defendant regardless of the evidence) finally ended up where he belonged all along, the far-left Communist-flirting The Nation. He just issued a post that raises a legitimate issue, despite a typical Nation headline ( “The Men Pushing to Open the Economy Clearly Don’t Need Child Care”).

Closing the schools does indeed make it impossible for many Americans to go to work; this was obvious (wasn’t it?) as soon as schools started closing due to the Wuhan virus. His most useful observation: how are we going to send people back to work without addressing the school problem, and doesn’t that have to be addressed in order to open up the economy? Ellie, who is being  Daddy-child care in the division of duties in his family (good for him) writes in part,

As of this writing, 43 states have closed schools through the end of the academic year. …For most families, there is no child care without school. In America, school is pretty much the only free or subsidized child care our government provides. Without reliable, affordable, and Covid-free child care, going back to work is simply not an option for many parents. The school closings only deepen a reoccurring problem most parents face: the summer. In a society that has decided to outsource child care responsibilities to the school system, the fact that this system goes on an annual months-long holiday is already a nightmare for working parents.

After that, Ellie being Ellie and The Nation being The Nation, we get indictments of unfeeling male policy-makers (“I bet if we elected more women, the order of operations for reopening the economy wouldn’t be so ass-backwards”—Did you check how many states with female governors shut down the schools, Elie? I didn’t think so) and, of course, a call for more subsidized child care, because it takes a village to raise a child and because you never let a crisis go to waste.

I bet, if he thinks real hard, Elie can come up with another, less expensive, easier to implement plan that will address the problem, at least for now. Come on, man. Think.

2. Incompetent  #MeToo  Hypocrite Of The Year. I can’t believe I once advocated Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer as the best female VP option for Joe Biden since he has announced that he will be choosing the most female individual rather than the most qualified one. In addition to being one of the elected officials the pandemic has exposed as an aspiring dictator, she’s the state house version of Kamala Harris: ask her a question requiring thought and a clear response, and you get obfuscation and double-talk. Here’s the exchange that won her title,  from last Sunday’s ” State of the Union.with Jake Tapper:

TAPPER:  “You have said that you believe Vice President Biden. I want to compare that to 2018, when you said you believed Dr. Christine Blasey Ford after she accused now Justice Brett Kavanaugh of assault. Kavanaugh also, like Biden, categorically denied that accusation. And Blasey Ford, to be honest, she did not have the contemporaneous accounts of her view of what happened that Tara Reade does. You have spoken movingly about how you’re a survivor — survivor of assault yourself. Why do you believe Biden, and not Kavanaugh? Are they not both entitled to the same presumption of innocence, regardless of their political views?”

WHITMER: “You know, Jake, as a survivor and as a feminist, I will say this. We need to give people an opportunity to tell their story. But then we have a duty to vet it. And just because you’re a survivor doesn’t mean that every claim is equal. It means we give them the ability to make their case, and the other side as well, and then to make a judgment that is informed. I have read a lot about this current allegation. I know Joe Biden, and I have watched his defense. And there’s not a pattern that goes into this. And I think that, for these reasons, I’m very comfortable that Joe Biden is who he says he is. He’s — and you know what? And that’s all I’m going to say about it. I really resent the fact that, every time a case comes up, all of us survivors have to weigh in. It is reopening wounds. And it is — take us at our word, ask us for our opinion, and let’s move on.”

Weasel, hypocrite, coward, dim wit.

To be blunt.

  • She had to know she would be asked this question, and the best she could come up with was, essentially, “How dare you ask such a question–I’m a survivor!” and “move on”? Translation: “I have no answer for that question other than the obvious fact that Biden’s a Democrat and as a Democrat I apply different standard to him than I do to Republicans. And you, as a member of the mainstream media, our party’s ally in defeating the Bad Orange Man, are supposed to have our backs.”
  • But Reade has not been given a chance to make her case. Blasey Ford got a national forum. How has Reade been vetted? Whitmer is just throwing up any excuse she can think of whether it makes sense or not.
  • Oh, no! Pelosi’s “I know Joe Biden” defense? That’s the best she can do? Among other things, Whitmer doesn’t know Joe Biden especially well. There are spouses of serial killers who don’t know what their husbands are capable of, and she’s saying that the accused should be exonerated because their friends and relatives can’t imagine him doing what has been alleged?

Continue reading →

Ethics Verdict: Everyone Stinks. A Case Study

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

This is why we can’t have nice things…

…or even be certain what nice things are.

Yesterday, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was Jake Tapper’s guest  on CNN’s “State of the Union,” since he wasn’t going to talk about Tara Reade. Jake asked Pelosi, “Vice President Joe Biden’s campaign told me earlier this month that he supported President Trump’s partial travel restrictions on January 31st blocking foreign nationals from China from coming to the United States. Do you agree that it was the right move by President Trump at the time?”

She answered, “Tens of thousands of people were still allowed in from China. It wasn’t as it is described as this great moment, there were Americans coming back or green card holders coming back. If you’re going to shut the door because you have an evaluation of an epidemic, then shut the door.”

It’s a despicable, despicable response.

First, let’s go back to the question. Tapper, had he been the fair and objective journalist I once said  he was (I apologize; I was wrong. He’s a hack.) should have noted that Biden’s approval now is a flip-flop. The day after President Trump issued his Chinese travel ban, Biden called him xenophobic. This was important context for Tapper’s question, but Jake doesn’t think his audience cares about context, or something.

Well, let’s go back even further, shall we?

On March 26, President Trump said on Sean Hannity’s Fox News show, “I had Biden calling me xenophobic. He called me a racist, because of the fact that he felt it was a racist thing to stop people from China coming in.”

PolitiFact, the very partisan and untrustworthy factcheck site that I see has now been taken over by the Poynter Institute but maintains its previous biases, decided to spin for Biden in fact-checking Trump’s statement. Biden called Trump ‘xenophobic” the day after the travel ban was announced. What a coincidence! PolitiFact sees no reason to conclude Trump’s major announcement the previous day had anything to do with Biden’s tweet. Completely unrelated. After all, Biden’s camp pointed out that he’s always called the President xenophobic, which is true.

Now, is that self-evident spin or not? Obviously Biden was having a lucid moment and hedged his bets. He called Trump xenophobic after the China announcement because the Democrats have called every travel ban xenophobic, including bans on people breaking the law to enter our country. The timing of Biden’s tweet wasn’t accidental. But it allowed him to say, wink-wink,nudge-nudge, ‘Oh no! I never called the travel ban xenophobic! I called the President xenophobic, because he is.’

And a supposedly “non-partisan” factcheck operation  accepts that, and tells its gullible readers that they should accept it as well. Continue reading →

Ethics Dunce: CNN’s Jake Tapper

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

Observing the slow but steady deterioration of Jake Tapper, whom I once cited as an example of an ethical, objective and trustworthy journalist—it seems so long ago—has been excruciating to watch. He signaled yesterday that his transformation into just another AUC hack (That’s the Axis of Unethical Conduct: Democrats, the “resistance,” and the progressive mainstream media) is complete.

Tapper was  interviewing Rep. Ocasio-Cortez on his “State of the Union.” She blathered, as she is prone to do,

“We’re hearing every step from this administration- first, we were hearing it was a hoax, then we were hearing that everything is fine, then we were hearing that the fundamentals of the economy was OK – until the crash comes.”

Jake, from CNN, not State Farm (that’s him on the left above; yes, he used to be white) just let all of that go.

Well, as has been shown again and again to be of no avail as far as the Big Lie-masters are concerned, the President did NOT say the virus was a hoax. (he also never said that “everything is fine,” but never mind). I most recently explained this two days ago, here, and I’m sick of repeating it, frankly.

When he was properly criticized for allowing a false “resistance” narrative to go out over CNN’s imprimatur (whatever that’s worth these days) without uttering a peep of protest, Tapper issued this damning excuse via Twitter: Continue reading →

Morning Ethics Warm-Up, 3/13/2020: Let’s Talk About Something Other Than The Whateveryoucallit Virus [Updated!]

/ Jack Marshall / 28 Comments

Good Morning!

1. Hmmmm. “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.” Recognize those words? Might the news media have the sense and integrity to include them in stories about state governments “ordering” that there be no public gatherings of 500 or more (New York) and 250 or more (Washington state)?

Update: Massachusetts just “banned” gatherings of over 250. I’d like to see the research showing that numbers not ending in zero are unsafe.

As far as I can figure out, a state governor can’t unilaterally restrict the right to assemble even in a “state of emergency,” and whether such a draconian measure is permissible is subject to court challenge and judicial scrutiny. These two orders seem especially vulnerable. Why 500? Why 250?

I’d feel a lot better if organizations and the public would assert their rights and demand that governors, as Tom Cruise was required by Jack Nicholson in “A Few Good Men,” to ask nicely. This reminds me of Boston, of all places, meekly submitting in 2013 to a completely illegal demand by police that its citizens stay inside while the search for the Boston Marathon bombings was underway. Fear is a dangerous tool in the hands of the powerful, who have a nasty habit of becoming totalitarians if they sense any lack of resolve among their potential lackeys and victims.

2. Every now and then Jake Tapper’s once significant commitment to honest journalism creeps out of its post-CNN recruitment paralysis. Tapper recently opined on the air that Democratic voters were acting  like progressive  pundits:

“To be completely frank, I’m getting real 2004 vibes tonight…Democrats want to defeat an incumbent Republican so badly…that they decide which one is electable…and they decide, okay, it’s John Kerry, or in this case it’s Joe Biden… the point is that when you have the Democratic electorate deciding that they are all a bunch of Rachel Maddows and Chris Hayess and the like, that they’re just, you know, progressive pundits and they’re going to pick out who is the best one, maybe they don’t necessarily always know what they’re doing.”

“Hey! Where’s Tapper’s Kool-Aid? Get him a straw, quick!” I assume that within days, a former female guest will reveal that in 2014 Tapper complimented how she looked in her dress and asked, “Are you working out?,” leading to his immediate dismissal.

A fair point made by CNN critics: “I wonder why he didn’t say “Don Lemon and Chris Cuomo?” Continue reading →