mainstream media

To The Unethical And Biased News Media: There Are Plenty Of Legitimate Ways To Expose Donald Trump, So Why Are You Cheating?

/ Jack Marshall / 17 Comments
"Go visit that Loughner guy and see if you can get him to endorse Trump...

“Go visit that Loughner guy and see if you can get him to endorse Trump…

I’m really getting annoyed at unethical hacks—you know, journalists—forcing me to defend Donald Trump. Really, guys, if you can’t do this jerk in by reporting the facts and doing fair commentary, it’s time to send an application to Home Depot.

The fact that someone at a Donald Trump rally shouted out “White Power!” is no more significant or newsworthy than if someone shouted “Give peace a chance!”,  “Kilroy was here!” or “Tippecanoe and Tyler too!” One person? Or even if it was six, or ten, so what? Maybe he was a Democratic plant. Maybe he was a Rand Paul plant. Maybe he was nuts, and maybe he was a white power advocate, so what? What control does Trump have over who comes to his rallies? Yet the news media is treating this one shouted idiocy like it’s a smoking gun. 

Now the game is to see how many loathsome individuals the news media can find who will say they support Trump. using basic cognitive dissonance against him rather than facts, substance, or legitimately relevant issues.  The Daily Kos looked under a rock and found a David Duke nod to Trump: pathetic. “Have you no sense of decency?” Pure guilt by association, and the worst kind: there isn’t even any real association there. Let’s see who else they can get to endorse Trump. Dylann Roof? Bernie Madoff? Jared Fogel? Lance Armstrong? George Zimmerman? Casey Anthony? Satan? Continue reading →

Gotcha! The New York Times Again Proves Its Bias And Unethical Journalism

/ Jack Marshall / 17 Comments

F minus

One litmus test I have for whether individual Democrats, liberals and progressives have integrity and  can be trusted is whether they will admit that the left-leaning bias in the mainstream media is wrong and intolerable….and is real. It is amazing and depressing how few pass that test. For until liberals demand fairness and objectivity from journalists, the chances that the mainstream media will see the importance of reforming and actually following their own codes of ethics are nil.

The self-exiled Barry Deutsch, a perceptive and intelligent leftist cartoonist/blogger  (it’s a good blog) who once was a prolific commenter here, flunked the test repeatedly, which I found perplexing. Barry is an honest man. Why couldn’t he see it? Was it because his own bias is so strong that what the news media produced as slanted reporting seemed fair and accurate to his similarly slanted worldview? Was it that he is so far left that the news media seemed conservative to him, so the frequent, throbbingly obvious examples of the news media being left-biased—the cheerleading for Obama’s election, the relentless savaging of Sarah Palin, the open lobbying for the ACA, climate change legislation, gay marriage and gun control, the embargoes on coverage of scandals that would have attracted Watergate-level scrutiny in a GOP administration, like the IRS scandal, and much more) didn’t compute?

I still don’t have an answer, and Barry is gone, without ever supplying me with a plausible answer.

I have to think, however, that even Barry would have a hard time denying this example, neatly flagged by Elizabeth Rice Foley. She writes, on Instapundit this afternoon: Continue reading →

A Hung Ethics Jury On Fox’s Broadcast Of The Isis Burning Video

/ Jack Marshall / 34 Comments

jordan-pilot

The burning ethics issue of the moment is in the field of broadcast journalism, and Ethics Alarms is obligated to weigh in.

Who is right, the pundits are asking: Fox News, for defiantly posting on its website the 22-minute video from the Islamic State terror group that shows Jordanian pilot Lt. Muath al-Kaseasbeh being burned to death, or all the other U.S. news organizations that have refused to do so?

Fox’s decision has been criticized by its own media ethics watchdog, Howard Kurtz, as excessive and unnecessary, and by anti-terrorism experts, who unanimously say that this plays into the ISIS strategy. Malcolm Nance of the Terror Asymmetrics Project on Strategy, Tactics and Radical Ideology said the Fox was “literally – literally – working for al-Qaida and Isis’s media arm. They might as well start sending them royalty checks.”

Here are the Ethics Alarms observations on the controversy. The short version: I doubt everyone’s motives here, and nobody on any side of the journalism ethics debate is consistent or trustworthy. Unlike me.

1. Here are the relevant tenets of the Code of Conduct of the Society of Professional Journalists. Continue reading →

Nobody Should Be Cheering The Poll Showing President Obama As Regarded As “The Worst President Since World War II”

/ Jack Marshall / 23 Comments

News Item:

“In a new Quinnipiac University Poll, 33% named Barack Obama the worst president since World War II. Only 8% named Obama as the best president.”

Comments:

1. The conservative blogosphere, and I assume conservative radio and Fox News, are crowing about this. That’s revolting. No citizen or patriot should rejoice at a failed Presidency, which this one surely is.

2.The United States desperately needed–and needs—a uniting, skilled, strong and non-ideological leader with the ability to solve problems while maintaining a positive image of his (or her) iconic office and the United States itself.  That a President who promised so much and created such hope has proven to be none of these is no less than a tragedy, and quite possibly a catastrophe.

3. Polls aren’t always meaningless. This one is important, I think, because it shows that the American people are paying attention, and that the incredible covering, bolstering, spinning and enabling efforts by the mainstream media to prop up President Obama and blame others for his inadequacies have failed. This is good news.

4. The bad news, in addition to what I already mentioned above is… Continue reading →

Zeynep Tufekci Thinks We Should Trust Journalists To Protect Us From Mass Murderers Like Elliot Rodger, And Yet Restrain Themselves From “Protecting” Us From Other Things They Don’t Want Us To Know. And She Is A Fool.

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments
Zeynep Tufekci: so thoughtful, so gentle, so concerned, so dangerous, so terribly, terribly WRONG.

Zeynep Tufekci: so thoughtful, so gentle, so concerned, so dangerous, so terribly, terribly WRONG.

Zeynep Tufekci is a fellow at the Center for Information Technology Policy at Princeton University, an assistant professor at the School of Information and Department of Sociology at the University of North Carolina, and a faculty associate at the Harvard Berkman Center for Internet and Society. She wants  journalists to censor the news and information they publish for our own good, to protect us from mad killers like Elliot Rodger. Because she has surfaced again, as before, to spread her “solution” to mass killings, this well-meaning, sensitive, smug and utterly deluded academic is once again getting respectful quotes, interviews and nods of approval from the likes of The Atlantic, Vox and National Public Radio. Since the hysterics can’t seem to take down the Second Amendment, now they want to use the latest mass shooting (it was a stabbing too) to wound the principles underlying First.

I have been waiting for someone with more influence than me to point out how dangerous and wrong-headed her “solutions” are. So far, nothing. I guess I have to do it myself.

Tufekci laid out her plan in detail two years ago, and it is being resurrected now. In an article for the Atlantic, she opined that the media is complicit in mass murders like the Santa Barbara shooting, because such deranged killers are primarily seeking fame and publicity as they exit this cruel world in blood and bullets. For the sake of time and argument, let us accept her dubious premise that this is indeed the driving motive behind these incidents. (I am sure that this is the motive in some such cases; it is certainly not the motive in all of them, as with the University of Texas tower shooter Charles Whitman.)

Here were her five recommendations: Continue reading →

Clinton Worship Ethics

/ Jack Marshall / 29 Comments

_Smoking_Gun

Every now and then, when they aren’t indignantly denying it, mainstream media journalists let their guard down and hand the public smoking gun evidence of their unprofessional, unethical, partisan Democratic Party bias. There’s not much risk anyway: after all, the only ones likely to call them on it are card-carrying members of the conservative media, and they are biased, don’t you know. The hosannas and halleluiahs all over cable news and the web celebrating Chelsea Clinton’s pregnancy, however, is pretty hard to spin. This is Clinton worship from the news media, and nothing less, part of the embarrassing effort by uncritical, star-struck liberal reporters and pundits, particularly feminine ones, to ram Hillary Clinton down America’s throat in 2016. There is no excuse or justification for it. None.as. There’s not much risk anyway: after all, the only ones likely to call them on it are card-carrying members of the conservative media, and they are biased, don’t you know.

Do you recall if Amy Carter had any children? How about the two Johnson girls? Does Caroline Kennedy have offspring? The Nixon girls? When Jenna Bush was pregnant, do you recall it being a headline? That’s because the pregnancies, if there were any, of these women were not newsworthy, beyond a “Lifestyle” section line in a gossip or “People and Places” newspaper column. Chelsea Clinton’s sole significance is the identify of  her parents, and nothing more. She has no independent significance to American life, welfare or history, and whether she is fecund or barren as a sack of flour makes no difference to the state of the union whatsoever. Her pregnancy is less interesting, objectively speaking, than the unfortunate daughter of Kanye West and Kim Kardashian, as at least one  of her parents  is a genuine artist and the mother’s family’s inexplicable notoriety is a harbinger of the end of civilization as we know it. Chelsea? She’s a nice young woman, apparently. I met her once. She’s done nothing to justify an entry in Who’s Who, much less a headline. Yet yesterday, one would have thought that she was going to be mother of the presumptive King of the Colonies. Candy Crowley cheered! MSNBC was in rhapsody! CNN’s Headline News made it THE headline of the day!

How’s that Malaysian airplane doing? Continue reading →

The News Media’s Self-Degradation Continues: The Unethical Sliming of Chris Christie

/ Jack Marshall / 21 Comments

Yellow Journalism

You have to feel for Christie, who as a Republican moderate can literally find no news media organization that isn’t determined to destroy him, facts or fairness be damned. As a Republican, he is assured of being treated like the Devil incarnate by MSNBC no matter what he does or says.  As a proven leader of talent and charisma who poses a threat to the media’s relentless anointment of Hillary Clinton (a WOMAN!!!)—who has displayed neither— as the next President,Christie has a giant target on his back that the mainstream media cannot resist. As non-hateful Republican who is capable of bi-partisan conduct, will shake the President’s hand and has social positions to the left of Pat Robertson and Rick Santorum, Christie is also persona non grata at Fox News.

Thus it was that a completely self-serving, borderline unethical letter seeking financial benefits for his client sent by the lawyer of the former Port Authority official who personally oversaw the lane closings at the George Washington Bridge was turned into a “bombshell” yesterday and this morning, with headlines and breathless talking head claims that are completely, utterly, irresponsible, dishonest, misleading, unfair and wrong. Here’s a sample:

  • “Christie Linked to Knowledge of Shut Lanes” (NY Times) Untrue. He has not been linked. A lawyer hinted that some evidence suggesting he might be linked exists, or is said to exist, somewhere. That is not being “linked.”
  • “Chris Christie should resign if bombshell proves true” (Star-Ledger) And if it’s proven that I am a cucumber, I should jump in a salad.
  • “Chris Christie just got thrown under the bus in that traffic jam scandal that has jeopardized his presidential ambitions.” CBS’s Scott Pelley. By the press, perhaps.
  • “Explosive new allegations about Chris Christie. Tonight, the man at the center of the bridge shutdown scandal says the governor isn’t telling the whole truth. He says there’s evidence to prove it.” NBC’s Brian Williams. “Lawyer of accused official facing charges says it’s someone else’s fault!” This is headline news?
  • “This is a hugely significant development in the investigation! It’s a direct challenge to the credibility of Governor Christie.” NBC reporter Michael Isakoff Wrong. It’s significant if it’s true. There is no more reason to believe it is true than to believe it isn’t.

No, Michael, what this is is a journalistic disgrace and an example of intentionally misleading, partisan and biased reporting.  The context of the statement being pumped up into a crisis for Governor Christie was omitted in every one of the hysterical “We got him now! media reports until deep into the published or broadcast account, if it was mentioned at all….in other words, well after the point where the average member of the public stops reading or listening. This is unconscionable. It’s disgusting. It is gutter reporting, and rotten journalism. What if each report, as it should have, framed the story this way:

“In today’s new, the lawyer for David Wildstein, the ex-Port Authority official facing indictment in the bridge-closing scandal that has rocked the administration of New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, is using the threat of his client revealing undisclosed evidence indicating knowledge and involvement by the Governor as leverage to have Wildstein’s criminal defense, including the lawyer’s own fee, paid for by the state.”

Because that’s what the story really is.

Take the time to read the entire letter in question, not just the sections I have bolded. Naturally, most of the news reports referenced the letter without actually allowing us to read the letter. The New York Times made it damned difficult to read the letter online, but at least it was there. Here is the whole thing. I’m sorry, but the issue can’t be understood without reading all of it. The letter is from Wildstein’s lawyer, Alen Zegas, to Darrell Butchbinder, who is the General Counsel for the Port Authority: Continue reading →

Black Friday Ethics: Holiday Capitalism Hate In The Media

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments
Thanksgiving shopper. How DARE they?

Thanksgiving shopper. How DARE they?

Left-leaning media and pundits are so biased against corporate America and the profit motive that they will concoct ridiculous theories of wrong-doing just to bombard the ears of listeners with accusations about how cruel, crass and greedy the nation’s employers and retailers are. There is no ethical basis on which to criticize Walmart, Target, Macy’s or any of the retailers who chose to lure shoppers this year by “Black Friday” sales that reached into Thanksgiving. None.  Continue reading →

Empty Chair Vindication: Don’t Wait For An Apology, Clint, But You Deserve One

/ Jack Marshall / 24 Comments

The media abuse heaped on movie icon Clint Eastwood for his unexpected performance at the Republican National Convention was one more link in the chain of blatant and unprofessional anti-Republican bias that will surely continue right up to election day.  Eastwood, you recall, memorably held a one-way dialogue with the President as the invisible occupant of an empty chair. The pundits and columnists didn’t like Eastwood taking on their hero, so they trashed his method of doing it; they were personally offended by his message (which competent, objective journalists, now as rare as Ivory-billed Woodpeckers, would be able to put aside to give fair commentary), so they insulted Clint: they called him old (naturally; if he were fat, they would call him that, too); they called him out his depth, they called him befuddled and inept. The fact was, however, that it was they who were out of their depth, and they, not Eastwood, who embarrassed themselves. Continue reading →

In the Aftermath of Biden’s Human Rights Betrayal, Little Integrity From The Media

/ Jack Marshall / 1 Comment

Like Diogenes of Sinope searching for an honest man, Ethics Alarms has been searching for a political progressive, here or anywhere, who will acknowledge the blatant pro-liberal, pro-Obama, anti-conservative, anti-Republican, anti-Tea Party bias of the mainstream media. Obvious examples are routinely explained or rationalized away, even when they are criticized by a media outlet’s own internal ombudsmen and ethicists.

The media’s coverage of the recent toadying remarks of Vice-President Biden to the Chinese, as he gave a pass to China’s  long-time policy of limiting families to one child, has been a particularly vivid and disgraceful case in point. Despite the fact that Biden’s remarks were a shocking diplomatic gaffe and human rights betrayal, they were almost solely criticized by Republicans and conservative pundits, and only fleetingly covered at all by the mainstream media. While the so-called “conservative media” kept Biden’s gaffe in the news, the rest either covered the coverage, as in “Right Wing Critics Attack Biden,” or framed the criticism of Biden as a pro-life vs. pro-choice dust-up, as if anyone but a lunatic could describe a program limiting births by law  as “pro choice.” Continue reading →