“Nah there’s no mainstream media bias”

Unethical Quote of the Month: The Minnesota Star Tribune

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

“Vang’s actions 20 years ago were awful, but so were the violent protests at the U.S. Capitol on Jan.6, 2021, and those folks received Presidential pardons.”

—–The Minnesota Star, cheering on Gov. Tim “Knucklehead” Walz’s sick decision to pardon a serial child rapist in an attempt to foil efforts to deport him.

No one can trust a news source capable of putting such illogical, unethical garbage in print. Defense by non-sequitur! “Sure, he raped a child repeatedly for years, but Jeffrey Dahmer ate people!” There is no basis for comparison between the J-6 rioters, all citizens and jailed, some for a couple of years, for a single act, and a non-citizen who never spent a day in prison despite pleading guilty to multiple child rapes. The Star’s bizarre logic doesn’t even rise to the level of the worst of all rationalizations, Rationalization #22, The Comparative Virtue Excuse, or “There are worse things.” Is the idea that Walz trying to let a child molester stay in his state is good because Trump’s pardon of the rioters wasn’t? What is the Star trying to say? Do the editors even know?

Then the Star’s grand finale is to quote with approval another one of Walz’s idiotic outbursts. “Taking them out with no due process”? Vang received a final order of removal in October 2006! There was due process to spare.

Not for the first time, I find myself wondering how the once great state of Minnesota came to such a precipitous decline in values and common sense. Once represented by the likes of Hubert Humphrey and Eugene McCarthy, it is led by a principle-free, incompetent fool, with an addled newspaper like the Star warping the news to disguise his incompetence. Minnesotans used to be smart, creative, rational. They had standards, they had pride. What happened? Now they are sitting by while their state’s #1 paper applauds their Governor for pardoning a child rapist, and one who made it clear that he doesn’t think raping children is anything to get upset about. Americans are just weirdly prudish about such things!

So the citizens of Minnesota just nod their heads as their governor first pardons the man who rapes little girls and pays them to keep quiet, because Kamala choice’s to be VP wants to foil efforts to remove criminal non-citizens. They keep nodding as that governor describes years of multiple rapes as the rapist’s “worst day” [Vang didn’t think they were bad days at all], and nod some more as the Star calls Walz a hero for trying to inflict a sexual predator on their state permanently.

What is that? Brain damage? Hypnosis? Insanity?

I just don’t understand.

Today’s “Nah, There’s No Mainstream Media Bias!” Note [ADDED: A Special Rebuke To A Banned Commenter]

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

The story is sad but not exactly one that should inspire much sympathy. From the AP report:

“A man running from an encounter with immigration and other federal agents in Florida was struck and killed by a tractor trailer on Tuesday, authorities said….The 28-year-old was among four occupants of a vehicle that stopped in the parking lot of a gas station and convenience store in the St. Augustine area before 7 a.m. During an encounter with agents from ICE and Homeland Security Investigations, the four fled on foot, with one darting across a busy road into the path of the semi…”

Let’s be clear, now: a man was eluding law enforcement officials when he ran across a “busy road” and was hit by a truck. There are exactly two possible parties responsible for that death: the man running across the road, and the truck driver. There is nobody else to blame, and finding the truck driver responsible requires a quite stretch. Here is how the Associated Press characterizes the fatality, however:

“It was the third death in a week involving encounters with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, following shootings in Texas and Maine…It was at least the 10th death involving encounters with immigration agents since President Donald Trump launched his mass deportation campaign last year.”

That is pure deceit and indecent false framing. In cases where an individual dies at the hands of ICE agents, justifiably or not, the conduct of the agents can be fairly considered factors in the deaths. However, an individual who resists arrest and recklessly flees into the grill of a truck has not been killed by ICE, nor is ICE responsible for the death. The dead man would be alive if he obeyed law enforcement, as anyone in this country is obligated to do. He chose to run into traffic; ICE didn’t make him do that.

Never mind, though. You know we’ll be reading diatribes from the open borders fanatics that the dead man had a family, and was a respected member of the community, and he is dead because of Trump’s Gestapo. The Associated Press (and others) enable these advocates for illegal immigration with their deliberate anti-ICE and Trump Deranged spin. Naturally, other agents of pro-illegal immigration propaganda will add this death to the total that we will see repeatedly cited to show how “brutal” the enforcement of our immigration laws are.

The Woke Bias In CNBC’s “Worst States” List Is So Blatant It’s Actually Funny

/ Jack Marshall / 19 Comments

Nah, there’s no mainstream media bias!

On a day like today, when there are already a lot of juicy ethics stories on the runway, I have learned from bitter experience not to tackle the most complicated one until my brain wakes up, typically after two giant mugs of coffee and a few of hours. Thus I choose this to kick off the day: CNBC released its ranking of the ten worst states to live in 2026 based on its “Quality of Life “scores. Hilariously, the list contained only Republican-run conservative states. This was preordained because the criteria for the ranking included such leftist-priority items as “air quality” [read “climate change measures”], “healthcare access” [abortion restrictions], “worker protections” [ high minimum wages and DEI policies], and civil rights laws [Can biological males compete against girls? Can they use women’s rest rooms?]

Upon reflection, I am surprised “number of Democratic Socialist elected officials” wasn’t one of the factors weighed.

The rejiggered”Quality of Life” scores were then used to create CNBC’s best states for businesses list, so “blue” states dominate that list like the “red” states fill up the “suckiest places to live.”

Seems fair!

When consulted, a sample group of 1,000 aborted babies overwhelmingly disagreed that the states supporting abortions enhanced their “quality of life.”

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Unethical Quote of the Week: Bob Greene, Board Chair for Rocky Mountain PBS

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

“A nice stroke that turns him into a drooling, pooping blob in a wheelchair unable to speak.”

——Bob Greene, Chairman of the Board of Rocky Mountain PBS, on the station’s X account when asked about his birthday wish for President Trump, who turned 80 last week,

Nice! On the Rocky Mountain PBS website, Greene is described as “an experienced senior executive with over 35 years in sales, marketing and operations in the entertainment, interactive and broadband industries” who is “responsible for developing new revenue platforms and partnerships that leverage and enhance the global scale of Liberty.”

Nah, there’s no mainstream media bias! Responding to this pure verbal hate, a spokesperson for Rocky Mountain Public Media said that it had “only recently become aware of this post in question” and that it violates their social media guidelines, which state that “Personal views and political positions should be kept separate from the station’s content, and should not appear on any RMPM-operated platform or dedicated page/stream” and ” that “when using the internet or social media in your personal life, please make it clear and conspicuous that all of your statements are on your own behalf and are not RMPM’s. Disclaimers such as ‘opinions are my own’ should be used whenever appropriate.” And Greene’s post magically disappeared.

But the official disclaimer doesn’t change the fact that the individual at the top of the station’s management pyramid felt comfortable posting his vile opinion because it was completely consistent with the bias and toxic culture at the station. Hiding that kind of deranged hate doesn’t solve the problem of programming being filtered through such attitudes and such irresponsible leadership.

The episode serves as a vivid reminder of how much NPR and PBS deserved to have their Federal Funding eliminated. I had another discussion with a Trump Deranged friend who was bemoaning the loss of the two Leftist propaganda organs, which bring essential services to remote rural communities, or so the story goes. All NPR and PBS had to do was be fair, objective and non-partisan to have a strong argument that they performed an important function for the public regardless of citizens’ political affiliations. They couldn’t do it. They allowed themselves to be co-opted and dominated by progressives and Democrats who proved unable to restrain their objective of using NPR and PBS to advance a partisan agenda and to indoctrinate listeners. Greene openly expressed that bias, which he was supposed to keep under wraps like the rest of the staff. Yet the NPR and PBS broadcasts are evidence enough.

These people have such contempt for the intelligence of Americans,

Exit Question: Has any previous POTUS been the object of such unrestrained verbal calumny?

Update on “Dog-Rapegate”: Israel Is Suing the Times

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

Good.

(I originally published this post without a graphic, waiting for the memes to come out. I decided on the one above…)

Israeli officials not only released a bombshell report this week extensively documenting Hamas violence on and after the October 7 terrorist ambush, but they are also suing The New York Times for libel as a response to its publishing Nick Kristof’s outrageous claim that Israel was torturing Palestinian prisoners by, among other methods, having them sexually assaulted by trained dogs. The Times also released the libelous accusation on the day before a new, thoroughly sourced report on Hamas violence, “Silenced No More,” was scheduled for release. The Times, almost alone among news outlets, refused to publish that because it reflected poorly on Hamas. It preferred to assert that Jews are training Lassie and Rin Tin Tin to get off on anal rape.

The Israeli Foreign Ministry announced May 14, “Following the publication by Nicholas Kristof in The New York Times of one of the most hideous and distorted lies ever published against the State of Israel in the modern press, which also received the backing of the newspaper, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar have instructed the initiation of a defamation lawsuit against The New York Times.”

The news media has been abusing its privilege under New York Times v. Sullivan with increasing boldness in recent years, and many have suggested (including me) that the standards for punishable slander and libel need to be re-thought in light of a profession no longer committed to honesty and independent public service. To be fair, it is jolly decent of the Times to eliminate any question that the paper is nothing less than a Democratic talking point propaganda organ. Democrats hate Israel and Jews now, or perhaps you haven’t noticed. The Times has, as I wrote here (#6), even doubled-down on Kristof’s evidence-free claims.

As CNN token conservative Scott Jennings wrote on “X”: “Dying on dog rape hill. What a choice.”

“Nah, There’s No Mainstream Media Bias!” Res Ipsa Loquitur: Reuters’ Unethical Headline

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

“Spirit Airlines shuts down, industry’s first Iran war casualty”

Today I was a guest on The Steven Speirer Show, talking about ethics. In the final minutes, Steven, a California lawyer, asked me what I regarded as the greatest ethics issue facing the U.S. today. Without hesitation, I named the corruption of journalism and the collapse of ethics in the journalism profession. Readers here are familiar with that conclusion and why I am confident that it is correct. A republic cannot function with out an informed populace. “Advocacy journalism,” the elevation of the profit motive over integrity, responsibility and honesty, and the increasing intrusion of the techniques of “fake news” into reporting has transformed journalism into a toxic combination of propaganda and indoctrination.

“Professions earn that label by being trustworthy,” I told Steve. “Our news media today cannot be trusted, and those who do trust it are uninformed or misinformed.” My host said that he wished he could disagree, but in good conscience could not.

Then I checked my emails after the session, and saw the link to the Reuters headline above, re-posted on Yahoo! Finance. (Arthur in Maine gets the pointer for the link; my apologies for misidentifying the source in the original version of this post). It’s a classic, typical of how journalism operates today. A story about a company bankruptcy that was long in the works is framed as an indictment of the Iran War, and by extension President Trump.

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Flashback: “Ethics Reflections On The Trump Assassination Attempt Prelude and Aftermath” and Observations on the Latest Attempt

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

Fact: The Axis of Unethical Conduct is 100% responsible for the third serious attempt on President Trump’s life in less than two years. 100%. Denying this is spin.

I’m not tolerating it or allowing the Mad Left to duck responsibility. It has been pushing hate for years, mostly focusing on Trump but also on Republicans, conservatives, the United States of America, capitalism and our founding values. Many on the Left (including Senator Elizabeth Warren) cheered on or rationalized the murderous act of the man who murdered a health care insurance executive by shooting him in the back—you know, evil corporations, evil capitalism. Many on the Left cheered the assassination of Charlie Kirk. The “resistance,” Democrats and their propaganda engines, aka. “the news media,” have been calling Trump a dictator, a fascist, Hitler, a sexual predator, a convicted felon, a racist, a monster, an existential threat to democracy, a practitioner of genocide, constantly and repeatedly. A lot of people really believe these labels are justified; a lot more people are cynically and irresponsibly spreading those accusation because they will help the Democrats achieve their ultimate goal of single party rule.

I believe that a very large percentage of American progressives want Trump dead, one way or another. A Rutgers study, you may recall, found more than half of the progressive respondents to a survey said it would be at least somewhat justified to murder Donald Trump. I believe that this conclusion is inescapable.

It’s too bad for these corrupt and despicable Americans that Trump is really good at reacting to assassination attempt. Then again, he’s had more practice than anybody in U.S. history. In his comments to the media last night, the President said in part,

“This was an event dedicated to freedom of speech that was supposed to bring together members of both parties with members of the press. And in a certain way it did…I saw a room that was totally unified. It was in one way very beautiful — a very beautiful thing to see…In light of this evening’s events, I ask that all Americans recommit with their hearts to resolving our differences peacefully. We have to resolve our differences. You had Republicans, Democrats, independents, conservatives, liberals, and progressives in that room — a big crowd, record-setting crowd. There was a tremendous amount of love and coming together.

“We looked at all of the conditions that took place tonight. It’s not a particularly secure building. I didn’t want to say this, but this is why we have to have all of the attributes of what we’re planning at the White House. It’s actually a larger room and it’s much more secure. It’s got drone-proof and bulletproof glass. We need the ballroom.
 
“This is not the first time in the past couple of years that our republic has been attacked by a would-be assassin. In Butler, Pennsylvania, less than two years ago — you all know that story. And in Palm Beach, Florida, a few months after that, we came close again. We had some great work done by law enforcement.
 
…I’ve studied assassinations. The most impactful people, the people that do the most, are the ones they go after. Abraham Lincoln, the big names. I hate to say I’m honored by that, but we’ve done a lot. We’ve changed this country. There are a lot of people that are not happy about that.”

Trump’s assassination history is flawed, but in his case, it has some legitimacy. Abe Lincoln, of course, fits his narrative, but the other assassinated Presidents do not: McKinley, Garfield, and Kennedy. The President Trump just surpassed to become the failed assassination record-holder with three is Gerald Ford, not exactly one of the “big names.” Nevertheless, the resistance, Democrats and the Axis media have been vilifying this President because he has “done a lot.” and has foiled them again and again. Yes, Trump’s trolling, gloating, deliberately inflammatory rhetoric and defiant style make the target they have placed on his back a bit more vivid, but make no mistake: the Trump Deranged and the totalitarian-tilting Left put it there.

Before I get to the EA post I authored right after the 2024 assassination attempt, I want to quote from the later post on the same topic:

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Today’s “Nah, There’s No Mainstream Media Bias” Headline…

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

“Analysis: Failed peace talks leave Trump with few options to end Iran conflict“

That’s CNN.

Note the emphasis. This is Trump’s failure. The near universal framing of the Iran campaign is that the United States is losing, somehow, and it is Iran that has the U.S. at its mercy—you know, like the iconic Black Knight above from “Monty Python and the Holy Grail who insists that he is winning despite losing his arms and legs.

You see, the side that is being throttled in a war is the one with “few options,” and the collapse of peace talks are primarily a problem for the side that is losing. Ending the war is primarily in the best interests of Iran and its people. The anti-U.S., anti-Trump propaganda being spewed by the Axis news media in their reporting on the Iran war may be the most flagrant and unforgivable yet: it isn’t just Trump that they are hurting, or Republicans. They are deliberately harming our nation while giving Iran motivation to stall as long as possible.

Next, we will be reading “Poor Iranians” essays like the Times lament for Gazans. Our news media’s objective appears to be national euthanasia.

Yet More Evidence Of An Already Self-Evident Proposition: Our Journalists Are Disgustingly Biased and “Enemies of the People”: The NYC ISIS Terrorist Attack

/ Jack Marshall / 24 Comments

I have mused several time here that anyone who seriously asserts in a comment that the mainstream media isn’t fatally biased against conservatives, Republicans, and, naturally, President Trump risks being banned from the commenting wars. I have yet to act on that threat, because only one respectable commenter has challenged me on that assertion, one who has earned a multitude of Ethics Alarms brownie points for good faith and courageous arguments that often run counter to the currents here.

Nonetheless, the position is untenable, and has been for years. The latest example days ago when a smoking IED was tossed at a group of protestors outside Gracie Mansion by an ISIS-supporting terrorist yelling “Allah Ackbar!” Since the U.S. is in the process of attacking Iran, and since the mainstream media is committed to elevating the welfare of Muslims (and illegal immigrants, and violent criminals, Somali fraudsters, anti-American elected officials and international foes of the U.S….) over the interests of law-abiding, loyal and patriotic American citizens, the mainstream media immediately framed the attempted terrorist act as a bigoted attack on NYC’s Muslim Communist mayor Zohran Mamdani:

CBS announced, “Improvised explosive found at protests near Manhattan’s Gracie Mansion, Mamdani’s official residence, NYPD says.”

NBC:

UPI: “Suspicious devices ignited at anti-Islam protest in New York”

The Hill: “Device ignited at Gracie Mansion protest was explosive: NYPD.”

I admit it: I was fooled. I thought, based on perusing the reports, that the bombs, which the NYT initially described without noting that they were explosive, were hurled by anti-Islam protesters.

CNN’s framing was so disgusting that the Axis news network had to issue a retraction, which itself was misleading:

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Fact: MS NOW, aka MSNBC, Is Entirely A Leftist, Woke, Untrustworthy Anti-Trump Propaganda Operation [Corrected!]

/ Jack Marshall / 26 Comments

…and anyone who admits to using that network for news should be ashamed of themselves, as well as ignored when they opine on political issues.

Just when I think the news media cannot get more biased, unprofessional and dishonest, something like this happens…usually on CNN, MSNBC, or in the New York Times.

MS NOW used an AI-enhanced image of Alex Pretti, the anti-I.C.E. activist who was killed by a U.S. Border Patrol agent during an immigration enforcement operation. Naturally, the faked photo made him look better than he really did, a public opinion manipulation tactic as old as photography and unethical to its core. This is cheap Cognitive Dissonance Scale game-playing, because “lookism” is embedded in our DNA. A nicer-looking figure is more likely to land in positive territory on the scale than a fat troll: remember how much sympathy there was online and in the media for the handsome young terrorist who maimed all those innocent people in the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing? The alteration of Pretti’s image was subtle, but the point is why do it at all? Anything to make attacking Trump and supporting open borders more persuasive, I suppose.

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