This was a test of integrity for the mainstream news media, and they, most predictably, flunked it, and outed themselves as the shamelessly unethical propaganda-spewing hacks they are. Depressing, but good to know, as if we didn’t know already.
As an exemplar of the whole, ugly, revolting effort to dismiss evidence that a biased and partisan Twitter staff deliberately buried a news story that might have harmed Joe Biden’s prospects of winning the 2016 election, Phillip Bump’s “analysis” in the Washington Post could hardly be more damning. Its very headline is an unethical rationalization and an appeal to consequentialism: “No, limiting the Hunter Biden laptop story didn’t cost Trump the election.”
Texas teacher fired after telling Black students his race is ‘superior’
As so many are beating on Donald Trump right now (and deservedly so), it is only fair to point out that his statement that the news media were “the enemy of the people” was and is spot on, and quite possibly the most important and correct observation he has ever made in public. Naturally, it is also one of the statement he is most criticized for, especially by…the enemies of the people.
That headline by NBC is a prime example. It is pure deceit; indeed, I might use it to illustrate deceit in an upcoming ethics seminar. The first line of the NBC story immediately reveals the lie (deceit is lying): “A middle school teacher in Texas has been fired after a video posted on social media showed him telling students his race is “superior.” Other ways to distort the story for the edification of people who only read headlines, or to “poison the well” for those who do read on:
“Texas teacher fired after telling white students their race is ‘superior'”
“Texas teacher fired after telling black student her race is inferior.”
“Texas teacher fired after telling black students he regards their parents race makes them inferior.”
This is a distorted, manipulated, evil headline designed to misrepresent a complex incident into a knee-jerk confirmation of systemic racism and persistent white supremacy.
Is anyone going to call it out for what it is—unethical, biased, unprofessional, and typical of today’s journalism” other than Ethics Alarms?
The report above was mysteriously pulled and denied by NBC last week, not generally known to be a Republican mouthpiece. But the New York Times front page today includes as its primary “news” story, an accusatory piece headlined, “How Republicans Fed a Misinformation Loop About the Pelosi Attack.”
Oddly, the story doesn’t mention the recanted NBC story at all. I guess New York Times readers don’t need to know about that when they are assessing, right before the November 8 election, whether to vote for those evil Republicans.
Nor does the story, by undoubtedly good registered Democrats Annie Karni, Malika Khurana and Stuart A. Thompson, note that all of the theories, speculation and “misinformation” has flourished because of the strange absence of crucial information that police have but so far refuse to release: Pelosi’s 911 call, and security footage of the break-in. A reader will also search in vain for any mention of the details in the original report that caused such speculation, like the statement that there was a “third person” involved. There is no explanation of why Pelosi referred to his attacker as “a friend.” I guess I don’t understand this complex, crucial profession of “journalism,” but it would seem to me, tyro that I am, that an article about the GOP pushing “misinformation” might begin by clarifying the gaping holes in the story that have made people who don’t just swallow biased media narratives whole a teeny bit suspicious.
One thing the story is clear about, however, is that it is cold, hard, irrefutable information that Pelosi’s attacker, a mentally ill, rainbow flag embracing, Black Lives Matter-admiring illegal alien, was motivated to attack Paul Pelosi because Republicans have been saying mean things about Nancy Pelosi for some unknown reason. After all, “Mr. Pelosi’s attacker is said to have believed “Mr. Trump’s lie of a stolen election,” among other falsehoods. Said by whom? Oh, that’s not important; what’s important is that Republicans are circulating misinformation about the attack.
I’d like to know who was the genius that suggested “The evil, fascist Republicans who want to destroy democracy caused the violent attack by a whack-job on Nancy Pelosi’s husband with their hateful rhetoric must be stopped by any means necessary” would be a smart and persuasive argument to turn the Red Tide and pull off an upset on November 8. Then I’d like to have those among the “resistance,” Democrats, and mainstream media—that’s the Ethics Alarms Axis of Unethical Conduct—- who reacted with, “Hey! That’s brilliant!” explain their reasoning before checking themselves into a hospital, because they’re the ones who are acting like they have been hit in the skull with a hammer.
Can they really not detect the obvious hypocrisy and self-contradictory reasoning of this strategy? Apparently not. Yet it was Democratic Senate Majority Leader who pointed the way to an eventual assassination attempt on Supreme Court Justice Kavanaugh by shouting, “I want to tell you, Justice Kavanaugh and Justice Gorsuch, you have unleashed a whirlwind, and you will pay the price.You won’t know what hit you if you go forward with these awful decisions!” Then just this month, Nancy Pelosi told MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell that she would have attacked President Trump on January 6, 2021 if he had come to the Capitol “I would have punched him out. I said I would have punched him out. I would have gone to jail. And I would have been happy to do so.”
Because Republicans, and especially Trump, are evil and dangerous, you see. And they engage in hateful rhetoric that incites their supporters (of which Paul Pelosi’s attacker was not one by all indications) to take violent action! As Olsen Johnson so wisely observed,
Here are some recent examples of the commentary arising from that parallel universe:
This post should be seen as a footnote to the previous one, expressing gratitude that the Axis of Unethical Conduct (that’s the “resistance”, Democrats and the mainstream media alliance we have been watching attempting to strangle the democratic process since 2015, if not earlier) is now not even trying to disguise its methods and motives. The Wisconsin Senate race is another close one, and the media is as desperate as Democrats to keep the Senate in Democratic hands, making the defeat of incumbent Republican Ron Johnson Ron Johnson greatly to be wished. And thus, for the Greater Good and because the ends justifies the means, the august New York Times threw all standards of reporting objectivity to the winds and simply announced that Johnson is a poopy-head and his opponent is, as Lina Lamont would say, “a shimmering, glowing star in the political firmament.”
That’s not journalism. That’s campaigning, and cheap campaigning at that. “Leading peddler of disinformation” according to whom? Does Johnson lead Joe Biden? Adam Schiff? Donald Trump? AOC? Facts please! Evidence! Nah, none of that is forthcoming: this is just a “Vote Democrat” tweet, devoid of anything but naked partisan loyalty. NewsBusters executive editor Tim Graham responded that “The New York Times is a leading peddler of misinformation.”
Indeed,
What’s going on here? Well, the Times assumes most of its Twitter followers are progressive partisans who won’t mind the paper exposing its increasingly obvious and destructive bias. They are probably right about that, but fairer Americans are paying attention. Why would anyone trust a news source that would allow something like that tweet to go out under its banner?
The self-banned commenter who hung out here for a while making excuses for the Times would doubtlessly say, “Oh, come on. So some low-level intern or someone similar screwed up. It doesn’t prove the Times is biased.” It proves that the Times doesn’t respect it readers, the public, its profession or its mission enough to take proper care regarding how its power and influence are wielded and who wields it. The fact that the Times hasn’t publicly rebuked whoever was responsible for that tweet and apologized to all, including Sen. Johnson tells us all we need to know, not that those of us who have been paying attention didn’t know it long ago.
Almost as infuriating as the unholy alliance between a totalitarianism-aspiring political party and the large majority of the news media determined to play Pravda is the persistent denial that such an alliance exists despite mountains of daily evidence. (It’s a right wing conspiracy theory, you know.) This episode, small as it might seem, shows both reporters and Democrats outing themselves.
NBC reporter Dasha Burns commented on the air that Pennsylvania Senate candidate John Fetterman appeared to have trouble understanding their conversation prior to their interview, because his closed caption device allowing him to read questions in text while she was asking them wasn’t on yet.
This kind of information used to be known as “reporting,” back when journalists saw their jobs as informing the public about objective facts they needed to know. But Fetterman, who is still recovering from the effects of a major stroke that would have prompted an ethical candidate to withdraw from a Senate race is going to great lengths to avoid letting the public know how serious his comprehension and communications problems are. Naturally, his party, desperate to hold on to control of the Senate, wants to keep Pennsylvania voters in the dark as well. Also naturally, the mainstream progressive media, of which NBC is a card-carrying member, is expected to assist in this deception, and certainly not undermine it with that old-fashioned “reporting” stuff.
What’s going on here? Well, these career-long TV analysts conclude, viewers no longer have a “deep bond” to single late night hosts. Ratings have been sinking because of streaming, and so many alternative options for late night viewing. The cost to produce some late-night shows”is no longer feasible in an era of sinking ratings.”Late-night shows have also struggled to make the transition to streaming video, another consideration weighing on executives,” we are told, in part because “the topical opening monologue, a staple of the genre, has virtually no shelf life in streaming libraries.” Current late-night network hosts “don’t seem to want a lifetime appointment” unlike their predecessors like Johnny Carson, jay Leno and Letterman. “I think the Carson playbook of 40 years talking to celebrities is probably a thing of the past,” a former late night producer told the Times.
Is that it? I guess so: this long examination of factors and trens couldn’t find any other reason for the genre’s decline.
Funny…the reason I haven’t watched a late night talk show in almost eight years must be unusual: these media reporters don’t detect it. Funnier still, a substantial percentage of the readers who commented on the story seem to see the main reason for the rejection of such talks shows—the same reason I have—very clearly.
If you were troubled by yesterday’s Exhibit A regarding the degree to which the mainstream media is “all-in” to try to somehow convince potential voters that everything is really hunky-dory so they should vote Democrat next month, Exhibit B will really unsettled your grits. That would be this analysis by Washington Post political reporter Phillip Bump, a “numbers” guy who is only robbed of the title of Most Shamelessly Partisan WaPo Columnist because Dana Milbank is still at large. (Trump-Deranged Jennifer Rubin has become such a hack that she doesn’t qualify as a columnist any more.)
Bump’s contrived thesis is that there is no big crime problem that can be laid at the feet of Democrats and the Biden Administration; it’s all the concoction of Fox News and right wing conspiracy theorists. His excuse for this exercise in gaslighting was a Fox News segment in which political analyst Gianno Caldwell asked Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y) about rising crime rates. Caldwell’s brother was shot dead in Chicago in June, so I guess one could perhaps argue that he has a distorted view of matters, and that the the whole rising crime thingy is his imagination. But it isn’t, which is perhaps the reason Nadler refused to answer the question.
Americans’ concern about rising crime are at their highest levels since 2016, and no wonder.
“[Fox News] had a profound distorting effect on the news media, on our society. And if you look at what Musk says about social media, we are in the same moment, just updated 30 years later…[He] sees Twitter, and the policies that he wants to put in place and the way that he wants to use the platform, as a way to balance out those other social networks.”
—-Angelo Carusone,president of the pro-progressive media bias organization Media Matters, comparing Elon Musk’s pending acquisition of Twitter to when Fox News broke the liberal monopoly on network news more than two decades ago
Give Angelo credit: he’s right, even if he can’t distinguish a good development from a bad one. But then, that’s Media Matters for you, nearly completely ethics-free. (I generally ignore MM because it is so clearly dishonest and untrustworthy, but it does have a odoriferous Ethics Alarms dossier, here.)
These periodic themes on Ethics Alarms aren’t planned, but wowie zowie, have a lot of examples of the news media’s leftist bias been flying by today!
Caruso’s quote is signature significance for the arrogance and totalitarian instincts of such people. I seldom watch Fox News because it so often is pitched to idiots incapable of critical thought, and its star pundits like Tucker Carlson and Sean Hannity are perpetually intellectually dishonest. Nonetheless, Fox News’ appearance on the scene was arguably the most important and essential development in American journalism before journalists decided not to practice journalism any more and almost completely stomp on the principles enshrined in the profession’s ethics codes.
How many news stories that the mainstream media tried to bury or distort would we have never been informed fully about (or informed about at all) without one network that existed, indeed with its own biases, to balance out the Borg-like perspective of the vast majority of its competitors?
I was going to post about this one days ago, got distracted, and then was reminded about again when I saw today’s Exhibit B (coming along soon).
As Ethics Alarms has been chronicling (incompletely to be sure), the mainstream media is as panicked as its client, the Democratic Party, about the likelihood that the multilateral disasters created by administration policies as well as the performance of progressive governors and big city mayors will lead to an epic rejection in the November mid-term elections. I expect the mainstream media, deep in the throes of a “Bias Makes You Stupid” attack, to cross even more journalism ethics lines than it has been and further undermines what’s left of its credibility as the big day approaches.
The major themes in this desperation assault on reality and public awareness seem to be…
…the Supreme Court letting legislatures decide how to regulate abortion is an attack on democracy.
…the Republicans tried to take over the government in 2021 with the Capitol riot, so the Democrats must be allowed to continue eliminating and punishing dissent in the name of freedom.
…Donald Trump and anyone who supports him is a Nazi, as President Biden clearly explained during his cool Adolf Hitler impression
…”It isn’t what it is” explains and excuses anti-white racial discrimination in public policy; the illegal immigration wave; inflation; the increase in crime, soaring gas prices, public treasury hand-outs to those who haven’t paid their college loans while the suckers who met their financial obligations are just patsies; the frightening politicizing of the Justice Department as a Leftist state policing tool; the sexualizing of public school education and everything else that seems to be spinning out of control,and
….all opposition efforts to criticize or condemn any or all of the above is “a conspiracy theory” or a “Big Lie”
Exhibit A is an example of the latter, and a pretty amusing one, if one can find the total rot of American journalism funny. Continue reading →
This post should be seen as a footnote 
Ethics Alarms 