“Nah there’s no mainstream media bias”

Unethical Axis Headline of the Week: The Washington Post

/ Jack Marshall / 17 Comments

This, of course, comes with the “Nah, there’s no mainstream media bias!” label.

The Post headline truly is despicable. Despite the entire world clamoring for an end, however temporary, to the Gaza war and the abject failure of the U.N. or anyone else to achieve the release of the Israeli hostages, the Post spins the looming success of President Trump’s diplomatic efforts as merely another example of his narcissistic quest for personal acclaim. This is Big Lie of the Resistance #8: Big Lie #8: “Trump Only Cares About Himself, Not the Country.“

It is one of the most persistent of the Big Lies that emerged during his first term: two friends repeated it just yesterday. The smear is a great default excuse to refuse ever giving this President credit for anything, even achievements that are impressive, important and remarkable. It is an especially ethically obtuse smear: motives don’t make an action ethical, the conduct does, and the right thing done for the wrong reasons is still the right thing. In this case, the motive used to minimize Trump’s diplomatic triumph is a weak one, for I can’t imagine why Trump would want a Nobel Peace Prize, so thoroughly has that honor been debased by the flagrant politicizing of the award process.

[Aside: Of the 10 Big Lies I compiled through 2023, only #1 (“Trump is just a reality TV star”) and #9 (“Trump’s Mishandling Of The Pandemic Killed People”) have largely been retired from the Axis of Unethical Conduct and the Trump Deranged mob list of justifications for reviling the President of the United States.]

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Ethics Quote of the Month: Ann Althouse

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

“The journalists need to get in shape. Frankly, I’m getting tired of looking at their writing and seeing such shit. It’s completely unacceptable.”

—-Veteran bloggress Ann Althouse, an occasionally red-pilled liberal Democrat, expressing disgust in a pots yesterday with the state of American journalism after reviewing the (as usual) biased and partisan coverage of the Trump Administration, this time in reporting on Sec. of War Hegseth’s meeting yesterday with the Pentagon’s generals and admirals.

I was going to write about that meeting and President Trump’s characteristic stream-of consciousness speech that followed it, then saw Althouse’s piece this morning naming what she felt were the worst headlines about the “Hegsethathon.”

Ann has expressed annoyance with biased coverage of Trump and his administrations before, but I think this is the first time she condemned the entire Axis media, to which I say, 1) “Good!” and 2) “What took her so long?” American journalists have overwhelmingly been avoiding ethical journalism since at least 2008, and my blog, unlike hers, blew the whistle, loudly, beginning in 2010. I suppose, as a liberal, Democrat law professor living and working in the bubble of Madison, Wisconsin who voted for Obama, Hillary and Biden, she can be forgiven for being blinded by confirmation bias and denial. Her commentariate has become far more conservative than she is (or was) in the interim. Ann should have become “sick of seeing such shit” long ago.

Hegseth’s meeting was attacked by the mainstream media from the second that it was announced. Why? A leader seeking cultural and organizational change should gather his or her commanders to ensure they understand their mission, goals and objectives. Much of the criticism was over the meeting demanding live, in person attendance. This objection demonstrates generational ignorance. A live meeting with everyone present and sitting together is and always will be the most powerful way to build group bonds and common purpose. I know this as a live theater director and a public speaker, and also as someone who knows the visceral differences from watching a baseball game or a movie in a crowd and seeing them alone or with one or two companions on a TV screen. We have a whole Zoom-warped generation who can’t grasp that, and their institutions and organizations will suffer as a result, probably forever.

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Now THIS Lying MSNBC “Journalist” Really Needs To Be Fired…

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

Wikipedia tells us that Brandy Zadrozny “is an American investigative journalist and reporter with NBC News and MSNBC who specializes in radicalization, extremism and disinformation on the Internet.” Interesting! But apparently since she works for “MS,” she uses that supposed expertise to lie directly to the public in order to advance the Axis media’s propaganda. Zadrozny also, as evidenced by that head-exploding clip above, feels free to abuse her credentials and authority to literally deny reality that she, her fellow travelers, her employers and her whole profession find inconvenient.

Western Lensman (whoever he, she or it is) could not be more accurate, however. The lying by the Left, here and generally, knows no bounds. President Biden was sharp as a tack! If MSNBC doesn’t fire and permanently blackball this lying hack from ever practicing “journalism” again—and you know it won’t—we have a tacit admission regarding what their real purpose is: deception, confusion and distortion of reality for political gain. And it isn’t only MSNBC.

Heavens to Betsy: this woman’s specialty is the internet, and she doesn’t know about Bluesky, the Twitter/X alternative where cowardly progressives go to revel in their fantasies? Wait—she has an account on it: https://web-cdn.bsky.app/profile/brandyzadrozny.bsky.social! And still Brandy hasn’t noticed everyone around her cheering for Kirk’s death?

This is worse than mere lying. This is gaslighting, abuse of credentials (Brandy is a Pratt Institute grad), abuse of trust, abuse of journalism ethics, ack! ack! araghhyhayyrewqaunngemg!!!!!

(I just hurled myself to the floor like John Belushi used to do on Saturday Night Live.)

And poor Jimmy Kimmel sits at home, wondering what he said that was so bad….

Boy, And I Thought The Last Times Op-Ed I Criticized Here Was Bad! Peter Baker Says, “Hold My Beer”!

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

If you can read the crap the Times’ Peter Baker threw at us in “In an Era of Deep Polarization, Unity Is Not Trump’s Mission” without getting the dry heaves and being tempted to destroy you computer screen with a hammer, you have a piece missing. Its subhead: “President Trump does not subscribe to the traditional notion of being president for all Americans.” KABOOM. Head exploded, brains on walls and ceiling. How date Baker write that? How dare the Times print it? This is simultaneous smoking gun evidence of Trump Derangement, incurable bias, and denial of reality. The gift link is here. Have a bucket nearby. Here’s the gift link. I don’t think the opportunity to read such malign, intellectually dishonest junk is truly a “gift.”

To state the obvious, Baker has the utter gall to make his fatuous assertion following a sort-of President who did this…

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Serious Question: Has US News Media Ever Treated Another President or Vice-President This Way Before?

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

And why is it acceptable now?

A completely made-up “scandal” began when The Guardian reported  on “Canoe-Gate.” “JD Vance’s team had water level of the river raised for family’s boating trip,” the outlet claimed. Though the same article said that “one source with knowledge of the matter who communicated with the Guardian anonymously alleged that the outflow request for the Caesar Creek Lake was not just to support the vice-president’s Secret Service detail, but also to create ‘ideal kayaking conditions” and that “The Guardian could not independently confirm this specific claim,” the story was reported anyway. Got that? An unnamed source claimed that Vance had ordered that a river’s water level be raised to create better kayak conditions, the news organization couldn’t substantiate the claim, yet they printed it as fact.

Then the usual suspects jumped into the fray. The New Republic’s  headline was “JD Vance Abused Power to Raise River Levels for Family Kayaking Trip.” Huffington Post declared: “JD Vance Had A River’s Water Level Raised For His Family Vacation.” The Daily Beast: “JD Vance Ordered a River’s Water Level Raised for His Family Boat Trip.” Stephen Colbert called the story an “insane spoiled baby emperor move.” (What an asshole he is. But I digress.)

There was no truth to the story whatsoever. Secret Service spokesman Anthony Guglielmi explained that the they conducted a routine trip to the Ohio area ahead of the Veep’s planned trip and one of their vessels actually ran aground. The Secret Service the increase: “It’s very normal, it’s very routine.” He said that the decision was made without input or involvement from the Vice President’s office.

Never mind, though. Vance is Donald Trump’s #2, so whatever damning stories and rumors people make up about him must be true, and must be broadcast to the world as fact. None of the news outlets noted above have retracted or taken down the false story. Of course they haven’t.

I’ll answer my own question: no, there have never been a President and Vice President who have been slandered, libeled, slimed and unfairly denigrated like Trump and Vance. By any objective measure, the first seven months of the second Trump administration has been spectacularly productive on an impressive number of fronts, yet the President’s popularity is still in negative numbers. The barrage of deliberately misleading negative propaganda is why. It hurts the government, it hurts society, it scars democracy. “Enemy of the people.” Trump coined that phrase in relation to the news media, and he was never more accurate. Journalists screamed, “How dare he!,” but Trump nailed their corrupt profession as deftly as Ronald Reagan did when he called the Soviet Union the “Evil Empire.” That’s what we have as our “journalism” now: a malign, unethical, dastardly institution determined to mislead rather than inform.

______________

Pointer: Res Ipsa Loquitur

And the First “Terry Moran ‘Nah, There’s No Mainstream Media Bias!’ Award” Goes To…

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

Jim Acosta!

Hardly an upset, but wow, what an asshole. But then, you knew that, didn’t you?

Acosta was riffing on a “No Kings” Day episode of “The Contrarian” podcast hosted by fellow-Stage 5 Trump Derangement sufferer Jennifer Rubin, and attacked President Trump for having ICE enforce our immigration laws. Then he made the bizarre argument that the President is a hypocrite because two of his three wives were immigrants. They weren’t illegal immigrants, mind you, but progressive Democrats like Acosta pretend that they don’t understand the distinction.

“Where are the ICE raids at the Trump properties? Could somebody call ICE on the Trump golf course in Virginia? You’re telling me there’s nobody in there that is undocumented or has some kind of squirreliness going on with their paperwork?” he asked. “Give me a break. How many immigrants has he married? He’s got one [that would be first wife Ivana, who died in 2022] buried at his golf course in New Jersey! Isn’t she buried by the first hole or the second tee or something like that?” he asked. Rubin’s guest April Ryan, another unethical reporter, cackled along with Rubin at Acosta’s wit. “Immigrants always doing the jobs that Americans don’t want to do!” he joked.

This guy was CNN’s primary reporter on the first Trump administration. His bias was palpable, and Acosta is now revealing what kind of vicious hate-monger CNN allowed to distort the news in pursuit of his–and its— own partisan agenda.

Someone can try to amuse like-minded resistance fanatics with absurd anti-Trump bile, and one can be a tough journalist speaking “truth to power.” But a reporter who indulges in the first has no credibility trying be the latter. What are the chances that Acosta’s disqualifying contempt for Donald trump wasn’t common knowledge at CNN while he was posing as a journalist? My guess? None.

Commenting on his outburst, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said, “Jim Acosta is a disgraceful human being.” Why yes, Karoline, I believe you are correct.

ABC to Terry Moran: It’s OK For You To Be Biased Like the Rest of Us, But For God’s Sake Don’t Be So Obvious About It!

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

ABC News suspended senior national correspondent Terry Moran for, shall we say, a revealing but undiplomatic post on Twitter/X that gratuitously attacked both President Trump and top aide Stephen Millers as “world-class hater[s].” Nice!

Nah, there’s no mainstream media bias!

“Miller is a man who is richly endowed with the capacity for hatred. He’s a world-class hater,” Moran wrote. “You can see this just by looking at him because you can see that his hatreds are his spiritual nourishment. He eats his hate.” Moran continued, “Trump is a world-class hater. But his hatred only a means to an end, and that end [is] his own glorification. That’s his spiritual nourishment.”

If you say so Terry. Amazingly, Moran apparently saw nothing unprofessional about his outburst, which he subsequently deleted. Talk about living in a bubble!

An ABC News spokesperson said in a statement shortly thereafter that Moran had been suspended, pointing to the post as the impetus for the disciplinary action.

“ABC News stands for objectivity and impartiality in its news coverage”—Excuse me, but HAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA–<breath>HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!—“and does not condone subjective personal attacks on others,” ABC said in a statement. “The post does not reflect the views of ABC News and violated our standards — as a result, Terry Moran has been suspended pending further evaluation.”

KABOOM! Well, My Head Just Exploded, and If You Read This, Yours Will Too…

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

Unbelievable. Outrageous. Disgusting. Amazing.

And yet, oddly satisfying and welcome!

That “60 Minutes” segment on Kamala Harris in which CBS and the once-respected new magazine tried to influence the 2024 election by editing a Harris interview to make her seem like less of a babbling, intellectually-challenged fool — the subject of Trump’s $20 billion lawsuit against CBS — was nominated yesterday by Emmys for “outstanding edited interview.”

The revelation that the television industry approves of deceptive partisan propaganda that helps Democrats and advances progressive agendas isn’t the shocking aspect of the nomination. Anyone paying attention know that already. What is head-blowing is that the Emmys would be so open about its bias and rejection of ethics.

The nomination is a direct and flagrant gesture of defiance to President Trump. It is not merely political and partisan, but openly and intentionally political and partisan. Trump sued CBS for $20 billion as a result of this all-time low-point in fair, unbiased, and trustworthy journalism, and should have, if only to make sure the smoking gun “Nah, there’s no mainstream media bias!” episode wasn’t jammed in a metaphorical memory hole as the Axis media continues to pretend that it is interested in informing the American public rather than manipulating it.

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Nobody Should Trust The News Media Anyway, But Trusting It After This Is Unconscionable…

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

How infuriating.

Ex-NBC News chief political analyst and “Meet the Press” host Chuck Todd was a guest on “Piers Morgan Uncensored” on yesterday, and when Morgan asked Todd “why was the mainstream media so reluctant” to cover President Biden’s mental state, especially when “everyone was seeing [it] with their own eyes,” Todd offered this: “The only thing I can chalk it up to is this, whatever you want to call it, this fear that some members of the media had sometimes that they would be perceived as helping Trump if they somehow diminished Biden, right?”

NO, you despicable asshole, NOT right! Your job is to report the facts that the public not only should know but has to know in order to govern themselves effectively, not to decide which facts will benefit a particular individual, policy or party and censor accordingly. Right before that damning statement, Todd said the American public should have been able to figure out that President Biden was failing cognitively because the media had been “subtle” in its coverage. “I would argue the reason people were able to come to their own conclusion on Joe Biden is because of the media coverage,” Todd said. “Look, we were subtle. ‘He’s using the back staircase. He’s not using the front staircase.’ ‘Hey, he’s not doing any interviews.’”

This isn’t a game of charades, you incomparable fool! The public isn’t supposed to have to guess what’s going on based on the clues you and your fellow propagandists for the Democrats are willing to reveal.

Over at Instapundit there has been a mantra repeated often lately: “No matter how much you hate these people, it isn’t enough.” Todd, the most inept and untrustworthy host of “Meet the Press’ in its long and once distinguished history, is among the worst of the worst in his field: he’s biased, he’s partisan, and he’s just not very bright.

The Associated Press Generously Demonstates Why It Should Be Kicked Out of White House Briefings

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

“WASHINGTON (AP) — The Associated Press has withdrawn its story about U.S. Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard saying President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin “are very good friends.” Gabbard was talking about Trump and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The AP will publish a corrected version of the story.”

Oh. WHAT???

How in the world does a news organization get the Prime Minister of India mixed up with Putin?

Why, it does this when that news organization is so eager to publish negative stories, rumors and gossip about President Trump to undermine his Presidency and the will of the electorate that it doesn’t bother to check and verify such a tale that they view as just what they are looking for— an item that will be quickly gobbled up, regurgitated and spread all over social media by the Trump Deranged to show that, as Stephen Colbert so eloquently (and, to the intended audience, humorously) put it, President Trump is Putin’s “cock-holster.”

The Associated Press is suing the White House, you may recall, arguing that stopping this persistently partisan hack news organization from being guaranteed one of the limited numbers of seats in the White House press room constitutes a First Amendment violation. After this latest fiasco, AP’s victory in the case would justify The Babylon Bee, The National Enquirer and the Weekly World News—you know, these guys…

…being guaranteed places as well.