USA Today

The Pattern: Trump Makes A Decision That Can Be Legitimately Criticized, and the Media Reports It In a Misleading and Biased Manner To Rig the Debate…

/ Jack Marshall / 21 Comments

This one nearly got me!

The USA Today headline: “National parks cut free entry for MLK Day, add Trump’s birthday.” I almost leaped for my keyboard. Sure, trolling the “No Kings” Trump Deranged is fun for POTUS, but this crossed the line. It also seemed like a deliberately racially provocative act: substituting his own birthday for MLK’s among the days commemorated by the National Parks? This mandated an Ethics Dunce post that would write itself!

It was not until the end of the story (by USA TODAY hack Kathleen Wong, who “covers travel news with a passion for sustainable tourism and human-focused storytelling” —gag/ack/yecchh!) where the full list of days when admission to the National Parks will be free of charge to American citizens is listed, that I recognized the nasty partisan con.

The new list of 2026 free admission days to the National Parks during patriotic holidays: President’s Day (Feb. 16), Memorial Day(May 31), Flag Day (June 14) Independence Day weekend (July 3–5),  the 110th Birthday of the National Park Service (Aug. 25) Constitution Day (Sept. 17) Theodore Roosevelt’s birthday (Oct. 27)—Teddy launched the National Parks— and Veterans Day (Nov. 11).  I had forgotten, as I suspect many readers have, that Flag Day happens to be Trump’s birthday, but the holiday fits naturally into the category of non-interest group, non- divisive patriotic commemorations that was clearly the motivation for “patriotic fee-free days” announced by the Department of the Interior.

Continue reading →

4 Ethics Takeaways From USA Today’s 5 Takeaways From Joe Rogan’s Interview With JD Vance

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

The target is this USA Today story.

1. The quote everyone seems to be repeating is “It’s just strange that everyone’s accepting that this person who is the least popular vice president ever is now the solution to the problem and that the media machine in just a few days did this 180 and just sold her as the solution. And as long as they keep her from having these conversations where she’s allowed to talk, they’re able to pull this off. And the, the fact that it’s happening with no primary should be really concerning to people… because that’s never happened before…. they could have had a primary….”

It should tell voters everything they need to know to vote against Harris that even with the race so close, she refused to do an interview with Rogan for his massive audience of mostly young men unless he did it under her staff’s control and limited the interview to an hour rather than his usual three. This shows that she’s hiding her real nature, unsure of her abilities, a coward, a weenie, and a prop candidate. Why would anyone vote for someone like that to be President? There are no ethical reasons: the reasons that exist are all linked to unethical conduct and characteristics or non-ethical considerations like fear and hate.

Continue reading →

Our Objective News Media: ‘Trump May Have Caused His Own Assassination Attempt’

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

Nah, there’s no mainstream media bias!

That was USA Today’s reporting of the Trump assassination attempt yesterday. (I haven’t checked to see if it has been changed.)

The sub-head is a non-sequitur unless the reader is supposed to conclude that there is a causal connection between Trump’s Truth Social post, Vance’s provocative comments on Sunday Morning TV, and the later assassination attempt.

There is no defending such blatant partisan hackery from a news source. The fact that this nonsense could make it to the USA Today site without a sane professional putting a stop to it is damning. Are we supposed to conclude that the shooter was an offended Taylor Swift fan? USA Today might as well have written, “The incident occurred that same day that Trump had hush puppies for breakfast.”

Again, this is how you try rig an election, at least if you’re aiming at the moron vote—which is, sadly, considerable.

_______________

Pointer: Willem Reese

From The “Res Ipsa Loquitur” Files: “Fact Check: Chihuahuas Are Dogs, Not Rats.”

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

USA Today really did print a “fact check” of a gag social media claim that chihuahuas are not dogs but rodents. The article by agriculture and business reporter Laura Peters shows no hint of humor or irony: USA Today treats this as if there is a substantial likelihood that a significant number of its readers might be deceived by the claim that “DNA study finds chihuahuas aren’t dogs …Among other findings the analysis determined that Chihuahua is actually a type of large rodent, selectively bred for centuries to resemble a canine.”

Peters also cites Scopes as an authority, because those fools also did a fact check the last time someone posted this idiocy. “According to Snopes, the claim was just a “bit of satirical fun,” Peters informs us.

What the USA Today article actually informs us about—the headline alone is enough— is the degree to which USA Today has sunk beneath Weekly Reader and World News Daily status. Why would anyone possessing more than two  neurons firing trust anything reported by a rag with editors and reporters who think it is necessary to show that chihuahuas aren’t rats?

There is almost nothing substantive in USA Today’s print editions any more; the thin paper is mostly ads, photos, and local news snippets. With all of the important news being buried or ignored by most of the news media, the once handy Gannett paper could at least fill in some blanks–how about those Cassidy Hutchinson texts? No, what USA Today’s editors think its readers have a right to know is that dogs aren’t rats. Are the editors the morons? Peters? Or do they just think anyone who reads USA Today must be a moron?

On that, they have a point.

Why American Presidents Need A Fair News Media To Be Competent, And More Evidence That They Won’t Get One Anytime Soon, If Ever…

/ Jack Marshall / 30 Comments

fakenews

It’s my own fault. I’ve written so many essays here since 2009 about the disgraceful descent of the news media into partisan propaganda that I can’t find the relevant post I was looking for on my own blog. That would be the one during the Obama administration in which I pointed out that being assured that no reporters and virtually no pundits would have the guts or integrity to criticize Obama’s performance as President had made him lazy, arrogant, and reckless. If you know anything you do will be extolled whether it deserves praise of not, and any mistakes and blunders will be covered up or spun, why be careful, especially if you’re an arrogant narcissistic like Barack? The same principle operated on President Trump, but in reverse (I honestly don’t recall if I noted this, but I noticed it). If a President is certain that whatever he does will be attacked by the news media, there is no reason for him to consider the press in his policy considerations. Summary: bad journalism makes bad Presidents.

Several commentators are finally waking up to this phenomenon now, as they try to find some other than Joe Biden to blame for Joe Biden’s incompetence. I have now read several pieces opining that the President was certain that the press would have his back no matter what happened in Afghanistan.

That was really foolish on Biden’s part (but then…Biden) for two reasons. First, he is not nearly as popular as Obama, and nobody was going to call a reporter “racist” for criticizing him. Second, and more importantly, journalists destroyed their influence and credibility during their four year campaign of fake news and glorified rumors to bring down Donald Trump. Most of the public doesn’t trust the mainstream media—good!—because it is untrustworthy. The days when it could cover a President’s botches effectively have passed.

One would think that this would spur the news media to be more careful about the lies they present to the public as truth, and one would be tragically wrong. Two recent examples from last week demonstrate that no “Oh-oh, we better start practicing honest journalism!” alarms are ringing yet.

Continue reading →

Sunday Ethics Shots, 7/11/2021: A Rescue, Larry Vaughn In Tokyo, Joe Trippi Trips, And “La Bamba” Meets Calvinball

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

Alexander Hamilton died on this date in 1804, in a bizarre episode in U.S. history with profound ethical and political implications. There Aaron Burr fatally shot dead the nation’s first Secretary of the Treasury and essential political thinker in an illegal duel at Weehawken, New Jersey. It was, of course, unethical to break the law, especially for these two men, who qualified as national leaders. Hamilton’s son had died defending his father’s honor in 1801 at the exact same spot (What was Alexander thinking?)

According to Hamilton’s “second,” Hamilton deliberately fired his weapon into the air rather than at Burr, a gentlemanly gesture and also a profoundly stupid one, if Hamilton believed half the things he had said and written about Burr’s character for years. This was why they were dueling, after all. Burr’s second claimed that Hamilton fired at Burr and missed, and the more I’ve thought abut this, the more I’ve come to believe that this is the more likely scenario. Hamilton was anything but naive, reckless or stupid. Yes, he was a crack shot, but anyone can miss. Even if the gesture of “throwing away his shot” as “Hamilton” puts it, would have impressed some adversaries and been seen as a display of mercy and an offer of reconciliation, it made no sense at all with this adversary. Moreover, Hamilton considered Burr a threat to the nation—he was right about that—why wouldn’t he shoot him? Whatever really happened, Burr, who had the second shot, killed Hamilton with a ball that went through his stomach into his spine. Hamilton died the next day.

This ended Burr’s political career: Would killing Burr have ended Hamilton’s? Probably, but Burr was the one who had issued the challenge. Maybe Hamilton would have been excused by the public. Maybe he would have ultimately become President; all the Founders of his magnitude except Ben Franklin did. For good or ill, Alexander Hamilton would have been a strong and probably transformative leader. But if he hadn’t died at Weehawken, it’s unlikely that we would have “Hamilton” the musical….

1. Baseball, hotdogs, and a bystander hero. Dr. Willie Ross, the father of Washington Nationals pitcher Joe Ross, saved the life of a choking fan midway through yesterday 10-4 Giants win over Washington at Oracle Park in San Francisco. Ross saw that a female spectator was choking, and when Ross came over to her seat to check on her, she couldn’t talk. Ross helped dislodge two pieces of a hot dog by using the Heimlich maneuver, then reached into her throat to take out the third and final piece. The woman, who is a nurse, could breath and speak at last. Ross received a standing ovation from nearby fans.

Continue reading →

Meanwhile, The News Media Keeps Lying For Stacey Abrams

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

Stace Abrams 2

As noted in the previous post, it’s unethical to use Stacey Abram’s crummy romance novels against her, when she herself is such a revoltingly unethical public figure. The Democrats and the news media have been trying to make a hero out of Abrams, who pretty clearly is a fake and an opportunist whose ethics alarms rusted shut long ago. Most recently, she pushed Major League Baseball to pull the All-Star Game from Atlanta because of the “Jim Crow” election law changes in Georgia Joe Biden repeatedly lied about. MLB, desperately pandering, relocated the game to Colorado, a state whose safe-guards against voting fraud are more stringent than Georgia’s. (Trying to make voting less easy to rig is “racist.” Yeah, I don’t get it either.)

After MLB followed Abrams’ exhortations and it was revealed that the move would devastate small businesses in Atlanta, many of them minority-owned, Abrams said she was “disappointed” in baseball.

Yes, she is a weasel in human form. The fun part is figuring out how long before enough people figure it out. The mainstream news media, which resembles Pravda more with each passing day, is doing its best to delay that moment of reckoning, as the recent revelation about her stealth-edited USA Today essay illustrates.

The piece was published on March 31, right before Major League Baseball made the despicable choice to withdraw from Georgia the law that Abrams opposed. Abrams then argued that the boycott was a correct corporate response. Abrams was also arguing both sides of the argument at once, something she does a lot, shameless phony that she is. She wrote in part:

“Boycotts work…The impassioned response to the racist, classist bill that is now the law of Georgia is to boycott in order to achieve change. Events hosted by major league baseball, world class soccer, college sports and dozens of Hollywood films hang in the balance. At the same time, activists urge Georgians to swear off of hometown products to express our outrage. Until we hear clear, unequivocal statements that show Georgia-based companies get what’s at stake, I can’t argue with an individual’s choice to opt for their competition. However one lesson of boycotts is that the pain of deprivation must be shared to be sustainable. Otherwise, those least resilient bear the brunt of these actions; and in the aftermath, they struggle to access the victory. And boycotts are complicated affairs that require a long-term commitment to action. I have no doubt that voters of color, particularly Black voters, are willing to endure the hardships of boycotts. But I don’t think that’s necessary — yet. … I ask you to bring your business to Georgia and, if you’re already here, stay and fight. Stay and vote.”

Continue reading →

The Great Stupid Rolls On: Once Again, The News Media Makes Us Play “Wheel Of Fortune”…

/ Jack Marshall / 28 Comments

Barely three weeks ago, Ethics Alarms offered this post, “The New York Times Refusing To Inform Its Readers What Meyers Leonard Was Suspended For Saying Is Far More Unethical Than Leonard Saying It.” Readers of the Times and many other news sources had revealed that the NBA’s Miami Heat center Meyers Leonard was in big trouble because he had used a word that was an ethnic slur so terrible that we couldn’t be told exactly what it was. This is censorship and journalism incompetence at its worse: without knowing the word, the story makes no sense. It is a central fact that the public must know in order to assess whether the outrage over the utterance and the eventual consequences were just.

Ethics Alarms had to inform readers that the word was “kike.” That’s not my job. Nonetheless, I have respect for the public, language, the duty of communication and free speech that the majority of American journalists do not.

Now, in an example of bad ethics deja vu, it’s happened again. Rather than do their job and tell the story, most of the news media is requiring the public to play “Wheel of Fortune,” and complete a phrase by guessing what a word is in order to understand why its utterance by a professional athlete is newsworthy.

Here was how USA Today reported the episode:

Tampa Bay Buccaneers cornerback Carlton Davis apologized for a tweet he sent Sunday night that contained an anti-Asian slur.  Davis said he confused the term for one he was intending to mean “lame” while trying to blame the media for the traction the tweet received.”I would never offend any group of people,” Davis, 24, wrote. “You reporters can look for another story to blow up. The term was directed towards a producer claiming he ‘ran Miami’ With that being said I’ll retire that word from my vocabulary giving the hard times our Asian family are enduring. According to ESPN, Davis wrote “Gotta stop letting (expletive) in Miami” in the tweet that has since been deleted. Anti-Asian attacks have increased recently as the COVID-19 pandemic continues into its second year.In response to the tweet, the Asian American Journalists Association Sports Task Force said in a statement that it “is disappointed by his sentiment, especially at a time when Asians in the United States are experiencing a sharp increase in anti-Asian hate which has resulted in harassment and attacks.”

Continue reading →

Sunday Ethics Peeps, 3/28/21: “Hey, Everybody! Free Gym Memberships!”

/ Jack Marshall / 35 Comments

Peeps

1. Speaking of useless awards shows: Here are the winners of the NAACP Image Awards, presented by Black Entertainment Television, which raises questions all by itself. Now someone explain to me how such awards are helpful, productive, and justified in the United States of America in 2021. As hard as I try, I cannot think of any words but hypocrisy, apartheid, and double standards.

I’d really appreciate an argument from an African-American reader.

2. An ethical firing at USA Today. After Ahmad Al Aliwi Alissa shot up a supermarket in Boulder, Hemal Jehaveri, who held the Orwellian post of “Race and Inclusion Editor,” proved her qualifications by tweeting “It’s always an angry white man, always.” This did not go over well, for several reasons.

Race tweet

First, “it” isn’t “always” a white man. Second, this particular shooting appears to be based on religious and ethnic hate, not race. Third, for a “race and inclusion” editor to announce racial bias of her own on social media would seem to be immediately disqualifying. Fourth, as a journalist, she needs to be trusted, and not tweet out false information on a whim.

Fifth, she’s a biased idiot.

She was fired. Good. Now she’s claiming that her firing was race-based:

Continue reading →

Evening Ethics Exorcism, 12/2/2020: Boy, I Hate Thinking About This Stuff Before Bed…

/ Jack Marshall / 20 Comments

pazuzzu

1. This is too stupid to devote a post to, but too stupid to ignore. Some group of wackos calling itself the We the People Convention is advocating that President Trump invoke “limited martial law” and hold a new election by fiat. The group somehow scraped up the money to call for this in a full page Washington Times ad, not that the Times is a particularly prominent newspaper, but it is a conservative one, which I guess is why they thought it was okay to accept money for such junk. It isn’t.

As for the WTPC’s argument, it is based on bad history, bad law, and bad thinking. The press release “explains”:

The Ad compares the Extraordinary Executive actions implemented by President Abraham Lincoln in his efforts to save the Union during the Civil War and the literal civil war that is dividing our nation today. Without full confidence that our courts or Congress will indeed follow the 12th Amendment of the Constitution and defend our electoral process, the ad calls upon President Trump, like Lincoln, to exercise the Extraordinary Powers of his office and declare limited Martial Law to temporarily suspend the Constitution and civilian control of these federal elections in order to have the military implement a national re-vote that reflects the true will of the people.

Cue “Murder by Death”:

What the ad and petition are arguing for is wildly unconstitutional. Lincoln’s various excesses were also unconstitutional and among the most serious abuses of Presidential power in our history, but at least he had an actual Civil War to deal with. There is not, obviously, any “literal” civil war today. If something as unprecedented and nationally disrupting as a voided election and a do-over is going to happen (it won’t), it would have to occur through the courts, which is to say, through the rule of law.

The ridiculous, offensive, reckless and foolish suggestion would have probably received the scant attention it deserved had not, if what I have seem reported is correct, recently-pardoned Mike Flynn and pro-Trump lawyer Linn Wood, who looks and sounds more like Michael Avenatti every day, publicly endorsed it. (Wood is not a member of the Trump legal team, incidentally, though I keep seeing that reported.)

Well, shame on them both, but Flynn is a notorious loose cannon, and Wood, well, is Wood. Their approval won’t make the petition any less ridiculous, and their poor judgement reflects badly on nobody but themselves.

Continue reading →