Tag Archives: responsibilities

That’s Not All

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Amid the press coverage of a variety of recent video clips showing Progressive-Democrat President Joe Biden’s apparent physical and mental decline—standing motionless in the middle of a number of dignitaries swaying and bobbing to some music, wandering off in the middle of a parachute team demonstration, being taken by the wrist and led off the stage—there comes Biden’s Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre’s full throated and angry denunciation of the video clips as cheap fakes and deep fakes.

Among the press’ snark corps commentary ridiculing Jean-Pierre’s claim there were a few suggestions that were more serious.

The least among the more serious is Guy Benson’s unsubstantiated denial:

But it’s literal misinformation to pretend the videos themselves are fake. They are not.

Based on what evidence, Benson?

Some more serious questions include these:

Senator Mike Lee (R, UT):

Wait, exactly which videos we’ve all seen—of Biden freezing or looking lost—are deepfakes?

Stephen L Miller:

A reporter needs to genuinely ask her what she thinks a deep fake is[.]

This line of questioning badly lacking, however, which is all too typical of today’s cute sound bite-driven media. A reporter—a myriad of reporters—also need to ask (to get back to Benson’s failure from the right) for the specific data that shows the videos to be deep fakes, or cheap fakes, or in any way altered other than—perhaps—being clipped out of longer videos showing more of Biden’s behavior both before and after the clips in question.

Maybe the lack of calls for hard evidence—and Benson’s evidence-free claim—is of a piece with what passes for today’s journalism: sound bites don’t have room for facts.

Journalist Complaining about Violation of Journalistic Ethics

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This is rich. Here’s David Brooks, complaining about a journalist penetrating a private gathering hosted by a historical society and attended by some Supreme Court Justices:

It’s a complete breach of any—the basic form of journalistic ethics. And I was, frankly, stunned that all of us in our business just reported on it, just like straight up.

I’ve addressed this concept of ethics in journalism—rather the lack of ethics in journalism—before. I’m addressing it again here, now that the highly esteemed (at least in some circles) Brooks has brought the matter up.

Today’s journalists news writers and opinion personalities think it’s jake to base their pieces entirely on “anonymous sources,” leaving readers and listeners no means of assessing for themselves the accuracy of the claims made or the credibility of the unidentified claimers.

Today’s news writers and opinion personalities think it entirely appropriate to treat their anonymous sources as though they actually exist, and subsequently that they are truthful solely because the writer and personality say so. Never mind that such a source, if it exists, is likely violating his terms of employment if not his oath of office by leaking, and so is empirically dishonest at the outset. Alternatively, an anonymous source, if it exists, is hiding behind anonymity out of cowardice, and cowards will always and only say what he believes will be personally beneficial with his leaks.

Some writers and personalities think it sufficient to address those points by claiming the source is a whistleblower. They consciously choose to not provide any evidence that the source has exhausted all of his whistleblower avenues of objection before he chose to become a leaker. Again, we’re supposed to believe the writer/personality solely on the basis of his smiling face and congenial rhetoric.

Finally, and of overarching importance, journalism used to have a standard that required two on-the-record sources to corroborate the claims of anonymous sources.

Today’s writers and personalities have long since walked away from that standard. On top of that, today’s writers and personalities, and their Editors-in-Chief, refuse today to identify the standard of journalistic integrity they use in its stead.

“Journalistic ethics.” A canonical oxymoron.

A Cautionary Tale

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A man lived with a girlfriend way back in the 1980s:

…in 1987, [the man] listed [his cohabitor] on a handwritten form as the sole beneficiary of his workplace retirement account. He never changed the beneficiary designation and died in 2015.

Two years later, the man and his cohabitor went their separate ways, but he left the beneficiary designation in place, unchanged and apparently unreviewed for all these decades. His family heirs, two brothers, won’t get the now million dollar inheritance; his cohabitor of those decades ago will, at least so far (the brothers have lost their court cases but have appeals in progress).

As it happens, when the man’s then-employer went to online employee account tracking and beneficiary designating, it never brought those paper forms into its computer systems. That’s no serious knock on this employer; lots of employers have left their paper documents outside their new computerized tracking systems.

The man’s employer, though, did send him repeated warnings about his beneficiary designation.

[The employer] said that it provided warnings when the company changed service providers, and online, and on his monthly statements, such as this one: “You don’t have any beneficiary designations online. Any prior beneficiary designations on file with the Plan will be retained by…, but are not viewable on this site.”

It’s anybody’s guess why the man didn’t review his beneficiary designation, but his reasons are irrelevant to this tale.

The caution: don’t be lazy or let life events be distractors. Every time there’s a life event—breaking up with a significant someone, marrying or deciding to live with a significant someone, birth of a child or grandchild or great-grandchild, death of an important someone, even something as mundane as an account trustee changing—it’s necessary, not just useful, to review all beneficiaries designated for all accounts a person might hold.

And make the changes that are appropriate for the new time.

The tale extends to financials generally. Financials are a family’s future; there’s no excuse for being “too tired” to review them and keep them current. Nor is “don’t have the time” any sort of excuse. There’s always time to deal with the family’s future.

Domestic Support for Terrorists is Getting out of Hand

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The UAW’s new membership, the California university system’s 48,000 teaching assistants and “academic proletariat,” is striking in open support of anti-Israel protestors (read: pro-Palestinian and Hamas “protestors”).

Never mind that the strike violates the UAW’s no-strike contract with the system—why should a solemn, written commitment be allowed to stand in the way of supporting terrorists? UCLA English grad pupil and UAW local union president Rafael Jaime:

…the union goal is to “maximize chaos and confusion for the employer.”

Nothing to do with arguing for better working conditions, everything to do with supporting those terrorist supporters.

To compound the California system’s problems,

UC faculty have refused to perform the work of their striking assistants….

The WSJ editors speculated that the reason for this is that the faculty support the strike in favor of the terrorist supporters (my characterization of the WSJ‘s “anti-Israel” term), and that’s a plausible speculation. I have another speculation, one that is in addition to rather than in opposition: these professors have gotten too soft and spoiled in their air conditioned offices and requirement to teach only one or two course per semester (or year!), and don’t want to have actually teach to earn their high six-figure and low seven-figure salaries.

At any rate, it seems to my reprobate self, that 48,000 TAs, et al., and those faculty members refusing to step into the TA-missing classrooms and teach have self-identified as no longer wishing to work for the university system.

California’s university system managers should honor their wish and terminate them promptly and with prejudice.

Update: As of this morning (10 Jun 24), a California judge has ordered this strike stopped.

Apologies

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My blog got hacked at the start of the week; that’s why you haven’t been able to get in. The hackery has been resolved with the outstanding and patient help of my hosting service, Pair Networks, and you should be able to read to your heart’s content, again.

Unfortunately, as part of the cleanup, all users had to be deleted in order to be sure all the hackers had been deleted. Those of you who wish, or wished, to comment can still do so, but you’ll have to register again. For that, too, I apologize.

Eric Hines