Category Archives: culture

The Bias of Journalists and Journalism

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Howard Kurtz, that self-styled bastion of journalistic criticism who writes for Fox News has a piece out about a Trump-hostile media and “some pundits admitting they blew it.”

After producing a litany of…mistakes…made by newspapers and pseudo-journalists as they produced their erroneous analyses and predictions, though, this is all that Kurtz could conclude:

[W]e somehow decided that we knew what was best for them.

Kurtz is missing the point.  His fellow pseudo-journalists didn’t miss their predictions because they misunderstood or blew off mainstream Americans—Americans outside their New York and West Coast bubble—or because they thought they knew what was best for us.  That’s a symptom, not a cause.  His fellow pseudo-journalists misunderstood and blew us off because they’re too biased to see the truth.

And so Kurtz exposes his own bias.

I suggest that the era of the NLMSM is past.  It’s time for ordinary Americans to go elsewhere for our news and other information.  It’s time for us to use our own judgment in evaluating that news and information.

The print and broadcast sources have shown they cannot be trusted; their output has no reliable value.  Their output, at bottom, is no different than the entertainment fluff published by the National Enquirers or the Globes or the Stars of the entertainment industry.  Kurtz and his ilk just take themselves more seriously.

The Left’s Blatant Bigotry

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…continues.  A couple of examples illustrate the shame.

Here’s Jamelle Bouie, political writer for Slate in a tweet:

I didn’t quite understand how much white people hated us, or could at least live with that hate. Now I do.

He went on:

Donald Trump did what Romney and McCain wouldn’t do. He all but cried “nigger.” And it worked.

Because “white people” disagreed with this black man.

Rachel Maddow of MSNBC:

I’m thinking about President Obama too. I mean, to have the first African American President succeeded by a guy who was endorsed by the KKK…it’s a big deal.

It’s also a big deal that Democratic Party Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton was endorsed by the California branch of the KKK, and she quietly accepted that endorsement, while Trump rejected the KKK endorsement of him.  Maddow carefully elided that news item.

And Jeff Jarvis, Professor, Director of Tow-Knight Center for Entrepreneurial Journalism at City University of New York:

I fear that journalism is irredeemably broken, a failure. My profession failed to inform the public about the fascist they are electing.

He’s right about journalism being broken.  It’s broken and untrustworthy for the blatant bias and deliberate mischaracterization he demonstrated in that second sentence.

Because those he’s decided are “uneducated and uninformed” are that because they disagree with this “journalist.”

Even Fox News‘ bastion of media criticism, Howard Kurtz, can’t bring himself to recognize this sewage as anything more than unattractive vitriol.

And then there are the Left’s rank and file, the equivalent of what no less a light than President Barack Obama has disparaged as bitter Bible-clinging, gun-toting denizens of flyover country.

Thousands of people coast-to-coast took to the streets Wednesday night to protest Donald Trump’s election, disrupting traffic, chanting anti-Trump slogans and some ending up in handcuffs.

From New England to heartland cities like Kansas City and along the West Coast, demonstrators bore flags and effigies of the president-elect, disrupting traffic and declaring that they refused to accept Trump’s victory.

These were far more than protestors, though, Fox News‘ decision to minimize their behavior as protests notwithstanding.  These were vandals who damaged private property, burned the American flag, lit fires in street intersections, shut down highways.

Because these toddlers didn’t get their way last Tuesday.

So much for binding up the wounds and coming together for the good of the nation after the election, as the Left’s own champions, Clinton and President Barack Obama, called for.  The bigots of the Left will never give up their divisiveness.  In a very Locke-ian sense, they’ve created themselves as outlaws.

The rest of the Left, hopefully the large majority of the Left, need publicly to disown these bigots among them, to separate themselves from this still too-active detritus of the Democratic Party’s past.

Freedom’s Just Another Word

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…as far as the PRC is concerned.

The good citizens of Hong Kong had elections for their representatives in the city-state’s Legislative Council, and two folks who participated in protests two years ago against PRC intrusion into Hong Kong government affairs were elected.

Never mind the voice of the people.  They have none wherever the PRC can reach.

The Standing Committee of China’s National People’s Congress said people elected to the city’s legislature cannot retake their oaths of office if their first attempt was invalidated for being insincere, not solemn, or deliberately misread.

Naturally, the ones who decide whether an attempt was insincere, not solemn, or deliberately misread are those of the PRC’s government and their puppets allies in the Legislative Council.  And so, Yau Wai-ching and Sixtus Leung are being barred—by the PRC—from taking their oaths of office, after their first attempt was blocked by the Council’s leadership because the two were too lippy to suit them, and before a Hong Kong court could adjudicate the matter.

So much for freedom in PRC satraps.  So much for the PRC’s commitment vis-à-vis Hong Kong, made as part of Great Britain’s handover of Hong Kong.

A Measure of Justice

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Recall Rolling Stone‘s article by Sabrina Rubin Erdely that accused a fraternity at the University of Virginia and the university at large of fostering a climate of rape.  The article went on explicitly to accuse the fraternity’s members of participating in the gang rape of a particular woman—a woman whose rape never occurred—and it smeared (now ex-; she’s still employed by UVA, but in a different and lesser capacity) Dean of Students Nicole Eramo as being indifferent to the purported victim’s plight.

Eramo sued Rolling Stone and Erdeley in Federal court for defamation—a charge in which, because of her celebrity status, a status manufactured by Rolling Stone and their press brethren through their publication of the article and repeated of summaries of it, Eramo would have to prove actual malice by the magazine and Erdeley, not that they were merely extremely negligent.  Last Friday, the jury in the case agreed with Eramo.

[T]he…jury found that the magazine and one of its journalists, Sabrina Rubin Erdely, was liable for defaming Eramo….

And then:

The jury awarded Eramo $2 million from Erdely and $1 million from Rolling Stone….

Eramo’s attorney noted the vindication:

This was nothing short of a complete repudiation of Rolling Stone and Sabrina Rubin Erdely’s flawed journalism[.]

But only a measure of justice.  Eramo described the long-term destruction inflicted on her during her testimony.

Eramo said that U-Va. reassigned her from her duties counseling students on matters involving sexual violence and that she felt adrift on the campus she had called home for 20 years. Eramo said that she received hundreds of vitriolic email messages….

And

[Eramo said that] she faced threats, lost her ability to pursue her life’s work as a sexual assault prevention advocate, and took a major hit to her professional credibility.

The money award is good in the sense that it sends a clear signal to a dishonest press and the “journalists” within it.  However, money cannot repair the damage the smear has done.

Again, only a measure of justice: UVA promptly on the accusation, but without any investigation of its own and long before the police completed their own investigation, suspended not just the accused fraternity but all fraternities associated with the university.  Further, the university has done nothing since to make those fraternities whole from the school’s smearing suspension.

Given the magazine’s and the pseudo-journalist’s evident disdain for the truth and their willingness to publish anything at all in order to make a sale, it’s an amazement to me that anyone anymore would pay money to read their…stuff.

The smeared fraternity has its own lawsuit in progress.

Mao-ist China Returns?

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People’s Republic of China President Xi Jinping has been consolidating his power and centralizing control of the PRC in his hands for a while.

Now he’s seizing more direct control of the nation’s economy.  Xi has removed Lou Jiwei, the PRC Minister of Finance from office.  Lou was “reform-minded” (read: more open and freely operating domestic markets with a more rational tax régime), but that conflicted with Xi’s demand for more government control over those same domestic markets.  Xi has reassigned Lou to run the nation’s pension fund.  The fund is in a disastrous condition; this is simply a move to set Lou up for failure and removal from government altogether.

Look for Li Keqiang, the PRC’s Premier of the State Council (so far) and nominal number two in the government, to go next.

All that’s remaining is to see whether these folks go into peaceful “retirement” or they’re given reeducation coursework to complete in a quiet rural environment.

Nor does this bode well for the PRC’s international behavior generally, nor does it indicate any interest in Xi’s improving relationships with American government officials.  This consolidation simply makes it easier for him to pursue his economic warfare against us through his government’s cyber attacks and cyber spying against our businesses, our nation’s economic infrastructure, and our nation’s government.