Tag Archives: responsibilities

False and Dangerous

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The New York Times published a hit piece on President Donald Trump, a piece in which the news outlet’s authors—Mark Mazzetti, Maggie Haberman, Nicholas Fandos, and Michael  Schmidt—cited only “several American officials” and other such, but not a single on-the-record source to underlie their central thesis or otherwise corroborate claims of their carefully hidden “sources.”  Indeed, here is their methodology, proudly proclaimed in the middle of their piece,

How The Times Reported This Story
To write this story, New York Times reporters reviewed documents and conducted several dozen interviews with current and former government officials, members of Congress, legal experts and more[]

but even here, they identified no one and nothing—not even the “reporters” who did the claimed reviews and interviews, much less any of the persons or documents the authors claimed were consulted.  We’re just supposed to meekly take the authors’ word for this.

Of course, Trump demurred, and in his usual blunt, seemingly inflammatory way.  As do I; the NYT‘s bit is a long one, and it cites “sources” that, for all we know, are only made-up.

Now to the heart of my post.  Quoting Howard Kurtz’ citing of NYT Publisher AG Sulzberger from Kurtz’ own piece on Trump’s objection, Sulzberger (see that? An actual on-the-record source) said

in demonizing the free press as the enemy, simply for performing its role of asking difficult questions and bringing uncomfortable information to light, President Trump is retreating from a distinctly American principle…The phrase “enemy of the people” is not just false, it’s dangerous.

No.  What’s false and dangerous is Sulzberger’s blatant, deliberate lie about what Trump said.  Here’s Trump’s actual claim:

Notice that.  As Sulzberger knows full well—both with words and grammar being his stock in trade, and from what he learned in his third grade grammar lessons—words that modify nouns limit the class of nouns to a clear subset of that class.  Trump has never called the media, or the news media, an enemy of the American people.  He has said only that that subset of the news media that is fake news is that enemy.

It’s true enough that Trump has made no bones about his contention that many, if not most, journalists are purveyors of fake news, nor has he hidden his view that many, if not most, news outlets are such purveyors.  He’s used no euphemisms in expressing his views of CNN as a routine such purveyor.  He also called the NYT a true enemy of the people.

Notice that, though: even in the latter two instances, he’s addressed particular outlets, not “the news.”

On the other hand, Trump has, often, commented favorably on other journalists and news outlets as being quality reporters, “fair” journalists and outlets, including journalists at outlets Trump otherwise disdains.  Plainly, not all news media, or individuals within it, are enemies of the people in Trump’s view or commentary.

This is the false and dangerous lie that Sulzberger—one of the influential MFWICs of one of the influential printers of what it’s pleased to call “fit news”—is spreading.  Sulzberger deliberately and carefully censored the key part of what Trump said—that modifying phrase, which Trump even emphasized in his tweet—and thereby changed utterly what Sulzberger claims Trump said to fit Sulzberger’s own narrative.

And guys like Howard Kurtz, who claims to know better as a critic of the news media, uncritically repeat the lie.

A Serious Case

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Covington Catholic High School student Nicholas Sandmann is suing The Washington Post for its despicable and wholly, deliberately dishonest assault on the boy in its reporting on a confrontation initiated by an American Indian provocateur who also has a history of misrepresenting his role in the Vietnam War, a confrontation that was triggered by a group of blacks claiming to be Jewish and who were yelling racial slurs at Sandmann and his fellow students as the students waited for their bus ride back home.

The suit accuses WaPo of

using its vast financial resources to enter the bully pulpit by publishing a series of false and defamatory print and online articles…to smear a young boy who was in its view an acceptable casualty in their war against the president.

Any member of the NLMSM that delayed reporting of anything more than the fact of an encounter by a whole day in order to view the full video of the encounter would have known the facts and the truth.  WaPo made the carefully thought out editorial decision not to tarry that moment in order to gather actual facts on the matter.  Of course, the news outlet’s owners and editors could not know in real time that a dispositive video would be published, but those worthies did know, absolutely, that more facts would emerge, more facts could be brought to light by competent investigation.  The outlet chose not to bother.  It chose, instead, to attack children—leave aside its bias against a Republican President—for the sake of sensationalism, for clickbait, for readership.

My advice to Sandmann and the lawyers? Do not settle.  Get the court ruling.  Do not settle any appeals.  The suit is for harm and for $250 million.  Those $250 million needn’t only be for immediate damages, either; they can include significant punitive damages.

Burn the WaPo to the ground.  Its despicable assault on a child wants a serious answer, not a slap on the wrist. WaPo‘s abuse of a child wants an answer that not only gets the outlet’s attention (which to achieve that attention must consider the outlet’s deep pockets, via its owner), but one that also serves as a serious warning to the outlet’s peers in the NLMSM on the relative priorities between telling the cold facts and objective truth on the one hand and sensationalizing smears for the sake of clickbait on the other.

Flexible Genders and (Modern) Feminism

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A generally satirical piece by Bill Walsh on The Daily Wire concluded with this straight-up bit of logic:

This [the concept of “identifying as…”] is their own logic. I’m just accepting it. For the sake of argument, anyway. Liberals still have not faced the fact that their progressive gender theory completely undermines, negates, and rules out, all of the feminist “girl power” stuff. They want to have their gender cake and eat it, too. One minute they want us to believe that gender is fluid and a person’s body parts have nothing at all to do with the matter, the next minute they want us to jump for joy because a bunch of people with vaginas were elected to Congress. The two ideas stand in obvious conflict. They must choose. Or else they will have to face the fact that every time they go off on a feminist tangent, they are, according their own ideology, guilty of transphobic bigotry.

What Walsh said.

Virtue Bullying

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As I think about it, I begin more and more to support Virginia Governor Ralph Northam’s refusal to resign over a blackface incident(s) and/or a radio interview in which he discussed Virginia’s then-proposed (since rejected) law that would have allowed abortions up to and including the pregnant woman dilating (according to the bill’s primary sponsor, Delegate Kathy Tran (D), and who now in the face of the hue and cry, says she “misspoke.”)

The blackface yearbook image and the Michael Jackson blackface dance affairs occurred 35 years ago.  Stipulate that Northam knew what he was doing at the time that what he was doing was despicable, and that he knew that, also. I’m a firm believer in the power of rehabilitation and of the ability of a man to be rehabilitated, even to rehabilitate himself.  It’s entirely believable to me that Northam (whom I do not know, so I am speculating, but with the benefit of the doubt) has rehabilitated himself, that he’s corrected his underlying ethos and concept of morality, and that as a result, the man he is today is far different from and far better than the man he was 35 years ago.  Whether Northam can prove that while staying in office, though, or he must resign and make that proof in private life is a matter solely for the citizens of Virginia to decide; it’s not for outsiders, however sincere, to demand.

In an apparently damning radio interview, Northam said this, according to what the NLMSM has chosen to publish.

When we talk about third-trimester abortions, these are done with the consent of obviously the mother, with the consent of the physicians, more than one physician, by the way. And it’s done in cases where there may be severe deformities, there may be a fetus that’s non-viable.
So in this particular example [the Tran example of the mother is dilating], if a mother is in labor, I can tell you exactly what would happen. The infant would be delivered. The infant would be kept comfortable. The infant would be resuscitated if that’s what the mother and the family desired, and then a discussion would ensue between the physicians and the mother. So I think this was really blown out of proportion.

Notice that.  It certainly seems like Northam was supporting the potential for infanticide—but we don’t know because the carefully edited published excerpts omit the rest of Northam’s remarks, so that, in particular, we don’t know what Northam said (or didn’t say) would, should, or could be the outcome of that ensuing discussion.

Whether Northam should go or stay on the basis of his views of abortion is up to the citizens of Virginia; it’s not for outsiders, however sincere, to demand.

Northam, for now, is resisting nothing else than virtue signaler bullying, and that’s to the good.

That the virtue signalers are bullying rather than speaking from principle is made pretty clear from the fact that nearly all of the calls for Northam to go, to resign, to… are coming from folks seeing only to their personal political gain, without any concern whatever for the morality of the situation or the morality of Northam going or staying.

An extended face-off over Mr Northam’s status risks undercutting a key Democratic message as the 2020 race for the White House gets under way, party officials and advocates said.

And this from Anton Gunn, a Progressive-Democratic strategist:

This really does undermine the moral high ground of where the Democratic Party wants to put itself in the 2020 cycle, and it’s a shame that the governor of Virginia doesn’t understand that.

The virtue signaling nature of the calls for Northam’s ouster doesn’t get any clearer than that. These worthies are concerned solely with their personal political gain and with Party political gain.  They care not a whit about moral considerations.

And this from Ken Thomas, the author of the WSJ piece at the link:

The state’s constitution allows for impeachment of the governor for “malfeasance in office, corruption, neglect of duty or other high crime or misdemeanor.” The photograph wasn’t taken while he was in office, and Republicans control the Legislature, which would have to launch such an effort.

A shabby excuse, indeed. As with the Federal Constitution, an impeachable offense is what the State’s legislature says it is—especially regarding the corruption, neglect of duty or other high crime or misdemeanor part. If the virtue signalers were serious, they’d begin the impeachment proceedings, even if they had no expectation of success. Instead, they’re just engaged in cynically virtuous spouting off.

Finally, Northam works for the citizens of Virginia; he has no obligations whatsoever to outsiders, virtue signalers, or porch dog yappers.

Facebook and Trust

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…seem, increasingly, a contradiction in terms.

See this image, from The Sun via Fox News, below.

The girl pictured has a laryngeal cleft, a hole between her larynx and her esophagus, which means she can’t eat normally; food or drink can pass into her airway.  The tube through her nose passes down her esophagus, bypassing that hole; it’s the only way she can take sustenance.

The girl’s mother tried to post the image on Facebook, not to garner sympathy, but to raise general awareness of the hassles and hazards of laryngeal clefts, and to raise money for her daughter’s necessary surgery.

Facebook barred the image, for the reasons listed in the text to the right of the image.  The text is hard to read; the money rationalization is this: the image

contains shocking, sensational or excessively violent content.  This type of material creates an unexpected experience for users, and goes against our core value of fostering a positive global community.

Because a smiling little girl, albeit with a tube in her nose, is shocking, sensational, or excessively violent.  Because Facebook has such contempt for its users that it considers them such snowflakes that unexpected experiences—surprises—would excessively disturb them.  Because Facebook’s view of positivity overtly excludes attempts to bring those apparent snowflakes’ attention to an uncommon medical condition so that that attention might foster increased medical research into ways of alleviating or correcting such a condition.

The mother successfully appealed the bar, but questions remain: with this sort of ban being Facebook’s kneejerk, initial action, how can Facebook be taken seriously?  How can Facebook’s management be trusted?