Tag Archives: responsibilities

Media Bias

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Here’re another couple of examples, this time by (not reported by, but by) media “critic” Howard Kurtz, writing for Fox News.

What President Donald Trump tweeted:

What Kurtz said—right after he presented the above tweet:

The media are not the enemy.

Notice that cynical strawman: carefully censored from the tweet by Kurtz was the modifier—there in all caps—FAKE NEWS.  Just to drive the point home so that maybe even Kurtz will recognize it, what Trump said was the enemy was fake news media, not media generally.

Here’s Kurtz again:

Trump was able to change the subject from the firing of Michael Flynn, the withdrawal of his Labor nominee and the fact that he still hasn’t appealed the travel ban ruling to, well, himself.

Here’s Kurtz attempting to change the subject away from illegal, potentially criminal, intelligence leaks; SecDef’s trip to Iraq as the Mosul campaign picks up; and tax reform and Obamacare repeal and replace to, well, his media.

How biased is that, if not outright dishonest?

Confidence in the Press

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“Aren’t you concerned, Sir, that you are undermining the people’s faith in the First Amendment freedom of the press and the press in this country when you call stories you don’t like fake news…?”

That’s what CNN’s White House Correspondent, Jim Acosta, asked President Donald Trump during last Thursday’s mid-day press conference.

No, the NLMSM is doing a fine job all by itself in undermining the people’s faith in the press—the shot about the First Amendment is disingenuously irrelevant and an illustration of the NLMSM’s performance—the undermining needs no help, and is getting none, from Trump.

See, for instance, CNN’s own bruiting about the fake news of a “dossier” of salacious behaviors allegedly engaged in by Trump in Russia and The New York Times‘ carefully misleading headline last Tuesday, Trump Campaign Had Repeated Contacts with Russian Intelligence while the body of the piece said, “Well, nothing was ever found.”

This is how automatic the NLMSM’s dishonesty is; it no longer can tell right from wrong, truth from fiction.  It has needed no assistance from outside the press to earn its sorry condition.

Federal Funds and Sanctuary Cities

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Within days of President Trump’s executive order to crack down on so-called sanctuary cities, San Francisco had filed a lawsuit opposing the order [to block federal funding for them]….

We also have this regarding…coercion…by the Federal government.

Last year, a federal judge in Illinois ruled that it was unconstitutional for the Department of Homeland Security to force local jails to detain suspected undocumented immigrants without a warrant. And in a 1997 Supreme Court decision, Printz v US, a 5-4 majority held that the federal government “may neither issue directives requiring the States to address particular problems, nor command the States’ officers, or those of their political subdivisions, to administer or enforce a federal regulatory program.”

OK.  And with our republican form of democracy, articulated most clearly in our 9th and 10th Amendments, those probably aren’t bad court rulings.

However, if things like Printz v US or South Dakota v Dole [another Supreme Court coercion case] really are going to be players in this, it’s a game easily settled: stop sending Federal dollars—taxpayer dollars—to all cities altogether.  The cities have no inherent right to Federal money, and the cessation of that particular spending would be good for the Federal budget in its own right.

Good Reporting?

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That’s Howard Kurtz’ claim.  In his piece about the NLMSM, Michael Flynn, and the “leak” that led to his resignation as President Donald Trump’s National Security Advisor, Kurtz said that The Washington Post story that began the thing was “good reporting.”

Then Kurtz said this:

[T]he Post story would not have been possible without the cooperation of nine unnamed senior officials who furnished the leaked information.

The Post story was built entirely on those unnamed persons.  Unnamed.  We don’t know there were nine.  We don’t know they were senior or even officials.  We don’t even know they exist.  I have to ask: what part of “unnamed” is unclear to Kurtz?

The Post didn’t provide a single bit of corroborating evidence; The Post didn’t name a single source who would corroborate the claims of the leaker or leakers.  The only corroboration in this whole sad affair is the lack of denial from the White House.  This is damning, certainly, but it’s hardly dispositive.

Kurtz added this:

But it must be said that the leakers’ information was right on target.

Based on what?  Kurtz, along with his confreres in the NLMSM, have chosen to not publish the leaked transcripts to which the NLMSM claims to have access.

When did rumor-mongering become good reporting?

More Fake News

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This time, courtesy of the Progressive-Democrats in the House of Representatives.  House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and Congressman Elijah Cummings (D, MD), as part of their whining about the Republican majority in the House

…cited a tweet purportedly from [ex-National Security Advisor Michael (Lt Gen, USA, Ret)] Flynn that said, “I feel it is unfair that I have been made the sole scapegoat for what happened.”

Which Cummings proceeded to emphasize, with Pelosi chiming in.

CUMMINGS: Madam Leader, just this morning, Flynn tweeted, and this is a quote, “scapegoat,” end of quote. Scapegoat. He basically described himself as a scapegoat.

PELOSI: I have a tweet, I’m going to make, I’m telling my staff right now—it’s not scapegoat, it’s stonewall, and that’s exactly what the Republicans in Congress are doing.

Except the tweet being so enthusiastically touted was a fake.  There followed, then, this:

Both offices later acknowledged the mistake. Pelosi spokesman Drew Hammill acknowledged that Pelosi inadvertently cited tweets from a fake account. Cummings issued his correction on Twitter: “Yes, sorry, to correct the record—just learned like many others that the Flynn tweet this morning was fake.”

Notice that.  Pelosi didn’t apologize for her smear; she didn’t do anything.  She hid behind her spokesman, who did nothing more than acknowledge a “mistake.”  Cummings had the integrity to speak for himself, but he didn’t apologize for his role in the smear, either.  He just expressed regret for needing to “correct the record.”  Not a syllable of apology.