RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.city-journal.org/media-portrayal-of-govt-shutdown

In every confrontation between the press and President Trump, there comes a time when media coverage becomes so aggressively bad that it turns into a parody of itself and “jumps the shark.” I knew that moment had arrived in reporting on the federal government’s partial closure when I opened my news-of-the-day app to find the headline, “How the shutdown will affect the Super Bowl.” Having once attended a Super Bowl during a period of genuine emergency—Super Bowl XXV, played in the first days of Operation Desert Storm in January 1991—I doubted that the furloughing of nonessential federal personnel could threaten the big game. Not surprisingly, much of the story consisted of Atlanta officials assuring the public that they didn’t anticipate any problems, followed by some conjecture about things that might go wrong, anyway.

I’ve been ignoring most such stories, because I’ve seen no evidence that the shutdown will affect me and my family. I’ve heard no friend, neighbor, or relative even mention it. Virtually everyone I know outside of my professional life seems to be going about their business. Still, I’ve taken a thorough look at press coverage over the past two weeks and found nearly 500 stories on how the closure is supposed to affect our lives. Most of the coverage goes beyond the plight of federal workers themselves, who are not getting paid, and who, if they’re living from paycheck to paycheck, are facing real duress. The press seems intent on convincing the rest of us that we’re at risk, too.

Throughout the shutdown, the press has been asking readers for stories about how the situation was disrupting their lives. “Everything from airport security to some food inspections to tax refund processing may be affected,” the Richmond Times Dispatch wrote recently, trying to stoke local concerns. “Is your passport delayed? Is your research grant funding halted? Are you a business providing assistance to Richmond-area federal government workers?” Call us, the paper asked. But is it a national emergency if reporters are begging readers for stories?

https://pjmedia.com/trending/the-disgraceful-covington-catholic-pile-on/

The daily media smearing of Donald Trump and his followers is one thing, but the readiness not just of the media but of self-righteous types from all walks of life to demonize a bunch of Kentucky high-school kids on the basis of a couple of news reports was truly breathtaking.

Presumably everyone knows the story by now. Last Friday, after attending the March for Life in Washington, D.C., several boys from Covington Catholic High School in Park Hills, Kentucky, were waiting outside the Lincoln Memorial for their bus home when something happened. The early reports accused the boys, some of whom were wearing Make America Great Again caps, of encircling and harassing an elderly Native American activist and a group of African-Americans. A snippet of video seemed to confirm this account, which was based largely on the testimony of the Native American activist. Next thing you knew, media around the world were reporting on this gang of racist pro-Trump louts and accusing them of White Privilege (even though several of them are black) and famous names on both the left and right were spewing the kids with vitriol.

Then longer videos emerged, and the story turned completely around. The group of African-Americans, who turned out to belong to a racist, anti-Semitic cult, the Black Hebrew Israelites, had been screaming at the boys, calling them “crackers” and “faggots” and the products of incest, among much else. The elderly Indian turned out to be notorious left-wing mischief-maker Nathan Phillips, whose claims to be a Vietnam vet have been challenged and who in 2015 accused some Michigan college students of harassing him. Last Friday, he wasn’t surrounded by the boys from Kentucky; he got up in their faces, banging a drum and chanting. Other Indians with him called the Kentucky boys interlopers on Indian territory and told them to go back to Europe.

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2019/01/22/buzzfeed_the_covington_teens_and_the_harms_of_false_witness_139247.html

In the last week, two related media failures starkly revealed the endemic press credibility crisis that confronts our country. Far too many prominent media figures earnestly parrot distorted or patently false narratives so long as the group-think stories advance an agenda of “resistance” to President Trump and to the voters who galvanized our 2016 movement.

First, on Thursday night the media largely erupted with glee at BuzzFeed allegations that Robert Mueller possessed evidence that Trump suborned perjury, a claim forcefully discredited the next night by a rare public pronouncement from Mueller’s own team. Until that denial, MSNBC trumpeted the supposedly imminent impeachment of the president 97 times in one day. However, once the truth emerged, countless broadcasters and writers struggled with this grand unmasking of their inherent bias.

But help appeared – or so they thought. Video footage emerged that, initially, appeared to show a group of teenagers surrounding and intimidating an elderly Native American activist. Straight out of central casting, these young men were white, Catholic pro-lifers, and decked out in MAGA gear. Sensing an incredible opportunity to save face, the Trump-opposition advocates that populate most newsrooms leapt at this apparent validation: “See, they really are retrograde, racist hatemongers!”

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/272571/big-datas-alliance-big-media-threat-free-speech-daniel-greenfield

The media is dying. Read about it in the media.

Facebook is pumping $300 million into the media. And that’s after the Google News Initiative shoved $300 million into fighting “fake news” and helping struggling media outlets like the New York Times.

These aren’t investments. They’re charitable donations by Big Data to Big Brother.

Take Jeff Bezos taking $250 million, a little more than the $215 million he makes a day, and using it to buy the Washington Post, not because it’s a good business opportunity, but a good political one.

The media isn’t worth investing in.

TV and cable news are the weakest holdings of the entertainment giants. That’s why AT&T is none too fond of the CNN white elephant it’s stuck with.

John Stankey, Time Warner’s new boss (and therefore also CNN’s new overlord) told CNN that the news network has a “special social responsibility”. That’s the same rhetoric about public service that has the emerging giant monopolies subsidizing media companies as a charitable cause, not a profitable venture.

Journalism is deader than disco. The shambling monster still squealing about the First Amendment while pressuring social media companies to censor its conservative opposition under the guise of a Russian conspiracy theory has as much to do with journalism as Nabisco’s ad agency or Biden’s spokesman do.

The media doesn’t report the news. It reposts tweets, recycles news stories from a handful of wire services and largely relies on outside interests to do its actual reporting for it. Sometimes that means outside hit pieces covertly embedded, like Fusion GPS’ Russian Trump conspiracy theory, other times it’s more openly financed, like NPR getting $100K from a pro-Iran deal group to report on the Iran deal.

Media once stood for the multiple mediums, print, radio and television, which required expensive infrastructure and allowed major corporations to reach a national audience with its mass media.