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The Highly Conditional Priorities of Our National News Media By Jim Geraghty

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/the-highly-conditional-priorities-of-our-national-news-media/

A few respondents have observed that there were some liberals who complained about the Obama administration’s immigration enforcement policies back in his first term. That’s swell, but the amount of attention and outrage directed at separating families, crowded detainment facilities and cooperation with local law enforcement was miniscule from 2009 to 2012 compared to that of today — so miniscule that some of us could fairly conclude that the methods used in immigration enforcement were a second, third, or fourth-tier issue for most Democrats and most people in the national news media, and that many Democrats believed those methods were reasonable and justified as long as their preferred president was running things.

The argument isn’t mere hypocrisy; the argument is that large swaths of the national news media are only truly interested in topics when they are useful for demonizing Republicans. Immigration-enforcement methods that were bottom-of-page-A24 news in the Obama administration become top-of-page-A1 news in the Trump administration.

For example, Vladimir Putin is pretty much the same guy today that he was five years ago and ten years ago and 15 years ago. But the amount of coverage of his regime and the threat it represents to the United States increased exponentially once it became clear that President Trump had a friendly (some would say spectacularly naïve) perspective about him. Even now, the context for most of the discussion about Putin and Russia’s regime remains focused on the treat he presents to Democratic odds of winning in 2020 as opposed to the threat he presents to the United States and its allies. You see overwhelming coverage of the potential for more ridiculous Facebook ads and comparably little coverage of an estimated 120,000 Russian troops in eastern Ukraine.

Teen Vogue Encourages Children To Explore Prostitution As A Career By Chrissy Clark (Huh??!!)

https://thefederalist.com/2019/06/17/teen-vogue-encourages-children-explore-prostitution-career/

On April 26, Teen Vogue posted an article titled “Why Sex Work is Real Work” by Dr. Tlaleng Mofokeng. Teen Vogue tweeted the article out again today.

Teen Vogue
✔ @TeenVogue

Yes, sex work is real work! http://tnvge.co/VnFnlN7

The author, who is also the founder of Nalane Reproductive Justice, explains why she believes sex work should be decriminalized.

“The idea of purchasing intimacy and paying for the services can be affirming for many people who need human connection, friendship, and emotional support,” Mofokeng said.

What drew outrage, beyond the obvious, was that the article was published in Teen Vogue, a magazine targeted toward 13-year-old girls.

This article reduces the work of a medical professional to that of a sex worker. In her piece, Mofokeng questions why having a medical degree to talk about sex-related problems differs from physically performing sexual acts. Both are a transfer of cash, therefore both ought to be legal.

With that line of logic, we should legalize all drugs because doctors give out drugs; therefore crack dealers should be allowed to give out drugs. They’re both a transfer of cash, after all.

Ingraham Angle Promotes Qanta Ahmed’s And Asra Nomani’s Two-Tiered Takiya On Islamic Persecution Of Christians Andrew Bostom

https://www.andrewbostom.org/2019/06/ingraham-angle-promotes

Fox News’ Laura Ingraham on Monday June 10, 2019 hosted two so-called “reformist” Muslim women, Qanta Ahmed and Asra Nomani for a discussion of Christian persecution under Islam, which is a shameful, murderous pandemic. Neither woman could deal honestly with the Islamic, Sharia-based roots of this persecution, although certainly Ahmed was much more egregious in her dissimulation/ takiya. Hard data make plain “The Concordance of Sharia ‘Thirst’, Rampant Christian Persecution, and Jew-Hatred in Muslim Societies”. This juxtaposition reveals a striking concordance between Christian persecution by Muslims, the excess prevalence of extreme Antisemitic sentiments within Muslim societies, and Muslim attitudes favoring strict application of the Sharia.

Qanta Ahmed made these egregious pronouncements:

“It [Christian persecution] is also anathema to Islam that reveres Jesus [NO; he’s a Muslim prophet who destroys Christianity], that sees the Gospel as a holy book of God [No; deliberately corrupted version of the Koran]…Islam says everyone has a right to a free will, a right to reject Islam, to reject the truth of God [NO; per Koran 4:89, 2:217; 9:5; 9;29 & canonical hadith, “apostates” are to be killed; jihad to be waged to submit Jews & Christians to limited practice under Sharia jurisdiction if they survive]…So these Muslims are acting beyond the bounds”

She then goes on to extol Qatar for its alleged Catholic ecumenism, and the Kurds—chronic, mass murdering persecutors of Christians, past as prologue.

Asra Nomani was better, but her takiya can be almost as corrosive. She claimed mendaciously that Koran 1:7 is only hateful because of a “Wahhabi interpretation”. This verse in fact has a classical-cum-modern overwhelming (90%) interpretation across 13-centuries, Sunni and Shiite alike, I just carefully reviewed, and it curses the Jews for having incurred Allah’s anger [linking this verse to Koran 5:60, Jews as apes and pigs], and the Christians for having gone astray [linking Koran 1:7 to Koran 5:77]

Here is Asra Nomani, verbatim:

“Why is the cross under attack? It is because the Koran that I have here in the first chapter, the last sentence that we have [she means the Fatiha, Koran 1:6 to 1:7] , we say that we have to stay on the straight path [i.e., Islam] but [what] the Saudi interpretation and how governments like Qatar and Turkey have added is we have to stay on the straight path and not depart from it like the Jews and Christians have done They say that thinking of Jesus as a son of God is like polytheism and that is ultimately worse than murder they say. So that is why you have attacks on the symbol”

FRIEDMAN NEITHER SAID THE WORD “ANNEX” NOR “UNILATERAL” IN HIS INTERVIEW NEWS ITEMS FROMTOM GROSS

There has been substantial pushback across the Israeli and American Jewish media (including in Haaretz) against the New York Times in the last two days, for what has been called the “disgraceful” misrepresentation of U.S. Ambassador David Friedman’s remarks in an interview with New York Times Jerusalem bureau chief David Halbfinger.

Both Halbfinger and his editors and headline writers at the Times are being criticized for badly misleading readers in a piece of “fake news” that has, in turn, been picked up and copied from the Times in hundreds of other publications across the world.

Halbfinger’s headline and article began: “Israel has a right to annex at least some, but ‘unlikely all,’ of the West Bank, the United States ambassador, David M. Friedman, said in an interview, opening the door to American acceptance of what would be an enormously provocative act.”

Yes, as is pointed out in the articles attached below from Haaretz and other publications, Friedman never said the word “annexation.” Nor did he say anything different from long-standing international policy to try and solve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

As the articles below point out, what Friedman said was consistent with the policy of US presidents dating back to Lyndon Johnson in 1967. It is consistent with the policy of the Soviet Union/Russia and much of the rest of the world which supported the key UN 1967 Security Council Resolution 242 that envisaged border adjustments in order to bring about lasting peace and security. It is consistent with the words of the president of the International Court of Justice in The Hague.

It is consistent with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’ acknowledgement that land swaps will be necessary in any final agreement and that Israel has the right to keep Jerusalem’s Western Wall and other parts of terroritory beyond the 1948 armistice lines.

No serious observer of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict could imagine sustainable peace existing along the exact 1948 armistice lines. Hence resolution 242.

The leading left-wing Israeli paper Haaretz has now acknowledged that it also misrepresented the US’s ambassador’s remarks (after it first rushed to follow the New York Times’s lead). Will the New York Times have the integrity also to do so?

A Sovereign People Need Data Sovereignty—Now By Ned Ryun

https://amgreatness.com/2019/06/06/a-sovereign-people-need-data-sovereignty-now/

It’s time the American people woke up and understood what the big tech companies, many of which are now publishers and telecommunications companies masquerading as neutral platforms, are doing with their personal data.

Respecting individual privacy is the most common concern you find in the media and elsewhere. But privacy is only part of the challenge before us—and a relatively small part at that. By feeding companies like Google, Amazon, and Facebook untold amounts of personally identifiable data, Americans—specifically American workers—are helping sow the seeds of their own demise.

Many people don’t take the time to consider what happens to their data when they give it away. Where does it go? With whom is it being shared? How is it being used to accelerate the growth of new technologies, including artificial intelligence and automation?

The data being given freely to these tech companies and the amount of personally identifiable data being collected put the National Security Agency’s efforts to shame. Like it or not, all of this data isn’t being used simply to inform algorithms that help you make better movie selections or put funny cat videos into your Facebook feed or remind you that you’re about to run out of toilet paper.

All of that information is feeding projects such as Google Brain and Facebook’s artificial intelligence research and development. These are grand efforts by very large, private companies that have vast and untold implications for public policy. Yet these same companies are not being very transparent about their work.

An American President in London The media disses the Donald — and liberty, and the American and British people. Bruce Bawer

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/273925/american-president-london-bruce-bawer

Because my router was on the fritz during the first couple of days of the President’s state visit to the UK – a prelude to his Normandy visit on Friday marking the seventy-fifth anniversary of D-Day – I was forced to watch more TV coverage of the proceedings than would otherwise have been my wont. This meant relying heavily on CNN, the BBC, and Sky News. All of them were pretty much as snotty about Trump as expected, although the BBC did an especially obnoxious job, giving a ridiculous amount of airtime to some historian named Mark Shanahan, who in the guise of providing historical context and insight oozed anti-Trump – and anti-American – venom.

Since I’d never heard of Shanahan, I looked him up. He turned out to be an associate professor at the University of Reading, where one of his areas of specialization is “the celebritisation of American political culture from Eisenhower to Trump.” Shanahan brags on his university’s website about being “a regular media contributor to the BBC, ITN; CNN, Sky, ABC (Australia), France 24, and CTV (Canada).” During the Trump visit, no matter what the subject, he was ready with snark, both on the tube and on his Twitter feed. While Trump was visiting Westminster Abbey, Shanahan sneered that this would “play very well with American evangelicals at home.” Right, those American evangelicals who are into smoky thuribles, priests in red cassocks, and old Anglican anthems sung by boy choirs. Shanahan assured BBC viewers that Americans have an outdated “Mary Poppins” image of Britain, complete with bowler hats and chimney sweeps. Yeah, you’ve got it, Thucidydes, we’re all a bunch of dolts, who somehow slept through the Beatles, James Bond, Monty Python, the Thatcher era, Elton John, Ab Fab, Tony Blair, and all those horrible Hugh Grant romcoms. Shanahan also opined, with what seemed like at least a touch of antisemitism, that the “special relationship” is now a joke, because Trump cares less about US ties to the UK than to Israel.

Needless to say, Shanahan wasn’t alone. Pretty much every time the cable-news talking heads mentioned Trump, they found it necessary to repeat the word “controversial.”

Nolte: Far-Left CNN Suffers Double Digit Primetime Ratings Crash in May

https://www.breitbart.com/the-media/2019/06/04/nolte-far-left-cnn-suffers-double-digit-primetime-ratings-crash-in-may/
The news just keeps getting worse and worse for the far-left CNN, which suffered a 16 percent primetime ratings collapse last month.

The embattled CNN, which always lands is far-last place and axed more than 100 jobs already this year, had about as bad of a ratings month as is possible in May.

It’s primetime hours were only able to average a measly 761,000 viewers, while the fake news outlet’s total day viewers dove nine percent (compared to this same month last year) to just 559,000 viewers.

For comparison purposes, Fox News earned three times as many primetime viewers (2.34 million) and more than twice as many total day viewers (1.34 million). What’s more, when compared to this same month last year, Fox lost none of its primetime viewers and only four percent of its total day viewers.

The most astounding thing, though, is that CNN’s ratings are already so low, it seems impossible they could dive any lower — and yet, they always do.

Do you have any idea just how low 761,000 primetime viewers is…?

How does a nationally known brand like CNN, a brand that is decades old, only manage to attract 761,000 viewers throughout a gonzo news month in a country of over 300 million?

The New York Times: Enabler of Genocidal Anti-Semitism How America’s “paper of record” whitewashes Jew hatred by its silence. Kenneth Levin

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/273830/new-york-times-enabler-genocidal-anti-semitism-kenneth-levin

In response to the uproar over its April publication of a blatantly anti-Semitic cartoon, the Times first tweeted an acknowledgment that the cartoon was “offensive,” then posted an apology and finally – as the blowback continued – published a statement by the Editorial Board conceding the cartoon was “appalling” and its appearance in the paper’s international edition, at a time of resurgent targeting of Jews, was evidence “of numbness to [anti-Semitism’s] creep…”

One can agree with that assessment of the cartoon, but there are other elements of the Editorial Board statement that are grossly misleading and reflect a refusal to come to terms with the Times’ sordid track record regarding anti-Semitism.

On the Holocaust and its prelude in Germany, the statement declares: “In the 1930s and 1940s The Times was largely silent as anti-Semitism rose up and bathed the world in blood. That failure still haunts this newspaper.”  But it has obviously not haunted the paper enough to move it from its consistent refusal over many decades – despite its intense coverage of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict – to report on the incitement to mass murder of Jews that has long been a staple of Palestinian and broader Arab media, mosques and schools. It has failed to do so even as such incitement has in recent years become ever more widely established within the Muslim world.  On the contrary, to the degree that the Times, in relatively rare moments, has noted the problem at all, it has typically done so to downplay it or even to ridicule concern with it. 

Report: Obama’s Spying On The Press Was Far More Extensive Than Previously Thought: John Merline

https://issuesinsights.com/2019/05/25/report-obamas-spying-on-the-press-was-far-more-extensive-than-previously-thought/

President Trump might be openly hostile to the mainstream media, but it was the Obama administration that was engaged in a widespread effort to thwart the media. Which do you think is more harmful to a free press?

The full extent of Obama’s actions against the press are only now coming to light.

The Columbia Journalism Review reports on a newly released government document showing that the Obama Justice Department engaged in a far more sweeping effort to spy on the Associated Press than previously believed.

“In 2013, the Justice Department launched a brazen attack on press freedom,” the CJR notes, “issuing sweeping subpoenas for the phone records of The Associated Press and several of its reporters and editors as part of a leak investigation. At the time, the subpoenas were widely seen as a massive intrusion into newsgathering operations. Last month, we learned that they told only part of the story.”

The spying came in the wake of the AP’s reporting on a thwarted Yemen-based bomb plot, which contained classified information about the CIA operation. Months later, the AP learned that the DOJ had vacuumed up two-months of phone records on 21 different lines trying to find the leaker. 

Unprecedented Intrusion

Upon learning this, the AP blasted the Obama Justice Department. AP’s President and CEO Gary Pruitt said the records collected could “reveal communications with confidential sources across all of the newsgathering activities undertaken by the AP during a two-month period, provide a road map to AP’s newsgathering operations and disclose information about AP’s activities and operations that the government has no conceivable right to know.”

Turns out, Pruitt should have been even more outraged. The new report, obtained by the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University and the Freedom of the Press Foundation, finds that the DOJ actually collected records on 30 phones. 

Al Jazeera Writes Another Chapter in Its Own Ugly History By Marlo Safi

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/05/al-jazeera-anti-semitic-video-controversy-radical-agenda/

An anti-Semitic video posted by the Qatari outlet last weekend is just the latest example of its radical, bigoted agenda.

While Al Jazeera’s English-language channel is known in the U.S. for its progressive bent and seemingly fitting slogan “Experience. Empower. Engage,” the outlet’s flagship Arabic channel showed its true colors last weekend, in a since-deleted video that denied the magnitude of the Holocaust.

The 17-minute video, featuring a female narrator, was published on May 18 on Facebook with the Arabic caption, “Gas chambers killed millions of Jews, this is what the story is. What is the truth of the #Holocaust and how did the Zionists benefit from it?” The video, according to the BBC, claimed that the toll of the Holocaust had been exaggerated and “adopted by the Zionist movement,” that Israel was the biggest winner from the Holocaust, and that Jews use “financial resources and media institutions” to “put a special spotlight” on Jewish suffering.

Al Jazeera’s statement following the video’s deletion said that the post had “violated the editorial standards of the network” and that two journalists were suspended over its content. But what editorial standards, exactly, is the network referring to? It’s been churning out such anti-Semitic tropes — not to mention Islamist extremism, anti-Shia rhetoric, and Qatari propaganda — since its inception.