RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://amgreatness.com/2018/06/14/our-imploding

Patrick Maines recently retired as president of the Media Institute, a nonprofit think tank promoting a strong First Amendment, sound communications policies, and journalistic excellence

If democracy in the United States is imperiled, as some say it is, then the pregnant question remains: Imperiled by whom? For the Left, Democrats, the pop culture industry, most of the mainstream press, and those in the permanent government bureaucracy known colloquially as “the deep state,” the answer is always Donald Trump. Trump because he is a president unschooled in the manners and mores of the country’s so-called elites.

For most everybody else, the answer may be found in the reflection of those same people and institutions whose over-the-top antics are a consequence of their hatred of Trump. They marinate in a vat of hypocrisy and self-promotion, and soothe themselves with the belief that the ends (removing Trump) justify their means.

Consider, for instance, the quality of political news coverage from outlets like CNN, NBC, and its offspring, MSNBC. No matter when you tune in, you can count on tendentious and nonstop anti-Trump commentary offered in a manner that perfectly blends hubris with hysteria.

But where is the historical perspective? Where is the gravity one would expect from people who work in the only industry protected by name in the constitution? If, in fact, the media are essential to our democracy, is it too much to expect from them the modest acknowledgment that nothing is more central to a democracy than elections, even those that are won by people one dislikes?

A Shameful Surrender

https://www.wsj.com/articles/don-and-the-dictator-1528831761

President Donald Trump seems to have given North Korea’s dictator Kim Jong Un a media coup and not received much in return—at least not yet. The joint statement signed by the U.S. President and North Korea’s leading thug says that the two countries will seek a lasting peace and the denuclearization of the Korean peninsula. Mr. Trump says he received further disarmament promises beyond the written ones and the world will eventually find out if Mr. Kim fulfills them. In short, the Trump-Kim deal is precisely the kind of vague and well-meaning gesture in foreign affairs that the political left in the U.S. should love.

Tradition holds that such agreements are met with at least respectful coverage in the American media. For example, early in President Bill Clinton’s term the U.S. reached a similar agreement with North Korea’s communist dictatorship.

Twenty-five years ago today, the New York Times published an editorial called, “To Assure a Nuclear-Free Korea.” Given that Mr. Trump was in Singapore this week trying to persuade North Korea to dismantle its nuclear weapons program, it’s fair to say that the hopes invested by Times folk in the Clinton deal were not exactly realized. But back in 1993, the newspaper’s editorial board expressed admiration for officials in both the American and North Korean governments :

Deft diplomacy by the Clinton Administration has coaxed North Korea back from the brink. The North had threatened to bolt from the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and build nuclear arms. It will now allow routine international inspections of its nuclear sites.

Gaining access to its nuclear waste sites will require further negotiation; that could provide more evidence of how much plutonium North Korea might already have produced. But the resumption of routine inspections is a critical first step toward assuring that the Korean Peninsula is truly nuclear-free.

The agreement is a tribute to sensible officials in Pyongyang who chose the path to prosperity over the road to ruin. It’s also a tribute to cool heads in Washington who refused to overreact to North Korea’s bizarre bargaining behavior.

Along with the tip of the cap to the “sensible officials in Pyongyang,” the Times went on to describe U.S. military exercises with our friends in democratic South Korea as “needlessly provocative.” Of course time would reveal that Washington’s cool heads had wildly underreacted. CONTINUE AT SITE

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/270364/paul-krugmans-intellectual-dishonesty-mark-tapson

The discourse of today’s political left is invariably marked by jaw-dropping degrees of hypocrisy and psychological projection. Case in point: last week columnist Paul Krugman posted an opinion piece at The New York Times titled “Intellectuals, Politics and Bad Faith,” in which he strove to smear the political right as intellectually dishonest – exactly the same sin of which Krugman was guilty in his own column.

Nobel Prize-winner Krugman long ago ceased being reliable as an economist but has maintained his political stature among the left as a race-obsessed smear merchant who habitually demonizes conservatives in his Times columns. As noted in his profile at DiscoverTheNetworks.org, the David Horowitz Freedom Center’s encyclopedia of the political left, Krugman’s “view of Republicans and conservatives as hate mongers has been on display again and again.” As an example, when Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords and six others were shot in Tucson, Arizona in 2011 by an obsessed lunatic, Krugman falsely blamed it on “the rising tide of violence” in America stemming from “toxic,” “eliminationist” rhetoric “coming, overwhelmingly, from the right.”

In another instance, on Election Day in 2016, a bitter Krugman lashed out by attacking Donald Trump’s supporters as racist misogynists “who don’t share at all our idea of what America is about.” At least he got that last part right – Trump supporters most assuredly do not share Krugman’s Progressive vision of what America should be about.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/06/james-wolfe-leak-investigation-journalists-double-standard/

It is an interesting contrast.

The media are in a lather over the Justice Department’s grand-jury investigation of contacts between several reporters and a government source — the former Senate Intelligence Committee security director who has been indicted for lying to investigators about his leaks to the press.

The same media are in a lather over the refusal of the president of the United States, at least thus far, to submit to questioning by the special counsel in the Russia investigation. The president is placing himself “above the law,” they contend, if he rebuffs prosecutors or defies a grand-jury subpoena.

Whether we’re talking about journalists or presidents, the situation is the same: An investigative demand is made on people whose jobs are so important to the functioning of our self-governing republic that they are given some protection, but not absolute immunity, from the obligation to provide evidence to the grand jury.

And whether it’s a reporter or the chief executive, the question is: Under what circumstances should they be forced to testify?

The oddity — a very human oddity — is that the press is extraordinarily attuned to its own need for protection but scoffs at the notion that someone with greater responsibilities should have comparable protections.

James A. Wolfe, who was indicted on Thursday, is a textbook swamp creature. According to the New York Times, he is a former army intelligence analyst who 30 years ago latched on to the Senate Intelligence Committee as a staffer. A non-partisan staffer, of course. The Senate Intelligence Committee, a pillar of the Beltway establishment, is nothing if not self-congratulatory about its cross-the-aisle comity. It doesn’t do much, but rest assured that what little it does is awesomely bipartisan . . . except to the extent it is admirably non-partisan.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2018/06/the_new_york_times_then_the_new_york_times_now.html

The current indictment of James A. Wolfe, 58, Security Director for the Senate Subcommittee on Intelligence for 29 years, for passing classified information to reporters raises an interesting contrast of editorial standards under different editors at theTimes over the years.

In his interrogation, Wolfe admitted having a personal relationship with reporter Ali Watkins for three years while she was 30 years his junior. Watkins had zoomed from college through other news organizations in just four years to becoming National Security Correspondent for The New York Times, attended by her extraordinary access to insider information in the Federal government. In its investigation, the Department of Justice examined “tens of thousands” of email correspondence and phone records between Wolfe and Watkins, according to the Wolfe indictment.

“She [Ali Watkins] is having her private records scrutinized and spied on by the government for doing her job as a journalist, and the Justice Department’s move should be loudly condemned by everyone no matter your political preference,” The Freedom of the Press Foundation said.

According to a New York Times spokeswoman: “Freedom of the press is a cornerstone of democracy, and communications between journalists and their sources demand protection. ” She added: “Ms. Watkins said she told editors at BuzzFeed News and Politico about it and continued to cover national security, including the committee’s work.” And the New York Times had also been informed about Ms Watkin’s three-year-long personal relationship with Wolfe.

http://politicalmavens.com/index.php/2018/06/10/indoctrination/?print=1

In its ongoing mission to “epater le bourgeois,” the NYT Style section features an essay by a woman who decides to give sado-masochism a try. (Wanting to Be Dominated, But Not Quite Like That, Aly Tadros 6/10) She tells us about her previous travails – boiler-plate issues with an immigrant father who didn’t understand her, his illness and death, her drinking and her rejection by a previous boyfriend – none of these either extraordinary or interesting. The woman claims not to be a masochist yet she is willing to be bitten hard, whipped with a belt and treated as just one of this man’s submissive playthings outside of his relationship with the woman he lives with and presumably loves. Part of it is explained by her having the freedom to scream, cry and release all the emotions she previously hid or submerged in alcohol, but part is also the titillation of Fifty Shades of Gray and the ongoing acceptance of deviancy as a suitable subject for mainstream media. The subtext is that it’s restorative to behave like a child whose tantrums will be tolerated rather than a grown woman who is expected to control emotional outbursts and deal with common life situations.

It’s not important to know whether this story is real or fabricated because on its own, it doesn’t merit a second thought. It’s only worth noting as part of the Times’ determination to force recognition and acceptance of all sorts of what used to be called “perverse behavior.” How much of its newsprint is devoted to transgender issues – in education, the military, the arts – how much respectful attention it gave to porn star Stormy Daniels, the front page review a year ago by critic Alistair Macaulay of dance that included anal penetration as part of its choreography. All this from the old grey lady that used to be called the newspaper of record.

https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/qed/2018/06/watch-4-corners-part-ii/
Four Corners is an Australian investigative journalism/current affairs documentary television program now airing the Trump Russian collusion narrative…..rsk

The first episode of 4 Corners’ globe-girdling ‘investigation’ of the purported Russia/Trump conspiracy didn’t cover any fresh ground. What it did was omit a wealth of essential background information, allowing host Sarah Ferguson to gabble breathlessly about the ‘story of the century’ that isn’t.

Hello and welcome to Four Corners. Tonight we begin our special, three-part investigation into the story of the century: the election of US president Donald Trump and his ties to Russia.

Since his inauguration, President Trump has been caught up in a rolling series of allegations. More than a year ago special prosecutor Robert Mueller was appointed to investigate Russian efforts to interfere in the 2016 election and whether Trump and his campaign officials helped them. Also under investigation are Trump’s business links with Russia, testing allegations that his deal-making has exposed him to compromise (sic).

Over the next few weeks you’ll meet the characters in this extraordinary saga.

We begin by following the spies and the money trail.
– Sarah Ferguson’s preamble to Monday’s 4 Corners

_______________________

4 cornersThus did ABC personality Sarah Ferguson kick off the national broadcaster’s detailing of Trump’s alleged fealty to Russia. Now information is the foundation of any journalistic exercise: gather facts, place them in context, lay them before the public so that, once provided with the full picture, the citizenry can form its own well-versed opinions. More than a professional obligation, it is a sacred trust. Or should be.

The key, though, is that all relevant information be presented and, more important than that, any such exercise not be freighted with loaded words and presumptions presented as undisputed fact. In this regard Ms Ferguson’s introduction violated a number of key tenets before the “investigation” proper was shared with viewers whose taxes paid for it.

For example, she tells her audience they are about to see “the story of the century”. Just twenty-three words later, the “story” — a word which suggests facts, plot and resolution — is no better than a “series of allegations.” Our century is relatively young to be sure, but are “allegations” yet to be established by Special Counsel Robert Mueller a bigger yarn than, say, the 9/11 massacres, the Syrian civil war, the failure of the Arab Spring, 2008’s global financial crisis, Benghazi, the election of the first black president? One could go on, but you get the point. In newsroom parlance, 4 Corners has hauled out the MixMaster and produced a standard issue ABC-style beatup.

Let’s pull apart this breathless exercise in error, omission and sensationalism one scene at a time.

https://amgreatness.com/2018/06/08/bullies-in-the-white-house-press

Of all the post-2016 credibility casualties—the Clintons, the FBI, Hollywood, professional athletes, late-night comedians—the American news media is the most bloodied.

After fluffing Barack Obama for a decade—so much so that the former president still claims with a straight face that his presidency was scandal-free—the press is going after the Trump White House with a level of malice and animus that borders on abuse.

In its servile, vainglorious attempt to score points with each other and feed an insatiable Trump-hating constituency, the media has participated in a shameful degradation of an institution that was once viewed as a critical American liberty. Newspapers such as the New York Times and Washington Post, and cable news outlets CNN and MSNBC, have done most of the heavy lifting—particularly in fueling one side of the Trump-Russia collusion hoax, which includes reporting illegally leaked classified information to damage anyone in Trump’s orbit.

Not only has their collective political coverage been deemed overwhelmingly negative by objective observers (a study by Harvard University last year concluded, “Trump’s coverage during his first 100 days set a new standard for negativity”), the professional conduct of individual reporters and cable news hosts has been—to borrow a term they embrace for others—deplorable. Any pretense of objectivity is gone; professionalism and common courtesy is nowhere to be found. One only has to watch a White House press briefing for evidence.

https://amgreatness.com/2018/06/08/the-creepy-and-creeping

With the recent revelations that “

Google allowed “Nazism” to be associated with the California Republican Party in searches, to YouTube removing purely mechanical gun content, to the news that Facebook allowed far greater access to private data than anyone realized, it’s time to have a conversation about what these social and tech giants really are.

We should acknowledge social media has had a positive effect over the years in breaking the monopoly on information flow. The traditional gatekeepers can no longer stop conversations they don’t approve because social media platforms have been an extraordinary means for people and groups to connect and communicate locally, regionally, and internationally. They’ve allowed upstarts, outsiders, and disrupters like Donald Trump, or movements like Brexit, to break through and actually win.

For almost 20 years, the federal communications and competitive regulatory environment that was in place allowed companies like Facebook, Amazon, and Google (and their many competitors that either no longer exist or that have been subsumed into the victorious behemoths) to operate more freely and with fewer regulatory impediments compared to other traditional communications companies like Comcast, AT&T, and Verizon. For example, Facebook, Google and Amazon had far looser federal policies to adhere to related to the kind of personal data they could collect about their customers, how long they could store that data, and what they could sell or share with other entities. The “traditional” communications companies had to adhere to much more stringent rules.

That was then. Now we need a conversation about social media and tech giants in light of what they’ve become. They’re all grown up now and it’s time for the kids in Silicon Valley to start operating under the rules that govern the other adults. And by that, I mean media and telecommunications companies.

If entities are creating content, selling advertising, streaming both live and produced original content, publishing original content, deploying broadband and wireless internet, even offering voice and video communications services, haven’t they become publishers and telecommunications companies? Because that’s exactly what they’re doing and exactly what they are.

https://pjmedia.com/video/apple-exec-our-top-news-stories-are-hand-picked-by-our-editorial-team/

An Apple executive today said that the top news stories for Apple News are “handpicked” by an editorial team, arousing suspicion that left-wing bias is at play in the stories we see on its news app.

Apple News editor-in-chief Lauren Kern told an audience at its Worldwide Developer’s Conference (WWDC), that Apple’s popular news app serves users the “stories you want to read pulled together from trusted sources.”

“Our top stories are handpicked by the Apple editorial team to make a great collection of curated content,” she said.

Facebook ran into trouble with conservatives two years ago when former editors blew the whistle on the practice of using “news curators” to handpick news content and weed out conservative points of view.

Former editors for Facebook’s news aggregation service told Gizmodo that they had “the power to choose what stories make it onto the trending bar and, more importantly, what news sites each topic links out to.” While selections for stories are automated, the “news curators” claimed some sources and topics were “blacklisted” to avoid exposing readers to conservative points of view.

In an effort to resolve allegations of bias against conservatives, Facebook changed its process for trending topics.