RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2022/01/muslim-takes-hostages-texas-synagogue-robert-spencer/

On Saturday, Congregation Beth Israel Synagogue in Colleyville, Texas was in the middle of Shabbat services that were being livestreamed on Facebook when a Muslim gunman named Malik Faisal Akram, burst in and took hostages, including the rabbi. After a standoff that lasted hours, all the hostages were safely freed and Akram was killed. Then the denial and obfuscation began almost immediately.

FBI Special Agent in Charge Matt DeSarno got the ball rolling when he said: “We do believe from our engagement with this subject that he was singularly focused on one issue, uh, and it was not specifically related to the Jewish community, uh, but we’re continuing to work to find motive and, and we will continue on that path.”

DeSarno’s bizarre statement was based on the fact that the demands the hostage-taker made all revolved around Aafia Siddiqui, also known as “Lady al-Qaeda,” who is serving 86 years in prison for plotting a large-scale jihad massacre in New York City. The hostage-taker reportedly demanded that his “sister” be freed, which led to widespread speculation that he was in fact Aafia Siddiqui’s brother. However, Akram was no relation to Siddiqui; he was referring to her as his sister in Islam.

According to Tom Winter of NBC News, the hostage-taker even had the rabbi of Congregation Beth Israel, Charlie Cytron-Walker, whom he was holding hostage, call another rabbi in New York City. “The purpose of the call was to again demand the release of Aafia Siddiqui. The New York City based rabbi called 9-1-1 and the NYPD is well aware of the incident.”

https://spectatorworld.com/topic/media-president-joe-biden-honest-appraisal-polling/

Joe Biden usually likes being compared to Donald Trump. During the 2020 presidential campaign the media often contrasted the two figures in order to highlight how much more decent and compassionate and normal Biden is, as opposed to Orange Man. However, the empathizer-in-chief might not be as crazy about the latest parallels emerging thanks to his poll numbers.

A headline in Newsweek, not exactly a right-wing rag, reads, “Joe Biden’s Approval Lower Than Donald Trump’s at Same Stage of Presidency: Poll.” The president’s current approval rating according to the Quinnipiac poll is a dismal 33 percent. Considering how slanted these polls can be, the real number might be even worse.

Imagine how dreadful Biden’s approval rating would be if the mainstream media were even remotely honest about his administration’s myriad of failures. But will journalists eventually tire of trying to polish a t-…a terrible president? Spinning Biden’s barrage of bad news grows harder by the day.

This week Joe couldn’t even get Georgia Democrat Stacey Abrams to show up for his tirade on voting rights in Atlanta. His rant, which Al Sharpton described as a “you’re going to Hell” speech, failed to strike the right tone with…well, anyone.

https://pjmedia.com/vodkapundit/2022/01/13/deep-impact-cnn-ratings-crater-nearly-90-jeff-zucker-needs-to-go-n1549107

Pedophilia scandals, Trump Derangement Syndrome, and poor programming choices take their toll as CNN ratings crash to Earth like a massive asteroid in a doomsday movie.

Remember when CNN let anchor Chris Cuomo spend a year fluffing his own older brother, then-New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, live on the air, even as Andrew’s COVID-19 policies needlessly killed thousands?

Remember when that same governor was forced to resign over sexual harassment allgations?

Remember when Chris was finally forced out of CNN when the infotainment network was publicly humiliated by the younger Cuomo’s misdeeds?

Remember when it turned out that Chris Cuomo had serious sexual misconduct allegations against him, too?

Remember when, just a few days later, a CNN producer quit over accusations of “luring girls for ‘sexual subservience’ training?”

Remember how that was just the first CNN producer who left in December over “improper conduct with a minor” allegations?

That’s just the juicy stuff. CNN ratings have been in a tailspin since Presidentish Joe Biden took office (and I do mean took office) last year. The Trump-obsessed infotainment service has been floundering for months — but that was nothing compared to its latest ratings woes.

https://bariweiss.substack.com/p/another-resignation-read-tara-henley?token=eyJ1c2VyX2lkIjoxND

The story of Tara Henley is the story of countless liberals. Until recently, they were the ones pushing everyone else to be more tolerant, more understanding, more open-minded, more compassionate. Then, something happened — call it ideological succession or institutional capture or the new illiberalism — and, all of a sudden (or so it felt to them), they found themselves to the right of their friends and colleagues. Their crime? Refusing to abandon their principles in the service of some radical, anti-liberal dogma. Bari Weiss

For months now, I’ve been getting complaints about the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, where I’ve worked as a TV and radio producer, and occasional on-air columnist, for much of the past decade.

People want to know why, for example, non-binary Filipinos concerned about a lack of LGBT terms in Tagalog is an editorial priority for the CBC, when local issues of broad concern go unreported. Or why our pop culture radio show’s coverage of the Dave Chappelle Netflix special failed to include any of the legions of fans, or comics, that did not find it offensive. Or why, exactly, taxpayers should be funding articles that scold Canadians for using words such as “brainstorm” and “lame.”

Everyone asks the same thing: What is going on at the CBC?

When I started at the national public broadcaster in 2013, the network produced some of the best journalism in the country. By the time I resigned last month, it embodied some of the worst trends in mainstream media. In a short period of time, the CBC went from being a trusted source of news to churning out clickbait that reads like a parody of the student press.

Those of us on the inside know just how swiftly — and how dramatically — the politics of the public broadcaster have shifted.

https://amgreatness.com/2022/01/08/veteran-miami-herald-reporter-caught-coaching-democrats-to-cheat/

Long-time Miami Herald reporter Mary Ellen Klas was just caught red-handed coaching Democrats on how to challenge Republican redistricting in Florida.

For conservatives and Republicans, the story is as old as time. But some amazing revelations reflecting the current state of journalism, including indisputable evidence of Klas’ partisanship, help illustrate our current predicament. Klas, who is no newbie, is the Miami Herald’s capitol bureau chief in Tallahassee, where she has covered Florida politics since the 1990s. One wonders how often she has freelanced as a political consultant over the years. In this instance, she was cavalier enough to get caught by a Republican Senate staffer who was sitting right there.

A public records request netted an audio recording by an aide to Senate President Wilton Simpson of Klas talking to state Senator Randolph Bracy, an Orlando Democrat currently running for Congress. The audio, Simpson wrote, showed Klas was “seeking to pre-litigate the 2022 redistricting cycle, pitting Senate counsel against expert witnesses frequently used by plaintiffs in litigation against the state, thereby creating a manipulated legislative record to be used in the courts.”

The story broke with Florida Power and Light—a favorite target for Klas over the years and the largest power company in the nation—taking the extreme measure of publicly going on the attack against Klas and the Herald. FPL on Wednesday launched a website called Truth Matters that details Klas’ duplicitous and partisan coverage against the power company. Giant companies rarely go to such lengths, particularly those as heavily regulated as a utility. But apparently FPL felt it had no choice, and the website makes clear why. 

The final straw for FPL was a December 20, 2021 “story” by Klas claiming FPL was using “dark money” and lobbyists to write legislation that would hamstring rooftop solar. In the increasingly dirty world of the partisan media, it’s important to note that this story was done in conjunction with Floodlight, an environmentalist group which describes itself this way on its own site: “Floodlight investigates the corporate interests holding back climate action. We partner and co-publish with local journalists and national outlets . . . .” 

So there is not even the pretense of this being honest journalism. FPL vehemently denies the veracity of the story and wrote an opinion piece refuting it. But the Miami Herald refused to run the opinion piece and instead heavily edited it down, removing all criticism of the Herald and of Klas, and then ran it as a watery letter to the editor. Even that was just in the lightly read print edition, and not online.

https://issuesinsights.com/2022/01/03/ii-tipp-poll-media-trust-took-a-serious-beating-in-2021/

For the big media that dominate America’s cultural and political life, 2021 was a dismal year when it comes to public trust. The prospects for 2022 are little better, as both the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, midterm elections and a growing problem with inflation loom. Year-end data from the I&I/TIPP Poll show little public optimism that the media will do a better job this year.

The data for the I&I/TIPP Poll Media Indexes stem from a survey of 1,301 adults, conducted online from Dec. 1-4 by TechnoMetrica Market Intelligence, I&I’s polling partner. The poll’s margin of error is +/-2.8 percentage points.

I&I/TIPP has tracked public opinion on the media since March of 2021. For simplicity’s sake, percentages have been converted to an index ranging from zero to 100, which makes for easy comparisons over time. Anything above 50 shows trust, below that, a lack of trust. 50 is neutral.

The year-end 2021 numbers tell a clear tale: The public became profoundly disappointed with the media’s performance during 2021.

For example, the I&I/TIPP Traditional Media Trust Index has fallen 15% since its inception last March. That, despite a rebound of 4.5 points, or 11.6%, to 43.3 in December off the record low of 38.8 set in November. This index is made up of major media, such as the Washington Post, New York Times, NPR, CBS News, and so on.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2021/12/project_veritas_scores_a_significant_victory_over_the_new_york_times.html

After the DOJ authorized the FBI to conduct dawn raids on Project Veritas’s people because they briefly possessed, but neither stole nor published, the diary of Joe Biden’s drug-addicted daughter, Ashley, the New York Times “coincidentally” received and published copies of memos that Project Veritas’s attorneys had written regarding legal standards for investigative reporting—while Project Veritas was already involved in litigation with the Times. On Friday, a New York judge ordered that the Times must return every document and destroy every electronic file. It’s a huge victory for Project Veritas and an appropriate rebuke to the Times, which acts more sleazily than any supermarket tabloid ever has.

You can read more details about the back story here. If you don’t want the long version, the short version is best summarized in Michael Cernovich’s tweet on the subject:

Project Veritas sued the Times to recover the stolen material, and the Times promptly sought shelter behind (a) the First Amendment and (b) New York Times Company v. United States, 403 U.S. 713 (1971), which concerned the Times’s decision to publish the Pentagon Papers. Without even reading that Supreme Court decision, one of the things that’s immediately obvious is that the 1971 case involved government documents that the Supreme Court concluded revealed matters of the utmost interest to the American public.

https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2021/12/from-media-bias-to-outright-partisanship.php

EXCERPT

In 2004, in an episode that became known as Rathergate, 60 Minutes tried to help swing the presidential election to John Kerry by publishing fake documents intended to put President Bush’s service in the Texas Air National Guard, back in the early 1970s, in a bad light. The fraud unraveled quickly as we at Power Line and others on the internet showed that the documents were clumsy fakes that were full of substantive errors.

In less than 24 hours after the internet critique of the 60 Minutes story began, CBS News announced that it would conduct an investigation into what had happened. And it did. CBS News hired a former Attorney General of the U.S. to lead the investigation, and the report that he and others authored, the Thornburgh Report, was a devastating account of the dishonesty at CBS. Dan Rather was already gone by the time the report came out, and thereafter CBS fired Mary Mapes, the producer of the 60 Minutes segment, and several other employees.

The key point is that back in 2004, CBS News was seriously embarrassed that it had produced a false news report. It really did want, at least, to be seen as a fair and unbiased news source. And when the fraud was exposed, it took decisive action against the employees who had perpetrated it.

But over the next decade, that changed. Major news organizations have gone from being biased against conservatives to engaging in open warfare against conservatives. In 2016, Dean Baquet, Executive Editor of the New York Times, publicly stated that the Times’ approach to covering the news had changed when it came to Donald Trump. No more neutrality, no more objectivity, the Times would openly attack Trump not just in its editorials, but in its news stories.

Shortly after Baquet made that announcement, the Russia collusion story hit the news, and it continued to dominate the news for the next two or three years.