RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://amgreatness.com/2025/02/28/american-publics-trust-in-mainstream-media-hits-50-year-low-poll/

A new survey from Gallup revealed that the American people’s trust in the mainstream media has reached the “lowest point” in over 50 years.

As reported by Breitbart, Gallup had asked the public about their trust in mass media dating as far back as 1972. At that time, 68% of Americans said they either had a “great deal” or “fair” amount of trust in the media, with that number rising slightly to 69% in 1974. It then reached a record high of 72% in 1976.

Since 2000, that number has plummeted to remain consistently below 50%, with just 51% saying they trusted the media in the year 2000; the number then fell to 44% in 2004 before rising slightly to 45% in 2018. In every subsequent poll, the number has dropped further and further, with the most recent poll showing just 31% saying they trusted the media in 2024.

Gallup noticed that a major contributor to the decrease in trust came in the form of Republican voters, who overwhelmingly distrust the media compared to independents and Democrats.

“Whereas about a third of U.S. adults say they have no trust at all in the mass media, 59% of Republicans hold this view — a view that saw a particularly sharp increase between 2015 and 2017, when it rose 21 percentage points to 48%,” the report notes. “Republicans’ lack of trust in the media topped 50% for the first time in 2020 and has since remained at the majority level.”

“Lack of trust is also up sharply among independents, now 42%, while it continues to be low — 6% this year — among Democrats,” the survey’s summary added.

German Soccer Player’s Child Bites Referee’s Crotch Forcing the Game to Be Canceled

A recent soccer match in Germany was postponed after an unfortunate injury to a referee.

According to the Latin Times, Rheinische Post, and National World, the incident occurred just before the match between FC Taxi Duisburg II and FC Rot-Weiss Mülheim began on Sunday, Feb. 23.

Referee Stefan Kahler was reportedly conducting his routine pre-game checks of the players’ passports when a “small child” who was on the field “doing gymnastics” gave him a “sharp” bite on his left testicle.

The young child was later identified as the son of a player on the Taxi Duisburg football team.

Related: Golfer Billy Horschel Fends Off Wayward Alligator with Club at Tournament

Kahler’s injury was so painful that he “buckled over” in pain, per the reports, and he was unable to perform his scheduled duties as referee.

https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2025/02/tapped-out-tapper.php

“I predict one common theme from this and all the other forthcoming books about the 2020 election and the run-up to it: they will all absolve the media of any blame. Who covered it up? I thought exposing cover-ups is what the media is all about ever since Watergate. Biden’s “deception,” as it is termed here, would never have succeeded without a compliant media.Would this be the same Jake Tapper who scorned any mention of Biden’s obvious decrepitude, claiming that Biden’s stumbles were because of his “stutter”?

So CNN’s Jake Tapper and co-author Alex Thompson of Axios and CNN have announced May 20 as the publication date for their book Original Sin: President Biden’s Decline, Its Cover-Up, and his Disastrous Choice to Run Again.

My hunch is that they are still writing the book, but want to pre-empt the field of journalists feverishly cranking out similar “inside stories” of Biden’s disaster right now.

Let’s have a look at the pre-publication description:

Joe Biden launched his successful 2020 bid for the White House with the stated goal of saving the nation from a second Trump presidential term. He, his family, and his senior aides were so convinced that only he could beat Trump again, they lied to themselves, allies, and the public about his condition and limitations. At his debate with Trump on June 27, 2024, the consequences of that deception were exposed to the world. It was shocking and upsetting.

Now the full, unsettling truth is being told for the first time. Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson take us behind closed doors and into private conversations between the heaviest of hitters, revealing how big the problem was and how many people knew about it. From White House staffers at the highest to lowest levels, to leaders of Congress and the Cabinet, from governors to donors and Hollywood players, the truth is finally being told. What you will learn makes President Biden’s decision to run for reelection seem shockingly narcissistic, self-delusional, and reckless—a desperate bet that went bust—and part of a larger act of extended public deception that has few precedents. The story the authors tell raises fundamental issues of accountability and responsibility that will continue for decades.

https://issuesinsights.com/2025/02/27/did-jeff-bezos-just-kill-karl-marx-on-k-street/

Amazon founder and owner of the Washington Post Jeff Bezos announced Wednesday that change is coming to the paper’s opinion pages. Going forward, they will be supporting and defending the “two pillars” that are “right for America,” “personal liberties and free markets.” It was helpful for those who oppose the change to identify themselves as enemies of personal liberties and free markets.

Bezos also said that “viewpoints opposing those pillars will be left to be published by others.”

“A big part of America’s success has been freedom in the economic realm and everywhere else. Freedom is ethical — it minimizes coercion — and practical — it drives creativity, invention, and prosperity. … I’m confident that free markets and personal liberties are right for America. I also believe these viewpoints are underserved in the current market of ideas and news opinion.”

“Congratulations on becoming Reason Magazine!” Liz Wolfe, a Reason staffer tweeted in response.

Other reactions were not so kind. In fact, to a casual observer, it might seem as if Bezos had committed a felony by assaulting someone or had shot and killed Karl Marx, whose hostility to personal liberties and free markets has produced quite a few spiritual grandchildren and great-grandchildren who hold prominent places in American society.

There were of course the crude reactions from the crude people who believe the country is theirs to run.

Keith Olbermann, who used to be someone some time ago, before he came off of his hinges, said “the self-defenestrating” Washington Post is “somehow climbing back up the stairwell and throwing itself out another window while Bezos fires the opinion section and declares the paper utterly fascist.”

Get that? Personal liberties and free markets are “utterly fascist.” It takes a truly twisted person to reach that conclusion.

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/msnbc-cancels-joy-reids-show-in-programming-shakeup/

MSNBC will cancel host Joy Reid’s show, The ReidOut, this week. The show has aired in the 7 p.m. timeslot on the network since July 2020.

The move was initiated by MSNBC’s new president, Rebecca Kutler, the New York Times reported on Sunday. Reid’s last show will be sometime this week. Reid’s 7 p.m. slot will now be filled with commentary from the current co-hosts of MSNBC’s weekend morning show, The Weekend, Symone Sanders Townsend, Michael Steele, and Alicia Menendez.

The network’s decision comes after years of Reid’s peddling far-left narratives involving identity politics and progressive ideologies. Recent Nielsen Media Research data showed that after Donald Trump won the presidency, between November and December, Reid’s show lost almost half of its viewers. MSNBC experienced a 53 percent decrease in primetime viewership after the election.

Reid has used her platform over the past many years to show disdain for Trump and Republican supporters. In an infamous Thanksgiving special last year, Reid vindicated liberals who might not want to share their holiday table with conservatives: “Make your own dinner, MAGA,” she said.

“You right-wingers shouldn’t have to suffer the consequences of your votes? ‘You don’t want to be around me because I voted for fascism. No fair. I am coughing on you with COVID, but you want me to wear a mask for your safety? No fair. My body, my choice.’ Well, here’s an alternative thought — make your own dinner, MAGA. Make your own sandwiches, wipe your own tears, troll amongst yourselves with Elon, and leave us alone,” she said.

Reid also bashed Latinos who supported Trump in November’s election, saying last year that pro-Trump Latino voters “own everything” that happens to their families.

During Trump’s inauguration, Reid criticized Trump’s expansionist mindset as “manifest destiny,” which she described as “one of the most racist concepts in the history of America.” She also made remarks about the appearance of billionaire tech CEOs Mark Zuckerberg, Sundar Pichai, and Elon Musk.

https://thefederalist.com/2025/02/06/unedited-60-minutes-kamala-interview-proves-again-the-democrat-2024-campaign-was-a-media-driven-psyop/

Now that the full ‘60 Minutes’ interview with Kamala Harris is out, it’s more clear that the media were all in assisting her failed campaign.

It’s been three months since the election, and there are still so many unanswered questions as to what exactly happened in the very obvious partnership that took place between the dying national news media and the Kamala Harris campaign. But a little more clarity was offered this week when Brendan Carr, chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, released the full nearly hour-long interview CBS “60 Minutes” aired with Harris several weeks before Election Day.

The disclosure of the raw footage came as CBS cooperated with a complaint to the FCC from the Center for American Rights, a right-leaning law firm that accused the network of news distortion. The allegation followed a discrepancy observers noted between the short tease that CBS released in advance of the full “60 Minutes” episode and the final cut that aired and showed Harris offering a different answer to the same question.

What we know now is that CBS’s original explanation for the issue, that it merely used a separate portion of a longer answer in the production that went to air, is true. But that doesn’t clear the network of its questionable decision to clean up not only that newsworthy portion of the interview, in which Harris’s fuller answer is hysterically confused, but in other parts, too.

Another highly suspect omission from the final cut was an extended portion in which Harris wasn’t asked some convoluted question on geopolitical matters or macro economics, but on why she wants to be president.

https://www.spiked-online.com/2025/02/06/can-science-journalism-get-over-its-trump-derangement-syndrome/

Scientific American, the oldest continually published magazine in the US, once prided itself on explaining science to the public through scholarly reporting, knowledgeable research and carefully crafted articles. Since its founding in 1845, it has published articles by more than 200 Nobel laureates. Yet for some time now, it has been wandering from science to politics.

A recent op-ed, titled ‘How feminism can guide climate change by action’, demonstrates how completely off the rails this once prestigious magazine has gone. To say the article is simply ‘bad science’ would not be accurate. There is no science in it at all. Here is a small sample:

‘Feminism gives us the analysis, tools and movement to create a better climate future… Climate policymaking needs to take into account the expertise that women, including indigenous and rural women, bring to bear on issues like preserving ecosystems and environmentally sustainable agriculture… We must redistribute resources away from male-dominated, environmentally harmful economic activities towards those prioritising women’s employment, regeneration and care for both people and ecosystems.’

Fans of Scientific American might have hoped that this kind of activist journalism would leave the magazine along with former editor Laura Helmuth, who finished her nearly five-year tenure in November. Instead, it appears that little has changed. Other articles published since her departure include a defence of puberty blockers (which makes the striking claim that ‘the underlying principles of trans [healthcare] could make everyone healthier’) and a first-person perspective of a Just Stop Oil campaigner’s arrest.

Under Helmuth, the magazine broke with its 175-year-old tradition of impartiality when it endorsed the candidacy of Joe Biden in 2020, followed by Kamala Harris in 2024. Fittingly, Helmuth’s resignation followed one of the most severe cases of Trump Derangement Syndrome witnessed during November’s election, which she shared with the world on Bluesky. ‘I apologise to younger voters that my Gen X is so full of fucking fascists’, Helmuth wrote after Trump’s re-election. She then added, for good measure:

‘Every four years I remember why I left Indiana (where I grew up) and remember why I respect the people who stayed and are trying to make it less racist and sexist. The moral arc of the universe is not going to bend itself… Solidarity to everybody whose meanest, dumbest, most bigoted classmates are celebrating early results because fuck them to the Moon and back.’

Helmuth’s intemperate remarks raise several questions. First, what was she thinking? Presumably, to avoid charges of bias, you’d think the editor of a major scientific magazine would at least try to maintain a modicum of discretion in their public comments. Did she not realise that her comments might put some people off Scientific American who didn’t happen to share her politics? One also wonders what the board of Springer Nature, who own Scientific American, saw in Helmuth that led her to become just the ninth editor in the magazine’s long and storied history. It can’t have been for an impartial, objective approach.

In truth, Helmuth’s social-media rants and political endorsements are merely a symptom of the broader demise of Scientific American. It is hard to imagine now but this is the same magazine that published Albert Einstein’s generalised theory of gravitation and Nikola Tesla on the possibility of electro-static generators.

A more recent sample of the Scientific American’s work under Helmuth would find headlines such as ‘Modern mathematics confronts its white, patriarchal past’, ‘Denial of evolution is a form of white supremacy’, and a landmark takedown of Star Wars titled ‘Why the term JEDI is problematic for describing programmes that promote justice, equity, diversity and inclusion’.

Not content with publishing woke, unscientific nonsense, Scientific American has at times been little more than a mouthpiece for progressive and government orthodoxies. During the pandemic, it published multiple articles supposedly ‘debunking’ the lab-leak theory – now all but accepted by the majority of Western governments. It even trashed the Cass Review, which highlighted the lack of scientific evidence for the treatments given out to young people by Britain’s gender-identity services.