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MEDIA

The Big Surge In Coronavirus Deaths Is A Media-Fed Myth

https://issuesinsights.com/2020/07/22/the-big-surge-in-coronavirus-deaths-is-a-media-fed-myth/

Almost daily now we’ve been reading about how daily deaths from COVID-19 have reached record highs. It’s a scary prospect. But the truth is the mainstream press is grossly misleading the public by misreporting the death counts.

Here’s a typical report, from USA Today a few days ago: “As the outbreak continues to surge across the southern states, Florida, Texas and South Carolina set records for new daily deaths, reporting 156, 129 and 69, respectively.”

ABC News reported that “Nineteen states set single-day records for the most cases this week … Three states set a record today.”

According to PBS in Arizona, the state “on Saturday (July 18) set a record for coronavirus-related deaths reported in one day, with 147, according to the Arizona Department of Health Services.”

The last story is particularly illuminating because the website the PBS article links to includes a chart of daily deaths in the state. It lists only three deaths on July 19. What’s more, the chart shows that there hasn’t been a single day in the state where deaths exceeded 65.

So where did that scary 147 number come from? The same place all the other “surging” numbers come from. Each day Arizona and other states file reports on how many people died from COVID-19. It’s not a measure of how many died that day. In most cases, the people died days or even weeks earlier.

The News Media Becomes Fluent in Newspeak Orwell’s observation that language shapes thought holds true for Covid-19 and Black Lives Matter.By Gerard Baker

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-news-media-becomes-fluent-in-newspeak-11595284117?mod=opinion_lead_pos5

‘War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength.”

Part of George Orwell’s genius lay in his insight that manipulation of language was essential to the revolutionary project. If you can command popular compliance with a lexicon that reorders—or even inverts—the widely understood meaning of political terms, you can remake society as much as you can with any law, mandate or act of force. Thought is constrained by the limits of language, and so language becomes a vital tool for placing limits on thought.

We don’t have a Ministry of Truth in America. But our political and cultural institutions have no shortage of eager propagandists creating a new glossary.

Take freedom. Since free speech is such a subversive threat to the orthodoxy, the term itself needs to be tightly defined. Academic freedom in particular must be rigorously regulated.

So, in the words of a recent letter setting out demands from faculty members at Princeton, all research and publication should be submitted for approval to a special committee to root out any “racist” thought.

This freedom will be achieved in part by ostracizing those who dissent. When Joshua Katz, a classics professor, objected to the proposals, his words—unlike those of the original letter-writers—were roundly condemned, including by the university’s president, Christopher Eisgruber. All this ostensibly because Mr. Katz used some hyperbolic language in describing a black activist group.

This vignette is especially telling because the term “racism” itself is another of those undergoing a careful redefinition.

Beinart’s Rejection of a Jewish State What his envisioned unitary, bi-national state would mean for Israelis – and for Palestinians. Joseph Puder

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/07/beinart-doesnt-believe-jewish-state-joseph-puder/

The New York Times has eagerly accepted Peter Beinart’s opinion piece published on July 8, 2020, titled, “I No Longer Believe in a Jewish State.” The piece by Beinart rejects the existence of the Jewish state of Israel and calls for a bi-national state. Would the NYTimes dare solicit an opinion piece that suggested that Turkey should be a bi-national state made up of Turks and Kurds with equal rights? It’s doubtful! It is not the first time the NYTimes has published an op-ed piece that advocates the elimination of the Jewish state and the creation of a bi-national state. In 2009, the NYTimes published such an op-ed by the Libyan dictator Muammar Qaddafi, that argued for replacing the Jewish state with “Isratine,” as the name implies, an Israel-Arab-Palestinian state. In his Twitter account, NYTimes editor Max Strasser, expressed his belief that Beinart’s views might at first seem controversial, but will before long become mainstream opinion among American Jewish liberals. Strasser has obviously not considered the majority of American Jews, or the wishes of Israeli-Jews.

The arrogance of both Beinart (editor at large of Jewish Currents) and the NYTimes are clearly exposed in ignoring the will and wishes of the Israeli people. The overwhelming majority of Israeli-Jews are proud of their Jewish state and would not be compelled to share it with an Arab-Palestinian people who seek their destruction, to kill them, or displace them. A look at the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) charter, not to mention Hamas’ charter, reveals those very intentions. After two millenniums of persecution in the diaspora, both in Christian and Muslim lands, Israeli-Jews cherish their one Jewish state in the world, a state that has been a major Zionist success story. 

Frankly, few Jewish people care about Beinart “disbelief” in the Jewish State. Beinart’s views regarding the Jewish state are shared by many enemies of the Jewish state, the Palestinians in particular. These enemies couldn’t destroy the Jewish state by war, terror, or economic and political warfare. Some Palestinians might agree to a bi-national state as the first stage before eliminating Jews by sheer weight of importing Palestinians from throughout the Middle East. Once they have become a majority, they would democratically or otherwise (through terror) abolish the Law of Return, and all the symbols of the Jewish state. 

Channeling Candy Crowley: Chris Wallace uses his interview with President Trump to argue with the man — and gets his facts wrong By Monica Showalter

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020

Is there anything more disgusting than a reporter so full of himself he decides to try to outshine the subject of the report and make himself the news?

Welcome to Chris Wallace’s world. The Fox News newsman got a prized interview with President Trump to be aired Sunday and used it as an occasion to argue with his subject, playing junior fact-checker instead of grand old interviewer, all in the name of cheap shilling for Joe Biden:

Here’s the biased USAToday report with a little editorial comment there in the loaded word ‘inaccurate’:

WASHINGTON – Fox News host Chris Wallace fact-checked President Donald Trump’s inaccurate claim during an interview that former Vice President Joe Biden is in favor of defunding the police, leading to a testy reaction.

In a clip released between the “FOX News Sunday” anchor and Trump – the entire interview will air Sunday – the president blamed  “stupidly run” Democratic local governments for the increase in violence in some cities and implied the increase was the fault of the defund the police movement. 

Just one problem. Trump was right. And Wallace was wrong:

Magazine Maoists successfully push writer Andrew Sullivan out of his job By Andrea Widburg

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/07/magazine_maoists_successfully_push_writer_andrew_sullivan_out_of_his_job.html

Andrew Sullivan calls himself a conservative, although his politics could more accurately be described as “not socialist.” Despite his lean to the left, though, Sullivan made the same discovery that the New York Times’s Bari Weiss did: Unless you embrace completely the Marxism that is now the norm in media outlets, today’s young fascists will force you out.

On Friday, Sullivan explained why he was leaving New York Magazine. According to him, the magazine’s management had been great to him. The problem was that the magazine’s other employees are so far to the left that they cannot tolerate the slightest deviation from the party line. To the extent that Sullivan periodically deviated, they put pressure on the publisher to jettison him. So it was that, when Vox media, which owns New York Magazine, had to fire 6% of its staff because of a drop in revenue, Sullivan was on the chopping block.

In his farewell article, Sullivan explained that he perpetually offended the leftist writers and editors at the magazine, an offense that they internalized as actual physical violence, that he was no longer considered a viable writer:

A critical mass of the staff and management . . . seem to believe, and this is increasingly the orthodoxy in mainstream media, that any writer not actively committed to critical theory in questions of race, gender, sexual orientation, and gender identity is actively, physically harming co-workers merely by existing in the same virtual space. Actually attacking, and even mocking, critical theory’s ideas and methods, as I have done continually in this space, is therefore out of sync with the values of Vox Media. That, to the best of my understanding, is why I’m out of here.

Media bias and bullying go well beyond Baris Weiss By Jack Hellner

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/07/media_bias_and_bullying_go_well_beyond_baris_weiss.html

The media, entertainers, educators and other Democrats claim they care deeply about bullying, diversity and women.

But they’ve shown very little support when a woman editor was bullied out of the NYT because, heaven forbid, she thought more than one opinion should be in the opinion page of the newspaper.

Bari Weiss Claims Bullying Led Her To Quit The New York Times

There is a lot of pretending going on that the reason the media is so hostile and one-sided today is because of President Trump, but they have been ripping and calling Republicans racists at least since Reagan.

They intentionally bury stories that don’t fit the agenda and will even endlessly attack and run stories, without evidence, to destroy Republicans.

All that seems to matter is getting more power for leftist Democrats and push for bigger government and less freedom for the people.

Most of the media sought to destroy Judge Brett Kavanaugh, with no evidence, while they intentionally buried true stories about Harvey Weinstein, Matt Lauer, Jeffrey Epstein and Bill Clinton. A few stories, such as these, ran. But they got no wall-to-wall coverage the way Kavanaugh did.

Top 16: ‘Worst President In American History’ Trump Has ‘Rivers of Blood On His Hands’ Geoffrey Dickens

https://www.newsbusters.org/blogs/nb/geoffrey-dickens/2020/07/16/top-16-worst-president-american-history-trump-has-rivers-blood

Yikes! Lefty reporters and hosts went nuts over the last few weeks as they attacked Donald Trump as the “worst president in history” whose anti-pandemic efforts have left him with “rivers of blood on his hands.” 

Liberal journalists also distorted Trump’s patriotic speech at Mount Rushmore (that “grandiose symbol of U.S. imperialism”) as an attempt “to weaponize the anger and resentment of some white Americans for his own political gain.”

The following is a top 16 countdown of the most vicious anti-Trump attacks from the ultra-left media over the last few weeks: 

16. President Gets an “F”

Host Wolf Blitzer: “How badly is he [Donald Trump] failing right now in dealing with this spiraling crisis? 

Correspondent Nia-Malika Henderson: “He’s doing terribly. I mean, the President gets an ‘F’ in terms of the handling of this global pandemic.”

—  CNN’s The Situation Room, July 14. 

15. Like “George Wallace,” Trump Pursuing Voters Who Think Wrong Team Won the Civil War

Fake News Becomes a Way of Life By Michael Brendan Dougherty

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/07/media-fake-news-becomes-a-way-of-life/

The media has decided there’s more emotional satisfaction in failure than in performing the function with which the public entrusts it.

In December 2016, Ben Smith, then BuzzFeed’s editor-in-chief, wrote a memo to his staff that was meant to be a kind of charter for the dawning of the Trump Era. In truth it spoke to and aimed to speak for the entire mainstream media. Smith would eventually move on to the New York Times, which elevated him to a role as the supervisory voice of conscience for the whole media. But that December, he warned his staff of the danger of fake news, and the need of the media to be accurate and factual:

The information environment itself will become even more central to our coverage:

Fake news will become more sophisticated, and fake, ambiguous, and spun-up stories will spread widely. Hoaxes will have higher production value. It is, for instance, getting easier and easier to create video of someone saying something he or she never said — a tool both for fake news and false denials.

And powerful filter bubbles will drive competing narratives from parallel universes of facts.

The Times and The Atlantic have minted tens of thousands of new subscribers from across the nation since Trump’s election, readers who want to keep informed, even as their local newspapers shrivel into nothing. The importance of these institutions has lately been increased substantially by their ability to survive, grow, and set trends across a more tightly concentrated media environment. Their staffers have largely defined themselves as part of a resistance to Trump’s administration.

So how is the “information environment” now, three and a half years after Smith’s memo?

Sen. Tom Cotton: Bari Weiss’ NY Times exit shows stifling political correctness left wants. Don’t let them win The media is just the latest prize in the left’s long march through elite cultural institutions

https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/tom-cotton-bari-weiss-ny-times-left-political-correctness

The woke mob at The New York Times has claimed another scalp. Earlier this week, opinion columnist and editor Bari Weiss resigned from the paper after being viciously harassed by her colleagues for daring on occasion to express conservative opinions in print.

This is not a one-off event but a trend, as far-left, anti-American forces have consolidated control over some of our nation’s most influential institutions.

Weiss followed in the footsteps of former opinion editor James Bennet, a liberal who was forced to resign by The Times’ publisher for running my op-ed.

I argued that the military could be called out as a last resort to restore public order in cities wracked by violent rioting and looting—an opinion shared at the time by a majority of Americans.

The Times claimed the op-ed didn’t meet its “standards.” (I agree: my op-ed far exceeded its normal sophomoric fare.) But the paper couldn’t identify a single falsehood or error that explained why the op-ed deserved almost two weeks of ritual denunciation and hyperventilation—or why Bennet deserved to lose his job.

Maybe it’s only because the publisher can’t fire himself.

New York Times denizens respond to Bari Weiss resignation over bullying — with more bullying By Monica Showalter

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/07/new_york_times_denizens_respond_to_bari_weiss_resignation_over_bullying__with_more_bullying.htm

 It ought to have been embarrassing for the New York Times to have a top op-ed editor resign with fiery criticism of the paper’s stultifying leftism. In the news industry, it’s pretty rare for anyone to resign, let alone say what the problem was. That’s what happened a couple days ago, when Bari Weiss submitted her resignation to the paper, denouncing the far-left atmosphere of cancel-culture bullying, the signs of which have been pretty obvious for years. After all, not too long ago, this bunch forced the Times’ op-ed boss out merely for running an opinion piece by an elected Republican senator because the snowflake staffers said it made them feel “unsafe.” Weiss had had enough and threw in the towel. Thomas Lifson noted that the letter was likely “historic” in its significance.

Embarrassed? Not in the least. Not at the Times. In fact, plenty of them bit back and got catty. All because what she she wrote. Ms. Weiss writes that she herself faced “constant bullying by colleagues who disagree with my views.” She writes that they “have called me a Nazi and a racist.” She adds that she has learned to “brush off comments about how I’m ‘writing about the Jews again.'” She has too much grace to mention that her writing about Jews included covering the murders at her hometown’s Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh. Ms. Weiss’s tenure at the Times became an ordeal. Friendly colleagues were “badgered by coworkers,” she told Mr. Sulzberger.

“My work and my character are openly demeaned on company-wide Slack channels where masthead editors regularly weigh in. There, some coworkers insist I need to be rooted out if this company is to be a truly ‘inclusive’ one, while others post ax emojis next to my name.” First mean girl out the gate was Hannah Jones, creator of the phony 1619 Project, who had a couple of retweets about Weiss and now has up this counter-claim to victimhood: She also had this screen grab inexplicably up: Then there were the deniers — a collection of whom were collected here: In other words, nothing to see here, Bari Weiss is a liar, no such thing as wokesters taking over, we’re all just objective journalists trying to get at the truth.