RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.wsj.com/articles/facebook-and-free-speech-11571602853

Mark Zuckerberg offered a stalwart defense of liberal values on free speech last week, and it’s a sign of our illiberal times that progressives were his biggest critics. A Joe Biden spokesman accused the Facebook CEO of using “the Constitution as a shield for his company’s bottom line,” and pundits on Twitter raged at his refusal to censor ads for Donald Trump.

Mr. Zuckerberg’s offense was standing up for John Mill’s liberal marketplace of ideas that liberals used to stand for. At Georgetown University and in our pages Thursday, he committed Facebook to uphold a wide definition of free expression. This is good news with major implications for how information is distributed in the 21st century if Facebook honors this pledge.

When Facebook and other social-media sites took off in the 2000s, an elite consensus held that freewheeling debate advanced democratic government and liberal social causes. Then came the 2016 election. Many liberals saw Mr. Trump’s victory as a democratic malfunction and blamed Facebook, though they had previously lionized the platform for its role spreading candidate Barack Obama’s message.

The pressure on the platform to referee America’s political back-and-forth has increased with polarization. Mr. Zuckerberg’s comments seemed aimed at reminding the political left that it suffered most from censorship amid the polarizing episodes in the 20th century, citing the World War I-era prosecution of socialist Eugene Debs.

Today, conservatives are more likely to perceive that their views are suppressed on social media, and Republican Members of Congress have made it a top issue. A recent controversy of note was Facebook’s temporary suppression of a video produced by the pro-life group Live Action.

https://amgreatness.com/2019/10/17/cnn-staffer-our-obsessive-anti-trump-coverage-wont-stop-until-trump-dies/

A new video released by Project Veritas Thursday shows CNN employees admitting on tape that the network peddles “a bunch of bullsh-t” and that it will not stop hammering the president “until he dies—hopefully soon.”

Part III of O’Keefe’s expose on CNN focuses on the network’s movement away from objective news-gathering towards partisan advocacy.

Once upon a time, CNN was respected as a serious, straight news outlet, but those days are long over, several CNN employees lamented on camera.

CNN insider Cary Poarch told O’Keefe, “I want to chase the facts, like the motto that CNN put out earlier this year, ‘the facts first,’ that’s what I want the news to be. That’s what it should be. That’s what it used to be.”

Multiple CNN staffers were secretly recorded voicing similar concerns.

CNN’s Manager of Field Operations Patrick Davis has been with the network for 25 years and has seen first-hand how its journalistic standards have slid.

“…I hate seeing what we were and what we could be and what we’ve become. It’s just awful…I mean, we could be so much better than what we are…And the buck stops with him (Zucker),” he said.

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/farewell/

GOODY TWO SHOES IS GOING TO “THE DISPATCH” A “TRUMP SKEPTIC” MAGAZINE  RSK

NR was the first national platform to publish my work, and now — thousands of posts and more than a million words later — I say goodbye. On Monday, I’ll join my good friends Jonah Goldberg and Stephen Hayes at The Dispatch, their new media venture. In true writerly fashion, I sign off even as I’m behind on a print deadline.

https://pjmedia.com/trending/police-do-nothing-as-antifa-thugs-violently-attack-trump-supporters-after-trump-rally-in-minneapolis/

It seems the entire 24/7 news business is still going on about a “violent meme” that depicts Trump in a movie scene from The Kingsman. No one is upset about the original movie, where Colin Firth’s character kills a bunch of conservative Christians in a church, because violence against conservatives and Christians is A-OK with just about everyone except Christians and conservatives. They’re upset that some meme-maker put Trump’s head on the assassin and a bunch of media logos on the victims. For shame. How dare he.

Anyhoo, while they are blathering their outrage about fictional violence, actual violence is taking place against those Christian conservatives no one cares about on the streets of Minneapolis. There is a resurgence of Antifa violence against Trump rally-goers again as the 2020 election nears. At the president’s last rally, the streets were awash in patchouli and other foul things as Antifa rioted and attacked innocent people for wearing Trump gear or attending the rally. The police didn’t appear to be doing much about it.

In this video, a woman is slapped in the face while trying to get through the crowd.

https://thehill.com/opinion/white-house/465726-false-combat-video-raises-many-questions-cautions-for-media

I feel pretty safe in saying that most Americans can’t tell you off the top of their head who the Kurds are or what the U.S. relationship with them is — let alone how that factors into Iran, Russia, China, Turkey and Syria.

Without explaining as much, the topic of President Trump’s “abandonment” of the Kurds and how it will surely put a resurgence of the Islamic extremist terrorist group ISIS on Trump’s shoulders, has dominated news coverage for much of the past week.

Now comes word from ABC News that it has pulled down video that aired on its flagship broadcasts, which claimed to show a “slaughter” by Turkey on the Syrian border after President Trump’s announced withdrawal of U.S. troops.

ABC correspondent Ian Panell reported on Sunday that the video “obtained by ABC News, appears to show the fury of the Turkish attack on the border town of Tal Abyad two nights ago.”

The pictures show massive explosions lighting up the night sky. But it turns out ABC may have been hoodwinked, according to its own account.

A tweet issued by ABC News on Monday morning reads: “CORRECTION: We’ve taken down video that aired on ‘World News Tonight’ Sunday and ‘Good Morning America’ this morning that appeared to be from the Syrian border immediately after questions were raised about its accuracy. ABC News regrets the error.”

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/abc-news-issues-correction-after-airing-kentucky-gun-range-footage-during-syria-segment/

ABC News issued a correction Monday after it aired footage from a 2017 Kentucky military demonstration in the middle of a segment on the war in Syria.

“This video, obtained by ABC News, appears to show the fury of the Turkish attack on the border town of Tal Abyad two nights ago,” said foreign correspondent Ian Panell during the Sunday “World News” segment.

The clip was also featured on “Good Morning America” on Monday morning. It depicts explosions that occurred at the Knob Creek Gun Range in West Point, Kentucky during an event called “Military Gun Shoot and Military Gun Show.”

“CORRECTION: We’ve taken down video that aired on “World News Tonight” Sunday and “Good Morning America” this morning that appeared to be from the Syrian border immediately after questions were raised about its accuracy,” ABC wrote in a Monday tweet. “ABC News regrets the error.”

https://amgreatness.com/2019/10/12/trumps-latest-move-against-the-press-get-to-da-choppa/

Originally published at New York Post.

Since abandoning the daily press briefing, which had sunk into an embarrassing spectacle where journalists would bully former press secretary Sarah Sanders, the White House now favors “chopper-pressers” where the boss interacts with the media while his helicopter idles nearby.

In his latest battle with the American news media, President Trump is bringing out the heavy artillery: Marine One.

Since abandoning the daily press briefing, which had sunk into an embarrassing spectacle where journalists would bully former press secretary Sarah Sanders, the White House now favors “chopper-pressers” where the boss interacts with the media while his helicopter idles nearby.

Like his use of Twitter, Trump’s impromptu gaggles frustrate the media and enable him to control the message for the day.

There is no camera on the press, only Trump. You usually can’t hear the questions on television, only the answers. It takes away the media’s ability to grandstand. There are no Jim Acosta moments.

It also requires journalists to yell over each other and outshout the deafening blades of the president’s waiting ride, conduct that undoubtedly amuses the commander-in-chief.

Trump has held three chopper-pressers in the past 10 days. Thursday’s briefing lasted 11 minutes — the president fielded a number of questions related to Ukraine, Turkey, Joe Biden and his rally in Minneapolis that evening. In one exchange, Trump forced a reporter to ask about the so-called “whistleblower” three times before he answered:

Reporter: Do you know the whistleblower’s name?
Trump: What?

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2019/10/about_that_fox_poll.html

Journalism and those claiming to be journalists in the America have not only been increasingly and overtly partisan over the past 25 years but also increasingly indolent.  Far too many rely on the lunacy, vitriol, and rumormongering on social media as the primary source of many of their stories and to make assumptions as to what American society thinks on any particular issue.  Another source of so-called “news” is generated by their ideological cohorts in the polling industry. 

Polling in modern America has degenerated into a vehicle to create news, headlines and to shape public opinion on an issue or an individual.

 Over the past few days the lead on every cable news channel and the headline in virtually all newspapers is Fox News claiming in their exclusive poll that 51% of Americans now favor impeachment and removal of President Trump. 

How did the Fox polling unit come up with this number?

The Fox news polling companies interviewed 1,003 registered voters ostensibly throughout the length and breadth of the United States.  Many polling companies use either all adult Americans (254 million) or registered voters (158 million in 2016) as their universe for polling.  Obviously the greater the number of potential people to contact and question the easier a poll is to complete and to skew a result.  In reality, what matters is who votes in an election.  In 2016 86% (or 136.6 million) of registered voters cast a vote.  A poll of likely voters would inherently be more reliable but more difficult to achieve.  Currently only Rasmussen among national polls uses exclusively likely voters and they are among the most reliable.