RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.frontpagemag.com/the-donks-press-agents-are-panicking/

Last week more portents of doom appeared for the Dems’ mouthpieces. The Washington Post’s owner Jeff Bezos, once a center-left stalwart, announced a radical shift in the paper’s editorial orientation. Going forward, commentary will now defend two pillars: “personal liberties and free markets.” Adding insult to injury, Bezos also said that “viewpoints opposing those pillars will be left to be published by others.”

We knew Bezos was wobbly before the election when he didn’t endorse a presidential candidate, exercising Falstaffian discretion rather than endorsing Trump. But this shift to the right burns a bridge for the progressives, whose hatred of Donald Trump is all-consuming and absolute.

Another bad sign for progs, though not as certain as Bezos’ decision, regards the Associated Press’s failure to secure a court order that halts Trump’s banishment of the wire service from the White House, the Oval Office, and Air Force One, for thumbing its nose at Trump’s renaming the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America. And, according to The Wall Street Journal, the banishment was also for “more substantial complaints about bias and dishonesty in the influential AP Stylebook.”

Again, the outcome is uncertain for now, but a win for common sense and good journalism is still possible depending on the hearing on March 20. But the AP’s hubris––demanding special consideration as though it is entitled to ignore the Constitution’s separation of powers, and colonize the executive power’s proprietary space––needs some comeuppance, especially since the media’s endemic arrogance and self-regard are contributors to its excessive partisanship and haughty pretensions to superior intelligence and righteousness.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/how-the-media-killed-itself/

Over the last twenty years, the media, an institution that had defined American politics in the twentieth century, began a decline that has wiped out its influence, its finances and its future.

Ask anyone in the media what happened and they will blame the internet, social media, disinformation, echo chambers and other tired buzzwords directing the fault elsewhere.

The reality is that the media killed itself.

The media lost its influence because it believed so much in that influence that it became convinced that it was no longer subject to the gravity of public opinion, but defined public opinion, at exactly the time when its future was most at risk and its influence was most in doubt.

It wasn’t the internet, but the media’s reaction to it that put it on its current pathway to oblivion. Rather than responding to the increasing competition resulting from a low barrier to entry by maximizing its appeal, the media radicalized until it could only appeal to niche audiences.

The media complains about echo chambers and disinformation, but it chose to become a very expensive echo chamber filled with disinformation appealing to a shrinking audience. Now it’s struggling to compete with much cheaper echo chambers filled with disinformation.

When faced with this reality, the media insisted that it had an entitlement to monopolize the market and demanded that Google, Facebook and other major monopolies subsidize its content and suppress the content of its competitors because it was in the ‘public interest’. The media’s rent seeking did not save it, it only slowed the rate of decline until it became irreversible.

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.