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MEDIA

The Flood of Political Violence the Press Refuses to Cover An impressive list. by Brad Slager

https://www.frontpagemag.com/the-flood-of-political-violence-the-press-refuses-to-cover/

If we were to listen to the lectures from the media, we are on the cusp of an outbreak of violence set to explode from the right side of the political spectrum. President Biden has enthusiastically pushed this agenda, positioning MAGA Nation as a violent faction orchestrating an uprising of democracy-threatening actions any day now. At Biden’s direction, “fascist” has become the left’s new knee-jerk accusation since “racist” has become a played-out charge.

There is one disqualifier; the actual acts that we have recently seen that fall under this heading are emanating from the left. There have been numerous incidents of leftist political violence over the past year, yet – despite typifying the very promised outbreak of outrage – these are somehow not classified as dangerous, get explained away, or are outright ignored by the press.

The following examples perfectly display the very promised violence they say will arrive any day now from the conservative right, and their willingness to not address these incidents exposes the effort to demonize and criminalize only one side of the political arena.

North Dakota Political Killing

Last week, Shannon Brandt was arrested for using his car to run over and kill an 18-year-old who he declared was a “Republican extremist.” There has been a notable lack of enthusiasm in reporting on this on a national level, and we have been spared numerous news panel discussions, editorials, and think pieces decrying the political divide in this country. Some are even going so far as to say there is no evidence that this was a politically-motivated attack – despite the fact that the suspect, Shannon Brandt, repeatedly stated he did this as a result of the political stance of his victim.

Republican Teenager Murdered, Media Yawn They don’t want this in the “political violence” category. by Tim Graham

https://www.frontpagemag.com/republican-teenager-murdered-media-yawn/

A long time ago, when Air Supply and Toto were in heavy rotation on the radio, I was an 18-year-old Midwestern Republican kid in braces. So, I was especially outraged when news emerged from tiny McHenry, North Dakota, that 18-year-old Republican kid in braces Cayler Ellingson was run over and killed for his political views.

Shannon Brandt, 41, struck and killed the teenager with his Ford Explorer SUV early Sunday in an alley. His mother said Cayler called and asked her if she knew Brandt (she did). The boy called again a short time later and said that “‘he’ or ‘they’ were chasing him.” The mother could no longer reach him after that.

Court documents said, “Brandt admitted to striking the pedestrian with his car because he had a political argument with the pedestrian and believed the pedestrian was calling people “to come get him.” He claimed the teen was part of an unspecified Republican “extremist group.” Brandt was released on bail.

While the Fox News Channel and Newsmax both started reporting this story on the evening of Sept. 20, NewsBusters found zero coverage on ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN or MSNBC. How about our taxpayer-funded PBS and NPR? Zero coverage. The New York Times and The Washington Post had nothing.

The Great Canadian Mass Graves Hoax Why so many journalists embraced a story as “true” even though it wasn’t real. Bari Weiss

https://www.commonsense.news/p/the-great-canadian-mass-graves-hoax?utm_source=email

Last year, The New York Times dropped a bombshell headline: ‘Horrible History’: Mass Grave of Indigenous Children Reported in Canada. As other outlets picked up the shocking story, marches, protests and riots erupted across Canada. One former Canadian minister called it “Canada’s George Floyd moment.”

But according to veteran journalist Terry Glavin, the shocking story about a mass graves wasn’t true.

And saying that—reporting that—came at a very high cost.

Terry Glavin has been a reporter for over 20 years. In that time, he’s had a particular focus on persecuted minorities. Both in faraway places like China, Afghanistan, Russia and Iraq, but also in his own backyard, where he has reported extensively on the First Nations of Canada and the abuses they have suffered at the hands of the state. So how is it that someone who has spent his career giving voice to the most vulnerable, found himself accused of genocide denial?

That’s what today’s fascinating and provocative conversation on Honestly is about. In the end, it’s about what happens when the truth no longer matters.

Ebrahim Raisi’s predictable ‘CBS News’ performance By Ruthie Blum

https://www.jns.org/opinion/ebrahim-raisis-predictable-cbs-news-performance/

 The brouhaha surrounding Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi’s comments about the Nazi genocide of the Jews, during an interview that aired on Sunday with CBS News’s “60 Minutes,” is puzzling.
Anyone who expected the radical political figurehead of the mullah-ruled Islamic Republic to acknowledge, let alone denounce, the acts of the Third Reich—when his regime makes no bones about wanting to finish the job that Adolf Hitler started—is living in an alternate universe.

Nevertheless, the short exchange he had on the topic with correspondent Lesley Stahl made international headlines and was circulated widely on social media. When asked by Stahl whether he “believe[d] the Holocaust happened—that 6 million Jews were slaughtered,” Raisi replied, “Look, historical events should be investigated by researchers and historians. There are some signs that it happened. If so, they should allow it to be investigated and researched.”
The only thing noteworthy about this was his willingness to point to “some signs that it happened.” It was almost amusing of him to suggest that it be “investigated and researched.”

As though he had no idea that it’s been studied for decades and verified by historians and survivors. And as if his role-model ayatollahs aren’t keen to emulate the Holocaust, albeit Islamist-style: first, through terrorist proxies in Syria, Lebanon, Judea and Samaria and Gaza, and ultimately with nukes.

“So, you’re not sure; I’m getting that you’re not sure,” Stahl said quietly, being careful to avoid causing her interviewee to rue over having agreed to be challenged by a woman.
“What about Israel’s right to exist?” she then queried.

Here, Raisi didn’t hesitate or moderate his answer. But he did, however, refrain from repeating the name of the Jewish state that’s in the crosshairs of his massive arsenal of weapons, both in Iran and along Israel’s borders.

How A Small, Conservative Campus Paper Did A Better Job Covering The BYU Volleyball Incident Than “The New York Times” Another strike against “moral clarity” in journalism Jesse Singal

https://jessesingal.substack.com/p/how-a-small-conservative-campus-paper?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

Last month, Rachel Richardson—the only black starter on the women’s volleyball team at Duke University—leveled a shocking accusation. She said that during her team’s August 26 match against Brigham Young University, fans inside the BYU arena in Provo, Utah inundated her with racist abuse and threats.

After the match, 19-year-old Richardson told her godmother, Lesa Pamplin, about the incident. Pamplin is a criminal defense attorney running for a county judgeship in Texas, and was not at the game—but the next day, she published a tweet that rocketed the story to national attention: “My Goddaughter is the only black starter for Dukes [sic] volleyball team. While playing yesterday, she was called a [n-word] every time she served. She was threatened by a white male that told her to watch her back going to the team bus. A police officer had to be put by their bench.”

The tweet is no longer available, but it racked up 185,000 likes before it was archived. LeBron James himself responded: “you tell your Goddaughter to stand tall, be proud and continue to be BLACK!!! We are a brotherhood and sisterhood!  We have her back. This is not sports.”

Richardson’s story also spread via her father, Marvin Richardson, who is Deputy Director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and who spoke with multiple outlets on behalf of his daughter. In an August 27 story about the incident in the New York Times that named him but not his daughter, he described an alarming, potentially violent scene. Despite an onslaught of slurs, he told the Times, his daughter thought the safest choice was “to keep her head down and continue playing.” He said that “as the crowd got more hyped and the epithets kept coming, she wanted to respond back but she told me she was afraid that, if she did, the raucous crowd could very well turn into a mob mentality.”

The Media’s Pathological Commitment to Dividing Americans along Racial Lines By Isaac Schorr & Brittany Bernstein

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/the-medias-pathological-commitment-to-dividing-americans-along-racial-lines/

Signs of Rot and Hope in BYU Volleyball Story

When an opportunity arises to publish a story that might make Americans feel as though they’re living in a country just barely more racially harmonious than South Africa under apartheid, much of the mainstream press have long adhered to a compact: Never investigate, and, once the story is proven to be mistaken, never apologize.

Late last month, Rachel Richardson, a member of the Duke University women’s volleyball team, accused fans of the Brigham Young University squad of hurling racial epithets at her during a match at BYU. She further charged BYU officials with having “failed to take the necessary steps to stop the unacceptable behavior and create a safe environment.”

Everyone — including the administration at BYU, who quickly identified and banned a suspect from campus — was rightly horrified by the prospect of such harassment of a black athlete.

Yet at so many outlets, Richardson’s allegations were treated not as a subject of inquiry, but as gospel truth to immediately be atoned for.

“What does it say about the BYU community and culture that this happened?” CNN’S Alisyn Camerota asked BYU’s athletic director. “A Division I volleyball match at Brigham Young University turned really ugly when black players from Duke University endured racial slurs from at least one fan in the crowd,” explained Brianna Keilar, also of CNN.

The New York Times reported that “Marvin Richardson, the father of the Duke volleyball player, said in an interview late Saturday that a slur was repeatedly yelled from the stands as his daughter was serving, making her fear ‘the raucous crowd’ could grow violent.” The Times tacked on that BYU’s “student population is less than 1 percent Black” and “has struggled with creating an inclusive environment for its students of color,” so that readers could understand that BYU is the type of place where racial harassment takes place.

The New York Times and its devouring obsession with President Trump By David Zukerman

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2022/08/the_new_york_times_and_its_devouring_obsession_with_president_trump.html

The first time The New York Times demanded a special prosecutor to investigate President Trump, was less than a month after his inauguration.

From the opening paragraph of its February 17, 2017 editorial, the call for a special prosecutor was based on the fabrication conceived by the Hillary Clinton-based resistance that the president was a Putin agent — and the Times colluded, seeking to overthrow a legitimately-elected president.

Then, on May 11, 2017, a contributor for the publication urged Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein to name a special prosecutor to investigate President Trump. Less than a week later, following the firing of FBI director James Comey, Rosenstein tapped Robert Mueller to be special counsel.

Six days after that, the paper published an op-ed calling for an investigation of President Trump’s dismissal of FBI director James Comey, arguing that the firing may have constituted a criminal act by the president.

And just two days ago, the Times took the rhetoric to a new level, and called for the former president to be indicted — apparently in hopes that its editorial lightning will strike again. Having succeeded in pressing Mr. Rosenstein to appoint Mueller to investigate a sitting president after just four months, it appears that the Times is now confident they can replicate the situation and pressure Attorney General Merrick Garland to indict former President Trump. Garland will be as obsequious to the Times diktat as was the craven Mr. Rosenstein. (And with nary a Republican voice in Congress heard in protest!)

Here is the title of the August 28, 2022 New York Times editorial, in boldface letters:

Donald Trump Is Not Above the Law

The Times editorial is predictable in that from February 2017 to the present, the paper has demanded the investigation, the impeachment, the ouster of Mr. Trump. It’s also pathetic, wallowing for six years and counting, in its obsession with the former president. To what end? Banishment to St. Helena, if not imprisonment?

The New York Times is eating itself Why is the world’s most liberal newsroom being accused of racism? Jenny Holland

https://www.spiked-online.com/2022/08/27/the-new-york-times-is-eating-itself/

Gather round, children, it is time for another instalment in our fun-filled series of Watch the Woke Newsroom Eat Itself Alive.

This week a new report by the New York Times Guild – the New York Times chapter of the national journalists’ union, NewsGuild – contained a great bombshell: ‘The New York Times’s performance-review system has for years given significantly lower ratings to employees of colour, an analysis by Times journalists in the NewsGuild shows.’ And in 2020, not a single black employee was given the ‘highest rating’ in employee evaluations, while ‘white employees accounted for more than 90 per cent of the roughly 50 people who received the top score’.

This has been widely interpreted as as a sign of ‘racial bias’ and even ‘racial discrimination’ at the Times.

I haven’t set foot in the Times newsroom for a long time, and obviously I have no knowledge of the individuals whose evaluations are being questioned by the union. So I am neither defending the report nor denying its veracity.

I can confirm, however, that when I worked there – back in the olden days, before woke millennials made skin colour a major topic of conversation among the journalistic elite – I did not meet a single racist. The vast majority of the people I worked with were the most open, liberal, high-minded, Upper West Side-dwelling, well-meaning people I have ever had the pleasure of knowing. There were a few grumpy old-timers tucked away in their messy cubicles. But even within the ultra-focused, deadline-driven environment, the vibe on the whole was more 1970s Sesame Street than 1950s Alabama.

Majority of Americans No Longer Trust Mainstream Media, Regardless of Party Sarah Arnold

https://townhall.com/tipsheet/saraharnold/2022/08/24/only-32-percent-trust-the-political-media-n2612197

It’s not news that American’s trust in mainstream media has dissolved over the past few years. Former president Trump hailed political news networks as “fake news” when it became apparent that the networks no longer delivered unbiased information, and instead pushed for a certain narrative. 

According to a new Rasmussen Reports poll, 62 percent of voters believe media bias is getting worse; and 82 percent say “fake news” is only going to become a bigger problem than it is now. 

52 percent of voters just don’t trust political media overall. 

This may be because viewers are left to sort fact from fiction, bombarded with information that may or may not be true. So long are the days where news was simply just news as it happened with no spin or propaganda seeped in. 

When pollsters were asked whether they trust the political news they are getting, just a mere 32 percent said no. 

However, trust in the media varied between parties. 67 percent of Republicans and conservatives were quick to say they are weary of what to believe on the news, while 55 percent of Democrats say they do trust news about President Joe Biden, Washington and Congress. 

It will take a long time for news networks to rebuild the trust, as well as commitment and re-branding to gain viewers back. 

CNN took a nosedive in ratings when the Left decided to become the radical progressives they are today. 

Twitter’s “Tricky” Timing Problem: Lawsuit Reveals Back Channel with CDC to Coordinate Censorship: Jonathan Turley

https://jonathanturley.org/2022/08/24/twitters-tricky-timing-problem-lawsuit-reveals-back-cdc-channel-to-coordinate-censorship/

“Tricky.” Over the course of 110 pages in a federal complaint, that one descriptive word seemed to stand out among the exchanges between social media executives and public health officials on censoring public viewpoints. The exchange reveals long-suspected coordination between the government and these social media companies to manage a burgeoning censorship system. Twitter just reportedly suspended another doctor who sought to raise concerns over Pfizer Covid records. Former New York Times science reporter Alex Berenson is also suing Twitter over his suspension after raising dissenting views to the CDC. In the meantime, Twitter is rolling out new procedures to combat “misinformation” in the upcoming elections — a move that has some of us skeptical.The recently disclosed exchange between defendant Carol Crawford, the CDC’s Chief of digital media, revealed a back channel with Twitter and other companies to censor “unapproved opinions” on social media.  The “tricky” part may be due to the fact that, during that week of March 25, 2021, then CEO Jack Dorsey was testifying on such censorship before Congress and insisting that “we don’t have a censoring department.”  It seems that any meeting on systemic censorship with the government would have to wait until after Dorsey denied that such systemic censorship existed.
The exchange is part of the evidence put forward by leading doctors who are alleging a systemic private-government effort to censor dissenting scientific or medical views. The lawsuit filed by Missouri and Louisiana was joined by experts, including Drs. Jayanta Bhattacharya (Stanford University) and Martin Kulldorff (Harvard University). Bhattacharya objected this week to the suspension of Dr. Clare Craig after she raised concerns about Pfizer trial documents.Those doctors were the co-authors of the Great Barrington Declaration, which advocated for a more focused Covid response that targeted the most vulnerable population rather than widespread lockdowns and mandates. Many are now questioning the efficacy and cost of the massive lockdown as well as the real value of masks or the rejection of natural immunities as an alternative to vaccination.  Yet, these experts and others were attacked for such views just a year ago. Some found themselves censored on social media for challenging claims of Dr. Fauci and others.