Displaying posts categorized under

MEDIA

MEDIA, NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Okla. Woman Took Credit for Rescuing the Afghan Girls Robotics Team—and Many in the Media Fell for Her Lies By Rick Moran

By on August 28th, 2021

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/rick-moran/2021/08/27/okla-woman-took-credit-for-rescuing-the-afghan-girls-robotics-team-and-many-in-the-media-fell-for-her-lies-n1473472

It’s a story of bravery, courage, pluck, grit, and luck. It’s also a story of self-promotion and media manipulation for personal gain.

When the all-girl Afghan robotics team escaped the clutches of the Taliban earlier this week, most people saw it as a big win for the good guys. These girls were prime targets of the Taliban’s wrath for daring to not only learn how to read and write but excel in a difficult and challenging scholastic endeavor.

An American woman from Oklahoma supposedly played a large part in the daring rescue that someone in Hollywood is going to make into a movie one day. But as it turns out, Allyson Reneau played barely any role at all in the girls’ rescue. Now, a lawyer for the girls’ sponsoring organization, Digital Citizen Fund, has sent a cease-and-desist letter to Reneau, calling for her to stop her self-aggrandizing efforts to put herself in the middle of a story she had little to do with.

Washington Post:

“Continuingly recycling old pictures with the Afghan Girls Robotics Team, many of whom are minors, as validation that you had anything to do with their immensely stressful and dangerous escape not only impacts the safety of the girls but it also significantly affects the safety of the members of the team who still remain in Afghanistan,” wrote Kim Motley, a lawyer for the group and a Digital Citizen Fund board member, in a letter sent to Reneau just after midnight Wednesday. “It is highly unfortunate that you would use such a tragically horrible situation … for what appears to be your own personal gain.”

A spokesman for the Qatari Foreign Ministry, which helped evacuate many Afghans, including the robotics team members, also accused Reneau of taking credit for a rescue she had little to do with — and lambasted the U.S. media for making her a “White savior.”

Continue reading →
MEDIA Comments turned off

The Co-Founder Of Snopes Wrote Dozens Of Plagiarized Articles For The Fact-Checking Site “You can always take an existing article and rewrite it just enough to avoid copyright infringement.”Dean Jones

By on August 16th, 2021

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/deansterlingjones/snopes-cofounder-plagiarism-mikkelson?scrolla=5eb6d68b7fedc32c19ef33b4

David Mikkelson, the co-founder of the fact-checking website Snopes, has long presented himself as the arbiter of truth online, a bulwark in the fight against rumors and fake news. But he has been lying to the site’s tens of millions of readers: A BuzzFeed News investigation has found that between 2015 and 2019, Mikkelson wrote and published dozens of articles containing material plagiarized from news outlets such as the Guardian and the LA Times.

After inquiries from BuzzFeed News, Snopes conducted an internal review and confirmed that under a pseudonym, the Snopes byline, and his own name, Mikkelson wrote and published 54 articles with plagiarized material. The articles include such topics as same-sex marriage licenses and the death of musician David Bowie.

Snopes VP of Editorial and Managing Editor Doreen Marchionni suspended Mikkelson from editorial duties pending “a comprehensive internal investigation.” He remains an officer and a 50% shareholder of the company.

“Our internal research so far has found a total of 54 stories Mikkelson published that used appropriated material, including all of the stories Buzzfeed shared with us,” Marchionni and Snopes Chief Operating Officer Vinny Green said in a statement.

“Let us be clear: Plagiarism undermines our mission and values, full stop,” Marchionni added. “It has no place in any context within this organization.”

Snopes’ editorial staff disavowed Mikkelson’s behavior in a separate statement signed by eight current writers. “We strongly condemn these poor journalistic practices. … we work hard every day to uphold the highest possible journalistic and ethical standards.”

Continue reading →
ISRAEL, MEDIA Comments turned off

BBC: Leading the World Against Israel by Richard Kemp

By on August 15th, 2021

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17646/bbc-against-israel

Following accusations of slanted reporting of the second Palestinian intifada, which began in 2000, and the rise in Jew-hatred caused by it, in 2004 the BBC was pressured to open an inquiry into its coverage, by Malcolm Balen, former BBC News editor. For 17 years Balen’s findings have been kept under lock and key by the BBC, which admitted spending $500,000 of public funds in a series of legal battles to prevent its release.

“What is it are they hiding and what are they afraid of?”, Conservative peer Lord Polack asked. Responding, the Minister for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport said that in “some instances it [the BBC] has fallen far short” of the required standards.

Three allegations that Bowen breached BBC guidelines on accuracy and impartiality were fully or partially upheld in 2009 by the BBC’s Editorial Standards Committee, which also said that he had failed to acknowledge there were views contrary to his own.

The BBC’s reporting on the Gaza conflict this year typifies its long-term bias against Israel. It constantly drew moral equivalence between Israel, a Western liberal democracy, and Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, both proscribed terrorist organizations…. There was no acknowledgement that the conflict had been initiated by these groups that openly seek the destruction of Israel or that without their violent actions, no Palestinians in Gaza or civilians in Israel would have died. Instead the BBC maintained the fiction — pushed by the Palestinian side — that Israel’s actions in Jerusalem were the cause. Nor did they mention that Hamas misappropriated millions of dollars of international aid to construct tunnels, rockets and other engines of war to attack Israeli civilians.

This biased journalism was crowned by commentary direct from Jeremy Bowen, whose report from Gaza at the end of the conflict looked more like pro-Hamas propaganda than objective reporting…..

Why so much emphasis on Bowen’s role? Because all BBC reporting on the Israel-Palestinian conflict for more than 15 years has been driven, above all, by his editorial influence.

I do not blame Bowen for the influence he wields, I blame the BBC executives that allow him, with his history, to hold a position that dominates the coverage of the world’s largest broadcast media corporation. Israel. During the 2021 Gaza conflict… the BBC had to issue corrections eight times in their Arabic news coverage alone.

Senior BBC producer Alaa Daraghme recently shared a video on Twitter which he wrote was “An Israeli settler ramming a Palestinian man near the Lions Gate.” In fact the video showed a car being driven onto the sidewalk after an attempt by Palestinians to lynch the driver, who then lost control. There are many other such cases of bias and distortion among BBC staff.

Like many others, the BBC rejects or ignores historical reality in order to portray Israel as an illegal occupier of Arab lands. To underpin its false narrative, for many years it has repeated Palestinian propaganda, ignored violence against their own people, and whitewashed their Jew-hate…. Israel’s contributions to disaster relief and other humanitarian actions around the world are almost always ignored.

There is little likelihood, without firm intervention by the British government, that the BBC will relinquish its leadership of the global anti-Israel movement that has contributed to so much suffering, misery and bloodshed.

Continue reading →
ISRAEL, MEDIA Comments turned off

Why the Media is Drawn To Israel Alex Grobman, PhD

By on August 4th, 2021

https://www.jewishpress.com/indepth/analysis/why-the-media-is-drawn-is-to-israel/2021/08/04/

Have you ever wondered why the international media is drawn to Israel?

Arab/Israeli Conflict Offers a Compelling War Story

The late Tamar Liebes, a professor of communication at the Hebrew University, opined that the Israeli-Arab conflict offers a compelling war story in which the front lines are frequently shifting, the front and rear boundaries are not clearly defined, they cannot be excluded, there is often no clear winner, and the media’s focus is on “the unexpected within the expected.” The ongoing nature of the war has created a longstanding infrastructure of foreign correspondents, facilitating the opportunity for other reporters to file stories once they arrive on the scene.

The best method to evaluate the significance of a story to a news organization is to count the number of staff assigned to the country asserts Israeli Journalist Matti Friedman. When Friedman was a correspondent at the Associated Press, the agency hired more than 40 staffers to cover Israel, Judea, Samaria, and Gaza. This was considerably more than the AP employed in China, Russia, India, or in all the 50 countries of sub-Saharan Africa combined. It was even greater than the entire number in the nations where the “Arab Spring” ultimately broke out.

According to the Foreign Press Association in Israel, there are currently 380 members representing TV, radio, photojournalists, print and web media from 32 countries in the country. Journalist Stephanie Gutmann said this comparatively large number of permanently assigned journalists, which at times included a hundred or more free-lance journalists, writers, photographers, and film makers who were in search of a new angle on the conflict or an exposé.

Danny Seaman, who for approximately 10 years served as director of the Israel Government Press Office (GPO), which is part of the Office of the Prime Minister and responsible for the foreign media in Israel, is concerned that the large number of reporters come to Israel instead of other countries where there is a conflict, because Israel makes it very easy for them.  Israel is a modern, open, democratic state and in terms of size quite manageable. Though there are no new approaches to understanding the Arab/Israeli conflict, this does not stop the reporters from trying to find new ones in the hope of winning a Pulitzer Prize.  It is “like there’s nothing else going on in the world,” Seaman said.

He is also disturbed they come to Israel without the slightest notion of what is happening in the country. They meet Arabs and Israelis from the same socio-economic background, and the journalists “live off” what they learn from their colleagues and Haaretz, Israel’s oldest, most influential daily newspaper and the newspaper most critical of Israeli government policies.

Israel No Longer “Enjoys the Benefit of the Doubt”

Zev Chafets, a former director of the Israel Government Press Office (GPO) and a senior aide to Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin, said there was a period in the Middle East, when American journalists and editorial writers favored Israel over the Arab states because Israel is an open society. Once reassessing Israel’s policies became in vogue, many editors and correspondents adopted a “neutral” and an “even handed” approach in their reporting. Israel no longer enjoyed “the benefit of the doubt.” those with “little or no ideological bent” relished in debunking “myths” about the Jewish state. In their quest for a new slant on the conflict, they found one. “Arabs biting Jews had long ceased to be news; but Jews biting Arabs—that was a story.”

Systematic Effort to Manipulate The Media

Continue reading →
MEDIA Comments turned off

AP and Reuters Team up with Twitter to Patrol Political Dissent as ‘Misinformation’ By Eric Lendrum

By on August 4th, 2021

https://amgreatness.com/2021/08/03/ap-and-reuters-team-up-with-twitter-to-patrol-political-dissent-as-misinformation/

Two of the largest news publications in the country, the Associated Press (AP) and Reuters, have teamed up with one of the leading tech giants, Twitter, in a new partnership to crack down on “misinformation” and “elevate credible information,” the Daily Caller reports.

Twitter confirmed the new alliance in a blog post, saying that the two publications would be responsible for identifying “misleading” information, and to help Twitter expand its efforts to mediate trending stories, “especially where facts are in dispute.” The websites will also help Twitter staff whenever they lack “sufficient expertise or access to a high enough volume of reputable reporting.”

“This program is just part of our ongoing efforts to help people understand the conversation happening on our service,” the Twitter blog post continued. “People experience a range of public conversations on Twitter every day, and we’re committed to continuing our work to elevate credible information and context.”

Tom Januszewski, a spokesman for the Associated Press, said that the AP aims “to expand the reach of factual journalism.” Reuters’ Hazel Baker made the questionable claim that “trust, accuracy, and impartiality are at the heart of what Reuters does every day,” and that “those values drive our commitment to stopping the spread of misinformation.”

Twitter, along with other Big Tech platforms, have significantly increased their efforts to crack down on political dissent in recent months, most notably by permanently banning President Donald Trump in January, while he was still the sitting President of the United States. Other platforms such as YouTube and Facebook have either outright banned, or attached “warning labels” to, content that raises doubts about the 2020 presidential election, the efficiency of coronavirus restrictions, and other controversial subjects.

Continue reading →
MEDIA Comments turned off

WaPo Promotes the Sexual Grooming of Children Civilization dies in darkness. Mark Tapson

By on July 6th, 2021

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/07/wapo-promotes-sexual-grooming-children-mark-tapson/

Last week The Washington Post, one of the most prominent news outlets in the world, the newspaper whose self-important motto “Democracy dies in darkness” belies its own undemocratic propaganda, saw fit to promote an opinion piece calling for the increased exposure of small children to sexual deviance.

In the article titled, “Yes, kink belongs at Pride. And I want my kids to see it,” freelance writer Lauren Rowello declared her support for the presence of “kinksters” – practitioners of sexual fetishes – in parades during so-called “Pride Month,” the thirty days a year officially devoted to the compulsory celebration of LGBT narcissism. More specifically, she called for it in order to expose children as young as toddlers to “the scope and vitality of queer life.”

Rowello, a self-described “gendervague” person who is married to a transgender woman, described how the couple attended a Pride parade in Philadelphia five years ago. (The term gendervague, in case you’re overcome by curiosity, refers “to a specifically neurodivergent experience of trans/gender identity.” You’re welcome.) At one point during the parade, Rowello wrote, “our elementary-schooler pointed in the direction of oncoming floats, raising an eyebrow at a bare-chested man in dark sunglasses whose black suspenders clipped into a leather thong. The man paused to be spanked playfully by a partner with a flog. ‘What are they doing?’ my curious kid asked as our toddler cheered them on.”

Her toddler cheered them on. In a saner time, parents wouldn’t allow adults “playfully” engaged in sado-masochism within a hundred miles of their toddlers, but today a generation or two of fanatically woke parents intentionally expose their children to such a repellent display in order to inculcate, as young as possible, a sexual awareness that kids aren’t equipped to process.

“The pair was the first of a few dozen kinksters who danced down the street, laughing together as they twirled their whips and batons, some leading companions by leashes,” Rowello continued. What kind of mother thinks it is appropriate to expose her children to human beings degrading each other with leashes? “At the time, my children were too young to understand the nuance of the situation, but I told them the truth,” Rowello explained. “That these folks were members of our community celebrating who they are and what they like to do.”

Here’s something else she could have told her children: all human beings are children of God, deserving of dignity, and literally parading them around like animals for sexual kicks is morally reprehensible. Maybe that’s too much “nuance” for Rowello.

Rowello did acknowledge that even among the LGBT crowd, there is debate about whether “kinksters” belong in Pride parades at all, at least partly because of the presence of children. But she argued that “kink visibility is a reminder that any person can and should shamelessly explore what brings joy and excitement. We don’t talk to our children enough about pursuing sex to fulfill carnal needs that delight and captivate us in the moment.”

Read that last sentence again, and ask yourself what kind of parent is in a hurry to push his or her child to fulfill carnal needs. The answer is that there are only two kinds: pedophiles and neo-Marxist ideologues who are targeting impressionable minds and vulnerable souls, with the intention of weaponizing them against the “cis-normative” status quo.

Continue reading →
MEDIA Comments turned off

Washington Post ‘Clarifies’ Error-Riddled Hit Piece On Top Anti-CRT Investigative Journalist The article is a part of the left’s response to stinging critiques of the open racism embodied in critical race theory, which has led to Chris Rufo and others being targeted.By Gabe Kaminsky

By on June 24th, 2021

https://thefederalist.com/2021/06/22/washington-post-clarifies-error-riddled-hit-piece-on-top-anti-crt-investigative-journalist/

Over the weekend, The Washington Post joined the Christopher Rufo smear campaign. He’s a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute who has become the face of public opposition to critical race theory. The article’s misrepresentations led to a story “clarification” that doesn’t go far enough.

The article, written by “reporters” Laura Meckler and Josh Dawsey, is predictable and appalling in its failure to accurately define critical race theory and how Rufo has exposed it.

WaPo’s piece is a part of the left’s response to stinging critiques of the open racism embodied in critical race theory, which has led to Rufo and others being targeted in The Atlantic, The New York Times, NBC News, and on MSNBC and CNN. But in terms of how this report ranks on language manipulation and aversion to truth, Meckler and Dawsey’s article might very well top the bunch.

Yes, Insisting White Skin Means Privilege Is Racist

Before getting into the meat of the half-cooked smear, Meckler and Dawsey propose an insufficient definition of critical race theory (CRT).

Rufo alleged that efforts to inject awareness of systemic racism and White privilege, which grew more popular following the murder of George Floyd by police, posed a grave threat to the nation …Conservatives say analyzing these issues through a racial lens is, in and of itself, racist.

This is an inadequate descriptor for the movement that is overhauling American institutions. CRT does incorporate the idea of systemic racism, but is far more radical than employing a “racial lens.”

The writers skim over the reality that the left takes things a step further, communicating through the neo-Marxist ideology that white people are implicitly racist based on the skin color they were born into, and that those who do not submit to “antiracist” “equity” dogma are racist. This is yet another example of the left’s progressive-or-bigot binary.

Continue reading →
MEDIA, P.C.-CULTURE Comments turned off

Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Lesson in Invisibilization, Unlocking Doors with Keys, and Other Cardinal Sins By Charles C. W. Cooke

By on June 23rd, 2021

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/lin-manuel-mirandas-lesson-in-invisibilization-unlocking-doors-with-keys-and-other-cardinal-sins/

Ninety-seven percent of Hispanics in the United States disfavor the term “Latinx.” How, I wonder, must they feel reading the rest of this remarkable Washington Post piece, which, taken in its entirety, may be the silliest thing ever published in a major newspaper.

The gist of the article is that the actor, composer, and director Lin-Manuel Miranda has committed a sin against dark-skinned Hispanics by making a movie, In the Heights, in which they are underrepresented. Or, at least, I think that’s the gist. It’s hard to tell when every sentence reads like this:

The deprioritization of lived and racialized experiences in favor of a nonexistent mono-cultural “Latinidad” has no function beyond fantasy. How can we honor those who came before us and risked everything to exist despite the challenge of erasure?

Good question. I’ll get back to you on that one.

Continue reading →
MEDIA, NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

The Biden No-Go Zones The Democratic Party won the long march through journalism, but this Pyrrhic victory has meant the destruction of every principle of journalistic integrity liberals ever claimed to champion. By Victor Davis Hanson

By on June 21st, 2021

https://amgreatness.com/2021/06/20/the-biden-no-go-zones/

In American journalism, there are supposed to be some clear, nonnegotiable third-rails. 

One is zero tolerance for overtly racist language and comportment among our movers and shakers. Reporters, for example, for four years damned Donald Trump for his neutralizing summation that there were both “fine people” and extremists mingled among the hordes of protestors during their occasionally violent encounters in Charlottesville, Virginia. 

It mattered little to the media that Trump added qualifiers of “many” and “both” sides of the protests: 

We condemn in the strongest possible terms this egregious display of hatred, bigotry and violence, on many sides . . . And I’m not talking about the neo-Nazis and the white nationalists, because they should be condemned totally—but you had many people in that group other than neo-Nazis and white nationalists, OK? . . . Now, in the other group also, you had some fine people, but you also had troublemakers and you see them come with the black outfits and with the helmets and with the baseball bats—you had a lot of bad people in the other group, too.

Selected words from the  above quote were recycled ad nauseam as proof Trump was a racist. 

Another no-go zone is any hint of contextualizing sexual harassment or assault. No statute of limitations can provide exemption, much less a “she said/he said” defense in the age of “women must be believed.” The Brett Kavanaugh circus of September 2018 was a reminder that a lack of evidence, credible witnesses, or basic logic is no defense against the 30-year-old charges of alleged teenage sexual misbehavior. Bill Clinton managed to use his progressive credentials as an insurance policy to avoid for months any condemnation that he was a callous womanizer, but finally the press corps found his exploitative appetites too egregious to ignore.

A third zero-tolerance zone is any hint of presidential debility. We were told in the dark days of 1973 that Nixon was non compos mentis, nursing his wounds with drink as his legendary constitution finally cracked under the pressure, making him supposedly unable physically to withstand the impending impeachment. “Saturday Night Live” made an industry out of Chevy Chase replaying Gerald Ford’s stumbles. Ronald Reagan was all but declared senile by the press for using index cards in some of his summits and speeches, or putting his hand to his ear and claiming he could not fathom reporters’ gottcha questions amid the din of swirling helicopter blades on the White House lawn. 

Finally, lying, fibbing, and even presidential exaggeration are deemed intolerable—or so we are told by the media. It does not matter that the newsroom is currently one of the great purveyors of untruth, as we saw in the Russian collusion hoax, the dubious Wuhan wet-market narrative, or the yarn about the Lafayette Square militarization to green-light a Trump photo-op. 

Continue reading →
MEDIA Comments turned off

Glazov on Lindell TV: YouTube Removes Glazov Gang’s Fauci Episode One more “strike”, YouTube warns, and the channel will be removed permanently.

By on June 21st, 2021

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/06/glazov-lindell-tv-youtube-removes-glazov-gangs-frontpagemagcom/

This new Glazov Gang episode features Brannon Howse interviewing Jamie Glazov  on Lindell TV,

Jamie discussed how YouTube has removed the Glazov Gang‘s Fauci Episode (watch it on Rumble) and how they have warned that one more “strike” will result in the permanent removal of the channel.

Don’t miss it!

Continue reading →