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MEDIA

Whatever The Atlantic Is Paying Jonathan Chait, It’s Too Much

https://issuesinsights.com/2024/12/12/whatever-the-atlantic-is-paying-jonathan-chait-its-too-much/

We are not in the habit of reading Jonathan Chait’s bloated regurgitations, but the headline on his latest column in The Atlantic — “The Bizarre Normalcy of Trump 2.0” — intrigued us because only a leftist could describe the orderly and upbeat transition that is happening right now as “bizarre.”

To Chait, what’s bizarre is that people on the left aren’t freaking out more because “what is actually happening in the capital is, by any rational standard, disturbing.”

A prime example, Chait says, is Trump’s appointment of Michael Anton as director of policy planning at the State Department, which, he says, highlights “the banal ubiquity of authoritarian thinking in the Trumpified Republican Party.”

What he says next is one of the purest, most unadulterated forms of projection we’ve ever come across.

Here’s what he writes about Anton:

Anton is best known for an essay published eight years ago called ‘The Flight 93 Election.’ In it, he argued that conservatives should support Trump, despite their serious reservations about his character, because another Democratic term in office would amount to the death of the republic. (Hillary Clinton, like the 9/11 hijackers, would steer the country toward the equivalent of a fiery demise.) At the time, Anton’s argument stood out for its existential tone and hysterical life-and-death metaphor. Now his logic — that permitting Democrats to win a single national election is tantamount to national suicide, the prevention of which justifies any measures, legal or otherwise — is a required belief for service in the power ministries. Once an oddball, Anton is just another Trump bureaucrat who subscribes to the party’s rule-or-perish ideology. (emphasis added)

Say what?

Why the media keep underestimating Israel Israel’s military successes are a repudiation of the pundit class’s worldview. Michael Murphy

https://www.spiked-online.com/2024/12/07/why-the-media-keep-underestimating-israel/

As a boy in Wilhelmine Germany during the First World War, future historian Sebastian Haffner devoured daily army bulletins. At just seven years old, he was already a ‘fanatical jingoist and armchair warrior’, meticulously tallying troop strengths. He was confident that the Kaiser’s army would soon triumph.

The bulletins, however, were rose-tinted, designed to bolster morale rather than inform. As the front deteriorated, they increasingly resembled a fantasy league, with regiments holding favourable positions only on paper. When defeat finally came, it shocked the nation. Haffner likened the feeling to ‘someone who year after year has deposited large sums of money in his bank’ only to discover ‘a gigantic overdraft instead of a fortune’.

Today, this experience is all too familiar. Like Germans deceived by rosy war bulletins, educated people are often blindsided by major events, misled by wishful thinking disguised as analysis. From Brexit to the rise and resurgence of Donald Trump, big events are routinely confounding mainstream predictions. Errors are inevitable when discussing the future, but something is amiss when they consistently tilt in the same direction.

Brexit was dismissed as unlikely to happen because few in the media class wanted it to happen. Similarly, before the recent US presidential election, MP turned commentator Rory Stewart proclaimed that Kamala Harris would ‘win comfortably’. Americans, Stewart supposed, surely wouldn’t vote for Trump again. Yet they did – across demographics and states, in greater numbers than before.

It should raise eyebrows that predictive errors so often reflect the broadly liberal worldview of those making them. This worldview esteems international law over sovereign parliaments and has a narrow view of democracy. When voters defy this orthodoxy, their choices are dismissed as mere ‘populism’. However comforting these assumptions may be, they collapse time and again under the weight of reality.

Most recently, Israel has confounded expectations in its war against Hamas. The IDF has ground Hamas into the rubble of Gaza, killing most of its leaders. It has wreaked sufficient devastation on Hezbollah to produce a ceasefire agreement, albeit a shaky one. Commentators warned solemnly of ‘escalation ladders’ and a ‘wider regional war’, predicting that Iran would not stand idly by as its proxies were degraded. Yet apart from a few token missile strikes, that is precisely what has happened.

Journalists Mourn That Jack Smith’s Probes Are Dead When media ethics died. by Tim Graham

https://www.frontpagemag.com/journalists-mourn-that-jack-smiths-probes-are-dead/

Democratic attorneys waged legal war on former President Donald Trump on every level of government: federal, state, county and city. Now that he’s been reelected, all that legal wrangling is going to be curtailed. Biden-appointed special counsel Jack Smith had to fold his tent, and on Nov. 25, the networks offered live “breaking news” that just sounded like they were the broken ones.

Start with ABC’s Jonathan Karl, whose third anti-Trump book was aggressively titled “Tired of Winning: Donald Trump and the End of the Grand Old Party.” That’s a little embarrassing for Karl and his publishers now that the GOP controls the White House, Congress and 55% of state legislative seats.

Karl decried the death of accountability for Trump: “He ultimately will not be held to account in the criminal court system for his actions to overturn the presidential election of 2020.” Karl is upset that the Orange Man isn’t in an orange jumpsuit. No jail, no justice!

CBS reporter Scott MacFarlane, whose primary beat for almost four years now has been treating Jan. 6 as worse than 9/11, was also upset: “The historic case against Donald Trump for allegations he tried to conspire to overturn an election and the ties to that horrific attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6, that case is dying with a whimper today.”

This pro-prosecutor tone was not the MacFarlane spin when the Bidens were the ones being investigated. He overused the adverb “allegedly” to describe pictures of Hunter Biden’s rampant drug use when he was on trial. He lamented special counsel Robert Hur “controversially” stated President Joe Biden would appear too doddering to be convicted in his classified-documents case. Who was whimpering instead of holding politicians accountable then?

Over a Dozen Current and Former Fox News Employees Shoot Down NBC’s Hit Piece Against Pete Hegseth–on the Record By Debra Heine

https://amgreatness.com/2024/12/04/over-a-dozen-current-and-former-fox-news-employees-shoot-down-nbcs-hit-piece-against-pete-hegseth-on-the-record/

An NBC News hit piece accusing Pete Hegseth, President-elect Donald Trump’s pick for defense secretary, of habitually coming to work at “Fox and Friends Weekend” hung over and smelling of alcohol has been refuted by over a dozen Fox News personalities and guests who have worked with him, including his two cohosts.

The NBC story, which is based on ten anonymous sources, claims that Hegseth’s drinking “concerned” his colleagues at Fox News.

“Two of those people said that on more than a dozen occasions during Hegseth’s time as a co-host of ‘Fox & Friends Weekend,’ which began in 2017, they smelled alcohol on him before he went on air,” the NBC story alleges. “Those same two people, plus another, said that during his time there he appeared on television after they’d heard him talk about being hungover as he was getting ready or on set.”

According to the story, “one of the sources said they smelled alcohol on him as recently as last month and heard him complain about being hungover this fall.”

NBC News reporters Chloe Melas, Courtney Kube and Sarah Fitzpatrick claim they spoke with ten current and former employees at Fox News. However, 12 of Hegseth’s colleagues at Fox have gone on the record to strongly dispute the story on social media.  And these employees say they weren’t even contacted by NBC News for comment.

Hegseth’s Fox and Friends Weekend cohost Will Cain fumed on X that NBC’s story is “Bullshit. 100 percent bullshit. Actually…horseshit.”

“Put my name on it. On the record. It’ll be your only on the record source,” Cain wrote. “Signed, The guy who sat next to him for 8 hours every week for five years starting at 6am.”

Election Be Damned, Google’s Anti-Trump Bias Is Alive And Well

https://issuesinsights.com/2024/11/29/election-be-damned-googles-anti-trump-bias-is-alive-and-well/

Donald Trump may have overwhelmingly won reelection, but according to Google’s content police, saying anything nice about him is “demonstrably false” and a threat to the “democratic process.”

Do you think we’re exaggerating?

We received notice the other day that our article “Unburdened By What Has Been, Trump Is Poised To Deliver Bigly” contained, according to Google, “unreliable and harmful claims.”

What falls into this category? Content that:

makes claims that are demonstrably false and could significantly undermine participation or trust in an electoral or democratic process.
promotes harmful health claims, or relates to a current, major health crisis and contradicts authoritative scientific consensus.
contradicts authoritative scientific consensus on climate change.

Google didn’t, and never does, provide any specific information on what exactly violated these standards or what a “fix” would entail. But it did strip its ads from that page, costing us money.

So, we decided to try to figure out on our own what the violation was. There were no health claims or mention of “climate change,” so it has to be the first bullet above.

What was “demonstrably false”?

Is Pro-Kamala Harris Bias During 2024 Election Destroying The Big Media? I&I/TIPP Poll Terry Jones

https://issuesinsights.com/2024/11/27/is-pro-kamala-harris-bias-during-2024-election-destroying-the-big-media-ii-tipp-poll/

If you want to know why big media outlets are struggling so badly, you only need to look at the coverage of this month’s presidential election. Not only were the media perceived by voters as favoring Democratic Party candidate Kamala Harris, but they continued to show an erosion in Americans’ overall trust in them as sources of information, the latest I&I/TIPP Poll shows.

The November national online poll includes 1,436 adults, with a +/-2.6 percentage point margin of error.

Each month, I&I/TIPP asks voters the following questions about the national media:

“Generally speaking, how much trust do you have in the traditional or established news media (Example: Washington Post, New York Times, NPR, CBS News, etc.) to report the news accurately and fairly?”

And, “Generally speaking, how much trust do you have in the alternative news media (Example: New York Post, Washington Times, NewsMax, The Daily Caller, etc.) to report the news accurately and fairly?”

Respondents are given a number of possible responses to both questions, including: “A lot of trust,” “Quite a bit of trust,” “Little trust,” “No trust at all,” and “Not sure.”

In keeping with the recent trend, the overall trust picture for the media is not a pretty one to behold.

Media Describes Muslim Terrorist as “Homeless Florida Man” The name of the “homeless Florida man”? Harun Abdul-Malik Yener. by Daniel Greenfield

https://www.frontpagemag.com/media-describes-muslim-terrorist-as-homeless-florida-man/

What is it with those homeless Florida men anyway?

Florida man arrested in alleged plot to bomb New York Stock Exchange – CBS News

Homeless man arrested for plotting to bomb New York Stock Exchange – UPI

US arrests homeless man in New York Stock Exchange Bomb Plot- Reuters

FBI arrests homeless Florida man in alleged plot to bomb New York Stock Exchange – NBC News

The name of the “homeless Florida man”? Harun Abdul-Malik Yener.

Harun Abdul-Malik Yener considered joining ISIS, had been looking into bombmaking since 2017 and boasted,
“I feel like Bin Laden.”

So clearly this is a Florida homeless man problem. And not another Muslim terrorist problem.

Fake News in the 21st Century: The egregious, unethical sin of omission – Diane Bederman-

https://dianebederman.com/fake-news-in-the-21st-century-the-egregious-unethical-sin-of-omission/

“The omission is the most powerful form of lie, and it is the duty of the historian to ensure that those lies do not creep into the history books.” —George Orwell,author of ‘1984’

We have heard a great deal about Fake News over the decades. But we have not discussed the fake news that is the result of the egregious unethical omission of facts.

I am old enough to remember Donald Rumsfeld when he wrote about the known knowns, known unknowns, and unknown unknowns. Many laughed. I didn’t. I realized that he could be talking about the failure of MSM – the failure to report ALL the facts:The unknown unknowns. Sadly, once Fake News is shared online, it is there forever. Far too few people fact check. They just blindly believe.

I am also old enough to remember journalists like Walter Cronkite and Huntley/Brinkley. Days before cable news.

We have witnessed the most egregious sins of omission these past few years as the left-leaning legacy media tried desperately to prevent Donald Trump from being elected a second time, while having tried to destroy his first Presidency.

Always the same modus operandi – share half a quote – blow it up on social media and MSM. Take those half quotes and synthesize a false conclusion. Trump is hitler. Trump is a fascist.  Trump is a danger to America. Put all of this on social media where it lives forever.

The impotent rage of the flailing woke elites Brendan O’Neill

https://www.spiked-online.com/2024/11/15/the-impotent-rage-of-the-flailing-woke-elites/

So the Guardian has flounced off of X. With characteristic pomposity it announced this week that it will no longer post its articles on this ‘toxic media platform’. X has become a volcanic mess of noxious opinion since evil Elon Musk took over, say the crybabies of Kings Place. So they’re off, to Bluesky, whatever that is. Quite how X’s users will cope without such fine journalism as ‘My toddler is vegan. What’s the problem?’ and ‘What if the mega-rich just want rocket ships to escape the Earth they destroy?’ remains to be seen.

The Guardian charges Musk with letting X be overrun with ‘disturbing content’. This once nice joint now simmers with ‘far-right conspiracy theories and racism’, it says. Let’s leave to one side the industrial-strength gall it must require for a media group that wanged on for years about how Brexit was the handiwork of a ‘shadowy global operation’ spending oodles of ‘dark money’ to accuse anyone else of being a conspiratorial crackpot. The more striking thing is the Guardian’s fantastically haughty refusal to hang out anywhere there are people who have a different opinion.

Let’s be real: that’s what this hissy fit is about, this exodus of the entitled, this fleeing of the self-important from X. They just can’t abide being around people who like Trump and don’t like mass immigration and think lesbians don’t have cocks. Musk’s true crime, in their eyes, was to open X up to views that lie outside the fiercely policed parameters of correct think. Their ‘X-odus’ is an oik-avoidance strategy, a retreat from the madding crowd of lowly opinion-havers into the safety of the liberal echo chamber where everyone agrees Trump is Hitler, Brexit is ‘Brexshit’ and Eddie Izzard is a woman.

It was summed up in a column in the Guardian about the Guardian’s abandonment of X. (The Guardian’s favourite topic of discussion is itself.) ‘Hell is other people’, the writer cries. ‘Or, more specifically, other people on social media.’ Of late, she says, X has become ‘the digital equivalent of a pub notorious for glassing at chucking-out time’, whereas Bluesky hosts a ‘more measured, less emotive conversation’. The hints of class hatred are delicious. X is depicted as a shady pub in the chavvy bit of town while Bluesky is apparently akin to the hot-desking zone at Soho House. God bless the Guardian, they gave mingling with the masses their best shot but it’s just not for them.

One thing the Guardian really came to hate on X was the dreaded community note, which is when users can collaboratively correct a post they feel is misleading. Guardian posts on Brexit and Net Zero and other matters were often targeted by these organic swarms of sceptics. That’s the ‘glassing’ they feared – the shoving of the glass of public doubt into the face of elite ideology. Just imagine how painful it was for the posh and virtuous of the Guardian to have some sunburned bloke with the England flag in his social-media bio waging a war of community notes against their online blather. The horror!

The least convincing thing in the Guardian’s smug justification for its retreat from X is its cry that Musk is using the platform ‘to shape political discourse’. Now, this is true, of course. Musk is not shy about his conversion to the cause of Trump. He took every opportunity to push Trumpism on X in the run-up to the presidential election. Yet the idea that the Guardian has some classically liberal hatred for billionaires using their swag and clout to shape politics is bullshit. The Guardian was fine with Twitter, as it was then, when a ‘nicer’ breed of Silicon Valley fat cat was using it to big up the Dems, silence pesky feminists and gag anyone judged to be ‘far right’. What really horrifies the Guardian is that its class of anti-populist, post-truth graduate hysterics has lost control of X. It hates Musk not for stomping his political bootprint on X but for erasing its own.

Editor-in-Chief of ‘Scientific American’ Resigns After Anti-Trump Rant By Eric Lendrum

https://amgreatness.com/2024/11/15/editor-in-chief-of-scientific-american-resigns-after-anti-trump-rant/

The editor-in-chief of Scientific American has resigned from her position following a vulgar rant against President-elect Donald Trump and his supporters.

As the New York Post reports, Laura Helmuth announced her resignation on Thursday, declaring that she was “going to take some time to think about what comes next (and go birdwatching).”

As previously reported, Helmuth reacted to the results of the 2024 election in real-time, beginning her deranged rants once it became clear that former President Trump was going to win an historic second, non-consecutive term.

“Every four years I remember why I left Indiana (where I grew up) and remember why I respect the people who stayed and are trying to make it less racist and sexist,” said Helmuth in a series of social media posts.

“Solidarity to everybody whose meanest, dumbest, most bigoted high-school classmates are celebrating early results because f*** them to the moon and back,” she continued. She also declared that “Gen X is so full of f***ing fascists.”

Helmuth wouldn’t issue an apology for her remarks until November 7th, affirming that her insults were “offensive and inappropriate,” while claiming that she would “respect and value people across the political spectrum.” She deleted the posts in question, but they were preserved through screenshots that have since been shared by her critics, including X owner Elon Musk, who agreed with another user who described Helmuth as “a political activist who has taken over a scientific institution.”