Displaying posts categorized under

MEDIA

MEDIA Comments turned off

Heather Mac Donald Trumped The mainstream press is about to suffer its most definitive discrediting yet.

By on November 8th, 2024

https://www.city-journal.org/article/trumped

For months, the media have issued apocalyptic warnings about a second Donald Trump presidency. Arcane diagrams of nefarious political connections and multipage spreads of damning quotes have laid out how Trump will tear down democratic norms. He will unleash the National Guard on Democratic voters. He will wreak vengeance on his enemies. He will usher in fascism. He will have Liz Cheney shot. He will be a dictator on Day One. He will use the military to round up millions of migrants. He will seek a national abortion ban. He will outlaw in vitro fertilization. He will suppress free speech.

And now that Trump has been elected again, in a historic political comeback, the press continues to lay down a marker against which to measure its own ideological blinders. On Wednesday, November 6, the New York Times issued the same parade of horribles that it has been hawking since Trump declared his 2024 candidacy: Trump will “use military force against his political opponents . . . crush the independence of the Department of Justice, use government to push public health conspiracies and abandon America’s allies abroad.” He will “turn the government into a tool of his own grievances, a way to punish his critics and richly reward his supporters” and rule as a “dictator”—if only on Day One.

According to a Times headline, America has just hired a “strongman.” Its news reporting explains: “America stands on the precipice of an authoritarian style of governance never before seen in its 248-year history.”

Historian Ruth Ben-Chait tells the paper that Trump has prepared for authoritarian government by teaching the public to “see American democracy as a failed experiment.” His victory means the triumph of a style of government that uses “violence as a means of solving political problems.”

A national political correspondent for the Washington Post, Ashley Parker, said on MSNBC that Trump will “take revenge on his enemies” this time around.

None of these things will happen. Trump will not usher in authoritarian government or fascism. He will not shred the rule of law. His administration will not ask Internet platforms to censor information and opinion that opposes administration policies, as did the Biden administration. The press predictions are all on the record and can be consulted for accuracy from this moment onward.

Continue reading →
MEDIA, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Douglas Murray: What the British Government Wouldn’t Say Over the summer, UK police threatened people who dared to speculate about the background of a killer. Now, they’ve admitted that he possessed an al-Qaeda manual.

By on November 3rd, 2024

https://www.thefp.com/p/douglas-murray-british-police-taylor-swift-killer-terrorist-al-qaeda?utm_campaign=email-post&r=8t06w&utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

There are certain rules in British public life that are worth noting. Such as this one: If someone is killed by a jihadist or someone who could plausibly be connected to immigration in any way, the British public will not be informed of the possible motive—or at least not until it becomes impossible to conceal it any longer.

Certain rules follow on from this. One is that “wise” heads will inform anyone who does mention a likely motive that they must be exceptionally careful not to prejudice any forthcoming trial. There then comes an insistence that there will be a time and a place to debate these things. Quite often, that time and place never arrives.

We have seen this enough times now, from the murder of Drummer Lee Rigby to the murder of Sir David Amess; from the Ariana Grande concert attack to the Taylor Swift dance-class massacre. This last has come back to the fore with a suggestive revelation this week. Readers may recall that back in July a maniac went into a children’s dance workshop in Southport, England, and started knifing the participants. Three young girls—Bebe King, Elsie Dot Stancombe, and Alice da Silva Aguiar (ages 6, 7, and 9, respectively)—died of their injuries. Many others had life-changing wounds.

For the time being, it is safe to say that such horrors are relatively uncommon in the UK. We do not have such attacks on a daily basis, so it is inevitable that as well as being angry, the British public might be curious about how such a grotesque and unusual attack could occur. But the police seemed strangely unwilling to release any information. And this is when people can surmise something with considerable accuracy: If the attacker had been a far-right extremist of the kind we are told is so common in our country, and had shouted, “I’m doing this for Oswald Mosley,” then we would have heard about it. If the attacker had said, “All Taylor Swift fans must be killed,” we might also have heard of it. But there was silence.

Eventually there was a coy statement that Sky News and other media eunuchs were all too pleased to report—which was that the suspect was from Cardiff. “Ah,” we might all say, “a typical Welshman.” Except that nobody does think that. People knew that there must be more. Soon it was revealed that the attacker was of Rwandan heritage, at which point all the anti-speculation people said: “You see, nothing to see here.” After some furious googling, these same people pointed out that Rwanda is a majority-Christian country and that, in any case, the suspect was the child of immigrants, and not a recent arrival on an illegal boat. Meaning that the identity of the attacker didn’t matter, because one dogma of the multicultural state is that once you are in Britain, you become as British as roast beef, whether you originated here or not.

Continue reading →
MEDIA Comments turned off

Heather Mac Donald Journalism Dies in Lockstep To the outrage of their readers and staff, the Washington Post and Los Angeles Times withhold endorsement in the presidential race.

By on October 30th, 2024

https://www.city-journal.org/article/journalism-dies-in-lockstep

The media world is in a fury: the Washington Post and Los Angeles Times recently announced that they would not endorse a presidential candidate. Editors and columnists at both papers have resigned in protest; readers have cancelled their subscriptions en masse. Why the outrage? Because everyone knew that those papers would have endorsed Kamala Harris. Why the certainty? Because the papers’ coverage of Donald Trump has been so unrelentingly negative. (The decision not to endorse was made by the papers’ owners: Jeff Bezos, in the case of the Post, and medical entrepreneur Patrick Soon-Shiong, in the case of the Times.) 

Acknowledgment of that one-sidedness has been unapologetically frank.

Former Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein argued that the non-endorsement decision “ignores the Washington Post’s own overwhelming reportorial evidence on the threat Donald Trump poses to democracy. Under Jeff Bezos’s ownership, the Washington Post’s news operation has used its abundant resources to rigorously investigate the danger and damage a second Trump presidency could cause to the future of American democracy.”

The editorials editor at the Los Angeles Times, Mariel Garza, was even more explicit. “How could we spend eight years railing against Trump and the danger his leadership poses to the country,” Garza wrote in her resignation letter, “and then fail to endorse the perfectly decent Democrat challenger—who we previously endorsed for the US Senate?” (Garza proved her L.A. Times bona fides by playing the race and gender cards as well as the threat to democracy card: the decision not to endorse “makes us look . . . a bit sexist and racist.”)

It was “patently absurd,” L.A. Times columnist Robin Abcarian told L.A. Times reporter James Rainey, for the newspaper that had written dozens of news stories and opinion pieces about the dangers of Trump to pull back belatedly from endorsing Harris. (Abcarian and Rainey are off in their quantitative estimate of anti-Trump journalism by a factor of at least 1,000.)

Continue reading →
ISRAEL, MEDIA Comments turned off

The Media Is Implementing Sinwar’s Genocidal Strategy by Alan M. Dershowitz and Andrew Stein

By on October 29th, 2024

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/21065/hamas-media-genocidal-strategy

Although they could easily distinguish between combatant and non-combatant deaths, Hamas refuses to do so.

They [Hamas] fail to acknowledge that many of these so-called children were also combatants.

They do the same with women, conveying the impression that only men are terrorists.

Without the support of the media, this strategy would not succeed.

And useful ignoramuses on university campuses, along with bigots in international organizations, falsely accuse Israel of genocide, despite the successful efforts of the IDF to reduce civilian casualties to the minimum possible….

In the absence of an honest accounting, the media will continue to do Sinwar’s nefarious work in increasing Palestinian casualties in order to increase the pressure on Israel.

Sadly, the media’s dangerous cooperation with terrorists tells us more about them than about the war about which they purport to be “reporting.”

Following the death of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, documentary evidence has emerged confirming what many observers already knew: namely, that Sinwar weaponized the death of Gazan civilians, especially women and children.

Continue reading →
ELECTIONS, MEDIA Comments turned off

The Washington Post Declines to Endorse for President, and Civilization Melts Jeffrey Blehar

By on October 26th, 2024

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/the-washington-post-declines-to-endorse-for-president-and-civilization-melts/?utm_source=recirc-

The Washington Post — newspaper of the federal clerisy, official organ of the Resistance, the place where “Democracy Dies in Darkness” — announced this afternoon that not only will it not be endorsing either Kamala Harris or Donald Trump for president in 2024, but that it will never make an endorsement again. (This is truly a shame; as a colleague lamented to me, now I guess we’ll just never know how these people really felt about 2024.)

The reactions across media have ranged from disgust to outright garment-rending peals of agony — resignations have already been filed — and you’d have to have a heart of stone not to be laughing until tears roll down your cheeks at every last one of them. I’d be remiss if I didn’t share a few, if only to illustrate the absurdity of it all.

Let’s get one thing out of the way first, however: This was a business decision by Jeff Bezos. Publisher and CEO Will Lewis wrote the piece announcing the Post’s decision not to endorse (erm . . . “change its policy going forward,” that is), but all other reporting (including, hilariously, the Post’s own employees’ union) clearly indicates that this is a directive from on high, one that Lewis was willing to go along with. I think I know why — and it’s not the dull and obvious answer of “Bezos just worries about Trump regulators hurting Amazon” — but hold that thought for now.

Because before that we should note that Bezos wasn’t actually the first to act on this. Only yesterday, the media world flew into a similar outrage over the owner of the Los Angeles Times blocking his editorial board from issuing a presidential endorsement. The editorial page editor resigned after owner Patrick Soon-Shiong asked the board to — this is not a joke, dear readers — write a sober “pros and cons” analysis of each candidate instead. (I am deeply disappointed myself, because nobody should have been denied the comedy of reading the Times rate Donald Trump’s good qualities.)

The reactions to the Times kerfuffle were muted, because to be perfectly honest, nobody reads or cares about the Los Angeles Times. But the news from the Post was greeted with a collective gran mal seizure from online media lefties. There are simply too many denunciations from the cheap seats to mention here, but internally it was ugly: Editorial board member Robert Kagan announced his immediate resignation, while former editor Marty Baron tweeted “this is cowardice, with democracy as its casualty” (leading one to assume he wrote the Post’s current masthead slogan, among other things). Meanwhile, notoriously surly race-harridan Karen Attiah first fell into stunned silence on Twitter, tweeting only “Jesus Christ” and “Today has been an absolute stab in the back.”

Continue reading →
ELECTIONS, MEDIA Comments turned off

Heather Mac Donald Prophets of Doom The dishonesty with which the media has portrayed Donald Trump from the beginning threatens our civil coexistence.

By on October 24th, 2024

https://www.city-journal.org/article/prophets-of-doom

A quiz: Who said the following, and which speaker did the New York Times deem dark and demagogic?

“We’re not going to have a country” if my opponent wins.

My opponent is “a threat to our democracy and fundamental freedoms.”

“There is one existential threat:” my opponent.

“The only existential threat to humanity is climate change, and [my opponent] didn’t do a damn thing about it.”

The 2024 presidential election “might carry near-existential stakes.”

Blacks and Hispanics “have to wake up knowing that they can lose their very life in the course of just living their life. . . . [they] have to worry about whether their sons or daughters will come home after a grocery store run or just walking down the street or driving their car or playing in the park or just sleeping at home.”

“America must heed this warning”: my opponent is a “fascist.”

“No one has ever been as dangerous to this country” as my opponent.

“Folks don’t care if tanks roll by on the way to the store as long as the milk doesn’t cost more than 4 years ago.”

Answer key: The first quote is from Donald Trump. The rest are from: Kamala Harris, Joe Biden, Joe Biden, the New York Times, Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, Kamala Harris, and a New York Times reader.

Continue reading →
ELECTIONS, MEDIA Comments turned off

60 Minutes Officially Announces: Yes We Edited the Harris Interview and We’re Proud of It By Jeffrey Blehar

By on October 22nd, 2024

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/60-minutes-officially-announces-yes-we-edited-the-harris-interview-and-were-proud-of-it/?utm_

I’d like to add a brief note tonight on a kerfuffle of less matter and moment than the other debates of greater importance currently raging throughout American political media. (To name but one example: How many times will Kamala Harris and her media surrogates try to sell “Donald Trump is old and tired” as a campaign talking point before giving up at the transparent futility of it all?)

Earlier this month Kamala Harris sat down for an interview with 60 Minutes, and it went just about as well her other various media encounters have: rather poorly. She served up her usual word salad, and I don’t recall there being much for me to say about it that wasn’t already covered well enough by my colleagues.

One little detail that nagged at me, however, was the way in which 60 Minutes edited their interview with Harris after first airing a preview of it on Face the Nation. When interviewer Bill Whitaker queried Harris about the Biden-Harris administration’s diplomatic relationship with Israel, Harris began with a rambling, lost prelude that amounted to her typical rhetorical churn. Then she collected herself and remembered her canned answer.

Later on, when the interview aired on 60 Minutes, that opening word jumble — which made Harris look remarkably weak — was edited away from Harris’s response. Instead of looking like a deer in the headlights unable to quickly answer, she was presented to viewers as a crisper speaker and thinker than she was.

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

A Media Beyond Caricature The trust and prestige that took prior generations of journalists decades to earn have been thrown away in just a few years by incompetents and partisans. By Victor Davis Hanson

By on October 21st, 2024

https://amgreatness.com/2024/10/21/a-media-beyond-caricature/

CBS’s iconic 60 Minutes has had plenty of scandals and embarrassments in its long 57-year history, most notably the fake-but-accurate Dan Rather mess. Yet never has it found itself in greater disrepute than in 2024.

Donald Trump, for good reason, recently declined to join 60 Minutes for its traditional election-year in-depth interviews of the two presidential candidates. Why?

Last time he consented in 2020, anchor and interviewer Leslie Stahl attacked Trump’s accurate assertion that the Hunter Biden laptop (then in the possession of the FBI) was authentic—and authentically damning to Joe Biden’s presidential candidacy.

Stahl falsely claimed the laptop “can’t be verified.” She further incorrectly asserted, “So this story about Hunter and his laptop, some repair shop found it; the source is Steve Bannon and Rudy Giuliani.” The New York Post, in fact, reported the story. The FBI did not deny it.

Yet old Twitter and Facebook, under collaborating FBI tutelage and pressure, suppressed dissemination of the truth. Joe Biden’s then-advisor and now Secretary of State Antony Blinken, in conjunction with former interim CIA Director Michael Morrel, helped round up “51 former intelligence authorities” (among them Leon Panetta and both John Brennan and James Clapper, who had admitted previously of lying under oath to Congress) to claim falsely that the laptop had all the hallmarks of a Russian information gambit to warp the election.

Joe Biden used the “expert” consensus to further lie in the last Biden-Trump debate that the laptop was cooked up by the Russians. And neither CBS, the “intelligence authorities,” nor any of the Bidens have ever since apologized.

More recently, CBS got caught selectively editing the 60 Minutes interview with Kamala Harris, cutting and pasting an incoherent Harris response to lessen her embarrassing word salad. And in a subsequent interview with House Speaker Mike Johnson, the network once again edited and pruned his answers, but in contrast, on this occasion, to make him seem far less persuasive.

Continue reading →
MEDIA, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

‘Pure Genocide’: Christians Slaughtered in Nigeria and the Great Press Cover-Up by Raymond Ibrahim

By on October 18th, 2024

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/21033/christians-slaughtered-in-nigeria

Muslim militants slaughtered 16,769 Christians [in Nigeria] in just the four years between 2019 and 2023. That comes out to 4,192 Christians killed on average per year—or one Christian murdered for his/her faith every two hours. — Report, Observatory for Religious Freedom in Africa, August 29, 2024.

The violence has reached the point, the report says, that many traumatized Christian children sleep in trees to try to avoid being butchered during the night, when Fulani are most prone to attack.

[I]n 2014, there were 1.1 million internally displaced persons (IDPs) in Nigeria; as of 2023, there are 3.4 million. — “NO ROAD HOME: Christian IDPs displaced by extremist violence in Nigeria,” Open Doors, September 1, 2024.

Behind all these misleading euphemisms, the facts remain: the murderers are Muslim and their victims are overwhelmingly Christian.

When Muslim terrorists slaughtered nearly 200 Christians last Christmas, the Associated Press failed to mention the identities of the assailants and their victims. Rather, it presented the atrocity, as so many now do, as a regrettable byproduct of climate change — which is, ostensibly, forcing “herders” (Muslims) to encroach on the lands of “farmers” (Christians).

In another AP report on the 2022 Pentecost Sunday church bombing that left 50 Christian worshippers dead, the words “Muslim” and “Islam” — even “Islamist” — never appear. Rather, readers were told, “It was not immediately clear who was behind the attack on the church.”

“Muslim” and “Islam” — even “Islamist” — never appear. Rather, readers were told, “It was not immediately clear who was behind the attack on the church.” To maintain this ambiguity, the AP failed to mention that Islamic terrorists have stormed hundreds of churches and slaughtered thousands of Christians “for sport” over the years in Nigeria….

“It’s tough to tell Nigerian Christians this isn’t a religious conflict since what they see are Fulani fighters clad entirely in black [like ISIS], chanting ‘Allahu Akbar!’ and screaming ‘Death to Christians.'” — Sister Monica Chikwe, cruxnow.com, August 4, 2019.

“Removing Country of Particular Concern status for Nigeria will only embolden the increasingly authoritarian government there.” — Sean Nelson, Legal Counsel for Global Religious Freedom for Alliance Defending Freedom International, catholicnewsagency.com, November 23, 2021.

For the mainstream media and politicians, Christian lives taken by Muslims apparently do not matter.

Continue reading →
MEDIA Comments turned off

Americans Are Suffering From ‘Crisis in Confidence’ in Major Institutions, Especially the Press: Gallup Polling The press is the least trusted group of ten major institutions — including local and state governments and the judicial branch.Maggie Hroncich

By on October 16th, 2024

https://www.nysun.com/article/americans-are-suffering-from-crisis-in-confidence-in-major-institutions-especially-the-press-gallup-polling?

The percentage of Americans who trust the press — including television, radio, and newspapers — has fallen to a historic low, new Gallup polling indicates.

With 36 percent of Americans saying they don’t trust the press to report the news “fully, accurately, and fairly” compared to only 31 percent who trust it a fair amount or a great deal, those who distrust the news outnumber those who trust it for the third year in a row.

In addition to the 36 percent of American adults who said they have no trust in the press, an additional 33 percent said they had “not very much” confidence in it. Trust has plummeted deeply since Gallup first started tracking the issue in the 1970s, when trust in news institutions was ranging between 68 and 72 percent. 

Confidence levels had a slight rebound after the 2016 election but spiraled downwards in 2019 and in the years since. The polling also indicates a deep difference in trust levels along partisan lines — 54 percent of Democrats have at least a fair amount of trust in the news, compared to 27 percent of independents and a mere 12 percent of Republicans. 

The press is also the “least trusted group among 10 U.S. civic and political institutions involved in the democratic process,” Gallup says. A majority of Americans, or 67 percent, expressed trust in their own local governments to handle local issues, and 55 percent trust their state governments to handle state problems. When it comes to making decisions about issues facing the country, 54 percent of American adults trust the “American people as a whole.” 

Trust in the federal government to handle international and domestic issues also outweighs trust in the press, and more Americans trust the judicial branch and the executive branch more than they trust news institutions, the polling showed.

Continue reading →