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MEDIA

Letter Calls for Withdrawal of ‘1619 Project’ Pulitzer By Stanley Kurtz

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/letter-calls-for-withdrawal-of-1619-project-pulitzer/

An open letter released today and signed by 21 scholars and public writers calls on the Pulitzer Prize Board to rescind the Prize for Commentary awarded to Nikole Hannah-Jones for her lead essay in “The 1619 Project.” The letter is posted at the website of the National Association of Scholars here. (I am one of the signatories.)

The letter revisits the sorry tale of the 1619 Project’s errors and distortions and invokes these in calling for the revocation of the prize. The recent revelations that The New York Times stealthily edited out the signature claim of the project—that the advent of slavery in the year 1619 constitutes our country’s “true founding”—were, however, the immediate occasion for this letter. As Phillip Magness (another signatory) has shown, Nikole Hannah-Jones has several times denied ever claiming that 1619 was our true founding, although in fact she has made this latter claim repeatedly.

These actions on the part of both the Times and Hannah-Jones are profoundly irresponsible and disturbing. How can we explain them?

Jonah Goldberg has suggested that the Times may have undertaken its stealth edits, “out of a partisan desire to deny Donald Trump and his fans a talking point.” There is some evidence in support of this suggestion.  As Wilfred McClay (another signatory) notes in Commentary Magazine, leaked transcripts of internal meetings at the Times suggest that the 1619 Project may have been part of a strategy designed to help elect a Democratic president by highlighting America’s (allegedly) endemic racism. Not long after President Trump effectively made American history a campaign issue in his Mt. Rushmore address this July, Hannah-Jones began to deny that she or the 1619 Project had ever asserted that the year 1619 was America’s “true founding,” citing the stealthily edited text of the project as evidence. (See especially the exchange with Ben Shapiro here.) The Hannah-Jones interview on CNN that helped kick off the controversy over the stealth edits took place the day after President Trump attacked the 1619 Project in his address to the White House Conference on American History. This suggests that Hannah-Jones was willing to jettison the most notable claim of her project—even to the extent of denying that she had ever made it—once that claim began to seem like a campaign liability.

Pulitzer Board Must Revoke Nikole Hannah-Jones’ Prize Peter Wood

https://www.nas.org/blogs/article/pulitzer-board-must-revoke-nikole-hannah-jones-prize

The National Association of Scholars has agreed to host this public letter to the Pulitzer Prize Board. The letter calls on the Board to rescind the prize it awarded to Nikole Hannah-Jones earlier this year. I am one of the 21 signatories.  A hard copy has been mailed to the Pulitzer Committee as well as a digital copy.

—Peter Wood, President, National Association of Scholars

We call on the Pulitzer Prize Board to rescind the 2020 Prize for Commentary awarded to Nikole Hannah-Jones for her lead essay in “The 1619 Project.” That essay was entitled, “Our democracy’s founding ideals were false when they were written.” But it turns out the article itself was false when written, making a large claim that protecting the institution of slavery was a primary motive for the American Revolution, a claim for which there is simply no evidence.

We call on the Pulitzer Prize Board to rescind the 2020 Prize for Commentary awarded to Nikole Hannah-Jones for her lead essay in “The 1619 Project.”

When the Board announced the prize on May 4, 2020, it praised Hannah-Jones for “a sweeping, deeply reported and personal essay for the ground-breaking 1619 Project, which seeks to place the enslavement of Africans at the center of America’s story, prompting public conversation about the nation’s founding and evolution.” Note well the last five words. Clearly the award was meant not merely to honor this one isolated essay, but the Project as a whole, with its framing contention that the year 1619, the date when some twenty Africans arrived at Jamestown, ought to be regarded as the nation’s “true founding,” supplanting the long-honored date of July 4, 1776, which marked the emergence of the United States as an independent nation.

Don’t Believe Anything ‘Sources’ Say David Solway

https://pjmedia.com/columns/david-solway-2/2020/10/05/dont-believe-anything-sources-say-n1003461

As every sentient person knows by now, our mainstream media and Big Tech platforms are limitlessly corrupt. Almost nothing they say, report or interpret can be trusted. They have become mouthpieces for the political Left, resonating bullhorns for the Democratic Party, the “social justice” insurgency, the feminist movement, domestic terrorists like Antifa and BLM, and the concerted effort to vilify and destroy the sitting American president.

A dead giveaway of their malignant agenda is the customary reliance on the “expert,” the “insider,” a someone-in-the-know code-named as “a source” or, more explicitly, “an unnamed source.” The phenomenon is so ubiquitous that it scarcely needs even a jot of documentation. Just pick up The New York Times or The Washington Post et al., scan any number of Internet sites, or watch CNN, MSNBC and the rest of that morbid crew, and you will meet the unnamed source at every turn.

Once there was a good reason for anonymity: the identity of the source needed to be protected for reasons of his or her safety as well as to ensure the continued flow of information. Such is now rarely the case. The source is unnamed because it has no name, it does not exist except in the bureau of missing persons known as the editorial office. The source is a disembodied figment that can be found nowhere but in the journalistic toolkit. In effect, whenever the reader or viewer comes across a newspaper article or visual report citing “a source,” a red flag should immediately pop up alerting us that we are dealing with a malevolent ghost now haunting the media, aka the house of lies.

The Full Crowley Whether these journalists know it or not, in the American mind they are already retired before they have even retired. By Victor Davis Hanson

https://amgreatness.com/2020/10/04/the-full-crowley/

In the second presidential election debate between President Barack Obama and Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney on October 16, 2012, CNN moderator Candy Crowley sensed that Obama, coming off a dismal initial September 26 debate, was again floundering. 

Romney was driving home the valid point that the Obama Administration had inadequately prepared the American mission in Benghazi for likely terrorist attacks. And such laxity resulted in a horrific attack and the deaths of four Americans, including the U.S. ambassador. 

Yet in the wake of the attacks, Team Obama denied that the killing of four Americans was indeed an act of terror. Instead, it fed the public a transparently but politically correct false narrative of a spontaneous riot in reaction to a video posted by a purported right-wing Egyptian residing on American soil. 

Yet in the debate, Obama retorted: “The day after the attack, governor, I stood in the Rose Garden and I told the American people and the world that we are going to find out exactly what happened. That this was an act of terror and I also said that we’re going to hunt down those who committed this crime.” 

Romney pounced: “You said in the Rose Garden the day after the attack it was an act of terror? It was not a spontaneous demonstration—is that what you’re saying? I want to make sure we get that for the record because it took the president 14 days before he called the attack in Benghazi an act of terror.”  

Romney was correct. Obama took two weeks before he eventually jettisoned his administration’s concocted “spontaneous demonstrations” party line that his subordinates—Susan Rice in particular, to her eternal embarrassment—had been peddling to the American people. 

Yet in the debate, Obama flailed with a weak, “Get the transcript.” 

In truth, Obama in his comments after the attack had simply offered, “No acts of terror will ever shake the resolve of this great nation, alter that character, or eclipse the light of the values that we stand for”—a deliberate effort not to name Benghazi specifically in the context of a terrorist act.  

The media’s mad obsession with white supremacy It isn’t the Proud Boys who have been rioting for the past two months. by Brendan O’Neill

https://www.spiked-online.com/2020/10/01/the-medias-mad-obsession-with-white-supremacy/

EXCERPT

Trump and white supremacy have become the main talking points in the post-debate fallout. From CNN to the BBC, and of course across the Trump-loathing Twittersphere, all the talk is of why Trump won’t condemn the white-supremacist groups that are apparently tearing apart the soul of America. During the debate, Trump was asked if he would condemn the Proud Boys, the stupid right-wing gang founded by Gavin McInnes to defend Western values (if these chinless wonders are the last line of defence for Western civilisation, then we’re even more screwed than I thought). Trump said he doesn’t know who the Proud Boys are but he would be happy to condemn them if they are indeed white supremacists. They should ‘stand down’, he said, and ‘stand by’.

It is those last two words – ‘stand by’ – that have whipped up global fury and rejuvenated the chattering classes’ beloved pastime of Trump-bashing. See, Trump is a white supremacist, they’re saying. He is now openly calling on groups like the Proud Boys to ‘stand by’ (we’ll leave it to the time-rich, sunlight-deprived users of 4Chan and other sites to pore over the question of whether the Proud Boys really are white supremacists). No one allowed for the possibility that Trump misspoke or messed up his words, something he is quite famous for doing. And even his clarification of his comments – he has now said that the Proud Boys, whoever they are, should definitely ‘stand down and let law enforcement do their work’ – has not damped down the drama. Trump refused to condemn white supremacists because he is one, the tweeting classes claim.

Biden, who at this point will clamber upon any soapbox that comes his way, says America now has a president who is ‘refus[ing] to disavow white supremacists’. Big talk from a man who just a few weeks ago announced that any black person who is even thinking of voting for Trump is not really black. These are the double standards on racism in the woke era: Trump is a vile white supremacist for saying ‘stand by’ in relation to the Proud Boys, yet Biden is the great hope for civil rights in America despite his belief that all black people must think and vote in the exact same way or else forfeit their blackness. The broader point about that crazy, awful debate – the fact that Trump said ‘Sure, I’m willing to do that’ when directly asked if he is willing to condemn white supremacists – has been lost in all of this. Trump saying he is willing to condemn white supremacists has somehow morphed into proof that he supports white supremacists.

There is a bigger issue at play in the media elite’s obsession with white supremacist groups. It speaks to their alarming inability, or unwillingness, to face up to the real source of disarray and conflict in the US today. It isn’t white-supremacist groups who have taken part in the worst, most nihilistic riots to rock America for five decades – it is people who, right or wrongly, identify as ‘left’ or as ‘progressive’. It isn’t the Proud Boys who have laid waste to entire blocks in often quite deprived areas in Kenosha, Minneapolis and Portland – it is supporters of so-called ‘Antifa’ and of Black Lives Matter. It isn’t the Proud Boys who have harassed diners and stormed into suburbia calling people ‘motherfuckers’ and insisting that they bow down to the supposedly correct political worldview – it is the upper middle-class, often white supporters of BLM who have done that, most of whom will shortly be voting Biden for president.

America’s Chris Wallace Problem – Is anything more dangerous to our country than media bias? Robert Stacey McCain

https://spectator.org/chris-wallace-debate-bias/

When will Chris Wallace apologize to Katie Pavlich? More than once, Wallace has
insulted his Fox News colleague on the network, as in a January segment about the impeachment of President Trump, when Wallace barked at Pavlich, “Get your facts straight!” As it turned out in that case, Pavlich was right and Wallace was wrong — and not accidentally so. The question at issue was Democrats’ demand that the Senate trial over what was called “Ukrainegate” include testimony from additional witnesses. Pavlich said this was unprecedented, and contended it was not the Senate’s fault that “the House did not come with a complete case.” Wallace began barking about “facts” in an attempt to rescue Democrats from the consequences of their failure.

Wallace’s dismal performance as moderator in Tuesday’s presidential debate reminded many viewers of such previous instances in which the Fox News Sunday host has shown his prejudice against Trump. And this matters, not only because of how that ugly televised carnival might affect the election, but because of what it tells us about the sad state of journalism in America. If Wallace is, Dov Fischer says, “the fairest moderator we can hope for in today’s Left-dominated media,” there is no hope for fairness. But what about those “facts” that Wallace presumed to lecture Katie Pavlich about? Even if we must resign ourselves to partisan prejudice from the media, must we tolerate journalists trafficking in outright lies?

That’s what Wallace did in Tuesday’s debate. Consider this question he aimed at President Trump: “You have repeatedly criticized the vice president for not specifically calling out Antifa and other left-wing extremist groups, but are you willing tonight to condemn white supremacists and militia groups and to say that they need to stand down and not add to the violence in a number of these cities, as we saw in Kenosha and as we’ve seen in Portland?”

Where is the evidence that “white supremacists and militia groups” were to blame for violence in Kenosha or Portland, Oregon? Wallace’s question was not only tendentious, but counterfactual. As regards Portland, Wallace seemed to be echoing Oregon’s woefully misguided Democratic governor. After a man who described himself as “100% Antifa” murdered a Trump supporter on the streets of Portland Aug.29, Gov. Kate Brown issued this rather bizarre statement:

The downfall of Fox News’s Chris Wallace and John Roberts By Andrea Widburg

https://proudpatriots.com/pages/trump-space-force-2-bills?gclid=EAIaIQobChMIxam27cqV7AIVyuqzCh1ZtQweEAEYASAAEgKxfvD_BwE

Some men are alphas, like President Trump, and some men are betas, like Al Gore and the sneering, puffing Biden. And then there are men who aren’t even strong enough to be betas. They are, instead, weak, mewling creatures who lack either presence or power, and who then cry about it afterward. Chris Wallace and John Roberts, both employees at Fox News, have exhibited behavior that’s so craven and humiliated themselves so badly in the eyes of Fox News’s core audience that they should be retired immediately.

It all started with Chris Wallace’s stint as a debate moderator for the first presidential debate. Right out of the gate, he failed to stop Biden from interrupting Donald Trump:

I rewatched the start of the debate. The 1st Q went to Trump who gave an uninterrupted 2-min response. Then Biden gave an uninterrupted 2-min response. Then it went back to Trump, whose answer was interrupted 3 times by Biden. If you didn’t like it, blame Biden for starting it.

— Ari Fleischer (@AriFleischer) September 30, 2020

Trump immediately realized that Wallace was either weak or biased and proceeded to ignore him. In both estimations, Trump was correct. For the next 90 minutes, Wallace proved himself to be both ineffectual, for he bleated like a lost lamb when he couldn’t regain control of events, and partisan. That partisanship was almost criminal when Wallace failed to force Biden to respond substantively to the question about whether Biden intends to pack the Supreme Court. Trump, a true alpha predator, rode roughshod over the inconsequential Wallace.

Media Gunning For Scott Atlas Because He Keeps Exposing Coronavirus Lies By Joy Pullmann

https://thefederalist.com/2020/09/29/media-gunning-for-scott-atlas-because-he-keeps-exposing-coronavirus-lies/

Everything he says is false,’ NBC News quoted CDC Director Robert Redfield as saying of Atlas. That’s just not true, top epidemiologists told The Federalist.

“Dr. Scott Atlas is arming Trump with misleading data” about COVID-19, Centers for Disease Control Director Dr. Robert Redfield told a colleague Friday, according to a Monday report by NBC News political reporter Monica Alba.

Within hours, numerous outlets ideologically allied with NBC amplified the coverage. Here are some screenshots of the Google News results for the story just a short while later, but is Redfield’s assertion correct? The Federalist spoke to numerous epidemiologists to find out.“Everything he says is false,” NBC News quoted Redfield as saying of Atlas’s coronavirus recommendations. That’s just not true, top epidemiologists told The Federalist.

“Dr. Redfield is a prominent and respected scientist, so I respect his opinion, but I don’t know what he’s thinking,” said Dr. Jayanta Bhattacharya, an epidemiologist and medical professor at Stanford University, in response to the NBC story. Bhattacharya has advised public officials including Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis on COVID-19 response. “I think the evidence is more strongly with Dr. Atlas,” he continued.

In an interview, Atlas said the constant media characterization of President Trump’s coronavirus response as detached from scientific expertise is “completely false.” He said the president’s policies are informed by infectious disease experts from the world’s top medical and research institutions, including Bhattacharya and John Ioannidis of Stanford University Medical Center, Martin Kulldorff and Katherine Yih of Harvard Medical School, and Sunetra Gupta and Carl Heneghan of Oxford University.

“The extreme comments that have been reported are an attempt to delegitimize me and undermine the president of the United States,” Atlas said, not a dispassionate, science-based position. “There can be different opinions about scientific evidence, but to say I’m citing false information is a lie,” he said later.

Another Pathetic Times ‘Bombshell’ Donald Trump failed to pay taxes on business losses—like every other taxpayer in the world. By Adam Mill

https://amgreatness.com/2020/09/28/another-pathetic-times-bombshell/

The New York Times earned a whopping $428.5 million in revenue in just the third quarter of 2019. While its revenue increased when compared to the same quarter in 2018, it’s tax bill declined to just $6.1 million (down from $10.1 million in the same quarter the year prior).

How on earth did this rich corporation manage such a significant reduction in its tax burden after such a flush year? It employed the same tax gimmick that Times reporters would later pillory President Trump for using on his taxes; it only paid taxes on its profit realized after deducting operating costs. 

To ordinary wage earners, it might seem like cheating: Only paying income taxes on income. But that’s just the same dirty game the Times has now claimed to have caught the Bad Orange Man playing. 

The Times clucked righteously that the president failed to pay taxes on his losses. The Times failed to identify any other business in the history of income tax that has ever paid income taxes on losses. But since the Times hates him, it wants him to follow a different tax rule than every other company in the world.

Over the weekend, the Times finally opened the Schrodinger’s box of Trump tax returns. While the box remained closed, it allowed all sorts of idle speculation (masquerading as journalism). 

“Might it shed light on the president’s connections to Russian money, interests, indebtedness?” Forbes speculated in April 2019. “Democrats say they are concerned the White House could pressure IRS agents to go easy on Trump’s returns, and that they need his tax documents to understand how seriously the agency is vetting them,” Politico reported in July 2019. 

Media’s Wuhan Lies Lengthen, Deepen By Trevor Thomas ******

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2020/09/medias_wuhan_lies_lengthen_deepen.html

Because they’ve made a god of government, there’s seemingly always another low to which liberals will stoop in order to help slow, sleepy Joe defeat Donald Trump in November.  Many of these lows involve the numerous nefarious reactions to the Wuhan virus.  Make no mistake about it: we have suffered an unprecedented loss of jobs and businesses, the shutdown of schools, entertainment, and hospitals; the mandating of masks and “social distancing”; and the like, not because of a global pandemic, but because of our foolish and unprecedented reaction to a global pandemic. 

In other words, much of what was “unprecedented” in the fight against the Wuhan virus was simply unnecessary.  As Tim Black at Spiked recently put it, because of what leftism has wrought worldwide, we have turned a pandemic into an apocalypse.  Mr. Black writes: 

To varying degrees, political elites, screamed on by the media, have responded to the threat posed by this virus as if it is world-ending. As if it demands the complete reorganisation of social and economic life around the supreme principle of safety. As if there is no way back. They treat it not as a nasty virus that poses a significant but manageable health risk to certain sections of the populace. No, they treat it as a god-like judgement on the old structures of social life, now deemed, in the jargon of the day, unsafe and unsustainable. 

This is what is unprecedented. Not the novel virus itself. But the panicked, fear-laden and, in some quarters, gleefully apocalyptic response.

Because viruses are simply going to virus — not at all unprecedented — in order to keep the fear and the panic high, American leftists in politics, academia, and the media must regularly lie.  This is especially the case as the lockdowns drag on and as the actual evidence contradicts what those who have a vested interest in keeping the Wuhan virus fear level high and the lockdowns in place are telling us. 

Probably the most repeated lie in this evil episode is the near-endless reporting on Wuhan virus “case counts.”  As has been noted multiple times, these reports are filled with numerous deceptions.  The drive-by media in my home state of Georgia again provide a clear example.