RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://issuesinsights.com/2020/07/08/the-press-is-already-trying-whip-up-a-new-pandemic-panic/
Oh, no! With the planet still unlocking and some parts still tightly buttoned down, and with the world economy plummeting, “China Researchers Discover New Swine Flu with ‘Pandemic Potential,’ ” blares CNN. “Scientists Say New Strain of Swine Flu Virus Is Spreading to Humans in China,” shrieks the New York Times. Say it ain’t so!

Okay, it ain’t so. Not in any meaningful way. The media should go back to “murder hornets,” or find another asteroid with a chance in a zillion of hitting Earth.

The virus in question, G4 EA H1N1, is genetically descended from the H1N1 swine flu that caused what the World Health Organization declared a pandemic in 2009. G4 shows “all the essential hallmarks of a candidate pandemic virus,” said a study in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).

But … there are a few little caveats.

First, while the Times says the virus “is spreading silently in workers on pig farms in China,” that means pigs-to-humans and that’s been going on for so time. “This is not a ‘new’ new virus; it’s been very common in pigs since 2016,” tweeted Carl Bergstrom, a professor of biology at the University of Washington. “There’s no evidence that G4 is circulating in humans, despite five years of extensive exposure. That’s the key context to keep in mind.”

Okay, but it’s a swine flu !!! Um, yes, pigs appear to play a role in most strains of flu, along with birds. Specifically, the massive swine farms of China are “mixing bowls” to produce new flu strains.

https://amgreatness.com/2020/07/07/bret-stephens-the-gray-lady-and-the-great-a
A small piece of advice for anyone preparing a submission to the New York Times: do perform a thorough background check on each and every person you intend to cite.

A spike in the level of outrage on Twitter is by no means a rare event. Regular users are accustomed to glancing over at the “Trending” tab to see who or what has raised people’s hackles that particular day. It is not so common, however, for that type of spike to be generated by something published in America’s newspaper of record, still less an instance of outrage that should prompt the editors of said newspaper to issue a major correction and an “Editor’s Note.”

Many will recall that Twitter went into meltdown on June 3, after the New York Times published a bellicose op-ed by Senator Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) titled “Send In the Troops.” But this is not what I have in mind. The event to which I’m referring took place at the end of last year, and although it is but one squall in a vast and tempestuous sea of online indignation, I believe it offers some valuable insights into cultural trends in the English-speaking world.

The kerfuffle began when Bret Stephens—whose journalistic career, even before the event in question, had not been completely divorced from controversy—published a column titled “The Secrets of Jewish Genius.” In the column, Stephens argued that the reason Jews have made such outsized scientific and cultural contributions is not that they are smarter than other groups, but rather that they have benefited—over the course of their history—from certain beliefs, practices and traditions. These would include being asked “not only to observe and obey but also to discuss and disagree” and understanding that “everything that is intangible—knowledge most of all—is potentially everlasting.” In fact, the column’s original subheading was “It’s not about having high I.Q.s.” (Stephens even went so far as to say “what makes Jews special is that they aren’t,” suggesting that explanatory coherence was not his primary concern.)

https://us7.campaign-archive.com/?e=a9fdc67db9&u=9d011a88d8fe324cae8c084

President Trump calls it the “fake news.” I’ve tried to steer mostly clear of that term, but it just gets harder and harder. You keep thinking that it must be possible to turn to some newspaper or TV news channel for just some basic information on what is going on in the world. But it turns out that the desperate effort to come up with something, anything that will defeat the Republicans or the President requires distorting or suppressing even the most basic facts of what is happening.

There were three years of the Russia, Russia, Russia collusion hoax. Has any media outlet that promoted that fraud ever issued any sort of apology or correction? If so, I have never seen it. Ditto for the Ukraine “quid pro quo” that wasn’t. Just this past weekend, Trump gave what I thought was a very decent and unifying patriotic speech at Mt. Rushmore. Here is the text. For every major left-wing media outlet, it was “dark” and “divisive.” Try reading the text and see if you can find that. Could they really think that nobody would read the text?

But then, the significance of Trump’s speech is a matter of opinion. Let’s consider a matter much closer to simple fact: the number of daily cases and deaths from the Covid-19 virus in the U.S. Figures are reported daily, with charts going back to February, at various places, including a site called Worldometers that I have frequently linked. While there are reasons (that I have discussed in several posts) to think that these data might not be fully accurate, they are still the basic data that we all are working with.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/trump-at-mount-rushmore-11593978913?mod=opinion_lead_pos1

At Mt. Rushmore, Trump uses Fourth of July celebration to stoke a culture war

—Los Angeles Times

Trump Uses Mount Rushmore Speech to Deliver Divisive Culture War Message

— New York Times

Trump pushes racial division, flouts virus rules at Rushmore

—Associated Press

At Mount Rushmore, Trump exploits social divisions, warns of ‘left-wing cultural revolution’ in dark speech ahead of Independence Day

—Washington Post

President Trump delivered one of the best speeches of his Presidency Friday evening at Mount Rushmore, and for evidence consider the echo-chamber headlines above. The chorus of independent media voices understands that Mr. Trump is trying to rally the country in defense of traditional American principles that are now under radical and unprecedented assault.

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/amid-a-pandemic-the-woke-ist-media-are-experiencing-a-psychotic-break

If the press suffered a nervous breakdown after the 2016 election ⁠— and they did ⁠— they are experiencing a full-on psychotic break amid the COVID-19 pandemic and the George Floyd protests.

It is as if the lockdowns and nationwide demonstrations caused media executives to snap, leaving them in a wide-eyed, obsessive frenzy to cleanse society of all problematics, screaming all the while, “Out, damned spot!”

CNN, for example, engaged in explicit political activism this week when it sought to shame companies that have yet to pull ads from Facebook over CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s persistent refusal to censor problematic speech.

“These are the big brands that haven’t pulled ads from Facebook yet,” reads the headline. The report then goes on to name and shame the businesses that have had the temerity to continue to advertise on one of the biggest social media platforms in the world.

This is not news reporting. This is activism. It is a poorly disguised effort by a major newsroom to pressure companies into boycotting a social media platform that is too committed to political neutrality and too opposed to political censorship for the media’s taste. In any other time and place, the press would have mocked and condemned the CNN article. But these are unusual times. Many journalists today agree with CNN’s shaming tactics and the reasons behind them, and so the Facebook report came and went this week with barely a whimper of objection from our brave Fourth Estate.

https://amgreatness.com/2020/07/02/if-it-werent-for-double-standards-our

The Marxist blood running in the veins of the media, of celebrities in Hollywood, in nearly every Democratic politician, and unfortunately some weak sister Republicans, demands that we do not question the Left.

Since the death of George Floyd in May, the top headlines every day report that the protests stem from his alleged murder. Though the left-leaning woke media insists on describing the protests as “peaceful,” they have spiralled into destructive rioting and are responsible for deaths, in some cases, at the hands of Marxist opportunists looking to upend our Founders, our institutions, our Constitution, and our way of life. 

An MSNBC reporter standing in front of burning buildings said, “This is mostly a protest, it is not, it is not, generally speaking, unruly.” In the face of destroyed buildings (including a brand new low-income housing unit), looting, lawyers tossing Molotov cocktails into police cars, and the shooting death of David Dorn (a retired policeman who was guarding his friend’s business), the legacy media continues on with this “peaceful change” narrative.

Legacy media, as well as Antifa and some Black Lives Matter activists are little more than opportunists. They can “never let a crisis go to waste,” as Rahm Emanuel and now Hillary Clinton like to say. The progressive media understands what this means, and while it’s interesting to see how the news anchors, editors, and writers all seem to have similar talking points, they may only be loosely tied to actual Democratic directives. They don’t really need marching orders anymore. They are so very tightly anchored to the same political philosophies, attitudes, and methods that they speak as one voice even without prompting. As Alinskyite Democrats, they know “the issue is never the issue; the issue is always the revolution.”

The mainstream media continuously ignore the weekly shootings in Chicago and other large cities. Two young children died this past weekend in Chicago from the violence, and  at least 16 other people are dead while at least 50 others were wounded in shootings. These people matter too. The children matter. The adults matter. The police who put their lives on the line every day for people in those communities matter.