RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/martha-mcsally-hack-comment-journalists-see-some-great-sacrilege/

As I note in my New York Post piece today, I don’t believe that Martha McSally, who is serving her first term in the Senate after being appointed to take John McCain’s seat, is going to be helped much by accusing CNN’s Manu Raju of being a “hack.” Attacking the press might be an effective way to excite national conservatives, but it probably does little to entice independents and moderates in Arizona.

One group, however, was greatly affected by the interaction: journalists, who seem to believe that McSally has engaged in some great sacrilege. A distressed National Press Club statement calls her comment “ethically wrong.” The New York Times’ Michael Barbaro says it is “never” ok to attack a journalist. One wishes there would have been this level of outcry when Elizabeth Warren, also a senator, called Fox News a “hate-for-profit racket.” But so it goes.

The Washington Post’s media critic labeled the interaction “chilling.” Now, “chilling,” it seems to me, would more appropriately describe the government spying on reporters or throwing someone into prison in effort to appease foreign theocrats. I’m pretty sure, at this point, the largely inconsequential McSally-Raju kerfuffle has generated more outrage from mainstream journalists than either of those cases.

It should also be noted, rude or not, that McSally’s underlying grievance is legitimate. CNN, as Charles Cooke has written, is no longer a news network, and Republicans have no ethical responsibility to treat it as such, whether one of its reporters happens to be asking a legitimate questions or not. And no matter how many times his colleagues put the word “respected” in front of Raju’s name, it doesn’t change the fact that he has a long history of partisan bias, not only with his still-unexplained Don Jr. “collusion” piece, but on the issue of Brett Kavanaugh and many others. The fact that Raju does some good reporting, doesn’t mean he isn’t also a partisan. You can be both.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/01/when_it_comes_to_the_news_media_their_antitrump_narrative_is_relentless.html

The media is all a’flutter about a report saying that the Russian military has been attempting to hack Burisma. It’s unclear to me and to the media whether this is a newsworthy story or just the same old news we’ve seen since 1921, about Russia spying on and making trouble for the West and its allies. For the media, though, any story that can impugn Trump is headline stuff, and that fact is on perfect display in the media’s reporting about the suspected hacking.

Here are the facts: The Russian military has apparently tried to hack Burisma’s computers. That’s it. That’s everything the media knows, as can be seen from this New York Times article:

It is not yet clear what the hackers found, or precisely what they were searching for.

On the basis of known facts, this is a story that ought not to have been published at all or, at the very least, should deserve a single paragraph on the last page of the main section.

But that’s not how the Times is spinning it. Instead, for the Times this is just more evidence that (a) Trump colluded with Russia to win the 2016 election (never mind that Obama and Hillary had the slobbering love affair with Putin) and (b) that Trump coerced the Ukrainian president into investigating Burisma.

Regarding the first point, the one about Russia collusion, keep in mind as you read the following the fact that the Times knows absolutely nothing other than that there apparently was a hacking attempt. Nevertheless, it manages to spin out a whole saga:

But the experts say the timing and scale of the attacks suggest that the Russians could be searching for potentially embarrassing material on the Bidens — the same kind of information that Mr. Trump wanted from Ukraine when he pressed for an investigation of the Bidens and Burisma, setting off a chain of events that led to his impeachment.

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/we-cant-trust-the-media-to-report-honestly-on-iran/

It’s hard enough watching journalists blaming the United States for the Islamic Republic’s perniciousness or exaggerating the importance of “revered leader” Qasem Soleimani while minimizing the actions of the courageous Iranians who oppose the mullahs. Even before a pro-Iranian regime bias infected much of the institutional media, conservatives were reading outlets like the New York Times through a prism of skepticism. In general, though, one could trust that the underlying facts and framing were basically correct. The past four years have made even that impossible.

Take the Soleimani killing, for example.

In the newest iteration of the story from NBC News, we learn that after Iran shot down a U.S. drone this summer, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and John Bolton, Trump’s then-national security adviser, tried to persuade Donald Trump to kill the Iranian terrorist leader. Trump, instinctively uneasy about escalating Middle East conflict, resisted the pressure. According to “current and former senior administration officials,” NBC News states, the president instead drew a red line: He would authorize the killing of Soleimani only “if Iran’s increased aggression resulted in the death of an American.”

Trump even tweeted, warning the mullahs that further violence would have repercussions.

https://pjmedia.com/trending/nyt-nobel-laureate-paul-krugman-claims-hackers-downloaded-child-porn-onto-his-computer/

Paul Krugman, economist at The New York Times, tweeted (and then deleted) a very strange story on Wednesday claiming that someone had hacked his IP address and was using it to download child porn.

“Well, I’m on the phone with my computer security service and as I understand it, someone compromised my IP address and is using it to download child pornography. I might just be a random target but this might be an attempt to Qanon me.” He continued, “It’s an ugly world out there.”

Twitter users were quick to point out that that’s not how IP addresses work and if anything was downloaded on his computer it would have been done by him. Hardly anyone believes him. One Twitter user pointed out Microsoft’s answer to users’ concerns: “IP addresses cannot be compromised. It’s just a number that identifies your system on the [typically local] network so that other computers can send responses to its requests…a PC itself can be compromised by malware or other more direct attacks, but this has nothing to do with the IP address itself.”

However, it is possible that the Nobel Prize-winning Boomer really is that bad at technology that he fell for a scam. Tech journalist Mikael Thalen uncovered a Better Business Bureau report that appears to describe the exact phishing attempt Krugman described. Reports the BBB:

https://amgreatness.com/2020/01/07/media-beclowns-itself-spreading-fake-news-and-anti-trump-propaganda-during-iranian-rocket-attack/

As Iranian missiles rained down on U.S. military targets in Iraq Tuesday night, two cable news outlets, MSNBC and CNN, spread fake news that suggested that the damage was worse than it was.

The Pentagon confirmed that Tehran fired more than 12 ballistic missiles targeting two military bases used by US and coalition forces in Iraq.

During a broadcast of Hardball on MSNBC, NBC News Tehran bureau chief Ali Arouzi parroted Iranian state media propaganda claiming erroneously that Iranian rockets had killed 30 American soldiers.

“The IRGC [Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps] was saying that Ayatollah Khamenei, the supreme leader of this country, was in the control center coordinating these attacks,” Arouzi told anchor Chris Matthews. “This bit I’m not sure about but Iran state media says 30 U.S. soldiers have been killed in this attack. This is not confirmed, it’s just coming from Iranian media.”

“This is drawing people from all sides into this what is potentially the beginning of a war, Chris,” Arouzi added. “I don’t know how this is going to go in the coming hours, but it’s not looking good from the rhetoric that came out from President Trump earlier today saying that he will retaliate against any retaliation from Iran. I think we can expect an attack on Iran imminently.”

https://thefederalist.com/2020/01/08/time-magazines-iran-guide-for-parents-refuses-to-call-soleimani-a-terrorist/

Time Magazine’s “Time for Kids” publication issued a guide Tuesday for parents on how to talk with their children about the situation unfolding in Iran riddled with biased omissions.

The legacy outlet first refers to Qasem Soleimani, the recently slain Iranian general responsible for hundreds of American deaths, as a “top military leader in Iran,” rather than a terrorist. In the next line, the guide explains that President Donald Trump took action on Soleimani simply because Trump said Soleimani was a terrorist.