Category Archives: Freedom of Speech and of the Press

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The left really do hate Freedom of Speech and of The Press

As we have previously reported, the professional media can get very, very upset when other professional media members report things that do not fit Teh Narrative.

Admittedly, I was using the professional media in Philadelphia as my focus, as I frequently express my interest in our nation’s sixth-largest city. But it isn’t just Philly, as CNN is a national source.

Opinion: Why is ‘60 Minutes’ amplifying the views of Marjorie Taylor Greene?

Opinion by Dean Obeidallah | Updated Monday, April 3, 2323 | 8:26 AM EDT

Last year, GOP Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia spoke at a white nationalist event organized by Holocaust denier Nick Fuentes that caused Republican leaders to denounce her.

Last week, Greene’s Twitter account was temporarily suspended by the Elon Musk-headed platform over a tweet with a graphic referring to a “Trans Day of Vengeance,” as she denounced a planned transgender rights rally.

And come Tuesday, Greene has announced plans to protest in New York City when former President Donald Trump is expected to be arraigned on an indictment of more than 30 counts, calling the proceedings against him an “unconstitutional WITCH HUNT!”

I’m beginning to get the impression that Mr Obeidallah doesn’t like Mrs Greene very much!

So, who is Dean Obeidallah? The CNN article describes him as: “a former attorney, (and) is the host of SiriusXM radio’s daily program “The Dean Obeidallah Show.” Follow him @DeanObeidallah@masto.ai. The opinions expressed in this commentary are his own. View more opinion on CNN.” So, he, too, is a member of the professional media.

But on Sunday, Greene was featured on CBS’ “60 Minutes” in an interview the long-running show promoted on Twitter with the tease: “Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, nicknamed MTG, isn’t afraid to share her opinions, no matter how intense and in-your-face they are. She sits down with Lesley Stahl this Sunday on 60 Minutes.” The images attached to this tweet by “60 Minutes” include Greene and Stahl walking through the US Capitol, taking a stroll outside and Greene showing Stahl something on her phone.

In the segment that aired Sunday night, Stahl noted the congresswoman had moved from the fringe to the GOP’s front row in two years despite a “sharp tongue” and “some pretty radical views” as well as “over the top” comments such as “the Democrats are a party of pedophiles.” Stahl also referred to video of Greene chasing a Parkland, Florida, school shooting survivor, still maintaining that the 2020 election was stolen and failing to criticize Trump over spending. (The interview was conducted before news of his indictment.)

But Stahl didn’t mention Greene spoke at a white nationalist event a year ago while a member of Congress or her extreme anti-Muslim views and her defense of January 6 rioters.

That little related article reference above? I screen captured it, and put it in exactly the same place, and same size, it was on the CNN original. It references another opinion piece, this time by Jill Filipovic McCormick, another hard-left columnist, who wants Mrs Greene kicked out of Congress.

Mrs Greene, however, very well represents the views of her district, the 14th congressional district in Georgia. She won her primary elections easily, and the general election in 2020 by a massive landslide over Democrat Kevin Van Ausdal, 229,827 (74.7%) to 77,798 (25.3%). In 2022, she defeated Democrat Marcus Flowers 170,162 (65.86%) to 88,189 (34.14%). Mrs McCormick’s article was written a month after Mrs Greene’s re-election victory.

Criticism of CBS for amplifying Greene has been swift and well-deserved even before the program aired. Former GOP Rep. Adam Kinzinger of Illinois tweeted beforehand: “Wow. Insane that 60 min would do this.” (Kinzinger is a CNN senior political commentator.)

Journalist Molly Jong-Fast also slammed “60 Minutes” with the tweet: “Attention is currency and 60 minutes is spending its currency on the Jewish space lasers woman.” (Jong-Fast was apparently referring to Greene’s past claim that a massive California wildfire was started by “a laser” beamed from space controlled by a prominent Jewish banking family.)

David Hogg, who survived the 2018 horrific school shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland and has since become an activist against gun violence, responded, “I look forward to your questions about why she thinks school shootings are fake and why she’s supported QAnon.”

So, Mr Obeidallah listed a #NeverTrump Republican who has become a “CNN senior political commentator”, a liberal journolist[1]The spelling ‘journolist’ or ‘journolism’ comes from JournoList, an email list of 400 influential and politically liberal journalists, the exposure of which called into question their … Continue reading, and a left activist. Quite the sample size there!

The distinguished Mr Obeidallah is, as you would guess, a hard-left hater of Donald Trump, as the screen capture from his Mastodon to the right shows. It’s just natural that he would despise everything for which Mrs Greene stands. But there’s something which pegs the irony meter that someone who is purporting to be a journalist and opinion commentator, someone who exercises his Freedom of Speech and of the Press, attacking someone else being allowed to exercise her Freedom of Speech, and CNN’s Freedom of the Press for broadcasting her. Mrs Greene’s constituents knew what she is like, and they still gave her an almost two-to-one margin over her Democratic opponent in the last election, so perhaps, if Mr Obeidallah believes she is so utterly, utterly horrible, so many people in her district supported her.

Mr Obeidallah did note that CBS had previously broadcast interviews with Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh and Iran’s Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, in a not-so-veiled attempt to lump Mrs Greene in with those thugs, but with Mrs Greene being a growing national figure, is covering her not actual news? But, as I’ve said before, journolists don’t really think the media should cover the news that they don’t like.

References

References
↑1 The spelling ‘journolist’ or ‘journolism’ comes from JournoList, an email list of 400 influential and politically liberal journalists, the exposure of which called into question their objectivity. I use the term ‘journolism’ frequently when writing about media bias.
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The laughable contortions taken by the professional media when a school shooter is #transgender Isn't simply reporting the truth much, much simpler?

It did not take long for the crazy person who shot up The Covenant School, a private Christian elementary school, Audrey Elizabeth Hale, a woman who killed three children and three adults, to be identified as transgender, a woman who decided that she was a man. Yet that news was primarily confined to Twitter and conservative sites; the professional media seemed reticent to acknowledge that part.

Finally, there was this, at 1:39 AM EDT this morning, in The New York Times:

There was confusion about the gender identity of the assailant in the immediate aftermath of the attack. Chief Drake said the shooter identified as transgender. Officials used “she” and “her” to refer to the shooter, but, according to a social media post and a LinkedIn profile, the shooter appeared to identify as male in recent months.

This was the sixth paragraph down. In what is even more amusing is that the article used some stilted prose, to refer to Miss Hale as “the shooter” or “the assailant,” and managed to not once refer to her with a gendered pronoun.

Also see: Robert Stacy McCain: Nashville Shooter Left ‘Manifesto,’ Was ‘High-Functioning’ Autistic

A second Times story also managed to avoid using gendered pronouns or honorifics — like The First Street Journal, the Times uses honorifics, unlike the vast majority of publications — and had this paragraph:

In the aftermath of the shooting, there was confusion about the shooter’s gender identity. Chief Drake said the shooter identified as transgender, and officials used “she” and “her” to refer to the attacker. But according to a social media post and a LinkedIn profile, the shooter appeared to identify as male in recent months.

Not quite identical, but very close. The author of the second article, Adeel Hassan, was not one of the four listed authors, Emily Cochrane, Ben Shpigel, Michael Levenson and Jesus Jiménez, of the first one. The second article was time stamped at 6:57 AM EDT this morning.

The Washington Post, which does not use honorifics, gave slightly more information:

(John)Drake (chief of the Metropolitan Nashville Police Department) said Hale was transgender. Asked if that had played a role in what he described as a “targeted attack,” Drake said it was part of the police investigation.

“There is some theory to that,” Drake said. But, he added, “We’re investigating all the leads, and once we know exactly, we will let you know.”

Don Aaron, a police spokesman, later clarified the chief’s remarks. “Audrey Hale is a biological woman who, on a social media profile, used male pronouns,” Aaron said in an email.

Not restrained by editorial policy specifying honorifics, the Post story frequently referred to the killer as “Hale”, so there were fewer references to “the shooter” or “the assailant.” Neither the Times nor the Post referred to “the killer.” But there was this highly amusing sentence as a stand-alone paragraph:

Police initially described Hale as appearing to be a teenager before revising the age upward to 28.

In any normal composition in English, that would be “revising her age” or “revising his age”. “(R)evising the age” is incredibly stilted.

The Philadelphia Inquirer simply had an Associated Press story by John Matisse, time stamped 2:34 PM EDT on Monday, which, starting on the fifth paragraph down, included:

Police gave unclear information on the gender of the shooter. For hours, police identified the shooter as a 28-year-old woman and eventually identified the person as Audrey Hale. Then at a late afternoon press conference, the police chief said that Hale was transgender. After the news conference, police spokesperson Don Aaron declined to elaborate on how Hale currently identified.

Drake did not give a specific motive when asked by reporters but gave chilling examples of the shooter’s prior planning for the targeted attack.

“We have a manifesto, we have some writings that we’re going over that pertain to this date, the actual incident,” he said. “We have a map drawn out of how this was all going to take place.”

He said in an interview with NBC News that investigators believe Hale had “some resentment for having to go to that school.”

Like the other stories listed, the AP avoided any gendered pronouns in reference to Miss Hale. An updated version, this one in the Lexington Herald-Leader, time stamped at 7:19 AM on Tuesday, had the same paragraphs, and did the same as the Times, referring to “the shooter.”

The Wall Street Journal, which does use honorifics, had a somewhat briefer story, noted that the killer was transgender, but avoided any language which required honorifics or gendered pronouns, referring to “the shooter” and “the suspect.” The suspect? She’s stone-cold graveyard dead now, so unless there’s some chance that the police shot the wrong person, I believe we can avoid calling her “the suspect.”

These are the hoops through which the credentialed media are jumping to avoid “misgendering” someone. Our Stylebook, which specifies that, “Those who claim to be transgender will be referred to with the honorific and pronouns appropriate to the sex of their birth,” avoids that kind of confusion or stupid prose. Isn’t simply telling the truth much, much simpler?

Finally, my compliments to the police! Unlike the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School massacre, where the School Resource Officer, Scot Peterson, earned the epithet the “Coward of Broward“, by hiding outside while Nikolas Cruz was inside killing people, or the Uvalde school shooting, where armed responders waited for an hour while the carnage continued, because they were scared [insert vulgarity for feces here]less, Nashville Metropolitan Police received the call of an active shooter at 10:13 AM CST, and by 10:27 AM Miss Hale was dead.
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Also posted on American Free News Network. Check out American Free News Network for more well written and well reasoned conservative commentary.

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How stupid can they be? "Satire is rapidly becoming impossible because reality has gotten so weird."

There comes a point at which there is so much silliness, so much absolute stupidity, that my mind has to question just how much of this is real and how much is deliberate parody. As Robert Stacy McCain put it, “satire is rapidly becoming impossible because reality has gotten so weird.” When a ‘transgender woman’ claims that a Transportation Safety Administration agent yelled at ‘her’ for having a penis, “punched her in the testicles” at John F Kennedy Airport, and whined that “that her ‘balls still hurt so bad’,” what can you do but laugh?

“We apologize again for your experience,” the airport tweeted in response, according to the Daily Mail. “Your comments have been noted and shared.”

Well, that part isn’t laughable: the TSA is accepting the unnamed passenger’s complaints at face value, and accepting the notion that a woman can have a penis and testicles.

Then there’s Dylan Mulvaney, an (allegedly) ‘transgender woman,’ and his “Days of Girlhood,” in which Mr Mulvaney acts out his ‘transition.’ I say “acts out,” because it’s such a parody of actual girls that it’s difficult to take it as anything serious about how real girls behave, or even that a ‘transgender’ girl would think real girls behave. But President Biden was apparently taken in, as he met with Mr Mulvaney and “said that states had no right to restrict gender-affirming health care, including sex-change surgery and the prescription of hormone blockers.”

Of course, the states blocking “sex-change surgery and the prescription of hormone blockers” are only doing so for minors; adults can still do whatever silliness they want to their bodies, and some minors have been pushed into ‘sex changes’ well before they were of any reasonable age to have informed consent.

The amazing part is that much of the left have swallowed this, not just hook, line, and sinker, but past the rod-and-reel and up the arms of the ‘transgender’ fisherperson. It’s as though registering ‘Democrat’ has entailed swallowing a stupid pill which causes some people to lose that innate ability of every bird, every reptile, and every mammal, to be able to distinguish between males and females of their own species.

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Killadelphia: Everyone wants to talk around the problem, without ever telling the truth

There are dozens and dozens of suggestions on how to reduce crime, but there is one way which actually does work: locking up the criminals that are caught for as long as the law allows, because the criminal who is behind bars is not out on the streets able to commit more crimes. But somehow, some way, that very simple logic has escaped the good citizens of the City of Brotherly Love. From The Philadelphia Inquirer:

Gun violence can affect every part of Philly life. Here’s how residents suggest solving it.

Philadelphians are “tired of looking over their shoulder.” Some want to leave the city altogether.

by Ellie Rushing and Nate File | Monday, March 20, 2023 | 5:00 AM EDT

Joshua Sanchez was leaving his bank one day in North Philly when a group of men with guns swarmed him. They robbed him, he said, then shot him once in the back before fleeing.

“It’s still there,” Sanchez, 38, said of the bullet, which is lodged too deep and close to his spine for doctors to remove.

Three years later, he’s tried to move his life forward, but gun violence remains a looming threat. Sanchez hears shots at home and at job sites, where he works in property maintenance. The danger often feels overwhelming, the lifelong Philadelphian said. He worries that if he stays much longer, he or his son may not survive.

“I just put my house up for sale,” he said. “I’m getting out of Philadelphia.”

He wouldn’t be the first. The 2020 Census put the population of Philadelphia at 1,603,797, but just a year later, the Census Bureau was guesstimating the city’s population as down to 1,576,251, a 1.72% population loss. More than a year later, the Census Bureau has still not updated its website to reflect its guesstimate for 2022 population.

Nearly 50% of Philadelphians in recent poll said that gun violence has had a major negative impact on their quality of life, per the Lenfest Institute for Journalism and research firm SSRS, and 64% of respondents said they have heard gunshots in their neighborhood in the last year.

This is the second time in a week in which I have seen the Leftist Lenfest Institute referenced in an Inquirer story, yet in neither the previous one, nor this, does the newspaper article point out that the Lenfest Institute owns the Inquirer. To cite something as though it is an outside source without that disclosure violates every standard of journalism of which I can think. The Lenfest Institute’s website doesn’t even mention that it owns the Inky on its main page, and you have to go down to a second section on its “About” page to see that acknowledged.

In interviews with nearly a dozen residents, people conveyed an ever-present fear of life in the city. Many said they’ve changed their habits in recent years as shootings have spiked, and now limit their time spent outdoors, especially at night. Mothers said they worry about their children anytime they leave home. Others, such as Sanchez, said they’d move out of Philadelphia if they had the resources.

“People are tired of looking over their shoulder,” said Jacob Green, 69, a poll respondent who’s saving up money to move from Mount Airy to North Carolina.

Then there was this tweet from WCAU-TV, Channel 10, the NBC owned-and-operated station in Philadelphia. District Attorney Larry Krasner apparently wants to give them their severe slaps on the wrist, and released a series of mugshots of homicide suspects. Given that many of the credentialed media journolists[1]The spelling ‘journolist’ or ‘journolism’ comes from JournoList, an email list of 400 influential and politically liberal journalists, the exposure of which called into question their … Continue reading have complained about Steve Keeley of Fox 29 News and his unsoftened coverage of crime in the city, they will doubtlessly be aghast that NBC10 put together this montage of the mugshots of the ten murder suspects, because nine of them are black, and one appears to be Hispanic, or “brown” as The Philadelphia Inquirer would call him. That the District Attorney had the police mugshots of nine of the ten suspects tells us that all but one had been previously arrested, which raises the obvious question: how many, if any, of these suspects could and should have been behind bars when they committed the murders of which they are accused?

More than that, in the linked story from NBC10, the mugshots of the ten suspects are all separate, but, for the tweet, the station put them all together, a montage of minority suspects.

As I guessed without looking first, the Inky didn’t have any of that on their website main page or specific crime page.[2]As of 10;10 AM EDT. The newspaper would much rather not show mugshots like that than help the police apprehend murder suspects.

Back to the original Inquirer article:

The poll also quantified a long-known fact of the crisis: Communities of color largely bear the brunt of it.

Black respondents were more than twice as likely to say that gun violence has seriously affected their quality of life, compared with white respondents. And across income levels, Black and Latino residents were more likely than white residents to report that they had heard gunshots in the last year.

So, while the Inky is willing to tell us that “(c)ommunities of color” are the primary victims of shootings and killings in Philly, the newspaper is unwilling to do anything to get identified and sought-after killers off the city’s streets. Got it!

The survey indicates that while 86% want improved relationships between the police and local communities, only 55% support increased funding for the Philadelphia Police Department. And the people of Philadelphia voted, by landslide margins in both the primary and general elections, in Philly’s most murderous year, 2021, to keep Let ’em Loose Larry Krasner as District Attorney.

Meanwhile, Margie Harkins, 63, a former X-ray technician who frequently worked with gun violence victims, said she wants to see stricter gun laws but knows that action must come from state leaders, not the city. But first, she said, the city must address the mindset of the people using guns.

“Why is everything settled by pulling a gun?” asked Harkins, a poll respondent from Southwest Philly.

Why? Because parents aren’t rearing their children properly, that’s why. With fathers absent or never known, and mothers trying to rear children on their own when there simply are not enough hours in the day to work and try to be both mother and father to their kids, with drugs rampant and a city that’s trying not to stamp out drugs but create ‘safe injection centers’, how can anyone expect anything other than savagery?

References

References
↑1 The spelling ‘journolist’ or ‘journolism’ comes from JournoList, an email list of 400 influential and politically liberal journalists, the exposure of which called into question their objectivity. I use the term ‘journolism’ frequently when writing about media bias.
↑2 As of 10;10 AM EDT.
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“I’ll take ‘Things you won’t find in the Inquirer’ for $200, Alex.”

Also see: Robert Stacy McCain: Journalists Against Journalism: Reporter in Crime-Ridden Philadelphia Criticized for Reporting About City’s Crime Wave

As I’ve pointed out many times before, The Philadelphia Inquirer is our nation’s third oldest continuously published daily newspaper, serving the nation’s sixth largest city and seventh largest metropolitan area, winner of twenty Pulitzer Prizes, the unofficial newspaper of record for the area, but they just don’t want to report the news!

Man Shoots Would-Be Car Thief During Gun Battle, Police Say

During the gun battle, the 18-year-old was shot four times throughout his body and collapsed to the ground after trying to flee, according to investigators.

By David Chang • Published March 16, 2023 • Updated on March 16, 2023 • 11:54 PM EDT

An 18-year-old man was shot four times after he got into a gun battle with the owner of the car he was trying to steal in Northeast Philadelphia, police said.

Police said the 18-year-old and a second suspect were trying to steal a Toyota sedan along the 4400 block of Princeton Avenue around 3:30 p.m. on Thursday. The two suspects went inside the car when the vehicle’s owner, a 26-year-old man, heard the commotion and exited his home, according to investigators.

Continue reading →

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Once again, the #woke credentialed media don’t want to cover the story * Updated! *

As we reported on Saturday, some of the credentialed journalists, journolists as we see them, really don’t like it when other journalists do something really radical like report the facts. The spelling ‘journolist’ or ‘journolism’ comes from JournoList, an email list of 400 influential and politically liberal journalists, the exposure of which called into question their objectivity. I use the term ‘journolism’ frequently when writing about media bias.

Yesterday, a 15-year-old Hispanic boy was shot and killed, shot ten times, making it an obvious hit, not far from Samuel Fels High School. Here’s the story from Fox 29 News:

Police: 15-year-old chased down Philadelphia street, shot to death in broad daylight

Published March 13, 2023 1:27PM | Updated 10:17PM

PHILADELPHIA – A 15-year-old is dead after police say he was chased down a Philadelphia street by a group of gunmen and shot at least 10 times. Continue reading →

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Journolists don’t like real journalism Reporting the unvarnished truth doesn't sit well with those who want to apply their own 'finish' to stories

No, that’s not a typo in the headline: the spelling ‘journolist’ or ‘journolism’ comes from JournoList, an email list of 400 influential and politically liberal journalists, the exposure of which called into question their objectivity. I use the term ‘journolism’ frequently when writing about media bias.

We have reported on, too many times to count, the fact that The Philadelphia Inquirer minimizes its reporting on homicides in the city, deliberately removing references to race in such stories. That I have frequently referred to as The Philadelphia Enquirer[1]RedState writer Mike Miller called it the Enquirer, probably by mistake, so I didn’t originate it, but, reminiscent of the National Enquirer as it is, I thought it very apt. does have its Freedom of the Press, and can report, or not report, on whatever it chooses. But it seems that the newspaper, or at least its long-time columnist, Jenice Armstrong, doesn’t like it when other members of the credentialed media exercise their Freedom of the Press! From Philadelphia magazine:

Fox 29’s Steve Keeley Under Fire From Reporters and Councilperson for Crime Coverage

“It’s embarrassing,” says one Fox 29 insider of Keeley’s reporting. Plus: What’s with my ridiculous PGW bill?

by Victor Fiorillo | Friday, March 10, 2023 | 9:13 AM EST

On Thursday, I reported on a new study about the Philadelphia media world. I pointed out that of the Philadelphia media outlets studied (and there were many), Fox 29 leads the charge by far in terms of the quantity of crime reporting on the network. I thought that would be the end of it, but then a curious thing happened.

Veteran journalists at well-established Philadelphia media outlets don’t generally stick their necks out to criticize one of their peers. (Though you may not consider me a veteran journalist or Philly Mag a well-established outlet, two points we can argue about over a PBR sometime, I’m an exception to this rule, because Philadelphia doesn’t have enough media criticism, and it needs it.) So I was surprised when two did just that.

First up was Cherri Gregg. She worked at KYW Newsradio for many years before switching over to Philadelphia’s NPR affiliate, WHYY, where you can hear her for several hours each day. Since 2021, Gregg has essentially become “the voice” of WHYY.

Gregg took to Facebook shortly after I published my story and wrote the following:

I rarely speak badly of news outlets — BUT Steve Keeley FOX 29’s coverage of crime — definitely makes me cringe. Crime coverage can be very harmful and scares people.

I have been working with my fellow Board Members at Law & Justice Journalism Project to train journalists to do better. Our crime coverage must be community centered — otherwise it can be harmful, sensationalized and disproportionate to what is really happening. AND who gets harmed?? Black and brown people… Black communities and Black men.

OK, I’m going to criticize Victor Fiorillo’s reporting here! He referenced Cherri Gregg’s Facebook statement, but a responsible reporter in an online article would have done something really radical like included the link to Miss Gregg’s posting. I was able to find it in less than a minute, screen capture it in less than another minute, and Mr Fiorillo obviously had it, so why didn’t he include the documentation?

Shouldn’t a media report on other media’s coverage not include documentation? Documentation increases credibility! And non-documentation is, to me, indicative of just plain laziness.

Meanwhile, veteran Inquirer columnist Jenice Armstrong, who previously worked for the likes of the Washington Post and the Associated Press, also had something to say. She wrote on Facebook: “His Twitter feed is also disturbing.”

Regrettably, I was unable to find that statement from Miss Armstrong, but I shouldn’t have had to have tried; Mr Fiorillo could and should have included the link.

Ah yes, his Twitter feed. Keeley’s Twitter account takes his doom-and-gloom, the city is going to hell, the junkies are everywhere approach to a completely different level. It is the Citizen app on steroids. Just have a look and you’ll see what I mean. It’s easy to see why Armstrong would find it “disturbing.”

Miss Gregg, further down in her Facebook post, told us why she was displeased with Mr Keeley’s reporting: he took it from police reports, and showed mugshots when available.

One wonders about her statement that “it is not good reporting to simply repeat police accounts/ narratives, center reporting on an alleged suspect,” when that is exactly what most Philadelphia Inquirer crime reporting — when they report on it at all — is, as I have documented here and here and here. The Inky’s own Helen Ubiñas noted the same thing, in December of 2020, though apparently before publisher Elizabeth ‘Lisa’ Hughes’ edict that the newspaper would be an “anti-racist news organization,” and the paper ceased noting the race of suspects and victims.

It’s not just Miss Gregg, or the Inquirer; a lot of media organizations have engaged in this censorship of the news that they don’t want to publish, as is the case with the McClatchy Mugshot Policy. But Steve Keeley and Fox 29 News are not censoring the news, at least not that part of it, and the liberals in the credentialed media are not at all happy about it. When Mr Keeley and Fox 29 report the unvarnished facts, Miss Gregg and Miss Anderson are appalled because they have told the whole truth, and they just can’t handle the truth.

Freedom of the Press includes the right not to read the Inky, not to listen to listen to Cherri Gregg on WHYY, not to watch Fox 29, and not to read Steve Keeley’s tweets. If someone doesn’t like the way Mr Keeley, or any of those media sources, reports the news, they are perfectly free to not read or listen or watch them. What Misses Gregg and Armstrong don’t like is that someone else is producing the information they’d like to keep hidden.

But I’ll tell another truth: while the Enquirer Inquirer deliberately censored the truth about the recent shooting of seven people in Strawberry Mansion, is there anybody who knows anything about Philly who didn’t “know” that the shooters and the victims were all black? Do Misses Gregg and Armstrong think that the people who read and listen to them don’t know what information they are trying to hide, even without Fox 29 and Mr Keeley’s tweets?

I’ll close with this thought: by withholding the information on race when it comes to crime in the City of Brotherly Love, are the liberal journolists not contributing to a perception that all crime in Philadelphia is committed by, to use the Inquirer’s usual formulation, “black and brown” people? While it’s certainly true that most crime occurs in those neighborhoods, not all crime does, and not every shooter or victim is black or Hispanic. Of the 294 shooting victims listed in the city’s shootings victims database, through Thursday, March 9, nine were non-Hispanic white males, seven were non-Hispanic white females, and two were Asian males. Yes, those are small numbers, just 6.12% of the total, but the number isn’t zero. In Philly right now, the perception is so bad that some people might think that the number for white and Asian victims is zero.

References

References
↑1 RedState writer Mike Miller called it the Enquirer, probably by mistake, so I didn’t originate it, but, reminiscent of the National Enquirer as it is, I thought it very apt.
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In which the credentialed media unwittingly destroy the transgender ideology

This was just a feel-good story in the sports section of The Philadelphia Inquirer, how a teenaged girl was competing, and having some success, in wrestling competition against boys.

Julissa Ortiz became the first girl to win a Public League wrestling title. She’s just getting started.

Julissa Ortiz was about 7 years old when her older sister wrestled a Catholic League rule to its knees. Now, at age 14, she just became the first girl to win a Public League wrestling championship.

by Aaron Carter | Friday, March 10, 2023 | 5:00 AM EST

Julissa Ortiz was about 7 years old when her older sister, Tatyana, then a freshman at Marianna Bracetti High School, inadvertently wrestled a Catholic League rule to its knees.

Last month, Julissa, who is now a freshman at Bracetti, became the first girl to win a Public League wrestling championship.

I will admit it: I sometimes wonder if these Inquirer articles for “paid subscribers only” are so restricted to keep people not exactly friendly to the newspaper’s editorial slant from seeing them. 🙂

“I feel like my sister went through a lot of roadblocks,” Julissa said before a recent practice. “When she was in high school, there were barely any girl wrestlers. When a guy saw a girl wrestler, it was like the end of the world.”

Later, she added: “I just learned to never give up and not listen to what other people say, because this is what I want to do. So I’m just going to stick with it.”

So, young Miss Ortiz has set a goal, has been working hard to achieve it, and has succeeded at some level.

Ortiz, 14, had hoped to compete in Sunday’s unsanctioned girls’ state championships at Central Dauphin High School. Last week, however, Ortiz was unable to compete in girls’ regionals after she weighed in one pound over for the 124-pound weight class.

Last month, with Tatyana, who is now 22, in attendance at the PIAA District 12 co-ed championships, Julissa won her first-round match but lost in the quarterfinals at St. Joseph’s Prep.

“For me just watching [Julissa] grow,” Tatyana said via phone, “it just makes me feel happy because I feel like I’ve done my job. I feel like I’ve shown her how to pave her own way. Even if you’re a girl battling against guys. It doesn’t matter, as long as you put the dedication in. I am so proud of her.” . . . .

And on Feb. 11, she won the Pub title in the 121-pound weight class, beating Central’s Henry Hunsicker via decision in the finals.

Hey, she beat a teenaged boy competing in the same weight class; good for her.

Also see: William Teach: GOP House Moves Legislation On Parental Rights And Banning Trans In Women’s Sports

But here’s where the Inky undermined their own agenda: the entire article on Miss Ortiz’s success is based on the fact she is a teenaged girl, occasionally wrestling against, and beating boys. In the ‘man-bites-dog’ reporting notion, her story merited a full-sized article in the sports section of the newspaper precisely because it was so unusual. It’s not as though the newspaper routinely covers high school athletics other than football and basketball, and even those infrequently.

Miss Ortiz’s competition and victories against the boys are newsworthy because no one expects it, because everyone knows that males have physical advantages over females, even of the same size, in sports requiring strength, endurance, speed, and quickness.

As of 4:08 PM EST, there was only one reader comment, one offering her congratulations. No complaints, no deleted comments noted.

UPenn Women’s Swim Team, via Instagram. It isn’t difficult to pick out the one man male in a women’s bikini top. Click to enlarge.

That certainly hasn’t been the case with the newspaper’s reports on Will Thomas, the male University of Pennsylvania swimmer who claims to be a woman and goes by the name “Lia.” As we have previously reported, the Inquirer was quick to censor reader comments — and there were several of them — which challenged the notion that Mr Thomas is a woman and should be competing against women in formal swim meets. The 6’3″ tall physically intact Mr Thomas absolutely destroyed the competition before he learned to hold back a little, to win races but not by such devastating margins.

It’s actually pretty simple: most conservatives don’t object to someone trying to step up against tougher competition, and we recognize that girls and women deciding to compete against boys and men in sports where males, overall, have a decided physical advantage over females, isn’t unfair to anyone. What we also realize is that males competing against females in women’s sports is different, is the taking advantage of male size, speed, endurance, and musculature, against women. The Inquirer would never publish an article about how some teenaged boy who wasn’t claiming to be a ‘transgender’ girl won a girls’ sports competition; the newspaper simply goes along with the ‘transgender’ ideology because the editorial and news staff are #woke journolists[1]The spelling ‘journolist’ or ‘journolism’ comes from JournoList, an email list of 400 influential and politically liberal journalists, the exposure of which called into question their … Continue reading who have swallowed the far-left line hook, line, and sinker.

But, every once in a while, they wind up reporting on something, something very much in the realm of common sense, which completely destroys the “LGBTQ+” meme without ever realizing what they’ve done. I am amused.

References

References
↑1 The spelling ‘journolist’ or ‘journolism’ comes from JournoList, an email list of 400 influential and politically liberal journalists, the exposure of which called into question their objectivity. I use the term ‘journolism’ frequently when writing about media bias.
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The left say they are for democracy, but they’re really not We must do as Our Betters say, because it's for our own good!

It took a couple of Washington Post reporters to say the quiet part out loud. According to her Post biography, Lauren Weber joined newspaper in 2023 as an accountability reporter focused on the forces promoting scientific and medical disinformation. She previously investigated the decimated public health system and covid disparities for Kaiser Health News. Yeah, that’s the definition of an unbiased reporter! Joined by Joel Achenbach, they produced this gem:

Covid backlash hobbles public health and future pandemic response

Lawsuits and legislation have stripped public health officials of their powers in three years

By Lauren Weber and Joel Achenbach | Wednesday, March 8, 2023 | 6:00 AM EST

When the next pandemic sweeps the United States, health officials in Ohio won’t be able to shutter businesses or schools, even if they become epicenters of outbreaks. Nor will they be empowered to force Ohioans who have been exposed to go into quarantine. State officials in North Dakota are barred from directing people to wear masks to slow the spread. Not even the president can force federal agencies to issue vaccination or testing mandates to thwart its march.

Conservative and libertarian forces have defanged much of the nation’s public health system through legislation and litigation as the world staggers into the fourth year of covid.

If you hold your cursor on the title tab, you’ll see that the article was originally entitled “Covid lawsuits weakened public health, U.S. pandemic preparedness.” Reporters submit their articles, but editors frequently write the headlines.

But think about what Miss Weber and Mr Achenbach wrote: that “conservative and libertarian forces” — quite the liberal bugaboo there! — used “legislation and litigation” to “(defang) much of the nation’s public health system”. Legislation is the act of legislatures, the elected representatives of the people, and litigation is the use of the courts, the legal system, to bring to account actions taken which might be outside existing law. Are not both acts of democracy in a democratic system?

At least 30 states, nearly all led by Republican legislatures, have passed laws since 2020 that limit public health authority, according to a Washington Post analysis of laws collected by Kaiser Health News and the Associated Press as well as the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials and the Center for Public Health Law Research at Temple University.

Health officials and governors in more than half the country are now restricted from issuing mask mandates, ordering school closures and imposing other protective measures or must seek permission from their state legislatures before renewing emergency orders, the analysis showed.

We have previously mentioned Governor Andy Beshear’s (D-KY) dictatorial orders concerning COVID-19 restrictions, and his refusal to involve the General Assembly.

Beshear was asked at Friday’s (July 10, 2020 — Editor) news conference on COVID-19 why he has not included the legislature in coming up with his orders. He said many state lawmakers refuse to wear masks and noted that 26 legislators in Mississippi have tested positive for the virus.

Though the Governor is supposedly very popular, and the public supposedly approve of his handling of COVID-19, the November elections increased Republican control over both chambers of the state legislature. The GOP increased their majority in the state Senate from 28-10 to 30-8, and in the state House of Representatives from 61-37 (with 2 vacancies) to 75-25. Both were, and again are, veto-proof majorities under the state constitution. Republicans campaigned in 2020 on reining in the Governor’s powers, and the voters of the Commonwealth apparently approved of their message.

The subsequent legislative elections, in 2022, further increased the Republicans’ majorities, to 31-7 and 80-20. As an act of democracy in the only polls that count, actual elections, it would appear that the voters approved the Republicans’ actions in the previous legislative sessions.

Of course, our Democratic Governor was appalled that the state legislature would rein him in:

Beshear has indicated he would like no approach at all. He has criticized the effort to restrict his ability to issue executive orders, painting it as a potentially “catastrophic” attempt to limit his ability to deal with COVID-19, and one that would hamstring future governors if another unforeseen emergency arrives.

“I hope when they show up, making a lot of noise, let’s take a breath, let me get on through this and afterwards, have at it,” Beshear told the Herald-Leader when asked about the legislature’s effort to limit executive power. “Then we can go to court or anything else.”

Also see: William Teach: All That Backlash To COVID Tyranny Will Make Next Pandemic Tough

As we have previously noted, the General Assembly passed the bills restricting the Governor’s emergency powers, requiring any executive orders to be approved by the legislature within thirty days or automatically lapse, which Mr Beshear vetoed, his vetoes were promptly and overwhelmingly overridden, and the Governor then went to his toady judge to file suit to overturn the legislature’s actions. It took 5½ months, but the state Supreme Court finally overruled Judge Philip Shepherd’s injunction and stated that the legislature acted within their authority.

All of that, even with the delays, was through the democratic action of a legally elected state legislature, and ruled on by legally elected judges.

That, of course, appalls Miss Weber and Mr Achenbach!

The movement to curtail public health powers successfully tapped into a populist rejection of pandemic measures following widespread anger and confusion over the government response to covid. Grass-roots-backed candidates ran for county commissions and local health boards on the platform of dismantling health departments’ authority. Republican legislators and attorneys general, religious liberty groups and the legal arms of libertarian think tanks filed lawsuits and wrote new laws modeled after legislation promoted by groups such as the American Legislative Exchange Council, a conservative, corporate-backed influence in statehouses across the country.

I just love that paragraph! The authors note a “populist rejection of pandemic measures”, “Grass-roots-backed candidates”, “Republican legislators and attorneys general, religious liberty groups and the legal arms of libertarian think tanks”, and “groups such as the American Legislative Exchange Council, a conservative, corporate-backed influence in statehouses”, all examples of public opinion in democratic action.

The Alabama legislature barred businesses from requiring proof of coronavirus vaccination. In Tennessee, officials cannot close churches during a state of emergency. Florida made it illegal for schools to require coronavirus vaccinations.

We were critical, from the very beginning, of the authoritarian dictates of so many of our nation’s governors when the COVID-19 scare first erupted.

On March 19, 2020 Governor Andy Beshear (D-KY) unconstitutionally ordered all churches closed in the Bluegrass State. That order covered the Easter holiday, the most important day in the Christian calendar. When a couple of churches ignored the Governor’s order, he sent the Kentucky State Police to record license plates and vehicle identification numbers on vehicles in church parking lots, on Easter Sunday!

Two federal judges ruled against the Governor, allowing churches to reopen, but they did not rule until May 8, 2020.

The result, public health experts warn, is a battered patchwork system that makes it harder for leaders to protect the country from infectious diseases that cross red and blue state borders.

Well, it will certainly make it hard for dictators to take action! In states like Kentucky, the Governor can issue executive orders, but he has to call the General Assembly into a special session — if they are not already in session — to approve the orders if they are to extend beyond thirty days. That almost sounds, you know, reasonable!

“One day we’re going to have a really bad global crisis and a pandemic far worse than covid, and we’ll look to the government to protect us, but it’ll have its hands behind its back and a blindfold on,” said Lawrence Gostin, director of Georgetown University’s O’Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law. “We’ll die with our rights on — we want liberty but we don’t want protection.”

There was a rather famous Virginian by the name of Patrick Henry who said something about liberty.

There’s a lot more at the Post’s original, and if you are stymied by the Post’s paywall, you can read the whole thing for free here. But what you will be reading is a thinly-veiled defense of authoritarianism, of allowing Our Betters the power to tell us what we must do and cannot do in the event of the next panicdemic.

No, that’s not a typographical error: I spelled it to indicate exactly what I thought it to be.

The cited article is not listed as an opinion piece, but the authors’ opinions are very, very obvious. That quiet part they said out loud? That we must sit down and shut up, and be ruled by the left.
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Also posted on American Free News Network. Check out American Free News Network for more well written and well reasoned conservative commentary.