Category Archives: Freedom of Speech and of the Press

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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.

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The Philadelphia Inquirer: using grammar to avoid telling the whole truth

Writers attempt to communicate with the written word, and decent writers should know at least something about grammar, to ply their trade most efficiently. One important concept in grammar is the difference between the comparative and the superlative.

Comparatives vs. Superlatives

Published October 7, 2019

Not all things are created equal: some are good, others are better, and only the cream of the crop rise to the level of best. These three words—good, better, and best—are examples of the three forms of an adjective or adverb: positive, comparative, and superlative. . . . .

There are a few irregular adjectives and adverbs. For those, you must memorize how these change the spelling of their positive form to show comparative and superlative degrees.

Some common irregular adjectives are good, better, best and bad, worse, worst.

Some have more than one option: little can become littler or less (comparative), and littlest or least (superlative). Many, some, or much become more in the comparative and most in the superlative.

It was this paragraph which caught my attention, in the main editorial in this morning’s Philadelphia Inquirer. Any decent writer understands that he shouldn’t use the same word twice in a sentence if possible, so when the Editorial Board wrote that “too many residents endure,” the following should be “where most, but not all, the shootings occur.” Continue reading →

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The Philadelphia Inquirer has now come out against Freedom of Speech and of the Press No one who reads the newspaper regularly can really be surprised.

In 1971, President Richard Nixon sought a restraining order to prevent The New York Times and The Washington Post from printing more of the so-called “Pentagon Papers,” technically the Report of the Office of the Secretary of Defense Vietnam Task Force, a classified history and assessment of American policy and operations in the Vietnam war. The Times and the Post fought the injunctions in court, the Times winning in New York Times Co. v. United States, 403 U.S. 713 (1971). The Times was all about the First Amendment and Freedom of the Press.

Of course, the American left were aghast that Elon Musk’s purchase of Twitter has meant that conservatives would be able to actually speak freely. As we have previously noted, Twitter added rules banning “targeted misgendering or deadnaming of transgender individuals.” “Misgendering” means referring to ‘transgendered’ individuals by their biological sex, either directly or through the use of the appropriate pronouns, while “deadnaming” means referring to such people by their birth names rather than the ones they have adopted which are more consistent with their imagined ‘gender.'[1]The First Street Journal’s Stylebook is exactly the opposite: while we do not change the direct quotes of others, in original material we always refer to people by their normal, biological sex … Continue reading The New York Times gave OpEd space to Chad Malloy[2]Chad Malloy is a man male who claims to be a woman, and goes by the faux name “Parker Malloy.” to claim that such restrictions actually promoted freedom of speech.

And now come the Editorial Board of The Philadelphia Inquirer, who are also very much opposed to the freedom of speech and of the press . . . for other people!

Social media companies must curtail the spread of misinformation | Editorial

It may be up to policymakers to strike the balance between upholding the First Amendment and regulating speech on sites such as Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube.

by The Editorial Board | Sunday, February 19, 2023 | 5:00 AM EST

About 500 hours of video gets uploaded to YouTube every minute. The online video-sharing platform houses more than 800 million videos and is the second most visited site in the world, with 2.5 billion active monthly users.

Given the deluge of content flooding the site every day, one would surmise that YouTube must have an army of people guarding against the spread of misinformation — especially in the wake of the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection that was fueled by lies on social media.

Whenever I see something by the Editorial Board which has a plethora of hyperlinks, I always suspect it was written by columnist Will Bunch; that’s just his style. And when I see yet another reference to the Capitol kerfuffle, I’m even more persuaded, because former President Trump has been living, rent-free, in Mr Bunch’s head.

Well, not actually.

Following recent cutbacks, there is just one person in charge of misinformation policy worldwide, according to a recent report in the New York Times. This is alarming, since fact-checking organizations have said YouTube is a major pipeline in the spread of disinformation and misinformation.

The hand-written copy of the proposed articles of amendment passed by Congress in 1789, cropped to show just the text in the third article that would later be ratified as the First Amendment.

The First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States was very simply written: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.” But it seems that the Editorial Board very much want Freedom of Speech and of the Press limited.

Not limited for the Inquirer, of course, but to all of those riff-raff not part of the old-line credentialed media.

Mr Bunch, oh, sorry, the Editorial Board continued for several paragraphs, telling us how Google and Meta and Twitter lave laid off thousands of staff, including people who were, supposedly, staff who were supposed to stifle “misinformation,” and “hate speech,” before we get to this:

But Musk says he is a free speech absolutist — except when it impacts him. The billionaire temporarily suspended the accounts of several journalists and blocked others who rebuked him on Twitter. He also fired employees at SpaceX, one of his other companies, who criticized him.

More to the point, Musk fails to understand that freedom of speech is not absolute. As much as this board supports and cherishes the First Amendment, there are rules and regulations surrounding what can be said.

For example, you can’t harass or violate the rights of others. Just ask Alex Jones. The conspiracy theorist and Infowars founder was ordered to pay nearly $1 billion in damages to the families of eight victims of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting for his repeated lies that the massacre was a hoax.

Oops, sorry, wrong answer. That was not the government regulating speech, but a civil action in which Mr Jones was found liable for damages (supposedly) inflicted on eight families. Just like the old maxim that you can’t yell, “Fire!” in a crowded theater, while doing so can make you liable for both civil damages and criminal law violations if someone is injured by your actions, that does not give the government the right to prevent you from entering the theater because you might yell, “Fire!”

To be sure, the First Amendment makes it difficult to regulate social media companies. But doing nothing is not the answer. The rise of artificial intelligence to create sophisticated chatbots such as ChatGPT and deepfake technology will worsen the spread of fake news, further threatening democracy. Policymakers must soon strike a balance between the First Amendment and regulating social media.

“Strike a balance”? What part of “Congress shall make no law” don’t the Editorial Board understand?

Texas and Florida have already muddied the regulation debate by passing laws that will upend the already limited content moderation efforts by social media companies and make the internet an even bigger free-for-all. The U.S. Supreme Court put off whether to take up the cases, leaving the state laws in limbo for now.

Meanwhile, the European Union is pushing forward with its own landmark regulations called the Digital Services Act. The measure takes effect next year and aims to place substantial content moderation requirements on social media companies to limit false information, hate speech, and extremism.

And there you have it: the admiration of the Board to limit not what they are calling “false information,” but also “hate speech and extremism.” The Board want to limit what people can read, if it doesn’t meet with their approval of what should be said. We reported on the Inky ending reader comments on all stories other than sports, and then, when a sports story on Will Thomas, the male University of Pennsylvania who claimed to be a woman named “Lia,” with open comments, drew many which held that no, Mr Thomas was not a woman, the newspaper removed them. To the Inky, which has all of its articles on Mr Thomas, on all ‘transgendered’ persons, phrased to agree with the claims that they are the gender they claim to be, rather than the sex they really are, questioning that in any way is ‘misinformation’, ‘hate speech,’ and ‘extremism.’

“As much as this board supports and cherishes the First Amendment,” they claimed, but let’s tell the truth here: the Editorial Board do not support and cherish the First Amendment when those First Amendment rights are exercised by people of whom they disapprove, expressing opinions with which they disagree.

References

References
↑1 The First Street Journal’s Stylebook is exactly the opposite: while we do not change the direct quotes of others, in original material we always refer to people by their normal, biological sex and their original names. But we do say that explicitly.
↑2 Chad Malloy is a man male who claims to be a woman, and goes by the faux name “Parker Malloy.”
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Once again, the Lexington Herald-Leader chooses to break McClatchy policy, and publish photo of a criminal suspect Why? I suspect it's because he's white

It has been awhile since we last mentioned the McClatchy Mugshot Policy:

Publishing mugshots of arrestees has been shown to have lasting effects on both the people photographed and marginalized communities. The permanence of the internet can mean those arrested but not convicted of a crime have the photograph attached to their names forever. Beyond the personal impact, inappropriate publication of mugshots disproportionately harms people of color and those with mental illness. In fact, some police departments have started moving away from taking/releasing mugshots as a routine part of their procedures.

To address these concerns, McClatchy will not publish crime mugshots — online, or in print, from any newsroom or content-producing team — unless approved by an editor. To be clear, this means that in addition to photos accompanying text stories, McClatchy will not publish “Most wanted” or “Mugshot galleries” in slide-show, video or print.

Any exception to this policy must be approved by an editor. Editors considering an exception should ask:

  • Is there an urgent threat to the community?
  • Is this person a public official or the suspect in a hate crime?
  • Is this a serial killer suspect or a high-profile crime?

If an exception is made, editors will need to take an additional step with the Pub Center to confirm publication by making a note in the ‘package notes‘ field in Sluglife.

Oddly enough, I have never been able to find the McClatchy mugshot policy officially published anywhere, but after the apparently internal memo went out, but on August 20, 2020, then Fort Worth Star-Telegram, a McClatchy newspaper, reporter Nichole Manna published it in a tweet.

The Lexington Herald-Leader is another McClatchy newspaper, so you would assume that that newspaper would follow the policy, right?

‘Brazen theft.’ Former University of Kentucky student accused in $67 million fraud

by Bill Estep | Thursday, February 16, 2023 | 11:27 AM EST | Updated: Friday, February 17, 2023 | 11:21 AM EST

Screenshot of Herald-Leader logo and accompanying photo, taken at 11:45 AM EST on Friday, February 17, 2023. Click to enlarge.

A former Lexington resident and University of Kentucky student has been accused of siphoning $28 million from a company and using it for expensive personal purchases, including a $16 million jet and a luxury box at a sports arena.

Christopher S. Kirchner was charged with wire fraud in a federal criminal complaint.

Authorities arrested him Valentine’s Day at his home in a gated community in Westlake, Texas, according to court records.

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filed a separate civil complaint against Kirchner, 35, alleging he lied over and over to investors in raising $67 million for his company, Slync.io, and drained much of it for himself even as the company didn’t meet payroll at times.

“This case concerns an offering fraud orchestrated by Kirchner . . . involving his brazen theft of over $28 million of investor funds to fund his lavish lifestyle,” SEC attorneys said in the complaint.

Read more here.

So, Mr Kirshner is accused of a rather serious felony, and the story is of some interest in Kentucky, but I have to ask: under which of the three mugshot policy exceptions does Mr Kirshner’s case fall?[1]In writing this story, I initially saved Mr Kirshner’s photo from the story itself, but decided instead to take a screenshot, including the newspaper’s logo, to prove what I have stated, … Continue reading Is Mr Kirshner an urgent threat to the community? He had his initial court appearance, in Texas, earlier this week, and was released pending a trial. Clearly federal law enforcement in Texas did not consider him to be an urgent enough threat to hold him without bail. Is he a public official or the suspect in a hate crime? No, he is a private individual, and no hate crime is either charged or alleged. Is he “a serial killer suspect or a high-profile crime?” He isn’t charged with killing anyone, and wire fraud isn’t exactly what anyone would call a “high-profile crime.”

So, why did what my best friend used to call the Herald-Liberal break policy and include Mr Kirshner’s photograph? There’s nothing in reporter Bill Estep’s story which indicated that Mr Kirshner is a previously convicted criminal, and if he is acquitted — and remember: he is legally innocent until proven guilty — he will have been harmed, according to the McClatchy policy statement that “The permanence of the internet can mean those arrested but not convicted of a crime have the photograph attached to their names forever.”

Mr Estep has been with the newspaper for a long, long time; it would seem improbable that he would have been unaware of the McClatchy policy. If Mr Estep went ahead and published this story, under his own byline, without getting approval of Editor Peter Baniak, he again violated policy. Whether Mr Baniak actually did approve the publication of Mr Kirshner’s photograph is unknown.

As regular readers know, The First Street Journal does not share the McClatchy policy’s concerns, and regularly publishes photos of those accused of crimes. I do not object to the newpaper publishing Mr Kirshner’s photograph; I do object to the hypocrisy being shown by publishing it.

There is, of course, more. As we have previously reported, the newspaper has previously published photos of white suspects, including this, and especially this one, in which the mugshots of five white convicted criminals were published, out of nearly two dozen inmates affected.

Let me be clear about this: my strong impression is that the editor and staffers of the Lexington Herald-Leader have been far more guarded about publishing photographs of black criminal suspects and convicted criminals than white suspects and convicted criminals. I suspect, but cannot prove, that this is more than just an unconscious bias, but a deliberate policy choice, because these ‘exceptions’ to the policy have occurred far too often to be obvious coincidences.

References

References
↑1 In writing this story, I initially saved Mr Kirshner’s photo from the story itself, but decided instead to take a screenshot, including the newspaper’s logo, to prove what I have stated, in case it is edited out later.
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Senator Karen Berg thinks that Jack can be Jill . . . and wants the public schools to enforce that

Kentucky, one of the most conservative and Republican states in the nation, elected Democrat Andy Beshear to be Governor of the Commonwealth in 2019. The previous Governor, Republican Matt Bevin, had tried to take serious action to restore the state’s employee pension fund to greater financial stability, and the teachers in the Bluegrass State went absolutely ape! Out of 1,442,390 total votes cast, then-Attorney General Beshear beat Governor Bevin by 5,189 votes, with 28,425 going to Libertarian John Hicks.

Having a Democrat as Governor has led to all kinds of mischief in Kentucky. Mr Beshear’s handling of the COVID-19 panicdemic[1]No, that’s not a typographical error; I spelled it panicdemic deliberately, because unreasoning panic is how the United States reacted to the disease. was to order churches closed — a decision eventually ruled illegal, but not until churches had been closed for nine weeks, including through Easter Sunday[2]Governor Beshear ordered the Kentucky State Police to record license plate and vehicle identification numbers of cars parked in one church parking lot on Easter Sunday, to order people who attended … Continue reading — “non-essential” businesses closed, mask mandates and the other intrusive measures. He ordered people not to have gatherings of more than ten people, from more than two households, for Thanksgiving in 2020, an order I am happy and proud to say we violated.

Another bit of horrible mischief was the appointment of other Democrats to fill executive positions in the Commonwealth, including the Commissioner of Education. From the Lexington Herald-Leader:

KY education chief defends state pronoun guidance after legislators’ attacks, bills

By Valarie Honeycutt Spears and Austin Horn | Monday, February 13, 2023 | 5:13 PM EST

Kentucky Education Commissioner Jason Glass spoke out Monday in response to lawmakers’ criticism about a state guidance document recommending the use of a student’s preferred pronouns and legislation that seeks to strengthen “parental rights” in schools.

In a Monday email to state education employees, Glass referenced his comments last week to the House Education Committee, where he was testifying about long-standing shortages in the educator workforce.

“While I was happy to share information with them about the shortages we are facing and trend lines in the teacher workforce,” Glass said, “I was disappointed with the turn the meeting took toward the end of the time I was there. Instead of staying focused on what we can do to support the teaching profession, some of the legislators ended up focusing on guidance the agency produced regarding use of student’s preferred names.”

At the meeting, lawmakers openly criticized Glass and the guidance, calling it part of a “woke agenda” driven by Glass.

The guidance says, in part, school leaders should consult with their local board counsel for advice on specific issues in their districts. It is considered best practice to recognize and use a student’s preferred name and pronouns when these preferences are requested, the document said.

If a student voluntarily discloses their sexual orientation or gender identity to an educator with the assumption that this information is to be kept private, it is best practice for the educator to maintain that confidence and keep the information confidential, the document recommends.

There’s more at the original. While what my best friend used to call the Herald-Liberal has a paywall, non-subscribers can access a couple of free articles a month.

As we have previously noted, the Central Bucks (Pennsylvania) School Board required teachers, administrators and staff to use students’ proper names, references and pronouns as recorded in school records, unless the individual student’s parents approved a change. This was done to avoid legal repercussions if a particular student wanted to claim he was the opposite sex, and his parents sued the school for ‘enabling’ gender transition. By setting up a system under which parents can ‘opt in’ to allowing their ‘transgendered’ students to be identified by their ‘preferred’ names and pronouns, the District is also setting up a policy which allows parents to choose not to go along with that silliness, and thus protect the District from being sued into penury.

While no such lawsuit has been filed in the Bluegrass State thus far, that doesn’t mean one couldn’t happen if teachers follow the Commissioner of Education’s ‘guidance’. Quite frankly, I hope that such does happen, sooner rather than later. More, I want to see not just the school systems sued for this, but the school administrators, staff, and teachers who go along with such nonsense.

Of course, the newspaper, which as we have previously reported makes endorsements uniformly rejected by voters in the sixth congressional district and the state as a whole, is very much on the side of the homosexual and ‘transgender’ lobby:

Sen. Berg: Please listen to a grieving mother. ‘Parents rights’ bills are dangerous. | Opinion

by state Senator Karen Berg (D-26th District) | Friday, February 10, 2023

I have been proud to represent the people of Kentucky and fight for their rights and well-being since being first elected in 2020. However, this proud moment was marred by a deep personal loss — my transgender son, Henry, who I loved with all my heart, took his own life. This tragedy has forced me to confront the harsh reality where discrimination and bigotry against the LGBTQ+ community are all too common.

We have previously noted Senator Berg, who is actually a physician, a diagnostic radiologist, who should understand the very elementary biology of sex differences, and her acceptance of her daughter’s transgenderism. While all of the sources I could find give only Miss Berg-Brousseau’s first name as “Henry,” and use the masculine pronouns and references to her, at The First Street Journal, we always tell the truth: Miss Berg-Brousseau was female, regardless of what she and her mother wanted to believe. The Herald-Leader uncritically wrote that Senator Berg’s daughter was her son. As is so often the case, the newspaper’s stylebook calls for referring to the ‘transgendered’ by the gender they claim to be, not the sex they actually are, and the use of the preferred ‘pronouns’ and faux name they chose. All of this is subtly designed to be courtesy, but also to normalize ‘transgenderism’ as something real.

Now, bills like Senate Bill 150 are being introduced in our state legislature and sold as “parental choice,” but in reality, they are nothing more than a dangerous attack on our children. These bills aim to limit the authority of the Kentucky Board of Education and the Kentucky Department of Education concerning parental rights and a student’s use of pronouns, prohibit school policies from keeping student information confidential from parents, and even require school personnel and students to use pronouns for students that do not conform to that student’s biological sex.

Perhaps Dr Berg isn’t that good a doctor, because she just referred to a ‘transgendered’ student’s ‘gender identity’ as his “biological sex.”

These measures are not just misguided. They are cruel and harmful. Bills like SB 150 send a message to LGBTQ+ students that they are not valued or respected and put them at greater risk of discrimination and harm, whether self-harm or bullying. They also undermine the ability of teachers and school staff to create safe and inclusive environments for all students, and they limit the ability of schools to provide the support and resources that our children need to thrive.

Senator Berg could, if she chose, try to amend SB 150 to allow, as the Central Bucks policy does, schools to refer to ‘transgendered’ students by their preferred names, pronouns and other gendered references if the student’s parents were notified and consented. But that isn’t what she wants; she wants the public schools — which, due to compulsory education laws, have what is, in effect, a captive audience — to keep a student’s ‘transgender identity’ a secret from the parents. While it’s difficult to imagine that parents could fail to notice these things, or that the gossip of neighborhood parents and other students would escape the parents’ notice, Senator Berg does not want them notified.

Of course, Dr Berg wants ‘transgenderism’ normalized as well:

The provision in SB 150 to establish requirements for public schools’ courses, curriculums, or programs on human sexuality is particularly concerning. These courses and curriculums should provide accurate and comprehensive information on human sexuality and gender identity in a way that is inclusive and respectful of all students. Requiring a specific perspective on these subjects limits educational opportunities and spreads harmful, inaccurate information about the LGBTQ+ community.

Actually, the public schools should not be presenting programs on human sexuality at all; that is the job of parents. But any curriculum on human sexuality is going to have a “specific perspective,” either normalizing and accepting what the federal government has euphemistically referred to as “minority sexual orientations,” or not doing so, which the homosexual and ‘transgender’ advocates would find terrible. Dr Berg is pushing a specific agenda. Dr Berg is wanting the public schools in Kentucky to push the acceptance of a transgender student as being the sex he claims to be rather than the sex he is; she wants the schools to push the notion that Jack is really Jill — or vice versa — with the schools enforcing the chosen names, pronouns, and other gendered references the ‘transgendered’ prefer, regardless of the beliefs of other students and other students’ families.

It isn’t much of a step to see another student referring to Jack as Jack rather than Jill being punished for bullying for not accepting the notion that Jack is really Jill.

In her OpEd piece, Dr Berg mentioned nothing about her daughter’s mental illness, I suppose because it would undermine the political goal she is trying to achieve. But it’s not a secret, as even Dr Berg previously admitted:

This lack of acceptance took a toll on Henry. He long struggled with mental illness, not because he was trans but born from his difficulty finding acceptance.

Henry Berg-Brousseau is seen with his politician mother Karen, father Bob, a marketing director, and sister Rachael, a rabbi. Photo from the Daily Mail. Click to enlarge.

To be blunt about it, young Miss Berg-Brousseau would have found ‘acceptance’ difficult even if people around her accepted her claim to be a boy. A photo of the family shows Miss Berg-Brousseau as being shorter than her mother and sister, as well as obese. Were she an actual boy who grew up that way, “he’d” have been the last picked for a team in Phys Ed, and been dateless as high school girls, real girls, would have rejected “him” for more masculine guys. As an adult, she might somehow ‘pass’ as a male, if no one asked any questions, but she’d have been the least impressive of ‘guys’. A female claiming to be male does not change the sexual dimorphism which exists in human beings, and Miss Berg-Brousseau grew up with a height much more typical of females than males.

You know, I get it: Dr Berg really, really, really wants to believe that her daughter was actually her son, and she wants her daughter to be honored for what she claimed to be. She is suffering the personal tragedy of having lost her child, and that is a devastating thing, but it doesn’t make her right.

More, I understand that some people think that it’s just common courtesy to accept the ‘transgendered’ as who and what they claim to be, rather than what they actually are. But people have a right to think for themselves, and if they do not want to agree that Jack is really Jill, they have that right, and the public schools should not be enforcing a perception that girls can be boys and boys can be girls. The ‘transgendered’ need mental help, to help them to come to terms with what they are, not coddling to continue their delusions of what they think they should be.

References

References
↑1 No, that’s not a typographical error; I spelled it panicdemic deliberately, because unreasoning panic is how the United States reacted to the disease.
↑2 Governor Beshear ordered the Kentucky State Police to record license plate and vehicle identification numbers of cars parked in one church parking lot on Easter Sunday, to order people who attended services into self-quarantine.
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The credentialed media really, really, really hate being held to account Taylor Lorenz is just hopping mad that not everything in the world revolves around her

Taylor Lorenz is a Washington Post 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 about whom we’ve reported several times. Miss Lorenz first came to my attention when she doxed Chaya Raichik, a Brooklyn-based real estate salesperson who was the creator of the Twitter site Libs of TikTok. My good friend Amanda Marcotte of Salon loved that LoTT was doxed, doubtlessly hoping that Chaya Raichik, a Brooklyn-based real estate salesperson and LoTT creator would lose her job, and posted a hope that Mr Musk’s buyout of Twitter results in the whole thing being killed.

Then, a month later, we noted that Miss Lorenz, who found it so necessary to expose Miss Raichik, was simply appalled that the political resistance to President Biden’s attempt to create a Ministry of Truth Disinformation Governance Board within the Department of Fatherland Homeland Security forced the proposal to be ended. The proposed Minister of Truth board administrator, Nina Jankowicz, worked in the press room at Volodymyr Zelensky’s campaign headquarters, which calls into question just how impartial she could have been in fighting ‘disinformation’ concerning the Russo-Ukrainian War.

She later complained about someone else being doxed, a journalism student who had written a critical article about her subject: Continue reading →

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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To the left, liberal politics are far more important than Freedom of Religion Jennifer Palmeiri said the quiet part out loud: to the left, religious faith is determined by politics, rather than the other way around.

As we noted on Friday, an FBI “Analyst” submitted a proposal to monitor traditional Catholics who prefer the Tridentine, or Traditional Latin, Mass, “Radical-Traditionalist Catholics,” or RTEs, he called them, because “Racially or Ethnically Motivated Violent Extremists,” or RMVEs might be interested in using Latin Mass Catholics to spread their goals.

Someone leaked a hand-redacted, redacted by magic marker, copy of the “FBI internal use only” document, and the Bureau decided, rather quickly, that they ought to withdraw the document entirely.

FBI retracts leaked document orchestrating investigation of Catholics

By Tyler Arnold and Joe Bukuras | Thursday, February 9, 2023 | 3:15 PM EST

The FBI says it is retracting a leaked document published on the internet Feb. 8 that appears to reveal that the bureau’s Richmond division launched an investigation into “radical traditionalist” Catholics and their possible ties to “the far-right white nationalist movement.”

In response to an inquiry from CNA, the FBI said it will remove the document because “it does not meet our exacting standards.”

Really? The document is ‘sourced’ citing far-left political sources, including Salon, The Atlantic, and the Southern Poverty Law Center. If there are less biased sources, they were redacted from the document. It’s so bad that it makes me wonder: if it was a great departure from the Bureau’s “exacting standards,” why wouldn’t the document author have realized it, and the Bureau have flagged it before it was leaked? Or is the document not really that great a departure from those “exacting standards,” which calls into question just how “exacting” those standards really are. Continue reading →