Category Archives: Journolism

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Telling the people most at risk for contracting #Monkeypox how to avoid it is just way, way, way too politically incorrect!

It seems that some people have suggested that the name “Monkeypox” somehow discriminates against blacks and homosexual males, and should be changed, which immediately became the subject of jokes:

The apparently odd notion that, with Monkeypox, an infection that is being spread primarily, though not exclusively, by male homosexual sex, should make them question whether they really need to copulate with that cute guy at the end of the bar just never seems to occur. Continue reading →

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The journolism of The Philadelphia Inquirer And people wonder why the Philadelphia Police Department cannot get recruits to fill the undermanned force?

No, I didn’t misspell the word in the title: 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.

I have noted, many times, that black lives don’t matter to The Philadelphia Inquirer, as evidenced by the fact that the newspaper, to meet publisher Elizabeth Hughes’ decree that it be an “anti-racist news organization,” but has become racist in itself.

I also noted that when Police Commissioner Danielle Outlaw decided to fire the officer who (allegedly) killed 12-year-old Thomas Siderio, Jr, who had shot first at police, injuring one, and then was pursued and shot as he fled by another officer, the Commissioner declined to name the officer, expressing concern for his safety, but the inquirer managed to ferret out his name and print it. What are we supposed to think other than the Inky is trying to get the officer killed?

Well, they’re at it again!

Philly police fire lieutenant who allegedly used the N-word on a radio call last month

Sgt. Eric Gripp, a department spokesperson, declined to identify the officer but said he was given 30 days notice of his termination on July 5 — a standard practice in police firings.

by Max Marin | Wednesday, July 20, 2022

The Philadelphia Police Department has moved to fire a veteran lieutenant who allegedly used the N-word while on a recorded line with a police radio-room worker last month, officials said Wednesday.

Lt Anthony McFadden, from his LinkedIn page.

Sgt. Eric Gripp, a department spokesperson, declined to identify the officer but said he was given 30 days’ notice of his termination — a standard practice in police firings — on July 5. Police sources identified the officer as Lt. Anthony McFadden, a 32-year veteran of the force who was previously assigned to the Special Victims Unit.

So, the Police Department spokesman declined to identify the officer, but the Inky turned to its internal sources, got his name, and published it anyway.

I have to ask: what’s the point? Only one thing comes to mind: The Inquirer is trying to keep Lt McFadden from being able to get another job on another police force.

This is the same newspaper which doesn’t report on most actual murders in the city, and scrubs out the race of the victims on the few occasions that it does, and of the (alleged) perpetrators when known. In all but the most sensational cases, the Inquirer does not tell readers the names of the perpetrators.

Miss Hughes’ newspaper won’t tell us about actual murders in the City of Brotherly Love, but a police lieutenant says a bad word? Grounds for the firing of a 32-year veteran — will they deny him his pension? — and for the Inky to try to sabotage any future job prospects he may have.

And people wonder why the Philadelphia Police Department cannot get recruits to fill the undermanned force? The Department doesn’t have their backs, and the local media try to crucify them!

oo0oo

Updated! Thursday, July 21, 2022 | 8:43 AM EDT

In the story Person of interest in Monday’s gunpoint rape on subway platform is in custody, reporter Mensah H Dean tells Inquirer readers that:

A person of interest in the rape of a woman on the platform of a South Philadelphia subway station was taken into custody Wednesday morning, the Philadelphia Police Department said.

The person, whose name has not been released, was taken to the Special Victims Unit for questioning, the department said in a statement Wednesday morning.

Perhaps the “person of interest’s” name has not been released, but I note that the Inky did not put enough effort into finding it out, as they did with Lt McFadden.

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73-year-old man murdered by teens in Philly The Inquirer wants to keep teen offenders out of the adult court system

Surprisingly enough, The Philadelphia Inquirer actually reported, albeit briefly, on two murders in the city yesterday.

Two people were killed and eight others wounded in separate shootings around Philadelphia on Monday, police said.

Just after 3 p.m., an unidentified man believed to be in his late 30s was outside on the 2700 block of North Broad Street when he was shot 13 times, police said.

The man was taken by medics to Temple University Hospital, where he was pronounced dead. Police said a person was in custody but released no further information on the case.

Around 1:30 a.m., a 36-year-old man was fatally shot in the head outside on the 3800 block of North 9th Street in Hunting Park. The man, who was not identified, was pronounced dead at the scene by medics. Police reported no arrests.

Note that the Philadelphia Police press releases identified the races of the victims, but the Inky scrubbed that part.

This was a bigger crime story in Philly:

Brothers, ages 10 and 14, surrender to Philly police in traffic cone beating death of 73-year-old man

James Lambert Jr. was crossing Cecil B. Moore Avenue near 21st Street when a group of juveniles attacked him. Another North Philly woman said she was attacked a month earlier at the same intersection.

by Robert Moran and Oona Goodin-Smith | Monday, July 11, 2022

Two brothers — ages 10 and 14 — have surrendered to police for questioning by homicide detectives as “persons of interest” in a fatal attack on a 73-year-old man last month in North Philadelphia, police said.

No charges have been filed as police continue to investigate the June 24 assault of James Lambert Jr., who was crossing Cecil B. Moore Avenue near 21st Street just before 2:40 a.m. when a group of juveniles assailed him. In a surveillance video, one of the participants can be seen knocking him to the sidewalk with a traffic cone.

Police say seven juveniles were involved.

While Lambert remained on the sidewalk, a girl can be seen in the video picking up the traffic cone and throwing it at Lambert, who then appears to stagger down Cecil B. Moore, followed by the girl, who retrieves the traffic cone and throws it at him again. She is wearing a bright pink long-sleeved sweater, with matching pool slide sandals. White-framed sunglasses are propped on top of her head.

As many as seven youths had gathered by that point. Video shows them talking before leaving the area.

Lambert suffered head injuries and died the next day, police said.

The photo of Mr Lambert is from a tweet embedded in the Inquirer story.

You know what wasn’t mentioned in the Inky? The Philadelphia Police released a video of the attack on Mr Lambert, including the descriptions shown on the right. But when the Inky reported on the story — which, to be fair, did include a link to the video — “four Black male and three Black female teen offenders” became “four males and three females”.

I might not have written about this story, save for one OpEd that was also in the Inquirer, still on the website main page, while the story about the two brats surrendering has been pushed back to the crime page:

Pennsylvania needs to stop prosecuting children as adults

This legislation will reduce recidivism, control costs, make our communities safer, and allow all young people the opportunity to grow.

by Camera Bartolotta and Anthony H. Williams | Monday, July 11, 2022

Imagine only seeing the sun for one hour a day while crammed into a 6-by-8-foot cell. Now imagine that you are only 16 years old, yet to be found guilty, and you are spending your days in an adult jail when you should be in school or spending time with your family. This is the reality of many children charged as adults through “direct file.”

Really? Imagine that you are 73-year-old James Lambert, walking alone, with the help of a cane,[1]The released video obscures the cane, but if you look at the published photo of Mr Lambert, you’ll see the handle of a walking cane. at 2:38 in the morning, and you’ll never see the sun again.

And am I really supposed to believe that, following the high-profile murder of Mr Lambert by teenagers, the Inquirer’s editors didn’t deliberately decide to print this OpEd with keeping these cretins out of the adult system in mind?

Direct file, or “statutory exclusion,” is a provision where kids under 18 are automatically prosecuted as adults for certain offenses, without the chance of a review by a juvenile court judge. This practice often forces the youth to be held in adult jails before trial and, if found guilty, adult prisons. And it doesn’t affect all children equally — according to the Pennsylvania Juvenile Justice Task Force’s findings, 56% of kids convicted as adults are Black boys, even though they make up just 7% of Pennsylvania’s youth population. This disparity is even starker than the disproportionate treatment that Black youth face in other parts of the justice system.

Whenever I see numbers like those, I always finish the article, and you know what I never see? There is never, ever, even the slightest hint that perhaps, just perhaps, if “56% of kids convicted as adults are Black boys, even though they make up just 7% of Pennsylvania’s youth population,” somewhere around 56% of crimes committed by minors which wind up in adult courts are committed by black boys.

There is always the implied, but usually unspoken, argument that if there is a ‘racial disparity’ in arrests, prosecutions, convictions, or incarcerations, it simply must be the result of racism; there is never the consideration that such ‘racial disparities’ are a reflection of a ‘racial disparity’ in who actually commits crimes.

Me? I’m 69-years-old and retired, so I can’t be ‘cancelled’, which means I can actually write the very politically incorrect truth. If I were an Inquirer reporter, and I had the temerity to write something like that, I’d have the security guard, ready to escort me out the door, watching me as I emptied out my desk, while Executive Editor and Senior Vice President Gabriel Escobar stood nearby, tapping his foot, smugly happy for having fired me, while murmurs, and possible jeers, sounded across the newsroom. In journolism,[2]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 the truth shall set you free . . . from your job.

Stan Wischnowski was unavailable for comment.

Was the attack on Mr Lambert perhaps an isolated incident?

About a month before Lambert was killed, a 53-year-old woman from North Philadelphia said she, too, was ambushed at 21st and Cecil B. Moore.

Watching the video of the attack on 73-year-old Lambert on the news, the woman said she thought it “could have been me.”

The woman, who spoke to The Inquirer on the condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation, said she was walking on 21st Street toward the subway on her way to an overnight nursing shift in late May when she spotted a group of young teenage girls on the street.

One of the teens — whom the woman said she recognized from the video of the attack on Lambert — asked her for a dollar. When she did not give them money, the woman said the teens began to swear at her. One threw a brick at her chest, and slammed a metal dolly on her back, leaving deep bruises. Startled, the woman said she threw her cup of hot coffee at the group and ran, phoning her family. . . . .

She said she didn’t contact the police initially about the attack, but called on Friday after hearing about Lambert’s death.

We have previously noted the difference between crimes of evidence and crimes of reporting. If a man rapes a woman on the streets of Philadelphia, as far as the police are concerned, if it wasn’t reported, it didn’t happen. It is commonly assumed that most rapes go unreported, with some guesstimates being as high as 90% not reported. Crimes like robbery might go unreported if the victims do not trust the police or think it will do any good, or are fearful of revenge by the criminals. When your city is stuck with a District Attorney like Mr Krasner, who doesn’t believe in prosecuting criminals, or sentencing them harshly when they are prosecuted and convicted, what reason is there to report that you were robbed?

To the Philly police, the assault on the 53-year-old woman, by at least one of the murderers, murderers!, of Mr Lambert, never happened in late May, because she got away and didn’t report it, or didn’t report it until she saw the video of Mr Lambert’s murder.

Why? Well, she feared retaliation, she said. Whether her assault was caught on camera we do not know, but there was nothing the police could do about a crime that, to them, never happened.

And so we get back to state Senators Bartolotta’s and Williams'[3]Camera Bartolotta is a Republican state senator. She represents Beaver, Greene, and Washington Counties. Anthony H. Williams is a Democratic state senator. He represents parts of Philadelphia and … Continue reading OpEd. They don’t want minors charged with serious crimes to be tried in adult courts. But if the 14-year-old who turned himself in for Mr Lambert’s murder is tried as a juvenile, he will be out of whatever juvenile institution they put him in when he turns 18, and his record, for murder!, will be sealed. It will be as though it never happened.

But James Lambert will still be stone-cold graveyard dead.

States do not put juveniles into the adult system for littering or out-of-control horseplay, or racing unregistered dirt bikes down city streets; they go into the adult system for really serious crimes. The senators tell us that they only want to change the system, and that juvenile offenders can still be sent into the adult system if their crimes are really heinous, but they want a juvenile court judge to take that decision. Thanks, but no thanks: we need to treat crime harshly, not so much for deterrence — which doesn’t seem to work anyway — but to get these miscreants off the streets!

References

References
↑1 The released video obscures the cane, but if you look at the published photo of Mr Lambert, you’ll see the handle of a walking cane.
↑2 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.
↑3 Camera Bartolotta is a Republican state senator. She represents Beaver, Greene, and Washington Counties. Anthony H. Williams is a Democratic state senator. He represents parts of Philadelphia and Delaware County.
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Why should we trust the credentialed media if they won’t check their own stories?

There was a time, not so long ago, that if you had an argument with someone over a particular point, and if you could find in The New York Times material which supported your point, that was it, you won the argument.

The First Street Journal has been very critical of the reporting of the credentialed media, concentrating on The Philadelphia Inquirer and its censorship of stories which don’t line up with its political positions, but we have not been alone. On Independence Day, Robert Stacy McCain, an actual professional journalist — my brief time with the Kentucky Kernel hardly counts as professional — noted that the viral story about the 10-year-old girl who had to travel from Ohio to Indiana to get an abortion wasn’t passing the smell test:

A Story Too Good to Check?

July 4, 2022 | 28 Comments

This headline appeared Friday in the Columbus Dispatch:

 

As Ohio restricts abortions, 10-year-old girl travels to Indiana for procedure

On Monday three days after the Supreme Court issued its groundbreaking decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, Dr. Caitlin Bernard, an Indianapolis obstetrician-gynecologist, took a call from a colleague, a child abuse doctor in Ohio.

Hours after the Supreme Court action, the Buckeye state had outlawed any abortion after six weeks. Now this doctor had a 10-year-old patient in the office who was six weeks and three days pregnant.

Could Bernard help? . . .

This story has since been repeated all over the place (e.g., “‘A tragic situation’: Governor discusses pregnant 10-year-old with CNN host”), but having read through the original story twice with an editor’s eye, my question is: Where’s the comment from police?

Even if you’re willing to take Dr. Caitlin Bernard’s word for the basic claim — while some 10-year-olds are physically capable of getting pregnant, such cases are very rare — you’ve left the reader knowing nothing about the most basic elements of the story: What Ohio city did this happen in? Do authorities have a suspect in custody? Or is the public still in danger from the child rapist responsible for this atrocity?

The extreme youth of the alleged victim is what made the headline so shocking, and I actually checked the National Institutes of Health to make sure I wasn’t alone in finding this highly unusual. The media age of menarche (i.e., onset of menstruation, generally taken as meaning when a female becomes physically capable of pregnancy) in the United States is 11.9, about three months earlier than in the 1990s. About 10% of females reach menarche by age 10. Precocious puberty is slightly correlated with earlier sexual activity — the median age of first intercourse is 15.4 for girls reaching menache by age 10, compared to 16.6 for girls reaching menarche at age 14 or older. In general, blacks and Hispanics reach menarche earlier than white girls, but the differences are not dramatic.

There’s more at Mr McCain’s original, which should be read, but, to put it briefly, Mr McCain did his research. I do not know how fast he works in sourcing his stuff, but if I had done the research he included in the rest of his article, I could have gotten it done in under two hours.

Then, four days later, Mr McCain once again wrote on the story , this time noting that President Biden had used the tale for propaganda purposes.

Megan Fox of PJ Media had been on the case, and she noted that The Washington Post finally started checking out the story:

A one-source story about a 10-year-old and an abortion goes viral

Analysis by Glenn Kessler | Saturday, July 9, 2022 | 3:00 AM EDT

“This isn’t some imagined horror. It is already happening. Just last week, it was reported that a 10-year-old girl was a rape victim — 10 years old — and she was forced to have to travel out of state to Indiana to seek to terminate the pregnancy and maybe save her life.” — President Biden, remarks during signing of executive order on abortion access, July 8

This is the account of a one-source story that quickly went viral around the world — and into the talking points of the president.

The Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade, which had guaranteed a right to abortion, has led a number of states to quickly impose new laws to restrict or limit abortions. Ohio was one of the first, imposing a ban on abortions after six weeks of pregnancy, with no exceptions for rape and incest.

On July 1, the Indianapolis Star, also known as the IndyStar, published an article, written by the newspaper’s medical writer, about how women seeking abortions had begun traveling from Ohio to Indiana, where less restrictive abortion laws were still in place. “Patients head to Indiana for abortion services as other states restrict care,” the article was headlined.

That was a benign headline. But it was the anecdotal beginning that caught the attention of other news organizations. The article said that three days after the June 24 court ruling, an Indianapolis obstetrician-gynecologist, Caitlan Bernard, who performs abortions, received a call from “a child abuse doctor” in Ohio who had a 10-year-old patient who was six weeks and three days pregnant. Unable to obtain an abortion in Ohio, “the girl soon was on her way to Indiana to Bernard’s care,” the Star reported.

Personally, I regard an abortionist as, at the very least, a special pleader in a case like this, and an untrustworthy source.

The only source cited for the anecdote was Bernard. She’s on the record, but there is no indication that the newspaper made other attempts to confirm her account. The story’s lead reporter, Shari Rudavsky, did not respond to a query asking whether additional sourcing was obtained. A Gannett spokeswoman provided a comment from Bro Krift, the newspaper’s executive editor: “The facts and sourcing about people crossing state lines into Indiana, including the 10-year-old girl, for abortions are clear. We have no additional comment at this time.”

The story quickly caught fire, becoming a headline in newspapers around the world. News organizations increasingly “aggregate” — or repackage — reporting from elsewhere if it appears of interest to readers. So Bernard remained the only source — and other news organizations did not follow up to confirm her account.

There’s more at the original, and if you cannot get past the Post’s paywall, here is an archived copy.

A lot has been made of the obvious question that, if a 10-year-old girl became pregnant, someone had to have sexual intercourse with her.

Under Ohio law, a physician, as a mandated reporter under Ohio Revised Code 2151.421, would be required to report any case of known or suspected physical, sexual or emotional abuse or neglect of a child to their local child welfare or law enforcement agency. So Bernard’s colleague would have had to make such a report to law enforcement at the same time he or she contacted Bernard. Presumably then a criminal case would have been opened.

Also read: Robert Stacy McCain: ‘Not a Whisper Anywhere’: Abortion Story About 10-Year-Old Ohio Girl Looking More and More Like a Complete Hoax

A 10-year-old girl cannot legally consent to sexual intercourse, or any form of sexual contact. Our minds tend to default to picturing the slavering, evil step-father, or ‘funny’ uncle, or someone who visited Jeffrey Epstein’s private island. But when significantly underaged girls get pregnant, it is usually by a similarly underaged boy. If this 10-year-old girl actually existed — while I have my doubts, it cannot be discounted as obviously untrue — she may well have been impregnated by an 11-year-old boy, and let’s face it: we aren’t going to throw an 11-year-old boy in jail for copulating with a 10-year-old girl.

There’s a lot more, and this whole story has been inflated into a huge propaganda piece, as though evil reich-wing Republicans would force this 10-year-old to carry the baby to term. The average size for a 10-year-old girl in the United States is between 50 and 59 inches tall, the midpoint of that range being 4’6″, with an average weight of around 79 lb. It would be extremely difficult for such a girl to be able to carry a baby to full term, and such a girl would qualify for an abortion under life of the mother exceptions; a real pregnancy would probably kill her.

But, at least for me, the real story is that, despite the protestations of Nina Jankowicz, who was going to become our Minister of Truth, before evil reich-wingers derailed that, the credentialed media’s unblemished record of telling the truth isn’t quite as unblemished as they’d like you to believe.[1]Nina Jankowocz being interviewed by CNN’s Brian Stelter on ‘disinformation’ is about as laughable as things can get. The wheels started creaking when CBS News was caught using ‘unverified’ forged documents in an attempt to swing the 2004 presidential election to Senator John Kerry (D-MA), and was caught at it by the blog Powerline, and since then the ‘discrepancies’ between credentialed media stories and what actually happened have been catalogued hundreds of times over.

I have a simple rule: if a story seems to convenient to be true, start checking around; it just might not be true.

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↑1 Nina Jankowocz being interviewed by CNN’s Brian Stelter on ‘disinformation’ is about as laughable as things can get.
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Irresponsible journolism from the Lexington Herald-Leader

No, that’s not a typo in the title: the spelling of ‘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.

What my, sadly late, best friend used to call the Lexington Herald-Liberal published a story this morning on an escaped prisoner from an addiction-treatment center.

Prison inmate is at-large after escaping custody in Lexington, police say

by Christopher Leach | Monday, July 11, 2022 |10:20 AM EDT

Authorities across Kentucky are searching for an inmate who escaped custody on Saturday.

According to Kentucky State Police, David Lewis, who was staying at the Hope Center’s recovery residence in Lexington, removed his ankle monitor and walked away from the facility at approximately 1 p.m. Saturday. Trooper Josh Satterly with state police confirmed at 9:15 a.m. Monday that Lewis is still at-large.

Lewis, originally an inmate at the Blackburn Correctional Complex off Spurr Road in Lexington, was last seen wearing blue jeans and a white sleeveless shirt, according to state police. He was also carrying a black trash bag of personal belongings.

Read more here.

The Herald-Leader‘s story continued to tell us that Mr Lewis is 5’5″ tall, weighs 145 lb, and has black hair and brown eyes. Mr Lewis turns 42 years old this coming Saturday, and was, on May 6, 2020, sentenced to five years in prison. But what the newspaper didn’t do was publish his photo! If the Herald-Leader is going to inform readers that they can call State Police Post 12 at 502-227-2221, or a local police agency, if they have any information as to Mr Lewis’ whereabouts, why wouldn’t they publish his picture, in case a reader happens to see him out on the street?

We have mentioned the McClatchy Mugshot Policy many times before, but that policy does allow for exceptions, if approved by the editor. Wouldn’t an escaped prisoner, in this case a man already convicted, not just someone accused of a crime and awaiting trial, and apparently addicted to drugs, merit that exception?

Did editor Pete Baniak decide that no, the newspaper wouldn’t help locate Mr Lewis? Did article author Christopher Leach not even ask him if the photo could be used? I found it easily enough; Mr Leach could have as well.

This is just irresponsible on the part of the Lexington newspaper!

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Another begging letter from The Philadelphia Inquirer Remember when it used to be "An Independent Newspaper for All the People"?

This is not the first begging letter I have received from the Leftist Lenfest Institute for Journalism, the non-profit owner of The Philadelphia Inquirer, but it is as amusing as all of the others.

I have frequently referred to our nation’s third oldest continuously published daily newspaper, in our nation’s sixth largest city and seventh largest metropolitan area as The Philadelphia Enquirer ever since RedState writer Mike Miller called it the Enquirer, probably by mistake. I didn’t originate it, but, reminiscent of the National Enquirer as it is, I have found it very apt. The Inky, despite Philly’s size, is only our nation’s 17th largest newspaper, by circulation. Why? I have suggested that part of it is because the Inquirer censors the news!

In attempting to meet publisher Elizabeth Hughes stated goal of making the Inquirer an “anti-racist news organization,” the newspaper published its “Black City. White Paper” series, which, in effect, told white readers and potential readers that the Inky was really not for them.

Nor is it even true. Philadelphia isn’t a “black city.” The 2020 census found that just 38.3% of the city’s population were non-Hispanic black, and Hispanics, who can be either black or white, made up 14.9%. Between non-Hispanic whites, 34.3%, Asians, 8.3%, and “other groups,” 4.3%, the city is 46.9% non-black, and it doesn’t take a terribly large percentage of the Hispanic population being white to get the city to majority non-black. The non-Hispanic white population of the city have certainly declined, but they are hardly gone.

More, the Philadelphia metropolitan area is very much majority white. Perhaps, just perhaps, the Inquirer practically marketing itself as a newspaper for a “Black City” isn’t really something that’s going to help it to sell well in West Chester or Bucks County.

The Inquirer used to proclaim itself, on the newspaper’s masthead, that it was a “Public Ledger” and “An Independent Newspaper for All the People”. That “Independent Newspaper” blurb was even proudly emblazoned on its old building, but the newspaper under Miss Hughes has been telling us that no, it is no longer a “Public Ledger,” and that it is no longer a “Newspaper for All the People.”

Why did Rebecca Forman, the Director of Advancement for the leftist Lenfest Institute, call me “a supporter of The Philadelphia Inquirer“? It’s simple: it’s because I am a subscriber for the digital newspaper.[1]As much as I really do love actual printed newspapers, I now live well outside the newspaper’s physical delivery area. And I am paying $21.96 every four weeks for my digital subscription, more than I pay for The Washington Post, $99 a year, and more than I pay for The New York Times, $17.00 every four weeks. Given that I used to live in the Keystone State, and Philadelphia is the city about which I am most concerned, and about which I most frequently write, I’ll continue to pay that subscription. I think I have contributed quite enough to the Inky, thank you very much.

But the Inquirer needs to get better; it needs to report all the news, not just what Miss Hughes and Executive Editor Gabriel Escobar consider to be politically correct.

With the advent of digital publication, even though the dead trees edition has gotten physically smaller, newspapers in digital format are no longer constrained by word counts or assigned column inches. Newspapers have always had the ability to go more in depth than television news and their quick-fire show-and-tell stories, and now, with space constraints gone, really get into the heart of stories. The Inky can be better than it ever was.

Instead, it has gotten worse. Instead, the newspaper has gotten so thoroughly eaten up with ‘progressive’ ideology that the editors refuse to cover the news which might be politically incorrect, refuse to publish the news which might be outside Miss Hughes ideology. With Lenfest’s ownership, the Inquirer actually can call itself “An Independent Newspaper,” but they are failing in the “for All the People” part.

I’ve said it before: if I had Jeff Bezos’ money, I’d do what he did with The Washington Post: I’d buy the newspaper and rescue it from its financial problems. But I would also clean house, I would make sure that the Inquirer really did cover all the news, and publish all of the news, letting the chips fall where they may, regardless of whose feelings might get hurt.

That is what journalists, real journalists, are supposed to do.

References

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↑1 As much as I really do love actual printed newspapers, I now live well outside the newspaper’s physical delivery area.
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Even hormones and surgery are not enough! Without realizing what they've done, The Philadelphia Inquirer told the truth

The extremely #woke[1]From Wikipedia: Woke (/ˈwoʊk/) as a political term of African-American origin refers to a perceived awareness of issues concerning social justice and racial justice. It is derived from … Continue reading and ‘transgender’-positive newspaper that I have sometimes called The Philadelphia Enquirer[2]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. takes the position that the ‘transgendered’ really are the sex they claim to be, rather than their biological sex, and on Sunday published yet another article in support of that idea, never realizing that they were actually pointing out that the ‘transgendered’ are not the sex they wish they were:

Voice therapy can help trans people sound like themselves and feel safer

Voice therapy can be valuable for addressing the mental health challenges many transgender people experience.

by Abraham Gutman | Sunday, July 3, 2022

When Fenix Cobbledick speaks in an unfamiliar place for the first time, they often feel scared.

They have spent countless hours and thousands of dollars on hormone therapy, laser facial hair removal, and growing out a feminine haircut to make their appearance more accurately reflect their identity.

Note right away the stilted, incorrect grammar of the article, as Inquirer writer, Abraham Gutman, confirming to the newspaper’s stylebook, uses Mr “Cobbledick’s”[3]I assume that “Fenix Cobbledick” is a faked name, but I have been unable to find Mr “Cobbledick’s” real name in my research. preferred pronouns, “they/them”. It is jarring to the mind, as normal people read the plural pronouns and think that those pronouns refer to more than one person.

But even as they changed their body, Cobbledick, a 31-year-old nonbinary trans woman, felt at risk when they opened their mouth to talk.

“I love my singing voice. It’s beautiful; it’s just deep. And maybe one day we’ll live in a world where I don’t have to hide that voice,” Cobbledick said. “But we don’t live in that world.

Translation: Mr “Cobbledick” is a man male who thinks he’s a woman . . . maybe. I’m not certain how one can be both a “trans woman” and “nonbinary”. If one is “nonbinary,” how can he claim to be either a man or a woman?

From Moss Rehab:

Fenix Cobbledick (they/them) (featured above) started hormone estrogen therapy through the Einstein Pride Program three years ago. A teacher at the Philadelphia School of Circus Arts who identifies as nonbinary, Fenix is currently being treated by Hussein Safa, MD (he/him), who serves as medical director and attending physician in the Pride clinic. When discussing future potential gender-affirming services such as facial feminization surgery and laser hair removal with Dr. Safa, Fenix thought voice therapy would help achieve a more androgynous voice and better vocal control.

“Because I’m 5’10”, muscular and forthright, people overwhelmingly perceive me as male – and that is disheartening,” explains Fenix. “When Dr. Safa said the Pride program was partnering with a MossRehab speech therapist in providing voice therapy, I said I was interested. I’ve read enough to understand that I wouldn’t be able to train my voice properly without the guidance of an expert.”

Back to the Inky:

Voice therapy may be valuable for addressing the mental health challenges many transgender people experience. As a common identifier of gender, voice can contribute to gender dysphoria — an unease that arises from one’s gender not matching the sex they were assigned at birth.

“Voice is really integral to identity and listeners assume a lot about a person by their voice alone,” said Alyssa Giegerich, a speech-language pathologist at Einstein MossRehab, who specializes in gender-affirming voice therapy. “Our voice goals are to align the way that someone is perceived with their identity.”

Translation: humans, like every other mammal, can tell the difference between males and females, even without seeing them, by just hearing their voices. Even someone like me, who is mostly deaf, can tell the difference. I may not always be able to understand someone’s speech, because I’ve lost the ability to hear certain consonants, but I can still tell, from the tone of someone’s voice, whether they are male or female. In meeting their “voice goals,” “to align the way that someone is perceived with their identity,” is to note that no matter how many hormones they’ve taken, and regardless of how many surgical mutilations they have undergone, it’s still not enough to get other people to not recognize a ‘transgendered’ person’s biological sex. Normal people can just tell!

Hormone therapy, voice coaching, or surgery can help a person when their gender identity doesn’t match the sex they were assigned at birth. They are among the interventions known as gender-affirming care.

Yet more stupidity from the Inky. “Sex assigned at birth” is a wholly stupid phrase. As we have known for over a century, the sex of mammalian offspring is determined by the XX (for females) or XY chromosome pair, and the Y chromosome is only available through the sperm of the father. The sex of the offspring is determined at conception, and not at birth. In humans, the sex of the offspring is recognized at birth, through observation of the genitals of a normal baby — in some rare cases, this is not possible, but those cases are the result of genetic or developmental defects — and every sighted human being with normal knowledge can tell the sexes apart through observation at birth.

No one “assigns” a sex to a newborn which does not match observed biological sex, at least no one of normal intelligence and reasonable sanity.

But the #woke and ‘transgender’ activists have been attempting to push this “sex assigned at birth” meme for years now, hoping to have normal people swallow the cockamamie notion, and somehow normalize ‘transgenderism.’

I’m sure that Mr Gutman and his editors at the Inquirer never meant to point out yet another reason why the ‘transgendered’ will never be the sex they claim to be, rather than the sex they actually are, but that is the result, for any reader with anything like an objective eye.

References

References
↑1 From Wikipedia:

Woke (/ˈwoʊk/) as a political term of African-American origin refers to a perceived awareness of issues concerning social justice and racial justice. It is derived from the African-American Vernacular English expression “stay woke“, whose grammatical aspect refers to a continuing awareness of these issues.
By the late 2010s, woke had been adopted as a more generic slang term broadly associated with left-wing politics and cultural issues (with the terms woke culture and woke politics also being used). It has been the subject of memes and ironic usage. Its widespread use since 2014 is a result of the Black Lives Matter movement.

I shall confess to sometimes “ironic usage” of the term. To put it bluntly, I think that the ‘woke’ are just boneheadedly stupid.

↑2 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.
↑3 I assume that “Fenix Cobbledick” is a faked name, but I have been unable to find Mr “Cobbledick’s” real name in my research.
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For print newspapers, tempus is fugiting The solution to being 18th century technology is not becoming 19th century one-party newspapers!

Mickey East, a political science professor at the University of Kentucky during the 1970s, when I was a student there, used a bastardized phrase to encourage his students to get their work done, “Tempus is fugiting.”

According to Wikipedia, the expression “Tempus fugit” comes from line 284 of book 3 of Virgil‘s Georgics, where it appears as fugit inreparabile tempus: “it escapes, irretrievable time”.

Well, time flies for newspapers, which I have previously called 18th century technology, because people are abandoning printed materials.

U.S. newspapers continuing to die at rate of 2 each week

Despite a growing recognition of the problem, the United States continues to see newspapers die at the rate of two per week, according to a report issued Wednesday on the state of local news.

by David Bauder, Associated Press | Friday, July 1, 2022 | 10:26 AM EDT

NEW YORK — Despite a growing recognition of the problem, the United States continues to see newspapers die at the rate of two per week, according to a report issued Wednesday on the state of local news.

“A growing recognition of the problem,” huh? The problem is that time has flown by, and technology has overtaken the print medium. Yes, I subscribe to newspapers, The Wall Street Journal, The Philadelphia Inquirer, The New York Times, The Washington Post, and the Lexington Herald-Leader, for my use as source material for my poor site. As I have previously mentioned, my hearing is seriously compromised, and I can read the news far more easily than I can watch and hear the news on television. More, when reading the news, if there’s something which was poorly worded or unclear, or that I somehow missed, I can go back to reread that portion, to lock it down correctly. To me, especially as a (poor) writer, trying to ascertain that I am getting things correctly, that’s important.

But, let’s face it: my subscriptions to those newspapers, and all the рублей I am spending — The Wall Street Journal in particular is not cheap, and though this site has changed, I had originally planned to concentrate more on economics — are all digital; I not only don’t get the print editions, but out in the rural area in which I live, I cannot get home delivery of the dead trees edition. Heck, I can’t even get the United States Post Office to deliver the mail to me, so I have to rent a post office box!

However, it’s more than that. Before I retired, I used to pick up a copy of the Inquirer from the Turkey Hill in Jim Thorpe, to take to the plant. The guys combitched[1]The word “combitch” is a Picoism, for which I would bet you can figure out the etymology. Feel free to use it yourselves, with an appropriate credit appreciated. that I should have picked up the Allentown Morning Call instead, because that was closer to local news, but it was, and is, a junk paper. Now that it’s been bought out by the hedge fund, Alden Global Capital, I’m pleased that I didn’t spend much money at all on the Morning Call.

Amusingly enough, for an owner of dead trees newspapers, Alden’s website opens up to an image of trees!

One of the issues with buying the Inquirer for the plant was that there were frequently sports stories which noted that ‘this game ended too late for inclusion in this edition.’ In the 21st century, we can always get our news up-to-date, by checking that internet thingy that Al Gore invented. And that illustrates the major problem for print newspapers: they are always several hours behind, in a world in which the news is reported minute-by-minute. I have no idea whether the Associated Press story referenced above will appear in the print edition of the Inquirer, from which I sourced it, but time stamped at 10:26 AM as it was, it cannot appear earlier than Saturday’s dead trees edition!

Areas of the country that find themselves without a reliable source of local news tend to be poorer, older and less educated than those covered well, Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism, Media and Integrated Marketing Communications said.

The country had 6,377 newspapers at the end of May, down from 8,891 in 2005, the report said. While the pandemic didn’t quite cause the reckoning that some in the industry feared, 360 newspapers have shut down since the end of 2019, all but 24 of them weeklies serving small communities.

Actually, even out in the sticks, we have not one but two local weekly newspapers, the Citizen’s Voice & Times and the Estill County Tribune, but who can know how long they’ll both survive?

An estimated 75,000 journalists worked in newspapers in 2006, and now that’s down to 31,000, Northwestern said. Annual newspaper revenue slipped from $50 billion to $21 billion in the same period.

Even though philanthropists and politicians have been paying more attention to the issue, the factors that drove the collapse of the industry’s advertising model haven’t changed. Encouraging growth in the digital-only news sector in recent years hasn’t been enough to compensate for the overall trends, said Penelope Muse Abernathy, visiting professor at Medill and the report’s principal author.

As I have previously reported, The Philadelphia Inquirer, our nation’s third oldest continuously published daily newspaper, and 17th largest newspaper as measured by circulation, still thinks that the taxpayers should be taxed to support journalists, to the tune of a refundable payroll tax credit of up to $25,000 per journalist to help local news organizations hire and retain reporters and editors.

In other words, the publishers of the Inquirer believe that the taxpayers ought to pay up to $25,000 of the salary of reporters and editors! Does ABC News or CNN have to beg for the taxpayers to subsidize their journolists'[2]This was not a typographical error. The spelling ‘journolist’ or ‘journolism’ comes from JournoList, an email list of 400 influential and politically liberal journalists, the exposure … Continue reading salaries?

True “daily” newspapers that are printed and distributed seven days a week are also dwindling; The report said 40 of the largest 100 newspapers in the country publish only-digital versions at least once a week. Inflation is likely to hasten a switch away from printed editions, said Tim Franklin, director of the Medill Local News Initiative.

One of the newspapers to which I subscribe, the Lexington Herald-Leader, does not publish a Saturday edition, and what I see online on Saturdays makes it look like the reporters and editors are pretty much off on Saturdays.

But there’s more to it. When I look at the digital editions of the Herald-Leader and the Inquirer, since the Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization it has become obvious: if those were your only sources of news, you’d not be blamed for thinking that six Supreme Court Justices are the only people in America who don’t support an unlimited abortion license. These newspapers have been wholly one-sided in their reporting on the subject.

What my, sadly late, best friend used to call the Lexington Herald-Liberal just published a fairly long story on the disappearance of Democratic voters in eastern Kentucky. You’d have to be a Kentuckian to really understand it, but it points out the problem for the newspaper: a paper which used to circulate widely throughout the counties east of Lexington — and I delivered the morning Lexington Herald and afternoon Lexington Leader in Mt Sterling, two counties away from Lexington, when I was in junior high and high schools — has few subscribers now, because there is little or no local delivery, but also because the newspaper has become so thoroughly urbanized to the city that it really has nothing for the more conservative counties to the east. As we have previously reported, the newspaper has consistently endorsed the candidates, all Democrats, strongly rejected by the voters in every county of their (former?) service area other than Fayette. If you don’t give something for the readers in the outlying counties, can you really expect to have many subscribers there?

In Pennsylvania, the Inquirer is steadfastly liberal and Democratic in orientation, publishing all sorts of OpEds and barely-disguised opinion pieces camouflages as regular news articles slamming Republicans and conservatives, yet, while Joe Biden carried the Keystone State by 80,555 votes in 2020, that was only due to his 471,050 vote margin in Philadelphia; absent Philadelphia County, President Trump had a margin of 389,495 votes. Much of Pennsylvania was strongly “red” and even Philly’s collar counties were only slightly “blue.” But the Inky gives those more conservative voters no reason to be actual readers of the newspaper.

Newspapers have more than a single problem. Yes, print newspapers, despite fancy colored printing and photographs, are simply updated 18th century technology, and the reduction in print subscribers has meant a dramatic downturn in advertising revenue. But they also have a 19th century problem: in becoming so highly slanted, they have reverted to the one-party newspaper style of William Randolph Hearst and Joseph Pulitzer. In the 19th century, there were competing newspapers in every city of any size, and if readers of one particular political stripe did not like the slant of one newspaper, they could turn to another.

Today, few cities have more than one newspaper, but newspapers do have competition, from television news. If MSNBC and CNN are slanted to the left, Fox News and the One America News Network are slanted to the right, and consumers can do something really radical like choose the sources they prefer. That newspapers face serious competition from television news and the internet is obvious; when they respond by pissing off half of their potential readership, they compound their problems.

References

References
↑1 The word “combitch” is a Picoism, for which I would bet you can figure out the etymology. Feel free to use it yourselves, with an appropriate credit appreciated.
↑2 This was not a typographical error. 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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I owe Seth Williams an apology

At 11:17 AM EDT on Monday, June 20th, Seth Williams, a former District Attorney for Philadelphia, tweeted, “I am now being told that from midnight Friday until midnight Sunday, Philadelphia tragically suffered 41 shootings, 14 homicides, and 6 victims remain in critical condition. What we are doing now is not working!” Not having seen numbers like that anywhere in the media, I responded:

Well, I suppose that I owe Mr Williams an apology, because the numbers from the Philadelphia Police Department — the report was not updated on Monday, I suppose because whoever does the updating was off for the Juneteenth holiday — finally came in, and they are ugly.

The previous report was that 230 people had been murdered as of Friday, June 17th, so yup, Mr Williams’ report was right on target.

I responded to Mr Williams that I had seen nothing in The Philadelphia Inquirer supporting numbers anywhere close to that, and, checking the newspaper’s website main page again this morning, I still don’t. There is a story about teenagers concerns about the proposed 10:00 PM curfew, which is being considered in the wake of the South Street shootings during a rowdy street celebration full of teenagers, a five day old story about serious problems at Prevention Point Philadelphia, and, Heaven forfend!, the hugely critical Local strike could impact availability of beer ahead of Fourth of July weekend! Moving on to the newspaper’s crime page, there was a story about the killing of John Albert Laylo, a visitor from the Philippines, who was shot dead in what is now being called a targeted hit, but one which hit the wrong car. There was a story from Friday about two fatal shootings, plus another which left a victim, shot in the head, in extremely critical condition, and another about a murder in February, allegedly committed by a closeted bisexual male who wanted to keep his boyfriend from revealing their relationship.

There was a story, dated Thursday, June 16th, about three homicides Wednesday evening into Thursday morning.

But that’s it; there’s nothing in the Inky, at least as of 9:14 AM EDT, to tell readers that 14 people were murdered over the Juneteenth weekend.

There was, however, a significantly sized advertising blurb, telling people that they could subscribe for unlimited digital access for just 99¢ per week for 12 weeks, followed by $3.99 per week, billed every 4 weeks, no commitment, cancel anytime.

But I have to ask: why should people subscribe to the Inquirer if the newspaper is not going to do something really radical like report the news?

We noted, in January, Philadelphia Inquirer columnist Helen Ubiñas and her complaint, For two mothers touched by gun violence: ‘Pray, pray, and pray some more.’: Numbers tend to attract attention around here; the people behind them, not always so much.

On Thursday, she typed a similar lament:

Everyday gun violence goes unchecked, even as high-profile massacres capture the nation’s attention

We can’t accept the asymmetrical way people look at shooting victims based on race.

by Helen Ubiñas | Thursday, June 16, 2022

Within a few days of the mass shooting on South Street, two people were already in custody.

Two days later, two more.

And almost immediately came a familiar appeal from the loved ones of murder victims whose killings remain unsolved:

Where was the full-court press to identify suspects and make arrests in the deaths of their family members?

There’s more at the original. But perhaps Miss Ubiñas ought to look a bit more closely at her own newspaper in asking that question.

She had, in December of 2020, written an opinion column saying that we should at least know the names of the people slaughtered in the City of Brotherly Love, yet the newspaper at which she has worked for many years appears to have gotten even worse at reporting the news about homicides.

Fourteen people murdered? That’s almost five South Streets! 41 shootings, at least according to Mr Williams?[1]The city’s shooting database has not been updated to confirm this. That’s one shy of three South Streets, about which the Inquirer wrote story after story.

But last weekend, which ended two days ago? Barely more than crickets from our nation’s third oldest continuously published daily newspaper, nothing, no one looked at the numbers, no one figured it out.

The thing is, I’ve figured it out. The Inky spends a lot of time when innocent people are killed. We saw that the paper paid attention to the accidental killing of Jason Kutt, a white teenager shot at Nockamixon State Park, an hour outside of the city. That’s five separate stories, a whole lot more than the two or three paragraphs most victims get.

Then there was the murder of Samuel Sean Collington, a Temple University student approaching graduation. Mr Collington was a white victim, allegedly murdered by a black juvenile in a botched robbery. The Inquirer then published 14 photographs from a vigil for Mr Collington, along with another story about him. Five separate stories about the case of a murdered white guy.

To which shootings, to which killings, does the newspaper not pay attention? It doesn’t pay attention to the murders of young black boys and men by other young black boys and men, which happens to be the majority, the vast majority, of the homicides in the City of Brotherly Love. It’s easy to have sympathy for people like Mr Collington, or Mr Laylo. The Inquirer has even tried to drum up sympathy for kids like Marcus Stokes or Thomas Siderio.

But when one gang banger shoots and kills another gang banger? The editors and publisher of the Inquirer not only don’t care, but actively don’t want to publish stories about them, because it does not fit within the worldview they want to project.

References

References
↑1 The city’s shooting database has not been updated to confirm this.