Category Archives: Journolism

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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.
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The journolism of The Philadelphia Inquirer

No, that’s not a typo 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.

As we have mentioned, The Philadelphia Inquirer is the nation’s third oldest continuously published daily newspaper, and has won 20 Pulitzer Prizes for its reporting. The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Wall Street Journal are all significantly younger than the Inky. With 6,245,051 people according to the 2020 census, Philadelphia and its surrounding metropolitan area is the seventh largest in the United States. With a population of 1,603,797, the city of Philadelphia itself is the sixth largest in the United States. So why, then, does the Inquirer rank only 17th in circulation? Could it be because they censor the news?

Another pro-life clinic attacked, this one in Philadelphia

by Joe Bukaras | Wednesday, June 15, 2022 | 3:41 AM EDT

A pro-life pregnancy center in Philadelphia was vandalized last weekend with smashed windows and graffiti.

Latrice Booker, director of Hope Pregnancy Center in Philadelphia, told CNA that when she drove by her clinic Saturday, June 11, she found four windows smashed, with one written on with graffiti. It is unclear what the graffiti says.

Three glass doors were smashed as well, she said. She estimated the damages to be around $15,000. As of Tuesday afternoon, the windows were boarded up and the clinic is in the process of repairs. They are still open for business, she said.

Booker said that the clinic offers all its services to help women and families in need at no cost. She said that the clinic is not dissuaded in its mission by the vandalism and called on people of faith to “stand tall” despite the vitriol against pro-lifers.

There’s more at the original. Naturally, I searched the Inky’s website, to see if I could find this story, and to my very much not surprised self, I found nothing, nada, zilch, zippo, ничего. You can see the top of the search results if you click on the image to the right.

I did, however, find hundreds of articles on abortion, in a site search for pro life clinic, virtually all of them supporting the pro-abortion position in one way or another. The ‘pro-choice’ crowd do not like the term ‘pro-abortion,’ but it is economically accurate: to support having the choice to have an abortion, you must concomitantly want enough abortions to occur to keep the abortuaries open. President Clinton’s formulation that abortion should be “safe, legal, and rare” falls on its own weight, because if abortion is rare, abortion providers can’t stay in business.

From Politico:

Garland returns to Oklahoma City to warn that domestic terrorism is ‘still with us’

The attorney general has vowed to crackdown on a resurgence of violence linked to white supremacist and right-wing militia groups.

by Josh Gerstein | April 19, 2021 | 12:14 PM EDT

Attorney General Merrick Garland returned Monday to Oklahoma City — the site of the nation’s most deadly act of domestic terrorism and of his formative experiences as a young prosecutor — to deliver a warning that the threat of domestic extremism is again on the rise.

Delivering his first major speech as attorney general, Garland told a memorial service that the nation must remain vigilant against such dangers.

There were plenty of other stories, such as “Top law enforcement officials say the biggest domestic terror threat comes from white supremacists.” in The New York Times, while National Public Radio reported:

At Tuesday’s hearing, Jill Sanborn, the head of the FBI’s National Security Branch, told lawmakers that the threat posed by domestic violent extremists is “persistent and evolving.” The “most lethal threat” from domestic violent extremists, she said, is posed by white supremacists and anti-government militias.

So, I’m wondering: was the vandalism at a pro-life pregnancy center or one at a similar clinic in Washington DC the work of evil reich-wing extremists or white supremacists?

Decades ago, the Inquirer’s masthead declared itself to be a “Public Ledger” and “An Independent Newspaper for All the People”. Now it should have a blurb similar to the one that ought to be on The New York Times, “All the News That’s Politically Correct.” The Inky just doesn’t want you to tell its readers the truth, and that’s why the only real newspaper in our nation’s seventh largest metropolitan area is just 17th in circulation.

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The Department of Fatherland Security ‘pauses’ creation of the Ministry of Truth The Washington Post's Taylor Lorenz is aghast!

If you hold your cursor over the page tab on an article, you can see the original title from when the article was first saved. The tab on The Washington Post article below shows that it was originally entitled “Disinformation Governance Board ‘paused’ after just 3 weeks”. Look at it now, once the Post’s editors got hold of it, and screen captured the original, reproduced at the left, for documentation. You can click on it to enlarge the image.

How the Biden administration let right-wing attacks derail its disinformation efforts

A ‘pause’ of the Department of Homeland Security’s newly created board comes after its head, Nina Jankowicz, was the victim of coordinated online attacks as the administration struggled to respond

By Taylor Lorenz | Wednesday, May 18, 2022 | 10:28 AM EDT

On the morning of April 27, the Department of Homeland Security announced the creation of the first Disinformation Governance Board with the stated goal to “coordinate countering misinformation related to homeland security.” The Biden administration tapped Nina Jankowicz, a well-known figure in the field of fighting disinformation and extremism, as the board’s executive director.

So, who is Taylor Lorenz? Miss Lorenz was most recently famous for her investigation and doxing of Chaya Raichik, a Brooklyn-based real estate saleswoman and creator of the Twitter site that the left hate, Libs of TikTok. Miss Lorenz’s article was, to put it mildly, harsh. Continue reading →

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Killadelphia Thou hypocrite, cast out first the beam out of thine own eye, and then shalt thou see clearly to pull out the mote that is in thy brother's eye.

Philly Police Department press release via Steve Keeley, Fox 29 News. Click to enlarge.

Two more Philadelphians bit the dust yesterday, but if The Philadelphia Inquirer was your only news source, you’d never know it. Nine people bled out their lives’ blood in the city’s mean streets over the last five days, but the “anti-racist news organization” won’t tell you anything. In December of 2020, columnist Heleb Ubiñas wrote, “What do you know about the Philadelphians killed by guns this year? At least know their names.” A year and a half later, the Inquirer, under publisher Elizabeth ‘Lisa’ Hughes and Executive Editor and Senior Vice President Gabriel Escobar, don’t want you to know that anyone was killed.

With 6,245,051 people according to the 2020 census, Philadelphia and its surrounding metropolitan area is the seventh largest in the United States. With a population of 1,603,797, the city of Philadelphia itself is the sixth largest in the United States. The Inquirer is the nation’s third oldest continuously published daily newspaper, older than The New York Times and The Washington Post. So why, then, does The Philadelphia Inquirer rank only 17th in circulation? Could it be because they censor the news?

The numbers are stark. At the end of Thursday, May 12, the city was seeing 1.295 homicides per day. Five days later, that’s up to 1.314 per day. More importantly, the City of Brotherly Love has gone from a projected 503 homicides in 2022 to 514.[1]Methodology: to compensate for the normal increase in homicides as warmer weather approaches, I have taken the number of homicides on a given date, divided it by the number on the same day in 2021, … Continue reading

So, if the newspaper does not report on homicides in its own home city, on what does it report? How about his gem? Continue reading →

References

References
↑1 Methodology: to compensate for the normal increase in homicides as warmer weather approaches, I have taken the number of homicides on a given date, divided it by the number on the same day in 2021, and multiplied that fraction by 562, the number of homicides in 2021. I have also compared the numbers to 2020’s homicide rate, and come up with huge numbers, 623 and 642, but have not really given them much credence. There are several different ways of calculating the numbers, but I will note that I accurately projected 562 homicides for 2021 on July 9, 2021.
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The Philadelphia Inquirer is still covering for tax cheat Larry Krasner

We noted, on May 13th, how Fox News had reported, the previous day, that District Attorney Larry Krasner’s private business ventures had not paid all of their taxes. We pointed out how The Philadelphia Inquirer, which had just sent out a begging-for-donations letter touting their “accountability journalism”, had not reported on Mr Krasner’s unpaid taxes.

As of 8:10 PM EDT on Tuesday, May 17th, there’s still no indication in a site search for Larry Krasner that the Inquirer has mentioned it. Well, they may have to do so soon:

It seems that the public, many of whom are loudly complaining about recent assessments which will increase their property tax bills, might not be that thrilled with Mr Krasner not paying what he owes.

I’ll check the Inky again later tonight, and Wednesday morning, to see if they’ve had the guts to tell Philadelphians the truth.

Update: Wednesday, May 18, 2022 | 8:20 AM EDT

As of this time, site searches for Larry Krasner, Krasner tax, and Krasner protest have not indicated any stories about the District Attorney’s tax problems. There was no story on the issue on the main page of the Inquirer’s website. What can anyone conclude other than the newspaper has simply chosen not to report anything negative about George Soros’ stooge?

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About that “accountability journalism”?

On Monday, May 9th, I received the email pictured at the right from Annie McCain Madonia, Chief Advancement Officer for the Lenfest Institute for Journalism, the non-profit owner of The Philadelphia Inquirer, saying:

As an Inquirer reader, you know the importance of quality, in-depth local news. Inquirer journalists are dedicated to keeping you informed and connected to the latest news in the Philadelphia area.

The Inquirer is owned by The Lenfest Institute for Journalism, which makes it the largest American newspaper owned by a nonprofit organization. This innovative ownership structure helps support investigative news and accountability journalism, new technology, and a newsroom of growing diversity and community impact.

Thanks to the support of individuals like you, The Inquirer has the resources to report on stories that impact and improve our communities. Will you join me in making a gift to support The Inquirer’s journalism, and double your impact with this match?

“Investigative news”? “Accountability journalism”?

Why, then, is there not a single mention on the Inquirer’s website, of a story which appeared an entire day ago concerning Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner’s failure to pay his taxes? Continue reading →

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Irony is so ironic: Ellen Pao uses her freedom of speech and of the press to attack freedom of speech and of the press

While the famous Pentagon Papers case, New York Times Co v United States, 403 U.S. 713 (1971), is more famously associated with the Times, The Washington Post was heavily involved as well. The petitioners argued that the government trying to prohibit “publication of current news of vital importance to the people of this country” was wholly wrong and a violation of the First Amendment, a position with which the Supreme Court agreed.

But now it seems that the very same Washington Post doesn’t like it when another privately owned company might choose to publish things with which the Post disagrees:

    Elon Musk’s vision of ‘free speech’ will be bad for Twitter

    Tesla CEO has used platform in ugly ways. Now he gets to shape the company’s policies.

    By Ellen K. Pao[1]Ellen K. Pao is a tech investor and advocate, the former CEO of reddit, and a cofounder and CEO of the diversity and inclusion nonprofit Project Include. | Friday, April 8, 2022 | 11:42 AM EDT

    Ellen K Pao, screen capture from her website.

    It takes a lot of money to become a board member of Twitter, but not a lot else apparently. With a large stock purchase, an abuser of the service — Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla and the world’s richest man — has now essentially bought himself a warm welcome from Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal. For those of us who care about equity and accountability, Musk’s appointment to such a prominent role at a platform that serves hundreds of millions of users daily is highly disconcerting — a slap in the face, even.

    Musk has been open about his preference that Twitter do less to restrict speech that many see as hateful, abusive or dangerous. Given his new influence, the way he himself has used the platform bodes ill for its future. Musk paid $20 million in fines to the Securities and Exchange Commission, and stepped down as Tesla’s chairman, after tweeting what the SEC said was misleading information about a potential transaction to take the company private; the settlement also required that any Musk tweets about the company’s finance be reviewed by lawyers. (He continues to flout SEC rules, failing to notify the agency immediately last month when he passed the threshold of owning 5 percent of Twitter’s shares. The 11-day delay in that declaration may have netted him $156 million, experts say — since shares shot up after investors learned of his purchases.)

    On nonfinancial subjects, Musk, who has nearly 81 million followers, often punches down in his tweets, displaying very little empathy. He called a British caver who helped to rescue trapped young Thai divers “a pedo guy” (beating a defamation suit over the slur but adding to his reputation as a bully). In February, he tweeted, then deleted, a meme comparing Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to Adolf Hitler.

Let’s be truthful here: a lot of Twitter users compared Mr Trudeau to der Führer! The Prime Minister’s use of arbitrary and dictatorial orders to fight COVID-19 and to stifle protest aren’t exactly the actions one would normally attribute to a free and democratic government.

    Perhaps not coincidentally, allegations of incidents involving racism and sexism at Tesla have been common — standing out even by tech-world’s low standards. A female engineer who sued Tesla, claiming “unwanted and pervasive harassment,” reported that one area in a Tesla factory in Fremont, Calif., was known to women as the “predator zone.” Black workers have claimed that White workers at that same factory referred to another area as “the plantation.” Like many trolls, Musk says his critics — both those on Twitter and those who sue him — should be more “thick-skinned.” He used that phrase in message to factory workers, some of whom had raised concerns about racial harassment.

After a couple more paragraphs in which the author tells us what a scumbag Mr Musk is – and I am not a fan of Mr Musk myself – we get to this:

    Musk calls himself a “free-speech absolutist,” but like many “free speech” advocates, he willfully ignores that private companies are free to establish some limits on their platforms. He hasn’t learned from the folks who left Facebook and subsequently raised alarms about the harms the platform can cause teenage girls and other users. Or even from Dick Costolo or Evan Williams, former CEOs of Twitter, both of whom eventually realized how pervasive and harmful online harassment is. (“I wish I could turn back the clock and go back to 2010 and stop abuse on the platform by creating a very specific bar for how to behave on the platform,” Costolo said in 2017.) Co-founder Williams even went on to build a new company for sharing information, Medium, because he regretted the way Twitter, Facebook and other platforms had turned into free-fire zones. Lots of tech leaders — though not Musk — are turning against “free speech” models that end up letting the loudest, most extreme and hateful voices win, driving others off the platforms.

No one sees everything on Twitter; people see the tweets of those they follow, or tweets to which one of their followers responds or likes or retweets. But it’s simple: if Miss Pao thinks that “the loudest, most extreme and hateful voices win, (and are) driving others off the platforms,” then Twitter might lose users and the company lose value; Mr Musk has bet against that, and it is his money!

Of course, Twitter has, itself, driven off users, through its censorship of conservative views.

The Post itself did not say what Miss Pao wrote; the editors simply provided space for her to express her view independently. But one has to wonder: just how closely do the views of the editors of the Post adhere to Miss Pao’s opinion?

The New York Times, that paragon of freedom of speech and of the press, published OpEds celebrating Twitter’s banning of “misgendering” and “deadnaming” of transgender individuals, and even an OpEd entitled “Free Speech Is Killing Us. ”

The revolution which began with Rush Limbaugh and continued with the internet, and the ability of anyone to express his views more widely, ended the gatekeeping functions of the editors, and that’s something they just cannot stand. Now, anyone can say anything, without an editor to censor him. Twitter is, of course, the largest self publishing medium in the world, and now we have a part owner and board member who wants to issue less editorial restraint on users, and the credentialed media really, really, really don’t like that. Heaven forfend! Donald Trump might be allowed back on Twitter!

    Musk’s appointment to Twitter’s board shows that we need regulation of social-media platforms to prevent rich people from controlling our channels of communication. For starters, we need consistent definitions of harassment and of content that violates personal privacy. Most companies, I suspect, would welcome such regulations: They would give executives cover to do things they know should be done but which they are afraid to try, out of fear of political backlash or a revolt by some users. If platforms continue to push for growth at all costs — without such regulations — people will continue to be harmed. The people harmed will disproportionately be those who have been harmed for centuries — women and members of marginalized racial and ethnic groups. The people who benefit from unrestricted amplification of their views will also be the same people who have benefited from that privilege for centuries.

Freedom of speech and of the press is harmful, Miss Pao has just said. That she used her freedom of speech, and the Post’s freedom of the press to disseminate her view on the subject seems not to have occurred to her, or, if it did, she thought that what she said ought to be acceptable, and not deserving of censorship, or criticism.

Miss Pao, a child of privilege — her mother a researcher, her father a math professor, who was able to matriculate at Princeton, and, following that, go straight to Harvard Law School — is very, very concerned about “women and members of marginalized racial and ethnic groups,” sued — and lost! — a sex discrimination lawsuit against her former employer Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, yet, in an article attacking “incels,” or the “involuntarily celibate,” The Perverse Incentives That Help Incels Thrive in Tech, which she has linked on the main page of her website, she wrote, “We cannot allow employees to mobilize identity-based intolerance, much less against their own coworkers,” and yet she just attacked “the same people who have benefited from that privilege for centuries,” certainly identity-based intolerance on her part.

I get it: Miss Pao, specifically, and much of the left in general, do not like freedom of speech and freedom of the press when people of whom they do not approve use their First Amendment rights to express views to which the left are opposed.

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References
↑1 Ellen K. Pao is a tech investor and advocate, the former CEO of reddit, and a cofounder and CEO of the diversity and inclusion nonprofit Project Include.