Journolist Linda Blackford needs to get out more often She was fooled by a statistic that anyone could have seen was bogus

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

Linda Blackford’s biography blurb with what my best friend used to call the Lexington Herald-Liberal states that she “writes columns and commentary for the Herald-Leader. She has covered K-12, higher education and other topics for the past 20 years at the Herald-Leader.” You’d think that someone who has lived in and around Lexington for at least twenty years would be somewhat familiar with the Bluegrass State.

But, when the Williams Institute of UCLA’s law school reported that Kentucky had the highest percentage of homosexuals and transgendered people in the country, 10.5%, Mrs Blackford reacted with glee, and jumped right into a celebratory column. Unfortunately, that column is no longer available, because she had to issue a correction, using the same url:

It turns out Kentucky is NOT the gayest state in the U.S. | Opinion

by Linda Blackford | Friday, December 8, 2023 | 6:44 PM

Late Friday, the Williams Institute at UCLA issued an apology for a data error that said Kentucky had the highest rate of LGBTQ adults in the nation.

“We made a mistake, and we apologize to Kentucky and to you,” the release said. “We know there is a growing and thriving LGBTQ community in the Bluegrass State. But our report issued earlier this month incorrectly stated that Kentucky had the highest percentage of people identifying as LGBTQ. That percentage is 4.9 percent instead of 10.5 percent and in line with the national average of 5.6 percent.” Continue reading

The Journolism of The Philadelphia Inquirer

No, that’s not a typographical error in the headline: The spelling ‘journolist’ or ‘journolism’ comes from JournoList, an email list of 400 influential and politically liberal journalists, the exposure of which called into question their objectivity. I use the term ‘journolism’ frequently when writing about media bias. We have previously written about the journolism of The Philadelphia Inquirer, often enough that this is the fifth article with that title. The newspaper reported:

Haverford College holds vigil for Palestinian student shot in Vermont

Haverford students, alumni, and staff gathered in Founders Hall to light candles and offer support for Kinnan Abdalhamid, the West Bank-born biology major and member of the school’s track team.

by Max Marin and Ximena Conde | Tuesday, November 28, 2023 | 7:21 PM EST

Jason J Eaton, mugshot by Burlington Police Department and is a pubic record.

Haverford College held a vigil on Tuesday in support of a Palestinian student who was shot in what authorities are investigating as a potential hate crime in Vermont on Saturday.About 200 Haverford students, alumni, and staff gathered in Founders Hall around 4:30 p.m. to light candles and offer support for Kinnan Abdalhamid, the West Bank-born biology major and member of the school’s track team, who was one of three victims of Saturday’s shooting.

Abdalhamid remains hospitalized in Burlington along with his two friends, Hisham Awartani and Tahseen Ahmed. The three college students, all 20, were visiting Burlington for the holiday weekend when a man opened fire on them without warning.

Note the publication date of the newspaper’s article: Tuesday, November 28th, at 7:21 PM EST. The reporters let readers know that this is being investigated to see if it was a hate crime, referencing an article published the previous day at 8:58 AM, and updated at 6:56 PM, in which it was reported:

Given the unprovoked nature of the attack and soaring tension around the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Murad said it was understandable to suspect hate-based motivations at play in the case, but urged the public to withhold speculation as the investigation continues among local, state, and federal authorities. “We still do not know as much as we want to know.”

Returning to the originally cited article in the Inquirer:

Haverford’s vigil was structured in the Quaker tradition where students held long moments of silence broken only when someone was motivated to speak. One Palestinian student broke down in tears as she addressed the room. As two friends flanked her for support, she said there was no doubt in her mind the shooting was a hate crime.

“Palestinians’ suffering has to be recognized,” she said. “We’re humans.”

Authorities said the men were walking to a relative’s house in Burlington after a family gathering when Jason J. Eaton stepped up onto a nearby porch and, without a word, fired four shots from a Ruger .380 pistol, injuring all three.

While the motive remains unclear, authorities noted the victims were speaking in a mixture of English and Arabic, and two of them were wearing keffiyehs. The U.S. Department of Justice is assisting with an investigation into whether the unprovoked attack was a hate crime. Eaton, 48, was arrested Sunday and pleaded not guilty to three counts of attempted murder on Monday.

OK, fine. But there is absolutely nothing in the Inky’s reporting to tell you that the suspect, Jason Eaton, was off his rocker, suffering from depression, coocoo for Cocoa Puffs, and mostly a political whacko:

According to NBC, Eaton appears to have a YouTube account that has playlists with videos that include “Expose Fauci,” long COVID, economics, and how to use brain crystals for “psychic powers.” An Instagram account that appears to belong to him also shows him on a farm and cooking.

In an X account that appeared to belong to Eaton, he describes himself as a “radical citizen…patrolling demockracy and crapitalism for oathcreepers.” A 2022 archived version of that same account, which contains the same photo, has a more subdued bio that describes him as a Vermont dad and part-time farmer. The archived X account also provides a link to a Substack, with the “wandering ramblings of a reformed broker on the ADHD/ASD spectrum.” The Substack only has one post, which is an essay on how restaurants can retain dishwashers.

I guess that part wouldn’t fit Teh Narrative, but actual journalists, rather than journolists, would have included it. It should be noted that the published reports about Mr Eaton and his mental health issues are dated on the morning of the 27th, and updated at 7:07 PM the same day, fully a day prior to the Inky’s story.

The mugshot of Mr Eaton? The newspaper doesn’t usually publish them, despite mugshots being easily available from the Philadelphia Police Department, but when it comes to a blue-eyed, blond-haired white guy? While the photo credit notes that it came from the Burlington Police Department, I found it in this article in the Inquirer.

Did the Inquirer actually lie to its readers? Nope, there’s nothing that I spotted which was demonstrably untrue. But the newspaper omitted a lot of facts, enough to be called lies of omission by some, facts which would change the impression that the article was intended to give.

How does The Philadelphia Inquirer not even cover the World Series?

I understand that Philadelphians are disappointed that the Phillies choked lost a World Series berth with their Game 7 loss to the Arizona Diamondbacks, especially after the Phils won the first two games at Citizens Bank Park. Lose a seven-game series when you have a 2-0 lead?

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 Philadelphia Inquirer, our nation’s third oldest continuously-published newspaper, rank only 17th in circulation? The winner of twenty Pulitzer Prizes, and the newspaper of record for the entire Philadelphia area — the Wilmington, Delaware, News Journal is a Gannett-owned joke — have exactly zero stories on the World Series, which is going on right now, the Texas Rangers and Arizona Diamondbacks tied at one game apiece!

The screen capture to the right was taken at 10:06 AM EDT this morning, and shows 17 stories in the sports section. Yeah, I get it: covering the Philadelphia Eagles and the 76ers and even the Flyers is important to the newspaper, but this is ridiculous. Scroll further down in the online sports section — my subscription is digital only — and I found separate sections for the Eagles, 76ers, Flyers, individual sports columnists, sports betting, women’s sports, college football, and even soccer, as though anyone cares about soccer, but not a single story on the World Series!

It’s not as though the newspaper does not publish stories from outside of its newsroom production: there were at least two stories from the Associated Press on national news showing on the website main page. The Inky could have included something about the series.

I subscribe to the newspaper, because now that I’ve moved out of the Keystone State, it’s my best source of information on the news there, and because I prefer to read the news rather than watch or listen to the news. My unlimited digital subscription costs $5.49 per week, which, times 52 weeks a year, equals $285.48 a year, yet the newspaper doesn’t even cover the World Series?

Christine Flowers once mocked me for paying for the Inky. She might have been right.

Just because they like to behead babies is no reason to label Hamas “terrorists!

The First Street Journal has previously reported on the Associated Press Stylebook, and how the AP uses it to try to push political debates in one direction or another, which is almost always to the left. Well, now the AP believe that the credentialed media should not refer to terrorists as terrorists! Continue reading

When they show you who they are, believe them! Did The New York Times think that no one would notice?

In the first Avengers movie, Robert Downey, Jr, as Tony Stark, spots a SHIELD technician playing a video game at his terminal, and says, loudly, “That man is playing Galaga. He thought we wouldn’t notice, but we did.”

The tech quickly shuts down Galaga and returns to work . . . until the Avengers leave the room, when he brings up the game again.

NYT rehires Hitler-praising Soliman Hijjy to cover Israel-Hamas war

By Shannon Thaler | Friday, October 20, 2023 4:11 PM EDT

A New York Times reporter who came under fire last year for a praising Adolf Hitler in multiple resurfaced Facebook posts was rehired by the Gray Lady to cover the Israel-Palestine war.

Palestinian filmmaker Soliman Hijjy hailed the Nazi leader as recently as 2018 in a post on Facebook, when he shared a photo of himself captioned that he was “in a state of harmony as Hitler was during the Holocaust,” per a translation from Arabic by pro-Israel media watchdog site HonestReporting.

That same year, Hijjy was hired by the Times as a freelance journalist and worked on a slew of “visual investigations” published by the organization through 2021, including one on an Israeli airstrike that killed 44 people.

Hijjy’s 2018 post — including a 2012 Facebook post where he wrote, “How great you are, Hitler” in Arabic alongside a photoshopped image of Hitler seemingly taking a selfie — were unearthed last year, when pro-Israel outlets called out the Times for hiring antisemitic journalists as freelancers. Continue reading

More media tributes for the connected white guy in Philly.

We have previously noted how the Philadelphia media have been all over the story of the murder of freelance journalist Josh Kruger in Philadelphia. The Philadelphia Police Department now have an arrest warrant for 19-year-old Robert Edmond Davis, charging him with murder and other crimes. Mr Davis was not in custody when the Police Department made the announcement, but one obvious point: if the police have not yet arrested Mr Davis, yet they have a mug shot of him, he has been arrested on other charges previously. It turns out that he was, to use the euphemism, “known to the police.”

And while Mr Davis mugshot is all over social media now, The Philadelphia Inquirer, declined to publish Mr Davis’ mugshot.

Police are searching for a 19-year-old man they believe killed Josh Kruger

Police are searching for Robert Davis, who they believe shot Kruger to death early Monday.

by Ellie Rushing | Friday, October 6, 2023 | 1:33 PM EDT | Updated: 2:52 PM EDT

Philadelphia police have issued an arrest warrant for a 19-year-old man they believe killed Josh Kruger, the local journalist fatally shot in his home earlier this week, officials said Friday.

Police are searching for Robert Davis, who investigators believe was an acquaintance of Kruger’s before he allegedly shot him multiple times Monday morning inside his Point Breeze home. The warrant includes charges for murder and related crimes, police said. Davis remains at large.

Lt. Hamilton Marshmond of the Homicide Unit said Kruger, 39, had been trying to help Davis, who was facing various troubles including homelessness.

“He was just trying to help him get through life,” Marshmond said.

We are, of course, not surprised in the least that the Inky did not publish Mr Davis’ mugshot, even if there was a possibility that such would help the police apprehend him more rapidly. After all, the Inquirer itself told us that, to meet publisher Elizabeth ‘Lisa’ Hughes’ requirement that it become an “anti-racist news organization,” the newspaper would censor the news, saying that the newspaper would be review its crime reporting practices.

Marshmond said Davis was known to police and had been arrested before, but declined to elaborate on officers’ earlier interactions with him. Court records show that Davis was arrested in August and charged with criminal trespassing and mischief, but the District Attorney’s Office withdrew the charges at a preliminary hearing the following month. Continue reading

Being taught about white privilege, by The Philadelphia Inquirer

It has been pointed out countless times on The First Street Journal that The Philadelphia Inquirer only cares about individual homicides when the victim is an ‘innocent,’ a person already of some note, or a cute little white girl.

And so it has been with the killing of Josh Kruger. Continue reading

Lies, damned lies, and statistics More biased reporting from the Lexington Herald-Leader

Brianna Coppage, via St Clair School District, through St Louis Post-Dispatch.

The internet was supposed to help more people become more informed about what is happening in the world around us. It seems to have another function as well, exposing just how f(ornicating) stupid some people can be! Brianna Coppage has given us a whole new take on what living in the Show Me State means! Continue reading

Are the teachers’ unions writing purportedly straight news pieces for The Washington Post?

The Washington Post got the headline wrong. The editors make it sound as though the students were the ones in the wrong for reporting a teacher who broke the law!

Her students reported her for a lesson on race. Can she trust them again?

Mary Wood’s school reprimanded her for teaching a book by Ta-Nehisi Coates. Now she hopes her bond with students can survive South Carolina’s politics.

by Hannah Natanson | Monday, September 18, 2023 | 6:00 AM EDT

CHAPIN, S.C. — As gold sunlight filtered into her kitchen, English teacher Mary Wood shouldered a worn leather bag packed with first-day-of-school items: Three lesson-planning notebooks. Two peanut butter granola bars. An extra pair of socks, just in case.

Everything was ready, but Wood didn’t leave. For the first time since she started teaching 14 years ago, she was scared to go back to school.

Six months earlier, two of Wood’s Advanced Placement English Language and Composition students had reported her to the school board for teaching about race. Wood had assigned her all-White class readings from Ta-Nehisi Coates’s “Between the World and Me,” a book that dissects what it means to be Black in America.

The students wrote in emails that the book — and accompanying videos that Wood, 47, played about systemic racism — made them ashamed to be White, violating a South Carolina proviso that forbids teachers from making students “feel discomfort, guilt, anguish, or any other form of psychological distress” on account of their race.

The story was originally entitled “South Carolina students reported their teacher’s lesson on Ta-Nehisa Coates,” or so I judge from the blurb that appears on the article tab using Microsoft Edge. Someone changed it to the headline you see above, which includes “Can she trust them again?” But what Mrs Satterwhite[1]While the teacher did not respect her husband, Ryan Satterwhite, enough to have taken his last name, The First Street Journal does not show similar disrespect to him, and always refers to married … Continue reading did was in blatant defiance of the law in the Palmetto State. Do the editors of the Post support teachers breaking the law?

Reading Coates’s book felt like “reading hate propaganda towards white people,” one student wrote.

Let’s be clear here: Mr Coates, who has had material published previously in the Post, something the Post article does not mention, which is a violation of standard journalistic ethics, strongly concentrates on race relations in the United States. Wikipedia’s section on Mr Coates’ views on race in the US states:

In an interview with Ezra Klein, Coates outlined his analysis that the extent of white identity expression in the United States serves as a critical factor in threat perceptions of certain European Americans and their response to political paradigm shifts related to African Americans, such as the presidency of Barack Obama.

I note here that Ezra Klein was the creator of JournoList, so the above statement concerned a left-wing “journalist” reporting about a left-wing subject. While I was obviously not present during Mrs Satterwhite’s lessons, I don’t find the student’s complaint that the book felt like “reading hate propaganda towards white people” to be improbable.

At least two parents complained, too. Within days, school administrators ordered Wood to stop teaching the lesson. They placed a formal letter of reprimand in her file. It instructed her to keep teaching “without discussing this issue with your students.”

Wood finished out the spring semester feeling defeated and betrayed — not only by her students, but by the school system that raised her. The high school Wood teaches at is the same one she attended.

Oh, she felt “defeated and betrayed” because students reported her to teaching a lesson which broke the law? People might genuinely disagree about the merits of the law in question, but it is still the law.

Here is the crux of the teacher’s problem:

Wood believes trust is fundamental to the classroom. She has to trust her students. They and their parents have to trust her. But trust, she believes, is impossible without authenticity. And for Wood, teaching authentically means assigning writers like Coates — voices unfamiliar, even disconcerting, to students in her lakeside town. Because of what happened last year, though, Wood now worried anything, from the most provocative essay to the least interesting comment about her weekend, might be resisted, recorded and reported by the children she was supposed to be teaching.

And if she couldn’t trust them, how was she supposed to make them trust her?

That trust was broken when Mrs Satterwhite began teaching her students something prohibited by law, yet she somehow sees the trust as having been broken by the students reporting her, not her teaching of a prohibited lesson. If the lessons she taught made some students feel “ashamed to be white,” how does that not violate “a South Carolina proviso that forbids teachers from making students ‘feel discomfort, guilt, anguish, or any other form of psychological distress’ on account of their race”?

Mrs Satterwhite was not discharged. She had a letter of reprimand placed in her file, and was admonished not to teach inappropriate lessons. Yet she has returned to the classroom this school year.

How can she trust her students? She can record her lessons herself, to prove that she has remained within the state’s and the school board’s guidelines.

And Wood believed the school district had come to accept her — respecting her students’ 80-plus percent AP exam passage rates year after year, above the national average — even if not everyone liked her methods. Chapin was her hometown. Chapin High School had been her school, the place she began to question the conservative, Christian views espoused by her classmates, friends and family.

No teacher ever assigned her someone like Coates, Wood said, but her father Mike Satterfield, a teacher and later principal at Chapin, encouraged her to pursue whatever outside reading she found interesting. That led her to left-leaning authors. By the time she graduated from University of North Carolina Wilmington, she was a self-professed liberal.

The Post reporter tried to put that innocuously, but the meaning is clear: Mrs Satterwhite is not just “a self-professed liberal,” but she was choosing to teach that liberalism to the students in a mostly conservative area. Lexington County, in which Chapin is located, gave 92,817 votes, 64.20% of the total, to President Trump in 2020, versus 49,301 votes, 34.10%, to the dummkopf from Delaware.

But amid a red sea, Chapin’s English department was a blue island. And Wood was known as the bluest of the bunch — conspicuous for decorating her classroom with posters of Malcolm X, Ruth Bader Ginsburg quotes and LGBTQ pride stickers.

Though the Post didn’t want to say it directly, the above paragraph tells us all that we need to know: Mrs Satterwhite was bringing her politics into the classroom.

As one would expect, Mrs Satterwhite attempted to use an “I know better because I am a professional” argument, the type of thing the liberal teachers’ unions try, but it didn’t work: parents have, and should have, the ultimate authority over what their children are taught.

The Post article is a very long one, and it is a left-leaning editorial, slanted to make Mrs Satterwhite a martyr, attempting to masquerade as a news piece.

References

References
1 While the teacher did not respect her husband, Ryan Satterwhite, enough to have taken his last name, The First Street Journal does not show similar disrespect to him, and always refers to married women by their proper names, though we do not change the direct quotes of others.