Tag Archives: #FreedomOfThePress

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Once again, The Philadelphia Inquirer does not cover a story that doesn’t fit Teh Narrative.

We noted, on Friday, how administrators at Central Bucks West High School have instructed teachers to use the names and sex indicated on a student’s records in the office, rather than go along with a ‘transgendered’ student’s chosen name and ‘gender’, unless the student’s parents discuss with and approve the use of the student’s preferred name and ‘gender.’ Robert Stacy McCain was kind enough to reference the previous article on his fine site.

Obviously, I appreciate the link! But, you know who hasn’t had anything, anything at all, about the school’s action? That would be our nation’s third oldest continuously published daily newspaper, the winner of twenty Pulitzer Prizes, and the regions “newspaper of record,” The Philadelphia Inquirer. I searched for such a story on Friday, when I added my previous article, but found nothing. Then, on Sunday afternoon, at 8:54 PM EDT, I once again used the newspaper’s website search function to look for “Central Bucks”, and found absolutely zero on the school’s decision.

But I did find this, in the Opinion section:

I’m a trans teen in Central Bucks. Here, it doesn’t ‘get better.’

The district has become an increasingly more unwelcoming and unsafe place for marginalized students. We’re worried about what this 2022-23 school year will look like for us.

by Lily Freeman | Updated: Thursday, September 8, 2022

I’m 16, and just started 11th grade at Central Bucks High School East, part of the Central Bucks school district. I’m a daughter, a sister, a friend, an artist, an actor — a typical teen. And I happen to be trans.

I’ve spent my whole life in this district. I live with both my parents, I have two amazing sisters and an adorable dog, Scotch, all of whom inspire me every day to be my most authentic self. I feel lucky to have this support network, because I know that not every trans student does.

Now, discriminatory policies are being implemented in our schools, taking books off of shelves and further preventing students like me from receiving the support we need to thrive.

Over the summer months, the district passed a contentious library policy against books with “sexualized content” — which is often code for books that tackle issues of race or racism, or feature LGBTQ characters or plot lines. When I heard about the new books policy, which was approved in July, I wasn’t shocked or surprised. My family and I knew this was coming. We saw it happen around the country, even in a neighboring school district. My mom spoke about the dangers of book censorship in front of the House Oversight Committee back in April.

My family and I have been fighting for years to get the schools in Central Bucks to create a more accepting environment for marginalized kids, specifically educating around gender identity. Instead, we’ve seen the opposite happening — the district has become an increasingly unwelcoming and unsafe place for students like me. This is disappointing and scary, to say the least.

It would seem, then, if young Mr Freeman’s[1]In accordance with our Stylebook, The First Street Journal always refers to the ‘transgendered’ by their birth names, if known — and we have been unable to find “Lily” … Continue reading family have been “fighting for years to get the schools in Central Bucks to create a more accepting environment for marginalized kids,” that, were he a student at Central Bucks West, they’d agree to the student’s request to be called “Lily” and be referred to by the feminine pronouns.

There’s more at the original, but young Mr Freeman’s OpEd piece notes that he is a student at Central Bucks High School East, not West, and does not reference the Central Bucks High School West’s notice to staff.

Simply put, what I have frequently 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. due to its biased journolism[3]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 apparently does not want its readers to know about the schools’ decisions, because they understand that a majority of readers would agree with the schools!

What, I have to ask, would young Mr Freeman see as “a more accepting environment for marginalized kids”? While it’s clear from the OpEd that his parents would agree to their son being called their daughter instead, would the Freeman family hold that other ‘transgender’ students should be referred to by the names and pronouns they prefer, even if their parents either disagreed or were not even informed that such was happening? Becky Cartee-Haring, an English teacher at Central Bucks West, said:

I physically felt sick in that meeting, listening to an administrator basically argue that we were going to protect ourselves by outting children . . . .

Translation: Mrs Cartee-Haring, who is already a legally-mandated reporter if it comes to suspected child or sexual abuse, believes that she has a right to withhold information about a child suffering from ‘gender dysphoria.’

In his OpEd, the writer stated that other students would make fun of him, that they said “all sorts of mean and harmful things,” was “harassed and threatened online,” and that he never felt safe other than when with “supportive teachers and friends.” And that leads to the obvious question: would the “more accepting environment” he seeks include requiring other students to use the names and pronouns he prefers, and to be punished in some manner if they did not?

Well, we don’t know how the junior at Central Bucks High School East would answer that question, because it wasn’t addressed in the OpEd, but we do know that the New York City Commission on Human Rights does require such, and can levy fines of up to $250,000 for violations. The city’s ordinance essentially tramples on the freedom of speech, and requires people who do not accept the notion of transgenderism to state things they believe to be lies.

Calling a boy a girl does not make him a girl, regardless of how much he may wish her were female. We can, and should, have some sympathy for those suffering from gender dysphoria, but having sympathy does not mean that we should just go along with their delusions.

References

References
↑1 In accordance with our Stylebook, The First Street Journal always refers to the ‘transgendered’ by their birth names, if known — and we have been unable to find “Lily” Freeman’s real name — and biological sex, though we do not change the direct quotes of others.
↑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 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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In Philadelphia, Black Lives Don’t Matter!

The mission of journalism is to report the news, the truth, to the public, even if it means digging deeply into things that some people, particularly people in positions of power, do not want disclosed. Journalists must have an open mind, to see the truth, even if the truth is not what they wanted or expected, and report it accurately. Journolists[1]The spelling ‘journolist’ or ‘journolism’ comes from JournoList, an email list of 400 influential and politically liberal journalists, the exposure of which called into question their … Continue reading, on the other hand, only see what they want to see.

Philly’s gun violence epidemic reaches a perilous new low as a 7-year-old is shot while playing video games | Editorial

The only thing more disturbing than the relentless pace of shootings in the city is the lack of action and outrage from those sworn to protect residents.

by the Editorial Board | Tuesday, August 23, 2022

In case city leaders have yet to realize that gun violence has reached epidemic proportions, consider the following: A 7-year-old boy was sitting in his bedroom playing video games Saturday night when he was shot in the thigh by a stray bullet from outside his home.

The shooting of a boy innocently playing in his bedroom should shake city leaders to their core and spark a full-throated call to action. So should the latest tally of weekend gun violence in Philadelphia: 21 people were shot between Saturday and Sunday.

At one point, the shootings were occurring minutes apart. An unidentified male was shot in the head at 12:21 a.m. on Sunday. Five minutes later, a 23-year-old man was shot in the back. Just 24 minutes later, a 59-year-old man was shot in the buttocks and left thigh.

The only thing more disturbing than the relentless pace of shootings that continues unabated across the city is the lack of action and outrage from those sworn to protect residents. What will it take for Mayor Jim Kenney, District Attorney Larry Krasner, Police Commissioner Danielle Outlaw, and City Council to do something — anything — to try to stem the flow of blood?

On May 9, 2021, the same Editorial Board which expressed such outrage, endorsed Larry Krasner for re-election. It wasn’t that the Editorial Board did not know what the city had in Mr Krasner; on that same May 9, 2021, the City of Brotherly Love suffered its 183rd murder of the year, an average of 1.4186 per day, a whopping 46 more than on the same date in 2020.

In 2020, the city saw 499 murders, just one short of the record set during the crack cocaine wars of 1990.

On May 9, 2021, the Editorial Board knew that it was Mr Krasner and his office which let Hasan Elliot out on the streets, when they could have locked him up for a parole violation, and that Mr Elliot then killed Philadelphia Police Corporal James O’Connor. The Editorial Board know that under Mr Krasner prosecution of arrests for illegal firearms possession have dropped dramatically. Yet now that are asking, “What will it take,” for Mr Krasner “to do something — anything — to try to stem the flow of blood?”

“Something” and “anything” apparently does not include something really radical like locking up criminals. In their endorsement of Mr Krasner, the Board wrote:

A complex, relatively recent spike in gun violence isn’t a reason to return to the mass incarceration regime of yesteryear, but a challenge to do better.

Oddly enough, the “mass incarceration regime of yesteryear” was coincident with a significant reduction in murders in Philly. As we noted on August 9th, under Philadelphia under Mayor Jim Kenney and District Attorney Larry Krasner have led the city into more homicides so far in 2022 than any entire year under previous Mayor Michael Nutter, District Attorney Seth Williams, and Police Commissioner Charles Ramsey.

Are the Editorial Board now willing to try “mass incarceration” again? That would certainly fall under trying “anything” “to try to stem the flow of blood,” wouldn’t it?

How about “stop and frisk”? With the ever-mounting toll of shootings and death, City Council President Darrell Clarke floated the idea of a return to the “stop and frisk” policies. The Editorial Board didn’t like that idea, either:

The rise in gun violence has prompted some City Council members to call for the Police Department to reexamine its stop-and-frisk policy. While the idea is well intended, it should be a nonstarter.

The Philadelphia Police Department has a long history of racial discrimination and brutality aimed at the Black and Latino communities.

In 2010, the American Civil Liberties Union sued the city, alleging police used racial profiling to illegally stop, search, and detain thousands of people. To settle the lawsuit, the Police Department agreed to collect data on all stop-and-frisks and train officers in the use of the tactic.

In the years since, the practice has continued with significant modifications — chief among them: Officers must have sound legal suspicions to make stops. As a result, the number of stops has fallen precipitously: In 2015, police made nearly 400,000 pedestrian stops; this year, officers are on track for about 10,000 stops.

Also in 2015: Philadelphia saw 280 homicides. Since then, the city has seen 277, followed by 315, 353, 356, 499 and 562 murders each subsequent year, and 352 so far this year. We can’t know that the reduction from 400,000 to about 10,000 pedestrian stops has contributed the huge rise in murders, but the numbers do seem rather stark.

That’s another “something,” “anything” the Editorial Board don’t want the city to try.

The problem is that the Editorial Board are too blind to see the problem! The police do not stop crimes; the police respond to crimes, clean up the mess left behind by crimes, and try to arrest the perpetrators of crimes. Yes, the very short-staffed Philadelphia Police Department are not solving enough crimes, and yes, the George Soros-sponsored District Attorney is not prosecuting crimes seriously enough, both of which reduce the deterrent to the bad guys when it comes to committing crimes, but the actual prevention of crime is not something the city government can do.

The prevention of crime comes from children being reared right, in stable, two-parent homes, but it’s far, far, far too politically incorrect to say that. And when the city government, and The Philadelphia Inquirer’s Editorial Board, and all of its opinion columnists, and all of the media coverage support the killing of children who are simply too inconvenient to be allowed to live, can it really be a surprise that that message is getting through to the teenagers and twenty-somethings on the street?

The left look for the problem everywhere but where it is. Inquirer columnist Jenice Armstrong wrote, on July 20th, Philly needs new solutions to prevent gun violence. Not conversations. And not parties. In it, she wrote:

After putting it off for years, I finally got around to participating in the Beer Summit put on by Global Citizen, the nonprofit group that organizes the Martin Luther King Day of Service.

Billed as a “conversation on race, class, and power,” the annual gathering — which began in 2009 when President Barack Obama convened a “beer summit” at the White House with Harvard University professor Henry Louis Gates and Cambridge, Mass., police Sgt. James Crowley, after Gates’ arrest — was virtual this year, so I could watch the recording at my leisure.

There was lots of good commentary. As Temple University’s David Brown pointed out, “The whole notion of the Beer Summit is to bring different people from different perspectives along and [focus] on a common challenge in a community.”

This year’s theme was gun violence sparked by white supremacy.

She has got to be kidding. Yes, there have been a few mass shootings by supposed “white supremacists,” but the number of their victims pales in comparison to the numbers of black Philadelphians being killed by other black Philadelphians. Unlike Philadelphia, St Louis, our most murderous city, breaks down its homicide cases on race. In a city in which slightly less than half the population are black, 121 out of 130 homicides as of August 24th had black victims, and out of 84 known suspects, 83 are black.

It isn’t “white supremacy” killing all of those black victims in the Gateway City, and it hasn’t been “white supremacy” killing all of those victims in Philly. But Jenice Armstrong, the Editorial Board, and almost everyone else can’t bring themselves to tell the truth: the blood being spilled by the mostly black victims of shootings has been spilled by black assailants.

Me? I can say it, because I’m retired, and I can’t be ‘canceled,’ can’t lose my job for doing something really radical like telling the truth. As horrible as the homicide rates have been in Philly, in St Louis, in Baltimore and Chicago, they really aren’t that bad for white people.

In Philly, black lives don’t matter, or at least they don’t matter as much as the left keeping their mouths shut as far as telling the truth is concerned. The key to reducing the carnage is to stop supporting the social policies and tolerances which have produced it.

References

References
↑1 The spelling ‘journolist’ or ‘journolism’ comes from JournoList, an email list of 400 influential and politically liberal journalists, the exposure of which called into question their objectivity. I use the term ‘journolism’ frequently when writing about media bias.
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Everything about #Monkeypox is built on lies.

American novelist and literary critic Mary McCarthy once said of playwright Lillian Hellman, “Every word she writes is a lie, including ‘and’ and ‘the’.” While not everything the newspaper I have frequently mocked as The Philadelphia Enquirer[1]RedState writer Mike Miller called it the Enquirer, probably by mistake, so I didn’t originate it, but, reminiscent of the National Enquirer as it is, I thought it very apt. publishes is a lie, enough of the truth is withheld or shaded to make much of what is published questionable, to say the least.

I guess that it shouldn’t be a surprise when the #woke[2]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 the politically correct jump through circus hoops to avoid telling the truth. The truly sad thing about it is that anyone with eyes and ears can see that they’re jumping through those hoops.

I had ignored this story in The Philadelphia Inquirer the first time I saw it; the headline made it seem like just another one of the same, when the Inky complained that too few black residents were getting the COVID-19 vaccines, as though racism was the problem, when the vaccines were readily available in black neighborhoods, but the local population were simply not as enthusiastic about taking them. Now, its Monkeypox:

Black Philadelphians are at higher risk of monkeypox but get just a fraction of vaccine doses

City health officials acknowledged they have failed to reach a population that accounts for 55% of the city’s 203 reported cases.

by Jason Laughlin and Kasturi Pananjady | Friday, August 18, 2022

Black Philadelphians account for more than half of Philadelphia’s monkeypox cases, data released Thursday showed, but received less than a quarter of the city’s vaccine doses, an alarming disparity in the midst of a fast-spreading virus.

Despite outreach to the Black community, city health officials acknowledged they have failed to reach a population that accounts for 55% of the city’s 203 reported cases.

“You hate to say something hasn’t worked, but these numbers aren’t where we want them,” said Cheryl Bettigole, the city health commissioner.

Philadelphia’s population breakdown, without separating Hispanics, who can be of any race, is 41.36% black, 39.33% white, 7.42% Asian, 7.27% another race, and 4.26% bi-racial. With 55% of the diagnosed monkeypox cases being among black Philadelphians, out of just 203 total, out of a guesstimated total population of 1,619,355, the difference is really statistically insignificant. The total infected population are a whopping 0.0001253585532511401% of the city.

The poor vaccination rates could stem from factors such as fear of stigmatization among the Black LGBTQ community, poor access to doses, and the same distrust and skepticism of health-care systems that hampered efforts to persuade more Black Philadelphians to get fully vaccinated against COVID-19.

“The fact that they made [monkeypox] look like a gay disease is just generating more distrust toward that system, because it’s ultimately not,” said Jazmyn Henderson, an activist with ACT UP, an HIV and AIDS advocacy group. “People know that it’s not a STI [sexually transmitted infection].”

Sex has proven to be the most common way the virus is transmitted, which is why health officials are focusing on men who have had sexual contact with numerous or anonymous male partners. But although more rare, it is possible to spread monkeypox through any kind of extended contact with the painful rashes and lesions it can cause.

So, the Inky went through all of that to tell us that it’s not a sexually transmitted infection, but then tells us, in the very next paragraph, that the most common way it has been transmitted through sex. How common is “most common”?

Monkeypox has been spreading primarily through skin-to-skin contact during sex among gay and bisexual men, public health officials say. About 98% of patients who provided demographic information to clinics identified as men who have sex with men, according to the CDC. But public health officials have repeatedly emphasized that anyone can catch the disease through physical contact with someone who has it or contaminated materials such as bedsheets and towels.

So, “most common” actually means ‘almost all.’ Why wouldn’t the government, and Inquirer writers just tell the plain truth? When Jazmyn Henderson, an activist with ACT UP, an HIV and AIDS advocacy group, said, “The fact that they made [monkeypox] look like a gay disease is just generating more distrust toward that system, because it’s ultimately not,” he was lying to us, because, as can be gleaned from the description of him by the Inky, he has a very definite bias to support.

It doesn’t even make sense for Mr Henderson to lie about that; admitting that it is an infection spread not just “most common(ly)”, but very nearly entirely by homosexual males would lessen the demand for the vaccines among normal people, thus leaving more available for homosexual males.

Much further down, the Inquirer article notes that in Philly, vaccines have primarily been made available through the city’s monkeypox hotline and to patients of several LGBTQ clinics, places which one would not expect to somehow discriminate against blacks, so it isn’t as though the vaccine, when available, is somehow being withheld from racial minority populations; it has been a matter of who chooses to try to get vaccinated. Further, the city wants to team with businesses like Philly’s two bathhouses, an obvious place for the disease to be spread, and other places like pharmacies to host vaccination clinics, though with the vaccine in somewhat short supply, I fail to see how expanding the number of places it is available helps. Perhaps, just perhaps, what wasn’t mentioned, is that the city’s two homosexual “bathhouses” ought to be places where the very, very politically incorrect message, “Hey, promiscuous homosexual sex is risky for monkeypox” should be shouted out, but we all know that you’re just not allowed to say that.

Here’s where the reporting really shows the Inky’s politically correct suppression of the truth:

The data released Thursday by the Philadelphia Department of Public Health offer the first detailed look at who in the city has been infected by monkeypox, and who has been vaccinated for it. The data show 87% of cases have been reported in cisgender men. Three-fourths of infections have been in people ages 20 to 39. The racial disparities, though, are the most concerning indicators.

The chart at the right, taken from the city’s posted data on Sunday, August 20, 2022, sjows us that out of 203 known cases, while yes, 87% are among “cisgender” males, another 10% are from “unknown”, meaning that the data are incomplete. If you just read that 87% were from “cisgender males,” you might be subconsciously assume that the other 13% were among female victims, but that isn’t the case. With 177 cases among “cisgender males” plus 20 more among a population whose sex was not reported, that’s a total of 197, out of 203 total cases, 97.04%, leaving only four cases which could be among real women, fake males, fake females, and some other “gender identity”. The city didn’t report those numbers, and the Inquirer, while it did link the data, kind of hoped you wouldn’t really check it out.

It wasn’t exactly a lie, but it was definitely an attempt to obscure the truth. Article author Jason Laughlin could have written, “among the 183 reported cases in which the sex of the infected person was known, 96.72% were among ‘cisgender’ males,” but that would have told a truth that his editors at the Inquirer would not have wanted told.

Henderson, a trans Black woman, said Black men who have sex with men may still identify as heterosexual.

Translation: they are lying not only to others, but to themselves.

“Identifying as gay, identifying as trans, all of that is very stigmatized,” she said. “I didn’t realize how stigmatized trans women are until I became one.”

For this reason, Henderson has urged public health officials to stop emphasizing that monkeypox is a virus that primarily afflicts gay men, she said. She felt it would discourage gay, bisexual, and trans Black men from seeking out the vaccine. Being seen walking into an LGBTQ-focused health center could damage a man’s reputation in his community, she said.

“If it’s someone who knows you and knows where you hang out,” she said, “that business is going to be everywhere.”

Well, it’s certainly true that if you are seen walking into a health center which caters to homosexuals, and someone who knows you sees it, that information is going to spread among your neighborhood. But Mr Henderson, apparently like the Inquirer, wants to soft-peddle the facts, because political correctness is really much more important than the disease itself.

Everything here is being built on lies. It’s built on the lie that while monkeypox can be spread by contact other than sexual, it’s not a sexually transmitted infection despite the fact that around 98% of the cases are due to promiscuous homosexual male activity. It’s built on the lie that this is not an almost entirely homosexual male disease, because the left do not wish to stigmatize homosexual males. I can understand a dedicated activist like Mr Henderson telling lies to support his causes, but the credentialed media, a newspaper which purports to be telling readers the truth, should not go along with the lies.

References

References
↑1 RedState writer Mike Miller called it the Enquirer, probably by mistake, so I didn’t originate it, but, reminiscent of the National Enquirer as it is, I thought it very apt.
↑2 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.
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The Philadelphia Inquirer conceals a truth that everyone already knows Is the Inky actually perpetuating a stereotype it wishes to avoid?

We have noted, many times before, that The Philadelphia Inquirer censors the news because publisher Elizabeth ‘Lisa’ Hughes demands it. But it has to be asked: does their deliberate censorship actually reinforce the stereotype they are trying to avoid?

‘I’m grateful to be alive.’ Victim of West Philly rec center shooting heals as three accused gunmen face charges.

Tahmir Pinckney, Azyear Sutton-Walker, and Marlon Spurell, who are all 22 years old, were arraigned overnight Thursday on charges including attempted murder and jailed on $3 million bail each.

by Chris Palmer and Mensah M. Dean | Thursday, August 18, 2022 | 1:15 PM EDT

Photo via 6ABC News Click to enlarge.

Three of the men accused of opening fire during a drive-by shooting outside a West Philadelphia rec center this week — an incident that left five people wounded, two of them critically — have been charged with crimes including attempted murder, aggravated assault, and conspiracy, court records show.Tahmir Pinckney, Azyear Sutton-Walker, and Marlon Spurell, who are all 22 years old, were arraigned overnight Thursday and jailed on $3 million bail each, court records show. All were being represented by the Defender Association, which declined to comment Thursday morning.

Police said the men were among six people who began shooting out of a white Dodge Durango around 7 p.m. Tuesday on the 300 block of North 57th Street, just steps from the Shepard Recreation Center, where dozens of people were outside playing basketball, football, or otherwise enjoying a summer evening.

The Inquirer doesn’t print mugshots, because Miss Hughes believes that being an anti-racist news organization just won’t allow that.

But the Inky isn’t the only news source in town, and the television stations did show the mugshots. Television news is, of course, is a medium much more dependent upon the visual, so it’s understandable that, regardless of how #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 the management are, pictures have to be published. The Inquirer, which has a far smaller circulation than the television stations have viewers, certainly didn’t keep the public from seeing the mugshots, and noting what Miss Hughes desperately wants not noted, that the suspects were all black — something most people would have inferred anyway, given the names of the suspects — but at a certain point, one has to ask: is the Inky, by censoring all mugshots, contributing not only to the stereotype that most criminals are black, but actually pushing a message, that all criminals are black?

I’m sure that’s not the intention of the journolists[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 who work for what I have frequently called The Philadelphia Enquirer[3]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., but it has to be considered a possibility. The stereotype that most criminals are black certainly exists, and by censoring the news where race is concerned, isn’t the Inky contributing to that stereotype? When the newspaper declines to publish something like this, won’t most of the readers simply assume what the Inky refuses to tell them? I’m guessing that there are at least some criminals in the City of Brotherly Love who are white, but the newspaper doesn’t tell us that.

The original article title in the Inquirer was “Tahmir Pinckney, Azyear Sutton-Walker, Marlon Spurell charged over West Philly shooting near Shepard rec center,” which you can see if you hold your cursor over the tab of the Inky article. An editor changed that, which wasn’t a terrible idea, since part of the article focused on the victims, but at least it wasn’t front-and-center on the newspaper’s website main page. Their names, however, were prominently featured in the subtitle.

The Enquirer Inquirer did tell us, in a sort of offhand way, that both the shooters and the victims were gang-bangers, without using the word “gang”:

an ongoing feud between groups of young men — with the shooters in the car on one side of the dispute, and the victims on the other. One of the victims shot Thursday had also been shot several weeks ago,

At least some of the targeted victims were armed themselves, and returned fire.

Mr Spurell was awaiting trial — or, more probably, having the charges dropped by Let ’em Loose Larry Krasner — on a drug trafficking charge from four months ago, while Mr “Pinkney pleaded no contest to a drug charge in 2019 and was sentenced to a year of probation.” I’m actually surprised that the newspaper told us that, because it will lead more readers to assume that the arrested men are actually guilty; these are some bad dudes!

The Inquirer includes short, first person, biographies of its writers at the bottom of its articles. I have to wonder: how does Mr Palmer focus on how criminal justice and law enforcement are “evolving and impacting communities during a moment of reform”? How does Mr Dean “report on law breakers, those they impact, and how the criminal justice system interacts with both” when he is required to censor part of the news? Both reporters are actually contributing to the stereotypes that Miss Hughes wants to avoid, though I’ve no doubt that such is required by editorial guidelines, regardless of what their personal inclinations might be.

Wouldn’t actually telling the whole truth serve better?

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 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 RedState writer Mike Miller called it the Enquirer, probably by mistake, so I didn’t originate it, but, reminiscent of the National Enquirer as it is, I thought it very apt.
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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 myth of “banning books”

Other than the Library of Congress, which is supposed to receive two copies of every copyrighted work, every library in the country exercises some discretion as to what books, magazines and other material to purchase and add to its collection. Discretion is what the Central Bucks School Board has mandated:

Central Bucks approves contentious library policy targeting ‘sexualized content’ in books amid community opposition

The policy, said the superintendent, would create a process for the selection of new books and for parents to challenge “gratuitous, salacious, over-the-top, unnecessary, sexualized content.”

by Oona Goodin-Smith | Tuesday, July 26, 2022

By US Census, Ruhrfisch – taken from US Census website [1] and modified by User:Ruhrfisch, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=808255

Facing heated community opposition, the Central Bucks School District on Tuesday approved a contentious library policy that takes aim at challenging books with “sexualized content” — guidelines the district’s superintendent says ensure students are reading “age-appropriate material,” but that the Pennsylvania Library Association calls one of the most restrictive in schools across the state.

In a 6-3 vote, after a rally and more than an hour of public comment — most of which was vehemently opposing the policy — and questions by some board members about its origins, the Republican-dominated board voted to advance the policy that’s raised alarm among civil rights groups. . . . .

Wielding signs reading “dictators ban books, not democracies,” and “love not hate makes CB great,” dozens of parents, students, community members, educators, and advocates rallied outside the Doylestown school district headquarters Tuesday night ahead of the vote, calling for the board to strike the policy. Many repeated their remarks during public comment before the school board. Only a couple speakers voiced their approval for the policy.

“This is not a ban, this is not censorship, it’s common sense,” said one mother, who said she was “against minors being exposed to sexually explicit content.”

Full disclosure: before I retired, I did some work in Bucks County, and specifically in the Doylestown area, where the Central Bucks School District is located, though none for the schools specifically.

A very obvious point: attendance at school is compulsory for children in the United States, and the public schools have, in effect, a captive audience. Thus, when schools take decisions on what books and other materials are to be housed in their libraries, they are exposing that captive audience to those materials.

Another very obvious point: while the Central Bucks School Board can limit what materials are bought and housed in the schools’ libraries, they have exactly zero authority over library choices in any other place, or over bookstores, or amazon.com, or any other place which buys, sells, lends, or distributes anything. If the students in the district want to read about sex, it’s widely available, in other places, including, sometimes for free, over the internet. Central Bucks is not exactly a poverty-stricken area; it’s difficult to imagine that more than a handful of homes of school-aged children lack internet access.

The public schools do not exist, and should not exist, for sexualizing children. There should be no normalizing of homosexuality or ‘transgenderism,’ or of promiscuity. That’s what concerns normal parents, and that’s what concerned the elected school board. If some parents want their children to learn about abnormal sexuality, hey, that’s on them!

Karen Downer, president of the NAACP’s Bucks County branch, noted that books most frequently flagged for sexual content “tend to include certain themes,” including the history of Black people, LGBTQ topics or characters, and race and racism. The books also are often written by marginalized authors, she said.

Does Miss Debbie Downer mean books which stir up racial strife or that push the normalization of homosexuality? Guess what? Those should not be part of school libraries! If some parents want to stir up racial strife — and, despite bordering Philadelphia at its extreme southeastern end, Bucks County’s population are only 4.7% non-Hispanic black, 6.1% Hispanic, 5.5% Asian, and 82.4% non-Hispanic white — that’s their business, but it should not be what the public schools teach.

“The policy is vague and overbroad,” said Richard T. Ting, an attorney with the ACLU.

“We’re also talking about library books, …not required reading for classwork. This is just books in the library that are there for students, and students should be free to choose what they read. Families should be able to discuss those things with their kids, as well. It shouldn’t be up to a few people … to decide what everyone else gets access to.”

But that’s just it: in any library, “a few people .  .  . decide what everyone else gets access to,” as far as their collection is concerned. Any materials not present in the school libraries can be found elsewhere, often by an internet search, so that people don’t have to leave home to do so. If families wish to discuss “those things,” with their children, they can find “those things” on amazon.com, and download them onto their computers or Kindles immediately.

Let’s face it: the “groomers” want to normalize the abnormal, and want to use the public schools to help them with that. Let’s face it: the “groomers” want to normalize the abnormal, and want to use the public schools to help them with that. Not just no, but Hell no!

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The poor Special Snowflakes™ are getting their precious little feelings hurt!

We have previously noted how today’s left, who in past years were the most vociferous defenders of absolute freedom of speech, have now gone in very much the opposite direction. The New York Times and The Washington Post went to court in 1971 to fight President Richard Nixon’s attempts to prevent publication of the so-called Pentagon Papers, winning their case  in New York Times Co. v. United States, 403 U.S. 713 (1971).

Well, that was then, and this is now. One of the Times Editorial Board members, Greg Bensinger, opined that Twitter under Elon Musk will be a scary place, because, Heaven forfend! it might allow Donald Trump back on the platform, and that:

central to (Mr Musk’s) vision for the service is for it to be an “inclusive arena for free speech,” but users should understand what that phrase means: It means free speech for people like Mr. Musk, a billionaire and the world’s richest man. Even as Twitter’s board on Monday was debating his offer of $54.20 per share, which it accepted, Mr. Musk was setting the tone for his leadership by tweeting that Securities and Exchange Commission officials were “shameless puppets.”

Loosening content moderation, as Mr. Musk appears poised to do, won’t make Twitter a better place; that will make it far more toxic. Under the notion that more speech is the best antidote to harmful speech, earnest users can probably expect to be shouted down even more frequently by trolls and bots. (I am hopeful Mr. Musk was serious when he said he’ll “defeat the spam bots or die trying!”)

Female Twitter users, in particular, ought to worry about whether Mr. Musk will bring his apparent disdain for women to the company he is about to own. Twitter is already a toxic place for women who use it, particularly those of color.

This was hardly the first time that the Times, that staunch defender of freedom of speech and of the press when it comes to their First Amendment rights, has wanted them stifled when it came to other people. The Times also gave major OpEd space to Andrew Marantz, a staff writer for The New Yorker, to tell us that Free Speech Is Killing Us, and to Chad Malloy[1]Chad Malloy is a male who thinks he is a woman, and goes by the faux name “Parker” Malloy. to tell us How Twitter’s Ban on ‘Deadnaming’ Promotes Free Speech.

It’s not just the Times. From Le*gal In*sur*rec*tion:

Twitter to Ban Use of ‘Groomers’ After Pressure From Liberal Outrage Mongers

“Right-wing users have spent months targeting LGBTQ users on Twitter with offensive accusations of ‘grooming,’ contributing to a climate of harassment and violence,” Media Matters alleged in an article demanding that Twitter take action.

Posted by Stacey Matthews | Saturday, July 23, 2022 | 2:00 PM EDT

Since leftists control most popular social media platforms, when their woke acolytes demand they get more aggressive with the thought and speech policing of conservatives, those platforms respond accordingly by tightening the reins and dropping the hammer on the allegedly offensive accounts, often on the ones that are influential and have large followings.

Such was the case earlier this week thanks in part to an aggressive online campaign started by the left-wing frauds at Media Matters for America (MMFA) and inspired by earlier actions taken by Reddit to crack down on the use of the word “groomers” when it is being used to describe, well, people who sound an awful lot like groomers.

According to Media Matters, allegations of grooming against educators—especially those who are using platforms like TikTok to openly brag about indoctrinating children with LGBTQ-themed sexualized content—by popular Twitter accounts like Libs of TikTok and ConceptualJames have led to a rise in violence against members of the LGBTQ community because according to them, “groomers” is a “slur” and code-word used by the right “to brand gay and transgender people as child molesters, evoking an earlier era of homophobia.”

There’s more at Miss Matthews’ original.

Let’s face it: the left are getting their precious little feelings hurt when conservatives do something really radical like tell the truth.

An obvious question: if Twitter is going to ban the use of the word Groomer — and the hashtag #Groomers is still up on Twitter — why wouldn’t Twitter similarly ban calling other people misogynist or homophobes or transphobes? The answer is obvious: Twitter’s leadership actively supports the homosexual and transgender agenda! Twitter, and as we noted on Saturday, the Associated Press, want to force debate to the left by forcing the use of the language preferred by the left. The left don’t like the truth because they can’t handle the truth, and they are deathly afraid of other people hearing the truth.

References

References
↑1 Chad Malloy is a male who thinks he is a woman, and goes by the faux name “Parker” Malloy.
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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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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.