Tag Archives: #FreedomOfThePress

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Kara Alaimo exercised her #FreedomOfSpeech and CNN’s #FreedomOfThePress to decry conservatives’ Freedom of Speech and of the Press

In an episode of Blue Bloods, fictitious New York City Police Commissioner Frank Reagan said, “Freedom of the press only applies to people who own one,” and, in a lot of ways, he’s right.  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).

Many people regard the issue of Twitter having been bought by Elon Musk as a matter of freedom of speech; I view it more as a matter of freedom of the press. You can say anything you want, but no one else is somehow obligated to repeat it, or publish it. For umpteen years people have submitted articles and other things to the Times and National Review and Simon & Schuster, and had their articles or books not accepted for publication. The editors at those companies were exercising a ‘gatekeeping’ function, and using their presses to print what they decided they wished to print, even if the authors of the rejected pieces thought differently.

And yes, I have — at least in memory; I didn’t keep them — a small collection of rejection letters myself. But my late best friend and I knew, in advance, that we were entrusting our submissions to the judgement of those who owned the presses in which we sought to get published.

This internet thingy that Al Gore invented changed all of that. Rush Limbaugh made the first crack, when he got his radio show syndicated, to the absolute horror of many on the left. Internet chat rooms on America Online widened things a bit, but the real break came when independent people could start their own websites, and Powerline and Little Green Footballs[1]Did you notice what I did there? I approve of Powerline, and included the hyperlink to it. Little Green Footballs went way, way, way in the wrong direction, and I do not want to give them more … Continue reading exposed CBS News use of forged documents to try to defeat the younger President Bush’s re-election in 2004.

And in the end, Twitter, and the other social media sites, are publishers, able to choose what, and what not, to publish.

Now comes Kara Alaimo, an associate professor in the Lawrence Herbert School of Communication at Hofstra University, who writes about issues affecting women and social media. Dr Alaimo, it seems, does not much like it when the wrong people who own presses get to decide what does, and does not get published.

Elon Musk is running Twitter like dictators run their states

Opinion by Kara Alaimo | Friday, December 16, 2022 | 7:20 PM EST

Kara Alaimo, from her website.

CNN – On Thursday, Elon Musk’s ownership of Twitter entered a terrifying new phase when he began wielding his power to censor the press. The Twitter accounts of several journalists who have covered Musk critically recently — in other words, done their jobs — were suspended.In tweets, Musk accused the journalists of violating the platform’s policy against doxing — or posting private information online — by sharing his “exact real-time” location. But none of the banished reporters — including CNN’s Donie O’Sullivan and The Washington Post’s Drew Harwell — appeared to have done so. Musk and Twitter didn’t respond to CNN’s requests for comment.

Well, we already knew that Dr Alaimo had no problem at all with Taylor Lorenz’s doxxing of Chaya Raichik, the creator of Libs of TikTok, calling it accountability even while she stated that “Doxxing can be dangerous — or even deadly. There are many people who should be able to share information anonymously online.” It’s almost as though the professor believes that the acceptability of doxxing is determined by the political views of the victim.

It was yesterday’s news that Twitter had suspended 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 in question; by the next day, Twitter announced the restoration of those accounts.

Now I don’t know: was this all part of Mr Musk’s master plan to teach those journolists a lesson, that what they celebrated when Donald Trump and some prominent conservatives were suspended by the previous Twitter management could happen to them as well, or was Twitter responding to the negative publicity for having done so?

If it weren’t obvious before, the latest moves make clear that Musk tends to run this company the way dictators run their states: by making decisions that serve his personal interests rather than those of the public, and capriciously getting rid of people who stand in his way. That’s why tech workers and journalists who have lost their jobs in the past few weeks should come together to create non-profit social networks designed to serve the public interest.

“The way dictators run their states”? Dr Alaimo didn’t quite go full Godwin’s Law and proclaim that Mr Musk is “literally Hitler,” but she was certainly hovering around that button. Twitter, as a publisher, was exercising its freedom of the press to not grant publication to a few reporters. Her OpEd, published on cnn.com, was certainly taking advantage of CNN’s freedom of the press!

And Dr Alaimo really, really doesn’t like freedom of the press when the wrong people own those presses, or are the one’s taking decisions about whose words they will publish:

The chilling problem with Kanye West’s definition of ‘free speech’

Opinion by Kara Alaimo | Tuesday, October 18, 2022 | Updated 8:12 AM EDT

CNN — The conservative social media company Parler announced on Monday that it is being purchased by Kanye West, who was temporarily suspended from Twitter this month for an antisemitic tweet. A statement from Parler’s parent company announcing the deal described West, who has legally changed his name to Ye, as having taken “a groundbreaking move into the free speech media space” where “he will never have to fear being removed from social media again.”

In a release by Parler, West said that “in a world where conservative opinions are considered to be controversial we have to make sure we have the right to freely express ourselves.”

This development means several social media companies could soon be left in the hands of mercurial, mega-rich men who have pledged to promote “free speech,” including the kind of extreme views that got West temporarily booted from Twitter. Elon Musk is currently in the process of buying Twitter, though Twitter said in a recent court filing that federal authorities (it was not clear which ones) are investigating Musk (while Musk’s attorney said this filing was designed to distract from Twitter’s own legal issues).

For his part, Musk has said Twitter should be “an inclusive arena for free speech.” And former President Donald Trump, who was thrown off Twitter and Facebook in January 2021, founded the company that created Truth Social, which describes itself as a “free speech haven.”

If West and Musk go through with their deals, these three social media platforms are likely to serve as ecosystems for conservative thought. This will likely make the views of those who remain on them more extreme — which could have a radical effect on our politics. That’s because when people who think similarly come together, they reaffirm and heighten one another’s initial beliefs.

Also read: William Teach: FBI Was Super Excited To Censor Conservatives On Twitter

So, if that’s what Dr Alaimo believes — and I certainly take her at her word — “ecosystems for conservative thought” are bad, bad things. On Twitter, at the time under the previous ownership, would have been an ‘ecosystem for liberal thought,’ with conservatives allowed, as long as they followed the left’s rules. I have already noted that I have had to be careful in tweets, especially when it came to my reporting about Will Thomas, a male swimmer who claimed to be a woman named “Lia,” including calling him ‘Lia’ Thomas in a couple of article titles to get past Twitter’s rules, even though I do not accept the cockamamie notion that anyone can change his sex.

While men such as West, Musk and Trump claim to promote free speech by not favoring the moderation of problematic content, here’s what lack of moderation really does: It drives away the people victimized by abusive content such as West’s tweet.

“Victimized,” huh? Apparently to Dr Alaimo, it’s not just sticks and stones which can break people’s bones, but names most certainly can hurt them!

As much as I’d like to quote all of Dr Alaimo’s OpEd piece, I’ll summarize much of the rest. She stated that Twitter really is a digital “town square,” and that while slightly less than a quarter of Americans have Twitter accounts, it does have an “outsize influence” on what reporters write and talk about, and thus is very, very important, and journolists journalists must be able to hold people in power accountable. Social media, Dr Alaimo stated, must be a place where the public can find “reliable information,” decrying what she saw as hate speech and misinformation.

It’s clear that we can’t rely on Musk’s Twitter to provide a safe, open forum. We need new, non-profit social networks run by boards responsible for considering the public’s interest when making critical decisions about things like content moderation and community standards. And many of the people who have these skills have just been laid off from their jobs. In addition to the mass exodus from Twitter since Musk’s takeover, there have been layoffs at a number of tech and journalism companies lately, including Facebook and CNN, with more coming at The Washington Post. Some of these professionals should work together to create new social platforms designed to provide the truly open town hall we so desperately need.

So, a “truly open town hall” must be one in which conservatives are censored, but not liberals, in which conservatives can be doxxed, but not leftists.

Musk’s latest power moves are nothing short of dangerous. Recently unemployed tech and journalism workers should take them as a rallying call to unite to create new, healthier online spaces. We have nothing to lose except our dependence on a mercurial, egotistical czar to set the terms of our public debates.

The creation of Parler and Truth Social were mocked by the left, and none of the alternate sites gained anywhere near the size and influence of Twitter. Governments ar all levels use Twitter to convey information to the public, but if any government has a Parler account, I’ve not heard of it.

Now Twitter has been taken over by a man whose ideas of what should and should not be published are different from the left, and the libs are aghast. Really, Dr Alaimo, names really cannot hurt you . . . unless you are weak-willed enough to let them.

References

References
↑1 Did you notice what I did there? I approve of Powerline, and included the hyperlink to it. Little Green Footballs went way, way, way in the wrong direction, and I do not want to give them more publicity, so I did not link that site. Owning the site The First Street Journal, I am able to take that decision as to which things I wish, and wish not, to publicize, and exercised my discretion.
↑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.
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Those who want to regulate speech aren’t really afraid of lies or misinformation; what they are afraid of is the truth.

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

To trans people, it represented a recognition that our identity is an accepted fact and that to suggest otherwise is a slur.

That their ‘identity’ might not be “an accepted fact” is not something Mr Malloy wanted to concede, but Twitter’s policy also meant that those who did not accept such claims still had to be careful with their language, or be suspended or permanently banned.

And yes, I have had to be careful in tweets, especially when it came to my reporting about Will Thomas, a male swimmer who claimed to be a woman named “Lia,” including calling him ‘Lia’ Thomas in a couple of article titles to get past Twitter’s rules.

Now comes Robert Stacy McCain, who had his own @rsmccain Twitter account, with “tens of thousands” of followers, permanently suspended noting that Twitter, under the previous regime also suspended credentialed media sites which did something really radical like tell the truth:

‘Blood On Your Hands’? Is Anyone Really Endangered by Twitter ‘Amnesty’?

by Robert Stacy McCain | Sunday, November 27, 2022

Hopewell Chin’ono is an award-winning journalist who has relentlessly exposed the evils of the lawless and corrupt regime in Zimbabwe:

In 2020, Hopewell reported on alleged Covid-19 procurement fraud within the health ministry, which led to the arrest and sacking of Health Minister Obadiah Moyo. It was President Emmerson Mnangagwa who fired Obadiah in July for “inappropriate conduct” over the $60 million medicines supply scandal. On July 20, 2020, Hopewell was arrested and charged with inciting public violence. The US embassy called Hopewell’s arrest “deeply concerning”, while his lawyer called it “an abduction” and Amnesty accused Zimbabwean authorities of “misusing the criminal justice system to persecute journalists and activists”. He was freed in September on bail, then he was arrested again in November 2020 and was charged with obstructing justice and contempt of court for a tweet about the court outcome of a gold smuggling scandal.

Hopewell Chin’ono was released on bail on January 27, 2021 after spending three weeks in prison. Chin’ono expressed concern about the COVID-19 pandemic in the overcrowded Chikurubi Prison and accuses the government of harassment for arresting him three times in five months.

Given such credentials, Chin’ono must be taken seriously when he warns of the risks of a general “amnesty” for banned accounts on Twitter. And certainly we should hope that Elon Musk will have his staff exercise caution when it comes to such cases as these, where repressive regimes are using “ghost accounts” to harass their critics. But the problem in the United States is almost the diametrical opposite situation, i.e., critics of the regime have been banned, because Twitter staff were working with the Democratic Party to effectively prohibit dissent.

The New York Post, America’s oldest continuously published newspaper,[3]There’s some dispute, but I believe that the Hartford Courant, founded in 1764, is the oldest, followed by the Post, founded in 1801 by Alexander Hamilton, as second, and The Philadelphia … Continue reading had its Twitter account suspended at the behest of intelligence officials who falsely declared the Hunter Biden laptop story to be “Russian disinformation.” (For the record, I do not think the Biden family is less corrupt than the rulers of Zimbabwe.) Comparing the problems in America to the problems in Zimbabwe is apples and oranges, of course, but that’s the point: If we don’t want to descend into a Third World nightmare, the voices of opponents of the Democratic Party must be heard. Maybe you think Zimbabwe can’t happen here, but you’re wrong. I mean, look what Democrats have done to Chicago and Philadelphia . . .

Of course, as it turned out, the Hunter Biden laptop story turned out to be true, but it was far, far, far more important to the #woke[4]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 nerds who ran Twitter previously that the story be stifled on October 14, 2020, three weeks before the presidential election, because Joe Biden just had to be protected so that he could win the election.

Twitter’s then-CEO Jack Dorsey was able to say that yeah, it had been a ‘total mistake’ to block the Post’s story . . . on March 25, 2021, after the election.

I’m old enough to remember when the left were free speech absolutists .  .  . when they weren’t really in control of much, when they were trying to get their messages out to the public in general. Now that they have power, not only in government but largely in the professional media, they really aren’t so enamored of freedom of speech, not for those with whom they disagree. To them, Twitter was great, when Twitter was suspending Mr McCain, when the platform was censoring the Post, when views contrary to theirs were stifled.

In one episode of Blue Bloods, fictitious New York City Police Commissioner Frank Reagan said that freedom of the press applies only to those who own a press, but that time has elapsed: with internet service (sort of) inexpensive, and the cost to have your own website cheap — heck, even I can afford it, and some platforms are free — almost anyone can own a ‘press.’

Well, social media like Facebook and Twitter and less popular sites like Parler are, in effect, publishers, and publishers do get to choose what they will and will not publish. But once Elon Musk bought Twitter leftists like The Philadelphia Inquirer’s Will Bunch, whose newspaper rarely publishes any opinions which aren’t #woke, decided that Twitter “should exist more as a semi-public utility than as an entity that a man with a spare $44 billion can just light on fire,”[5]As we have previously noted, Mr Bunch’s newspaper has been begging for donations to help keep it afloat. while Salon’s Amanda Marcotte wants Twitter to be ‘socialized’:

Of course, there is one way Twitter could be saved: By actually making it the “digital town square” Musk says he wants it to be. Which is to say the government should buy and run Twitter, just as government owns and operates actual town squares. Yes, I’m talking about a “socialist” takeover of Twitter, just like we have “socialist” libraries, schools and museums.

I don’t think that they understand what they’ve advocated, because a public utility cannot deny service to anyone who will pay the bill! It doesn’t matter how odious someone might think my opinions to be: Jackson Energy Cooperative cannot deny me the electricity service I use to power my too-old computer as long as I pay my sparktricity bill. Verizon cannot deny me the cell phone service for which I’ve contracted as long as the bill is paid, even if they’re worried that I might say something unsavory over the phone. Mr Bunch and Miss Marcotte somehow seem to think that if Twitter were a public utility, the utility’s directors could ban people they don’t like. Perhaps they just don’t understand what a public utility actually is?

Well, I actually (kind of) agree: Twitter should be considered a public utility, not only because of the size of its reach, but because governments at all levels use Twitter and Facebook — but not Parler or Truth Social — to communicate with the public. Virtually every government in the United States, federal, state, and local, have a Twitter account that they use. Being a public utility does not mean that it cannot be privately owned, as most of our electric, water, telephone , and natural gas companies are.

As a private publisher, Twitter was able to censor information it didn’t want disseminated, information which turned out to be the truth, and the left liked that. Now that Twitter is owned by someone who actually favors freedom of speech, the left don’t like it, don’t like it at all. It wasn’t just the Hunter Biden laptop story; Twitter routinely throttled down messages that exposed the fact that the COVID-19 vaccines did not actually keep a person from contracting the SARS-CoV-2, something we now also know to be true, because the left just can’t handle the truth.

References

References
↑1 The First Street Journal’s Stylebook is exactly the opposite: while we do not change the direct quotes of others, in original material we always refer to people by their normal, biological sex and their original names.
↑2 Chad Malloy is a man male who claims to be a woman, and goes by the faux name “Parker.”
↑3 There’s some dispute, but I believe that the Hartford Courant, founded in 1764, is the oldest, followed by the Post, founded in 1801 by Alexander Hamilton, as second, and The Philadelphia Inquirer, founded in 1829, third.
↑4 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.

↑5 As we have previously noted, Mr Bunch’s newspaper has been begging for donations to help keep it afloat.
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Brynn Tannehill and the American left love them some freedom of speech and of the press . . . for themselves. For conservatives? Not so much!

I will admit it: I had not heard of Brynn Tannehill before seeing this tweet from my good Twitter friend Robert Stacy McCain. Now I don’t know what Mr McCain tweeted to her that she found blockworthy — though blockworthy seems to have a pretty low threshold among many on the left — but, as I frequently do when I see something like that, I checked out the blocking author.

It didn’t take too much scrolling down to find this tweet in Miss Tannehill’s file. She is exercising her freedom of speech and of the press to tell us why other people ought not to have the same rights. That is, sadly, far too typical of the American left!

Why Elon Musk’s Idea of “Free Speech” Will Help Ruin America

Twitter without content moderation—and with Donald Trump and others reinvited—means that lies and disinformation will overwhelm the truth and the fascists will take over.

by Brynn Tannehill | Wednesday, October 26, 2022

After months of legal wrangling, Elon Musk’s bid to buy Twitter appears to be finally going through. Musk and the right see this as a great thing because it will restore “free speech” to Twitter. Any suggestion that the sort of “free speech” they envision can have highly undesirable consequences is met with howls of “Libs hate free speech” or other accusations of fascism. Similarly, warnings that unfettered free speech results in dangerous misinformation spreading are derided with “Sunlight is the best disinfectant” and the libertarian belief that in the marketplace of ideas, the best will always win out.

These theories will be tested quickly. It is being reported that after the sale is finalized, Musk plans on laying off nearly three-quarters of Twitter’s staff and that one of the first things to go will be any corporate attempt at content moderation and user security. Musk also plans on restoring the accounts of high-profile sources of disinformation and violent messaging who were previously banned, most notably former President Trump.

Well, of course it’s all about Donald Trump, who has been living rent-free in the heads of the left since before he was elected, and still now, after he’s been out of office for 21 months. We have often noted how some of the major organs of the credentialed media, including those who have so vigorously defended their own freedom of speech and of the press, have advocated censoring other people’s freedom of speech and of the press, all as the left scram that evil reich-wing Republicans are the fascists! That Miss Tannehill has previously accused Republicans of wanting to ban books only makes it more hypocritical, and more humorous.

OK, at this point, 9:41 PM EDT on Friday, October 28th, I need to make a serious correction. When I originally wrote this article, I made a huge, huge error: I failed to check the author’s biography, and did something silly like use the feminine honorifics and pronouns. Commenter 370H55V I/ME/MINE notified me of the error, and now I need to correct it. It turns out that Bryan Tannehill was a 1997 graduate of the United States Naval Academy, and began to ‘transition’ in 2010. I left the above part of my article in place, as written, but shall now correct the rest of it.

The pro-Musk arguments are complete nonsense, and there are innumerable historical and modern examples of why social media platforms with nearly unlimited freedom of speech produce horrors. The Supreme Court decided free speech isn’t absolute long ago, when Chief Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes noted that you can’t shout “Fire!” in a crowded theater, for obvious reasons.

As happens so often among the anti-free speech crowd, Miss Mr Tannehill wholly missed the point. From Schneck v United States, 249 US 47 (1919), internal citations omitted:

But it is said, suppose that that was the tendency of this circular, it is protected by the First Amendment to the Constitution. Two of the strongest expressions are said to be quoted respectively from well-known public men. It well may be that the prohibition of laws abridging the freedom of speech is not confined to previous restraints, although to prevent them may have been the main purpose, as intimated in Patterson v. Colorado. We admit that in many places and in ordinary times the defendants in saying all that was said in the circular would have been within their constitutional rights. But the character of every act depends upon the circumstances in which it is done. Aikens v. Wisconsin. The most stringent protection of free speech would not protect a man in falsely shouting fire in a theatre and causing a panic. It does not even protect a man from an injunction against uttering words that may have all the effect of force. Gompers v. Buck’s Stove & Range Co. The question in every case is whether the words used are used in such circumstances and are of such a nature as to create a clear and present danger that they will bring about the substantive evils that Congress has a right to prevent.

The entire opinion is short, and can be easily read in just a couple of minutes, but what Miss Mr Tannehill and others have so often forgotten is that while Associate Justice Holmes — he was never Chief Justice of the United States, as Miss Mr Tannehill claimed, though he was once Chief Justice of the Massachusetts state Supreme Court — said that the First Amendment does not protect a man from the consequences of shouting “Fire!” in a crowded theater and causing a panic and, presumably, a stampede for the exits, he never stated that the worry that someone might do such, without solid information about a specific, real, and credible threat justifies the law disallowing him from entering a theater in the first place. Miss Mr Tannehill and the like-minded left are basing their desire to shut down access to the most important organs of free speech these days to those they fear might shout “Fire!” in that crowded theater.

First, freedom of speech has caused untold death and suffering when used to disseminate hate or spread disinformation. The Protocols of the Elders of Zion was a fabricated antisemitic text that purported to expose a global baby-murdering Jewish plot bent on world domination. Mein Kampf was Hitler’s autobiography, which blamed Germany’s post–World War I woes on a global Jewish conspiracy. Both were readily available in the Weimar Republic, which had no First Amendment per se but guaranteed freedom of speech. They were key contributors to the fall of German democracy, the rise of the Third Reich, and the Holocaust itself.

Godwin’s law, also known as Godwin’s rule of Hitler analogies, “is a statement maintaining that if any online discussion continues long enough, someone will almost certainly compare someone else to Hitler. Typically, the comment likens someone to Hitler or calls that person a Nazi, and the individual described in that way is often a participant in the discussion. The law is thought to apply to conversations about any conceivable topic.” Miss Mr Tannehill leapt to that in just four paragraphs!

In modern times, lack of moderation on social media sites has repeatedly contributed to mass murder. The Christchurch, New Zealand, shooter killed 51 Muslims at two mosques after being radicalized on YouTube, 4Chan, and 8Chan. The shooter who killed 11 Jews at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh had been radicalized on the social media site Gab, which advertised itself as the “free speech” alternative to Twitter. Dylann Roof killed nine people at the historically Black Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina, in 2015, after he self-radicalized online. Investigations revealed that Google searches steered him further and further into extremist propaganda and hate.

Conservatives might just as well have stated that the free dissemination of the unfortunate death of George Floyd during a legitimate arrest helped lead to 2020’s summer of hate riots under Antifa and #BlackLivesMatter, though I suspect that Miss Mr Tannehill might disagree with that. If the freedom of speech and of the press are to be restricted because they might lead to harm, it has to be remembered: the speech that will be limited depends upon who is doing the limiting. Had President Trump been the horrible fascist that the left told us he was, he might have just suppressed the freedom of speech and of the press of the left. Oddly enough, the proposal for having Nina Jankowicz to lead a Ministry of Truth “Disinformation Governance Board” under the Department of Fatherland Homeland Security never occurred under President Trump; that was a (quickly trashed) idea of the Biden Administration. Washington Post writer Taylor Lorenz was aghast that it had been torpedoed:

But within hours of news of her appointment, Jankowicz was thrust into the spotlight by the very forces she dedicated her career to combating. The board itself and DHS received criticism for both its somewhat ominous name and scant details of specific mission (Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said it “could have done a better job of communicating what it is and what it isn’t”), but Jankowicz was on the receiving end of the harshest attacks, with her role mischaracterized as she became a primary target on the right-wing Internet. She has been subject to an unrelenting barrage of harassment and abuse while unchecked misrepresentations of her work continue to go viral.

Of course, Miss Lorenz being appalled that the “Disinformation Governance Board” was a flopped idea, was somewhat hypocritical, given that Miss Lorenz had been 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. Freedom of speech is for the left, not the right.

There’s a lot more at Miss Mr Tannehill’s original, trying to tell us all about the horrors that freedom of speech has caused, and telling us that the “libertarian fairy tale” of the “free market of ideas”, that “truth will inevitably conquer demonstrably false narratives” but then she he concludes with a strange paragraph:

As far as the free market goes, people forget that the usual result of completely unregulated markets is monopolies. Ideas within social media are no different. “Free speech” competitors to Twitter such as Gab, Parler, Truth Social, and GETTR (which exert little to no moderation) are uniformly conservative monocultures full of the worst kinds of misinformation and hate outside of 4Chan and Kiwifarms. Parler’s former CEO has begged liberals to join the site and even offered people $20,000 to do so, without any success. Musk himself has made it clear that he plans to follow down the path of Parler and Truth Social, posting a meme of himself, Donald Trump (owner of Truth Social), and Ye (formerly Kanye West and now owner of Parler) as the Three Musketeers.

It’s also true that Gab and Parler and the rest are simply not very large; begun to compete with Twitter, they can’t hold a candle to Twitter’s success. However good or bad they are, they are not winners in the competition for customers. Liberal Twitter has been winning, in part because conservatives like Mr McCain, and me, have been using Twitter because it allows a far more widespread dissemination of what we want to say.

The problem with the oh-so-noble left is that they just can’t handle the truth! Allowing, gasp! conservatives to speak freely on Twitter might just challenge the left’s thinking, and that simply cannot be allowed.

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I guess the Inky needs help before Christmas!

This is not the first, nor even the second begging letter — just 3½ months ago — I have received from the Leftist Lenfest Institute for Journalism, the non-profit owner of The Philadelphia Inquirer, but it is as amusing as all of the others.

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

Just two days ago, I pointed out that four people had been murdered in the City of Brotherly Love, and the Inky didn’t even mention any of them.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I did, however, note, with a photo, that our forebears across the pond have been able to keep newspapers full-sized.

Instead, it has gotten worse. Instead, the newspaper has gotten so thoroughly eaten up with ‘progressive’ ideology that the editors refuse to cover the news which might be politically incorrect, refuse to publish the news which might be outside Miss Hughes ideology. With Lenfest’s ownership, the Inquirer actually can call itself “An Independent Newspaper,” but they are failing in the “for All the People” part. I have frequently noted the differences between journalism and journolism,[2]The spelling ‘journolist’ or ‘journolism’ comes from JournoList, an email list of 400 influential and politically liberal journalists, the exposure of which called into question their … Continue reading and too much of the Inky is the latter.

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

References

References
↑1 As much as I really do love actual printed newspapers, I now live well outside the newspaper’s physical delivery area. Before I retired, I used to pick up a dead trees copy of the Inquirer to take to the plant.
↑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.
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Just because a public school library does not carry sexually-charged books does not mean that such books are banned

The image to the right is a screen capture if the results I got when I Google searched for libraries in Bucks County. This section of the map shows other libraries.

The Philadelphia Inquirer is, of course, aghast that concerned parents might not want their impressionable children exposed to certain materials, primarily sexually explicit materials, and things which glorify what the federal government has sometimes referred to as “minority sexual attractions.”

A parade against book-banning in Doylestown, as Central Bucks School District targets ‘sexualized content’

Bans, restrictions and challenges to books have reached levels not seen in decades

by Jeff Gammage | Sunday, September 25, 2022

One marcher was costumed as the cover of Lawn Boy, the Jonathan Evison book that was banned for its gay and lesbian content and because it was considered to be sexually explicit.

Another was outfitted as All Boys Aren’t Blue by George M. Johnson, which was banned for similar reasons.

Others wore the oversize dust jackets of other books that have been targeted in libraries and school districts for supposedly inappropriate content.

Note the use of language by Jeff Gammage, the Inquirer reporter: “supposedly inappropriate content.” Any responsible editor would have blue-penciled that loaded phrase right away, but there is no evidence that what I have frequently called 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. has any responsible editors.

The Central Bucks school district is prohibiting their school libraries from carrying books and other material which are sexually explicit and age-inappropriate, because a great many parents do not want their children exposed to such. But the school district controls only the public school libraries; the ones listed in the screen capture are the Bucks County free public library system, and they can carry whatever books and material they wish. If some student wants to read All Boys Aren’t Blue he can check the public library, or order it from Amazon. The question is whether the school system should be exposing public school students — and Pennsylvania, like every other state, has a compulsory education law — to a book which details and attempts to glorify the experiences of the author “growing up as a queer Black man in Plainfield, New Jersey.”

In addition to describing Johnson’s own experience, it directly addresses Black queer boys who may not have someone in their life with similar experiences.

Perhaps, just perhaps, some parents do not want their sons and daughters exposed to that.

The district superintendent said the measure would ensure that students read “age-appropriate material,” but civil rights groups have been alarmed.

“No one is saying that every book is or should be appropriate for every child,” said parade organizer Kate Nazemi, a parent with two children in the Central Bucks district, one of the state’s largest. “Librarians and teachers work actively to find the right books for the right kids. They are educators. And they’re being treated like they’re not.”

Well, that’s just it. As we have previously noted, child rearing is the responsibility of parents, and not of the school system or of teachers. More, the public schools and their employees should be subject to the wishes of the taxpayers and parents who fund them, but the “educators” are acting as though they should be supervising the parents, rather than the other way around.

Nazemi, a member of Advocates for Inclusive Education, a coalition that opposes extremism, said district parents have the power to restrict the books seen by their own child. But they shouldn’t have the right, she said, to have a book removed for nearly 18,000 district students.

Of course, once the students are past the schoolhouse door, the parents aren’t present to see what library books their children check out, are reading, or even having passed to them by another student or a teacher. And those students who want to read Lawn Boy can easily get it.

Mr Gammage let his bias creep into his supposedly-straight-news article again, when he described Advocates for Inclusive Education as a coalition that opposes extremism. Their own website has a page The Issues, and all of the issues they have listed stem from a very politically liberal attitude about what schools should teach students about normal and homosexual sex.

Discounting LGBTQ Children’s Social & Emotional Needs
We believe school is a place where children should feel safe to learn and grow together, and where all students are given the tools they need to excel. LGBTQ youth are a legally protected marginalized group who have historically suffered discrimination and therefore need supportive and affirming school policies to ensure their protection.

Issue 1: Affirming Symbols of Support
The Pride Flag has been identified as an effective tool in making students feel supported and welcome in the school environment. We don’t believe it is a divisive and political symbol.

Of course it’s a political symbol! It is a symbol which takes the political position that homosexuality and transgenderism are things to be supported and approved, and it is actively hostile to those who believe that homosexuality is just plain wrong. The public schools should be taking no position, either way, on this.

We are keeping an eye on draft Policy 321 that codifies pride flag removal and more (introduced on 9/14.)

Issue 2: Affirming Names and Pronouns
Some schools in CB are rolling out a new “gender identification procedure” where teachers are not allowed to call a student by their preferred/affirming name unless their parents/guardians have approved this change in the student information database, or the requested name is contained within their name, like Sam for Samantha.

Students must feel safe to learn. We believe this directive will adversely affect academic performance, school attendance, and lead to increases in anxiety and depression.

If “students must feel safe to learn,” I have to ask: do the Advocates care about those normal girls who do not feel safe when boys “identifying” as girls are allowed in the girls’ restrooms and locker rooms? Or doesn’t that feeling of unsafety count?

One wonders what the Advocates for Inclusive Education would say if a student persisted in calling a ‘transgender’ student who wanted to be called Lia by his previous name of William. Would the Advocates state that he should be punished? Jared Jennings, the boy who thinks he’s a girl and goes by the name “Jazz”, whined to Oprah Winfrey:

For the most part boys aren’t really accepting of me because I am transgender and therefore not many guys have crushes on me at my school. They think if they like me they will be called gay by their friends because they like another ‘boy.’

Clearly, there are at least some people who wouldn’t accept young Mr Jennings’ claim that he was actually a girl.

Note that, in every instance, the Advocates for Inclusive Education are pushing policies to normalize homosexuality and transgenderism. Some of us, myself most certainly included, see pushing those types of things as extremism on the left.

Far down in the Inquirer article was a single paragraph which proved that books aren’t banned:

Glenda Childs, owner of the Doylestown Bookshop, set up two displays of banned books in her store, proudly offering them for sale.

I absolutely support Miss Childs and her right to sell what she calls “banned books”. Given that the store website lists Ernest Hemingway’s For Whom the Bell Tolls as a “banned book,” I’d say that her definition is rather expansive, but that’s another subject.

But Miss Childs and her bookstore are private businesses, which may do as the owners choose; the government may not prohibit her from doing so. Public school libraries? Those are government institutions, and yes, they are subject to the decisions of the public. Other than the Library of Congress, no library in the United States, public or private, carries everything that is published; librarians have to take choices based on what is available, and what they can afford, concerning what they will and will not purchase and carry.

Public school libraries have a special duty, because they have what is, in effect, a captive audience, students in attendance because they are required to be there, by law. And they already take decisions based on content: how many carry Mein Kampf, or, Heaven forfend!, that great American classic, Huckleberry Finn? Do the Advocates for Inclusive Education bemoan schools which do not carry those very famous books, or would the Advocates say that, hey, if you want to read Huckleberry Finn, it’s easily available on Amazon?

The left were horrified, horrified! when some conservatives, looking at the overly-sexualized presentations in support of homosexuality and transgenderism, started calling them “groomers.” But it is reasonable to ask: what purpose other than “grooming” do they have, in their attempts to normalize homosexuality and transgenderism? Tolerance is one thing, but the constant pushing of those subjects is something else entirely.

References

References
↑1 RedState writer Mike Miller called it the Enquirer, probably by mistake, so I didn’t originate it, but, reminiscent of the National Enquirer as it is, I thought it very apt.
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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.