Tag Archives: #Journolism

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This is how media bias works! The credentialed media don't have to lie; they can simply not report the truth.

Although anyone can make a mistake, The New York Times doesn’t normally print out-and-out lies; that’s rarely how #FakeNews works. Rather, it’s the editorial decisions taken by the credentialed media which expose media bias.

Trash is piling up in NYC and sanitation workers blame de Blasio’s vaccine mandate

By Larry Celona, Julia Marsh, Kevin Sheehan and Bruce Golding | October 27, 2021 | 7:22 PM EDT

These city employees think Mayor Bill de Blasio’s vaccine mandate is pure garbage — and they should know!

Sanitation workers outraged over the order to get inoculated against COVID-19 are letting trash pile up across Staten Island and in parts of Brooklyn — and the head of their union said Wednesday that he’s on their side.

The protesting workers are engaging in a rule-book slowdown that includes returning to their garages for things like gloves or gas so collections don’t get finished, sources said.

Supervisors have even been warned to guard the garages this weekend to prevent trucks from getting vandalized, sources said.

When asked what was going on, Teamsters Local 831 President Harry Nespoli, whose union represents the sanitation workers, shot back, “The mandate’s going on.”

“Look, you’re going to have some spots in the city that they feel very strongly about this,” he said.

Nespoli added: “I’ll tell you straight out: I disagree with the mandate because of one reason. We have a program in place right now in the department, which is, you get the vaccination or you get tested once a week.”

There’s more at the original, including several photos of trash piled up on city streets. When the story mentioned that the Bay Ridge area of Brooklyn was one of the areas afflicted, I think they should have shot a pic in front of 8070 Harbor View Terrace in Bay Ridge, the house exterior used in Blue Bloods as fictional Police Commissioner Frank Reagan’s house, but I digress.

The cited story above is not from the Times, but the New York Post. The Times founded in 1851, has long been considered our nation’s number one newspaper, and, along with The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, and The Wall Street Journal, one of the four newspapers of record in the United States. The New York Post is actually older, founded in 1801 by Alexander Hamilton.

So, what’s so special about the Post article cited above? A fairly major New York City story, yet there isn’t a single story about the garbagemen’s slowdown on either in the Times’ New York section or website main page. Hugely important stories, like New York Has a New Band of Buzzy Post-Punk Teens: Geese and 5 Things to Do This Weekend, are there, but a major slowdown by sanitation workers, leaving the garbage piled high in Staten Island and Brooklyn? Nope, not in the Grey Lady!

Site queries for sanitation, garbage and trash all failed to find a single Times story on the slowdown.[1]Research for this was done between 2:20 and 2:24 PM EDT on Thursday, October 28, 2021, and the statements were accurate as of that time. There was one story about the potential disruptions due to the vaccine mandate:

    New York plans for shortages of police officers and firefighters as its vaccination deadline nears.

    By Emma G. Fitzsimmons, Troy Closson and Dana Rubinstein | October 28, 2021 | Updated 1:59 PM EDT

    Officials in New York City are bracing for staffing shortages, overhauling schedules and making contingency plans amid fears that thousands of police officers and firefighters could stay home when the vaccine mandate for city workers takes effect on Monday.

    The mandate, set by Mayor Bill de Blasio, requires city workers to get at least one shot of a coronavirus vaccine or go on unpaid leave. But workers at some city agencies have resisted getting vaccinated.

    About 65 percent of Fire Department workers and 75 percent of Police Department employees had reported receiving at least one dose of a vaccine by Wednesday, city officials said.

    Mr. de Blasio, a Democrat in his second term, predicted on Thursday that many city workers would get a shot at the last minute. He said New Yorkers would be safe and city agencies would weather the storm if some employees do not show up for work because of the mandate. . . . .

    Hundreds of protesters appeared outside Gracie Mansion on Thursday morning to oppose the vaccine mandate. Many wore sweatshirts and shirts bearing Fire Department engine and ladder company numbers from across the city. Union leaders at the demonstration led chants of “Hold the line!” and warned that New Yorkers would be endangered if unvaccinated firefighters and paramedics were sent home.

    The city’s largest police union warned on Wednesday — after a state judge denied their request for an injunction against the mandate — that the city was facing a “real crisis” and that New Yorkers should blame Mr. de Blasio for “any shortfall in city services.”

    The mandate, the union said, “not only violates police officers’ rights — it will inevitably result in fewer cops available to protect our city.”

There’s more at the original, including the Fire Department planning for a 20% shortage in ambulances and closure of about a fifth of the city’s fire stations.

The ‘slowdown’ by sanitation workers was not mentioned in the story.

The possible loss of police and firemen by the city still lays in the future; the sanitation slowdown over the Mayor’s vaccine mandate is already happening. And while police and firemen are certainly important, piles of garbage already laying on the sidewalks impacts far more New Yorkers than most other city services. 389 murders in the city, through October 24th — 15.68% fewer than Philadelphia’s 450 on the same date, even though NYC has 5¼ times Philly’s population — are certainly serious, but still relatively few people in the city have serious dealings with the police or firemen, while not getting the garbage picked up affects everyone.

And it wasn’t just one day; the Post noted that, at least in the Dongan Hills neighborhood of Staten Island, garbage collection was missed on both Saturday the 23rd and Wednesday the 27th.

But, for The New York Times, it just wasn’t news that was fit to print.

That is how media bias works! The Times wasn’t lying to anybody, but simply not saying anything about a major problem in the Big Apple. Sanitation workers in parts of the city, almost certainly including the vaccinated as well as the unvaccinated, are putting pressure on the city in a way that, if it spreads, every New Yorker will feel, and that’s the kind of pressure which can really force Bill de Blasio to back down.

References

References
↑1 Research for this was done between 2:20 and 2:24 PM EDT on Thursday, October 28, 2021, and the statements were accurate as of that time.
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They can’t handle the truth!

Sometimes 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 — and no, that’s not a misspelling — make a mistake and tell the truth, but, not to worry, they correct themselves as quickly as they can!

I spotted it through this oh-so-#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 tweet from WJLA-TV, Channel 7, the ABC affiliate in the Metropolitan Washington, DC, area. It seems that they did something really radical like tell the truth, and then had to change it:

    Capitol Hill neighborhood sees rise in murders, violent crimes

    by Sam Ford | Monday, October 18th 2021

    WASHINGTON (7News) — In the past two weeks in one Capitol Hill neighborhood, there have been two homicides on the same block and at least two carjackings.

    The local ANC (Advisory Neighborhood Commission) Commissioner, Kirsten Oldenburg, Sunday found her living room window had been shot out the night before, presumably during the homicide of a Maryland man in front of her house.

    Oct. 7, around the corner, a flag football game on the Watkins School field ended with one player shooting to death another, after an argument. That was right across the street from DC Council Chairman Phil Mendelson’s home.

    “I’ve lived in the Capitol Hill neighborhood for five years. This is the first time there have been homicides in the immediate neighborhood,” said Mendelson in an interview, “I don’t want to be alarmist, I don’t think the city is more dangerous, but it shows that violent crime can occur anywhere.” . . . .

    A long-time DC resident, Oldenburg said this was the first time her home has been hit by a stray bullet, but she lamented there are some residents in other neighborhoods who worry about stay bullets coming into their homes, “24/7” she said.

There’s more at the original, but there was this gem at the bottom of the story:

Editor’s Note: After reviewing an earlier version of this story, we realized the tone did not accurately reflect our reporting concerning crime. The headline and lede have been updated.

Their offense? They ‘implied’ that “wealthy neighborhoods should have less crime.” But the truth is that wealthy neighborhoods do have less crime, and everybody knows that they have less crime.

And being the [insert slang term for the rectum here] that I am, I’ll continue with the part they really couldn’t say: But the truth is that wealthy white neighborhoods do have less crime, and everybody knows that they have less crime.

WJLA’s editorial management knew that “white” was implied with the term “wealthy neighborhoods”, and that just had to go.

Journalists tell the truth, the unvarnished truth, and let the chips fall where they may; journolists have to massage the message so as not to offend anyone, or disturb liberal notions, or upset the woke.

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.
↑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 ‘journalism’ of The Philadelphia Inquirer

North Judson and West Clearfield Streets in North Philadelphia. Image from Google Maps.

We have said, many times, that black lives don’t matter, at least not to The Philadelphia Inquirer, which only reports on homicides in the City of Brotherly Love in which the victim is an ‘innocent,’ a ‘somebody,’ or a cute little white girl is the victim.

However, sometimes the Inquirer tries to paint someone as an innocent victim, but the details of the story, stories in this case, just don’t add up.

    Gunshots took a 13-year-old who was friends with everyone. At his North Philadelphia school, it’s ‘utter devastation.’

    A teacher at E.W. Rhodes School said seventh-grader Marcus Stokes was bright with an infectious smile, and that his peers “really enjoyed being his friend.”

    by Anna Orso | Friday, October 15, 2021

    Four days after 13-year-old Marcus Stokes was fatally shot in North Philadelphia on his way to school, his fellow students came back to the classroom at lunchtime to set up a makeshift memorial.

    They hung up a picture of Marcus that their teacher, Marcella Hankinson, had printed at Staples, and they strung balloons of blue and white, his favorite colors. They placed candles and a single rose next to a teddy bear on his desk, and they scrawled messages to him on red sticky notes next to his picture.

    The death has left students and teachers at E.W. Rhodes School traumatized, fearful, and in a state of “utter devastation,” said Principal Andrea Surratt, who oversees the school that serves kids in kindergarten through eighth grade. It’s the first time a student was fatally shot in her four years at the helm, and it took place five blocks from the school, triggering an hour-long lockdown.

There’s more at the original.

West Clearfield Street, from Google Maps. Click to enlarge.

The murder of Young Marcus Stokes happened at on North Judson Street, at the intersection with West Clearfield Street. If you look at the map, North Judson is not five blocks from the school, which is at 2900 West Clearfield Street, but eleven blocks. It’s just a hair over 1/3 mile between the two.

Anna Orso’s story says, further down:

    Investigators believe Marcus and five other young people — including other Rhodes students — were sitting in a parked car on the 3100 block of Judson Street before 9 a.m. on Oct. 8. A gunman approached the vehicle and fired shots into it, hitting Marcus once in the chest, authorities said.

Yet a previous Inquirer story stated that Mr Stokes was shot “just after 9 a.m.” That’s an important difference, because the E Washington Rhodes School website states “Breakfast will be served from 8:15 am to 8:45 am each day. All students must be in homerooms by 8:45 am each day.” If you read Miss Orso’s story carefully, she stated that Mr Stokes and five other E W Rhodes’ students were “were sitting in a parked car on the 3100 block of Judson Street before 9 a.m.”, not that the victim was actually shot before 9:00 AM. Miss Orso has to have been aware of the previous article noting that he was shot after 9:00 AM, because she was one of the two Inquirer reporters who wrote it!

But, if you didn’t know that the shooting itself didn’t take place until after 9:00 AM, perhaps, just perhaps, you wouldn’t figure out that no, young Mr Stokes was not on his way to school. He should have been on his way, but it is obvious that he wasn’t.

Also in the earlier story which Miss Orso co-wrote with reporter Chris Palmer was this statement:

    (Chief Inspector Frank) Vanore said some neighbors said the car had been parked on the block for “quite awhile,” so it was not clear if any of the people inside had been able to drive it.

Miss Orso had to know that those kids weren’t driving to school, but she still wrote that the victim was “on his way to school”.

The Inquirer published the picture of the vehicle in question, a Plymouth PT Cruiser, not a particularly large vehicle, one in which six people aren’t normally going to cram just to have a chat or pray the rosary. Sunrise was at 7:03 AM on that day, and the weather was unseasonably warm, yet the photo of the vehicle shows all of the windows closed. What, some might ask, were six kids doing, sitting in a parked car with the windows rolled up 15 minutes after they were supposed to be in school? If the police know, if Miss Orso knows, such has not been revealed to readers of the Inquirer.

Back to the first cited article:

    Homicide Capt. Jason Smith said officers found 12 shell casings at the scene, and investigators have recovered some surveillance footage showing a possible suspect fleeing. No one has been arrested. Smith said detectives have not determined a motive but don’t believe Marcus was the shooter’s intended target. He did not elaborate.

So, who in the vehicle was the intended target? When you read about an intentional ‘hit’ like this, the most common answers which leap to mind are ‘rival gang member’ or ‘rival drug dealer’. Other characterizations could come to mind, but few would guess ‘community organizer’ or ‘Baptist youth minister.’ And the fact that we haven’t been told that the possibly intended target was a community organizer or Baptist youth minister, which is the kind of information which would have been disclosed if true, leads one to believe that ‘rival gang member’ or ‘rival drug dealer’ is the more probable guess.

Who is Anna Orso? Her Linkedin biography tells us that she has:

    spent the last seven years as a reporter in Philadelphia covering mostly general assignment and breaking news. I’m currently a member of the Justice and Injustice team at the Philadelphia Inquirer, which is part of its broader News Desk. My coverage is focused on issues related to public safety and policing.

She isn’t someone three months out of a small college journalism program, but earned her Baccalaureate degree in “Print Journalism, sociology/ criminology” in 2014. Yet she wrote a story in which her statements contradicted what has been previously published, contradicted the timeline, and contradicted the map. She made young Mr Stokes into an innocent victim, when what has been published about this crime throws doubt on that notion.

An actual journalist would have looked at the points I have made, and done something really radical like investigated more deeply and more thoroughly. Who knows? Perhaps young Mr Stokes really was an ‘innocent,’ but if he was, Miss Orso didn’t do much in answering the obvious questions around the time and place of the shooting. Was the Inquirer really so desperate to paint him as a boy doing nothing wrong, just going to school on a Friday morning, that they couldn’t, or wouldn’t, dig for the truth?

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Are journalists today trying less to inform public minds than steer public opinions?

As we have previously noted, McClatchy’s mugshot policy is:

Publishing mugshots of arrestees has been shown to have lasting effects on both the people photographed and marginalized communities. The permanence of the internet can mean those arrested but not convicted of a crime have the photograph attached to their names forever. Beyond the personal impact, inappropriate publication of mugshots disproportionately harms people of color and those with mental illness. In fact, some police departments have started moving away from taking/releasing mugshots as a routine part of their procedures.

To address these concerns, McClatchy will not publish crime mugshots — online, or in print, from any newsroom or content-producing team — unless approved by an editor. To be clear, this means that in addition to photos accompanying text stories, McClatchy will not publish “Most wanted” or “Mugshot galleries” in slide-show, video or print.

Any exception to this policy must be approved by an editor. Editors considering an exception should ask:

  • Is there an urgent threat to the community?
  • Is this person a public official or the suspect in a hate crime?
  • Is this a serial killer suspect or a high-profile crime?

If an exception is made, editors will need to take an additional step with the Pub Center to confirm publication by making a note in the ‘package notes‘ field in Sluglife.

Jacob Heil, uncredited photo in the Lexington Herald-Leader, February 22, 2019. Photo cropped by DRP. Click to enlarge.

On Wednesday, October 13th, we pointed out that the Lexington Herald-Leader kept publishing the courtroom photo of Jacob Heil, the 21-year-old former University of Kentucky student charged with reckless homicide and driving under the influence of alcohol for killing 4-year-old Marco Lee Shemwell while his family and he were standing beside Cooper Drive near Scoville Drive. Mr Heil allegedly veered off the road, striking the boy and killing him.

The photo of Mr Heil that the Herald-Leader has been using was a press pool photo, and in it, he is wearing a face mask. However, the very first line of the text in this story, published on February 22, 2019 — before the McClatchy Mugshot Policy went into effect — in which Mr Heil’s full face photo is shown, in a full width of the story format.

Remember: the McClatchy policy states, “The permanence of the internet can mean those arrested but not convicted of a crime have the photograph attached to their names forever,” and Mr Heil has not yet been convicted of any crime! He is not an urgent threat to the community, he is not a public official or suspect in a hate crime, is not a serial killer or the suspect in a high-profile crime. Why, then, is the newspaper festooning its website with his courtroom photo?

Jymie S. Salahuddin, 53, from Lexington station WTVQ.

In an article by Herald-Leader reporter Karla Ward, also published on October 13th, Lexington man sentenced to 21 years in prison for cocaine trafficking, the newspaper declined to print the publicly available photo of a convicted felon. Since federal law requires that Jymie S. Salahuddin, 53, serve at least 85% of his 262 month sentence, he will not be eligible for release for 18½ years, when he would be 71 years old. I’m not certain how an 18-year-old mugshot would harm an elderly convict on his release. Mr Salahuddin is not a charged but not convicted person, but one who pleaded guilty. It’s not like the paper needed to save bandwidth; they included a stock photo of jail cell bars.

So, now we come to this:

Kentucky man sentenced to jail for involvement in Capitol riot

By Christopher Leach | Wednesday, October 13, 2021 | 3:44 PM EDT

A man from Cave City has been sentenced for his involvement in the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol.

Robert Bauer, a Kentucky resident, was identified through photos of himself during the Capitol riot, according to the FBI. This photo was included in a criminal complaint filed against him. PHOTO VIA FBI. Click to enlarge.

Robert Bauer, 44, was sentenced to 45 days in jail, 65 hours of community service and $500 restitution, the Louisville Courier Journal reported.

As part of a deal with prosecutors, Bauer pleaded guilty to a charge of parading, demonstrating or picketing in a Capitol building, according to court records. Bauer originally faced four charges for his involvement in the riot that injured hundreds of police officers.

The judge could have sentenced him to a maximum of six months in prison, a fine of no more than $5,000 and supervised release of no more than one year, according to court records.

The plea agreement document shows that Bauer agreed to the plea in late June.

In other words, as an old UK professor of mine, Gerard Silberstein, used to say, not much of a much. Yet, unlike Mr Salahuddin, whose crimes were so serious that he will spend at least 18½ years behind bars, the Herald-Leader decided to publish Mr Bauer’s photograph.

And while Mr Bauer now stands convicted, the Newspaper published his photo on January 15, 2021, January 30, 2021, and March 3, 2021, all when he was charged but not yet convicted of anything.

The McClatchy Mugshot Policy was put into effect the previous summer, so all photos were in violation of the policy.

So, what might be the distinguishing difference in these photos published and not published? There’s one very obvious one: Messrs Heil and Bauer are white, while Mr Salahuddin is black.

Thud!

Could that be it? Could it really be that simple? Remember, the McClatchy Mugshot Policy is based on two ideas:

  • Those arrested but not convicted of a crime have the photograph attached to their names forever; and
  • Inappropriate publication of mugshots disproportionately harms people of color.

At the very least, these statements could mean that editors, even just subconsciously, think that publishing photos of white suspects is simply not as harmful as publishing those of black suspects. But, at a more pernicious level, it could mean, as the Sacramento Bee, the lead McClatchy newspaper, put it, publishing mugshots:

  • Perpetuat(es) stereotypes about who commits crime in our community.

If that’s the case — and that last part was left put of the McClatchy policy in general — then might some McClatchy editors, at some papers, think that publishing photos of white suspects or convicted criminals while not doing so for black suspects or convicted criminals could actively steer the public away from such stereotypes, and thus be considered, at least to the left-inclined mind, an affirmative good?

If you suspect that I used the adjective “affirmative” deliberately, to bring Affirmative Action to your mind, you’d be right!

Journalists tend to have an elevated opinion of their place in society; the constitutional protection of freedom of the press has led many of them to think that they are some sort of super-duper constitutional guardians. Is it that much of a further leap for some of them to think that their role in society is to guide society into what hey would see as rightthink?

But journalists can only be respected when they tell us the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. That is sadly lacking among today’s journolists.

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The whole truth doesn’t interest newspapers these days

While checking on Lexington Police Department data to update the information in Bullets flying in the Bluegrass State, I found that the police had finally updated the city’s shootings investigations page. In 2020, a year which saw the city set its annual murder record with 34 homicides, there were also 140 non-fatal shootings. As of October 10, 2020, there had been 107 non-fatal shootings.

And the thugs are keeping pace, as there have been 109 non-fatal shootings as of October 10, 2021!

Out of 140 non-fatal shootings in Lexington last year, the victim was white 32 times, and listed as Hispanic on four occasions. Out of 140 non-fatal shootings, 104 of the victims, 74.29%, were black, in a city the 2020 census determined was 68.3% white; 14.9% black; 4.2% Asian or Pacific Islander; 7.1% two or more races; and 9.2% Hispanic or Latino.

So far in 2021, there have been 17 non-fatal shooting victims listed as white, and another 10 listed as Hispanic, leaving 82, or 75.23%, listed as being black.

Naturally, the 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 at a politically correct newspaper like the Lexington Herald-Leader won’t tell its readers this!

The Sacramento Bee, the lead newspaper of the McClatchy Company MNI: (%), led the way for the group, of which the Herald-Leader is part, in deciding not to publish mugshots:

    Publishing these photographs and videos disproportionately harms people of color and those with mental illness, while also perpetuating stereotypes about who commits crime in our community.

Further down:

    And the San Francisco Police Department earlier this month announced it will no longer release mugshots, unless the public is in imminent danger.

    “This policy emerges from compelling research suggesting that the widespread publication of police booking photos in the news and on social media creates an illusory correlation for viewers that fosters racial bias and vastly overstates the propensity of Black and brown men to engage in criminal behavior,” Police Chief William Scott said in a statement.

Perhaps that correlation is not so illusory!

The data are there, but the Herald-Leader reporters and editors do not follow the data, do not investigate something that an elderly man, namely me, was able to find sitting in his home three counties away, and so far out in the boondocks that I can’t get a dead-trees copy of the paper delivered.

Jymie S. Salahuddin, 53, from Lexington station WTVQ.

The McClatchy Mugshot Policy, which the Herald-Leader follows, claims that publishing mugshots of people charged with crimes is harmful, if they are not actually convicted of the crimes for which they have been arrested. Yet, in an article by Karla Ward, Lexington man sentenced to 21 years in prison for cocaine trafficking, the newspaper declined to print the publicly available photo of a convicted felon. Since federal law requires that Jymie S. Salahuddin, 53, serve at least 85% of his 262 month sentence, he will not be eligible for release for 18½ years, when he would be 71 years old. I’m not certain how an 18-year-old mugshot would harm an elderly convict on his release.

Not that it would matter: he’s not a charged but not convicted person, but one who pleaded guilty. It’s not like the paper needed to save bandwidth; they included a stock photo of jail cell bars.

Jacob Heil; photo by WLEX-TV press pool footage.

And the newspaper has assigned reporter Jeremy Chisenhall to sit in and cover the trial of Jacob Heil, 21, who is on trial for reckless homicide and DUI after he was involved in a crash which killed a 4-year-old pedestrian. The Herald-Leader has published at least two stories about the ongoing trial, including Mr Heil’s photograph. Though that phot shows him wearing a face mask, the paper published a full-face photo of him on February 22, 2019.

The paper is willing to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, when it comes Mr Heil’s trial, on charges of which he could be acquitted, yet when the statistics point to a significant racial disparity in crime and victimhood in the city, all of these well-educated and experienced reporters and editors keep their keyboards closely in check.

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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A stunning lack of perspective

Well, perhaps not that stunning after all.

Philadelphia Inquirer columnist Jenice Armstrong tells us how tears came to her eyes as she witnessed a Black Lives Matter demonstration in remembrance of the death of addled drug user and convicted felon, George Floyd:

    Tears came to my eyes during a visit to a West Mount Airy neighborhood

    Each night, residents walk to one of four corners at the intersection of Emlen Street and West Mount Airy Avenue and stand for 8 minutes and 46 seconds in memory of George Floyd.

    by Jenice Armstrong | Monday, October 11, 2021

    People think I’m so tough, but I cried at work on Thursday.

    I didn’t break into the ugly cry, thankfully, but a few tears fell. I was in West Mount Airy, visiting a neighborhood where for the last year, residents have been coming out each night and standing in silence for 8 minutes and 46 seconds, marking how long a murderous Minneapolis police officer knelt on George Floyd’s neck.

    Dozens participated each night during the summer of 2020, in the aftermath of the killing of the unarmed Black man. Lately the numbers have been down. Still, at least a handful of residents emerge from their homes just before 8 each evening and walk to the corners at the intersection of Emlen Street and West Mount Airy Avenue for the observance.

    The evening I was there last week, something else was afoot that led to even more participants: Twice in less than a week, a Black family had been the target of vandalism. First, someone smashed the windshield of their parked car with a rock. Days later, another rock came crashing through a window on their enclosed front porch.

    “An incident like this is unusual in Mt. Airy and is a reminder that there are still people who are unfriendly to anti-racism and that even our peaceful, diverse neighborhood is not insulated from divisiveness, fear and hatred,” Keely McCarthy wrote me in an email.

There’s more at the original, including two photos showing the public out holding Black Lives Matter signs.

But let’s tell the truth here: black lives don’t matter, at least not to The Philadelphia Inquirer, which only reports on homicides in the City of Brotherly Love is an ‘innocent,’ a ‘somebody,’ or a cute little white girl is the victim. We noted, on Saturday, the killing of a 13-year-old boy sitting in a car with “several others” at the intersection of North Judson and West Clearfield Streets, in what the Philadelphia Police and the Inquirer will not say was a targeted hit, but of course, it was. Someone shooting at least ten rounds at a parked car full of people isn’t exactly an accident.

While law enforcement has not released the identity of the victim, The Philadelphia Tribune, a publication for the city’s black community, noted that, in 2020, black victims accounted for about 86% of the city’s 499 homicide victims, and 84% of the 2,236 shootings; non-Hispanic black Americans make up only about 38% of the city’s population. In all probability, on that corner, in that neighborhood, the 13-year-old victim was black.

And now there’s this:

Let’s just stop with the subtitle: the victim, sitting in a parked car after 9:00 AM, was not on his way to school; the E Washington Rhodes School website states “Breakfast will be served from 8:15 am to 8:45 am each day. All students must be in homerooms by 8:45 am each day.” The victim was more than 15 minutes late, and not making any move to get to school, which was eleven blocks away at 2900 West Clearfield Street. The shooting intersection is in the middle of the 2300 block of West Clearfield.

    A 15-year-old was shot in the leg in North Philadelphia on Sunday night as he was leaving a vigil for a 13-year-old boy who was killed Friday morning, police said.

    At least 10 shots were fired just before 7 p.m. Sunday on the 2600 block of North 22nd Street, where dozens of people had gathered to release blue and white balloons in remembrance of a boy who was fatally shot Friday just blocks from his school.

    The 15-year-old shot Sunday was struck in the left calf and hospitalized at Temple University Hospital in stable condition, police said. No one was arrested in connection with the shooting, which took place just outside the Cecil B. Moore Recreation Center. Police said it’s unknown if the two shootings are related.

There’s more at the original, but one thing is absolutely true: with each day that passes, the good people of the City of Brotherly Love, and the #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 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 of The Philadelphia Inquirer prove that black lives don’t matter, don’t matter much at all. If the shooting on Friday was a targeted attack, then the one at the vigil on Sunday was as well. “At least ten shots” rang out at a vigil for the murder victim, and if the shooter displayed the gang bangers’ notoriously poor accuracy with bullets, it was very accurate in sending the intended message: whatever beef the gang had with the victim, or perhaps someone else sitting in that parked, and possibly disabled,[3]Police Chief Inspector Frank Vanore said some neighbors said the car had been parked on the block for “quite awhile,” so it was not clear if any of the people inside had been able to drive it. vehicle, thinking anything good or nice about the victim was not allowed thinking.

Perhaps the Sunday shooter was trying to knock off one of the people sitting in that car but who wasn’t hurt.

I have to ask: what good are the few dozen people in Mt Airy doing, holding up signs and gathering for 8 minutes and 46 seconds in the memory of a career criminal like George Floyd, rather than working to make Philly’s streets safe for the black, and white, and Hispanic, and Asian, people still alive in that city? Don’t tell me how horrible it is that Mr Floyd died while being restrained by a white policeman when nobody gives a damn about the hundreds of people spilling out their blood in the city’s mean streets.

——————————

Update: Tuesday, October 12, 2021 | 8:30 AM EDT

The last referenced story has already disappeared from the Inquirer’s website main page, though truly important stories like this one about a British golf ball remain up and how the paper’s deputy food editor described an egg sandwich as his only comfort food while deciding to ‘come out’ as homosexual. How does revealing to its readership one of the paper’s writers sexual orientation outweigh the murders in the city, and why do we even need to know about it? If he is going to be reviewing a restaurant, why should it be important for anyone who doesn’t know or interact with him personally to know with whom he sleeps?

The Philadelphia Police Department’s Current Crime Statistics page was finally updated after the long holiday weekend,[4]Only government employees get Columbus Day Indigenous People’s Day off. and, as of 11:59 PM EDT on Monday, October 11, 2021, 431 souls have been sent untimely to their eternal rewards. 431 Philadelphians murdered in 284 days works out to 1.5176 per day, and if that rate holds constant for the rest of the year, 554 people will bleed out their lives’ blood in the city’s mean streets.

The city has already seen its eleventh highest homicide total ever, with 81 days remaining in this bloody year. Philadelphia Mayor Jim Kenney, District Attorney Larry Krasner, and Police Commissioner Danielle Outlaw have already presided over the city’s second bloodiest year, missing tying the record by just one dead body, and now they are on track to not just break the record set in 1990, the depths of the crack cocaine wars, but shatter it, decimate it, blow it out of the water by more than 10%, and nobody at the nation’s third oldest newspaper gives a damn.

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 Police Chief Inspector Frank Vanore said some neighbors said the car had been parked on the block for “quite awhile,” so it was not clear if any of the people inside had been able to drive it.
↑4 Only government employees get Columbus Day Indigenous People’s Day off.
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The internet is forever . . . and so is stupidity. Journolists attempt to control the language to influence people's thinking

As regular readers — both of them — of The First Street Journal know, I have a tendency to do screen captures of things I suspect might be deleted. As Travis Lyles, “the first official Instagram Editor at The Washington Post,” now knows, the internet is forever.

    Washington Post adds ‘pregnant individuals’ to style guide

    by Luke Gentile, Social Media Producer | October 1, 2021 | 4:51 PM

    When referring to pregnancy, the Washington Post will strive to be more inclusive and use the term “pregnant individuals,” according to a Twitter post that has since been made private by the publication’s Instagram editor.

    “While biology dictates who can become pregnant, it does not always reflect gender identity,” the style manual reads. “If we say pregnant women, we exclude those who are transgender and nonbinary.”

    However, writers can’t use “pregnant individual” as a blanket term, as that would be at the expense of women who are already a marginalized group, according to the style guide.

    “If you are dealing with a situation in which you know the people identify as women , then you can appropriately use the phrase pregnant woman or pregnant women,” the directive stated. “In other situations, to be more inclusive, use pregnant women and other pregnant individuals.”

The Washington Examiner then included the screenshot of Mr Lyles Instagram post:

Washington Examiner screen capture of Travis Lyles’ Instagram post. Click to enlarge.

There’s more at the original.

So, what is the Washington Examiner? Originally a tabloid-sized daily in the nation’s capital, now a weekly publication and conservative website, it has been around for sixteen years now. Like The Washington Times, it originally hoped to supplant the post, but never did. Wikipedia has questioned its journalism, but at least here, Luke Gentile, the site’s social media producer, had the documentation.

Also see: Abigail Shrier, via Bari Weiss: Top Trans Doctors Blow the Whistle on ‘Sloppy’ Care

Conservatives routinely mock what 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 have been using as politically correct terminology, but it’s more than just political correctness at work here. It is a leftist attempt to normalize transgenderism, to normalize the cockamamie notion that, in the words of the Kinks, girls can be boys and boys can be girls.

We have previously noted how the left have been trying this, even altering a quote from liberal icon Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and the ACLU having to apologize for such obvious stupidity.

Even Mr Lyles recognized the biology, saying, “While biology dictates who can become pregnant, it does not always reflect gender identity,” a statement which attempts to decouple the as-long-as-we-have-had-language associations between man and male, woman and female. The control of language is the control of ideas, something the left well know, and something we must resist to preserve the common sense of millennia of known human language and history. The left are attempting to prey on conservatives’ sense of courtesy against us, to get conservatives, and everyone else, used to the idea of transgenderism as somehow being normal and acceptable, as a way to undermine our thinking and our ideology.

It’s simple: it is better to be discourteous than suborned.

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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The truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth is something the credentialed media don’t seem to like

We have already noted that some hospitals have been firing nurses for refusing to take the COVID-19 vaccines, and we had hardly covered them all. The Lexington Herald-Leader reported that some Kentucky hospitals have begun firing staff who refused a COVID vaccine.

    Though the vaccine mandate announcement was made in a unified voice alongside Gov. Andy Beshear, each hospitals’ enforcement of the requirement varies. The Herald-Leader surveyed each hospital, and though it was couched as a requirement, only some have made it a condition of employment.

    The initially agreed-upon deadline for many was September 15, but some have extended it and few have yet to disclose what percentage of their staff fulfilled the requirement, or what will happen to staff who didn’t. Some have confirmed they will offer weekly testing as an alternative, while others are moving more swiftly to write-ups and, in some cases, immediate firings.

    By the end of the day Wednesday, for instance, 23 staff had refused vaccination and were fired at St. Claire Regional Medical Center, one of the hospitals hardest hit by the most recent and severe surge in coronavirus cases. Fifteen personnel were approved for a religious or medical exemption. At the time the mandate was announced in early August, 30% of staff were unvaccinated, CEO and President Donald H. Lloyd said in a statement.

In yet another example of what I have frequently referred to 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. shows just how great their 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 is.

    ‘I see someone quit every day’: Nurses share horror stories from hospital staff shortage, in their own words

    Nurses, already physically and emotionally drained from a year and a half on the front lines of a pandemic, are being asked to care for more patients than is safe for either the patient or the nurse.

    by Maureen May[3]Maureen May, R.N., is a longtime Temple University Hospital nurse and president of the Pennsylvania Association of Staff Nurses and Allied Professionals, which represents 9,500 nurses and health-care … Continue reading | Thursday, September 23, 2021 | 9:00 AM EDT

    Nurses quite literally have their fingers on the pulse of patient care — and we’re sounding the alarm: There are not nearly enough of us at the bedside. What this means in ERs and on hospital floors in our area, throughout the state and even across the nation, is that nurses, already physically and emotionally drained from a year and a half on the front lines of a pandemic, are being asked to care for more patients than is safe for either the patient or the nurse.

Full disclosure: My wife is a registered nurse, working in a hospital.

    When this happens — when nurses are routinely required to care for more patients than is safe — it’s called chronic nurse short-staffing, and care suffers. Nurses suffer, too. These are our stories.

      I see someone quit every day

      by Peg Lawson[4]Peg Lawson, R.N., has worked as an ER nurse at Einstein Hospital for 30 years. She is co-president of Einstein Nurses United.

      We are experiencing a turnover rate now that I’ve never seen in the 30 years I’ve been at Einstein. Every day, someone leaves. Nurses used to be here for three or four years before moving on; now, it’s three or four months. It’s scary on so many levels.

      Nurses who are brand-new, just coming out of school, are being thrust into assignments with high acuity even as they’re forced to handle more patients because the units are short-staffed. Experienced resource nurses are just not available to help, and these new nurses are getting burned out very quickly due to the lack of support and great demand put on their shoulders.

There’s much more at the original. The author collected the stories of five different RNs on the front lines of fighting COVID-19 right now, and I recommend reading it. And while it’s a bit of a stretch to accuse the author of journolism, because she isn’t a professional journalist, the article, which shows the difficulty today’s RNs are having with understaffing, cannot be considered complete without noting that part of the understaffing has been artificially created by vaccine mandates, and the firing of, or quitting by, nurses who decline to be vaccinated. If the Maureen May didn’t include that point, an editor of the Enquirer Inquirer should have.

Media bias does not normally take the form of publishing falsehoods; there are few deliberate lies in the credentialed media. Rather, media bias usually takes the form of lies of omission, of not telling the whole truth in a way that distorts the entire story. We have previously noted that Philadelphia’s Acting Health Commissioner Cheryl Bettigole has a vaccine mandate in place for the city’s health care workers, and said, dismissively, “If you’re more committed to not getting the vaccine than to the safety of your patients, it’s time to do something else. Health care is not for you.”

The editorial position of the Inquirer is to support vaccine mandates. But such mandates have consequences, one being that some people will refuse to be assimilated comply, and choose to either resign or be fired over their refusal. Not reporting that, not reporting that in an already short-staffed state, nurses are leaving or being dismissed for a refusal to take a vaccine which has not been out long enough for us to have complete information about its long term effects.

Though some doctors have pooh-poohed the idea that it’s harmful, researchers have collected over 140,000 reports by adult women who have seen significant changes in their menstrual cycles after getting vaccinated. Could this affect future fertility, or produce children with birth defects? Nobody knows yet; further research is needed.

    Thalidomide was first marketed in 1957 in West Germany, where it was available over the counter. When first released, thalidomide was promoted for anxiety, trouble sleeping, “tension”, and morning sickness. While it was initially thought to be safe in pregnancy, concerns regarding birth defects arose until in 1961 the medication was removed from the market in Europe. The total number of embryos affected by use during pregnancy is estimated at 10,000, of which about 40% died around the time of birth. Those who survived had limb, eye, urinary tract, and heart problems. Its initial entry into the US market was prevented by Frances Kelsey at the FDA. The birth defects caused by thalidomide led to the development of greater drug regulation and monitoring in many countries.

The COVID-19 vaccines were hurriedly developed and rushed to market due to the tremendous economic and social disruptions caused by federal and state governments’ reaction to, overreaction to, the spread of COVID-19; there are no long-term studies on the vaccines’ effects because it hasn’t even existed for very long. The New York Times reported:[5]Hat tip to William Teach for the story.

    Roughly 221 million doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine have been dispensed thus far in the United States, compared with about 150 million doses of Moderna’s vaccine. In a half-dozen studies published over the past few weeks, Moderna’s vaccine appeared to be more protective than the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine in the months after immunization.

    The latest such study, published on Wednesday in The New England Journal of Medicine, evaluated the real-world effectiveness of the vaccines at preventing symptomatic illness in about 5,000 health care workers in 25 states. The study found that the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine had an effectiveness of 88.8 percent, compared with Moderna’s 96.3 percent.

    Research published on Friday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that the efficacy of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine against hospitalization fell from 91 percent to 77 percent after a four-month period following the second shot. The Moderna vaccine showed no decline over the same period.

The vaccines are at least somewhat effective in preventing contracting the virus in the first place, and in reducing the impact of the disease for those who contract it despite being vaccinated. But it has become clear that the Pfizer vaccine, at least, came with exaggerated promises; in the real world, it does not seem to have matched the hype.

Overall, it appears to be a net good, despite some reports of serious side effects. But it isn’t perfect, and it is reasonable for people to have concerns. Too bad that The Philadelphia Inquirer doesn’t want you to know that.

If you are sworn in for a criminal trial, you will be asked to swear that what you are about to say will be “the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.” Journalism, responsible journalism, requires the whole truth, and that’s what the Inquirer doesn’t want you to know.

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 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 Maureen May, R.N., is a longtime Temple University Hospital nurse and president of the Pennsylvania Association of Staff Nurses and Allied Professionals, which represents 9,500 nurses and health-care professionals across the commonwealth. She has worked at the bedside for more than 35 years.
↑4 Peg Lawson, R.N., has worked as an ER nurse at Einstein Hospital for 30 years. She is co-president of Einstein Nurses United.
↑5 Hat tip to William Teach for the story.
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I’ve said it before: when it comes to murder, The Philadelphia Inquirer is much more concerned about cute little white girls

I have previously noted what I called the racism of The Philadelphia Inquirer, and have noted, many times, that unless a murder victim is someone already of note, or a cute little white girl,[1]When accessed in September 21, 2021, at 2:05 PM EDT, the search returned 4,548 results. the editors of the Inquirer don’t care, because, to be bluntly honest about it, the murder of a young black man in Philadelphia is not news.

My point about the “cute little white girl” was in reference to Rian Thal, “a party promoter well-known in the city’s nightclub scene” and drug dealer, who was murdered on June 27, 2009. The city was captured by Miss Thal’s killing, and the local media were full of stories about it. The Inquirer and its sister publication, the Philadelphia Daily News, just loved splashing Miss Thal’s killing across their pages. After all, cute white girls sell newspapers!

But, as many times as I’ve used that, it was still twelve years ago, and since then, this year in fact, Inquirer publisher Elizabeth Hughes stated that her goal was to make the newspaper and its associated website “an anti-racist news organization.” So, wouldn’t the obvious result of that to be not concentrating on cute white girls as the victims of crimes?

Gabby Petito.

A site search for “Gabby Petito” returned 16 articles, the latest at 2:10 PM EDT today, just ten minutes before I made the search. Miss Petito is yet another cute little white girl, one whose disappearance has attracted a lot of social media, and credentialed media, interest.

Sixteen articles, though, to be fair, most were written by other than Inquirer reporters.

A photo taken during a block party last year of Dunkin’ Donuts manager Christine Lugo.

What about Christine Lugo? Miss Lugo was a 40-year-old Hispanic woman, the manager of a Dunkin’ Donuts on Lehigh Avenue in the city’s Fairhill neighborhood. The senseless murder was actually well covered by the city’s media, including the Inquirer, but a site search for “Christine Lugo” at 2:30 PM yielded only four returns, and two of them weren’t about her at all.

A cute little white girl, with no connection to Philadelphia, had sixteen mentions, while Philadelphia’s own Miss Lugo resulted in two.

Boy, it’s a good thing that Miss Hughes was determined to make the Inquirer “an anti-racist news organization,” or Miss Petito would have a hundred mentions, and Miss Lugo still two.

Also see: Robert Stacy McCain: Joy Reid is . . . right?

So, while my previous links to the Inquirer’s coverage of Miss Thal, as evidence of the newspaper’s racism, remain, her death twelve years ago, which I remembered from reading the print edition that I used to pick up before work, can be characterized as old news. But the disappearance, and probable death, of Miss Petito is today’s news, and it remains as evidence of what I have said all along: when it comes to their priorities and integrity, cute little white girls are still much, much more important to the very #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 journolists[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 of The Philadelphia Inquirer.

References

References
↑1 When accessed in September 21, 2021, at 2:05 PM EDT, the search returned 4,548 results.
↑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. than anyone else.

↑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.