Tag Archives: #Journolism

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Another dead in the Philadelphia Badlands Will The Philadelphia Inquirer actually tell us who he was, and why he was killed?

I’ve said it dozens of times before:  The Philadelphia Inquirer doesn’t care about homicides in the City of Brotherly Love unless the victim is an ‘innocent,’ someone already of some note, or a cute little white girl.

Well, an “innocent” was killed on Friday, so yeah, we’re getting a lot more about her from 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.

Parks and Recreation worker killed by stray bullet in West Philadelphia

Tiffany Fletcher was sweeping outside a recreation center when she was caught in the middle of a gun battle, police said.

by Robert Moran | Friday, September 9, 2022

A 41-year-old woman was killed by a stray bullet Friday afternoon while working for the city at a recreation center in the Mill Creek section of West Philadelphia, police said.

Just before 1:30 p.m., the woman — identifed late Friday night by the city as Tiffany Fletcher — was sweeping outside the Mill Creek Recreation Center on the 4700 block of Brown Street when a gun battle erupted and she was struck in the stomach, police said.

She was rushed by police to Penn Presbyterian Medical Center, where she was pronounced dead Friday evening.

Police Capt. John Walker said a 14-year-old boy — who allegedly was seen dropping a gun near the shooting scene — was in custody as part of the investigation. The gun was recovered by police.

Mayor Jim Kenney and Parks and Recreation Kathryn Ott Lovell issued statements praising Fletcher and decrying the gun violence.

Perhaps Mr Kenney shouldn’t have linked the city’s Parks and Recreation Twitter site, because, at least as of 8:30 AM EDT on Saturday, all it has are nice, positive tweets showing, and nothing on Miss Fletcher.

For Inquirer reporter Robert Moran, the 482 words in his story constitutes a long one. A reporter who covers “breaking news at night,” his stories are very frequently of the three or four paragraph variety, noting that the Philadelphia Police Department have reported an unknown male was shot and killed in one of the neighborhoods in the city’s combat zones. This time, he had more to work with, because the victim was an innocent, not just another gang-banger or wannabe.

There were nine total paragraphs about Miss Fletcher in Mr Moran’s story, and I would not be surprised if there’s another about her later today in the newspaper. Much further down, I saw this:

Later Friday night in the city’s Fairhill section, an unidentified man was fatally wounded in a shooting on the 3100 block of North Front Street. He was transported by private vehicle to Temple University Hospital, where he was pronounced dead at 9:34 p.m. Police reported no arrests in that case.

On Friday, December 11, 2020, columnist Helen Ubiñas published an article in the Inquirer entitled “What do you know about the Philadelphians killed by guns this year? At least know their names.”

The last time we published the names of those lost to gun violence, in early July, nearly 200 people had been fatally shot in the city.

Just weeks before the end of 2020, that number doubled. More than 400 people gunned down.

By the time you read this, there will only be more.

Even in a “normal” year, most of their stories would never be told.

At best they’d be reduced to a handful of lines in a media alert:

“A 21-year-old Black male was shot one time in the head. He was transported to Temple University Hospital and was pronounced at 8:12 p.m. The scene is being held, no weapon recovered and no arrest.”

That’s it. An entire life ending in a paragraph that may never make the daily newspaper.

Since Miss Ubiñas published her column, the Inky has changed its editorial policies, and now readers will no longer be told that the victim was “a 21-year-old black male,” but just a 21-year-old male.” And in Mr Moran’s story, this victim was reduced to even less than Miss Ubiñas wrote, to “an unidentified man”, though Mr Moran normally adds more information if he’d has it.

The Fairhill neighborhood is one of those listed prominently as part of the “Philadelphia Badlands.” Of course, once the Google Maps designation of “Philadelphia Badlands” was spotted, the Inky waxed wroth:

‘Philadelphia Badlands’ label on Google Maps latest controversy over neighborhood names

A Twitter user who spotted the name called it problematic: “to see Google kind of endorse that really did not strike me the right way.”

Philadelphia Badlands. Photo via Philadelphia Inquirer Click to enlarge.

by Patricia Madej | Updated: May 2, 2019A label for the “Philadelphia Badlands” on Google Maps drew ire online this week, adding another layer to the long-standing conversation over neighborhood names and boundaries, and their uses in technology.

A Twitter account, @RITTSQU, shared an image Tuesday that showed the name labeled near the Fairhill neighborhood in North Philadelphia, calling it “a racist new twist.” The post quickly garnered attention, and by Thursday, the name did not appear to be on the map, though a search for “Philadelphia Badlands” still brought results.

Using “Philadelphia Badlands” in Google Maps’ directions feature will take users to Sixth Street and Allegheny Avenue, while also suggesting Fairhill, North Philadelphia, and Kensington. It’s unclear how long the name had existed on Google Maps, when or why it was removed, or how it was added. Google did not respond to requests for comment.

Note that North Front Street is shown on that Google Maps photo of the Badlands. The 3100 block extends for three blocks south of East Allegheny Avenue, also shown on the map. You don’t get any more Badlands than that!

I’m not sure why calling a murderous neighborhood the Badlands is racist; it’s a designation spawned by the numbers, not color.

West Philly, where Miss Fletcher was killed, is not in the Badlands, but, if we do something really radical like tell the truth, West Philly has its own serious crime problem.

There’s a question not often asked these days: was Miss Fletcher’s life somehow more important than the unknown man killed on North Front Street? Being where the shooting happened, there’s a decent chance he was another gang banger, killed by a banger from a rival gang, but we don’t know that; he could easily have been a completely innocent man, perhaps an intended robbery victim, or could he have been someone’s boyfriend shot by a jealous, spurned suitor? Perhaps he was a buyer in a drug deal gone bad.

This is the problem with 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 of the Inquirer: they don’t do very much actual journalism when it comes to city homicides. We get to read the stories about the innocents and the cute white girls killed, but most of the homicide stories are simply not pursued.

This is really the job of the Inquirer, our nation’s third oldest continuously published daily newspaper, because the other important news medium in Philly, the television news stations, are in the business of presenting stories which happen right away, stories which have a strong visual component. Only newspapers have the capacity to dig more deeply, to present more information than people can get from a thirty-second story on WPVI-TV; that’s just the nature of the different media forms. And with the switch to a mostly digital format, newspapers are no longer stuck with assigned story length, save in the actual print editions.

Who was the unidentified 21-year-old man killed in Fairhill? Why was he killed? What family were left to mourn his passing? The Inky may, may! delve into the story of the 14-year-old (alleged) shooter in the Mill Creek Rec Center gun battle, perhaps telling us about the other (alleged) members of the gangs which fought it out, though that story might just be too politically incorrect for publication.

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.
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If the gun laws are the problem, why aren’t the homicide rates for Philly and the rest of the Commonwealth fairly similar?

It was no surprise that six more murders occurred in the City of Brotherly Love over the weekend, including Friday. Since the Philadelphia Police Department’s Current Crime Statistics page is not updated on Saturday or Sunday, we don’t get Friday’s ‘official’ numbers until Monday morning, though this tweet let me know earlier that the carnage was on.

Well, it was 10:45 AM EDT on Monday morning as I began, and as always, I checked our nation’s third oldest continuously published daily newspaper, the 17th largest in terms of circulation, The Philadelphia Inquirer, to check their coverage.

4-year-old shot in Olney barbershop

The child was struck by a single round following an argument. He is currently hospitalized and in stable condition.

by Ryan W Briggs | Sunday, August 28, 2022

A 4-year-old was wounded by gunfire following an altercation at a barbershop in the city’s Olney section — the latest of nearly 150 minors shot in Philadelphia this year.

The boy — whom police are not identifying because of his age — was with his father getting a haircut at a barbershop on the 5000 block of Rising Sun Avenue on Sunday afternoon. About 5:15 p.m., police say, they believe another patron got involved in an unrelated argument, pulled a gun, and opened fire inside the tiny salon.

Police say the boy was struck once in the right shoulder. Medics took the boy to nearby Einstein Medical Center, and he was then transferred to the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and placed in stable condition.

No weapon was recovered and no arrests had been made. Police are now reviewing surveillance footage.

There’s more at the original, but it’s a story about a young boy shot, but not killed. It was also the only story on either the Inquirer’s website main page or specific crime page I could find on any of the weekend shootings. Oh, there was a week-old story about 2 killed, 1 shot in Midtown neighborhood, from Atlanta, Georgia, and Oklahoma sheriff deputy serving eviction papers shot, killed, along with several other, older stories, but not one single word about the six Philadelphians who spilled out their life’s blood on the city’s mean streets.

I’ll be blunt here: none of the six slain could have been non-Hispanic whites, because, as we noted on Saturday, the newspaper which publisher Elizabeth Hughes vowed to make “an antiracist news organization” provides plenty of coverage when white guys get killed, but mostly ignores homicides when the victims are black, because to cover that would reinforce stereotypes that blacks are responsible for a disproportionate amount of crime.

Of course, readers already know that, and mostly assume that both victims and perpetrators of murder in Philly are black, unless told otherwise. There really are no secrets being kept here.

However, while the Philadelphia Police Department report six killed, the city’s shooting victims database tells me that nine people were shot to death over Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, August 26th through 28th. The nine fatal shootings,[1]The embedded link will take you to the city’s original. However, the city’s chart is formatted horribly, so I downloaded it and pasted it into a Microsoft Excel file, hid some columns and … Continue reading highlighted in yellow, include seven black males and two Hispanic white males.

It is possible that three of those killed were shot in self-defense, or some other justifiable situation, which could explain the discrepancy between the database and the Police Department’s numbers.

The Editorial Board of the Inquirer likes to blame a lack of gun control laws for the increased killings:

Lawmakers in Philadelphia have long tried to pass gun safety measures, only to get rebuffed by state courts and the recalcitrant Republican-controlled legislature in Harrisburg. Just last week, a majority-Republican panel of the Pennsylvania appeals court rejected Philadelphia’s latest attempt to overturn the state law that prevents the city from enacting its own gun regulations.

Mayor Jim Kenney rightly said the city would appeal the wrongheaded decision to the Pennsylvania Supreme Court.

There we have the Editorial Board telling us that Philadelphia is under the same gun control laws as the rest of Pennsylvania.

In 2020, there were 1,009 murders in the Keystone State, 499, or 49.45%, of which occurred in Philadelphia. According to the 2020 Census, Pennsylvania’s population was 13,002,700 while Philadelphia’s alone was 1,603,797, just 12.33% of Pennsylvania’s totals.

Here’s how the actual numbers work out: there were 510 homicides among 11,398,903 Pennsylvanians not living in Philadelphia, for a homicide rate of 4.474 per 100,000 population, while there were 499 murders among 1,603,797 Philadelphians, which works out to a homicide rate of 31.114 per 100,000. If the gun laws are the problem, why aren’t the homicide rates for Philly and the rest of the Commonwealth fairly similar?[2]Even as late as the end of August, I have been unable to find the ‘official’ statistics for the number of homicides statewide for 2021. With 562 murders in Philly in 2021, I’m sure … Continue reading

Yeah, I know: math has now been deemed racist by some on the left, but numbers are numbers, and the math is really pretty simple. The problem is not the gun laws; the problem is something specific to Philadelphia and our other large, urban areas.

References

References
↑1 The embedded link will take you to the city’s original. However, the city’s chart is formatted horribly, so I downloaded it and pasted it into a Microsoft Excel file, hid some columns and moved others, so the reader could see the data in an easier to read format.
↑2 Even as late as the end of August, I have been unable to find the ‘official’ statistics for the number of homicides statewide for 2021. With 562 murders in Philly in 2021, I’m sure the statistical disparities would be even worse, but I cannot work with numbers I do not have available.
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In Philadelphia, Black Lives Don’t Matter!

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

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

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

by the Editorial Board | Tuesday, August 23, 2022

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

References

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

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

I guess that it shouldn’t be a surprise when the #woke[2]From Wikipedia: Woke (/ˈwoʊk/) as a political term of African-American origin refers to a perceived awareness of issues concerning social justice and racial justice. It is derived from … Continue reading and the politically correct jump through circus hoops to avoid telling the truth. The truly sad thing about it is that anyone with eyes and ears can see that they’re jumping through those hoops.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

References

References
↑1 RedState writer Mike Miller called it the Enquirer, probably by mistake, so I didn’t originate it, but, reminiscent of the National Enquirer as it is, I thought it very apt.
↑2 From Wikipedia:

Woke (/ˈwoʊk/) as a political term of African-American origin refers to a perceived awareness of issues concerning social justice and racial justice. It is derived from the African-American Vernacular English expression “stay woke“, whose grammatical aspect refers to a continuing awareness of these issues.
By the late 2010s, woke had been adopted as a more generic slang term broadly associated with left-wing politics and cultural issues (with the terms woke culture and woke politics also being used). It has been the subject of memes and ironic usage. Its widespread use since 2014 is a result of the Black Lives Matter movement.

I shall confess to sometimes “ironic usage” of the term. To put it bluntly, I think that the ‘woke’ are just boneheadedly stupid.
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The Philadelphia Inquirer conceals a truth that everyone already knows Is the Inky actually perpetuating a stereotype it wishes to avoid?

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

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

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

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

Photo via 6ABC News Click to enlarge.

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

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

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

But the Inky isn’t the only news source in town, and the television stations did show the mugshots. Television news is, of course, is a medium much more dependent upon the visual, so it’s understandable that, regardless of how #woke[1]From Wikipedia: Woke (/ˈwoʊk/) as a political term of African-American origin refers to a perceived awareness of issues concerning social justice and racial justice. It is derived from … Continue reading the management are, pictures have to be published. The Inquirer, which has a far smaller circulation than the television stations have viewers, certainly didn’t keep the public from seeing the mugshots, and noting what Miss Hughes desperately wants not noted, that the suspects were all black — something most people would have inferred anyway, given the names of the suspects — but at a certain point, one has to ask: is the Inky, by censoring all mugshots, contributing not only to the stereotype that most criminals are black, but actually pushing a message, that all criminals are black?

I’m sure that’s not the intention of the journolists[2]The spelling ‘journolist’ or ‘journolism’ comes from JournoList, an email list of 400 influential and politically liberal journalists, the exposure of which called into question their … Continue reading who work for what I have frequently called The Philadelphia Enquirer[3]RedState writer Mike Miller called it the Enquirer, probably by mistake, so I didn’t originate it, but, reminiscent of the National Enquirer as it is, I thought it very apt., but it has to be considered a possibility. The stereotype that most criminals are black certainly exists, and by censoring the news where race is concerned, isn’t the Inky contributing to that stereotype? When the newspaper declines to publish something like this, won’t most of the readers simply assume what the Inky refuses to tell them? I’m guessing that there are at least some criminals in the City of Brotherly Love who are white, but the newspaper doesn’t tell us that.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Wouldn’t actually telling the whole truth serve better?

References

References
↑1 From Wikipedia:

Woke (/ˈwoʊk/) as a political term of African-American origin refers to a perceived awareness of issues concerning social justice and racial justice. It is derived from the African-American Vernacular English expression “stay woke“, whose grammatical aspect refers to a continuing awareness of these issues.
By the late 2010s, woke had been adopted as a more generic slang term broadly associated with left-wing politics and cultural issues (with the terms woke culture and woke politics also being used). It has been the subject of memes and ironic usage. Its widespread use since 2014 is a result of the Black Lives Matter movement.

I shall confess to sometimes “ironic usage” of the term. To put it bluntly, I think that the ‘woke’ are just boneheadedly stupid.

↑2 The spelling ‘journolist’ or ‘journolism’ comes from JournoList, an email list of 400 influential and politically liberal journalists, the exposure of which called into question their objectivity. I use the term ‘journolism’ frequently when writing about media bias.
↑3 RedState writer Mike Miller called it the Enquirer, probably by mistake, so I didn’t originate it, but, reminiscent of the National Enquirer as it is, I thought it very apt.
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Killadelphia! Philly is now ahead of last year's record pace, but the Inquirer hasn't noticed.

This is no surprise; we all knew it was coming. With three homicides in the City of Brotherly Love yesterday, Philadelphia has now moved slightly ahead of the pace of murders in 2021, the year which set the city’s annual record of 562.

This is something that you would think that The Philadelphia Inquirer, our nation’s third oldest continuously published daily newspaper, would have noticed, but at least as of 12:57 PM EDT, there is nothing on either the newspaper’s website main page or separate crime page. Nighttime reporter Robert Moran noticed two of the killings, but was apparently working solely from Philadelphia Police Department press releases:

2 dead in separate Philly shootings

A 29-year-old woman and a 30-year-old man were gunned down Tuesday night.

by Robert Moran | Tuesday, August 2, 2022

A 29-year-old woman and a 30-year-old man were fatally wounded in separate shootings Tuesday night in Philadelphia, police said.

Just before 8:15 p.m., the woman was outside on the 1800 block of Harrison Street in East Frankford when she was shot once in the left side of her back. Police rushed her to Temple University Hospital, where she was pronounced dead at 8:33.

Around 7:30 p.m., the man was outside on the 5400 block of Pearl Street in West Philadelphia when he was shot several times in the chest, police said. He was taken by private vehicle to Penn Presbyterian Medical Center, where he was pronounced dead at 7:44.

Police reported no immediate arrests or other details in either case.

So far this year, there were 319 homicides in Philadelphia as of late Monday night. There were 321 for the same time last year, which the city ended with an all-time record 562 homicides.

So, Mr Moran did notice that the city was very possibly approaching tying or exceeding last year’s homicide totals. Possibly he didn’t have access to last year’s totals for August 2nd, and didn’t realize that two homicides would tie it. And possibly he didn’t have the information that not two, but three separate homicides had occurred, all by gunfire, but Fox 29’s Steve Keeley had. Mr Moran did have the police press releases on the two homicides he listed, but, following the Inquirer’s guidelines,[1]I do not have a copy of those guidelines, but have inferred that they exist due to the constant scrubbing of references to race in the Inquirer’s reporting, something which was not the case in … Continue reading he scrubbed the race of the police reports of both the slain woman and man.

Such is the 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 of what I have occasionally 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. I have twice noted begging letters from the Lenfest Institute, which owns the Inky, asking for donations from subscribers above and beyond their subscriptions. Perhaps if the Inquirer’s reporting matched their history, I’d send something.

References

References
↑1 I do not have a copy of those guidelines, but have inferred that they exist due to the constant scrubbing of references to race in the Inquirer’s reporting, something which was not the case in previous years. And race is not the only thing that the Inky censors.
↑2 The spelling ‘journolist’ or ‘journolism’ comes from JournoList, an email list of 400 influential and politically liberal journalists, the exposure of which called into question their objectivity. I use the term ‘journolism’ frequently when writing about media bias.
↑3 RedState writer Mike Miller called it the Enquirer, probably by mistake, so I didn’t originate it, but, reminiscent of the National Enquirer as it is, I thought it very apt.
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Telling the people most at risk for contracting #Monkeypox how to avoid it is just way, way, way too politically incorrect!

It seems that some people have suggested that the name “Monkeypox” somehow discriminates against blacks and homosexual males, and should be changed, which immediately became the subject of jokes:

The apparently odd notion that, with Monkeypox, an infection that is being spread primarily, though not exclusively, by male homosexual sex, should make them question whether they really need to copulate with that cute guy at the end of the bar just never seems to occur. Continue reading →

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The journolism of The Philadelphia Inquirer And people wonder why the Philadelphia Police Department cannot get recruits to fill the undermanned force?

No, I didn’t misspell the word in the title: the spelling ‘journolist’ or ‘journolism’ comes from JournoList, an email list of 400 influential and politically liberal journalists, the exposure of which called into question their objectivity. I use the term ‘journolism’ frequently when writing about media bias.

I have noted, many times, that black lives don’t matter to The Philadelphia Inquirer, as evidenced by the fact that the newspaper, to meet publisher Elizabeth Hughes’ decree that it be an “anti-racist news organization,” but has become racist in itself.

I also noted that when Police Commissioner Danielle Outlaw decided to fire the officer who (allegedly) killed 12-year-old Thomas Siderio, Jr, who had shot first at police, injuring one, and then was pursued and shot as he fled by another officer, the Commissioner declined to name the officer, expressing concern for his safety, but the inquirer managed to ferret out his name and print it. What are we supposed to think other than the Inky is trying to get the officer killed?

Well, they’re at it again!

Philly police fire lieutenant who allegedly used the N-word on a radio call last month

Sgt. Eric Gripp, a department spokesperson, declined to identify the officer but said he was given 30 days notice of his termination on July 5 — a standard practice in police firings.

by Max Marin | Wednesday, July 20, 2022

The Philadelphia Police Department has moved to fire a veteran lieutenant who allegedly used the N-word while on a recorded line with a police radio-room worker last month, officials said Wednesday.

Lt Anthony McFadden, from his LinkedIn page.

Sgt. Eric Gripp, a department spokesperson, declined to identify the officer but said he was given 30 days’ notice of his termination — a standard practice in police firings — on July 5. Police sources identified the officer as Lt. Anthony McFadden, a 32-year veteran of the force who was previously assigned to the Special Victims Unit.

So, the Police Department spokesman declined to identify the officer, but the Inky turned to its internal sources, got his name, and published it anyway.

I have to ask: what’s the point? Only one thing comes to mind: The Inquirer is trying to keep Lt McFadden from being able to get another job on another police force.

This is the same newspaper which doesn’t report on most actual murders in the city, and scrubs out the race of the victims on the few occasions that it does, and of the (alleged) perpetrators when known. In all but the most sensational cases, the Inquirer does not tell readers the names of the perpetrators.

Miss Hughes’ newspaper won’t tell us about actual murders in the City of Brotherly Love, but a police lieutenant says a bad word? Grounds for the firing of a 32-year veteran — will they deny him his pension? — and for the Inky to try to sabotage any future job prospects he may have.

And people wonder why the Philadelphia Police Department cannot get recruits to fill the undermanned force? The Department doesn’t have their backs, and the local media try to crucify them!

oo0oo

Updated! Thursday, July 21, 2022 | 8:43 AM EDT

In the story Person of interest in Monday’s gunpoint rape on subway platform is in custody, reporter Mensah H Dean tells Inquirer readers that:

A person of interest in the rape of a woman on the platform of a South Philadelphia subway station was taken into custody Wednesday morning, the Philadelphia Police Department said.

The person, whose name has not been released, was taken to the Special Victims Unit for questioning, the department said in a statement Wednesday morning.

Perhaps the “person of interest’s” name has not been released, but I note that the Inky did not put enough effort into finding it out, as they did with Lt McFadden.

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Why should we trust the credentialed media if they won’t check their own stories?

There was a time, not so long ago, that if you had an argument with someone over a particular point, and if you could find in The New York Times material which supported your point, that was it, you won the argument.

The First Street Journal has been very critical of the reporting of the credentialed media, concentrating on The Philadelphia Inquirer and its censorship of stories which don’t line up with its political positions, but we have not been alone. On Independence Day, Robert Stacy McCain, an actual professional journalist — my brief time with the Kentucky Kernel hardly counts as professional — noted that the viral story about the 10-year-old girl who had to travel from Ohio to Indiana to get an abortion wasn’t passing the smell test:

A Story Too Good to Check?

July 4, 2022 | 28 Comments

This headline appeared Friday in the Columbus Dispatch:

 

As Ohio restricts abortions, 10-year-old girl travels to Indiana for procedure

On Monday three days after the Supreme Court issued its groundbreaking decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, Dr. Caitlin Bernard, an Indianapolis obstetrician-gynecologist, took a call from a colleague, a child abuse doctor in Ohio.

Hours after the Supreme Court action, the Buckeye state had outlawed any abortion after six weeks. Now this doctor had a 10-year-old patient in the office who was six weeks and three days pregnant.

Could Bernard help? . . .

This story has since been repeated all over the place (e.g., “‘A tragic situation’: Governor discusses pregnant 10-year-old with CNN host”), but having read through the original story twice with an editor’s eye, my question is: Where’s the comment from police?

Even if you’re willing to take Dr. Caitlin Bernard’s word for the basic claim — while some 10-year-olds are physically capable of getting pregnant, such cases are very rare — you’ve left the reader knowing nothing about the most basic elements of the story: What Ohio city did this happen in? Do authorities have a suspect in custody? Or is the public still in danger from the child rapist responsible for this atrocity?

The extreme youth of the alleged victim is what made the headline so shocking, and I actually checked the National Institutes of Health to make sure I wasn’t alone in finding this highly unusual. The media age of menarche (i.e., onset of menstruation, generally taken as meaning when a female becomes physically capable of pregnancy) in the United States is 11.9, about three months earlier than in the 1990s. About 10% of females reach menarche by age 10. Precocious puberty is slightly correlated with earlier sexual activity — the median age of first intercourse is 15.4 for girls reaching menache by age 10, compared to 16.6 for girls reaching menarche at age 14 or older. In general, blacks and Hispanics reach menarche earlier than white girls, but the differences are not dramatic.

There’s more at Mr McCain’s original, which should be read, but, to put it briefly, Mr McCain did his research. I do not know how fast he works in sourcing his stuff, but if I had done the research he included in the rest of his article, I could have gotten it done in under two hours.

Then, four days later, Mr McCain once again wrote on the story , this time noting that President Biden had used the tale for propaganda purposes.

Megan Fox of PJ Media had been on the case, and she noted that The Washington Post finally started checking out the story:

A one-source story about a 10-year-old and an abortion goes viral

Analysis by Glenn Kessler | Saturday, July 9, 2022 | 3:00 AM EDT

“This isn’t some imagined horror. It is already happening. Just last week, it was reported that a 10-year-old girl was a rape victim — 10 years old — and she was forced to have to travel out of state to Indiana to seek to terminate the pregnancy and maybe save her life.” — President Biden, remarks during signing of executive order on abortion access, July 8

This is the account of a one-source story that quickly went viral around the world — and into the talking points of the president.

The Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade, which had guaranteed a right to abortion, has led a number of states to quickly impose new laws to restrict or limit abortions. Ohio was one of the first, imposing a ban on abortions after six weeks of pregnancy, with no exceptions for rape and incest.

On July 1, the Indianapolis Star, also known as the IndyStar, published an article, written by the newspaper’s medical writer, about how women seeking abortions had begun traveling from Ohio to Indiana, where less restrictive abortion laws were still in place. “Patients head to Indiana for abortion services as other states restrict care,” the article was headlined.

That was a benign headline. But it was the anecdotal beginning that caught the attention of other news organizations. The article said that three days after the June 24 court ruling, an Indianapolis obstetrician-gynecologist, Caitlan Bernard, who performs abortions, received a call from “a child abuse doctor” in Ohio who had a 10-year-old patient who was six weeks and three days pregnant. Unable to obtain an abortion in Ohio, “the girl soon was on her way to Indiana to Bernard’s care,” the Star reported.

Personally, I regard an abortionist as, at the very least, a special pleader in a case like this, and an untrustworthy source.

The only source cited for the anecdote was Bernard. She’s on the record, but there is no indication that the newspaper made other attempts to confirm her account. The story’s lead reporter, Shari Rudavsky, did not respond to a query asking whether additional sourcing was obtained. A Gannett spokeswoman provided a comment from Bro Krift, the newspaper’s executive editor: “The facts and sourcing about people crossing state lines into Indiana, including the 10-year-old girl, for abortions are clear. We have no additional comment at this time.”

The story quickly caught fire, becoming a headline in newspapers around the world. News organizations increasingly “aggregate” — or repackage — reporting from elsewhere if it appears of interest to readers. So Bernard remained the only source — and other news organizations did not follow up to confirm her account.

There’s more at the original, and if you cannot get past the Post’s paywall, here is an archived copy.

A lot has been made of the obvious question that, if a 10-year-old girl became pregnant, someone had to have sexual intercourse with her.

Under Ohio law, a physician, as a mandated reporter under Ohio Revised Code 2151.421, would be required to report any case of known or suspected physical, sexual or emotional abuse or neglect of a child to their local child welfare or law enforcement agency. So Bernard’s colleague would have had to make such a report to law enforcement at the same time he or she contacted Bernard. Presumably then a criminal case would have been opened.

Also read: Robert Stacy McCain: ‘Not a Whisper Anywhere’: Abortion Story About 10-Year-Old Ohio Girl Looking More and More Like a Complete Hoax

A 10-year-old girl cannot legally consent to sexual intercourse, or any form of sexual contact. Our minds tend to default to picturing the slavering, evil step-father, or ‘funny’ uncle, or someone who visited Jeffrey Epstein’s private island. But when significantly underaged girls get pregnant, it is usually by a similarly underaged boy. If this 10-year-old girl actually existed — while I have my doubts, it cannot be discounted as obviously untrue — she may well have been impregnated by an 11-year-old boy, and let’s face it: we aren’t going to throw an 11-year-old boy in jail for copulating with a 10-year-old girl.

There’s a lot more, and this whole story has been inflated into a huge propaganda piece, as though evil reich-wing Republicans would force this 10-year-old to carry the baby to term. The average size for a 10-year-old girl in the United States is between 50 and 59 inches tall, the midpoint of that range being 4’6″, with an average weight of around 79 lb. It would be extremely difficult for such a girl to be able to carry a baby to full term, and such a girl would qualify for an abortion under life of the mother exceptions; a real pregnancy would probably kill her.

But, at least for me, the real story is that, despite the protestations of Nina Jankowicz, who was going to become our Minister of Truth, before evil reich-wingers derailed that, the credentialed media’s unblemished record of telling the truth isn’t quite as unblemished as they’d like you to believe.[1]Nina Jankowocz being interviewed by CNN’s Brian Stelter on ‘disinformation’ is about as laughable as things can get. The wheels started creaking when CBS News was caught using ‘unverified’ forged documents in an attempt to swing the 2004 presidential election to Senator John Kerry (D-MA), and was caught at it by the blog Powerline, and since then the ‘discrepancies’ between credentialed media stories and what actually happened have been catalogued hundreds of times over.

I have a simple rule: if a story seems to convenient to be true, start checking around; it just might not be true.

References

References
↑1 Nina Jankowocz being interviewed by CNN’s Brian Stelter on ‘disinformation’ is about as laughable as things can get.