Tag Archives: #MediaBias

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The credentialed media want to muzzle Glenn Greenwald They're finding out just how well that works

I have never been a particular fan of Glenn Greenwald. Born in the United States, he now resides in Rio de Janeiro with his “husband,” and has been a mostly left-wing journalist throughout his career. His participation in helping the odious Edward Snowden reveal classified documents was repugnant.

But if there is one thing I definitely do appreciate about Mr Greenwald is his devotion to Freedom of Speech and of the Press.

Journalists Start Demanding Substack Censor its Writers: to Bar Critiques of Journalists

This new political battle does not break down along left v. right lines. This is an information war waged by corporate media to silence any competition or dissent.

by Glenn Greenwald | March 11, 2021

Glenn Greenwald

On Wednesday, I wrote about how corporate journalists, realizing that the public’s increasing contempt for what they do is causing people to turn away in droves, are desperately inventing new tactics to maintain their stranglehold over the dissemination of information and generate captive audiences. That is why it journalists have bizarrely transformed from their traditional role as leading free expression defenders into the the most vocal censorship advocates, using their platforms to demand that tech monopolies ban and silence others.

That same motive of self-preservation is driving them to equate any criticisms of their work with “harassment,” “abuse” and “violence” — so that it is not just culturally stigmatized but a banning offense, perhaps even literally criminal, to critique their journalism on the ground that any criticism of them places them “in danger.” Under this rubric they want to construct, they can malign anyone they want, ruin people’s reputations, and unite to generate hatred against their chosen targets, but nobody can even criticize them.

Any independent platform or venue that empowers other journalists or just ordinary citizens to do reporting or provide commentary outside of their repressive constraints is viewed by them as threats to be censored and destroyed. Every platform that enables any questioning of their pieties or any irreverent critiques of mainstream journalism — social media sites, YouTube, Patreon, Joe Rogan’s Spotify program — has already been systematically targeted by corporate journalists with censorship demands, often successfully.

Back in November, the media critic Stephen Miller warned: “It’s only a matter of time before the media tech hall monitors turn their attention to Substack.” And ever since, in every interview I have given about the success of Substack and every time I have written about journalist-led censorship campaigns, I have echoed that warning that they would soon turn their united guns on this platform. Miller’s prediction was prompted by a Columbia Journalism Review article entitled “The Substackerati” which claimed that Substack was structurally unfair because “most” of “the most successful people on Substack” are “white and male; several are conservative” and “have already been well-served by existing media power structures.”

I will admit to having little contact with Substack. I knew that Patrick Frey, who has blogged for free as Patterico since 2003, and Bari Weiss, who was forced out at left The New York Times by the hatred of the young #woke in the newsroom. Mr Frey is an educated, (mostly) conservative, his hatred for Donald Trump notwithstanding, heterosexual married white male, but Miss Weiss is a mostly liberal lesbian.[1]A couple of commenters I consider to be anti-Semitic on The Other McCain have sought to educate me that she can’t be white, because she’s a Jew.

Thus, I never realized that Substack is a bastion of conservative white males. Mr Greenwald continued to note that most successful Substack writer is a somewhat obscure female History professor at Boston College.

In fact, looking at the list of ‘Substackerati’ Mr Greenwald used, Matt Taibbi, Andrew Sullivan, Matt Yglesias, Heather Cox Richardson, along with Messrs Greenwald, Frey and Miss Weiss, I find three who are homosexual, and the majority liberal.

Mr Greenwald continues to note what has really bothered the currently credentialed media:

That is precisely why they are so furious. They cannot stand the fact that journalists can break major stories and find an audience while maintaining an independent voice, critically questioning rather than obediently reciting the orthodoxies that bind them and, most of all, without playing their infantile in-group games and submitting to their hive-mind decrees. In fact, the more big stories you break while maintaining your independence from them, the more intense is the contempt they harbor for you: that explains, among other things, their willingness to watch Julian Assange (who has broken more major stories than all of them combined) be imprisoned for publishing documents.

That they are angry and upset is irrelevant. It only matters because these resentments and fears that they are losing their monopolistic power over public thought are translating into increasingly concerted and effective censorship campaigns.

The credentialed media heaped scorn on the recently deceased Rush Limbaugh, virtually celebrating in his death due to cancer, because he was the one who began the breaking of the ‘gatekeeping’ function of the media. When the only way for a contrary voice to be heard was if an editor approved, the editors had the power (mostly) to restrict the terms of debate. Mr Limbaugh, by virtue of his tremendous talent — “talent on loan from God,” he used to say — expressed to an audience of as much as thirty million the things that many people already believed, but rarely heard outside of their circle of friends. Then Al Gore invented this internet thingy, and debates started in America Online chatrooms, and then moved to independent blogs. Powerline and Little Green Footballs, working solely from images on low-definition television screens, were able to expose how CBS News used forged documents to try to turn the election of 2004 against the younger President Bush, and were able to get their findings out to millions of people. They went around the gatekeeping function of the credentialed media.

The older editors of major media sources realized, albeit grudgingly, that their power was lost. But as the young #wokes forced out older and wiser heads like James Bennet and Stan Wischnowski, even though they were liberal themselves, the young #woke lost that institutional memory which should have informed them that the gatekeeping function is gone.[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 now they think they should somehow get it back. Their success in using #CancelCulture to cow others into silence seems to have emboldened them.

But it’s an effort doomed to failure. As we previously noted, the HuffPost was bought out by BuzzKill BuzzFeed, and now Verizon Media has laid off about 30% of what was supposed to have been HuffPost’s independent newsroom. BuzzFeed has had its own financial problems, cutting salaries a year ago due to COVID-19 and having laid off 15% of its workforce in 2019.

The First Amendment to the Constitution protects the Freedom of the Press, but all that means is that the government cannot control the press, cannot censor it, and cannot punish people for printing things the government do not like. Unfortunately, far too many in the media believe that it confers on them some sort of special status, that it means they are somehow beyond criticism. Mr Greenwald, and a few of the other ‘Substackerati,’ have had the temerity, the unmitigated gall to criticize other reporters, so naturally the credentialed media are striking back. There’s nothing they can do about The First Street Journal and me, and my frequent criticisms of what I sometimes call The Philadelphia Enquirer, because, sadly, 🙁 there’s no one paying me to write and publish what I do.

But Substack? The media know that Mr Greenwald and others are making money due to their Substack affiliation, and they can put pressure on Substack to rein in those horrible, horrible free voices.

The fictitious Police Commissioner of New York City, Frank Reagan of Bluebloods, once said on his show that the freedom of the press is limited to those who actually own a press. In a way, that’s true enough, but with the internet, almost anybody can now own a printing press. Writers on the internet are successful or failures based on their individual merits as writers and self-publicists, and not upon the judgements of newspaper editors.

References

References
↑1 A couple of commenters I consider to be anti-Semitic on The Other McCain have sought to educate me that she can’t be white, because she’s a Jew.
↑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 HuffPo is biting the dust

While I have often noted that print newspapers are 18th century technology, the contraction of media outlets isn’t restricted to print.

BuzzFeed Announces Deep Cuts To HuffPost Staff After Acquisition

BuzzFeed acquired HuffPost from Verizon Media in February.

By Sara Boboltz | March 9, 2021 | 12:31 PM EST

BuzzFeed announced layoffs for the HuffPost newsroom on Tuesday, three weeks after acquiring HuffPost from Verizon Media in February.

Hillary Frey, the site’s executive editor, and Louise Roug, the executive editor for international, will be departing in the restructuring effort.

HuffPost Canada will also shutter operations later this month.

A deal between BuzzFeed, HuffPost and Verizon Media was first made public in November. Verizon Media stated at the time that BuzzFeed and HuffPost would operate as “separate, distinct news organizations” with their own websites and editorial staff while BuzzFeed CEO Jonah Peretti led the combined company.

Translation: Verizon Media lied to them!

The HuffPost Union, organized as part of the Writers Guild of America, East, slammed the restructuring effort in a statement:

Today, we learned that 33 of our colleagues — nearly 30% of our unit — will be laid off. We are devastated and infuriated, particularly after an exhausting year of covering a pandemic and working from home. This is also happening less than a month after HuffPost was acquired by BuzzFeed. We never got a fair shot to prove our worth. These layoffs reiterate the importance of forming a union and advocating for our colleagues. We are glad that we are protected by a collective bargaining agreement and that our colleagues will receive severance. Our union will continue fighting to make HuffPost a more just and equitable workplace, including pushing for clear and accountable commitments to hiring and promoting more people of color and for transparency around pay equity.

It really is just so exhausting working from home! 🙂 It means that you have to make your own coffee in the morning rather than having a $7.25 per hour clerk at 7/Eleven doing it for you.

Now let me be clear here: I don’t like seeing anyone losing his job, but let’s be honest here: the HuffPost was as #woke and biased a ‘publication’ as any around. There was no special reporting there, and nothing you can see on their website front page is not available elsewhere — frequently with better writing — for free. And given the contempt the media have for working class men and women in ‘flyover country,’ it’s difficult not to feel some schadenfreude.

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Way to promote that “unity,” Lexington Herald-Leader!

I have previously noted how the Associated Press surrendered to political correctness on language, saying that, when referring to race, it will capitalize “black” but leave “white” in lower-case.[1]Note that while the Associated Press and many media outlets will capitalize “black” but not “white”, The First Street Journal maintains its own published Stylebook, and does … Continue reading

After changing its usage rules last month to capitalize the word “Black” when used in the context of race and culture, The Associated Press on Monday said it would not do the same for “white.” The AP said white people in general have much less shared history and culture, and don’t have the experience of being discriminated against because of skin color. Protests following the death of George Floyd, which led to discussions of policing and Confederate symbols, also prompted many news organizations to examine their own practices and staffing. The Associated Press, whose Stylebook is widely influential in the industry, announced June 19 it would make Black uppercase. In some ways, the decision over “white” has been more ticklish. The National Association of Black Journalists and some Black scholars have said white should be capitalized, too. “We agree that white people’s skin color plays into systemic inequalities and injustices, and we want our journalism to robustly explore these problems,” Daniszewski said. “But capitalizing the term white, as is done by white supremacists, risks subtly conveying legitimacy to such beliefs.”

I found the whole thing not only obviously silly, but poor grammar. The use of “white” or “black” is simply shorthand for large racial groups, Caucasian and Negro, which are properly capitalized. Irish or French should be capitalized, as they refer to the inhabitants of countries as well as ethnic groups, while white should not be. Similarly, I would capitalize Kenyan or African, but not black. That the Associated Press would treat the words differently is just not very bright.

So now we come to the Lexington Herald-Leader, a McClatchy publication, and this sentence in a story about extending the COVID-19 vaccinations to Tier 1C:

Seventy-seven percent of people vaccinated are white, 6 percent are Black, and only 2.3 percent are Hispanic.

“Black” is capitalized, and “Hispanic” is (properly) capitalized, but “white” is left in lower-case. Yeah, I know: that’s the Associated Press Stylebook in action, but I cannot be the only person who noticed how the Herald-Leader has treated races differently. I have no idea how many readers of the paper will be familiar with, or even heard of, the AP Stylebook, but if the readers match the city’s demographics, 75.7% of them are white, and I would guess that some of them will have felt that they were slighted. Given just how out-of-touch the editors of the Herald-Leader are with their readership, perhaps those readers who feel slighted by that one sentence will have been right about how the editors feel about them.

Then again, anyone who notes that 77% + 6% + 2.3% = 85.3% might be wondering more about the math of the Beth Musgrave, the article author, and whichever editor checked her story before publication! 🙂

The newspaper does still have editors, right?[2]Well, maybe not, given that McClatchy filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection a year ago, and Chatham Asset Management now owns the McClatchy newspapers. The Herald-Leader’s Contact page … Continue reading

The left have spent the last five years decrying Donald Trump, claiming that he is very divisive and a racist, the editors of the Herald-Leader among them. But in going along with the Associated Press Stylebook in the manner they have, they are promoting the same “racial . . . intolerance” about which they complained concerning Mr Trump.

References

References
↑1 Note that while the Associated Press and many media outlets will capitalize “black” but not “white”, The First Street Journal maintains its own published Stylebook, and does not go along with such divisive foolishness.
↑2 Well, maybe not, given that McClatchy filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection a year ago, and Chatham Asset Management now owns the McClatchy newspapers. The Herald-Leader’s Contact page lists 15 non-sports reporters, deputy editors for digital, presentation and accountability, an executive editor and general manager, an editorial assistant and a news assistant. From those titles, I’m not sure that anyone actually reads and corrects reporters’ news stories. The days of the blue pencil are long gone, and there are times I think that editing itself has departed as well.
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The editors of the Lexington Herald-Leader and their one-sided OpEd pages

In a short letter to the editor of the Lexington Herald-Leader, Jeffrey Bradford of Nashville, Tennessee, said:

I’m a Lexington native who moved to Nashville many years ago. Recently, while visiting family in Lexington, I read the opinion section of your paper and was astounded by how completely one-sided it is (Jan. 31, 2021 edition). Entirely from the left. Yours is the only newspaper I’ve read in recent years — with the possible exception of the New York Times and Washington Post — that completely excludes views from the right. This is odd on two levels: 1. I’m sure your readership is not so monolithic in its political views. 2. You lose all credibility by only publishing one side of the story. That is, your views carry no weight.

I encourage you to strive for a more balanced approach in the future, as I used to read in my hometown paper when growing up here. Not only would it be more intellectually honest, but you might sell more papers.

Reading just one print edition isn’t much of a sample, but a perusal of what my, sadly late, best friend used to call the Herald-Liberal’s website doesn’t show much diversity of opinion. There is a real question of how in touch the editors are with their readership. I would point out here the Editorial Board’s recent political endorsements:

  • 2020: Joe Biden for President, Amy McGrath Henderson for Senate, and Josh Hicks for 6th District Representative;[1]Notably, the editors endorsed Charles Booker over Mrs Henderson in the Democratic primary, saying that he was the more progressive candidate. Mrs Henderson once said, “I am further left, I am … Continue reading
  • 2018: Amy McGrath Henderson for 6th District Representative
  • 2016: Hillary Clinton for President, Jim Gray for Senate, and Nancy Jo Kemper for 6th District Representative
  • 2014: Alison Lundergan Grimes for Senate, and Elisabeth Jensen for 6th District Representative

All Democrats, and all defeated in Kentucky and in the 6th District. It seems that the Herald-Leader Editorial Board isn’t exactly in tune with the voters of the Commonwealth. Note that the 2016 and 2014 Democratic nominees for the 6th congressional district were political novices, and the editors struggled to find much good reason to endorse them. Representative Andy Barr (R-KY 6th District) beat them both by landslide margins.[2]Dr Malcolm Jewell, one of my political science professors at the University of Kentucky during medieval times, defined a landslide margin as 10% or greater.

In fact, with the exception of the 6th district race in 2018, the editors’ endorsed candidates lost by landslide margins. Even in 2018, with Mrs Henderson outspending Mr Barr $8,274,396 to $5,580,477, she lost 51.0% to 47.8%.

In her Senate campaign, Mrs Henderson raised $94,120,557 and spent $90,775,744 compared to Senator Mitch McConnell’s $71,351,350 and $64,787,889, only to lose 38.2% to 57.8%. As it happens, Mrs Henderson had the lowest percentage total against Mr McConnell of any of his opponents save sacrificial lamb candidate Lois Combs Weinberg in 2002.

Simply put, the editors are completely out-of-touch with their readership. Voters in Lexington are closer to the editors’ views, but once you get outside Fayette County, nope, nowhere close, and the Herald-Leader is a regional newspaper for most of eastern Kentucky.[3]I delivered both the morning Lexington Herald and afternoon Lexington Leader in Mt Sterling, just a few years after the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock.

I do not expect the editors to change their views. But perhaps, just perhaps, they might consider that their readers are not all from the city, and provide a bit more content for them.

References

References
↑1 Notably, the editors endorsed Charles Booker over Mrs Henderson in the Democratic primary, saying that he was the more progressive candidate. Mrs Henderson once said, “I am further left, I am more progressive, than anyone in the state of Kentucky,” while at a fund raiser in Massachusetts.
↑2 Dr Malcolm Jewell, one of my political science professors at the University of Kentucky during medieval times, defined a landslide margin as 10% or greater.
↑3 I delivered both the morning Lexington Herald and afternoon Lexington Leader in Mt Sterling, just a few years after the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock.
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The Woke-ington Post defends Cameron “C-Grimey” Williams

We noted, four days ago, the firing of Chattanooga librarian Cameron Williams for being boneheadedly stupid burning library books with which he disagreed. Now comes The Washington Post, with their own article on the subject:

A Black Lives Matter activist was accused of burning books by Trump and Ann Coulter. He was then fired from his job.

By Teo Armus | February 17, 2021 | 3:08 AM EST

From the article title alone — and it should be noted that article titles in newspapers are normally written by the editors, not the article authors — you san tell: grab on to a support bar, because this one leans far to the left!

Cameron “C-Grimey” Williams says his instructions were clear enough: The 35-year-old library staffer was supposed to comb through the shelves of his branch in Chattanooga, Tenn., looking for books that were damaged, outdated or untruthful.

Black Lives Matter activist Cameron Williams

We noted Mr Williams’ appearance in the previous article; I can see from where his ‘street name’ of “C-Grimey” comes.

Let me be clear here: I would never hire, for any position involving public contact, anyone who looked like that. Nor would I ever hire anyone with any connection to #BlackLivesMatter. If someone cannot have decent, respectable grooming habits, nope, he doesn’t get hired. And having anyone on your payroll who you know is involved with attempting to defund or harm the police, who has a basically racist attitude — racist from any direction! — is something you do not want. It’s like hiring someone with any sort of “social justice” degree, such as Women’s and Gender Studies; such people are walking, talking discrimination lawsuits waiting to happen. You take their résumés, interview them if you must, and then quietly choose another candidate. The library was hiring someone to help people find books, not someone to push his political opinions on patrons.

The branch managers told employees they could bring home any weeded-out titles, he said. But Williams, a rapper who helped organize demonstrations against police brutality last year, reportedly had other plans for the books he picked out.

After nabbing Ann Coulter’s “How to Talk to a Liberal (If You Must)” and Donald Trump’s “Crippled America,” he allegedly set them on fire in his backyard in December, live-streaming the blaze on Instagram, according to the Chattanooga Times Free Press.

Last week, the library fired him over the alleged incident, saying that he’d broken the rules by “improperly removing items from the Library’s collections.”

Cameron “C-Grimey” Williams, picture by Mr Williams, taken from The Washington Post.

One point the Post article does not mention is that the library met with the Chattanooga city attorney about this, before taking the decision to terminate Mr Williams. One would assume that the city attorney would have been very careful in advising the library on the legalities. More, the Post article states that, “Before his firing, (Mr Williams) was the only Black man on a staff of about 80 people, he said.” Note that verbiage: Mr Williams was the only black man on the staff; it does not mean he was the only black person employed there. Library personnel tend to be heavily female. Was this poor writing by the Post article author, poor reporting in failing to clarify the situation, or just laziness in taking Mr Williams’ word for it?

That point should have been caught by whichever Washington Post editor reviewed the story. At least I assume the normal practice of editorial review; perhaps such an assumption isn’t a wise one?

The Hitlerjugend burning books, 1938.

Mr Williams provided this picture to the Post. In it, he is shown in what appears to be the library stacks. He’s also wearing a black hoodie, something hardly professional, and a Black Lives Matter facemask. Was he projecting a politicized image while working at the library?

There’s some rather delicious irony when we see the Post publishing sympathetic articles about book-burners. Some things are just not good looks.

The Post’s story is an example of absolutely horrible journalism . . . which seems to be a 21th century trend. We should not be able to discern the writer’s biases by reading what is supposed to be a straight news article, but they are there for all to see. This is what happens when you hire the #woke.

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It’s not just the big boys like The New York Times and The Washington Post who don’t like #FreedomOfSpeech for other people Much smaller media like the Lexington Herald-Leader aren't too fond of it either

At The First Street Journal, and William Teach’s The Pirate’s Cove — and Mr Teach has done this site an invaluable service, crossposting because I’ve been under power-cutting ice storm threats for several days now — we have been tireless defenders of the First Amendment and Freedom of Speech. Thus, I was interested enough to read Joel Pett’s OpEd piece in the Lexington Herald-Leader celebrating that free speech pioneer, Larry Flynt.

RIP Larry Flynt: Kentucky native, porn publisher, and First Amendment champion

By Joel Pett | February 15, 2021 | 10:50 AM | Updated 12:50 PM EST

In the gathering gray of an April evening in 2004, I waited alone in the alley behind the Kentucky Theater, uncertain that my guest would show up. Inside, 150 or so attendees of the Association of American Editorial Cartoonists annual convention watched a screening of the 1996 drama “The People vs. Larry Flynt.”

The film chronicled the infamous pornographer’s landmark 1988 legal battle with the late Rev. Jerry Falwell, which ended with a unanimous Supreme Court firmly reinforcing our collective right to satirize the powerful. (Even if that satire implies that a renowned religious figure had fornicated with his own mother in an outhouse.) The AAEC had filed a friend of the court brief on Flynt’s behalf.

I didn’t wait long. A standard prom-issue limo slid up next to the loading dock. A couple of well-dressed young men emerged, lifted the gold wheelchair out and positioned it. Out swung Larry Claxton Flynt’s legs, rendered useless by a 1978 assassination attempt and wrapped in an expensive suit. Flynt struggled into position, looked up at me and growled “Goddammit, I hate to f—ing travel!”

Flynt, who died last week at 78, not only won the big First Amendment case, he was a native Kentuckian, making him a natural “get” for the Lexington convention. I had found his office tricky to communicate with, since they made no demands, didn’t need airline tickets (he had his own jet) and handled their own hotel reservations. He had simply barked into the phone, some eight months earlier, “All right, dammit, I’ll be there!”

Mr Pett’s paean to Mr Flynt is somewhat tiresome. Larry Flynt was the extreme test case for the first amendment, just as a vicious, cold-blooded killer is the extreme test for opposition to capital punishment: the concepts one wishes to defend are personified by the worst of people. Mr Flynt’s Hustler magazine went where Playboy and Penthouse did not go, far exceeding them in raunchiness and crudity. Since then, the internet has made much more graphic pornography widely available, often for free, and if there’s anything not available on the internet somewhere, I can’t think of what it would be.

Heck, you can find the basics for building nuclear weapons on the internet!

Mr Pett was unstinting in his praise for the Hustler publisher:

His injuries made speaking a struggle, but Flynt delivered. He animatedly railed against former President George W. Bush, for whom he had a particular dislike. He stayed to answer plenty of questions with grace, wit and humor.

I was a little disappointed that, over dinner, Flynt was considerably less effusive. No matter, he had done his job, sparking soul-searching among our self-important, ponderous, mainstream newspaper cartoonists about First Amendment protections extending to the gratuitous, crude, misogynistic and utterly distasteful smut between the slick covers of porn mags.

I don’t have to like Mr Flynt to agree as far as freedom of speech and of the press are concerned. But, as we’ve sadly noted previously, today’s credentialed media are a lot more supportive of their own First Amendment rights than they are for others.

And so we have Mr Pett’s conclusion:

Larry Flynt once said, “If the First Amendment protects a scumbag like me, then it will protect all of you. Because I’m the worst.”

Maybe. But watching Donald Trump’s outrageous claims to free-speech protection play out last week, some might disagree.

Mr Flynt had done his job, Mr Pett said, “sparking soul-searching among our self-important, ponderous, mainstream newspaper cartoonists about First Amendment protections extending to the gratuitous, crude, misogynistic and utterly distasteful smut between the slick covers of porn mags.” Yet when it comes to the political speech of President Trump, speech with which both Mr Pett individually and the editors of the Herald-Leader in general disagreed, that First Amendment, well, maybe it shouldn’t cover that!

Mr Teach’s blog tagline is, “If we don’t believe in freedom of expression for people we despise, we don’t believe in it at all.” It seems to me that today’s credentialed media do not believe in freedom of speech and of the press for those theyn despise.

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Is there no actual journalism practiced at The Philadelphia Inquirer?

It’s a pretty sad thing that I have come to check the Philadelphia Police Department’s Current Crime Statistics page every weekday morning.[1]The statistics are updated Monday through Friday only. Well, this is Monday morning, and the first of February, so we get the homicide statistics for the month of January. And an even fifty people didn’t experience much Brotherly Love in the City during what is normally the coldest month of the year.

In last year’s just-barely-missed-the-record, Philadelphia saw 38 homicides in January. Fifty is a 31.58% increase. Fifty in 31 days is a rate of 1.6129 per day, which, if maintained throughout 2021, would mean 589 people killed in the city’s mean streets.

Yet, The Philadelphia Inquirer, the newspaper of record for the city, the metropolitan area, and really the entire Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, didn’t have the first hint of a story about this, at least not as of 11:38 AM EST, when last I opened the newspaper’s website.

Oh, there was plenty on the website’s main page. There was a big story about why the Inquirer was closing comments on its news stories, because “Commenting on Inquirer.com was long ago hijacked by a small group of trolls who traffic in racism, misogyny, and homophobia. This group comprises a tiny fraction of the Inquirer.com audience. But its impact is disproportionate and enduring.”

How can they be sure that these views do not represent more than a “tiny fraction” of their audience? Have they really done the research, or is it because the #woke in the newsroom, who got Executive Editor and Senior Vice President Stan Wischnowski fired to resign because he wrote an attention grabbing headline, but one of which the left wholly disapproved, didn’t like the idea that the riff-raff could express their opinions?

The Inquirer could post an OpEd piece by Patrick J Egan strongly in opposition to capital punishment,[2]Yes, I, too, am opposed to capital punishment, though not for the same reasons. The author claims that executions could resume once Governor Tom Wolf (D-PA) is out of office, and a capital punishment … Continue reading but make no mention of the one crime, murder, that can result in capital punishment, even as it has surged to record levels?

How could fifty homicides, occurring at a higher rate than during the previous year be so blithely ignored, be not considered newsworthy?

Oh, wait, I know! You have to have actual journalists on the staff to practice journalism. No wonder I’ve seen it called The Philadelphia Enquirer!

References

References
↑1 The statistics are updated Monday through Friday only.
↑2 Yes, I, too, am opposed to capital punishment, though not for the same reasons. The author claims that executions could resume once Governor Tom Wolf (D-PA) is out of office, and a capital punishment proponent is in office, while ignoring the fact that the previous Governor, Tom Corbett, a Republican, signed 47 separate death warrants during his four years in office, yet not one execution actually occurred.
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The New York Times and The Washington Post want to censor other people’s #FreedomOfSpeech WaPo OpEd piece argues that the Sedition Act of 1798 was a good idea

From 1984, Chapter 2:

Thoughtcrime does not entail death: thoughtcrime IS death.

Now he had recognized himself as a dead man it became important to stay alive as long as possible. Two fingers of his right hand were inkstained. It was exactly the kind of detail that might betray you. Some nosing zealot in the Ministry (a woman, probably: someone like the little sandy-haired woman or the dark-haired girl from the Fiction Department) might start wondering why he had been writing during the lunch interval, why he had used an oldfashioned pen, what he had been writing — and then drop a hint in the appropriate quarter. He went to the bathroom and carefully scrubbed the ink away with the gritty dark-brown soap which rasped your skin like sandpaper and was therefore well adapted for this purpose.

Winston Smith knew that all evidence of incorrect thought needed to be erased, yet he couldn’t help from keeping his diary. Mr Smith had found the beautifully-paged blank book in the window of “a frowsy little junk-shop in a slummy quarter of the town,” the type of shop that Party members were not supposed to frequent, and just buying the thing had been a violation of discipline. George Orwell didn’t really imagine computers or word-processors or the horrors, horrors! of widespread self-publication on the internet, where anybody, anybody! could read things.

From the Editorial Page of The Wall Street Journal:

Speech and Sedition in 2021

The progressive press decides that dissenters should be suppressed.

By The Editorial Board | January 29, 2021 | 7:21 PM EST

Most Americans learn in school about flagship political excesses in U.S. history like Joe McCarthy’s 1950s inquisitions, the post-World War I Red Scare and the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798. Yet a recent Washington Post opinion piece purports to explain “what the 1798 Sedition Act got right.”

The law banned a wide range of political speech and publication. It was passed by the ruling Federalists to suppress the rival Democratic-Republicans, whom they saw as seditious. The Post piece argues that though their solution was “flawed,” the Federalists had reason to worry about “unregulated freedom of the press.”

The author of the referenced Washington Post OpEd piece is Katlyn Marie Carter, an assistant professor of history at the University of Notre Dame and currently a fellow at the Notre Dame Institute for Advanced Study. She is writing a book entitled “Houses of Glass: Secrecy, Transparency, and the Birth of Representative Democracy.” She argued:

Citing the problem of misinformation in 1801, Rep. John Rutledge Jr. (S.C.) did not mince words in identifying falsehood as a particular threat to democracy. “In a Republican Government, where public opinion rules everything, it is all-important that truth should be the basis of public information,” he asserted. If public opinion was ill formed — poisoned by lies, deception, misrepresentations or mistakes — the consequences could be dire. “Government, which is the preservative of the general happiness and safety, cannot be secure if falsehood and malice are suffered to rob it of the confidence and affection of the people.”

Rutledge’s words sound like a premonition. Democracies are uniquely dependent on public opinion and trust, which makes the truth crucial to their function — and early Americans knew it.

While the communications world in 1801 was a far cry from the world of smartphones and social media, the two shared a key similarity. When the Internet debuted, it prompted significant optimism that the ease of access to information would promote knowledge. Similarly, early Americans had faith that a newly expanded print media would spread enlightenment. But like today, this initial hope soon gave way to concern. By the late 1790s many concluded that the truth was actually endangered by unregulated freedom of the press; they believed the only way to secure the republic was to punish people for spreading lies. Otherwise, falsehood would poison public opinion and people’s trust in their elected officials would be unduly eroded.

Rutledge’s warning came as he argued for renewal of the Sedition Act of 1798, which among other things, criminalized “false, scandalous and malicious writing or writings against the government of the United States, or either house of the Congress of the United States, or the President of the United States, with intent to defame the said government, or either house of the said Congress, or the said President, or to bring them, or either of them, into contempt or disrepute.”

Who, I wonder, did Dr Carter believe would determine what was true and what was not? We noted earlier that the (purportedly) private publisher Twitter has, in effect, determined that transgenderism, the idea that people can change their sex through a combination of drug therapy and surgical procedures, is the truth, and speech arguing differently must be prohibited. The New York Times gave OpEd space to Andrew Marantz to claim that Free Speech is Killing Us, and Chad Malloy[1]Chad Malloy is a male who claims to be female, using the name Parker Marie Malloy. The First Street Journal’s Stylebook notes that we always refer to the ‘transgendered’ by their birth names … Continue reading to state that Twitter’s restrictions on ‘deadnaming’ and ‘misgendering’ actually promote the freedom of speech. One side of the argument is simply to be suppressed, or, as Mr Orwell put it, “Ignorance is Strength.”

Twitter and Facebook and Joe Biden have all determined that the matter is settled, and therefore statements to the contrary are simply falsehoods, and ought to be suppressed. So far, so far! the government under President Biden hasn’t acted to declare such speech seditious, but private social media sites, which have near monopolistic publication control, apparently have.

Of course, President Biden has only been in office for eleven days now, so give it time; he just might try to use the power of government to shut people up.

The Journal continued to note articles by Thomas Friedman and Nicholas Kristof of The New York Times calling for advertiser boycotts of Fox News, as did Margaret Sullivan of The Washington Post. So much for “All the News That’s Fit to Print.” So much for “Democracy Dies in Darkness.”  Apparently these august credentialed media sources believe that Freedom of the Press means only their Freedom of the Press, 

I’ve reached the point where I’ve quoted too much from the Journal, and there is much more at the original. But just one more paragraph:

Much of American journalism, which was supposed to revert to its historic role as a check on those in power after Donald Trump left town, is now devoted to shutting down the commercial lifeline of other media. Think of the precedent for the next populist Republican President who might declare pro-choice publications “deadly.”

Of course, the last populist Republican President did not do that; the worry is that the current pro-abortion Democratic President might declare pro-life publications “deadly.”

That would include this publication!

The next step? Look for the left to start pressuring site hosting services to stop hosting sites like The Pirate’s Cove and The Other McCain and Le*gal In*sur*rec*tion and RedState because those sites don’t agree with what is apparently the Accepted Wisdom concerning transgenderism, and that’s simply unacceptable to the left. Because Parler used Amazon as its site hosting service, Jeff Bezos, owner of the “Democracy Dies in Darkness” Washington Post was able to lights out the service.[2]Note that I had a Parler account. Parler was a free speech site, but, sadly, its software and presentation were poor.

The Pirate’s Cove uses the blog tagline, “If we don’t believe in freedom of expression for people we despise, we don’t believe in it at all,” while The Other McCain has, “‘One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up.’ — Arthur Koestler”. The left and the credentialed media want us to do the latter, just shut up.

I’ve never been very good at shutting up.

References

References
↑1 Chad Malloy is a male who claims to be female, using the name Parker Marie Malloy. The First Street Journal’s Stylebook notes that we always refer to the ‘transgendered’ by their birth names and biological sex.
↑2 Note that I had a Parler account. Parler was a free speech site, but, sadly, its software and presentation were poor.
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The Biden Administration has no idea what poverty is like Warning: a nasty story is included

The Washington Post and Fox Business both had stories about the confirmation hearings of former mayor Pete Buttigieg (D-South Bend) to become Secretary of Transportation. Fox Business noted that Mr Buttigieg acknowledges Keystone Pipeline workers, thrown out of jobs due to President Biden’s cancellation of the border crossing permit into Canada, may need to get ‘different’ union jobs, while the Post omitted that part.

Republican Sens. Dan Sullivan (Ala.) and Ted Cruz (Texas) challenged Buttigieg over an order Biden signed Wednesday halting construction of the Keystone XL oil pipeline. The project’s supporters say the order will cost thousands of jobs.

Buttigieg said the administration’s climate agenda ultimately will create jobs and stressed the importance of curbing the use of fossil fuels.

Note what Mr Buttigieg said, that the administration’s climate agenda ultimately will create jobs. Meaning, in a time of high unemployment, those to be created jobs don’t exist yet! Perhaps some of those Keystone XL Pipeline workers will get some of those newly created jobs, but what do they do between today and then?

Oops! For the left, that doesn’t really matter, does it? Mr Buttigieg never got his manicured hands dirty trying to weld two sections of pipeline together, or excavating material in the pipeline’s path. The sheltered son of University of Notre Dame professors, he never had to worry whether there’d be food on the table or a roof over his head.

This is the problem for the left elites: they claim to be all for the poor and the working class, but they have no concept about how the poor and the working class actually live. It’s nothing for Democratic Governors to issue shutdown orders that throw millions of people out of work, because they have no idea what missing even one paycheck can mean for people.

The Federal Reserve noted, in May of 2019 — before the economic dislocations caused by COVID-19 — that 61% of Americans could cover an unexpected, $400 emergency through cash, savings or a credit card that they could pay off at the next billing date. And that means that 39% could not cover such an expense.

And how would that 39% take care of that bill? Borrowing, selling something, or putting off paying something else. But Mr Buttigieg apparently thinks nothing of throwing those unionized workers out of a job; they’ll just have to get ‘different’ union jobs.

If they exist, that is.

I grew up poor, and while not quite as badly off as some other folks in eastern Kentucky, things were tight.

I’m going to tell you a story, a kind of nasty story, but a true one nevertheless. Sometime when I was in high school, the water pipe in the basement froze, and burst. My mother — my father was long gone — did not have the money to afford a plumber to repair it. In high school at the time, I was able to figure out how to shut the water off in the basement where it came out of the foundation wall, but repairing the burst pipe was beyond my knowledge.

We went without running water for at least two months! My mother worked hard, every day, my long-gone father hadn’t contributed a dime in years, and she just didn’t have the money to get it repaired. Our house was in town, so there was no outhouse. I don’t know how my mother and sisters took care of things — as a teenaged boy, I really didn’t want to know — but with no working toilet, when I had to urinate, I pissed out the attic window.

It wasn’t too bad: my bedroom was in the (barely heated) attic, and there were no houses across the street, because there was a ravine there, so I was able to just open the dormer window and let fly. The roof extended under that dormer window, and the urine went into the gutter.

Of course, urine isn’t the only bodily waste. “Number two”? That was at school, or anyplace else I could find on the weekends.

Bathing? Showers in the school gym locker room.

Yeah, that’s a nasty story, but that was my mother’s unexpected $400 expense, backdated fifty years. But that’s an experience which taught me what it was really like to be poor, and we weren’t the poorest people around.

Joe Biden knows nothing about this, Pete Buttigieg knows nothing about this, nobody in the whole damned Biden Administration has any flaming idea what poor people go through, and they are willing to keep adding on and keep adding on and keep adding on more ‘little’ expenses and more ‘sacrifices’ for the good of all.

We’re not poor now, thanks to a lifetime of hard work, but even at my advanced age, my memory is still good, and clear. Mao Zedong once sent the urban elites in China out into the fields, so learn how the peasants lived, and while I would never advocate that kind of totalitarian action, but at least those elites learned — if they survived it — how the other 90% lived. It would be nice if someone in the Biden Administration had some experience, some concept of what the President’s policies will do to people in this country.

Right now, it doesn’t seem as though they give a damn.