Tag Archives: #MediaBias

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Why was ‘Peanut’ out on the streets in the first place?

My good friend — OK, OK, I’ve never met him in person, but with the internet, I have a lot of good friends I’ve never physically met! — Robert Stacy McCain, in his continuing series Crazy People Are Dangerous, tells us about the suicide-by-cop of Ryant ‘Peanut’ Bluford of San Francisco.

The police video of the shooting was released Friday, showing that Bluford had a pistol in his waistband, which he later aimed at police before he was shot. Despite all this, however, some people continued to ask why police couldn’t “de-escalate” the situation. The obvious answer is that Ryant Bluford didn’t want it to be “de-escalated.” Ryant Bluford was crazy and wanted to die in the proverbial hail of police gunfire.

The police have yet to confirm whether Mr Bluford actually fired a shot at the police, though Mission Local reported:

Bluford’s friends and family also said he had a gun, and fired once at the officers; they pointed on Thursday to a chalk circle on the street, where they said the casing from Bluford’s bullet had landed.

In reality, it doesn’t matter: you aim a gun at the police, and they do not have to, nor should they have to, hold their fire until first fired upon.

Mr McCain’s theme is that Mr Bluford was crazy, which he was, but that’s not the part of the story I find most important:

Bayview neighbors lament police shooting death of Ryant ‘Peanut’ Bluford

Friends, family say slain man feared, detested police after more than decade behind bars

by Gilare Zada, Griffin Jones, and Joe Rivano Barros | Thursday, July 27, 2023

Peanut, before getting shelled. Photo via R S McCain.

The Bayview man shot and killed yesterday afternoon by San Francisco police officers, 41-year-old Ryant Bluford of San Francisco, was known as “Peanut” to friends and family. They recalled him as a loving father, brother, cousin and friend — while acknowledging the violent crime in his past.Neighbors interviewed Wednesday night and Thursday morning said Bluford struggled with mental illness and had a disdain for the police, the result of more than a decade spent in prison for various serious offenses.

Bluford was convicted in the 2006 gang rape of a 16-year-old girl in San Francisco, and spent more than a decade in prison as a result. He was again charged, in 2022, for domestic violence and sexual assault.

Oh, Heaven forfend! Mr Bluford “has a disdain for the police,” he “feared (and) detested police,” because he was locked up for the gang rape of a 16-year-old girl? Apparently the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, the mission of which is, “building what will become the “California Model” – building safer communities through rehabilitation, education, restorative justice and reentry,” didn’t do much correcting or “rehabilitation, education, restorative justice and reentry” when it came to Mr Bluford. After spending “more than a decade” of a 14-year sentence behind bars for the 2006 gang rape, Mr Bluford was later accused with domestic violence and sexual assault. That means at least one more person was assaulted and raped by a man who was supposed to be corrected and rehabilitated for the same crime.

The details of the gang rape, and the fact that Mr Bluford orally, vaginally, and anally raped the victim, identified only by her initials, can be found here. Mr Bluford and his codefendants were sentenced to just 14 years in a plea deal. And that makes me wonder: why were Ryant Bluford, Eddie Perkins, Vincent Timmons, and Allen Releford offered a 14-year sentence, rather than taking this to trial and getting them locked up for the rest of their miserable lives. The plea deal was:

one count each of forcible kidnapping (count 1; Pen. Code, § 207, subd. (a)) with an admitted gang enhancement (§ 186.22, subd. (b)(1)(c)), and aggravated assault (count 12; § 245, subd. (a)(1)), for fixed aggregate prison terms of 14 years.

The dropped charges were:

forcible rape in concert (count 2; §§ 261, 264.1), forcible vaginal insertion of a gun in concert (count 3; §§ 289, 264.1), forcible anal and vaginal insertions of a bottle in concert (counts 4-5; §§ 264.1, 289), forcible oral copulation in concert (count 6; §§ 264.1, 288a, subd. (d)(1)), forcible sodomy in concert (count 7; § 286, subd. (d)), gang participation (count 8; § 186.22, subd. (a)), carrying a concealed gun in a vehicle (count 9; § 12025, subd. (a)(1)), firearm identity tampering (count 10; § 12090), and possessing cocaine base for sale (count 11; Health & Saf. Code, § 11351.5). Most dismissed counts carried multiple enhancements ranging from handgun arming and use, increased risk from moving a kidnap victim, to gang furtherance. An amendment of count 1 to forcible kidnapping (§ 207, subd. (a)) from kidnapping in concert for purposes of rape eliminated sentence exposure to a life term (§ 209, subd. (b)(1)).

One thing we do not know is how willing the victim was to testifying against Messrs Bluford, Perkins, Timmons, and Releford. It has to be conceded that the plea bargain might have been reached to keep the victim from having to testify to such a traumatic assault. But the notion that Mr Bluford was ever let out of prison is repugnant; the gang rape of a 16-year-old, of anyone, should result in life in prison without the possibility of parole!

Back to Mission Local:

Neighbors described the shooting as a tragedy.

“He had four kids and a wife, two were twins. He did the best he could,” said a friend of Bluford’s, who gave his name as Tyke, saying Bluford’s mental health worsened after time in prison. “He was in the pen for 12 years; he had some mental issues from that.”

I don’t know about you, but, to me, the tragedy is that Mr Bluford got out two years early.

At the Bayview intersection, Bluford’s family lit candles. They described Peanut as a man who had been through the wringer, and criminal records show past convictions for rape and other violent crimes.

When 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 start using the subject’s nickname in an article, in other than a direct quote, you know that they are trying to raise sympathy for him!

He had a fearful association with police, neighbors said, one borne from a lifetime of negative experiences dealing with law enforcement: According to criminal records, Bluford was charged with kidnapping, rape, assault with a deadly weapon, and various other crimes in 2006; he was incarcerated in 2008, according to criminal records, and friends and family said he spent more than a decade in prison.

Then in 2022, he was charged again, with domestic violence, sexual assault, and criminal threats. It was not immediately clear if he was convicted and imprisoned for these alleged crimes.

“You have to think about the kind of trauma someone has experienced with the police,” said one neighbor, who asked to remain anonymous. “He looked done, driven to suicide by cop.”

Oh, so Mr Bluford experienced “trauma” because of the police? Some people might be more concerned with the trauma the girl he and three other thugs raped suffered.

“He had a lot of mental health issues,” said another anonymous neighbor. “He had a family. He loved his kids. A lot of people around here have mental issues.”

As Mr McCain pointed out, Joe Biden got 85.26% of the vote in San Francisco, so yeah, a lot of people there must have mental health issues! 🙂

That neighbor, for her part, wished there had been a non-violent response initially to de-escalate the situation — or at least a less-lethal one.

“It’s like there’s no logic. They don’t ask what’s going on, they don’t even think to just ask. They need more training with people with mental health issues,” she said. “When it comes to African Americans, they use force and think later. Even if they felt he was a threat, they could have Tased him or shot him in the leg.”

Well of course the locals were upset that Mr Bluford was sent to his eternal reward. But at least Mission Local added important information:

San Francisco police, however, do not carry Tasers. And are not trained to shoot-to-wound.

Shooting someone is the use of deadly force, and if you are legally justified in shooting someone, you are legally justified in killing him. Shooting to wound is neither legally required nor very smart.

Naturally, the news source had to throw in a racial angle:

Since 2000, 19 of the 61 people shot and killed by SFPD were Black — 31 percent; 18 of them were Black men. That rate is disproportionate to the city’s population: Black people make up about five percent of San Francisco.

The odd notion that perhaps, just perhaps, black men males might engage in activities, activities such as Mr Bluford aiming at and apparently firing upon the police, which get them shot at a greater percentage of the time seems not to have entered the minds of the reporters.

At some point, people have to drop their sympathy for criminals. Who knows, perhaps the bad guys can eventually mentally reform, but that doesn’t mean that they shouldn’t be treated responsibly for the criminal acts that they have committed.

Releasing Mr Bluford, which seems to have occurred in 2020, which would have put it in the same timeline with the releases of prisoners due to COVID-19, was the release of a violent criminal, and it was one which led him to be able to be charged with a subsequent sexual assault crime. Someone else, at least one someone, became Mr Bluford’s victim at a time when he could have been still behind bars.

I’ll put it bluntly: releasing violent criminals early, releasing them even one day before the maximum time that they can be kept locked up legally, increases the danger to the community.
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Also posted on American Free News Network. Check out American Free News Network for more well written and well reasoned conservative commentary.

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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Killadelphia: Another story I didn’t find in The Philadelphia Inquirer How can a newspaper be called a newspaper when it doesn't report the news?

Yes, I’m paying good money to subscribe to The Philadelphia Inquirer, $5.49 per week, or $285.48 a year, so you’d think that that august journal, our nation’s third-oldest surviving daily newspaper, the winner of 20 Pulitzer Prizes, would do something really, really radical like report the news!

Well, I didn’t find this story in the Inquirer, but due to a tweet from Fox 29 News

Man charged in deadly ambush shooting of mother near crowded Philadelphia park, police say

Published July 27, 2023 11:00AM |Updated 12:04PM | Crime & Public Safety | FOX 29 Philadelphia

Alexander Grady, photo via Fox 29 News.

PHILADELPHIA – Homicide detectives have made an arrest in the deadly shooting of a local mother gunned down in a parked car in Philadelphia earlier this week, police say.

Note the date of the Fox 29 News article: it was initially reported at 11:00 AM on Thursday. That means that the Inquirer has had plenty of time to write its own story. But, as of 9:29 AM EDT on Friday, July 28th, there is absolutely nothing on this on either the Inky’s website main page or specific crime page.

Tina Arroyo, 32, was gunned down on Monday evening while sitting in the driver’s seat of a Honda Civic parked on the 500 block of East Louden Street, according to police.

“She pulled up on this scene and within moments another vehicle pulls up and shoots her,” Sgt. Eric Gripp said. “How quickly it happened and the callousness of all of it is deeply troubling.”

The shooting took place across the street from a crowded park, officials say.

On Thursday, police announced the arrest of 26-year-old Alexander Grady.

Grady has been charged with murder, criminal conspiracy, VUFA and related charges.

How can the newspaper be called a newspaper when it doesn’t report the news?

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I point at the moon; they stare at my finger How The Washington Post misdirects your attention on an important subject

It’s always amusing when today’s left try to minimize an important point, brought up by conservatives, one with which they cannot disagree, but also one with which they don’t want conservatives to gain any credit. Kathleen Parker Cleveland[1]Though the columnist is married to Sherwood M. “Woody” Cleveland, she hasn’t shown him enough respect to have taken his name. While she may not have shown him such respect, The … Continue reading, of The Washington Post, knows that no decent person can support child sexual abuse and trafficking, but, gosh darn it, the movie Sound of Freedom just has too many supporters on the wrong side of the political divide.

‘Sound of Freedom’ puts the adrenaline hormone to work

By Kathleen Parker, Columnist | Friday, July 21, 2023 | 6:12 PM EDT

Leave it to gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson to drop an obscure theory about oxidized adrenaline’s alleged psychedelic properties that, 52 years later, is being connected by QAnon conspiracists to a blockbuster movie about child sex trafficking. Deep breath.

Thompson, who died in 2005 and arranged for his ashes to be shot into the sky from a tower at his Colorado home, doubtless would delight in these developments, which even his fertile, drug-enhanced imagination could not have foreseen. That said, based on my decades-ago reading of his 1971 masterpiece, “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas,” he was surprised by nothing, especially regarding the human capacity for self-delusion and mass confusion.

So, we are told, in the first two paragraphs, that Hunter Thompson, a self-described gonzo journalist, who abused alcohol and narcotics, would have loved this stuff, two paragraphs which introduce a subject on which Mrs Cleveland somehow believed she had to write, but on which she wanted her readers to have something of a jaundiced eye.

The breakout indie movie “Sound of Freedom” is itself a curiosity. A low-budget film made five years ago, it sat on a shelf until it was recently picked up by Angel Studios. Since its release on July 4, this tale of child sex trafficking starring Jim Caviezel, who played Jesus in “The Passion of the Christ,” has earned $100 million. Its crowdfunded popularity is based in part on a unique marketing campaign and on its embrace by QAnon and high-profile conspiracy theorists, including Stephen K. Bannon and former president Donald Trump.

Did you spot it? By mentioning that lead actor, Jim Caviezel, had played Jesus in The Passion of the Christ, Mrs Cleveland lets non-Christian readers that hey, the lead actor is a right-wing Christianist nutball, so make of that what you will. Add to that QAnon, Steve Bannon, and, horrors!, Donald Trump.

At this point, the online version of the story has an ad, followed by a paragraph telling us about QAnon:

QAnon, a virtual “organization” with an extremist ideology led by the anonymous “Q” (purportedly a government agent who shares “scoops” for credulous followers), has advanced the idea that Hollywood and political elites traffic children so they can consume the children’s blood along with adrenochrome (oxidized adrenaline) for its “anti-aging properties.” Check.

Then a blurb for checking the rest of Mrs Cleveland’s columns, two more paragraphs telling us how nutsy QAnon is, including noting that Mr Caviezel has spoken before QAnon audiences, and yet another ad, before the author gets down to actually discussing the film, and noting that child sex trafficking was a huge business.

Even at that point, Mrs Cleveland starts telling us that the villains have been “extreme(ly) typecast” to “the point of caricature.” Yes, they’re really bad guys, but the author is telling us, in her own way, that they are like Snidely Whiplash, tying Sweet Nell to the railroad tracks, awaiting only Dudley DoRight to ride in to her rescue.

At that point, she went ahead and painted us a word picture of the audience, in terms which would not really appeal to most Washington Post readers:

It’s a hard movie to watch and is not for children. In the North Carolina cineplex where I saw it — midday and midweek — the audience was decidedly gray-haired. This might be generally true of the time slot, but most also seemed like folks who might own a MAGA hat, if I may indulge in a bit of typecasting of my own. I decided against interviewing any of my fellow moviegoers as I had intended. As they slowly left the theater, their drawn faces and hollow eyes told me this was not the time. I felt the same way.

“(F)olks who might own a MAGA hat,” huh? Has there ever been a paragraph more obviously aimed at telling liberals, “Don’t see this movie!”?

Mrs Cleveland does tell us that the movie has an important message, but she spent seven out of twelve paragraphs telling us how horrid the people who produced and supported the movie are.

More, as Farhad Manjoo noted on Slate, most online readers don’t make it much past the 50% point of an article on which they’ve clicked . . . and the 50% mark in Mrs Cleveland’s column, as measured by the first six paragraphs — and really, into the seventh — out of twelve, are all about QAnon and the horrible people who are involved in the movie.

Mrs Cleveland almost certainly knew that most people wouldn’t finish her column; students will be taught that in journalism school, and it’s simply common knowledge in newsrooms. Yet she frontloaded it with the stuff about QAnon, and that’s also something taught in journalism school: get the most important parts at the beginning, “above the fold,” in newspaper speak, so that readers who do not finish will get the most important parts read. And what she apparently wanted, to judge from her structure, most readers to see is QAnon, QAnon, QAnon . . . with a bit of Donald Trump and Steve Bannon thrown in for good measure.

Child sexual abuse and sex trafficking are important, horrible things, and even the left cannot deny that, but unless I assume that the columnist was completely ignorant of article structure in a journalistic setting, all I can conclude is that she understood that it was an important movie, but she really didn’t want readers to see it. Conservatives, horribly enough, just might be right when they focus on child sex trafficking, and we just can’t have that!

References

References
↑1 Though the columnist is married to Sherwood M. “Woody” Cleveland, she hasn’t shown him enough respect to have taken his name. While she may not have shown him such respect, The First Street Journal does not similarly show such disrespect.
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The Philadelphia Inquirer tells us all about Barbie and gluten-free meals at the shore. Criminals on the streets? Not so much.

Rasheed Banks, Jr, via WVPI-TV.

The Philadelphia Inquirer was more than willing to tell readers about how heroic Michael Salerno intervened to try to stop a carjacking, and was killed for his efforts:

Police identify man killed in South Philly trying to stop a carjacking

Michael Salerno was trying to prevent three young men from stealing his car while a woman was still inside, police said.

by Rob Tornoe | Thursday, July 13, 2023 | 2:22 PM EDT

A Philadelphia man is dead after police say he tried to stop three young men from stealing his car Wednesday night.

Police said the victim, identified as Michael Salerno, 50, was attempting to prevent his car from being carjacked around 10:45 p.m. in South Philadelphia. A woman was in the car, but officials declined to identify her, citing the ongoing investigation.

“Preliminary information appears that the motive for this homicide began with a carjacking of a female, and when the owner intervened, he was shot and killed,” Philadelphia Police Chief Inspector Scott Small told reporters Wednesday night.

Also see: Robert Stacy McCain: Death in Killadelphia

The episode occurred on Porter Street near South 12th Street. Salerno had just arrived at the location but wasn’t in the car when the attempted carjacking occurred, according to police, who declined to say whether it was near his home.

There’s more at the original, but at the time, all that we were told was that the suspects were to be three “young men, appearing to be between the ages of 15 and early 20s, dressed in dark clothing.”

WPVI-TV, known locally as Channel 6, the ABC owned-and-operated station in Philadelphia, had more on Friday, as the Philadelphia Police Department identified one of the suspects, 15-year-old Rasheed Banks, Jr., and published his photograph. Young Mr Banks is still on the loose as I write this, but if WPVI is trying to help, showing Philadelphians for whom to be on the lookout, as of 9:12 PM, The Philadelphia Inquirer has nothing about this.

Then there was this from Fox 29 News. The Philadelphia Police Department released surveillance photos of the suspects in the shootings on which we have previously reported. The editors of the Inquirer were naturally horrified at the fact an 11-year-old girl, almost certainly simply an innocent struck by a stray bullet — out of around 30 fired in what may have been a gunfight between gangs — but, when the Police released photos of the suspects, in the hopes that someone would recognize them and give information to the police, the Inquirer has chosen not to publish either the story or the photos of the suspects.

Given that two of the suspects are shown wearing hooded sweatshirts, with the hoods pulled up, on a Philadelphia evening where it was above 70º F, it would seem obvious that this wasn’t a snap decision, but gang members, oops, sorry, ‘street group’ members out with intentions that were less than kindly.

That the Inquirer chose not to inform its readers, readers who are paying for the privilege[1]My unlimited digital subscription: $5.49/week, billed every 4 weeks; that’s $285.48 a year. of reading our nation’s third oldest continuously published newspaper, because publisher Elizabeth Hughes forthrightly told us that the newspaper would censor the news if it was too politically incorrect.

Not that the Inquirer didn’t give us important news!

But warning readers about killers and gang bangers still on the city’s streets, and perhaps, just perhaps, getting them picked up a bit earlier? Nope, not the Inky!

References

References
↑1 My unlimited digital subscription: $5.49/week, billed every 4 weeks; that’s $285.48 a year.
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CNN correspondent in trouble for telling the truth Sometimes CNN makes about as much sense as a tampon dispenser in the men's room.

My good blogging friend Robert Stacy McCain likes to note how the once-renowned Cable News Network, CNN, has fallen in the ratings, not just third behind Fox News Channel and MSNBC, but gets fewer viewers than Nickelodeon’s kiddie cartoon Paw Patrol.

Fox News is unapologetically conservative, and MSNBC makes no bones about being leftist. CNN is leftist as well, though the network tries to deny it, and recently fired CEO Chris Licht, who was at least trying to get the network to report less bias and more news.

Well, in today’s more amusing news, a CNN correspondent, Ryan Young, is being criticized for doing something really radical, telling the truth!

CNN under fire for misgendering Dylan Mulvaney: ‘Unbelievably bad’

By Lee Brown | Wednesday, July 12, 2023 | 9:21 AM EDT | Updated: 4:14 PM EDT

CNN is under fire for misgendering Dylan Mulvaney as “he” and “him” in a segment about the “culture war” being waged over the transgender influencer’s partnership with Bud Light.

Correspondent Ryan Young failed to use the 26-year-old influencer’s preferred pronouns in a short segment about the backlash against the beer giant that has led to plummeting sales.

Young also mispronounced Mulvaney’s first name as “Dylvan” while describing the social media star to “CNN News Central” viewers Tuesday.

“He, of course, is the transgender person they were going to sponsor and go along with, with Bud Light,” Young said, using “he” instead of Mulvaney’s preferred “she.”

“But [trans activists] didn’t like how Bud Light didn’t stand by him after all this,” Young said, again failing to use the influencer’s preferred “they.”

Well, that’s a mistake: is Mr Mulvaney’s preferred pronoun “she,” the feminine singular, of “they,” the genderless plural?

Media Matters critic Ari Drennen shared footage of the less-than-2-minute clip, ripping it as an “unbelievably bad CNN segment.”

That Media Matters would see using the correct pronouns to refer to Mr Mulvaney as “unbelievably bad” is unsurprising. Naturally, CNN apologized for having a correspondent tell the truth:

CNN eventually apologized at the end of Wednesday’s episode of “News Central.”

Referring to Mulvaney, Bolduan said: “She was mistakenly referred to by the wrong pronoun, and CNN aims to honor individuals’ ways of identifying themselves and we apologize for that error.”

When Mr McCain noted that CNN was coming in behind Nickelodeon’s Paw Patrol, he neglected to mention that Paw Patrol, and really all of the children’s network’s programming, is more accurate and truthful than CNN. Mr McCain has said that he watches CNN so that his readers don’t have to, which is a fair amount of self-sacrifice. Sometimes CNN makes about as much sense as a tampon dispenser in the men’s room.

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Killadelphia: What the Philly media won’t tell us

With the Kingsessing mass shooting being a Philadelphia story, it’s unsurprising that The Philadelphia Inquirer would have several follow-up stories on it.

As soon as the name of Kimbrady Carriker was released, his social media were investigated, and photos of Mr Carriker in female dress led to immediate speculation that he was, like Audrey Hale in Nashville, yet another transgender killer. Well, that led to Philly officials quickly denying it:

While he acknowledged the social media images that appear to show Carriker wearing women’s clothing and jewelry, Asa Khalif, a member of the LGBTQ advisory committee for the Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office, condemned the “violent” language coming from the “conservative press” about Carriker’s gender identity and shared what the district attorney’s office knows firsthand about Carriker’s gender identity.

“Appear to show”? No, there’s no “appear to show” here, but actually show. Why would Mr Khalif, who supports the homosexual and transgender community, and must surely not be offended by, or see anything wrong, with cross-dressing, want to mealy-mouth things?

“The suspect has not identified themselves as trans. They have only identified themselves as male,” Khalif said at Wednesday’s news conference. “But the language spewed out by the conservative press is violent and is dangerous, and it’s targeting trans women of color. It’s rallying the community to be violent, and we’re better than that.”

I saw a video of Mr Khalif’s statement, and while he stated that Mr Carriker had not identified as transgender or anything other than male, I also noticed that he went out of his way to use “they/them” pronouns to refer to the suspect. Did Mr Carriker express a preference for such to be used? If so, it hasn’t made the credentialed press, but speaking with the District Attorney at his side, he might have been clued in to something the DA’s office knew but hasn’t been made public.

Khalif condemned those who label trans people as “killers.”

“They are the most vulnerable to violence,” he said. “They want to live their lives, and they have every right to do so, and we will not allow conservative bigots to use that type of language to attack trans people.”

District Attorney Larry Krasner expressed similar sentiments.

“There are some people for whom hate is a full-time job,” Krasner said. “And if they can stay away from the facts and talk about nonsense, that’s what they’re going to do.”

Mr Khalif, who tweeted on the Fourth of July, “So when i say Fuck The Police..don’t tell me that’s disrespectful..the violence against black people is beyond disrespectful!”, keeps telling us, through multiple tweets, and retweets that the alleged shooter isn’t transgender. The Philadelphia Inquirer also jumped on that bandwagon:

Conservative media outlets claimed Carriker was transgender based on Facebook photos of him dressed in feminine clothing. However, Carriker is identified as male on public records and district attorney officials said Wednesday that he identifies as male.

I actually avoided making such a claim, writing on Independence Day:

Everybody who pays any attention to Philadelphia news had heard, hours before the Post’s article was time-stamped, that the (alleged) shooter has been identified as Kimbrady Carriker, a 40-year-old black male, and he has a history of posting photos of himself on Facebook in women’s clothing, including earrings, tank tops, and at least one in which the outlines of a bra are showing. It has not been reported that he somehow thinks he’s really a woman, whether he’s just a cross-dresser, or whether he’s just clowning around, but that’s part of what we do know, and have known since well before the Post updated this article, yet the newspaper has kept this information from readers, readers who are paying good money for their subscriptions, because, Heaven forfend!, it isn’t politically correct.

But, you know what I also haven’t seen in the Philly media? You know what Mr Khalif, a member of the LGBTQ advisory committee for District Attorney Larry Krasner, hasn’t yet told us? Mr Carriker’s grandmother said that he was homosexual:

Ms Carriker said her grandson was gay and would sometimes dress in women’s clothing, but had not undergone gender transition surgery or treatment.

She said she made it clear to Carriker that she disapproved of him wearing women’s clothes due to her Christian beliefs.

“I saw him one time in female clothes, and from the expression on my face, from that point on, he never came in female clothes around me because he knew how I felt about it,” she told The Independent.

“He was trying to find himself. He didn’t know where he belonged. I used to talk to him about it, but he didn’t like to converse with me about things like that.”

The Philadelphia media, so quick to tell us some of Mr Carriker’s political views, his support for the Second Amendment, admiration of Tucker Carlson, and hating of President Biden, but soft-peddling his support of #BlackLivesMatter and the riots in many cities in the wake of the unfortunate death during the arrest of the methamphetamine-and-fentanyl-addled convicted felon George Floyd, and telling us that he wasn’t transgendered, never mentioned, at least as far as I could find, that he is homosexual. It took a report from a newspaper in London, England, for us to get that news.

It is not a surprise to anyone who pays attention to the Philly media that they would keep such under wraps.

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The journolism of The Washington Post Why won't the professional media tell the whole truth?

No, I did not misspell journolism in the title of this article. 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, and boy, did The Washington Post demonstrate that today!

I normally use the headlines from articles in newspapers, with the hyperlink embedded in the headline, but today I am using a screen capture of the Post’s article, because I want to document for the reader the time it was published, at 12:28 PM EDT on Tuesday, July 4th, but updated at 7:03 PM. If you cannot see the image clearly enough, just click on it, and it will show up enlarged.

What we know about the mass shooting in Philadelphia

By Kim Bellware, Tamia Fowlkes, Kelsey Ables and María Luisa Paúl | Updated July 4, 2023 at 7:03 p.m. EDT | Published July 4, 2023 at 12:28 p.m. EDT

Five people were killed and two children were wounded in a Monday night mass killing in Philadelphia, authorities say. A man suspected of the shooting has been arrested after firing on victims “seemingly at random,” Police Commissioner Danielle Outlaw said during a Tuesday news conference.

“Let me crystal clear: What happened last night in our Kingsessing neighborhood was unimaginably disgusting and horrifying,” Outlaw said.

Here’s what we know about the shooting in the largely residential area in southwest Philadelphia.

The victims

The five who were killed are all male, Outlaw said Monday.

Police identified them as Daujan Brown, 15; Lashyd Merritt, 20; Dymir Stanton, 29; Joseph Wamah Jr., 31; and Ralph Moralis, 59. Brown’s address was unknown; the other victims all lived close to the scene of the shooting. The two wounded children, ages 2 and 13, were in stable condition late Monday, Outlaw said.

Two people were also injured by broken glass during the shooting, including the twin of the 2-year-old gunshot victim, Philadelphia Police staff inspector Ernest Ransom said Tuesday.

“The suspect fired at a vehicle being operated by a mother who was driving her set of twins home,” Ransom said. “One of the twins suffered a gunshot wound to the leg. Their sibling sustained injuries to the eyes from shattered glass.”

Also see: Robert Stacy McCain: National Media Instantly Sends Philly Mass Shooter Down the Memory Hole

That’s all pretty unremarkable, standard journalism. But here’s where the Post veers off into the weeds:

Who’s the shooter?

Two people were in custody in connection with the shooting, authorities said: a 40-year-old man who is suspected in the killings, and one person who may have fired at the shooter.

The gunman was shooting as police pursued him on foot and was found wearing a bulletproof vest and magazines, police said. He had an AR-style rifle and a handgun, as well as a police scanner, according to Outlaw. Police found about 50 spent shell cases, Outlaw said.

Charges are pending for the 40-year-old man suspected in the killings, police said Tuesday afternoon.

“The suspect, while wearing body armor, a ski mask and holding a AR-15-style assault rifle was observed at several locations near 56th Street near Chester Avenue and Springfield Avenue,” Ransom said. He noted that the suspect began shooting “aimlessly at occupied vehicles and individuals on the street as they walked.”

There’s more at the original.

Everybody who pays any attention to Philadelphia news had heard, hours before the Post’s article was time-stamped, that the (alleged) shooter has been identified as Kimbrady Carriker, a 40-year-old black male, and he has a history of posting photos of himself on Facebook in women’s clothing, including earrings, tank tops, and at least one in which the outlines of a bra are showing. It has not been reported that he somehow thinks he’s really a woman, whether he’s just a cross-dresser, or whether he’s just clowning around, but that’s part of what we do know, and have known since well before the Post updated this article, yet the newspaper has kept this information from readers, readers who are paying good money for their subscriptions, because, Heaven forfend!, it isn’t politically correct.

I’m waiting to find out if Mr Carriker left us a ‘manifesto,’ the way the ‘transgender’ Nashville murderer, Audrey Hale, did, a ‘manifesto’ that the authorities have thus far refused to release, and have managed to keep from being leaked.

At least The New York Times managed to include:

In initial reports, police described the suspect as a 40-year-old male, but authorities later clarified that they were unsure of the suspect’s gender identity and in a news conference on Tuesday used the pronouns “they/them.”

It wasn’t just the Post. The Philadelphia Inquirer, in an article time-stamped “an hour ago” when I opened it at 9:29 PM, said absolutely nothing about Mr Carriker being black, or anything about him being ‘transgender,’ a cross-dresser, or whatever.

The New York Post, our nation’s second-oldest newspaper, one which does not shy away from sensationalism, but one which is also unafraid of publishing the truth regardless of political correctness, did tell us about the alleged shooter.

The professional media love to tell us how special they are, because the First Amendment mentions the press specifically. Of course, the First Amendment is protecting the right to publish, and not somehow glorifying individual publishers, but the people at the Post and the Times and the Inquirer sure don’t like to see it that way. To me, the best way for an individual media company to glorify itself would be to simply tell the truth, and tell us the whole truth.

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The Philadelphia Inquirer: using grammar to avoid telling the whole truth

Writers attempt to communicate with the written word, and decent writers should know at least something about grammar, to ply their trade most efficiently. One important concept in grammar is the difference between the comparative and the superlative.

Comparatives vs. Superlatives

Published October 7, 2019

Not all things are created equal: some are good, others are better, and only the cream of the crop rise to the level of best. These three words—good, better, and best—are examples of the three forms of an adjective or adverb: positive, comparative, and superlative. . . . .

There are a few irregular adjectives and adverbs. For those, you must memorize how these change the spelling of their positive form to show comparative and superlative degrees.

Some common irregular adjectives are good, better, best and bad, worse, worst.

Some have more than one option: little can become littler or less (comparative), and littlest or least (superlative). Many, some, or much become more in the comparative and most in the superlative.

It was this paragraph which caught my attention, in the main editorial in this morning’s Philadelphia Inquirer. Any decent writer understands that he shouldn’t use the same word twice in a sentence if possible, so when the Editorial Board wrote that “too many residents endure,” the following should be “where most, but not all, the shootings occur.” Continue reading →

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In which Leonard Downie says the quiet part out loud The credentialed media have sacrificed objectivity and internalized bias 

Conservatives have been saying, for a long time now, that the credentialed media were quite biased in their reporting, mostly, though not quite entirely, biased in a leftward direction. Yes, this site has focused much of its attention to The Philadelphia Inquirer, but it’s hardly alone; we reported previously how The New York Times found the details about an (alleged) killer not to be news which is fit to print. For the journolists[1]The spelling ‘journolist’ or ‘journolism’ comes from JournoList, an email list of 400 influential and politically liberal journalists, the exposure of which called into question their … Continue reading in the Times’ newsroom, the ones who forced out liberal columnist Bari Weiss because she just wasn’t #woke enough, the fact that a young, black gang member (allegedly) stabbed to death a white PhD candidate in computer science at an Ivy League college just does not fit Teh Narrative. The leftists who decry ‘mass incarceration’ just can’t deal with the fact that Vincent Pinkney should not have been able to stab Davide Giri, because he should have still been behind bars on that Thursday night, and that it took the London Daily Mail to tell people the truth.

Well, now a professional journalist has said the quiet part out loud. From The Washington Post:

Newsrooms that move beyond ‘objectivity’ can build trust

By Leonard Downie Jr. | Monday, January 30, 2023 | 7:15 AM EST

Amid all the profound challenges and changes roiling the American news media today, newsrooms are debating whether traditional objectivity should still be the standard for news reporting. “Objectivity” is defined by most dictionaries as expressing or using facts without distortion by personal beliefs, bias, feelings or prejudice. Journalistic objectivity has been generally understood to mean much the same thing.

But increasingly, reporters, editors and media critics argue that the concept of journalistic objectivity is a distortion of reality. They point out that the standard was dictated over decades by male editors in predominantly White newsrooms and reinforced their own view of the world. They believe that pursuing objectivity can lead to false balance or misleading “bothsidesism” in covering stories about race, the treatment of women, LGBTQ+ rights, income inequality, climate change and many other subjects. And, in today’s diversifying newsrooms, they feel it negates many of their own identities, life experiences and cultural contexts, keeping them from pursuing truth in their work.

There’s just so much in that which is wholly wrong that it’s difficult to wrap my head around it. But the most obvious point is that, if a reporters are applying their “identities, life experiences and cultural contexts” to the stories they are covering, it means that readers who have different “identities, life experiences and cultural contexts” are not getting the news in a context they can fully understand or appreciate.

The notion that there is one truth for white men and another for women or blacks or homosexuals is pretty stupid when it comes to reporting just the facts. That’s what the Times did, by covering up the known facts about a suspected killer, deciding that their readership did not need to know that Mr Pinkney could have still been in jail when he (allegedly) slew Mr Giri. Their reasons for that? Well, I can speculate, but I don’t know.

Leonard Downie Jr., the author, a former executive editor of The Washington Post, is a professor at the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication at Arizona State University, so that means he is teaching this stuff to journalism students, trying to make the upcoming generation of reporters as consumed with their biases as what we are already seeing.

Something like this occurred during my early years in the field in the 1960s and ’70s. Under the leadership of a few editors, including especially The Post’s Ben Bradlee, our generation of young journalists moved away from mostly unquestioning news coverage of institutional power. I was one of the editors on The Post’s Watergate story, which spawned widespread national investigative reporting that continues today. Colleagues at The Post, other newspapers and broadcast networks reported skeptically on the unwinnable Vietnam War.

“Report(ing) skeptically” is a good thing, if reporters are trying to ferret out the truth.

Throughout the time, beginning in 1984, when I worked as Bradlee’s managing editor and then, from 1991 to 2008, succeeded him as executive editor, I never understood what “objectivity” meant. I didn’t consider it a standard for our newsroom. My goals for our journalism were instead accuracy, fairness, nonpartisanship, accountability and the pursuit of truth.

Well, the dictionary definition of objectivity Mr Downie gave above would be a good one, and would certainly fit in the five goals he stated.

To better understand the changes happening now, I and former CBS News president Andrew Heyward, a colleague at Arizona State University’s Walter Cronkite School of Journalism, investigated the values and practices in mainstream newsrooms today, with a grant from the Stanton Foundation. What we found has convinced us that truth-seeking news media must move beyond whatever “objectivity” once meant to produce more trustworthy news. We interviewed more than 75 news leaders, journalists and other experts in mainstream print, broadcast and digital news media, many of whom also advocate such a change. This appears to be the beginning of another generational shift in American journalism.

Among the news leaders who told Heyward and me that they had rejected objectivity as a coverage standard was Kathleen Carroll, former executive editor of the Associated Press. “It’s objective by whose standard?” she asked. “That standard seems to be White, educated, fairly wealthy. … And when people don’t feel like they find themselves in news coverage, it’s because they don’t fit that definition.

If objectivity is defined as “as expressing or using facts without distortion by personal beliefs, bias, feelings or prejudice,” I have to ask: if the media are moving toward reporting filtered through concerns about:

upheaval over discrimination against and abuse of women; persistent racism and white nationalism; police brutality and killings; the treatment of LGBTQ+ people; income inequality and social problems; immigration and the treatment of immigrants; the causes and effects of climate change; voting rights and election inequality; and even the very survival of our democracy

isn’t that the very definition of “distortion by personal beliefs, bias, feelings or prejudice”? Two plus two will always equal four, regardless of the race, color, ethnicity or sexual orientation of the observer.

We have noted many times before how the credentialed media have simply accepted the notion that a ‘transgender’ person can change his sex, referring to such people as Richard Levine and Will Thomas as Rachel Levine and Lia Thomas, completely uncritically, and without any reference to their claims that they have ‘transitioned’ to the other gender unless that is a part of the story itself. I get that many people, though I suspect fewer people than the left believe, accept Dr Levine’s and Mr Thomas’ claims that they are really women, but in referring to these people solely by their assumed names and the pronouns appropriate for the opposite sex, have the media not taken one position in the debate over whether the transgendered really have been able to change their sex?

The American left are aghast that Elon Musk’s somewhat delayed purchase of Twitter has meant that conservatives would be able to actually speak freely. As we have previously noted, Twitter added rules banning “targeted misgendering or deadnaming of transgender individuals.” “Misgendering” means referring to ‘transgendered’ individuals by their biological sex, either directly or through the use of the appropriate pronouns, while “deadnaming” means referring to such people by their birth names rather than the ones they have adopted which are more consistent with their imagined ‘gender.'[2]The First Street Journal’s Stylebook is exactly the opposite: while we do not change the direct quotes of others, in original material we always refer to people by their normal, biological sex … Continue reading The New York Times gave OpEd space to Chad Malloy[3]Chad Malloy is a man male who claims to be a woman, and goes by the faux name “Parker Malloy.” to claim that such restrictions actually promoted freedom of speech.

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

That their ‘identity’ might not be “an accepted fact” is not something Mr Malloy wanted to concede, but Twitter’s policy also meant that those who did not accept such claims still had to be careful with their language, or be suspended or permanently banned. The Times, as well as The Philadelphia Inquirer, continued to use language to try to lock in the notion that ‘transgendered’ people have actually changed their gender, and go along with Mr Malloy’s claim that to not accept their “identity . . . is a slur.” Such would certainly not fit with Mr Downie’s standard of “accuracy, fairness, nonpartisanship, accountability and the pursuit of truth.”

“There is some confusion about the value of good reporting versus point of view,” said current Post executive editor Sally Buzbee, who noted that many journalists want to make a difference on such issues as climate change, immigration and education. “We stress the value of reporting,” she said, “what you are able to dig up — so you (the reader) can make up your own mind.”

That is a wildly inconsistent statement. If “many journalists want to make a difference” on some important issues, is that not biased reporting, and trying to influence how readers think rather than giving readers all of the information available so they can make up their own minds?

There’s a lot more in the article, but one paragraph, the last I shall quote, really caught my eye:

Both Heyward and I continue to believe that allowing journalists to express opinions on controversial social and political issues erodes the perception of their news organizations’ fairness and open-mindedness.

A quite reasonable statement, but Mr Downie’s previous quote that “many journalists want to make a difference” allow for the reporters’ opinions when it comes to what are supposed to be straight news stories to slant them, perhaps subtly, toward a particular point of view certainly does erode the perception of a particular news organization’s fairness and open-mindedness.

I will admit to being surprised by Mr Downie’s article, because he said, and The Washington Post admitted through the publication of it, that yes, that credentialed media source, and many others like it, are slanting the news.

Mr Downie said that media organizations can “build trust” as they “move beyond objectivity,” but I have to ask: how does allowing a particular reporter’s presentation of the facts through his ‘lived experience’ or racial, ethnic, or sexual identity and orientation status build trust among those who are not of the same experiences or identity?

Think about the results, because we actually do have them. Newspapers all over the country have been failing; even The Washington Post, one of our country’s newspapers of record, and The Philadelphia Inquirer have been laying off staff, while smaller newspapers have been shut down completely, or bought out by hedge funds with a history of stripping them to the bone. The Post itself might have failed had Jeff Bezos not bought it and saved it, at least for a while.

But it’s more than newspapers: CNN, the first 24-hour news network has been in a steady ratings decline, and has been surpassed in viewership by MSNBC, while both of them have been beaten out by Fox News. All three have obvious biases, and all three are mostly watched by people who agree with their biases. That hasn’t been particularly good for expanding their audiences. CNN can’t blame its general decline on the same forces that have so damaged print newspapers, and whatever it has been doing has not exactly built trust for that network.

Mr Downie said the quiet part out loud, that the credentialed media have sacrificed objectivity and internalized bias. We are not surprised.
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Also posted on American Free News Network. Check out American Free News Network for more well written and well reasoned conservative commentary.

References

References
↑1 The spelling ‘journolist’ or ‘journolism’ comes from JournoList, an email list of 400 influential and politically liberal journalists, the exposure of which called into question their objectivity. I use the term ‘journolism’ frequently when writing about media bias.
↑2 The First Street Journal’s Stylebook is exactly the opposite: while we do not change the direct quotes of others, in original material we always refer to people by their normal, biological sex and their original names. But we do say that explicitly.
↑3 Chad Malloy is a man male who claims to be a woman, and goes by the faux name “Parker Malloy.”