Tag Archives: #PhiladelphiaInquirer

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

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

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

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

Well, they’re at it again!

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

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

by Max Marin | Wednesday, July 20, 2022

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

Lt Anthony McFadden, from his LinkedIn page.

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

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

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

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

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

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

oo0oo

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

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

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

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

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

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73-year-old man murdered by teens in Philly The Inquirer wants to keep teen offenders out of the adult court system

Surprisingly enough, The Philadelphia Inquirer actually reported, albeit briefly, on two murders in the city yesterday.

Two people were killed and eight others wounded in separate shootings around Philadelphia on Monday, police said.

Just after 3 p.m., an unidentified man believed to be in his late 30s was outside on the 2700 block of North Broad Street when he was shot 13 times, police said.

The man was taken by medics to Temple University Hospital, where he was pronounced dead. Police said a person was in custody but released no further information on the case.

Around 1:30 a.m., a 36-year-old man was fatally shot in the head outside on the 3800 block of North 9th Street in Hunting Park. The man, who was not identified, was pronounced dead at the scene by medics. Police reported no arrests.

Note that the Philadelphia Police press releases identified the races of the victims, but the Inky scrubbed that part.

This was a bigger crime story in Philly:

Brothers, ages 10 and 14, surrender to Philly police in traffic cone beating death of 73-year-old man

James Lambert Jr. was crossing Cecil B. Moore Avenue near 21st Street when a group of juveniles attacked him. Another North Philly woman said she was attacked a month earlier at the same intersection.

by Robert Moran and Oona Goodin-Smith | Monday, July 11, 2022

Two brothers — ages 10 and 14 — have surrendered to police for questioning by homicide detectives as “persons of interest” in a fatal attack on a 73-year-old man last month in North Philadelphia, police said.

No charges have been filed as police continue to investigate the June 24 assault of James Lambert Jr., who was crossing Cecil B. Moore Avenue near 21st Street just before 2:40 a.m. when a group of juveniles assailed him. In a surveillance video, one of the participants can be seen knocking him to the sidewalk with a traffic cone.

Police say seven juveniles were involved.

While Lambert remained on the sidewalk, a girl can be seen in the video picking up the traffic cone and throwing it at Lambert, who then appears to stagger down Cecil B. Moore, followed by the girl, who retrieves the traffic cone and throws it at him again. She is wearing a bright pink long-sleeved sweater, with matching pool slide sandals. White-framed sunglasses are propped on top of her head.

As many as seven youths had gathered by that point. Video shows them talking before leaving the area.

Lambert suffered head injuries and died the next day, police said.

The photo of Mr Lambert is from a tweet embedded in the Inquirer story.

You know what wasn’t mentioned in the Inky? The Philadelphia Police released a video of the attack on Mr Lambert, including the descriptions shown on the right. But when the Inky reported on the story — which, to be fair, did include a link to the video — “four Black male and three Black female teen offenders” became “four males and three females”.

I might not have written about this story, save for one OpEd that was also in the Inquirer, still on the website main page, while the story about the two brats surrendering has been pushed back to the crime page:

Pennsylvania needs to stop prosecuting children as adults

This legislation will reduce recidivism, control costs, make our communities safer, and allow all young people the opportunity to grow.

by Camera Bartolotta and Anthony H. Williams | Monday, July 11, 2022

Imagine only seeing the sun for one hour a day while crammed into a 6-by-8-foot cell. Now imagine that you are only 16 years old, yet to be found guilty, and you are spending your days in an adult jail when you should be in school or spending time with your family. This is the reality of many children charged as adults through “direct file.”

Really? Imagine that you are 73-year-old James Lambert, walking alone, with the help of a cane,[1]The released video obscures the cane, but if you look at the published photo of Mr Lambert, you’ll see the handle of a walking cane. at 2:38 in the morning, and you’ll never see the sun again.

And am I really supposed to believe that, following the high-profile murder of Mr Lambert by teenagers, the Inquirer’s editors didn’t deliberately decide to print this OpEd with keeping these cretins out of the adult system in mind?

Direct file, or “statutory exclusion,” is a provision where kids under 18 are automatically prosecuted as adults for certain offenses, without the chance of a review by a juvenile court judge. This practice often forces the youth to be held in adult jails before trial and, if found guilty, adult prisons. And it doesn’t affect all children equally — according to the Pennsylvania Juvenile Justice Task Force’s findings, 56% of kids convicted as adults are Black boys, even though they make up just 7% of Pennsylvania’s youth population. This disparity is even starker than the disproportionate treatment that Black youth face in other parts of the justice system.

Whenever I see numbers like those, I always finish the article, and you know what I never see? There is never, ever, even the slightest hint that perhaps, just perhaps, if “56% of kids convicted as adults are Black boys, even though they make up just 7% of Pennsylvania’s youth population,” somewhere around 56% of crimes committed by minors which wind up in adult courts are committed by black boys.

There is always the implied, but usually unspoken, argument that if there is a ‘racial disparity’ in arrests, prosecutions, convictions, or incarcerations, it simply must be the result of racism; there is never the consideration that such ‘racial disparities’ are a reflection of a ‘racial disparity’ in who actually commits crimes.

Me? I’m 69-years-old and retired, so I can’t be ‘cancelled’, which means I can actually write the very politically incorrect truth. If I were an Inquirer reporter, and I had the temerity to write something like that, I’d have the security guard, ready to escort me out the door, watching me as I emptied out my desk, while Executive Editor and Senior Vice President Gabriel Escobar stood nearby, tapping his foot, smugly happy for having fired me, while murmurs, and possible jeers, sounded across the newsroom. In journolism,[2]The spelling ‘journolist’ or ‘journolism’ comes from JournoList, an email list of 400 influential and politically liberal journalists, the exposure of which called into question their … Continue reading the truth shall set you free . . . from your job.

Stan Wischnowski was unavailable for comment.

Was the attack on Mr Lambert perhaps an isolated incident?

About a month before Lambert was killed, a 53-year-old woman from North Philadelphia said she, too, was ambushed at 21st and Cecil B. Moore.

Watching the video of the attack on 73-year-old Lambert on the news, the woman said she thought it “could have been me.”

The woman, who spoke to The Inquirer on the condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation, said she was walking on 21st Street toward the subway on her way to an overnight nursing shift in late May when she spotted a group of young teenage girls on the street.

One of the teens — whom the woman said she recognized from the video of the attack on Lambert — asked her for a dollar. When she did not give them money, the woman said the teens began to swear at her. One threw a brick at her chest, and slammed a metal dolly on her back, leaving deep bruises. Startled, the woman said she threw her cup of hot coffee at the group and ran, phoning her family. . . . .

She said she didn’t contact the police initially about the attack, but called on Friday after hearing about Lambert’s death.

We have previously noted the difference between crimes of evidence and crimes of reporting. If a man rapes a woman on the streets of Philadelphia, as far as the police are concerned, if it wasn’t reported, it didn’t happen. It is commonly assumed that most rapes go unreported, with some guesstimates being as high as 90% not reported. Crimes like robbery might go unreported if the victims do not trust the police or think it will do any good, or are fearful of revenge by the criminals. When your city is stuck with a District Attorney like Mr Krasner, who doesn’t believe in prosecuting criminals, or sentencing them harshly when they are prosecuted and convicted, what reason is there to report that you were robbed?

To the Philly police, the assault on the 53-year-old woman, by at least one of the murderers, murderers!, of Mr Lambert, never happened in late May, because she got away and didn’t report it, or didn’t report it until she saw the video of Mr Lambert’s murder.

Why? Well, she feared retaliation, she said. Whether her assault was caught on camera we do not know, but there was nothing the police could do about a crime that, to them, never happened.

And so we get back to state Senators Bartolotta’s and Williams'[3]Camera Bartolotta is a Republican state senator. She represents Beaver, Greene, and Washington Counties. Anthony H. Williams is a Democratic state senator. He represents parts of Philadelphia and … Continue reading OpEd. They don’t want minors charged with serious crimes to be tried in adult courts. But if the 14-year-old who turned himself in for Mr Lambert’s murder is tried as a juvenile, he will be out of whatever juvenile institution they put him in when he turns 18, and his record, for murder!, will be sealed. It will be as though it never happened.

But James Lambert will still be stone-cold graveyard dead.

States do not put juveniles into the adult system for littering or out-of-control horseplay, or racing unregistered dirt bikes down city streets; they go into the adult system for really serious crimes. The senators tell us that they only want to change the system, and that juvenile offenders can still be sent into the adult system if their crimes are really heinous, but they want a juvenile court judge to take that decision. Thanks, but no thanks: we need to treat crime harshly, not so much for deterrence — which doesn’t seem to work anyway — but to get these miscreants off the streets!

References

References
↑1 The released video obscures the cane, but if you look at the published photo of Mr Lambert, you’ll see the handle of a walking cane.
↑2 The spelling ‘journolist’ or ‘journolism’ comes from JournoList, an email list of 400 influential and politically liberal journalists, the exposure of which called into question their objectivity. I use the term ‘journolism’ frequently when writing about media bias.
↑3 Camera Bartolotta is a Republican state senator. She represents Beaver, Greene, and Washington Counties. Anthony H. Williams is a Democratic state senator. He represents parts of Philadelphia and Delaware County.
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Killadelphia: City looking at between 540 and 550 murders this year Twelve people reported murdered over the last two days, and The Philadelphia Inquirer has exactly zero stories on them.

There are times I worry that I’m starting to sound like a broken record, but the City of Brotherly Love has become just appalling. It was just yesterday that I noted that Philadelphia had seen six homicides on Wednesday, July 6th, and all six were the murders of black males.

Well, the Philadelphia Police Department’s Current Crime Statistics page now reports another six killings, as of 11:59 PM EDT on Thursday, July 7th. The city’s Shooting Victims Database reports ‘only’ two homicides by firearms, with both victims being black males, in eight total shootings, with seven black victims, and one victim reported as being a white Hispanic male and, in the first time I have ever seen this in that database, one of the black males also reported as being Hispanic.

Mr Keeley’s math is wrong. As of 11:59 PM EDT on Thursday, June 30th, The Philly Police reported 257 homicides: 280 – 257 = 23. Nevertheless, this is mind boggling. Remember: twelve homicides were reported on two weekdays, not the weekend.

There may be some catch-up in the report, of people reported as seriously wounded several days ago, but if you thought that surely, surely! that even The Philadelphia Inquirer would have to have noticed, you’d have been wrong, or at least you would have been wrong at 12:03 PM EDT.

Now the math: 280 homicides ÷ 188 days = 1.4894 per day, or a projected 543.62 murders for the year. Done a different way, dividing the number of murders this year by the same number on the same day as last year, and then multiplying by 562, last year’s homicide total, I come up with a projected 548.29 killings. Either way, the city is looking at a homicide total in the 540-550 range.

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Killadelphia Black Lives Don't Matter to The Philadelphia Inquirer

When I saw that the Philadelphia Police Department’s Current Crime Statistics page had shot up to 274 homicides, as of 11:59 PM EDT on Wednesday, July 6th, from 268 the previous day, I had to check the Philadelphia Shootings Victims Database, to see if perhaps some of the six new fatalities were simply data catch-ups. As you can see from the chart on the left, there were six fatal shootings, out of thirteen total, yesterday. The chart is a direct copy from the shootings database, though I hid some of the data cells and made some of the data clearer — such as replacing ones and zeros with “no” and “yes” — and easier for the reader. Feel free to follow the link and confirm my data with the original. You can click on the chart itself to enlarge it for easier reading.

I have said, many times, that black lives don’t matter to The Philadelphia Inquirer, and, as of 12:13 PM EDT on July 7th, there was not a single story about any of the murders, either on the newspaper’s website main page or it’s crime page. There was, however, a photo, of Jailene Holton, the cute white girl murdered on June 28th, and a story about her (alleged) killer being arrested. Of course, we have also often said that The Philadelphia Inquirer does not care about murder victims unless they are an innocent, a ‘somebody,’ or a cute white girl, and this is just more evidence of that.

Who were the six people murdered in Philly yesterday? All six were black males, and, with one exception, all were in their twenties. The “anti-racist” Inquirer doesn’t want to tell us diddly, even though long-time Inky columnist Helen Ubiñas once lamented that so many victims received barely a few paragraphs.

Now, they’re not getting even that much! It’s just too politically incorrect for the newspaper to do something really radical like actually report the news. As we noted just yesterday, the advent of digital publication, even though the dead trees edition has gotten physically smaller, newspapers in digital format are no longer constrained by word counts or assigned column inches. Newspapers have always had the ability to go more in depth than television news and their quick-fire show-and-tell stories, and now, with space constraints gone, really get into the heart of stories. Four of the six homicides occurred before 3:00 PM, meaning that the newspaper has had plenty of time, plenty of time, to write something, anything, on the killings, two of which occurred in a double homicide in the 5000 block of Germantown Avenue. But the journolists[1]The spelling ‘journolist’ or ‘journolism’ comes from JournoList, an email list of 400 influential and politically liberal journalists, the exposure of which called into question their … Continue reading at the Inquirer have, instead, stopped covering the news that simply does not fit its editorial slant, or publisher Elizabeth Hughes’ dictates.

Black lives simply don’t matter to The Philadelphia Inquirer.

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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Another begging letter from The Philadelphia Inquirer Remember when it used to be "An Independent Newspaper for All the People"?

This is not the first begging letter I have received from the Leftist Lenfest Institute for Journalism, the non-profit owner of The Philadelphia Inquirer, but it is as amusing as all of the others.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Instead, it has gotten worse. Instead, the newspaper has gotten so thoroughly eaten up with ‘progressive’ ideology that the editors refuse to cover the news which might be politically incorrect, refuse to publish the news which might be outside Miss Hughes ideology. With Lenfest’s ownership, the Inquirer actually can call itself “An Independent Newspaper,” but they are failing in the “for All the People” part.

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

That is what journalists, real journalists, are supposed to do.

References

References
↑1 As much as I really do love actual printed newspapers, I now live well outside the newspaper’s physical delivery area.
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Six killed in Highland Park shooting, and everybody knows about it; ten killed in Philly, and no one cares. Could it possibly be because the Highland Park victims were 'innocents', and Philly's murder victims are mostly not?

Robert Crimo III, via Twitter.

This morning’s news is all about the shootings in Highland Park, Illinois, at a Fourth of July parage, allegedly committed by Robert Chimo III, who was arrested without incident. The left, of course, concluded that because he surrendered and was arrested alive, he was the recipient of some kind of ‘white privilege.’

But, while Mr Crimo (allegedly) killed six people, in a story which has swept across the nation, at least ten people were murdered over the holiday weekend in the City of Brotherly Love, and nobody cares. Of course, The Philadelphia Inquirer didn’t have anything on the Highland Park shootings, either, but that’s probably because the city had its own bullets flying at the Independence Day parade on the Ben Franklin Parkway.

According to the Philadelphia Police Department’s Current Crime Statistics page, 267 people were killed as of 11:59 PM EDT on Monday, July 4th. The previous update, done last Friday and including those killed as of 11:59 PM EDT on Thursday, June 30th, was 257 murders. The PPD only updates that page on normal business days.

What did we have? As closely as I could get the information –primarily from Fox 29 reporter Steve Keeley’s tweets — one person was murdered on Friday, and four on Saturday. I saw stories listing two murders on Sunday, so, if those counts are accurate, that means three more killed on the Fourth of July.

Two police officers shot on the Ben Franklin Parkway amid Philadelphia’s July 4th celebrations

by Justine McDaniel, Chris Palmer, Jason Nark, and Kristen A. Graham | Tuesday, July 5, 2022

Two police officers were shot and injured in front of the Philadelphia Art Museum while on duty at the city’s Independence Day celebrations on Monday night. The incident caused stampedes of people watching fireworks on the Benjamin Franklin Parkway to flee what they believed was an active shooting.

Investigators were still seeking to determine where the shots were fired from, how many were fired, and whether the shots were intentionally fired toward police or the officers were struck by stray gunfire. Police said no one else was shot.

It is possible, I suppose, that the shots fired were at random, but that they struck two Philadelphia Police Officers, and no one else, seems rather improbable.

No arrests had been made and no suspects were in custody as of 12:30 a.m. Tuesday, Police Commissioner Danielle Outlaw said at a news conference outside Thomas Jefferson University Hospital.

Each officer suffered a graze wound, one to the forehead — the bullet was found in the police officer’s hat — and one to the shoulder. Both were treated and released from Jefferson within about two hours after the shooting, which happened just after 9:47 p.m.

“We’re all just extremely grateful that this wasn’t worse than what it was,” Outlaw said.

If they recovered the bullet in the officer’s hat, the police now have the ballistic evidence needed to tie it to a particular weapon, so if they catch some cretin with the weapon on him, he can be prosecuted.

Neither The Philadelphia Inquirer’s website main page nor its specific crime page had a single story on any of the ten, ten! homicides in the City of Brotherly Love over the long holiday weekend. Oh, there were older stories about a 16-year-old being sought after what appears to be an accidental shooting in Upper Darby Township, and four items on a senseless, apparent ‘road rage’ murder, in Springfield Township, but not a single item on any of the weekend killings in Philly itself.

Publisher Elizabeth ‘Lisa’ Hughes set forth several principles she stated were necessary to make the Inquirer an “anti-racist news organization,” including:

  • Establishing a Community News Desk to address long-standing shortcomings in how our journalism portrays Philadelphia communities, which have often been stigmatized by coverage that over-emphasizes crime.
  • Examining our crime and criminal justice coverage with Free Press, a nonprofit focused on racial justice in media.

Apparently the result of that is to simply not report on city homicides at all!

The story about Robert Crimo will be across the national news for days, because the left will use it to argue to further restrict our constitutional rights. He’s easy to use, because he’s white, though apparently #woke[1]From Wikipedia: Woke (/ˈwoʊk/) as a political term of African-American origin refers to a perceived awareness of issues concerning social justice and racial justice. It is derived from … Continue reading, in that he actually has a tattoo above his left eyebrow that reads “Awake.” The Washington Post noted that he was a small-time rapper — see the “aspiring rapper” definition in the Urban Dictionary — and none of the major newspapers I checked had Mr Crimo’s photo with the stories, perhaps to avoid Ann Coulter’s tweet, “One gun control law I think we could all get behind is no guns for anyone with a face or neck tattoo.”

More, Mr Crimo’s victims are from a mostly white and Hispanic community; only 1.53% of the population are black, according to the 2020 census, and ‘innocents,’ in a randomly targeted assault. The editors of the Inky know that most, if not all, of the ten murders over the last four days are just as much bad guys as the guys who killed them; Philly’s 100 Shooting Review Committee Report noted that two thirds of the shooting victims had criminal records, most with violent felony records, most with prior firearms charges. The majority of the arrested shooters had violent felony records as well, had prior firearms charges, and PWID – possession of drugs with the intent to distribute – charges. Naturally, Publisher Hughes and Executive Editor Gabriel Escobar don’t want to say too much about Philly’s murders, save in the release of aggregate numbers, because that would not fit Miss Hughes’ “anti-racist” directives at all.

The truth shall set you free, but if you are looking for the truth, you will not get it from The Philadelphia Inquirer.

References

References
↑1 From Wikipedia:

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

I shall confess to sometimes “ironic usage” of the term. To put it bluntly, I think that the ‘woke’ are just boneheadedly stupid.
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Even hormones and surgery are not enough! Without realizing what they've done, The Philadelphia Inquirer told the truth

The extremely #woke[1]From Wikipedia: Woke (/ˈwoʊk/) as a political term of African-American origin refers to a perceived awareness of issues concerning social justice and racial justice. It is derived from … Continue reading and ‘transgender’-positive newspaper that I have sometimes called The Philadelphia Enquirer[2]RedState writer Mike Miller called it the Enquirer, probably by mistake, so I didn’t originate it, but, reminiscent of the National Enquirer as it is, I thought it very apt. takes the position that the ‘transgendered’ really are the sex they claim to be, rather than their biological sex, and on Sunday published yet another article in support of that idea, never realizing that they were actually pointing out that the ‘transgendered’ are not the sex they wish they were:

Voice therapy can help trans people sound like themselves and feel safer

Voice therapy can be valuable for addressing the mental health challenges many transgender people experience.

by Abraham Gutman | Sunday, July 3, 2022

When Fenix Cobbledick speaks in an unfamiliar place for the first time, they often feel scared.

They have spent countless hours and thousands of dollars on hormone therapy, laser facial hair removal, and growing out a feminine haircut to make their appearance more accurately reflect their identity.

Note right away the stilted, incorrect grammar of the article, as Inquirer writer, Abraham Gutman, confirming to the newspaper’s stylebook, uses Mr “Cobbledick’s”[3]I assume that “Fenix Cobbledick” is a faked name, but I have been unable to find Mr “Cobbledick’s” real name in my research. preferred pronouns, “they/them”. It is jarring to the mind, as normal people read the plural pronouns and think that those pronouns refer to more than one person.

But even as they changed their body, Cobbledick, a 31-year-old nonbinary trans woman, felt at risk when they opened their mouth to talk.

“I love my singing voice. It’s beautiful; it’s just deep. And maybe one day we’ll live in a world where I don’t have to hide that voice,” Cobbledick said. “But we don’t live in that world.

Translation: Mr “Cobbledick” is a man male who thinks he’s a woman . . . maybe. I’m not certain how one can be both a “trans woman” and “nonbinary”. If one is “nonbinary,” how can he claim to be either a man or a woman?

From Moss Rehab:

Fenix Cobbledick (they/them) (featured above) started hormone estrogen therapy through the Einstein Pride Program three years ago. A teacher at the Philadelphia School of Circus Arts who identifies as nonbinary, Fenix is currently being treated by Hussein Safa, MD (he/him), who serves as medical director and attending physician in the Pride clinic. When discussing future potential gender-affirming services such as facial feminization surgery and laser hair removal with Dr. Safa, Fenix thought voice therapy would help achieve a more androgynous voice and better vocal control.

“Because I’m 5’10”, muscular and forthright, people overwhelmingly perceive me as male – and that is disheartening,” explains Fenix. “When Dr. Safa said the Pride program was partnering with a MossRehab speech therapist in providing voice therapy, I said I was interested. I’ve read enough to understand that I wouldn’t be able to train my voice properly without the guidance of an expert.”

Back to the Inky:

Voice therapy may be valuable for addressing the mental health challenges many transgender people experience. As a common identifier of gender, voice can contribute to gender dysphoria — an unease that arises from one’s gender not matching the sex they were assigned at birth.

“Voice is really integral to identity and listeners assume a lot about a person by their voice alone,” said Alyssa Giegerich, a speech-language pathologist at Einstein MossRehab, who specializes in gender-affirming voice therapy. “Our voice goals are to align the way that someone is perceived with their identity.”

Translation: humans, like every other mammal, can tell the difference between males and females, even without seeing them, by just hearing their voices. Even someone like me, who is mostly deaf, can tell the difference. I may not always be able to understand someone’s speech, because I’ve lost the ability to hear certain consonants, but I can still tell, from the tone of someone’s voice, whether they are male or female. In meeting their “voice goals,” “to align the way that someone is perceived with their identity,” is to note that no matter how many hormones they’ve taken, and regardless of how many surgical mutilations they have undergone, it’s still not enough to get other people to not recognize a ‘transgendered’ person’s biological sex. Normal people can just tell!

Hormone therapy, voice coaching, or surgery can help a person when their gender identity doesn’t match the sex they were assigned at birth. They are among the interventions known as gender-affirming care.

Yet more stupidity from the Inky. “Sex assigned at birth” is a wholly stupid phrase. As we have known for over a century, the sex of mammalian offspring is determined by the XX (for females) or XY chromosome pair, and the Y chromosome is only available through the sperm of the father. The sex of the offspring is determined at conception, and not at birth. In humans, the sex of the offspring is recognized at birth, through observation of the genitals of a normal baby — in some rare cases, this is not possible, but those cases are the result of genetic or developmental defects — and every sighted human being with normal knowledge can tell the sexes apart through observation at birth.

No one “assigns” a sex to a newborn which does not match observed biological sex, at least no one of normal intelligence and reasonable sanity.

But the #woke and ‘transgender’ activists have been attempting to push this “sex assigned at birth” meme for years now, hoping to have normal people swallow the cockamamie notion, and somehow normalize ‘transgenderism.’

I’m sure that Mr Gutman and his editors at the Inquirer never meant to point out yet another reason why the ‘transgendered’ will never be the sex they claim to be, rather than the sex they actually are, but that is the result, for any reader with anything like an objective eye.

References

References
↑1 From Wikipedia:

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

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

↑2 RedState writer Mike Miller called it the Enquirer, probably by mistake, so I didn’t originate it, but, reminiscent of the National Enquirer as it is, I thought it very apt.
↑3 I assume that “Fenix Cobbledick” is a faked name, but I have been unable to find Mr “Cobbledick’s” real name in my research.
Posted on by

I owe Seth Williams an apology

At 11:17 AM EDT on Monday, June 20th, Seth Williams, a former District Attorney for Philadelphia, tweeted, “I am now being told that from midnight Friday until midnight Sunday, Philadelphia tragically suffered 41 shootings, 14 homicides, and 6 victims remain in critical condition. What we are doing now is not working!” Not having seen numbers like that anywhere in the media, I responded:

Well, I suppose that I owe Mr Williams an apology, because the numbers from the Philadelphia Police Department — the report was not updated on Monday, I suppose because whoever does the updating was off for the Juneteenth holiday — finally came in, and they are ugly.

The previous report was that 230 people had been murdered as of Friday, June 17th, so yup, Mr Williams’ report was right on target.

I responded to Mr Williams that I had seen nothing in The Philadelphia Inquirer supporting numbers anywhere close to that, and, checking the newspaper’s website main page again this morning, I still don’t. There is a story about teenagers concerns about the proposed 10:00 PM curfew, which is being considered in the wake of the South Street shootings during a rowdy street celebration full of teenagers, a five day old story about serious problems at Prevention Point Philadelphia, and, Heaven forfend!, the hugely critical Local strike could impact availability of beer ahead of Fourth of July weekend! Moving on to the newspaper’s crime page, there was a story about the killing of John Albert Laylo, a visitor from the Philippines, who was shot dead in what is now being called a targeted hit, but one which hit the wrong car. There was a story from Friday about two fatal shootings, plus another which left a victim, shot in the head, in extremely critical condition, and another about a murder in February, allegedly committed by a closeted bisexual male who wanted to keep his boyfriend from revealing their relationship.

There was a story, dated Thursday, June 16th, about three homicides Wednesday evening into Thursday morning.

But that’s it; there’s nothing in the Inky, at least as of 9:14 AM EDT, to tell readers that 14 people were murdered over the Juneteenth weekend.

There was, however, a significantly sized advertising blurb, telling people that they could subscribe for unlimited digital access for just 99¢ per week for 12 weeks, followed by $3.99 per week, billed every 4 weeks, no commitment, cancel anytime.

But I have to ask: why should people subscribe to the Inquirer if the newspaper is not going to do something really radical like report the news?

We noted, in January, Philadelphia Inquirer columnist Helen Ubiñas and her complaint, For two mothers touched by gun violence: ‘Pray, pray, and pray some more.’: Numbers tend to attract attention around here; the people behind them, not always so much.

On Thursday, she typed a similar lament:

Everyday gun violence goes unchecked, even as high-profile massacres capture the nation’s attention

We can’t accept the asymmetrical way people look at shooting victims based on race.

by Helen Ubiñas | Thursday, June 16, 2022

Within a few days of the mass shooting on South Street, two people were already in custody.

Two days later, two more.

And almost immediately came a familiar appeal from the loved ones of murder victims whose killings remain unsolved:

Where was the full-court press to identify suspects and make arrests in the deaths of their family members?

There’s more at the original. But perhaps Miss Ubiñas ought to look a bit more closely at her own newspaper in asking that question.

She had, in December of 2020, written an opinion column saying that we should at least know the names of the people slaughtered in the City of Brotherly Love, yet the newspaper at which she has worked for many years appears to have gotten even worse at reporting the news about homicides.

Fourteen people murdered? That’s almost five South Streets! 41 shootings, at least according to Mr Williams?[1]The city’s shooting database has not been updated to confirm this. That’s one shy of three South Streets, about which the Inquirer wrote story after story.

But last weekend, which ended two days ago? Barely more than crickets from our nation’s third oldest continuously published daily newspaper, nothing, no one looked at the numbers, no one figured it out.

The thing is, I’ve figured it out. The Inky spends a lot of time when innocent people are killed. We saw that the paper paid attention to the accidental killing of Jason Kutt, a white teenager shot at Nockamixon State Park, an hour outside of the city. That’s five separate stories, a whole lot more than the two or three paragraphs most victims get.

Then there was the murder of Samuel Sean Collington, a Temple University student approaching graduation. Mr Collington was a white victim, allegedly murdered by a black juvenile in a botched robbery. The Inquirer then published 14 photographs from a vigil for Mr Collington, along with another story about him. Five separate stories about the case of a murdered white guy.

To which shootings, to which killings, does the newspaper not pay attention? It doesn’t pay attention to the murders of young black boys and men by other young black boys and men, which happens to be the majority, the vast majority, of the homicides in the City of Brotherly Love. It’s easy to have sympathy for people like Mr Collington, or Mr Laylo. The Inquirer has even tried to drum up sympathy for kids like Marcus Stokes or Thomas Siderio.

But when one gang banger shoots and kills another gang banger? The editors and publisher of the Inquirer not only don’t care, but actively don’t want to publish stories about them, because it does not fit within the worldview they want to project.

References

References
↑1 The city’s shooting database has not been updated to confirm this.
Posted on by

The journolism of The Philadelphia Inquirer

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

As we have mentioned, The Philadelphia Inquirer is the nation’s third oldest continuously published daily newspaper, and has won 20 Pulitzer Prizes for its reporting. The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Wall Street Journal are all significantly younger than the Inky. With 6,245,051 people according to the 2020 census, Philadelphia and its surrounding metropolitan area is the seventh largest in the United States. With a population of 1,603,797, the city of Philadelphia itself is the sixth largest in the United States. So why, then, does the Inquirer rank only 17th in circulation? Could it be because they censor the news?

Another pro-life clinic attacked, this one in Philadelphia

by Joe Bukaras | Wednesday, June 15, 2022 | 3:41 AM EDT

A pro-life pregnancy center in Philadelphia was vandalized last weekend with smashed windows and graffiti.

Latrice Booker, director of Hope Pregnancy Center in Philadelphia, told CNA that when she drove by her clinic Saturday, June 11, she found four windows smashed, with one written on with graffiti. It is unclear what the graffiti says.

Three glass doors were smashed as well, she said. She estimated the damages to be around $15,000. As of Tuesday afternoon, the windows were boarded up and the clinic is in the process of repairs. They are still open for business, she said.

Booker said that the clinic offers all its services to help women and families in need at no cost. She said that the clinic is not dissuaded in its mission by the vandalism and called on people of faith to “stand tall” despite the vitriol against pro-lifers.

There’s more at the original. Naturally, I searched the Inky’s website, to see if I could find this story, and to my very much not surprised self, I found nothing, nada, zilch, zippo, ничего. You can see the top of the search results if you click on the image to the right.

I did, however, find hundreds of articles on abortion, in a site search for pro life clinic, virtually all of them supporting the pro-abortion position in one way or another. The ‘pro-choice’ crowd do not like the term ‘pro-abortion,’ but it is economically accurate: to support having the choice to have an abortion, you must concomitantly want enough abortions to occur to keep the abortuaries open. President Clinton’s formulation that abortion should be “safe, legal, and rare” falls on its own weight, because if abortion is rare, abortion providers can’t stay in business.

From Politico:

Garland returns to Oklahoma City to warn that domestic terrorism is ‘still with us’

The attorney general has vowed to crackdown on a resurgence of violence linked to white supremacist and right-wing militia groups.

by Josh Gerstein | April 19, 2021 | 12:14 PM EDT

Attorney General Merrick Garland returned Monday to Oklahoma City — the site of the nation’s most deadly act of domestic terrorism and of his formative experiences as a young prosecutor — to deliver a warning that the threat of domestic extremism is again on the rise.

Delivering his first major speech as attorney general, Garland told a memorial service that the nation must remain vigilant against such dangers.

There were plenty of other stories, such as “Top law enforcement officials say the biggest domestic terror threat comes from white supremacists.” in The New York Times, while National Public Radio reported:

At Tuesday’s hearing, Jill Sanborn, the head of the FBI’s National Security Branch, told lawmakers that the threat posed by domestic violent extremists is “persistent and evolving.” The “most lethal threat” from domestic violent extremists, she said, is posed by white supremacists and anti-government militias.

So, I’m wondering: was the vandalism at a pro-life pregnancy center or one at a similar clinic in Washington DC the work of evil reich-wing extremists or white supremacists?

Decades ago, the Inquirer’s masthead declared itself to be a “Public Ledger” and “An Independent Newspaper for All the People”. Now it should have a blurb similar to the one that ought to be on The New York Times, “All the News That’s Politically Correct.” The Inky just doesn’t want you to tell its readers the truth, and that’s why the only real newspaper in our nation’s seventh largest metropolitan area is just 17th in circulation.