Fading newsrooms, blatant bias and a war with Trump has ravaged the business - "I have always loved newsrooms, the chatter and the jokes, the erupting deadlines, the constant conversations with serious colleagues, eccentric characters and gossip-mongers. As a former ink-stained wretch, I miss the sense of synergy that would improve and enlighten everyone’s work – and is now fading into history. Of course, newspaper, magazine, television and radio newsrooms still exist, but they’re not exactly packed. During the upheaval of the pandemic – I remember having to do my show from a wind-whipped roof, and then from my basement – most journalists, editors, and producers discovered they rather liked working from home. It’s a good commute. Now many come in one or two days a week, unless their company mandates more frequent attendance... Maureen Dowd wrote "the final obituary for the American newspaper newsroom" in her New York Times column, and worries that "the romance, the alchemy, is gone."... Decades ago, many reporters didn’t have college degrees but were superb at pounding the pavement. By the time I started at a New Jersey paper where everyone banged away on manual typewriters, most journalists were solidly middle class. But now, especially in such news meccas as New York, Washington, D.C., and L.A., I’d define the majority as being upper middle class, many with graduate degrees, part of the dreaded elite, and increasingly out of touch with the blue-collar part of their audience... What’s more, with plenty of scribes having to feed Twitter and make television appearances, there is less time for actual reporting. Many homebound journalists are less likely to go see sources in person, doing interviews by email or text, which gives them time to send back prepared statements. Yet what dwarfs all of this is the surge in ideological journalism. There was liberal bias in the media while Donald Trump was still a reality-show star, but it exploded during the former president’s tenure. Many journalists viewed themselves on a mission to save democracy by blocking Trump’s election or crippling his presidency... Many younger journalists now believe they should embrace their view of social justice rather than steering down the middle – and their revolt caused the firing of Times editorial page editor James Bennet for the sin of publishing an online piece by Republican Tom Cotton. The web destroyed the business model that had sustained newspapers, as underscored by plunging print circulation as they increasingly shift to online editions. There is a thriving conservative media ecosystem as well, which helps shape political narratives, but many are upfront about their bias rather than pretending to have a neutral point of view."
Why So Many Mainstream Media Figures Really Hate Substack - "Substack — a newsletter site where popular writers can make money via private newsletters — has thoroughly rattled many traditional legacy mainstream media. Founded in 2017 and headquartered in San Francisco, it essentially ensures that the writer, not the medium, is the primary financial beneficiary of the writer’s talent. It also doesn’t need to censor writers on account of, say, money from China. One result is that many well-known writers from, for example, the New York Times, Vox, and BuzzFeed quit their jobs and started writing for newsletter subscribers who pay for premium content, print or podcast, typically $5 a month or $50 a year. Only a few thousand subscribers are needed to generate a nice income for a talented writer who is not just churning out the hackwork that keeps a declining legacy publisher happy and Correct... Needless to say, many defenders of the status quo are displeased... offering a representative range of opinions seems like a terrible idea to some... as a veteran Canadian journalist, June Callwood (1924–2007), once put it: If you don’t believe in free speech for people you hate, face it, you don’t believe in free speech... a classic legacy journalist was distressed by the lack of viewpoint enforcement at Substack"
The Substack Threat - "Former National Review writers Jonah Goldberg and David French, among others, are doing very well with The Dispatch, their political newsletter (which is now the No. 1 Substack in the country). Andrew Sullivan, angry that New York magazine wouldn’t let him write critically of the Black Lives Matter protests and race riots, jumped to Substack and has tripled or quadrupled his income. Glenn Greenwald and Matt Taibbi went Substack, and the other day, so did Vox co-founder Matt Yglesias... Love him or hate him — I have done both over the past three decades, Andrew Sullivan is one of the most interesting and compelling journalists of his generation. And yet in the year of our Lord 2020, this extremely anti-Trump journalist was driven out of New York magazine because they would not allow him to give his opinion on race riots, because it stood to upset younger progressives in the newsroom. Of course he left. If you could, wouldn’t you? Glenn Greenwald left the website he co-founded because, in his opinion, they were trying to protect Joe Biden, and wouldn’t publish Greenwald’s criticism of him. If you could leave a place like that and support yourself, wouldn’t you? All this makes me realize how fortunate I have been at [The American Conservative] these last nine years. Nobody has ever told me what I couldn’t write. Do you know how rare that is?... if TAC disappeared tomorrow, I could not get a job at an American newspaper. They would not hire me, entirely for political reasons. And I would not want to work there. The conservative friends I have still laboring in that particular vineyard, they’re trying to get out; they say the atmosphere inside their newsrooms is intolerable. Nothing but progressive activism and militancy against wrongthink. I remember over a decade ago, walking down the hallway at The Dallas Morning News, and one of my colleagues there turning his back to me and facing the wall when I passed by. This, because I published conservative opinions in my column — opinions that he thought were a disgrace. I laughed at that, because he was haughty, and I didn’t feel sorry for him when he got pink-slipped in one round of layoffs. My boss, more liberal than I, did not agree with everything I wrote, but she was an old-fashioned journalists who believed in fairness and open debate. She always had my back, and I was so grateful for it. Well, she’s retired now, and many senior journalists like her who remain in place at legacy media have capitulated to the progressive mob... There is nobody more privileged in leading American newsrooms today than left-wing writers of color, or other bearers of favored identities. You not only can write your own ticket, but you can determine what gets covered and what gets written (or not written). You know who are the most marginalized people in elite American journalism? Conservatives, especially religious conservatives... In 2003, I was at a big op-ed journalism annual conference for the first time, and I found exactly two people of my generation who were conservative. We hung together and just shook our heads in amusement at the lockstep liberalism all around us — and, in particular, at the constant self-congratulation among the herd of independent liberal minds, about how it is they who are open-minded and cosmopolitan, unlike the right-wing troglodytes. The epistemic closure within mainstream journalism is airtight, and worse than when I was involved. This really lights my fire. These people, these leftists in charge of journalistic institutions, are so sold out to their narrow vision of the world that they make it impossible for anyone who doesn’t share their ideology to work in a newsroom — and then they fault the talented writers who can make a go of it on their own for doing so, because it’s racist?! New York magazine would still have Andrew Sullivan on its staff if they had been willing to let him express an opinion that is shared by at least half the people in America, though in NYC journalism circles, they have probably frightened anybody who agrees into total silence... I read The New York Times and The Washington Post for the same reason a Kremlinologist would have read Pravda and Izvestia: for insights into how the ruling class thinks. I don’t read them for accurate and insightful information about the way the world is. I know that American journalism has selected for journalists who see the world a certain way, and only that way. The moralizing of difference — for example, demonizing the mere expression of opinions that run contrary to the leftist line — has made journalistic institutions less valuable as guides to reality, and more important as guides to how left-wing elites think. It’s a closed feedback loop."
ChuckModi on Twitter - "Dear Twitter, Pls stop calling Andy Ngo a “journalist”. Thank you."
Andy Ngô 🏳️🌈 on Twitter - "My detractors do this because they want to take away the one thing that all decent people agree on: press freedom is sacred. Who the far-left defines as "press" are those who write what they approve of. Anyone else is a "provocateur" deserving of intimidation & violence."
Melissa Chen - "Media lies are nothing new (WMDs in Iraq) but we are now seeing an astonishing number of narratives promoted by the legacy media collapse on its face. It was considered either disinformation or racist to question these:
- Russiagate
- Steele Dossier
- Russian Bounties
- Hunter Biden Laptop
- MI Gov Kidnapping plot
- Lab Leak Theory
- Rittenhouse
Did I miss anything else?"
Andy Ngô 🏳️🌈 on Twitter - "Dell Cameron, a leftist senior reporter for WIRED, used Twitter to solicit stolen information belonging to @MattWalshBlog, who was hacked last night."
Twitter labels NPR's account as 'state-affiliated media,' which is untrue - "Twitter added a "state-affiliated media" tag to NPR's main account on Tuesday, applying the same label to the nonprofit media company that Twitter uses to designate official state mouthpieces and propaganda outlets in countries such as Russia and China. NPR operates independently of the U.S. government. And while federal money is important to the overall public media system, NPR gets less than 1% of its annual budget, on average, from federal sources."
Fox News and MSNBC 'fail to adhere to basic journalistic standards', says credibility rater Newsguard - "MSNBC’s new score is now five points lower than conservative Fox News, the network’s long-time ideological and commercial opponent."
Fox News, ABC, CNN journalists win awards for Washington reporting - "Fox News congressional correspondent Chad Pergram, ABC News foreign correspondent James Longman and CNN photojournalist Eddie Gross all won awards... Pergram, who has been at Fox News since 2007, received the 36th annual Joan S. Barone Award for excellence “in congressional and political affairs reporting,” named after the late CBS News executive. He previously won the award in 2006."
Rachel Maddow’s Deep Delusion - "For the past two years, Rachel Maddow has been a hero of her own spy-thriller. She has written, directed and starred in a hit production based on the unlikely premise of a prime-time cable TV show host unraveling the most dastardly plot in American history — one opening monologue at a time. Only the story had a surprise twist at the end — she was completely wrong. Few people invested more in the Russia probe, night after night, monologue after monologue, with an ever-building sense of anticipation... It was almost touching how excited Maddow was to come back from a trout-fishing trip last Friday to host her show on an emergency basis upon the arrival of the long-anticipated report. Little did she know she only was setting the stage for her own discrediting... Yes, there were disturbing developments in the Mueller probe, but the evidence always tilted away from any Trump-Russian conspiracy. Believing otherwise required ignoring common sense (why would the Russians need to collude with the Trump campaign in the first place?), ignoring statements from more sober-minded intelligence officials that there was no evidence of collusion, ignoring the policy areas where Trump was tougher on Russia than Obama, and ignoring how the Mueller probe was unfolding, with no indictments for espionage or conspiracy with the Russians."
Why Hasn't the Mainstream Media Pilloried 60 Minutes for Spreading Misinformation? - "60 Minutes dropped a bombshell: Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican, had granted Publix a vaccination contract as a kickback for a $100,000 campaign donation, according to a report by journalist Sharyn Alfonsi. Then the story swiftly fell apart. Publix was neither the first nor the only vaccine distributor in Florida; the idea to use a grocery chain with more than 800 locations across the state was a good one, and did not originate with the governor; moreover, DeSantis explained all of this to Alfonsi, but his quotes were edited in a misleading way for the version that appeared in the 60 Minutes segment. Bafflingly, CBS News is standing by this atrocious hit job... Florida's director of emergency management, as well as the mayor of Palm Beach County—both of them Democrats—have subsequently released statements blasting CBS's distortions... As The Intercept's Lee Fang pointed out, California Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, received millions in campaign donations from Blue Shield of California—vs. DeSantis' paltry $100,00 from Publix—and then put the healthcare provider in charge of vaccinating the state, but no 60 Minutes story has described this arrangement as unethical. Journalism industry watchdogs should be all over CBS for this. But there's nothing about 60 Minutes over at Columbia Journalism Review. The dial on PolitiFact's Truth-O-Meter hasn't budged. One praiseworthy exception is CNN... And some in the media still wonder why Republicans and independents are so distrustful of them"
Farnoush Amiri on Twitter - "Speaker Nancy Pelosi and (most) the women of the Capitol Press corps" FCC Commissioner Slams Politico as Chinese Communist Propaganda - "Brendan Carr, a Commissioner for the Federal Communications Commission, slammed Politico for publishing what he described as uncritical “communist propaganda.”... David Wertime, Politico’s Chinese Editor, argued that Chinese citizens are all seemingly united in praising the country, and attacking America"
A Court Ruled Rachel Maddow's Viewers Know She Offers Exaggeration and Opinion, Not Facts - "MSNBC's top-rated host Rachel Maddow devoted a segment in 2019 to accusing the right-wing cable outlet One America News (OAN) of being a paid propaganda outlet for the Kremlin. Discussing a Daily Beast article which noted that one OAN reporter was a "Russian national” who was simultaneously writing copy for the Russian-owned outlet Sputnik on a freelance contract, Maddow escalated the allegation greatly into a broad claim about OAN's real identity and purpose: “in this case,” she announced, “the most obsequiously pro-Trump right wing news outlet in America really literally is paid Russian propaganda." In response, OAN sued Maddow, MSNBC, and its parent corporation Comcast, Inc. for defamation, alleging that it was demonstrably false that the network, in Maddow's words, “literally is paid Russian propaganda." In an oddly overlooked ruling, an Obama-appointed federal judge, Cynthia Bashant, dismissed the lawsuit on the ground that even Maddow's own audience understands that her show consists of exaggeration, hyperbole, and pure opinion, and therefore would not assume that such outlandish accusations are factually true even when she uses the language of certainty and truth when presenting them (“literally is paid Russian propaganda"). In concluding that Maddow's statement would be understood even by her own viewers as non-factual, the judge emphasized that what Maddow does in general is not present news but rather hyperbole and exploitation of actual news to serve her liberal activism... The judge's observations about the specific segment at issue — in which Maddow accused a competitor of being “literally paid Russian propaganda" — was even more damning. Maddow's own viewers, ruled the court, not only expect but desire that she will not provide the news in factual form but will exaggerate and even distort reality in order to shape her opinion-driven analysis... What makes this particularly notable and ironic is that a similar argument was made a year later by lawyers for Fox News when defending a segment that appeared on the program of its highest-rated program, Tucker Carlson Tonight... McDougal's lawsuit was dismissed in September, 2020, by Trump-appointed judge Mary Kay Vyskocil, based on arguments made by Fox's lawyers that were virtually identical to those made by MSNBC's lawyers when defending Maddow... This is worth noting because of how often, and how dishonestly, this court case regarding Carlson is cited to claim that even Fox itself admits that its host is a liar who cannot be trusted. This court ruling has become a very common argument used by liberals to claim that even Fox acknowledges that Carlson lies. Indeed, Maddow's own colleague Chris Hayes — whose MSNBC program is broadcast at the same time as Carlson's and routinely attracts less than 1/3 of the Fox host's audience — has repeatedly cited this court case to argue that even Fox admits Carlson is a liar, without bothering to note that his companies’ lawyers made exactly the same claims about his mentor, Rachel Maddow, to defend her from a defamation lawsuit. This claim — even Fox admits that Carlson is a liar who cannot be believed! — has become such a common trope among liberals that it is impossible to count how many times I have heard it. And that is because the liberal sector of the corporate media blared this claim in headlines over and over after the lawsuit against Fox was dismissed. It is virtually impossible to find similar headlines about Maddow even though the judicial rationale justifying dismissal of the lawsuit against her was virtually identical to the one used in Carlson's case. Indeed, lawyers for MSNBC and Fox cited most of the same legal precedent to defend their stars and to insist that their statements could not be actionable as defamation because viewers understood it as opinion rather than fact... Indeed, it was Maddow's statement — that OAN is "literally paid Russian propaganda”— that seems far more actionable than Carlson's obviously figurative assertion that McDougal was "extorting” Trump. Falsely accusing people of being paid Kremlin agents has a long and ugly history in the U.S., having destroyed reputations and careers, yet this smear has once again become utterly commonplace in Democratic Party politics... Ironically, those most guilty of being unreliable liars and propagandists are those in the media and even Maddow's own MSNBC colleagues who repeatedly cite this court ruling to delegitimize Carlson without ever mentioning that Maddow’s lawyers successfully used the same arguments in her defense."
Meme - Bridget Phetasy @BridgetPhetasy: "Maybe, just maybe, people wouldn't turn to conspiracy theories if the corporate press had any interest in truth instead of just pushing a narrative."
NBC News Anchor: ‘Fairness Is Overrated’ - "NBC Nightly News anchor Lester Holt says “fairness is overrated” and the news media no longer needs to present both sides of a given story
“Have Laptop, Will Travel,” and the Demise of The Chicago Tribune - John Kass - "When the editors of “the paper” that I served faithfully for 40 years recently decided to team up with angry leftist trolls in a vengeful “gotcha” exposé on our new home, I wasn’t happy about it... I left them and began this great new adventure that many of you have joined me on, this expedition into the great unknown of independent journalism, even as corporate legacy media collapses of its own corrupt and sodden weight. I get it. Some at “the paper” are angry. Bitter. This is not the old Tribune. It’s the new left-leaning Tribune. I see the woke media for what it is, what it’s done to the city, how they’ve avoided the truth of what’s happened to Chicago. And the left hates my guts. Once there was an almost quasi-religious belief at the Tribune Tower that there was no possibility of real life if you dared leave the Tower. But the Tower is gone. There is no Tower now. And the virtues “the paper” once held dear at that Tower, are stepped on and forgotten. So to get at me, they targeted our modest home in Indiana — still just barely in the Chicago metro area where they still sell “the paper” at the local stores — and wrote a story about it earlier this month. They made our home sound luxurious. It isn’t. It’s just a modest home... There were other stories more important to the Tribune’s readers than vengeance on me. They could have written about the continued rise in violent crime and Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s pathetic administration of the overworked and understaffed police department, where there aren’t enough cops to handle 9/11 emergency calls. Or they could have fully explored the abysmal news that many cheerleading press agents ignore amid all their forced happy talk: Downtown commercial office vacancy rates have hit record highs... The idea of “the paper” and the trolls was about somehow trying to shame me for moving away from crime-infested Chicago, as hundreds of thousands before me have done. The idea was to calcify idiotic, zigzag reasoning: Kass doesn’t live in Chicago. How dare he talk or write about Chicago? I spent most of my life in the city. And yet I have no right to talk about it? That is supremely illogical. Must you live in Minneapolis to offer a valid opinion of the police murder of George Floyd? Do you have to be born in Paris to recognize the lust for the Reign of Terror flickering behind the eyes of all those American neo-Jacobins searching for conservative heads to lop on Madame Guillotine?... We loved Chicago. But violence and politics and the lack of political leadership soured us. And crime, crime and more crime. Violence, chaos and anarchy. Crushing taxes. And a complete lack of political leadership coming from Lightfoot and Boss Toni Preckwinkle and her mouth-breathing minion, Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx. We’re not alone in this, are we? No, we’re not. The loss of Illinois’ population is well-documented and reflected in our loss of Congressional seats each Census. You see, there is a great realignment taking place in and around the old blue cities, a reset involving all that vacant urban downtown office space. It is empty due to blue state government shutdowns of businesses during the pandemic and the Black Lives Matter riots that savaged downtown following the death of George Floyd. The violent were unleashed. People aren’t going to work as they used to. Violent crime is scaring everyone off. And in Chicago, office workers just don’t want to take the CTA rapid transit trains to work, because they don’t want to become a crime or murder statistic."
Meme - USA TODAY: "Kyle Rittenhouse deserves an award for his melodramatic performance on the witness stand. Carli Pierson" Humor the New York Times just can't take - "On occasion it’s hard to spot satire, but it’s pretty sad when professional journalists can’t recognize an entire site devoted to it. But such are the fallen standards of po-faced progressive puritans at The New York Times... Yes, some social-media shares may confuse a few souls into thinking they’re reading real news, but that’s just as true of The Onion, which leans left. We wonder why The Times hasn’t attacked it."
16 Common Phrases In The News And What They Actually Mean | Babylon Bee - "1) "Debunked conspiracy theory" = a completely factual event that is 100% true and we don't like it Joel Pollak on Twitter - The Washington Post: "Analysis: This administration’s tweets, long bland, have become punchy and even viral as the president has shown more willingness to go after Republicans." Meme - "JOURNALISM Does Criticizing Biden Endanger Democracy?
Musk Fires Back at Mehdi Hasan, NBC: Organization ‘Killed’ Harvey Weinstein Story - "Elon Musk mocked NBC’s coverage of the Hunter Biden laptop and allegations against Harvey Weinstein and Matt Lauer, after MSNBC host and political commentator Mehdi Hasan accused Musk of handing Twitter “to the far-right” and labeling him a “not-so-bright billionaire.”... “NBC basically saying Republicans are Nazis…” Musk wrote in a tweet responding to a clip of Hasan’s monologue. “Same org that covered up Hunter Biden laptop story, had Harvey Weinstein story early & killed it & built Matt Lauer his rape office. Lovely people”"
WIRED on Twitter: "Neither Dell's story nor his Twitter feed contained hacked materials. We do not believe his account violated Twitter's policy. 2/3"
Liberals will just believe the lie when there're screenshots
Weird. When it suits them, liberals claim as long as $1 of funding is involved, there is a conflict of interest
It's only fake news when it's conservative
This liberal claimed Fox had not won an award for reporting
From 2019
Misleading editing is only a problem when a report hurts the liberal agenda, like with Project Veritas (where the allegations are never substantiated anyway). Only "right wing" media ever are irresponsible and/or lie
Stephen L. Miller on Twitter - "Guys, the journalists you should trust, male or female. are the ones who refuse to pose for such a ridiculous photo. What a ridiculous display of shameless unprofessional ignorance."
モートと妻 Husband & Wife on Twitter - "What happens when politics replaces religion in a society. Like the vast majority of journalists these days, they are activist first and foremost, journalists 2nd. Of course they are all smiles to be in a photograph with a Saint from their political religion"
INC 🎄🏠 on Twitter - "Quite a fangirl vibe. Washington is definitely tightlipped as he restrains his fury. I'd love to hear his thoughts on this crowd."
Tom Bob Anderson on Twitter - "These same women write about the whiteness of shark week"
When the press boast about being biased
USA TODAY: "Wisconsin Christmas parade defendant gives tearful opening statement: '2 sides to every story' Quinn Clark and Jeanine Santucci"
If you don't recognise left wing satire as satire, you're an idiot. If you don't recognise right wing satire as satire, it's dangerous misinformation
2) "This is dangerous misinformation" = we don't really agree with it but people are still sharing it
3) "Farm animal bacterial infection treatment" = penicillin
4) "Conservative panelist" = guy who once voted for Ronald Reagan, possibly by mistake
5) "Super-spreader event" = gatherings of people we don't like
6) "This is the end of democracy" = Trump said a thing
7) "Settled science" = a non-reviewed study by a possibly fictitious organization that just came out this morning
8) "Widespread outrage" = 3 people on Twitter got mad
9) "Racist statements" = literally means nothing
10) "Informal gathering of like-minded people that fosters a sense of camaraderie and community among friends and neighbors" = bread lines
11) "Zero" = anywhere from zero to several trillion
12) "Republicans pounce" = uh oh... a Democrat raped someone
13) "Mostly peaceful" = it was hyper-violent but we agree with it
14) "Racist dog whistle" = a super-secret whistle that only racists can hear and only we heard it
15) "Anonymous sources" = we totally made this up
16) "This is an apple" = this is a banana"
"Update: Mean tweets now good!"
BEFORE: *Man on podium speaks, reporter asks him questions*
NOW: *Man on podium speaks, reporter amplifies his words to the masses*"
Also headlined: "Is Criticizing Joe Biden a Danger to Democracy?"
Of course, not criticising Trump was supposedly a danger to democracy
