It's easy to screw up on breaking news. But you have to admit when you do. - "there was an explosion near a hospital in Gaza City. At 2:32 p.m. the Times sent subscribers like me the following news alert... “Israeli Strike Kills Hundreds in Hospital, Palestinian Officials Say.” Almost every word of that first clause is now disputed. Almost every word of that first clause is now disputed. The Israeli Defense Forces said that the blast was the result of a misfire from a Hamas rocket, and President Biden, citing Department of Defense evidence, has backed that claim. Also, the explosion appears to have hit a parking lot adjacent to the hospital, not the hospital itself. And it remains unclear what the death toll was — but forensic evidence doesn’t seem to be particularly consistent with a three-figure number. I’m sure you can find better summaries of the various claims and counterclaims elsewhere; I’m deliberately trying to be circumspect as I make a broader point about the news business... The Times is providing some degree of dignity and veracity to that claim by printing it, just as it would if it sent out a breaking news alert that said: “U.F.O. Cited Over Manhattan, Nate Silver Says” If it later turned out that the “U.F.O.” had just been a 747 landing at LaGuardia, and I’d made the claim while tripping on psychedelic mushrooms, this wouldn’t really absolve the Times for printing it without some independent verification or a second source... although the Times eventually walked its initial reporting back, it was exceptionally stubborn about doing so... the Times later addressed the controversy in disingenuous fashion. The headline, framed in the passive voice, tells you pretty much all you need to know: “After Hospital Blast, Headlines Shift With Changing Claims.” There is no admission of error whatsoever... the Times frames itself as an innocent, passive actor, one that’s merely reporting on the existence of the lava — neglecting its role in trying to steer it. That’s complete bullshit, because the Times is extremely and often somewhat proudly self-conscious of this role. “We set the agenda for the country” is literally the prevailing attitude in the building... Gallup published its annual poll on trust in the media. Overall, only 32 percent of Americans say they trust the mass media “a great deal” or “a fair amount” to “report the news fully, accurately and fairly” — tied with 2016 for a record low. The standard rebuttal in the Indigo Blob is to blame some combination of Republicans, misinformation, social media and political polarization for the decline, and there’s some truth to each of those claims. But some of it is the media's own damned fault."
Meme - Melissa Chen: "Yes we should rely on the gated institutional narratives put out by the mainstream media instead. After all, they nailed it on Covid origins, how the mRNA vaccine was going to STOP transmission, Hunter Biden's laptop, the killing of George Floyd, etc."
The Washington Post: "Doing your own research is a good way to end up being wrong"
Of course, a lot of left wingers still insist that the media wasn't wrong on all those topics, so
Washington Post Acknowledges They Misquoted Me, Buries Correction - "the Washington Post published a 2300 word article about me on the front page of their sports section. The article, which was titled, "Clay Travis is Trump's Secret Weapon in the Fight Over College Football," featured just 94 words in quotes from me. All of those quotes were taken out of context and one of them wasn't accurate at all. In reality, I spoke with the Washington Post for over an hour. The transcript of our conversation filled 28 single-spaced pages. This morning I published the audio file of the entire Washington Post interview on our Outkick the Show podcast so anyone who wants to listen to the audio of their questions and my responses can do so... Put simply, the paper, which allegedly prides itself on journalistic accuracy, mischaracterized and misconstrued everything I said to them and even though they only used 94 words from me, they couldn't even correctly quote what I said and publish it in their article. What's more, when they were caught publishing factually incorrect information, they made a quiet alteration and refused to even notify the person they wrote about, me, that they'd corrected the error. If this happened in a relatively inconsequential article about me, how often does it happen in more consequential articles about people much more significant than me? It's a question every reader should be asking."
My run-in with the New York Times | The Spectator - "It’s never a good sign when you’re watching a scene of street terror in yet another gut-churning YouTube video and you find yourself thinking: ‘Hang on a minute, that’s around the corner from my apartment!’ But there’s a now infamous video from last week where a mob of enraged millennials with their fists pumped in the air surrounded a lone young woman sitting outside a Washington restaurant where I often eat. Like a scene from the Cultural Revolution, the crowd demanded she shout certain slogans and raise her clenched fist in solidarity — or be damned as a racist. Most of her fellow diners took the path of least resistance. She wouldn’t. The chants grew louder: ‘White silence is violence!’ They started screaming in her face. She wouldn’t cave. Wokeness, in case you hadn’t noticed, has entered a more intense phase. Not so long ago, you were cancelled for something you did or said or wrote. Now you’re cancelled just for saying absolutely nothing at all. I had a much milder experience of this during the past week when the New York Times decided to run a profile of me. The hook was that I was forced to leave New York magazine last month because, according to the NYT, I had not publicly recanted editing an issue of the New Republic published… in 1994. The issue was a symposium on The Bell Curve, a book by Charles Murray and Richard Herrnstein that explored the connection between IQ, class, social mobility and race. My crime was to arrange a symposium around an extract, with 13 often stinging critiques published alongside it. The fact I had not recanted that decision did not, mind you, prevent Time, the Atlantic, Newsweek, the NYT, and New York magazine from publishing me in the following years. But suddenly, a decision I made a quarter of a century ago required my being cancelled. The NYT reporter generously gave me a chance to apologise and recant, and when I replied that I thought the role of genetics in intelligence among different human populations was still an open question, he had his headline: ‘I won’t stop reading Andrew Sullivan, but I can’t defend him.’ In other words, the media reporter in America’s paper of record said he could not defend a writer because I refused to say something I don’t believe. He said this while arguing that I was ‘one of the most influential journalists of the last three decades’. To be fair to him, he would have had no future at the NYT if he had not called me an indefensible racist. His silence on that would have been as unacceptable to his woke bosses as my refusal to recant. But this is where we now are. A reporter is in fear of being cancelled if he doesn’t cancel someone else. This is America returning to its roots. As in Salem.
From 2020
Meme - Jesse Singal @jessesingal: "This was sent to the Washington Post newsroom last week. Seems to pretty clearly telegraph what is considered the 'correct' coverage of some rather hot-button issues where there is good-faith disagreement. This sort of thing makes it a lot harder to trust a publication's output."
Hi all,
Thank you to everyone who joined our first Race in America coverage meeting last year, in which we discussed coverage of Latinos. We will continue to hold regular brainstorming sessions to ensure that our coverage of race and identity is as robust,
thoughtful, and ambitious as possible. To that end, please join us in *** for a brainstorming session on the backlash against diversity, equity and inclusion programs (DEI). Zoom link: ***
We will focus on the growing criticism of corporate and academic efforts to diversify their staffs and student bodies. Campaigns to dismantle these programs gained traction after the Supreme Court struck down the use of race-conscious college
admissions last year. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) has barred spending on DEI at public colleges and universities in his state. Many companies have scaled back their DEI programs, while others are fighting lawsuits critical of their efforts. Most
recently, Claudine Gay's resignation as president of Harvard has been heralded as a victory for DEI detractors. We already cover these attacks on DEI extensively. In this brainstorming session, let's talk through how we can expand and elevate our coverage. We certainly welcome you to come with specific story ideas, but we are also interested in your
thoughts on more general angles, directions, perspectives, etc. that may help guide this coverage. Here are some topics that we'll discuss:
How can we show the impact DEI has had on our country and what dismantling it could mean? What is the racial context of this conversation? How has it complicated the lives of company leaders and college presidents? How is it being discussed in
private spaces? How will it play out on the campaign trail?
I hope you can make, but if you can't and have ideas on how we should approach our coverage, please email me ***. You can also email me if you don't feel comfortable talking in the meeting but have thoughts.
Deputy America editor
Editor, About US"
Chris Cuomo rips NBC’s reversal on Ronna McDaniel hiring - "NewsNation host Chris Cuomo criticized NBC’s News’s decision to oust former Republican National Committee (RNC) Chair Ronna McDaniel as a paid contributor. “How is this not a ‘[Former President Trump] and his people tried to rig the election, we don’t want ‘em around,’” he said on his show “Cuomo” Tuesday. “‘Cause they’ve had plenty of Democrats on that said that Trump won because of Russian election interference.”... McDaniel’s ouster followed pushback from the network’s staff over her hiring, including some on-air, because of her comments and role in Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election. NBCUniversal News Group Chair Cesar Conde announced the decision to cut ties with McDaniel in a Tuesday memo... “No organization, particularly a newsroom, can succeed unless it is cohesive and aligned,” Conde wrote. “Over the last few days, it has become clear that this appointment undermines that goal.”"
Hiring left wingers undermines cohesiveness and alignment
Meme - Brandi Kruse @Brandikruse: "On the left are pictures most of the Seattle TV stations used to talk about two 16-year-olds found shot to death. The stories included links for GoFundMe donations. On the right is a more recent picture. A law enforcement source tells me one of the teens was a murder suspect."
"Questions about the murders of two best friends, their bodies found hours apart on I-5 in North Seattle *2 cute innocent black boys*"
*2 black boys with guns, acting like gangsters*
Weird. We keep being told that the media calls all black guys thugs for no reason
Meme - "To everyone who feels sorry for the so called "journalists" who were fired at LA Times, this is the garbage they put out:
Los Angeles Times CLIMATE & ENVIRONMENT
White drivers are polluting the air breathed by L.A.'s people of color"
Peter Thiel Silicon Valley spy comments have some basis in reality (2019) - "Facebook board member and Trump supporter Peter Thiel made explosive comments Sunday about Google at the National Conservatism Conference in Washington D.C., setting off a wave of skepticism and drawing attention from the president. Among other things, Thiel said that the FBI and CIA should investigate Google and ask whether any foreign spies, particularly Chinese spies, have infiltrated its research into artificial intelligence... Thiel’s allegations about Google, which were presented without specifics or proof, and from his claims that Google has participated in “treasonous” activity."
U.S. Charges Chinese National With Stealing AI Secrets From Google - WSJ (2024)
Iranian Commander Qassem Soleimani Assassinated By U.S. In Baghdad Airstrike | HuffPost Latest News - "Soleimani was one of the most powerful figures in the Mideast. The U.S. confirmed it targeted the general in a monumental escalation toward Iran."
Don Imus, Racist Radio Show Host, Dead At 79 | HuffPost Latest News - "Imus was fired from CBS in 2007 after he referred to members of the Rutgers women's basketball team as “nappy-headed hos.”"
The Washington Post on X - "Breaking news: Airstrike at Baghdad airport kills Iran’s most revered military leader, Qasem Soleimani, Iraqi state television reports"
Don Imus, talk-show host who turned bad behavior into big ratings, dies at 79 - The Washington Post
Steve Berman🇮🇱 on X - "@washingtonpost If WWII was today, WaPo would report how Goering was most revered among NSDAP members and Waffen SS commanders."
Gad Saad on X - "The important question though is whether he was an austere religious scholar."
The New York Times on X - "“Knowing General Suleimani was out there made me feel safer,” said a student about the commander killed in an American drone strike. “He was like a security umbrella above our country.” Listen today's episode of The Daily."
Journalists Mobilize Against Free Speech - "American journalism once thought of itself as being inherently and institutionally pro free speech... A publicly beloved press that earnestly believes in free speech now feels like it belongs to some fictive era of good feelings. These days, the American public distrusts the media more than it ever has. Confronted with this crisis of legitimacy, today’s corporate media increasingly advances ideas that would delight would-be power trippers of any party—like establishing novel forms of government control over what you can see, read, and hear and identifying people with a broad range of unpopular or unapproved views as domestic terrorists. Public discourse is now a “conflict space” with social media serving as an “information warzone,” the public intellectual Peter W. Singer declared in an essay published a few days after the alternately scary and farcical Trump riot on Capitol Hill, seamlessly adapting a framework of state-level physical violence to a discussion of constitutionally protected speech. In recent years the United States has seen more severe acts of political violence and deadlier riots than the events at the Capitol—but American guarantees of free speech apparently should not survive the shocking image of Nancy Pelosi’s office being ransacked. The notion that free expression is sedition’s handmaiden or that the prevention of treason should be a higher goal than the open exchange or exposure of allegedly dangerous arguments are not controversial views anymore; they pop up frequently, among putatively liberal-minded commentators in The Washington Post and The New York Times. Media skepticism toward free expression actually began long before the Capitol riot – and before Trump was elected. The New Yorker’s Kalefa Sanneh anticipated the rising ambivalence toward the existing First Amendment regime when he likened “speech nuts” to “gun nuts” in a 2015 essay. Today, support for the mainstream American free speech norms of earlier, less-Trump-addled times is increasingly cast as a kind of sinister eccentricity... “Those of us in journalism have to come to terms with the fact that free speech, a principle that we hold sacred, is being weaponized against the principles of journalism,” Coll warned. The notion of a dichotomy between free speech and journalism is bizarre enough on its own; stranger still is the idea that in this totally invented standoff between “free speech” and “journalism” the latter should be given higher priority. When one considers Coll’s decadeslong history of contact with the CIA and other security agencies in the course of his prize-winning journalism, perhaps this dichotomy looks a little less weird. Coll’s statement might have been logically and intellectually incoherent, but like Stengel’s piece it was at least an honest look into what various journalism popes are thinking these days: They’re thinking that it’s more honorable, and perhaps better for society at large, for the Fourth Estate to defend what it believes to be its prestige and its few remaining privileges than it is to uphold free expression, which isn’t the business these people are in anyway...
EMILY BAZELON: America is “drowning in lies,” the essayist and journalist declared in the midst of a long piece in The New York Times Magazine last summer, titled “The Problem of Free Speech in an Age of Disinformation.” Sure is! But whose lies, exactly? What are they? How can an average person be expected to tell lies from truth? Perhaps government censorship is the answer to this “problem.” Like many of the other proponents of controlled speech mentioned here, Bazelon’s writing has a detectable winking quality to it: Don’t worry, dear reader, YOU’RE not the one who’s going to be censored. THEY are. In fact, the censorship, so-called, won’t even be that bad. You’ll hardly notice it...
The new enemy is no longer “disinformation” but “misinformation,” or information that somebody, somewhere—perhaps a presidential commission, perhaps an FCC bureaucrat, perhaps a faceless content moderator, perhaps a college professor with a website—deems punishable by virtue of its allegedly being untrue, or not true enough. The “mis” in “misinformation” is a conveniently slippery and expansive term that can include things that might be conventionally regarded as “true,” and in fact are true, but might lead someone to conclusions that fail to conform to a higher truth and are therefore undesirable. What are facts, anyway?... Words aren’t just violence, but violence in its most organized and systematized form, violence on an industrial scale... Boot helpfully notes, in a parenthetical, that he is “a global affairs analyst” at the aforementioned CNN, meaning that he is explicitly arguing for his personal competition to be thrown off the airwaves by the combined forces of government and corporate power.
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS: Like ProPublica, the AP has discovered a shocking “loophole” exploited by ideological extremists: podcasts... “Podcasting ‘plays a particularly outsized role’ in propagating white supremacy,” according to “a 2018 report from the Anti-Defamation League.” Has anyone investigated comic books yet? The lyrics of rap songs? If you haven’t noticed yet, seditious, violence-inducing content is everywhere... For the rising, pro-censorship voices in media and beyond, history has no tides, just correct answers. What objection will today’s anti-speech intellectuals mount if someone in power decides they’re the ones who have it all wrong?"
Of course, now that terrorism supporters are wreaking havoc in the US, the journalists all claim that free speech is important
TV News Now on X - "JUST IN: Staffer for Rep. Rashida Tlaib attempts to block Fox News cameraman with an umbrella as @ChadPergram asks questions"
Stephen L. Miller on X - "A chilling attack on a free and fair press. A robust 4th estate is crucial to a functioning democracy and is stalwart pillar of what makes our institutions dedicated to our first amendment rights. This is not only a chilling attack on one reporter, but every reporter homey g truth to power Democracy died a little bit tod"
Meme - Jen Psaki @jrpsaki: "Campaigns do NOT work with media to pay off sources to suppress stories. It is not normal. It does not happen. Am certain democrats and republican from many campaigns will confirm that."
Stephen L. Miller @redsteeze: "Reminder that the Biden campaign and Tony Blinken authored a letter about the laptop claiming it was a Russian op, then circled it around to their friends in the Intel community to sign, then gave it to Politico to publish, and Jen Psaki then promoted."
Jen Psaki @jrpsaki: "Hunter Biden story is Russian disinfo, dozens of former intel officials say"
Reporter falsely asserts DeSantis spent $577 million on 'anti-immigrant' dashboard - "Gov. Ron DeSantis’ administration is firing back after a Palm Beach Post columnist asserted, falsely, that Florida has spent more than half-a-billion dollars on a single so-called “anti-immigrant online dashboard.” Frank Cerabino wrote for the Palm Beach Post that $577 million was spent to create a dashboard which tracks the costs of hospital visits by illegal aliens. Florida Agency for Health Care Administration Deputy Chief of Staff Alecia Collins called out the report, noting the dashboard costed just $5,000 to create...
Editor’s note: Since the time of publication, the Palm Beach Post has stealth-corrected its story. Click here for the original."
Thread by @ChristinaPushaw on Thread Reader App – Thread Reader App - "Florida media malpractice, example #27648: @pbpost journalist asserts that Gov. DeSantis somehow spent $577 MILLION to create an "anti-immigrant" (?) online dashboard to measure the burden that illegal immigration imposes on taxpaying citizens. In reality, the dashboard cost only $5,000 to create. Apparently the same journalists who wildly exaggerated COVID risks have not learned from their mistakes and remain proudly ignorant of data & statistics... Note that @pbpost published an incendiary, false headline about @AHCA_FL without reaching out to the agency for comment or fact-checking. This behavior violates basic principles of journalism. Journalists like this make a mockery of their own profession, then they lament that WE are responsible for destroying their industry's reputation just because we NOTICED their malpractice."
Nice Guy P on X - "It really never occurred to this guy that $577 million to create a website is plainly absurd? No proofreading? No editors? No “fact checkers”?"
Christina Pushaw 🐊 🇺🇸 on X - "I'm wondering the same thing... I know math isn't a strong suit for media libs, but this is pretty outlandish. Maybe they're so used to the massive federal government spending on DEI, foreign intervention etc. that $577 million doesn't sound like a lot to them?"
FACT CHECK: Would The Wealth Of Every Billionaire In America Keep The Government Running For Less Than 8 Months? | Check Your Fact - "“If we confiscated 100% of the wealth of every billionaire in America, we’d have enough money to run the federal government for less than 8 months… …Our problem isn’t how much billionaires have… It’s how much politicians spend,” the Feb. 3 meme read.
Verdict: False
The claim was based on figures produced by Forbes in 2016, when U.S. billionaires were estimated to have a combined net worth of $2.4 trillion. It cost $2.6 trillion to run the government for eight months in fiscal year 2016. The estimated number and collective net worth of billionaires has increased since 2016, and their combined wealth could now run the government for nine or so months. Although Turning Point isn’t far off the mark, the figure is no longer “less than” eight months."
Fact checking is about pushing the left wing agenda
The Bigger Threat Was Always Domestic - The Atlantic - "The attack Wednesday on the U.S. Capitol was a product of the modern internet... Although the problem is deep-rooted, the solution could be refreshingly straightforward: give journalists money"
From 2021. How convenient that the "solution" is more money for the media, and the focus was still on "disinformation" (i.e. narratives elites don't like) rather than demonising the other half of the country. Given that in 2024 China is recognised as a threat again, the narrative presumably is now different
Meme - Garbage Human @GarbageHuman23: "Madison Brooks was hit by and car, gang raped and then left by the side of the road and died, but for some reason this wasn’t all over the news. Why is that, I wonder?"
"Distraught mother of LSU student who died after alleged rape reveals daughter Madison Brooks' heartbreaking final moments"
Fairness Meter - Newsweek - "Newsweek is committed to journalism that is factual and fair. Our Fairness Meter allows readers to hold us accountable by rating an article's fairness"
Daron Acemoglu on X - "I am disappointed with mainstream US media, including the New York Times. The headlines are all about Biden’s debate performance. Yes, he’s old. Yes, it would’ve been great to have had a more inspiring younger candidate. Yes, he had a bad night, certainly compared to his State of the Union address. But that is not the main story. The main story is that Trump is a very serious threat to US democracy."
Thread by @Metamagician on Thread Reader App – Thread Reader App - "I find this kind of thing strange. I actually agree that Trump is a threat to democracy in the US, but that's a political opinion I hold - it's not a "story" that can be presented accurately and objectively in straight news reporting. It belongs in an editorial. The thing is, the mainstream, US media have been editorializing along those lines for years now, with seemingly little effect. If anything, they've simply damaged their own credibility because it's reached the point where they appear biased and motivated by self-interest. Perhaps there was no choice - it depends on your judgment of just how fundamental a threat you think he is. But there's no new "story" available that Trump is a threat to democracy (and to much else, such as global trade). I can certainly understand that in even more extreme circumstances you might have to do everything possible to oppose a potential tyrant, even to the point of sacrificing other values such as accuracy and objectivity. If a media corporation such as the New York Times went all the way to doing that, thereby further damaging its own credibility, perhaps forever, that would be its choice. It has that right. But it's a very risky business to take that decision. Once such institutions act in that way, they destroy much of their value as trusted sources of accurate, objectively presented information about the world & I think our liberal democracies need such institutions. If we no longer have them, that's also a threat to democracy. I'm not claiming to know the right answer here. Again, what other values you're prepared to risk might depend on just how big a threat you think Trump is. But I do think there's been a certain degree of insouciance about throwing other things of value away, irrespective of how much is thereby lost and how effective it is likely to be in any event."
The boy who cried wolf is still trying. And there're still too many naive people around