Popular Nullification of the State's Propaganda.  [Scroll down]  The news industry exploits a related phenomenon:  intellectual insecurity.  The primary target in this manipulation is news reporters themselves.  You have surely noticed that a lot of well known pundits aren't that smart.  That's intentional.  The people who control public narratives don't want celebrity thinkers; they want eager repeaters — people who mindlessly mimic whatever they're told.  At the same time, most news repeaters have big egos.  That's intentional, too.  People whose egos are larger than they merit are particularly susceptible to manipulation.  They fall victim to what you might call the "lone genius effect."  In any gathering of people, if one person sounds convincingly more intelligent than everyone else, the surrounding group will accord that person with some measure of authority.  What's important is not whether the "lone genius" is telling the truth or even an actual genius, but rather that the group perceives the person to be intellectually superior.  In the news industry, oversized egos are vulnerable to the propaganda of the "lone genius."  Because their psychological health depends upon a self-image of being smarter than they really are, they gravitate toward any individual who appears to be the real deal.  Reporters' intellectual insecurity makes them easy targets.

The Mayor Of Baltimore Attacks White People As The City Deals With Bridge Collapse.  There are evil people who think they're virtuous and there are dumb people who think they're smart:  Joy Reid falls into both categories.  She even looks the part, with the bleach blond, short cropped hair and permanent scowl she looks like the kind of middle aged woman who yells at the pizza delivery guy because the pizza doesn't have pepperoni on it, even though it's not the delivery guy's fault, and even though she didn't order pepperoni.  The point is, I'm not especially a fan of Joy Reid.  But today we have to pay her some special attention once again, unfortunately.  In fact, we are covering this today because the Joy Reid segment in question takes a certain turn that makes it even more relevant.  So, Joy took to her low-rated cable news show last night to call out the alleged racist conservatives who have been engaging in alleged racist conspiracy theories surrounding the Baltimore bridge collapse.  [... Video clip]

CNN Reporter Fully Debases Herself During Kamala Harris Interview, 'Struck Just Being in Your Presence'.  There have been a lot of embarrassing, sycophantic moments between reporters and Democrat politicians throughout history, and press bias is hardly a new revelation.  Some moments stand out more than others, though, and Laura Coates of CNN has just entered her submission to be one of the worst ever.  In an astonishing exchange, Coates appeared to get choked up as she heaped praise on Kamala Harris.  "I'm struck just being in your presence," she says, teeing up the vice president to claim it's because she's a woman.  [Tweet]

The Editor says...
At the upper levels, politicians can pick and choose the reporters they want to interview them. Democrats don't want to be interviewed by Tucker Carlson or Sean Hannity.  They'd prefer to interact with an awestruck female who will only ask the questions supplied by the party headquarters.

Why Was a Winner Projected in Iowa With <1% Votes Counted?  With less than 1% of the vote in, Decision Desk HQ and various news networks have projected Donald Trump to win the 2024 GOP Iowa caucuses.  It was a victory declared in record time.  CBS News was one of the first networks to call the race at 8:30 PM ET.  [Tweet]  In other news, it's cold in Iowa.  In all seriousness, Trump was expected to win and won't be the most important story of the night unless you're a Trump supporter. [...] Ron DeSantis's press secretary, Jeremy Redfern, blasted the move by the media, pointing out that some precincts haven't even voted yet.  "I'm at a precinct that hasn't even voted yet, and the media are trying to call the race for Trump," he said in a post on X/Twitter.

Biden Does Some Laughable Gaslighting About the US Having the 'Best Economy' in New Interview.  The Biden team has been limiting his contact with media for a long time.  As part of the new strategy that they're going to employ, they're going to have him out meeting the people more, and doing smaller podcast-type interviews.  They think that's going to help sell him and get past the age problem.  That didn't work out very well when they ran him around to various stores in the Allentown, Pennsylvania, area and he looked very bad, and contradicted himself on the Houthis, and other subjects.  They also had him do a very short interview with historian Heather Cox Richardson, who was asking him questions about his Valley Forge speech on January 6. You would think a historian might question Biden's effort to compare himself to George Washington, but her "interview" seemed to consist of nodding while he talked.  No piercing questions here, just a couple of softballs.

Sports Illustrated Owner Fires CEO, COO After Bungled 'AI' Adoption.  Last month, Sports Illustrated found itself at the center of a firestorm after it was busted using fake computer-generated authors and computer-generated content — without telling employees and readers.  The scandal came shortly after Gannett (which likely owns whatever's left of your hometown newspaper) was busted doing the exact same thing.  We've noted how most modern media executives see "AI" (language learning models) not as a way to improve productivity, boost product quality, or satisfy readership — but as a way to lazily cut corners and attack labor (organized or otherwise).  As a result, they're implementing these potentially useful technologies in the most half-assed, nontransparent, and problematic way possible.

Israel protest letters have grabbed headlines.  But how real are they?  NBC News broke the news last week that more than 40 White House interns had sent an extraordinary letter to President Biden opposing the administration's support of Israel's military action in Gaza.  So did HuffPost, when it reported Monday that 140 interns on Capitol Hill had sent an open letter protesting the war; it alleges that members of Congress have suppressed a wave of constituent support for a permanent cease-fire in Gaza. [...] Except the letters, and the news stories about them, left a few important questions unanswered -- namely, who wrote them and whether the number of people reportedly supporting them actually did so.  In each case, it was impossible to identify or enumerate the letters' purported signatories.  The stories said supporters declined to make their names public.  That left open claims that dozens of people stood behind the underlying sentiments.  The letters are part of a trendlet of anonymous protest letters purportedly written by people connected to the administration and federal government.  All of the letters were sent without the names of signatories.

Leslie Jones Admits She Thought the Electoral College Was a Real School.  ABC's The View has never been a place for smart and informed discussions about politics.  And that certainly wasn't the case on Monday's episode when Daily Show guest host and so-called "comedian" Leslie Jones openly admitted that before she joined Saturday Night Live in 2014, she seriously thought the Electoral College was a real place where politicians went to school.  In 2014, Jones was 47 years old.

Americans Are Essential — Not Their Government.  Tucker Carlson, one of the few national figures willing to speak plainly about the threats to and concerns of the American people, said some remarkable things in a speech last Tuesday.  He warned that "abrupt change" is heading our way.  He argued that the United States may very well be on the "brink of collapse." [...] Rigged elections, rampant censorship, political persecution, an economic death spiral, and the growing prospect of this century's first truly global war — yes, bad things are either here or quickly coming.  Yet the media's brainwashed minions prattle about "climate change," "colonialism," "diversity," "equity," Taylor Swift, and other false, foolish, or frivolous blather.

How Dumb is CNN?  Legacy media outlets are so grotesquely biased that it is easy to forget how incompetent they are, as well.  [Tweet with screenshot of CNN map of Israel]  They've got Tel Aviv on the Golan Heights, and Sderot, which is frequently in the news for being attacked by Gazan rockets, on the West Bank.  I think it is a matter of common knowledge that Tel Aviv is on the Mediterranean.  Would CNN produce a map showing Istanbul in the middle of Asia Minor?  Or Venice up in the Dolomites?  I don't know, maybe they would.  I know good help is hard to find, but how do you hire someone to situate cities on a map who doesn't actually look at a map?

The Gaza Hospital Fiasco Offers A Vivid Example Of Journalism's Rot.  When news broke yesterday that Israel had bombed Al-Ahli Arab Hospital in Gaza, killing patients, children, and staff, every "anti-Zionist," "critic of Israel," and most big American journalism outfits ran with the horrible story.  The tale incited worldwide condemnation and recrimination.  But it wasn't true.  Israel did not hit the hospital.  The Islamic Jihad did.  Hundreds of people did not die.  The missile landed in a parking lot.  It was Hamas disinformation.  The media's disastrous failure on the Gaza hospital bombing story is one of the most vivid and instructive examples of the structural and inherent problems plaguing contemporary journalism.  It mirrors many other fiascos of the past decade.  It is clear at this point that journalism schools are producing closed-minded, credulous ideologues who will believe anything that comports with their worldview.  It's either that, or we have a bunch of closed-minded ideologues who are willing accomplices in spreading propaganda.  Functionally speaking, it doesn't really matter.  In either case, their sympathies lie with Hamas.

How low can you go?  On the day that Gallup reported bad news for the U.S. news media, the folks in the newsrooms lost their common sense over a hospital story.  In a heartbeat they confirmed why the public doesn't trust them. [...] The reputable "journos" bought it without any hesitation.  Why?  I am not sure but maybe it was too easy to fall for those videos of ambulances dragging people out of the area.  A video speaks louder than the truth?  Maybe they like badgering Israel rather than doing any serious reporting about how Hamas is actually hurting the Palestine people.  Or maybe they are not serious people which is why more and more Americans are not trusting them anymore.

Our utterly bankrupt "mainstream" press.  The so-called bombing of a hospital in the Gaza strip yesterday has revealed better than anything the utter bankruptcy of our modern press.  Without any confirmation mainstream sources like CNN and MSNBC accepted without question the claims by Hamas that the bombing was an "Israeli strike" and that 200 to 500+ people were killed.  The graphic to the right illustrates CNN's dishonesty.  The report itself seemed eager to accept the Hamas claims, without any checking, while simultaneously treating the Israeli reports (that evidence showed that the impact was caused by a misfired Hamas rocket) with great skepticism and doubt requiring double and maybe triple verification.  MSNBC immediately reported the claims of Hamas, without any verification, while also exaggerating the damage incredibly, as shown by the second graphic to the right.  The reporter first claims "the images coming out of Gaza are absolutely harrowing," then notes that the known damage was in "the courtyard area of this hospital," even as the video being shown during his report shows no damage, just ambulances arriving at a hospital with a variety of patients.  The irony is that not only have video and audio evidence confirmed without question now that the rocket was from Hamas (including audio of Hamas' agents admitting to this fact), the impact itself didn't appear to hit the hospital itself, just that courtyard/parking lot.  As noted at the tweet, "How did 500 people die in a parking lot?"  In fact, the death toll remains very unclear indeed.  It could very well be that very few were killed, though determining that fact will not be easy.

Lies and Polling Questions.  Looking back over three decades plus of climate hysteria one can identify several phases in the narrative.  Phase one was simple, the message being:  the climate is changing.  The response from many (including this scientist) was:  yes it is, and it always has, and it always will.  We then moved into phase two:  the climate is changing, and human activity bears some responsibility for the phenomenon.  The question was always:  "if true, how much?"  But once we started down that road, civilized discourse pretty much came to an end.  That's because the media professionals got involved, and they don't care about highly technical.  They're only interested in attracting eyeballs. [...] Media types, like the propagandists they are, deplore complexity and nuance.  They want messages that are simple and powerful.  Once those of us they've labeled "deniers" started to delve into the intricacies involved in evaluating and responding to "climate change," the PR professionals put a stop to discourse.  They essentially said that this "crisis" was too important to dither about the details.  "Climate change is happening and mankind is responsible" — full stop.  Any further discussion was not desired.

Pay-For-Play Journalism is Killing the Media.  Good Riddance.  Mainstream science reporting is generally awful.  Ideological zeal and ignorance on the part of reporters help explain why we're regularly confronted by so much subpar journalism.  But we need to factor another important cause into the discussion: an increasing number of news outlets are paid to produce politically skewed coverage on vitally important public health issues.  The latest example of this outright corruption of the press surfaced in late August when the Washington Free Beacon released its investigation of the Associated Press (AP):  ["]The AP takes in millions more from philanthropies — the Hewlett Foundation, Walton Family Foundation, and others — to fund reporting on climate change, such as stories that this summer's heat wave is due to global warming ...["]  The problem is obvious: journalists who sell their coverage to the highest bidder are propagandizing the public for a paycheck instead of informing them.  Although this inappropriately cozy arrangement has skewed the public's understanding of many important issues over the years, the problem appears to be resolving as a growing number of Americans lose trust in the media.

CNN Gets Roasted for Absurd Chyron Warning Constitution is 'Outdated, Puts Democracy at Risk'.  The few remaining viewers of CNN got a remarkable dose of news on Saturday.  Just in time for Constitution Day, CNN's dwindling audience learned that the Consitution of the United States — the oldest written government charter in the world and the document that gave birth to the nation that has spread democracy around the globe — has become so "outdated" that it's actually a "threat to democracy."  Of course, that's democracy as CNN's scholars understand it.  And you can't spell ignorance without "C-N-N."

A Reckoning on COVID Coverage.  [Scroll down]  In both the CDC and FDA examples, you didn't need to be a virologist or epidemiologist to expose the glaring weakness of their argument.  Yet no major conservative media did so at the time.  One Fox newscaster repeated the FDA's "You're not a horse" tweet, but he made no mention that IVM comes in human tablet form which the FDA has made hard to get.  Why not? [...] There occurred no critical analysis of an entire host of COVID issues, including lockdowns, medical establishment sabotage of hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin, vaccine side effects, issues with remdesivir, etc.  (A notable exception is the Epoch Times, which has offered extensive, scholarly and critical COVID coverage throughout.)  Another problem among conservative news outlets was that they routinely, robotically and uncritically printed Reuters and AP articles, taking their COVID reporting at face value.

They are rubbing our noses in their filth.  As long as President Trump is out of office, it is felonious business as usual in Corruption City.  There is no incentive for the crooked Republicans in Congress to help Trump, which explains why John Fetterman is in the Senate and not Dr. Oz.  But that is not the narrative fake conservatives feed us.  Over at Paul Ryan's Express — a clever name for Fox News — Newt Gingrich is saying the dam is going to break and the bribery scandals are going to bring Biden down.  Sure they are, right after Republicans repeal Obamacare.  But the Bud Light of cable news believes false hope will appease and entice enough conservatives so it can go back to beating MSNBC and CNN in the fake ratings war.

NBC just repeats climate predictions by the UN, no matter how many previous dire projections have been 100% wrong.  It seems that every day the media will repeat a doomsday prediction about the climate from the UN or elsewhere to scare the public.  They never ask questions even though previous dire predictions have been 100% wrong.  The purpose is clearly to mislead the public that predictions are equivalent to facts, and they must capitulate to radical leftist policies to save the planet.  The prediction below is that people in the southern U.S won't be able to survive unless they give up gas cars, gas furnaces, and other conveniences. [...] What will make the South more uninhabitable is if they succed in destroying the power grid and we have less air conditioning.

Artificial Intelligence: The Facts.  Technical topics, of any sort at all, are generally subject to serious distortion when they hit the level of public discussion.  There are many reasons for this — ideology, click-lust, and the sheer inability of the average journo school grad to adequately wrap his head around whatever concept is under consideration.  There's no end of examples:  Just think of the garbage written about global warming or COVID.  The latest of these topics is Artificial Intelligence (AI).

As usual, the media's knee-jerk take on the Canadian wildfires was all wrong.  There was nothing new about springtime wildfires in Canada until the wind shifted unexpectedly last week.  That shift blew smoky air all over the northern and eastern US, producing memorably apocalyptic-like orange air in New York City.  Not wanting to waste a crisis, the lamestream media jumped right in with both feet.  They blamed the wildfires on the much-dreaded "climate change," scared the daylights out of everyone about the air quality and then warned that more like it was on the way unless we changed our fossil fuel-burning ways.  Not unexpectedly, the media's knee-jerk take was all wrong.  Wildfires and smoky air have always occurred wherever there are forests.  At least eighteen of these dark or "yellow days" occurred in the US and Canada from 1706 to 1910.  George Washington even noted in his diary the one that occurred on May 19, 1780 that reached as far south as Morristown, New Jersey.

There is very little news delivered in your average hour of cable news.  The "news" business should really have the "business" part in scare quotes.  No, they rarely do news reporting anymore — replacing investigating with repurposing press releases and repeating rumors whispered over drinks from interested parties.  They are a business.  And as a business, it is their fiduciary duty to maximize profits.  There are two ways these companies can maximize profits: attract as large of an audience as possible or cultivate a loyal audience and cater to them expressly.  Literally no outlet has opted for the first choice.  If, under the banner of news, you operate in a way to maintain your audience's loyalty you will do nothing that could possibly irritate them or cause them to leave.  Though, occasionally, they do stupid things like firing Tucker Carlson, most entities aren't dumb enough to rock their own boats like that.  Joy Reid's continued employment with no discernible skills, knowledge or talent is a prime example.  All you get is choir-preaching, not news delivery.

Blame the Media for the National Debt.  Democrats and Republicans reached an agreement to lift the debt ceiling, and nothing is going to change in the disturbing pattern of America's national debt climbing by leaps and bounds.  The best reason for pessimism?  Our Democrat-messaging media.  They can't be bothered to offer the most basic facts in budget coverage.  What is the budget for the current fiscal year?  What was the last budget deficit?  How large is the national debt?  These are questions that are rarely answered by news anchors.  What we get is a lot of horse-race jockeying and finger-pointing instead of facts.  They must think the viewers are too stupid to juggle numbers.

The Statistics That Come Out of Nowhere.  This winter, the university where one of us works sent out an email urging employees to wear a hat on particularly cold days because "most body heat is lost through the top of the head."  Many people we know have childhood memories of a specific figure — perhaps 50 percent or, by some accounts, 80 percent of the heat you lose is through your head.  But neither figure is scientific:  One is flawed, and the other is patently wrong. [...] (According to a hypothermia expert cited by the [New York] Times, a more accurate figure is 10 percent.)  This rather trivial piece of medical folklore is an example of a more serious problem:  Through endless repetition, numbers of dubious origin take on the veneer of scientific fact, in many cases in the context of vital public-policy debates.  Unreliable numbers are always just an internet search away, and serious people and institutions depend on and repeat seemingly precise quantitative measurements that turn out to have no reliable support.

Most of the media doesn't care about anything unless the story fits their radical leftist agenda.  Most of the media care as much about Tara Reade's credible accusations against Trump as they did about all women that Bill and Hillary physically and mentally abused.  The media also has never seemed to care about all the young girls that Jeffrey Epstein abused, or the men that enjoyed hanging around with Epstein.  The Me-too movement was fake.  The number of supposed news stories that are fake, false, or intentionally misleading the public is massive.  Here is a small sample:  Every day we hear that there have been hundreds of mass shootings in the U.S this year yet we see the details on only a few.  Why don't we ever see the details of all the mass shootings in Chicago and elsewhere that involve black gang members shooting other blacks?  Why don't we see the names of the victims, the records of the shooters, and the motives?  The answer is it doesn't fit the agenda.

Joe Biden says Hunter has done 'nothing wrong.' Really?  Let's count the ways.  In an interview with MSNBC on Friday, Biden repeated the same mantra that he has maintained since the 2020 election when his son's laptop revealed an array of possible criminal acts: Hunter has "done nothing wrong."  In the interview, Biden declared "My son has done nothing wrong.  I trust him.  I have faith in him, and it impacts my presidency by making me feel proud of him."  As with media over the last four years, MSNBC's Stephanie Ruhle did not challenge the clearly absurd statement.  Instead, she prefaced her question by stressing that there are "no ties to you" in any of his son's alleged crimes.  That is, of course, ignoring the mounting evidence of influence peddling, repeated references to the involvement of the president, and reports of a whistleblower alleging the president's involvement in a bribery scheme.

Police Hunt Suspect After NY Subway Rider Allegedly Stabbed with Ice Pick.  A New York subway rider was allegedly stabbed in the stomach with an ice pick in what police are calling an "unprovoked attack" as they continue the search for the suspect.  The incident happened on April 19 when the victim, a 38-year-old man, and his friend, a 43-year-old man, were waiting on the northbound J train platform at the Crescent Street train station in Cypress Hills at around 4:15 a.m.  Fox 5 reports the suspect approached the two men and stabbed the victim in the stomach with an ice pick before fleeing.

The Editor says...
The news media is infested with spineless weasels who wouldn't dare make an assertion of fact without the ability to quote a government official saying the same thing.  For example, this incident is "what police are calling an 'unprovoked attack.'"  What else would you call it?  Why hide behind the police spokesman?

Starship/Superheavy did not explode!  In the past twenty-four hours we have another wonderful demonstration of the utter bankruptcy of the American press in the manner in which it has decided to describe yesterday's first test launch of Starship/Superheavy.  Here are just a few headline examples:  [Omitted for brevity]  Every single one of those headlines implies that the explosion was the launch's failure.  If you read the linked articles you find that many repeat that implication in their reports.  None are correct.  The explosion was in fact a successful demonstration of the rocket's operation and engineering.  Every rocket has what is called a flight termination system, designed to allow mission control to manually self-destruct the rocket should it start to fly out of control. [...] In other words, the failures occurred before the self-destruct command was issued, and the explosion was merely the successful initiation of that termination system.  The explosion was not the failure, it was actually proof of working engineering.  What makes these headlines more damning to these news sources that many even described the use of the flight termination system, but still implied that the failure was the explosion.  Many didn't even bother to do any research into what happened.  Many articles exhibited a complete and almost willful ignorance of the facts.  The Verge and the Telegraph articles are a good examples, but they are unfortunately very typical.

Media Recruits "Muslim Jihadist" to Smear DeSantis.  I remember when the media was defending Islamic terrorists.  It's a short step to making them our moral guides.  ["]DeSantis 'is not a good guy,' says former Guantánamo detainee["]  I don't know about you, but when I set out to decide who's a good guy, I ask former Guantánamo detainees, followed by serial killers, pedophiles and mass shooters.

The media is clearly confused about the difference between made-up predictions and factual news.  A significant percentage of news stories are made-up predictions, not factual reporting. [...] Here is a small sample:
Prediction:  In 1922, an article appeared in the Washington Post warning that because of warming, the icecaps are melting fast.
Fact:  the icecaps are still there because the predictions were made up.
Prediction:  In 1970, around the first Earth Day, after thirty years of global cooling, we were told that an existential threat of a coming ice age would kill billions of people because of starvation.
Fact:  The predictions were 100% wrong because they were made up to scare the people. [...]
Prediction:  In 2000 we heard predictions that there would be snowless winters.
Fact:  The predictions were 100% wrong.
Prediction:  In 2005, after hurricane Katrina hit, we were told that global warming would cause more frequent and more severe hurricanes.
Fact:  The predictions were 100% wrong because they were just made up.  We actually had a very mild ten-year hurricane period after Katrina.
Prediction:  In 2008, ABC predicted great disasters by 2015 because of global warming
Fact:  The predictions were 100% wrong.

Miami Herald Fell For Another Rebekah Jones Hoax, Whitewashes Sons Alleged Threat to Shoot Up School.  The Miami Herald just can't quit Rebekah Jones, even if it means whitewashing alleged threats to shoot up a school.  On Wednesday, Jones turned her 13-year-old son into the Santa Rosa County Sheriff's Office.  He was wanted for intimidation, a second degree felony, because of threats he allegedly made to carry out a mass shooting at his own school in Florida.  Classmates of Jones's son had said that he had repeatedly alluded to such a desire, including in messages that read:  "I want to shoot up the school."  [Video clip]

The more you trust the media, the less accurate you are.  The other day I wrote about the correlation between political ideology and assumptions about how many unarmed Blacks are killed by police.  In it I discussed a study done by the Skeptic Research Center that showed that people who identify as liberal are least likely to guess how many unarmed Black men are killed by police.  Not by a little, but by a lot.  Almost none of the liberals guessed in the right range — the number is about 10 a year — and over half guessed that the number was between 1000 to 10,000.  [Numerous tweets]  The most accurate group was conservatives, with very conservative being the best, and very liberal being the worst.  It's not even close.  Liberals have no idea what the truth is, and they believe the very worst to be the case.  Yesterday the organization released more data from their study, in order to explain why that is the case.  Their findings were equally interesting because they give a very strong clue regarding what is driving that disparity.  And it's exactly what you think:  the greater the education you have and the higher the trust in the news media the less likely you are to have a grasp of reality.

Press Make Absolutely Horrific Move in Dealing With the Psychotic Transgender Shooter.  As RedState reported, a militant transgender shooter with a manifesto murdered multiple people at a Christian school in Nashville on Monday.  The tragedy that rocked the community was revealed to be politically motivated in short order with prior calls for a "Trans Day of Vengeance" permeating the situation.  That Tennessee had recently passed a law banning child mutilation under the guise of "gender-affirming care," something the left described as a genocide, clearly played a role in the shooter's psyche.  But as the aftermath of the tragedy played out, the national press latched onto what was really important:  Ensuring that the "right" pronouns are used to describe the murderous psychopath.  Truly, this is one of the worst things I've ever seen the news media do, [...]

American Thinker was the first to call out the fraud of Dr. Anthony Fauci and was viciously attacked by the WaPo, NYT other MSM outlets.  Three years ago tomorrow, on March 21, 2020, American Thinker published the first nationally-read critical article about Dr. Anthony Fauci, the Deep State medical bureaucrat who would play a determinative role in the country's draconian and failed response to Covid-19.  I was the author of that blog.  At the time, the United States was in the first days of an unprecedented nationwide lockdown as a result of the pandemic.  The weeks and months ahead would witness the greatest disruption of life in the U.S. since World War II — and arguably the most serious suspension of the constitutional protection of civil liberties, as well as harm to hundreds of millions of Americans' health and personal freedom — in the history of the country.  Although Fauci, as director of the National Institutes of Health's National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), had a four-decade-long history of questionable influence on the nation's health care, the media in March 2020, both left and right, were largely swooning over him.

Huge seaweed bloom that can be seen from space threatens Florida beaches.  A giant seaweed blob so large it can be seen from space is threatening to transform beaches along Florida's Gulf coast into a brown morass, scientists say.  The 5,000-mile-wide sargassum bloom — believed to be the largest in history at twice the width of the continental US — is drifting ominously toward the Sunshine State, NBC News reported.  "It's incredible," Brian LaPointe, a research professor at Florida Atlantic University's Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institute, told the news outlet.  "What we're seeing in the satellite imagery does not bode well for a clean beach year," he added.

The Editor says...
Fake news alert:  Nearly everything can be seen from space.  That's why we have orbiting telescopes pointing down.  But other things can be easily seen, too, and astronauts have really good vision.  An seaweed bloom covers several acres, so it's no surprise that it can be easily seen.  Also, there is no such thing as a "clean beach."  Nobody goes to the beach to get clean.  Everybody expects to get dirty.

CNBC's Jim Cramer [was] eviscerated for touting Silicon Valley Bank weeks before disastrous collapse.  CNBC's "Mad Money" host Jim Cramer is being shredded across social media after footage resurfaced of him urging viewers in February to invest in Silicon Valley Bank (SVB), which collapsed on Friday.  SVB had been the 16th largest bank in the United States and was connected to a number of Silicon Valley industries and startups.  The closure of the bank was announced by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), making it the worst U.S. financial institution failure in nearly 15 years.  Upon the news of SVB's collapse, a clip went viral of Cramer in February speaking positively about the bank in a list of "The Biggest Winners of 2023... So Far."

Silicon Valley Bank top bosses sold $4.5 million worth of shares before the collapse.  Ahead of the collapse of the Silicon Valley Bank (SVB), many of the company's top executives sold their shares worth $4.5 million in the company.  The bank's Chief Executive Officer Gregory Becker, Chief Financial Officer Daniel Beck, and Chief Marketing Officer Michelle Draper sold their shares of the bank's parent company SVB Financial Group.

The Editor says...
That lone assertion, presented without evidence, appears to be the entire article.  The rest of the page is just a warehouse of clickbait.

A Handy January 6 Fact Sheet.  In another example of Washington's inexorable slide into banana republic territory, Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) took to the floor of the U.S. Senate on Tuesday to call for the removal of an American journalist.  "I don't think I've ever seen an anchor treat the American people, and American democracy, with such disdain," Schumer said during his seven-minute authoritarian tirade.  "And he's going to come back tonight with another segment.  Fox News should tell him not to.  Fox News, Rupert Murdoch — tell Mr. Carlson not to run a second segment of lies.  You know it's a lie."  Schumer later reiterated his demand to a group of journalists who, rather than denounce one of the most powerful government officials in the country attempting to silence an influential member of the media, dutifully reported Schumer's bleating without question.

The Death of Expertise.  The "experts" told us that Obamacare wouldn't raise health care costs, that a random YouTube video caused the 9/11 Benghazi attack, that Hillary's unsecured private email server containing classified material was no big deal, that Donald Trump was a Russian spy, that the Steele dossier was something more than Clinton campaign propaganda, that a Trump presidency would bring economic depression and global war, that the Biden family had no financial interests in Ukraine or China, that Hunter Biden's laptop was Russian disinformation, that mail-in ballot dumps without signature matching or other verifiable security checks were perfectly normal, and that the 2016 election was rigged — but that calling the 2020 election "rigged" is an attack on democracy.  The "experts" were wrong, but they held the most fashionable opinions.

The DC anti-Trump brigade behind the 'big bad bot' stories that duped the media.  Last week, the great Matt Taibbi revealed that a shadowy group called "Hamilton 68" had been accusing anyone and anything they don't like of being, or being influenced by, a Russian bot.  "Instead of tracking how 'Russia' influenced American attitudes," Taibbi notes, "Hamilton 68 simply collected a handful of mostly real, mostly American accounts, and described their organic conversations as Russian scheming."  Simply in terms of volume, Taibbi estimates that Hamilton 68 "may go down as the single greatest case of media fabulism in American history.  Virtually every major news organization in America is implicated, including NBC, CBS, ABC, PBS, CNN, MSNBC, The New York Times and The Washington Post.  Mother Jones alone did at least 14 stories pegged to the group's 'research.'  Even fact-checking sites like Politifact and Snopes cited Hamilton 68 as a source."  But what is Hamilton 68?  It is, Taibbi writes, a "computerized 'dashboard' designed to be used by reporters and academics to measure 'Russian disinformation.'"

[A] Left-wing think tank [is] responsible for thousands of fake Russia stories: new Twitter Files.  A left-wing think tank erroneously claiming to track Russian online activity was responsible for thousands of bogus stories asserting the nation's influence in US politics, according to the latest batch of Twitter Files.  The Hamilton 68 "dashboard" was the brainchild of former FBI special agent and MSNBC contributor Clint Watts and operated under the Alliance for Securing Democracy, a think tank founded in 2017 — shortly after former President Trump took office.  The ASD Advisory Council included such figures as top Clinton ally John Podesta, Obama-era acting CIA Director Michael Morell, former US Ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul, and former conservative activist Bill Kristol.  The latest Twitter Files disclosure, the 15th so far, revealed how Hamilton 68's Russian bot dashboard repeatedly insisted there was widespread and deep Russian penetration of social media and unveiled that Twitter executives frequently challenged those claims internally.

Antagonizing the Scapegoats.  [Scroll down] [I]n view of the press' oft-repeated rush to smear its chosen targets, sinister suspicions suggest themselves.  The maudlin interviewer weepily bearing witness to the moving testimony of Jussie Smollett; the glum commentators endlessly recycling the "fine people" hoax; the monotonous chorus solemnly commemorating the all-but-sacred martyrdom of petty thugs like Trayvon Martin and Michael Brown; the casual assignment of guilt by accusation (to police officers, the Covington school kids, Kyle Rittenhouse) — all this arouses our suspicion.  Even when these obscene abuses of the public trust are exposed, there is no retraction or apology; the brazen liars simply soldier on.  Perhaps no institution is more conspicuous in its utter moral failure than the contemporary American print, broadcast, and online media. [...] Contemporary journalists are, as a general rule, embarrassingly unimpressive, poorly educated, self-promoting hacks having no understanding of (or loyalty to) the American heritage (a phrase from which many would probably recoil as a "racist dog whistle").  Journalists represent the worst the American university system has to offer a society its brainwashed graduates routinely degrade.  Any truth a media activist deems detrimental (like the Twitter files) is buried.  Any lie deemed serviceable — no matter how dubious the source or implausible the claim — is amplified and promoted.  Every cherished falsehood is blared at the public until it's exposed, then the activist simply trumpets the next serviceable lie (e.g. "Russia Collusion," "hands up, don't shoot," and so on).

Fox's Geraldo Rivera Slammed for Calling AR-15s 'Automatic Rifles'.  Longtime journalist and Fox News co-host Geraldo Rivera received a wave of criticism on Twitter Tuesday after incorrectly identifying the AR-15 as an "automatic rifle."  In an exchange on the opinion roundtable show, "The Five," Rivera discussed President Joe Biden's pledge to ban assault rifles with his fellow co-hosts.  "I submit to you, ladies and gentlemen, there is no legitimate reason ... to have an AR-15," Rivera tells the table.

"The Science" Isn't Scientific.  One of the saddest aspects of the Left's takeover of our institutions is what it has done to the scientific establishment.  This is a big topic, but for now let's stick to the Lancet, which once was one of the world's most respected medical journals.  Now, it is largely a joke, pushing hack politics — race, gender, climate change — instead of seriously advancing medical science.  This degeneration long predates covid.  In 2016, I wrote about the Lancet's editorial denunciation of Donald Trump, which read like a parody.  In 2017, I noted an article by Lancet's editor in chief, who argued that Marxism is the key to public health.  And in 2018, I mocked the Lancet's editorial calling for an end to eating meat.  For the climate!

Junk food and junk news.  [Scroll down] Everything about junk food can be said about junk news.  Fast, easy to swallow, no real informational value — it's not as if you'll come away with a healthy understanding of current events.  But you will feel as if you've packed away a lot of good stuff!  Just the kind of information that will sustain you.  Just like junk food, junk news is not produced and provided for your mental health or well-being, either.  Junk news gives only the illusion of healthy information — e.g., "wasn't there a piece of lettuce in there?" versus "wasn't there a kernel of truth in there?"  Yes, but the rest of the junk food is stuffing that clogs your arteries.  The rest of the junk news is wrapped in lies and distortions leading to the ignorance and prejudice that eventually kill inquiring minds and essential common sense.

Elon Musk asks judge to move shareholder's lawsuit from San Francisco to Texas for fair trial.  Elon Musk claims he can't get a fair trial in San Francisco and wants the trial for a shareholder's lawsuit over a series of 2018 tweets moved out of the Bay Area, according to a report.  The Tesla mogul wants the lawsuit — accusing him of causing volatility in Twitter's share price after he claimed he had enough financing to take the company private — heard in West Texas, which includes the state capital of Austin, where he moved Tesla's headquarters in 2021.  If not, the trial should be delayed until the negative media coverage surrounding Musk's $44 billion acquisition of Twitter calms down.

The Editor says...
Attention New York Post writers:  Austin is not in West Texas.  The center of Texas is about a two-hour drive to the west from Austin.

With all the cable TV news channels clamoring for your attention, fluff and filler replaces actual news.
Attack of the Megalomaniacal News Media.  The mainstream news media have mutated from providing useful information into multi-biased, overbearing, omnipresent purveyors of false, useless information that is critical for them to report and useless for us to receive.  This must stop. [...] Let us count some of these distortions:
  [#1]   News commentary in the form of space fillers telling us "what it really means," usually with bias.
  [#2]   News forecasting in the form of space fillers that forecast what will, or might, happen, again usually with bias.
  [#3]   Panel discussions from self-ordained "experts" on endless subjects.  Does anybody really know what constitutes a "Democrat Strategist" or "Republican Strategist"?
  [#4]   Endless interviews of ancillary parties, politicians, and celebrities providing the usual bias.
  [#5]   Fake news that results when, having exhausted endless ways to discuss what really happened or might happen, the camera continues to run.  The outlets effectively make things up to fill that space with more bias.
  [#6]   International news "crises" at thousands of miles distance presented as if the sky is falling here and now.
  [#7]   Journalists risking their lives standing on camera in seaside hurricane-force winds to inform us that wind blows during hurricanes.  Who would have guessed?
  [#8]   24/7 banners on the cable stations, e.g., Fox insisting there is a continuous stream of important "Alerts" and CNN perpetually hectoring us with "Breaking News."

The Editor says...
Many other topics are used as filler:  "This day in history" is not news.  At the end of every year, there's always a long "year in review" story on every network-affiliated TV station.  That's not news.  Today's "celebrity birthdays" is a well-known filler.  That's not news.  Traffic reports that almost always talk about problems in the usual problem areas that regular commuters know all too well.  (What good are TV traffic reports?  Who watches TV on the way to work?)  The fluff also includes highly sensational reports of routine weather, in which only the most severe weather — probably not in your area — is reported.  Severe weather coverage often includes a few hints that bad weather (hot or cold!) is caused by global warming.  The "weather" segment also talks about the pollen count, the ultraviolet index, and the air pollution level, none of which is mentioned unless it's couched as a foreboding pronouncement.  Local TV mews is mostly sizzle and very little steak.  A house fire isn't newsworthy, except to the people in adjacent houses.  (Suzie Plastique, reporting from the scene of the fire, which was probably extinguished before she got there, invariably concludes her live report with an assertion that "the cause of the fire is still under investigation."  Of course it is, Suzie, since we can see the house is still smoldering behind you.)  The local news is written by people who think the viewers are stupid.  We know icy roads are slippery and outdoor faucets should be covered in the winter.  Everybody knows it's a bad idea to celebrate holidays with gunshots into the air.  We know the batteries in our smoke detectors need to be checked.  We know what a school zone is.  We can figure out how to stay cool in the summer. (In fact, there's some kind of "How to stay safe while you _______" advice every couple of weeks.)  Most people understand that every other telemarketing call is a scam.  Everybody knows when the income tax deadline is.  By and large, local TV news is just the filler between commercials breaks, which are the only indispensible parts of the show.

Idaho Suspect's Classmates Accuse Him of 'Anti-LGBTQ' Statements but Reporters Don't Verify.  [Scroll down] "We had quite a long conversation in class about it too.  I don't believe I remember him commenting about it at all," classmate B.K. Norton told the New York Times.  Norton, a lesbian, weirdly accused Kohberger of making "anti-LGBTQ" comments but did not tell the reporters what those comments were.  Her accusation was repeated in many news publications that lifted her quotes from the Times.  At least one other student, who did not want to be named, backed up Norton's account but didn't elaborate on the actual comments, though they said the incident "somewhat isolated" Kohberger from other students and he had trouble making friends after that.  Was Kohberger canceled by his classmates for wrongthink?  Why didn't the reporters who interviewed Kohberger's classmates nail down what the "offensive" comments were?  Instead, they chose to leave that part of this story undisclosed and open to the interpretation of the reader to imagine some dastardly insult, when history proves that LGBTQ activists are so easily offended that the things one can't say change almost hourly.  Pardon my skepticism, but anyone crying "anti-LGBTQ" in the year 2022 needs serious vetting.

NYTimes Uses Pictures of Shotgun Shells when Discussing AR-15s.  The New York Times editorial board ran a hit job bashing gun rights that put the leftist media organ's ignorance on full display, using a cover photo for the op-ed that depicted shotgun shells instead of the piece's target, AR-15s.  The article was entitled "America's Toxic Gun Culture," and it was the fifth in a series entitled "The Danger Within," which NYT reports is an attempt to convince its dwindling readership "to understand the danger of extremist violence and possible solutions."

We don't have a free press.  If we had a free press, 30 reporters would never pose with Nancy Pelosi as if they were her ladies-in-waiting.  If we did, Hillary's 30,000 emails sent to a trucking company in Red China would have stopped her presidential bid.  If we had a free press, Seth Rich's murder would have been bigger than George Floyd's overdose death.  If we had a free press, journalists would not seek the approval of John Podesta (Hillary's henchman) as we learned in the DNC emails leaked by Seth Rich.  If we had a free press, Hillary's fake charity which laundered bribes from foreigners would have landed her in prison.  If we had a free press, the FBI spying on Donald Trump would have landed Barack Obama in prison as well.  If we had a free press, Jim Comey would have been Obama's cellmate.

Our Lying Idiot Media Really Is That Dumb.  One of the most astounding stories of media malfeasance is how the Associated Press ran a story claiming that Russian missiles struck Poland after a 10 minute Slack chat with a reporter who told colleagues, "I'm actually at a doctor's appointment."  Nobody at the AP, including its Arab correspondent running the European desk, did any kind of follow-up or got confirmation.  When a scandal like this reveals the internal workings of the media, it's almost laughable how little fact checking goes into stories and how thoroughly ignorant everyone involved really is.  But the only thing astounding about the story is how commonplace it is.  The media now routinely operates this way after discarding the layers of fact checking and runs reports based solely on whether they fit a political narrative and whether there is some anonymous government source behind them.  The Russian missile strike story met both criteria. [...] The media's research methodologies are roughly about those of a college freshman trying to finish a term paper due the next day after a night of heavy partying.  Material is thrown together in 10 minutes or less based on some casual googling or Slack chats by people who only have the job that they do because of their parents, which professor they befriended in journalism school or because of their race or other incidental attributes that qualify them for nothing.

The Unspoken Genocide of Christians in Nigeria: The black lives that don't matter.  Did you know that, all throughout sub-Saharan Africa — in Nigeria, Mozambique, the Central African Republic, Mali, the Democratic Republic of Congo — Muslims have for many years been terrorizing and slaughtering Christians?  Nor is there any hope on the horizon:  problems that cannot be honestly addressed are doomed to persist in perpetuity.  Enter the so-called "mainstream media."  As far as they are concerned, the persecution of Christians in Africa is a byproduct of economic and territorial grievances.  One report, titled, "How poverty and corruption fuel terrorism across Africa," is emblematic.  After citing an incident where "jihadis" connected to the Islamic State slaughtered dozens, it insists that such terrorist attacks, which "are on the rise across the African continent," are "a consequence of poverty, domestic grievances new and old..."  This has been the mainstream media's argument, and they're sticking to it — no matter all the mountains of contradictory evidence.

Report: Journalism is the most regretted college major.  Tens of millions of young Americans owe trillions of dollars in debt they incurred for the sake of college degrees, not all of which were created equal.  A new survey published by the American employment marketplace ZipRecruiter has provided a valuable insight into the perceived uselessness of certain college degrees, the most regretted of which is a journalism major.

Six Reasons Corporate Media Failed to Frame MAGA for Paul Pelosi Incident.  Watching the overpaid, blow-dried hoaxsters who run the corporate media haplessly attempt to frame Republicans for whatever happened to Paul Pelosi last week is like watching Lou Costello parallel park. [...] Outside of losing their moral authority and influence, the corporate media are becoming more incompetent by the day.  Fifteen years ago, with billions of corporate dollars backing their lies and a near-monopoly on public information, this frame-up would have worked like a charm.  But the execution would not have been as ham-handed as this one.  These people are not just fascist and corrupt; they're idiots.  So here are the six reasons why the media's attempt to frame us for whatever happened to Paul Pelosi has so spectacularly failed. [...]

11 Years Ago, Democrats Got Everything Wrong.  They Are Doing It Again.  On January 8, 2011, shortly after 10:00 AM, Democrat Representative Gabby Giffords and 18 other people were shot.  Six died.  Within minutes, every form of media was set ablaze with speculation. [...] By early afternoon, Jared Loughner a white male, had been identified as the shooter.  Loughner was instantly linked to neo-Nazis and white supremacists.  He was linked to the Tea Party and then to the "right wing" generally. [...] By mid-afternoon, a graphic with crosshairs "targeting" Democrat districts was shown on CNN, MSNBC, Huffington Post DailyKos, and dozens of other shows and internet sites about every 30 seconds.  The map, they loudly claimed, was definitive proof that Sarah Palin's PAC map had incited Loughner.  Palin was to blame.  The right was to blame.  All Republicans were to blame.  By nightfall, the torches were lit and the pitchforks were out. [...] Almost nothing media initially reported was accurate.  Palin had nothing to do with Loughner's personal grudge against Giffords.  Within weeks, America knew conclusively that Loughner never saw Palin's target map, and that "target maps" have been used for decades.

Twitter fake out?  Possible pranksters may have posed as fired data engineers.  Two men claiming they were Twitter data engineers recently let go under Elon Musk's reign may have been lying to the media.  The potential pranksters were spotted outside Twitter's San Francisco office Friday carrying cardboard boxes just a day after Musk took control of Twitter for the hefty ticket price of $44 billion and ousted its top executives.  One of the alleged employees identified themselves as a software engineer named "Rahul Ligma" during an interview with reporters outside, according to the Verge.  However, the outlet confirmed that an employee by that name was not in Twitter's Slack or email system and that there is no employee by that name on the online employment service LinkedIn.

'Fired Twitter Employees' Execute the Greatest Troll of the News Media I've Ever Seen.  Elon Musk officially controls Twitter as of this writing, and the hysteria has been hard to miss.  On Thursday, the billionaire dropped the hammer, firing several top officials, including Vijaya Gadde, who was behind the censorship of the Hunter Biden story.  But what about the rest of the employees?  Reports have emerged that up to 75 percent of the social media giant's workforce could be cut, something members of the press have wrung their hands over the last several weeks.  That's the setup for the greatest troll of the news media I've ever seen, and I promise you I'm not being hyperbolic.  On Friday morning, videos began to circulate of "fired Twitter employees" standing outside the company's San Francisco headquarters.  Journalists rushed to interview them in order to show that Musk was a very bad, no-good man.  [Tweet]

Oops!
Fox station in Arizona accidentally airs election 'test results' showing Democrat defeating Kari Lake.  Phoenix's local news station Fox10 accidentally aired election "test results" declaring Democrat Katie Hobbs the winner over Republican Kari Lake in the Arizona gubernatorial race.  A screenshot of Thursday evening Fox10 air footage shared by Charlie Kirk to Twitter shows a small graphic in the lower left corner of the TV screen displaying election "results," with a red checkmark next to Hobbs' vote "tally," thus "declaring her the winner 53-47 over Kari Lake," Kirk noted.

Arizona TV Station Airs Graphic Showing Kari Lake Losing 12 Days Before Midterms, Blames 'Error'.  Just under two weeks before the election, a local tv station in Arizona briefly aired a graphic that showed Katie Hobbs defeating Republican challenger Kari Lake in the state's gubernatorial race.  The graphic — which was displayed on the left side of the screen during a newscast — showed Hobbs up 53% to 47% with close to 2.5 million "votes" already tallied.  Hobbs had a checkmark in her column, indicating her as the victor.  [Tweet]  The graphic appeared on Thursday afternoon during an evening newscast on Fox 10 Phoenix.

"Don't Trust Experts, Experts Say".  I'm worried.  "Is 'rainbow fentanyl' a threat to your kids this Halloween?  Experts say no," NPR assures me.  And if there's one thing we've learned in these past few years it's to believe the opposite of what experts say.  The media has given up trying to get people to trust it and now asks it to trust its handpicked experts.  And those experts say the same exact things that the media says.  Every subject is now tackled by experts.  Do you think that a Senate candidate who can barely grasp a sentence is worrisome?  "Fetterman's use of captions is common in stroke recovery, experts say," the Washington Post wheedles.  Experts tend to say that Democrats should be elected and Republicans shouldn't be.  They agree that when a Democrat does something it's very different than when a Republican does it.  And if you think the experts are biased, the experts will say that they're not.  Q.E.D.  Experts warn of the rise of "misinformation".  And misinformation has come to be defined by people disagreeing with experts.  Experts say that anyone who disagrees should be deplatformed.  If you disagree with the deplatforming, they say you should be deplatformed too.

Media 'punked' at Delaware airport, waiting for new round of DeSantis immigrants.  Badly stung by Florida Governor Ron DeSantis' brilliant idea to drop two planeloads of illegal immigrants in swanky Martha's Vineyard last week, the media swarmed over rumors that more migrants were headed to President Biden's home state of Delaware, flocking to the airport to greet them but being left with egg dripping from their faces when nobody showed up.  The official purveyors of disinformation have been having fits after DeSantis succeeded in putting the nation's border crisis back in the headlines mere weeks before the crucial midterm elections that will determine whether Democrats can maintain their one-party rule over the government, sending the migrants to the wealthy elite's very special island and suggesting that he could similarly drop off more of the unwelcome guests in other prime locations.

While Reporters Crowded Around Biden's Airport, 12 Suspected Terrorists Were Caught At The Actual Border.  Think America's legacy media can't get any worse at their job?  Think again.  Following reports that Gov. Ron DeSantis, R-Fla., would be sending a plane full of illegal immigrants to a local airport in Georgetown, Delaware, near the residence of President Joe Biden, reporters and self-proclaimed journalists flocked to the location of the supposed drop-off on Tuesday, waiting with bated breath for an event they could spin to fit their anti-GOP agenda.  The only problem for the press, however, was that the plane in question wasn't carrying migrants and didn't even land in Delaware.  As reported by left-wing NBC News, "by late Tuesday, no plane had arrived [in Delaware]" and instead "landed in Teterboro, New Jersey," with no migrants "aboard the plane."  "Earlier in the day, DeSantis stoked the coals of speculation by declining to confirm or deny whether the plane would even take off — his administration later refused to say if the plane that landed in New Jersey was part of his program to relocate migrants — in an intentional effort to keep the issue alive," the NBC report claimed, citing an unnamed, anonymous source as evidence of its assertions.

60 Minutes' Scott Pelley Gets an 'F' for His Joe Biden Interview.  Until last weekend, President Joe Biden hadn't given an interview to an American news network in seven months, or some 223 days.  Think about that.  We literally have a United States president who is not answerable to the public, and who spends his days hiding behind his handlers, Teleprompters, cheat sheets, and wife Jill.  He did finally deign to appear on CBS News 60 Minutes on Sunday, and he dropped enough news to keep RedState reporters working overtime.  Yours truly reported how Biden warned Putin not to use nukes in the Ukraine war; streiff reported how the president pledged to defend Taiwan even though that is not the official U.S. position; Nick Arama told us how Joe bragged that he'd been busy depleting the Strategic Petroleum Reserve and then dismissed any concerns about the business dealings of his troubled son Hunter; Bonchie wrote about Joe's brushing off skyrocketing inflation before he suddenly declared that COVID is over...  Phew.  The list goes on.  [Tweet with video clip]

Give Him an Inch.  I would be embarrassed to conduct an interview with the president that was as lame as Scott Pelley's lovefest with President Biden on 60 Minutes last night.  The Biden administration accorded Pelley a substantial amount of time to chat with Biden and Pelley returned the favor with a variety of softballs and dropped balls as well as his own apologetics — to no one's surprise, of course, but still.  It was an embarrassment. [...] The lack of follow-up questions was one striking feature of the interview.  You'd almost think that Pelley himself doesn't follow the news.  He appears to be somewhat less knowledgeable than the average voter.  The good news is that "the pandemic is over."  That's what the man said.  The pandemic is over — until it's not.  You may recall that the administration now relies entirely on the pandemic to support it's illegal student-loan giveaway.  It's an emergency.  You may recall, but Pelley did not.

Anatomy of a Really Vile Bit of Propaganda.  Last week at American Thinker, in discussing the Dobbs case, I prophesied, "and if your media sources resemble those I've seen, the moral angle will be played to the hilt with stories of exceptional cases being treated as the rule."  How right I was, as the story of a 10-year-old who was raped and had to travel to Indiana from Ohio to get an abortion was highlighted in multiple media everywhere and used to discredit the Supreme Court justices who decided Dobbs and pro-life politicians.  Megan Fox has done a fine bit of journalism exposing this propaganda coup and the Blaze details her work. [...] The sole source of the story is an ardent abortionist.  The story is unverifiable and peddled by those who share her views with no apparent independent efforts to confirm the tale.  If nothing else, this shows you how easy the job of a news editor at the named publications is.  You don't have to do anything — just let your reporters rattle off the headline-framing tales of a figure who advances the desired narrative.

WSJ Editors Eviscerate Hillary, Lapdog Media in Blistering Op-Ed About Russia Collusion Lies.  [Scroll down]  Before we continue, lemme say this.  I abhor whataboutism — from both sides of the aisle and everywhere in between.  That said, we're talking about the same lapdog media who, when shown images, transcripts, receipts with signatures, and testimony from former associates of Joe Biden's wayward son, immediately dismissed the Hunter Biden laptop scandal as "Russian disinformation."  Yet, Hillary's lies?  Hook, line, and sinker.

Retired general, MSNBC contributor shares 'war footage', that turned out to be from a video game.  Brian R. McCaffrey is a retired four-star general and MSNBC contributor, but on Monday the distinguished former military officer made a faux pas that he likely won't live down anytime soon.  He posted a tweet that contained what he apparently thought was actual wartime footage from the Russo-Ukraine conflict, showing what appeared to be a Russian MiG being shot down by Ukrainian missile defenses.  Twitter users, however, were quick to inform him it was actually just a clip from a video game.  McCaffrey quickly deleted the tweet and seemed to pretend the whole thing never happened.  But the beauty of the internet is that nothing can ever really be deleted, and plenty of Twitter users took a screenshot of McCaffrey's post to ensure it will forever live in infamy.

VoterGA Exposes Local TV Station that Posted Premature Primary Results Before the Upcoming Election.  VoterGA released a statement today about a local Georgia TV station that came out with artificial Georgia primary election results for all statewide and US Congressional races in the Georgia primaries.  The election hasn't even taken place yet.  According to VoterGA a local TV station shared primary results that they put together related to the upcoming primaries.  These artificial results showed a far-left basis.  VoterGA found out that the results were produced for the local channel WSB-TV by the Associated Press.

CNN's Lemon Asks:  Why Is The 2nd Amendment Sacrosanct But Not Roe?  On Wednesday [5/4/2022], CNN's Don Lemon proved once again how little he knows about anything he discusses on his low-rated primetime program Don Lemon Tonight.  Further evidence of this is the fact that he asked two of his guests, Atlantic senior editor Ron Brownstein, and Washington Post columnist Max Boot why the Second Amendment is "sacrosanct" but Roe v. Wade is not.

'60 Minutes' Enables FBI Dysfunction.  Scott Pelley of "60 Minutes" didn't tell his viewers whether FBI Director Christopher Wray imposed conditions before agreeing to be interviewed on camera by CBS.  But his slobbering pro-FBI questions, which aired Sunday, had the feel of something Wray's communication director may have fed the "news" program. [...] Under Wray, the FBI has disgraced itself with misconduct and abuse of power.  In the days leading up to the interview, victims of serial child molestor and Olympic gymnastics doctor Larry Nassar sued the FBI for $130 million after agents charged with investigating the abuse instead covered it up by fabricating victim statements.  Pelly [sic] failed to ask Wray a single question about the scandal.  Pelley also failed to ask Wray about the humiliating acquittal of two men the FBI attempted to entrap into the Governor Gretchen Whitmer plot engineered by the FBI to interfere in the 2020 election.  Among the FBI agents involved, one was accused of perjury, another of wife beating (now convicted), and a third of using the investigation to help promote a side-business.  Nor did Pelley ask about the FBI child rapist who rampaged across multiple states for years under the noses of his colleagues responsible for protecting such victims, some younger than 13.  Nor did Pelley ask about the FBI's failure to stop the Jeffery Epstein child-rape-for-profit business.  An FBI lawyer pleaded guilty to falsifying evidence to help spy on a Trump campaign figure.  Pelley didn't ask about that, either.

Social Media:  The Intimidation and Enforcement Arm of the American Left.  The American left uses their dominant position in social media to manipulate the legacy media, set the agenda, browbeat the elected members of the Democrat party, and intimidate corporate America. [...] In a study to find out if journalists ascribe too much importance to Twitter, an experiment was conducted with 200 journalists.  The result: a majority of journalists ranked anonymous tweets as having equal credibility or more than the actual fairly reported stories.  This was particularly true for the younger, considerably less experienced journalists, who are now in the majority.  These researchers concluded that journalists oftentimes get caught up in a pack mentality in which a story is seen as important and must be published because other journalists on Twitter are talking about it, rather than because it is newsworthy and truthful.  The examples are legion but among the most egregious were the mad dash by virtually the entire cadre of mainstream journalists to condemn the Covington Catholic boys based solely on a Twitter feed, the never-ending Russian collusion hoax, and now the "Don't Say Gay" propaganda.  It is not just a reliance on Twitter for stories.  Editors and publishers oftentimes react to the volume of tweets directed at their news outlets to determine what stories to publish, whether to rebuke a reporter or commentator or to tint a story with a certain (in virtually all cases left-wing) point of view.

Anderson Cooper's '60 Minutes' Softball Infomercial for Pete Buttigieg.  The long-running CBS News program "60 Minutes" has a manically split personality:  Vicious attack dogs when Republicans are in power, but supportive infomercial producers under Democrats.  Take March 13 for example, when Anderson Cooper hosted a promotional segment for Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg and the "bipartisan infrastructure bill."  Buttigieg was touted as "40 years old, a Harvard graduate, Rhodes Scholar, and former Navy Reserve officer who ran for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2020.  Now he's dealing with a pandemic-related supply chain crisis and trying to ensure that hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars are well-spent on aging transportation systems in desperate need of repair."  CBS began with a Pittsburgh bridge collapse from January, as Cooper asked Buttigieg a series of bland softballs, such as:  "When somebody's driving over a bridge, should they feel confident?"  Then Cooper followed up:  "When grading the overall state of this country's infrastructure, the American Society of Civil Engineers recently gave the U.S. a C-minus.  How is it possible that a country like the United States gets a C-minus on infrastructure?"  These are easy pitches.  They sound like questions Buttigieg's publicist emailed to CBS.

On the Alleged Moral Superiority of Intellectuals.  [Scroll down]  The sin of pride combined with a pliable verbal medium that provides an easy escape from reality does not make for wisdom or common sense.  When a farmer plants the wrong kind of seed in a given year, he or she has to face the consequences.  When a nurse gives the wrong injection, he or she has to face the consequences.  But when an intellectual writes a foolish article and 100,000 people lose their jobs as a consequence, they generally need not face the consequences.  Since word inflation is so easy, they or their colleagues, other loyal members of the intellectual tribe, write new exculpatory words for them.

CNN Admits Live On Air That Their Fact-Checking Is Based On Typing Words Into Google.  These geniuses at CNN, who have been wondering out loud how they lost 90% of their audience, admitted live on air that to debunk misinformation, they type words into Google.  The panel was talking about Senator Ron Johnson's hearing on vaccine safety when the topic of over 100 pro athletes dying of sudden heart attacks was discussed.  This greatly upset the panel at CNN where one of the 'investigative reporters' admitted he typed what was said into Google and it came back as misinformation.  [Video clip]

A Danish newspaper decided to finally ask questions.  Sadly, most American journalists won't.  A Danish newspaper has finally figured out that it should not be a propaganda arm of the government and should have always asked questions about COVID instead of just repeating what they were told like puppets.  It is sad that most American journalists continue to be propagandists pushing the fear agenda to get the public to submit to dictatorial edicts. [...] No matter how often Dr. Fauci and the CDC have spread misinformation to the public, most of the media has treated their statements as infallible and have sought to silence and disparage anyone who dares disagree.

Brilliant Video Shows How Media, Joe Biden and Govt Health Officials Drove the Omicron Fear Narrative.  The Omicron doom and fear narrative became a parody of itself.  One brilliant videographer has put together a mashup showing what took place in the past ten days.  It all started with ultra-progressive Harris County, Texas, Judge Lina Hidalgo holding a dramatic press conference to report that an unvaccinated man in Houston, who was in his 50s, had died from the omicron variant.  However, only one journalist actually called the hospital to check the claim and discovered what progressive Judge Lina Hildago claimed was actually false.  There was no unvaccinated 50-year-old man who died from Omicron in the hospital.  It was all made up by the judicial version of AOC.  Unfortunately, once the media, medical establishment and politicians had that press conference soundbite, from a judge — not a doctor, they were off to the races.  This video brilliantly shows what happened next.  [Video clip]

'Face the Nation' Correspondent Stuns Fellow Panelists Into Silence, With Truth About COVID Policies Harming Kids.  Most of the time, the panel or roundtable portion of any weekly Sunday political program is a lively exchange among the moderator and the panelists.  But that wasn't the case during one segment of CBS News' "Face The Nation" this week.  As the show does once a year, it convened a panel made up entirely of the news division's correspondents, ostensibly to review the big stories of 2021 and make some predictions about where those storylines will go in 2022 and beyond.  But at some point in the segment, the panel sat in stunned silence for over a minute-and-a-half, as one of their own spoke the truth about how damaging the lockdowns and other governmental measures have been to our nation's children.  And it's implicit in her answer that the media is not off the hook for the blatant lack of reporting about it.

The Editor says...
There is always a lull at the end of the year, during which "news" people sometimes resort to interviewing each other.  To fill time, they also run the "year in review" recap, which they assembled weeks ago.  The "predictions for the coming year" show is also popular, because the Happy Team gets paid to pronounce the obvious.

Too good to fact-check?  Academic journal publishes hoax on conservative takeover of higher ed.  A prestigious academic journal has egg on its face for publishing a hoax paper that claimed to find widespread concerns about "undue" conservative influence in higher education.  "Right-wing money strongly appears to induce faculty and administrators ... to believe that they are pressured to hire and promote people they regard as inferior candidates, to promote ideas they regard as poor, and to suppress people and ideas they regard as superior," according to the abstract in Higher Education Quarterly.  Peer reviewers failed to perform basic due diligence on the paper submitted in April and approved in October, neglecting, for example, to verify that authors "Sage Owens" and "Kal Alvers-Lynde III" were UCLA professors as they claimed.  Owens even used an encrypted email service for correspondence with the journal.  They didn't check whether the conservative foundations named as active funders of higher education actually existed.  The "Randy Eller Foundation" is made up, while the Olin Foundation shut down in 2005.

John Fleck [was] rushed to [a] hospital after [the] Sheffield United star collapses.  Sheffield United midfielder John Fleck has been rushed to hospital after collapsing in worrying scenes during his side's 1-0 Championship win at Reading.  The Blades were leading at the time thanks to Jayden Bogle's second-half strike.  Fleck collapsed to the ground when off the ball and his team-mates immediately called for medical assistance.  Fleck was helped back to his feet by the medics after receiving attention for nearly 10 minutes and was given oxygen before being stretchered off.  He was put into an ambulance and taken to a nearby hospital.  Sky Sports News claimed Fleck 'was able to stand with the aid of an oxygen mask' and was 'conscious' when he left the stadium.

The Editor says...
Mr. Fleck did not rush to the hospital, as the headline states.  He was rushed to the hospital.  There is a difference.  Words matter.  Omitted words don't help.

British Newspaper Reports That Kyle Rittenhouse Shot Three Black Men.  Not long after a jury in Kenosha, Wisconsin found Rittenhouse not guilty of murder, attempted murder and reckless endangerment, The Independent newspaper updated its front-page coverage of the trial.  The sub-headline, which has now been taken down, said:  "Full story:  Teenager who shot three black men with rifle found not guilty on all charges."  All three of the men shot by Rittenhouse were actually white.

The Rittenhouse trial:  Our corporate media and big tech are truly sinister.  [Scroll down]  Now they carry out their Stalinist machinations right out in the open.  Parents who show up to speak at school board meetings?  Domestic terrorists.  Question the 2020 election results?  Crazed conspiracy theorist.  Be a known Trump supporter in DC on January 6?  Lock them up and throw away the key.  How is it possible that these agencies entrusted to enforce the law and uphold the Constitution are getting away with all this thuggery?  For that we can blame big tech:  Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, etc., and the mainstream media:  CBS, NBC, ABC, CNN, MSNBC, the NYT, the WaPo, the Los Angeles Times and the wholly unobjective denizens of their print and electronic outlets.  Big tech censors whatever they don't like and hardly a word that comes out of the mouths of the men and women affiliated with those media corporations is true.  They are first and foremost in the business of lying to the naïve people who watch or read them.

When all the media narratives collapse.  The news is a perilous business.  It's perilous because the first draft of history is almost always somewhat wrong, and needs a second draft, and a third, and so on, over time, until the historian can investigate with more perspective and calm.  The job of journalists is to do as best they can, day by day, and respond swiftly when they screw up, correct the record, and move forward.  I've learned this the hard way, not least in the combination of credulousness and trauma I harbored in the wake of 9/11.  But when the sources of news keep getting things wrong, and all the errors lie in the exact same direction, and they are reluctant to acknowledge error, we have a problem.  If you look back at the last few years, the record of errors, small and large, about major stories, is hard to deny.  It's as if the more Donald Trump accused the MSM of being "fake news" the more assiduously they tried to prove him right.

Our mostly complicit, compliant, sycophant press has no concern about facts, only Democrat power.  The corruption and dishonesty of the media have been clear for decades.  Here are some things they haven't cared about or have lied about as they campaigned for Democrats and set out to destroy their political opponents.  Didn't care about how many women the Clintons physically and mentally abused.  People who we are told respect women called them bimbos and trailer trash.  The women were disposable as the media, entertainers, and other Democrats campaigned for Bill.  Didn't care about Bill committing perjury and causing a young subordinate to commit perjury and obstruct justice.  Monica was disposable.  Didn't care how many trips Bill took with known pedophile Epstein.  The young girls were disposable if the Clintons wanted power.  How many women and young girls were sexually abused by powerful men because so many were campaigning for the Clintons?  Didn't vet Obama, or care that he associated with radical leftists such as Reverend Wright and Bill Ayers.  They also didn't care about Obama's record as they sought to destroy McCain and Palin.  All that mattered was electing Obama.  Didn't care about all the lies used to pass Obamacare, nor did they care that Pelosi wouldn't let members of Congress, the media, or the public see it before it was voted on.  All the media cared about was the agenda.  Didn't care about the separation of powers when Obama illegally bypassed Congress to pay for shortfalls in Obamacare.  Didn't care when Obama and Holder obstructed justice for years on Fast and Furious.  Didn't care when Holder or others in the Obama administration committed perjury before Congress.  They were above the law.

A Flood Of Superficial Climate Reports.  This past week, the Biden administration doubled down in its campaign against climate change with the release of a suite of four reports, on national defense, financial risk, homeland security, and migration.  These reports all start with the common premise that the climate crisis is now upon us in full fury.  Moreover, they also all insist that the issues at hand are nonpolitical, and that the objective at all times is "to be guided by the best available science and data."  To say the least, however, the claim looks hollow, given that none of these reports offers any data whatsoever to support its major contentions. [...] Sadly, instead of asking any hard questions, these reports just take the worst-case scenario for granted and move on.

The Cult of the Vaccine.  [Scroll down]  Since the start of the Trump years, we've been introduced to a new kind of news story, which assumes adults can't handle multiple ideas at once, and has reporters frantically wrapping facts deemed dangerous, unorthodox, or even just insufficiently obvious in layers of disclaimers.  The fear of uncontrolled audience brain-drift is now so great that even offhand references must come swaddled in these journalistic Surgeon General's warnings, which is why whenever we read anything now, we almost always end up fighting through nests of phrases like "the debunked conspiracy theory that COVID-19 was created in a lab" in order to get to whatever the author's main point might be.

Get Him a Map!  CNN Contributor Calls Manchin's West Virginia a 'Coastal State'.  Liberal ignorance of flyover country was on full display on CNN this morning [10/2/2021].  On New Day, CNN contributor Dr. Abdul El-Sayed — a Bernie Sanders ally — suggested that West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin should support the $3.5 trillion reconciliation bill because it includes funds to address climate change.  El-Sayed claimed that "climate change is ravaging coastal states like his."  As NewsBusters tweeted, "Someone get the Dr. a map."  West Virginia is — of course — a landlocked state.  Even worse, El-Sayed grew up in Detroit, which is less than 300 miles from West Virginia's panhandle.

The Editor says...
That's not the only thing he's completely wrong about.  Global warming (a/k/a climate change) is not hurting anybody in any state, coastal or otherwise.

A 'news' report that encapsulates what's wrong with today's media.  [Scroll down]  The article refers to the police report and the House Committee on Ethics statement about Crenshaw's wrongdoing.  It then explains how the extra security was necessary "following the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 during which five people were killed."  Wait!  What?  Insurrection?  Five people killed?  Well, not quite, Ms. Biased "Journalist."  All the evidence, including admissions from the FBI, is that there was no planned insurrection, that the FBI was involved well in advance and may have been encouraging events, that the Capitol police invited people into the building, and that those who entered treated the People's place of law with respect.  And as for those "five people killed," implying that the insurrectionists were murderers, only one person was killed when a Capitol police officer cold-bloodedly shot a woman who was manifestly neither a threat to him nor anyone else.  No other Capitol police officers even drew their weapons (some insurrection!).  The other people died either of natural causes (including a police officer) or, in the cases of one person, from an apparent drug overdose.

There Are No Bathrooms at the Border, and Other Shocking Revelations.  Molly Hennessy-Fiske of the Los Angeles  State Media  Times was literally shook to discover just how "dismal" things have become in migrant camps along the border.  I don't mean to make light of the harrowing conditions at the border.  Regardless of the cause, it's not nice to witness humans in peril, even of their own making.  What I am making light of is the L.A. Times and their ilk finding a "story" in the obvious and calling it news.  The very obvious truth is and has always been the same:  there aren't restrooms at the border.  It's not because the United States hates desperate immigrants or even desperate Haitian immigrants or the despotic coyotes who exploit them.  There are no bathrooms at the border because bathrooms don't belong in the middle of nowhere. [...] It obviously comes as a shock to people like Molly Hennessy-Fiske, who clearly have not spent much time in the middle of nowhere and thus do not understand that bathrooms don't grow in the wild.

Fake News:  Ignorant media confuse horse reins with 'whips,' claiming Border Patrol whipped Haitian migrants.  City boys don't know much about horse-riding out West, do they?  Various tenderfoots in the media, followed by assorted Democrats, including the White House itself, have ignorantly claimed that the Border Patrol was using "whips" on migrants in Del Rio, Texas, following a series of misleading pictures published in the press.

Another story about ivermectin that was spread by the left goes bust.  Monday [9/6/2021] I wrote about the fact that some big name progressives on Twitter, including Rachel Maddow, were spreading a local news story which claimed hospitals in Oklahoma were being flooded with patients who'd taken ivermectin and were experiencing serious side effects.  The same story was picked up by left wing outlets including Rolling Stone.  It turned out that story wasn't accurate.  One hospital said they hadn't seen any ivermectin patients and another hospital said they'd only seen a "handful."  It turned out that the local news outlet may have misunderstood the doctor who told them Oklahoma emergency rooms were full of COVID patients and that some people taking ivermectin had wound up in the hospital.  But the doctor wasn't necessarily saying ivermectin patients were filling up the ERs.  Lots of people on the left ran with the story without looking into the facts because they liked the sound of it.

Breaking Down Medical 'Fact-Checking' Propaganda.  When reading any kind of supposed "fact-checking" report like this, I always go to the bottom of the article and read the last paragraph because it represents the conclusion.  In this case, the last paragraph states, "Scientific evidence to date shows that vaccines against Covid-19 are overwhelmingly safe and that they reduce serious illness and rates of hospitalisation due to the virus."  Aha.  This sounds exactly like something the vaccine makers would say.  Overwhelmingly safe?  Reduce serious illness?  Reduce rates of hospitalization?  Not.  The bigger question should be, just how many vaccine deaths are acceptable before anyone should be concerned?  One hundred?  One thousand?  Ten thousand?  This "debunking" and "fact-checking" is pedestrian journalism of the lowest caliber, but it is always predictable in style and approach.  It says everything but says nothing at the same time, never offering any concrete or tangible evidence to support its claims while sewing doubt and confusion in your mind.  In short, it is partisan propaganda and nothing more.

The Media's Failure to Vet Candidate Biden Is Linked to the Afghanistan Debacle.  It was obvious to any sentient observer in 2020.  In defending himself on Afghanistan, Joe Biden fumbled his words, made weird comments and generally didn't seem up to the job of being president.  And the media pretended there was nothing to see.  This week Newsmax host Greg Kelly took the problem head on from a media perspective.  Afghanistan, Kelly observed with accompanying quite vivid video, "is a full blown disaster."  Which is most decidedly true.  After a video montage of Biden doing his bizarre kissing and hair-smelling routines, Kelly zeroed in again on Biden's competence — and the media.

The real fraud of 2020.  We saw a lot of disappointment from the media about what just happened in Afghanistan, as reported by Joe Cunningham:  ["]If for one brief moment, it appears that the love affair between the Biden Administration and most of our legacy media is on the rocks. [... "]  Where were these reporters during the campaign?  What about the optics of a candidate who stayed in the basement and did not do press conferences?  I guess that those optics were O.K. because the objective was to defeat Trump.  Yes, there was fraud in 2020.  It was the media protecting a candidate from rigorous questions or questions period.  They all knew that Biden could not put in a full day on the job but that was overlooked to get Trump. [...] Yes, we are stuck with a diminished president and everyone in the media knew it in 2020.  That's the real fraud of 2020.

Why Don't They Believe Us?  Imagine your confusion as the same people who spent three months telling you not only that masks don't work, but that there are several reasons you shouldn't wear or purchase them, suddenly introduce mask mandates.  We're "following the science," they tell you.  This seems to make little sense, but a pandemic is no time for questions. [...] The same people who told you Brexit would never happen, that Trump would never win, that when he did win it was because of Russian collusion but also because of racism, that you must follow lockdowns while they don't, that masks don't work, that masks do work, that social justice protests during pandemic lockdowns are a form of "health intervention," that ransacking African American communities in the name of fighting racism is a "mostly peaceful" form of protest, that poor and underserved children locked out of shuttered schools are "still learning," that Jussie Smollett was a victim of a hate crime, that men are toxic, that there is an infinite number of genders, that COVID couldn't have come from a lab until maybe it did, that closing borders is racist until maybe it isn't, that you shouldn't take Trump's vaccine, that you must take the vaccine developed during the Trump administration, that Andrew Cuomo is a great leader, that Andrew Cuomo is a granny killer, that the number of COVID deaths is one thing and then another ... are the same people telling you now that the vaccine is safe, that you must take it, and that if you don't, you will be a second-class citizen.  Understand vaccine hesitancy now?

Another Opinion Columnist Pushing War With Iran Who Doesn't Actually Exist.  There is at least one more foreign policy opinion writer from the Mujahideen-eKhalq (MEK) whose existence is dubious, based on a study by a social media analyst and statements from a defector from the group.  Amir Basiri, who contributed to Forbes 9 times, the Washington Examiner 52 times, OpenDemocracy, Algemeiner, and The Hill once also appears to be a fabrication.

It's Fun Watching The Press Humiliate Itself.  [Scroll down]  [T]ry again to imagine being these people.  They all grew up wanting to be the crusading Woodward and/or Bernstein — who themselves were less ace reporters than eager conduits for a disgruntled bureaucrat hack who exploited the callow correspondents to settle his personal scores — and instead they grew up to be the Gimp in the less interesting version of Pulp Fiction that is the DC milieu.  They aren't breaking stories.  They aren't uncovering wrongdoing.  They certainly are not comforting the afflicted or afflicting the comfortable.  They are the ruling caste's janitors.  They are drones, thralls to their elite masters, marching in grim conformity in step to the official narrative, never complaining, never questioning, never dissenting.  These are licensed, registered, regime journalists.

Joe Biden wants amnesty, but US tally of illegal immigrants is deeply flawed.  Having indulged an unhealthy interest in human migration for decades, I've been intrigued by how the number of illegal immigrants that journalists cite as living in the United States never changes.  For years on end, I've read that the population of America's "undocumented" — a euphemism that seems to upbraid the receiving country's bureaucrats for failing to issue its woefully overlooked residents the proper papers — is 11 million.  With the artificial precision that often attends these unverifiable figures, which derive their authority from sheer repetition, some journalists will quote the number as 11.3 million.  Oh, there was a brief period about 15 years ago when that standard statistic rose to 13 million, but then it popped right back down to 11 again, without any headlines about a stampede of 2 million suddenly ploughing over the Mexican border in the southern direction.

Glenn Greenwald skewers sketchy new Russia/Trump 'bombshell' as journos salivate.  The entire mainstream press is abuzz over another Russian collusion delusion story.  Making matters worse, the story was written by a known Russian collusion delusion smear merchant who was repeatedly exposed for publishing pure garbage during the Trump presidency.  Published in The Guardian, the most recent story by so-called "journalist" Luke Harding claims that, equipped with compromising information on former President Donald Trump, Russian President Vladimir Putin sought in 2016 to install him in the White House.  After the story's publication, it immediately went uber-viral among "journalists" eager to share it without offering any critical pushback.  Here's a sample of what that looked like:  [Tweets]

Explaining the Full Armor of God to an Ignorant Media.  When Ron DeSantis, Florida's conservative Republican governor and likely presidential candidate, said recently we need to put on the "full armor of God," the media looked at him like he was crazy — or from another planet.  But his supporters gave him a standing ovation.  As secular liberals, most of the press have no familiarity with the phrase, its origins, theology, or importance.  They are bigots against religion and unschooled in what used to be the norms of American life, churches, and culture.  The press and nearly our entire elite ruling class, in academia, sports, politics, media, business, and culture are biblically illiterate and have no idea what the Jar of Nar (John 12:3) refers to; where the road to Emmaus (Luke 24:13-35) led or who travelled on it; or even what happened in the garden of Gethsemane (Matthew 26:36-46).

MSM Saves Us From Not Knowing When We Shouldn't Drink Coffee.  When the MSM hits the hottest take of a hot story, it is nigh impossible to not stand back in awe of the pearls of great wisdom from on high with which it blesses us mere mortals.  Such a moment came about the other day, when television station CW 39 in Houston saw fit to pass along this hitherto unknown and unsuspected of existing drop of wisdom:  ["]When to stop drinking coffee, so it won't keep you up at night["]  Do tell, do tell.  (In case you're wondering, the answer is six hours before bedtime.)  Making this story all the more authoritative is how it is based in the work of a team of researchers in Scotland.

The Biden No-Go Zones.  In American journalism, there are supposed to be some clear, nonnegotiable third-rails.  One is zero tolerance for overtly racist language and comportment among our movers and shakers. [...] Another no-go zone is any hint of contextualizing sexual harassment or assault. [...] A third zero-tolerance zone is any hint of presidential debility. [...] Finally, lying, fibbing, and even presidential exaggeration are deemed intolerable — or so we are told by the media.  It does not matter that the newsroom is currently one of the great purveyors of untruth, as we saw in the Russian collusion hoax, the dubious Wuhan wet-market narrative, or the yarn about the Lafayette Square militarization to green-light a Trump photo-op. [...] Yet it is arguable that while no other president in modern memory has trespassed more egregiously on these no-go areas than Joe Biden, he has received no criticism for his transgressions.

Leftist Lies and Media Deceit About Florida Pride Accident — Even Claiming 'Assassination Attempt' Against Dem.  As we reported earlier, there was what appears, at this point, to be a horrible accident at a Florida Pride event with a pickup truck hitting multiple people and killing at least one at the event.  But it turns out that the driver of the pick-up truck was, according to reports, a member of the gay men's chorus, was wearing one of their t-shirts and had a Pride flag on his truck.  The Chorus confirmed that he was one of their members.  The man is claiming it was an accident.  That was known relatively early on after the incident last night.  [Tweets]  But that didn't stop people on the left and media, who were off to the races spreading lies about what had occurred.  Not only did they claim that it was a terrorist attack aimed at gay people, but they also claimed that it was an assassination attempt against Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL), again without any evidence at all.

Univision Fangirling of VP Harris at Mexico Presser, or MAJOR Security Breach?  When "María Fernanda from Univision" took the mic on Tuesday night [6/8/2021] and asked Vice President Kamala Harris a flattering question to cap off her trip to Mexico, it seemed like Univision's sycophantic day had taken a turn for the worse.  But the truth might be far worse than what it seems.  Watch as "Maria Fernanda from Univision" asked what seemed like a question totally in line with Univision's editorial line, "I voted for you" aside:  [Video clip, transcript, tweets]  Further complicating the issue is the fact that Univision Mexico City correspondent Jésica Zermeño was on site at the Harris press conference (who retweeted Coronell's statement).  Given all these elements, we are faced with one of only two possible scenarios which are, by degrees of exponential magnitude, far worse than the original "Univision reporter fangirls over Kamala, says 'I voted for you'" story:
  •   Coronell's statement is true, in which case we are talking about a MAJOR security breach and vetting failure from the Secret Service, Mexican state security, and the White House press team (led by former CNN political commentator Symone Sanders)
  •   Coronell is lying, in which case (as my colleague Curtis Houck pointed out) Univision has a major journalistic scandal on their hands.
This is a developing story with multiple angles, and we will keep you posted as they unfold.

Nicolle Wallace brings the hard-hitting journalism, asks James Clyburn: 'I need you to fill me up with wisdom'.  In an interview oddly reminiscent of Brian Stelter's softball questioning of White House press secretary Jen Psaki, MSNBC anchor Nicolle Wallace sat down with Democratic Majority Whip James Clyburn to discuss the House's voting rights legislation better known as the "For the People Act."  Wallace opened up the cringeworthy interview on "Deadline:  White House" Monday [6/7/2021] by telling Clyburn:  "I'm going to be really brief because I just need you to fill me up with wisdom here."

Coming Up Next.  There are very few Covid-related topics we aren't sick of at this point, so we're not really enjoying the media's tiptoe approach into speculation that the virus was manipulated in, and escaped from, a lab in Wuhan, China.  People who were paying any freaking attention at all have known this for more than a year.  But the truth had to be covered up, lest the reality help Donald Trump's reelection effort.  With very few exceptions, every news source has gotten so much wrong (often deliberately) about Covid that we just don't [care] anymore.

How Fact-Checkers 'Deceived The Public' About Possible Virus Outbreak From Wuhan Lab.  It's not an accident that most Americans are just starting to hear about the lab leak theory of COVID-19 origin as a potential legitimate source for the global pandemic's outbreak.  It's because the theory was suppressed for more than a year by corporate media fact-checkers and their allies in Big Tech.  The pages of The New York Times and The Washington Post have been filled with articles in recent weeks about the newfound potential legitimacy of the lab-leak theory. [...] Evidence for the lab-leak theory has been publicly available but censored from the public on social media.  When the theory first began to surface in early 2020, fact-checkers far and wide decried it as a conspiracy theory.  In September 2020, PolitiFact labeled the lab leak theory as a "pants-on-fire" lie that was "inaccurate and ridiculous."  The premature fact-check has now been retracted in May.

Liberal media Finally admit they made a mistake dismissing Wuhan Lab leak theory.  Liberal media reporters and pundits admitted over the weekend they were wrong to dismiss the Wuhan lab leak theory just because it was espoused by former President Donald Trump.  Mainstream reporters had pushed back at the idea that COVID-19 may have originated in a virology lab in Wuhan, China, and openly ridiculed the idea as Trump spoke openly about it in the early days of the pandemic.  But now, those same reporters have admitted that it is possible that the virus came from a lab leak — as more scientists and political officials openly question the virus' origins.

Keywords:  Softball, simpletons, giggling stenographers, incompetent partisan hacks.
Biden soft-serve ice cream inquiries keep enthralling media: 'Oh!  Chocolate-chocolate chip!'  Reporters aren't tired of dishing out soft-serve ice cream questions for President Biden — and he isn't tired of answering.  The Democrat was greeting with a round of "oh!" and "yeah!" responses Thursday after once again fielding inquiries on his favorite flavors of ice cream.  "Mr. President!  What did you order?" a reporter exclaimed as Mr. Biden stopped in at Honey Hut Ice Cream in Cleveland.  "Chocolate-chocolate chip," the commander-in-chief responded to his rapt audience.

Matt Yglesias:  The media really did screw up the lab leak story.  Yesterday [5/25/2021]Jonathan Chait wrote a pretty good summary of how the media messed up the lab leak story early last year.  The Washington Post's fact-checker also published a timeline which attempted to tell the same story.  Chait's piece was good and the Post's timeline was less so, mostly because it minimized how the Post itself helped launch the crusade against the idea.  In any case, today Matt Yglesias wrote his own summary of the media history of this story which I think is the best one I've seen so far.

Without serious reform, the BBC is damaged beyond repair:  That's what one of its greatest journalists John Humphrys says.  In the past 48 hours the nation has been exposed to a litany of revelations that have shocked anyone with even a smidgeon of concern about the future of journalism in this great country.  The most sensational interview with the most famous woman of her time turns out to have been a terrible fraud.  Princess Diana had been led to the microphone by a rogue reporter who lied and lied and lied again.  His bosses suspected the truth but used every device in the book to cover it up.  The BBC, which has stood for a century for all that is decent and honest about this country, has been dragged into the gutter.

Disgraced Lincoln Project Targets Children.  The Lincoln Project, the same disgraced organization that shielded a credibly accused child predator for months, is now looking to target your children through something called The Franklin Project.  The far-left Axios reports the news and does so in that hilarious way only the corporate media can:  by pretending it has a "scoop" when it's basically rewriting a press release sent to them first.  This is stenography, not journalism.

Ri-i-i-ght.
AP Denies Any Knowledge Gaza Office Building Was Shared with Hamas Terrorists.  The Associated Press (AP) denied any knowledge that Jala Tower, the building housing its offices in Gaza, was also shared by Hamas terrorists, as claimed by the Israeli military and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu after the office block was bombed on Saturday [5/15/2021].  AP President and CEO Gary Pruitt denied that the news organization knew Hamas was in the building.

The Editor says...
To put this as politely as I can, I find it impossible to believe that the people working in a professional news-gathering organization, in a volatile part of the world, would have been oblivious to terrorists in their office building.  That level of cluelessness is almost incomprehensible.  I'm not the only one who's skeptical.

AP Pretends It Didn't Know It Was Sharing a Building With Hamas.  After an airstrike struck a building with terrorist tenants that included Hamas and Al Jazeera, controlled by Qatar, a backer of Hamas, the main story in the media was about... the media.  Specifically the AP's presence in the same building.  "We are shocked and horrified that the Israeli military would target and destroy the building housing AP's bureau and other news organizations in Gaza.  They have long known the location of our bureau and knew journalists were there.  We received a warning that the building would be hit," the AP's statement says.  And the AP is complaining about what?  Israel warned it that the building was a target.  AP chose to share a building with Hamas and pretend not to know about it.

Confirmed: the AP Is Incredibly Ignorant and Yes, Hamas Was in the Building.  We reported yesterday how the AP was furious that Israel had leveled the building in which they had offices in Gaza because they were sharing it was Hamas.  We asked the basic question: how could they not know they were sharing the building with Hamas?  The AP issued a statement saying they'd been in the building for 15 years — and had no indication that Hamas was in the building.

When Fools Rule.  [Scroll down]  This phenomenon is not exclusive to politics.  The media is stocked with carnies who maybe waited tables once, but otherwise have no contact with present reality.  Their life is on stage, playing the role written for them by equally obtuse and ignorant people.  The mass media is a circus, but the audience is out of sight from the performers.  The media carnies cannot hear the laughter and jeering.  It is nothing but piped-in applause, which they assume is the real thing.

Grandpa Knew Best.  My grandpa once told me, "All my grandchildren were born smart.  The longer they go to school, the dumber they get."  I thought he was teasing, but now that I'm his age, I see his point:  You have to have spent a lot of time in school to be as dumb as the experts on everything including economics, energy policy, and even vote fraud. [...] Ask a first grader if he'd do his household chores if he got the same amount of money or even more from just sitting home and playing video games and you'd get the right answer:  No.  This is something that escapes the brain trust running this administration.  It also escapes the ninnies who write for corporate media.  The Jobs Report that came out this week was terrible, making widespread expectations by experts and the media the subject of well-deserved ridicule.

Playing Fast and Loose with Numbers.  Far from being settled, climate science is tricky:  we don't know well what happens to global temperatures when atmospheric CO2 doubles ("climate sensitivity"); we can't properly model clouds and cloud formation, crucial for how much of the sun's incoming heat will be reflected away; the range for best-guesses as to what the global temperature rise over the coming century will be is vast (maybe 1° Celsius — maybe 5° Celsius) — so vast, in fact, that it hardly warrants a quantification.  Yet, the science is "settled," we hear, and we must "listen to the scientists."  But the worst crime are the subtle throwaway lines that journalists tuck onto their coverage of impending doom that give a completely mistaken impression about the future of the world.

The Annual White House Correspondents Dinner Is Cancelled — Did These Leftist Hacks Finally Realize How Much They Are Reviled?  The White House correspondents dinner has been canceled again this year.  Does anyone in America care? [...] No God-loving American is going to miss this nasty self-congratulatory celebration by the fake news elites.  These evil people who push liberal lies all day long while ignoring the destruction of America, get together each year to pat each other on the back.  They think they are smart and intelligent and end up showing the world how dumb and disgusting they really are.

Another, Clearer Take on the Chauvin Trial.  I leave it to you to decide why, from the Trayvon Martin case to the George Floyd case, the media has so consistently misrepresented the facts.  Whether it is that unskilled reporters are covering these matters, or that the press is simply looking to attract consumers with florid tales, or that the media looks forward to destroying urban areas with false tales of murderous white racists (amid a shortage of real ones), I cannot say. [...] (I'd also note that it is my experience that reporters' deadlines often conflict with the way trials proceed, so that too often the prosecution (or in civil matters, the plaintiff) case is presented just before deadline and the cross examination occurs too late to be covered in that day's edition, leaving only a false, one-sided version of the day's action.)

The Death of Science, and of Scientific American.  The great legacy publication, Scientific American, is dead.  It's still in print, but it is no longer either scientific or American.  In an article described by a friend as, "a hailstorm of impenetrable academic verbiage, dictated by a Ph.D. trying to outpreen the race and climate-change virtue signalers," the publication has stepped through the woke looking-glass and emerged as self-parody.  How else can one explain "Climate Anxiety Is an Overwhelmingly White Phenomenon"?  The nonsensical article's apparent points are that "climate anxiety [is] just code for white people wishing to hold onto their way of life or get 'back to normal,' to the comforts of their privilege", and "Climate anxiety can operate like white fragility, sucking up all the oxygen in the room and devoting resources toward appeasing the dominant group."

MSM Journalists Claim That The Capitol Attacker Was A White Trump Supporter, Video Shows That The Attacker Was Young Black Man.  The U.S. Capitol is under lockdown after a car crashed into a security barrier near the building located on Constitution Avenue.  The driver rammed the barrier on the Senate side and exited the vehicle.  Capitol Police shot dead the driver after he jumped out of the car and lunged at them with a knife, Acting Chief Yogananda Pittman told reporters.  Two Capitol Police officers were wounded in the attack, and Fox News is reporting one of the officers has died.

Master List Of Official Russia Claims That Proved To Be Bogus.  We've spent the last five years watching as anonymous officials make major Russia-related claims, only to have those evidence-free claims fizzle.  From the much-ballyhooed "changed RNC platform" story (Robert Mueller found no evidence the changed Republican platform was "undertaken at the behest of candidate Trump or Russia"), to the notion that Julian Assange was engaged in a conspiracy with the Russians (Mueller found no evidence for this either), to the story that Trump directed lawyer Michael Cohen to lie to Congress ("not accurate," said Mueller), to wild stories about Paul Manafort meeting Assange in the Ecuadorian embassy, to a "bombshell" tale about Trump foreknowledge of Wikileaks releases that blew up in CNN's face in spectacular fashion, reporters for years chased unsubstantiated claims instead of waiting to see what they were based upon.

USA Today editor fired for tweet blaming Boulder shooting on 'White man', blames 'alt-right Twitter'.  A USA Today editor announced Friday [3/26/2021] that she was terminated over a tweet she posted in reaction to Monday's deadly shooting in Boulder, Colorado that erroneously blamed a "White man" for the attack.  Hemal Jhaveri, who served as the "race and inclusion" editor of USA Today's Sports Media Group, was one of many liberals who rushed to trumpet their judgment that a "White man" was responsible for the massacre at a grocery store that left 10 dead.  "It's always an angry [W]hite man. always," Jhaveri wrote in agreement with Deadspin writer Emily Julia DiCaro, who had similarly written, "Extremely tired of people's lives depending on whether a [W]hite man with an AR-15 is having a good day or not."  After police identified the suspect as Syria-born Colorado resident Ahmad Al Aliwi Alissa, critics accused Jhaveri and the others who assumed the gunman was White of racism.

Ahmad al Aliwi Alissa isn't a 'white man,' so can we make assumptions about what motivated him?  We know now that the man who shot up a grocery store Monday in Boulder, Colorado, is an immigrant from Syria named Ahmad al Aliwi Alissa.  In the context of recent history, this means there's reason to think he might be a Muslim terrorist.  But saying that aloud will get you called a racist by the media.  For now, we'll just have to pretend that this is another "lone wolf" who in no way fits into the totally not-real pattern (according to the media) of mass violence perpetrated by Muslim extremists in places as far-flung as Mumbai, Rouen, and Chattanooga and as close as Orlando, San Bernardino and New York.  If Aliwi Alissa were white, we could at least assume, without any evidence, like the media are doing with the recent killing spree in Atlanta, that this was an act of white supremacism.  Instead, it looks like we're back to square one.  Of course, before the shooter was identified by police, liberals had been very eager to draw early conclusions about him.  They were 100% certain he was white and perhaps even an anti-masker — i.e., a Trump supporter.  I'm serious.  Liberal journalist Kurt Eichenwald mused on Twitter that the details might reveal that the shooting, which left 10 people dead, was an episode of "anti-masker violence."

Noted Biblical Scholar Don Lemon Says God Not About Judging People.  CNN's Don Lemon recently appeared on The View and commented on a recent declaration from the Pope that the Catholic Church will not bless gay marriages.  Lemon claimed that God doesn't judge people.  Has he ever read any of the Bible?  Judging the living and the dead is mentioned pretty explicitly.

The Woefully Ignorant Media Is Getting America's Anger Over the Cancelation of Dr. Seuss Books so Wrong, so Let Me Help.  Looking at how the media reacted to the reaction by Americans at the cancelation of some of Dr. Seuss's books, it's hard to tell whether they're being obtuse on purpose or if they truly misunderstand the American people so much that their bubble stops them from experiencing reality as it is.  Case in point, here's what one Business Insider reporter had to say about why conservatives were mad about Dr. Seuss, and I'm going to warn you, the explanation is so stupid that you may get dumber for having read it: [...]

The Media's Miserable Record on Getting It Right.  About a month ago, news consumers were belatedly informed that New York governor Andrew Cuomo was not a pandemic hero, the Lincoln Project was not filled with noble Republican idealists who were effectively persuading conservatives to stop supporting Donald Trump, and progressive policies were not helping the least fortunate in California.  This week, the media belatedly recognize that the evidence for soaring hate crimes against Asian Americans is much less reliable than initially reported, that the survey data reveal that liberal perceptions of police shootings are wildly at odds with the verifiable facts, and that recent headlines exaggerated the conclusions of a CDC report on government mask mandates.

Attack of the Woke Teen Career Killers.  I was a mere 70 pages into Donald McNeil's brief about his firing from The New York Times when I emailed a dozen of my friends to demand they read it immediately.  But they don't have my perseverance, so here are the highlights. [...] These holy terrors are tormenting newsrooms across New York City — at New York magazine, The New Yorker and The New York Times.  They are true believers, not original thinkers — race-obsessed, gender-obsessed, anti-white, anti-American, and much, much stupider than reporters used to be.  Just tell me what I'm supposed to think and I'll think it.  These are the sort of people who ought to be office managers ordering staples and mousepads, not people who report news.

Michigan National Guard [was] Served Undercooked, Moldy Food While in Washington D.C..  Politicians love to talk about solutions to problems that they helped create and while they do, everyday Americans get caught in the crosshairs of their idiocy.  For this story though, it is not just any everyday Americans but those who serve in the Michigan National Guard who have been entangled in a political mess not of their doing.

The Editor says...
The National Guard did not serve the food.  The food was served to them.  The omission of verbs is the difference between English and Headline-ese.

Brian Stelter Asks Politifact About Andrew Cuomo, and the Interview Was Everything Wrong With Journalism.  Fact-checkers and journalists alike have done major damage to their respective professions over the years — the last four years especially, and two of the most notable examples of such are Politifact and CNN's Brian Stelter.  On Sunday during his "Reliable Sources" program, Stelter had on his network's resident fact-checker and fellow Joe Biden apologist Daniel Dale as well as Politifact's editor-in-chief Angie Drobnic Holan to discuss fact-checking in the Biden era.  We've been told in the past by our intellectual betters like Dale about how Biden supposedly doesn't lie a lot.  So you'd think Stelter and his guests wouldn't have had much to say during the segment.  But they did, especially when Stelter asked Holan about Gov. Andrew Cuomo's nursing home scandal and the fallout from it.

Fake News Wannabes.  The staple of my local morning news has been, for several decades now, a dreary litany of local murders, typically with persons of color on both ends of the gun.  One can only imagine that good liberals despise reporting these things.  In the first place it runs counter to their narrative, and in the second it makes them stand around looking nervous in the worst parts of the ghetto in the middle of the night.  They have to interview people whose English skills are even more marginal than their own.

CNN says Chris Cuomo is no longer allowed to interview his brother, Gov. Cuomo.  Chris Cuomo is not allowed to interview his brother, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, CNN said, claiming that appearances the governor made on his show in 2020 were an exception to the outlet's normal rule.  CNN defended its decision to allow those appearances but did not acknowledge wrongdoing on its part.  The interviews were criticized for apparently being too focused on banter between the brothers and not enough on difficult questions about how the governor was handling the pandemic in his state.

Bill Gates's Climate Hysteria.  This past Sunday, Bill Gates (net worth, $133 billion) and Anderson Cooper ($110 million) got together on 60 Minutes to discuss the numerous sacrifices Americans will be expected to make to avert an imminent climate catastrophe.  First, we should refrain from referring to these sorts of conversations as "journalism," since Cooper never challenges any of Gates's wild predictions nor displays even a hint of professional skepticism regarding the subject matter.  Cooper simply cues up the next talking point like a host of an in-house corporate video.

The Impeachment Show.  Lost in the tedium and general lack of interest in the impeachment show put on by the Democrats last week is the general weirdness of our ruling class.  What we see in politics and in the media is presented as if it is completely normal.  No one ever points out the facts or the contradictions with reality.  The presenters and their subjects are all super-serious, as if everything they are saying and doing is completely normal.  The reaction to the very peaceful demonstrations by Trump fans last month is a great example of this weird disconnect.  We live in an age where everything is monitored by millions of mobile-phone cameras.  As a result, everyone got to see hours of amateur video shot during the subdued protests in Washington back in January.  Yet the carrying-on by the politicians and media is disconnected from what we saw online.  If you are a left-wing partisan, all of it confirms your belief that Trump is a magical orange Hitler commanding an invisible army of Hitlers.  Of course, for these people, everything confirms this belief.  They are insane.

We're supposed to believe that only 11 million illegal immigrants are in the USA and that the number has been the same since 2003.  Some numbers are constants, a fixed numeric value established by physics, mathematics, geometry, law, literature, or logic.  They never change.  Take for example pi, (3.1416), the Ten Commandments, the Three Musketeers, 12 inches in a foot, and 11 million illegal aliens.  That's right:  eleven million illegal aliens in the United States.  In recent years we have seen once immutable values changed before our eyes — nine planets, two sexes, and more.  But since 2003, the number of unauthorized aliens present, illegally (need to emphasize that), in our supposedly sovereign nation has been wired in at 11 million.  With little sense of media curiosity, or fact-checking, that number, primarily sourced by a left-leaning research group (Pew) and copied by others, has remained a constant.  For nearly two decades now, we must believe that the waves of unconstrained illegal entries in the Bush and Obama years, the unenforced overstays, and the catch-and-release judicial free passes have not altered the number one digit.

Media "news" is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.  [Scroll down]  First, why get snarky with Senator Cruz to begin with?  Why not just report that his reference was incorrect if she thought it was, as a news reporter should?  The answer, of course, is that news reporters do that — get snarky — these days when their target is a Republican.  Second, why not double-check that you're right before correcting someone in front of millions of people?  The answer is that journalists are too lazy to double check things, especially when they think it reflects badly on Republicans.  Third, why not double-check that you're right when the person you're correcting is a genuine intellectual?  Ted Cruz graduated cum laude from Princeton and magna cum laude from Harvard Law School, then went on to clerk for Chief Justice William Rehnquist at the U.S. Supreme Court.  In practicing law, Cruz argued nine cases before the Supreme Court.  The answer is that Mitchell is pathologically arrogant.

Are we not fact-checking evidence-free claims anymore?  At what point are journalists going to hold Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez accountable for her evidence-free conspiracy-mongering? [...] The congresswoman has been on a roll recently, lobbing serious allegations of wrongdoing.  She even claims Republican Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas "almost" had her "murdered." Perhaps unsurprisingly, few, if any, in the press have bothered to challenge what are by all objective standards deadly serious and verifiable accusations.  Indeed, many journalists seem perfectly content merely to repeat the charges and leave it at that.  And that's the obvious problem here, that there is basically no pushback against Ocasio-Cortez from the industry that spent the past four years telling us how good it is at holding the powerful to account.  Who is the police officer in the congresswoman's story?  What is his take on her version of events?  Will he have a chance to defend himself?  Will establishment journalists even bother to uncover his identity?  This is no small thing, accusing a member of the U.S. Capitol police of possibly conspiring with a seditious, murderous mob.

Biden is planning more ice-cream stories.  Slightly inquisitive reporters with no President Trump to kick around, have gotten Joe Biden on the spot.  What better, then, than more ice-cream stories?  What's Joe Biden's choice of ice cream flavors at this visit to this local shop? [...] [I]n general, news of car crashes through walls, pet rescues, and high school valedictorian service projects tend to form the backbone of much local news, speaking anecdotally.  Don't forget the happy talk, or the weather girls in tight dresses.  Blue city machine corruption, which ought to be their forte, is not usually spotted, not when the local garden club's doings is likely to draw more viewers.  Neither will hard questions of Biden, which is the actual job of any self-respecting news.

You Can Thank Our Elites For Proliferating Conspiracies.  [Scroll down]  Let's focus in on the second point.  Rep. Ilhan "All-About-The-Benjamins" Omar, D-Minn., is corrupt and nearly as conspiratorial as [Rep. Marjorie Taylor] Greene.  She also seems to be antisemitic.  But the media doesn't make Omar the subject of breathless coverage about her party's moral bankruptcy.  They put her on magazine covers.  The same goes for the likes of Linda Sarsour and Tamika Mallory.  Hillary Clinton and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) are currently trafficking in bizarre conspiratorial theories that Donald Trump talked to and took direction from Vladimir Putin on the day of the Capitol riot without being treated as menacing representations of rot in their party.  Clinton never accepted the results of her 2016 loss, and continues to recklessly advance baseless notions of "hacking."  That brings us to the Russia collusion hoax, which for years consumed the entire Democratic Party (even Sen. Bernie Sanders!) in a silly conspiracy replete with prostitutes and urine.  Because this comported with the media's basic political narrative, they failed to approach it with appropriate skepticism.

"This is Such a Good Question!" — WH Press Sec When asked if Biden will Change the Paint on Air Force One.  Joe Biden's White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki held her first press briefing a few hours after Biden was sworn into office and it's all rainbows and unicorns.  A brave reporter asked Psaki if Joe Biden will keep Trump's Air Force One color scheme.  "This is such a good question!" Psaki said smiling.  "I have not had the opportunity to dig into that today..."  Rather than ask questions about the investigation into Hunter Biden's money laundering scheme and how Joe Biden turned his son into a bagman, the reporters ask about paint.

This is news?
DC police investigate vandalism of Bernie Sanders mural as a 'hate crime' after it was defaced with 'alt-right' Pepe the Frog.  The vandalism of a mural of Bernie Sanders in Washington DC that was defaced with a picture of Pepe the Frog is being investigated as a hate crime, police have said.  D.C. police confirmed their investigation into the vandalism of the mural in the Navy Yard area.  They said that it was not clear exactly when the mural was defaced, with a police report listing December 15, 2020 to January 14, 2021 as a possible time period.

CBS: 'So Many' Are So Proud of Kamala Harris: 'How Will You Support Her?'  The abrupt switch from media attack dogs to stenographers for power was always going to be jarring.  But get ready for "democracy dying in darkness" giving way to "everything is swell."  CBS This Morning on Monday [1/18/2021] cheered on Kamala Harris by talking to the Vice President-elect's former sorority sisters.  The full-on puff piece featured Gayle King insisting that "so many" are so proud of the Democrat.  Of course, no mention was made of just how liberal Harris is.  Instead, reporter Michelle Miller asked questions like this:  "How are you going to support your line sister as she becomes vice president?"

Fourth U.S. lawmaker tests positive for COVID-19 after U.S. Capitol attack.  U.S. Rep. Adriano Espaillat said Thursday he had tested positive for COVID-19, becoming the fourth member of Congress to announce they had contracted the coronavirus following a mob attack on the U.S. Capitol last week.  "I am following guidance from my physician and quarantining at home after having tested positive for COVID-19," he wrote on Twitter.  Espaillat is the latest lawmaker to test positive for the coronavirus in what has become a partisan issue, with Democrats blaming Republicans for not wearing masks while sheltering in secure areas on Jan. 6, as violent supporters of Republican President Donald Trump stormed the building.

The Editor says...
Or he could have picked up the virus from anywhere else he has been in the last two weeks, but this makes a much better story, doesn't it?  The writer further errs by presuming that the people who violently invaded the U.S. Capitol were Trump supporters, and not Antifa infiltrators.

Liberal Journalist Calls For Pelosi To Be Expelled From House.  Whatever you think of Twitter, it does have one virtue: it has exposed the carelessness and low intelligence of American journalists.  Gohmert couldn't have been clearer, and yet these dim bulbs didn't get the point.  More importantly, though:  these journalists thought the quote was shocking when they attributed it to Gohmert.  One wanted to expel Gohmert from the House.  So, does that mean that she now wants Nancy Pelosi expelled?  And do the other journalists quoted above now think that Pelosi's quote was reprehensible?  Will they jump to condemn Pelosi, as they did Gohmert?  Or are statements tolerant of rioting, or even encouraging rioting, perfectly fine when they are made by Democrats?

Explaining the Twelfth Amendment for Those in the Media Who Seem to Be Reading Impaired.  The Twelfth Amendment was adopted in June 1804 — ahead of the Presidential election of 1804 — and replaced the provision regarding the function of the Electoral College that was set forth in Art. II, Sec. 1, Clause 3 of the Constitution as originally drafted.  The purpose of the Amendment was to address the extraordinarily close outcomes of the Presidential election in 1796 and 1800.  The process set forth in the Constitution had resulted in the election of a President and Vice President from different political parties in 1796 — which turned out to be problematic since the one-party was pro-British and the other was pro-French in the armed hostilities between the two countries at the time.  In 1800, a tie in the Electoral College vote led to 36 ballots in the House of Representatives before it finally elected Thomas Jefferson over Aaron Burr — both from the Democrat-Republican Party.  Both had received the same number of Electoral Votes since under the original system each elector cast 2 votes without distinguishing between a vote for President and a vote for Vice President.

Our self-appointed media overlords aren't very bright.  In February 2017, Mika Brzezinski gave the media's game away.  She explained that Donald Trump, by trying to bypass media bias, "could have undermined the messaging so much that he can actually control exactly what people think."  Mika wasn't upset that Americans might be subject to thought control.  Instead, she was outraged because, when it comes to thought control "that is our job."  Jennifer Bendery, a HuffPost senior politics reporter, is Mika's spiritual heir because she is stupid, hostile to the Trump administration, believes that she owns the facts, and intractable about her ignorance and bias.  Normally, I wouldn't comment on the idiocies of a HuffPost journalist because that's pretty much a "dog bites man" story.  However, sometimes you must point these things out so that people understand the people in the mainstream media.  Remember, these journalists (sadly) control American discourse, despite being governed by an unsavory mix of hatred, ignorance, and arrogance.

The Worst People In Media 2020.  This year was a disaster in just about every respect, but nothing compares to the overall disaster that is the media.  Informing the public and seeking the truth took a backseat to agenda pushing and straight-up advocacy.  While everyone in the media soiled themselves this year, to one degree or another, some people are just so awful they deserve special recognition.

WaPo's reporting on Kamala Harris' marriage is painful prelude to the next four years.  An essay in the Washington Post about the "inspirational" relationship between Kamala Harris and husband Doug Emhoff has prompted justified ridicule on social media.  The obsequious, nearly 1,000-word article, which is almost painful to read or even skim, claims that people who see Harris's alleged "struggles" in themselves also have hope that they too can "find a long, loving partner" in middle age.  Citing Harris's memoir that probably only the journalist read or even was aware of, the Post writer praises the couple's courtship process "that offers hope, inspiration, and a little instruction."  Harris and her husband share a mutual admiration that causes the Democrat vice presidential nominee to "beam" whenever she mentions his name, the article notes.

Computer repairman who made Hunter Biden hard-drive contents public sues Twitter for $500 million after moderators 'labeled him a hacker'.  A computer repair shop owner who Hunter Biden handed his laptops over to in April 2019 is suing Twitter for defamation, claiming moderators labeled him a hacker.  John Paul Mac Isaac is seeking $500 million in damages from Twitter after The New York Post's story about Biden, obtained from the 50-year-old's laptop, was labeled as potentially coming from hacked material.  Facebook and Twitter both restricted viewing of the Post's story, and Twitter pointed to its ban on posting 'hacked materials' as an explanation.

Media heap praise upon themselves as 'heroes' of 2020.  Ace, at Ace of Spades, has uncovered a yucky little trend — the press seems to be intent on praising itself as the heroes of 2020. [...] Never have journalistic standards been lower.  From CBS's once-formidable 60 Minutes dismissing the Hunter Biden story as "not news" to Big Media's complicity with Big Social Media to cover up and in the case of the New York Post, literally censor its news, never has the press disgraced itself.  They promoted the lies of Russia collusion, then the lies of impeachment, then the lies of COVID, and finally, covered up for Joe Biden's corruption, opting instead to ask him about his ordered ice cream flavor, not his record of growing rich while in public office, or the computer evidence of Chinese and Russian influence peddling.  As Ace notes, few lost their jobs, which is an ironic thing, given that few did their jobs.  They impressed no one.  After all, if you have to praise yourself to get any praise, maybe there's a reason for ... not getting the praise.

Good news, bad news... the left can't discern the difference.  The most puzzling thing about leftists is their stubborn resistance to good news.  Tell them the actual death rate for COVID sufferers is 0.05% and they will come after you like a rabid animal.  Explain to them that the COVID numbers are hugely inflated — nearly all deaths of the usual things people die of are now attributed to COVID — and they will do everything in their power to silence you.  Let a Stanford doctor suggest that face masks are useless in preventing the spread of COVID, a fact that should be obvious to everyone by now, and that doctor will be cancelled, shadow-banned, deleted.  Months ago, if any doctor uttered the truth about hydroxychloroquine, he or she would be called a charlatan, a freak, a liar, all because President Trump mentioned it early on as one possible treatment.  Thousands of lives might have been saved had the media told the truth about HCQ — used early, it works.

CNN wastes your valuable time with meaningless filler like this:
Don't Worry, Kids:  Dr. Fauci Says Santa Is Vaccinated Against the Coronavirus.  Jolly Kris Kringle has been cleared for travel this Christmas season, allaying the worries of some children who didn't want him to catch the coronavirus while traveling all over the world.  On CNN Saturday [12/19/2020], Elmo from Sesame Street presented questions from three children who wanted to know:  Would Santa Claus be protected from the virus?

If the Media Doesn't Report on Crime, It Won't Exist.  The Nieman Foundation for Journalism was set up at Harvard.  Like everything touching old foundations and journalism, it's a toxic disaster.  And this one is right up there with In Defense of Looting. [...] No this stuff isn't marginal.  Nieman is influential and it's part of the larger pro-crime push.  And the reshaping of the legacy media.  Even at this late date, one of the few things the local news does anymore is sports, weather, and crime.  Lefty virtue signaling destroyed sports.  The push to make every weather report about global warmunism while firing any weatherman who doesn't go along has been underway for years.

China, Spies, And Sexual Harassment: 3 Bombshell Stories The Legacy Media Are Hiding From You.  Early last week, Axios reported that an alleged Chinese spy, a woman named Fang Fang or Christine Fang, had "forged ties with Swalwell while he was a city council member in Dublin, California."  Fang had helped fundraise for Swalwell's 2014 reelection campaign, and even placed an intern in his office.  White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany excoriated the legacy media for their complete disinterest in the possibility that Swalwell — who still sits on the House Intelligence Committee and was a vocal instigator in the Russia collusion hoax — could have been compromised by a Chinese spy.  On December 17th, The Hill reported that the "CBS, NBC and ABC evening newscasts haven't dedicated one second to the story," that Rep. Swalwell was "barely pressed" during an interview with CNN, and that The New York Times had failed to report on the story in any fashion.  One would imagine that had it been a Republican Congressman who was accused of sleeping with a spy, the legacy media may have expressed more interest.

Here Are the Ten Worst Softball Exchanges from the Colbert/Biden Interview.  This, dear NewsBusters readers, is what counts as journalism from our liberal media in 2020.  On Thursday night [12/17/2020], CBS's The Late Show host Stephen Colbert spent an hour fluffing the pillows of President-Elect Joe Biden and incoming First Lady Jill Biden.  Whether it was defending Jill Biden's doctorate in English, lamenting Hunter Biden being under federal investigation, nudging Biden from the left to screw Republicans and be openly partisan, Colbert closed out 2020 with one of the suck-ups of the year.

Stephen Colbert's embarrassing interview misses the mark.  After a blackout on the Hunter Biden scandal before the election, it often seems like the media is struggling to offer the appearance of coverage without actually asking questions that could be damaging for the president-elect.  That view of many was reinforced in the first interview with Biden about his son since the November election.  It was conducted by CBS' Stephen Colbert, host of "The Late Show with Stephen Colbert."  Biden has refused to answer questions on the expanding scandal surrounding his son's China connections so this was a big deal.  However, the president-elect's team arranged for the all-important question to be asked by a comedian on a late-night show.

New York Times admits award-winning doc 'Caliphate' did not meet 'standards for accuracy'.  The New York Times revealed Friday morning [12/18/2020] that its award-winning 2018 podcast "Caliphate" about the Islamic State terrorist group did not meet the paper's "standards for accuracy."  Following a more than two-month internal investigation, The Times found that the 12-part audio documentary, which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and won a Peabody Award in 2019, focused too heavily on the false or exaggerated accounts of Shehroze Chaudhry, a man who was charged by Canadian authorities in September with perpetrating a terrorist hoax.  "When The New York Times does deep, big, ambitious journalism in any format, we put it to a tremendous amount of scrutiny at the upper levels of the newsroom," executive editor Dean Baquet said in a podcast interview Friday.

'Oh, they do this to me every day': Trump rubs salt in NY Times' fail after mega-retraction.  President Donald Trump is justifiably calling out the New York Times after the far-left news organization to acknowledged that a podcast contained bogus information.  "Oh, they do this to me every day.  When will they apologize?" the president tweeted with feelings of vindication upon the disclosure that the Times had to retract a key premise of its 2018 "Caliphate" podcast.  Shehroze Chaudhry, the purported central figure of the 12-part Times podcast, who allegedly claimed to be a terrorist executioner, apparently made it up, and the news outlet fell for it.  After a four-year investigation, Canadian authorities have charged him with carrying out an alleged terrorist hoax, which could land him in prison for up to five years should he be convicted in a court of law.

New York Times: 'Caliphate' podcast didn't meet standards.  The New York Times admitted Friday [12/18/2020] that it could not verify the claims of a Canadian man whose account of committing atrocities for the Islamic State in Syria was a central part of its 2018 podcast "Caliphate."  The series was a Pulitzer Prize finalist and had won a Peabody Award, the first ever for a podcast produced by the newspaper.  Peabody administrators said the Times would return the award.

The Vaccine Naysayers Got It Wrong.  Today I'm reminded of the host of media experts who flogged the seriousness and reliability of the Steele dossier for months and years only to evaporate when we later learned that document wasn't reliable.  To his great credit, the Washington Post's Erik Wemple devoted 10 articles to tracking down some of the dossier's promoters and asking them how they felt about it in retrospect.  As I pointed out at the time, a lot of the journalists he spoke with had no comment.  People like MSNBC's Rachel Maddow, who made the dossier a key part of her program for years simply moved on to greener pastures.  There was zero price to pay for being so wrong for so long about something so important.  I'm reminded of that today because of this Twitter thread by Glenn Greenwald highlighted by Twitchy.  Greenwald points out that some of the same outlets flogging the the dossier were also confident that a vaccine by the end of the year was a pipe dream.  Stop and enjoy the smug condescension in this first clip from MSNBC:  [Video clip]

This is a commercial disguised as news:
Top supplier warns of possible cookie shortage over holidays.  There may be a shortage of cookies on the shelves this holiday season, one of the biggest commercial producers of confections is warning.  Campbell's Soup Company, which makes cookies under the Pepperidge Farms brand, warned that it is facing a shortage ahead of its busiest season — including of popular varieties like Milano and Chessman.  In an earnings call with investors, Campbell's CEO Mark Clouse blamed the shortage on an increase in demand and a labor shortage, both of which are results of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.

John Brennan Lies About the Steele Dossier, Fox News' Chris Wallace Just Nods Along.  I'm assured by some conservatives (most of which also happen to have Fox News gigs) that Chris Wallace is a serious newsman whose more recent bias against Republicans is really just him be a fair arbiter of the facts.  Of course, we all know that's nonsense, and it was never more evidenced than his embarrassing performance during the first presidential debate.  That was hardly the only example though, and the level of bias with which Wallace is willing to operate with was on display again today.

John Brennan on Fox News Sunday blatantly lies to Chris Wallace, who doesn't call him out.  To be honest, I didn't watch the much-hyped interview of former CIA chief, and now CNN contributor, John Brennan by Chris Wallace on Fox News Sunday.  I detest both men, and did not want to vomit on the TV or floor.  But my thanks go out to those like Bonchie of RedState, who did the job this American (and many other former Fox News viewers) refuses to do.  Tom Elliott, the founder of Grabien, tweeted out video of the lie:  [Video clip]

The Left-Wing Media Fell for China's COVID Lies.  This week, CNN aired an "exclusive" report about a "vast trove of leaked documents" showing "China underreported Covid-19 numbers, took weeks to diagnose new cases and didn't disclose a December flu spike in Hubei."  Well, yes.  Anyone willing to be honest about the longtime antics of the Chinese Communist Party concluded this in January. [...] When the White House Coronavirus Taskforce was officially launched on January 29, 2020, newsrooms in Washington, D.C., missed an enormous opportunity to deliver crucial information to the American people.  Editors and executives could have swapped out political reporters in the White House Press Corps for healthcare reporters.  This way, there would have been a higher chance legitimate questions about the disease would have been asked.  Instead, they chose to keep their partisan, anti-Trump reporters in the room and focused on President Trump's (accurate) language rather than the details of the disease, lockdowns, hospital preparation and more.

Biden Acolytes Are Abuzz Over 'First All-Woman WH Comms Team,' They Forgot to Check in With Who's There Now.  If anyone is known for putting a foot firmly in her mouth on a regular basis, it's Hillary Clinton.  So naturally, after news broke on Sunday [11/29/2020] that the top roles in Joe Biden's theoretical, White House press office would be made up of all women — for the first time ever — the former senator and first lady couldn't resist sharing a feminist, virtue-signaling tweet about it on Monday morning.

Hey MSM, Affidavits are Considered Evidence.  As a lawyer, including the former lawyer for the Maricopa County Elections Department, it has been appalling for me to see the MSM breathlessly blabbing over and over that there is no "evidence" of election fraud.  They even had the nerve to claim that Sidney Powell, a former high-level attorney in the DOJ who served as lead counsel in more than 500 appeals before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, had no evidence of fraud in the presidential election.  They pretended she just put her hard-earned reputation on the line to hold a press conference with Rudy Giuliani based on lies.  Sadly, the MSM is able to fool a lot of the public because the public doesn't understand the law.  Powell and the Trump legal team have compiled hundreds, if not thousands, of affidavits from people swearing to election fraud in the presidential election.  Affidavits are evidence.  Many court cases are decided based on evidence from affidavits alone.

'Pet Psychic' Says She Communicated Telepathically With Biden's Dogs.  The Daily Beast Runs With It.  The Daily Beast published a lengthy story on Friday about Beth Lee-Crowther, a so-called "pet psychic" who claims to have communicated telepathically with Democratic nominee Joe Biden's two pet dogs.  According to The Daily Beast, Lee-Crowther says her "mind-to-mind communication" with Biden's two dogs occurred on a British television show, when she was presented with a picture of them.  The pet psychic said that the two dogs proceeded to give her insight into Biden as a person and how he would govern the country as president.

The Editor says...
Red herring alert!  Articles of this sort make no mention of any doubts about the legitimacy of the election results.  The Biden-friendly journalist expects the reader to assume that Biden was elected in a fair process.

Hard-hitting journalists break riveting news about Joe and Jill Biden's pets.  The liberal media seems to prove that journalism may indeed be dead with the latest "breaking news" report about Democrat Joe Biden.  After four years of presenting leaked lies from unnamed sources as hit pieces on President Donald Trump, the mainstream media now seems to be shifting its tone in readiness for a journalistic vacation under a potential Biden administration.  Hence, CBS Sunday Morning dropped a new kind of bombshell as the Bidens "exclusively" shared news about their pets.  Not only are Biden and his wife Jill planning to bring their two German shepherds to the White House, if the former vice president is actually certified as the winner of the 2020 race, but CBS Sunday Morning revealed that the couple "tell us, exclusively, that soon they'll be joined by a cat."

The Editor says...
This is part of the news media's distraction program, drawing attention away from the obvious theft of the election, and concentrating on Biden's media-generated status of president-elect.  It is also an example of the Left encouraging you to use your emotions in place of rational thought.

Media Childishly Dismissive of Gettysburg Vote Fraud Hearing.  The mainstream media, rather than cover in any real detail the serious allegations of voting fraud that were presented at a Gettysburg hearing of the Pennsylvania Senate Majority Policy Committee on Wednesday, instead mocked and dismissed the event.  CNN made no effort to hide its extreme bias over the hearing in its headline which described it as a "baseless voter fraud event," "Trump invites Pennsylvania GOP lawmakers to White House after calling in to baseless voter fraud event."  In addition, the story put "hearing" in quotes so as to present it as somehow not a real hearing.

Fox News continues to alienate its viewers.  Fox News continues to insult its audience.  This time, the insults came from Kristin Fisher, who was speaking from either ignorance or malice when she attacked Rudy Giuliani after Trump's legal team gave a press conference.  The press conference was the equivalent of an opening argument in a trial.  Giuliani, Sidney Powell, and Jenna Ellis each stated one aspect of the upcoming case:  Giuliani described on-the-ground voter fraud, Powell described a sophisticated computer system created in Venezuela to steal votes, and Ellis reminded people that this was an opening argument rather than an evidentiary hearing.  The evidence, she said, will come.  The conference was essentially a preview of coming attractions.  In a trial, first you tell your story, then you prove your story, and then you summarize your story.  The legal team is at Phase One.  That didn't stop Kristin Fisher from proving that she's a lousy listener and is staggeringly ignorant about how the American legal system works.

Embarrassing: Lapdog Biden Journalists Debase Their Profession in Latest Presser.  If anyone was hoping the third time would be the charm for consistently constructive or tough questions at a post-election Joe Biden press conference, Thursday illustrated that such a hope was a fool's errand.  Over the course of the 15-minute availability, the Biden team had the former vice president receive questions from only four reporters with three of them offering softballs.  ABC senior congressional correspondent Mary Bruce continued her accumulation of quite a highlight reel if she ever wanted to join the Biden administration, wondering to Biden in the first of two questions:  "How many lives do you think are at risk here if this transition remains stalled?"  Her second and third questions weren't any better [...]

60 Minutes' Scarily Ignorant Interview of Barack Obama.  Interviewer Scott Pelley of 60 Minutes supplied the ignorance.  He appears to have no more knowledge of what transpired during the past four years than does, say, a Whoopi Goldberg or a Kathy Griffin.  Barack Obama supplied the scare.  His solution to make the right half of America as ignorant as the left would do Trotsky proud.  Pelley's ignorance flared throughout the embarrassingly sycophantic interview, but it reached something of a crescendo with his and Obama's elaborate discussion on the etiquette of presidential transitions.

THIS is NEWS?
Suspended NASCAR driver says he didn't intentionally draw a swastika on his toaster strudel.  Truck Series driver Josh Reaume was suspended indefinitely by NASCAR on Tuesday for violating its social media policy.  And according to Reaume, that violation was unintentional.  Reaume, who owns a team in the Truck Series, says he posted a picture to Snapchat of a toaster strudel last week.  That seems pretty innocuous, right?  Well, the icing on that strudel was drawn in the shape of a swastika.  And Reaume said he somehow didn't realize that he had drawn a strudel swastika when he posted the picture to Snapchat.

Fox Corporation shares down 12% since Election Day, 6% yesterday alone, since hopping on the 'Biden elected' media bandwagon.  First, its "Decision Desk" prematurely called Arizona for Biden, though a recount continues with Biden's lead shrinking every day, and then on Saturday, 10 minutes after CNN and MSNBC, it went all in on selling the fake news that Joseph Robinette Biden was "elected."  Speaking for myself, my sense of affiliation with Fox News has been destroyed.  They are selling what I believe to be a stolen election long before the constitutional processes to safeguard a presidential election have been followed.  Yesterday, eight days late, Bret Baier and Martha MacCallum both broadcast brief acknowledgements from the "Decision Desk" that it had blown its call that Democrats would enlarge their House majority.  Interestingly, they waited until they felt they could "call" that Democrats would retain their majority before acknowledging their error.  And they offered no explanation at all as to how they could have been so wrong.

The Red Wave No One Saw Coming.  Had you spent any time in this northern suburb of Pittsburgh listening to voters, finding out what matters to them when it comes to schools, community growth, economic prosperity and the emotional impact of the COVID-19 lockdowns, you would have at least been skeptical of the media narrative and the polls that claimed suburban voters here are no longer center-right.  Not Republican per se, just center-right.  Most reporters certainly didn't take the time to do so.  Instead, they relied on the scolding of our cultural curators in sports, media and Hollywood as an indicator of how these affluent, college-educated voters would vote.  Surely, reporters thought, these suburbs had fully embraced "wokeism" and rejected center-right values and principles.  They thought they would cave under the cultural pressure, push left and send a blue shock wave across the country with their votes.

The Media Should Not Have 'Called' This Election.  Joe Biden has made it clear that he will do his best to "unify" the country following an election in which more than 71 million Americans — nearly half the electorate — voted for Donald Trump.  It is an admirable goal.  But any chance of that happening depends on the American people having confidence that the election outcome resulted from a fair and honest process.  Though never perfect, our electoral system has generally instilled confidence for the past 231 years, which is why it has worked so well.  Under the contentious circumstances of this election, the traditional media's decision to declare a victor before the official process had run its course has diminished the confidence of Trump voters in the announced result.  Even if the declaration of a Biden victory is found to be accurate, the call was premature, and it will make the effort to unify our nation far more difficult.

The 'Anonymous' saga ended with a dud — a perfect example of the problem of Trump-era media.  There will be many incidents from the past four years of the Trump era that will erode the public's faith in the press to provide fair, accurate information — all the nonsense from the Russia collusion story, pings in Prague, the Steele dossier mess, false promises of what would be in the Mueller report and more.  These will leave lasting, damaging marks.  But no story better exemplifies the core problem with the media's anti-Trump instincts to elevate every crumb of a story to an 11 out of 10, only to be let down consistently for their exaggeration or outright falsehood, than the saga of "Anonymous." For those who don't remember [...] The New York Times published a column in September 2018 from someone identified as "Anonymous," whom the Times described as a "senior official inside the Trump administration." [...] If [Miles] Taylor published the column under his own name and title, it wouldn't pack nearly the punch it did the way it was shrouded in mystery and secrecy.

The Atlantic gave Ruth Shalit a 'second chance' 25 years after a journalism scandal.  It ended with an ugly correction.  Two weeks after publishing a long, juicy and instantly viral story about the world of competitive niche sports and the wealthy parents who push their children to play them, the Atlantic on late Friday [10/30/2020] appended a nearly 800-word editor's note informing readers that it was "deceived" by the story's author, Ruth Shalit Barrett.  In particular, the magazine said Barrett incorrectly asserted that the story's main character, who was identified by her middle name (Sloane), had a son in addition to three daughters in an attempt to blur her identity, and gave a misleading and highly exaggerated description of a fencing injury allegedly sustained by the woman's daughter.  The author had described the incident at a 2019 competition as a "massacre," in which the girl was stabbed in the neck; in the Atlantic's updated version of the story, the injury is now portrayed as "not severe."

Captain Anonymous Exposes Lapsed Media Ethics.  It was the wrong time for 33-year-old Miles Taylor to announce he is the much-celebrated "Anonymous" Trump official who wrote a New York Times op-ed and then a New York Times-bestselling book in which he trashed the president.  The announcement came in the last days of the presidential election campaign, as the establishment media are bloviating that they can't rush to cover the New York Post's evidence about Hunter Biden because they have such high standards for confirming facts.  None of them had such a standard when they gushed over Captain Anonymous in September 2018.  No one needed to know who he was to spread his claims far and wide.  ABC, CBS and NBC poured out nearly 15 minutes of excitable coverage the night the story broke.

Chris Cuomo confronts CNN colleague Miles Taylor over 'Anonymous' revelation: 'You lied to us'.  CNN's Chris Cuomo confronted Miles Taylor, a former U.S. government official recently hired by the network, over revelations Wednesday [10/28/2020] about him anonymously writing an anti-Trump op-ed and book.  The "Cuomo Prime Time" host questioned his colleague's credibility during an interview done shortly after Mr. Taylor revealed he wrote the 2018 op-ed and subsequent book slamming President Trump.  Mr. Taylor, a former Department of Homeland Security official who resigned from the agency in 2019, previously denied being the anonymous author, Mr. Cuomo reminded him during the discussion.

The New York Times' 'Anonymous' is an insignificant pipsqueak.  In 2018, the New York Times proudly published an anonymously written piece from a purported "senior official in the Trump administration," knowing that this statement was a lie.  "Anonymous" claimed that Trump was an idiot, but that a brave band of "senior officials in his own administration are working diligently from within to frustrate parts of his agenda."  In fact, the author was Miles Taylor, a low-level functionary in DHS when he wrote the hit piece.  The anonymous article, published on Sept. 5, 2018, bore the lofty title, "I Am Part of the Resistance Inside the Trump Administration:  I work for the president but like-minded colleagues and I have vowed to thwart parts of his agenda and his worst inclinations."  As noted above, to give the piece heft, the New York Times claimed it came from a "senior official in the Trump administration."  We now know this statement was an outright lie, for the Times admitted that the author's "identity is known to us."  The article was a nauseating glue of arrogant piety and self-serving condescension.

Infamous 'Anonymous' Op-Ed Writer and Trump Official Has Been Revealed, and It's Hilarious.  Some years ago, a supposed "high-level" Trump administration official penned a scathing op-ed in the pages of The New York Times.  That set off a wave of speculation.  Was it Nikki Haley?  Was it Jared or Ivanka Trump?  There was even talk it could be Mike Pence.  Well, the identity of that person has finally been revealed and it's absolutely hilarious.  The media have egg all over their face after this revelation. [...] You probably had the same reaction I did.  Who is this guy?  And how does this qualify as a "senior level" Trump administration official?  Further, given his meager rank at DHS, how exactly was he even in a position to influence policy the way he asserted he could in his original op-ed?  Remember, this guy painted himself as literally steering Trump away from tyranny.  This was an absolute grift, nothing more, and the media fell for it hook, line, and sinker.

Trump calls for firings after 'Anonymous' revealed as little-known official.  President Trump on Wednesday [10/28/2020] called for the New York Times to fire employees responsible for an explosive 2018 op-ed after its anonymous author was revealed as little-known former Department of Homeland Security official Miles Taylor.  "Who is Miles Taylor?  Said he was 'anonymous', but I don't know him — never even heard of him," Trump tweeted during a campaign trip in Arizona.  "Just another @nytimes SCAM — he worked in conjunction with them.  Also worked for Big Tech's @Google.  Now works for Fake News @CNN. They should fire, shame, and punish everybody associated with this FRAUD on the American people!"  Trump said moments later at a campaign rally, "Anonymous turned out to be a low-level staffer.  A sleazebag.  He's never worked in the White House.  Anonymous was a nobody, a disgruntled employee who was quickly removed from this job a long time ago for, they tell me, incompetence."

Famed 'Anonymous' Trump Official Is Actually Junior Staffer Who Never Worked w/ POTUS.  Miles Taylor, a former Trump appointee who publicly endorsed Joe Biden for President, has revealed himself as the author of an infamous New York Times op-ed rebuking the Trump administration.  The former Chief of Staff to the Secretary of Homeland Security from 2017 to 2019 claims to be "Anonymous" — the author of a 2018 article "I Am Part of the Resistance Inside the Trump Administration." [...] The article garnered considerable traction in establishment circles, bolstering mainstream media's claims about President Trump as an incompetent leader.  Taylor's claims, however, are undermined by the fact he was a junior staffer in the administration who never worked directly with President Trump.

Former "Senior Administration Official" (According to the Media) Who Penned Anti-Trump Diatribe As "Anonymous" Reveals Himself, and It's.. a Nobody.  Why call yourself "Anonymous" when you can use your real name and no one would know who [...] you are?  Ah well, the media was able to take this minor flunkie and get people to speculate that it was actually John Kelly or even Mike Pence writing the diatribe.  It's Miles Taylor.  That's right, you heard me — the Miles Taylor.  He claims that he joined the Trump Administration in a minor position because he rilly rilly rilly wanted Trump to succeed, which is why he... joined other liberals and NeverTrumpers who had infiltrated the government to subvert and "resist" Trump.

Tony Bobulinski's evidence means media should push Biden to answer big questions.  Journalists had a rare chance to ask Joe Biden a few questions Wednesday and — of course — failed to ask him anything about his knowledge of his son's business dealings.  Even though former ally Tony Bobulinski gave sitdown interviews with Fox News and The Post's Michael Goodwin outlining in detail his evidence disproving Joe's repeated claims of lifelong ignorance of son Hunter's profitable affairs.  And even though Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey was testifying to the Senate about the company's censoring of stories about the Bidens.  Two big developments that the press felt wasn't worthy of mention.

Rudy Giuliani explodes at anchor for 'outrageous defamation' as she likens him to 'Trump dossier' spy in fiery interview.  Rudy Giuliani exploded at Lisa "Kennedy" Montgomery for "outrageous defamation" after she likened him to the "Donald Trump dossier" spy during a fiery interview on Tuesday [10/27/2020].  The Fox Business anchor asked Trump's personal attorney about the Hunter Biden laptop scandal, saying "Some could say you are acting like Christopher Steele."  Kennedy was referring to the former British spy who was behind an unverified dossier on Trump that came to light during the 2016 election campaign.  "You better apologize for that!" Giuliani hit back.  "I've been a United States attorney, associate attorney general, mayor of New York City and a member of the bar for 50 years."  Giuliani also called Kennedy's comment an "outrageous defamation."

Rudy Giuliani demands an apology from Fox host Kennedy and threatens to walk out after she compared him to Christopher Steele.  Rudy Giuliani demanded an apology from Fox Business host Kennedy on Tuesday evening and threatened to walk out of their interview after she compared him to British ex-spy Christopher Steele.  The president's personal attorney had been on the show to discuss the laptop said to belong to Hunter Biden and the evidence he says is on it.  But when probed by Lisa 'Kennedy' Montgomery about the credibility of the documents in a line of questioning that compared him to Steele, Giuliani said: 'You got to be kidding me.  I was acting like Christopher Steele?' [...] Kennedy said: 'Some can say that you're acting like Christopher Steele, that you were abstracting information.'  Giuliani hit back:  'You better apologize for that.  I mean I've been a United States attorney, associate attorney general, mayor of New York City and a member of the bar for 50 years.  I've never been accused of anything, and you're accusing me of being Christopher Steele.'  'What you're saying is an outrageous defamation of me, of my reputation', he added.

'Truth' Over Facts.  In his memoir, Banana Sunday, the late British newspaperman Christopher Munnion described his first encounter with what was then called New Journalism.  This was a style of newswriting that got going in the 1960s and 1970s.  It was more like long-form fiction than conventional reporting. [...] The new style of journalist came to the story with a narrative in mind.  He was a storyteller who would provide the reader with a sense of what it was like to be in the story, at least the story the writer wanted to tell.  As Munnion explained, the journalist showed up with a prepared narrative and then went around looking for people, events, and images to fill in the details.  The facts were mere ornaments to decorate the story, not the point of the story.

The New York Times Discovers China.  The latest revelations about Biden family influence peddling in China are having an adverse effect on the patriarch's prospects of becoming President.  Despite the best efforts of the Fourth Estate and the big social media platforms to censor the story, it is eroding Biden's lead in the polls and has driven his campaign back into its Delaware hideout.  Thus, with the grim inevitability of Greek tragedy, the New York Times has suddenly discovered that President Trump is the true villain of the piece.  Before he became President, it seems, Trump pursued a few unconsummated business deals in China and has a dormant bank account there.  This soporific Times story has received more coverage by the media during the past 48 hours than the Biden corruption story has received during the past 48 months.

No More Debate Moderators.  A Knight Foundation survey on trust in the media taken earlier this year found that 86 percent of Americans — including 94 percent of Republicans and 88 percent of Independents — see "a great deal" or "a fair amount" of political bias in news coverage, compared with 62 percent in 2017.  Further, Americans perceive inaccurate news to be intentional, either because the reporter is misrepresenting the facts (54 percent) or making them up entirely (28 percent).  [...] Media bias isn't new, but in this election cycle, the press has taken agenda-driven coverage to a new level, effectively building a wall around their preferred candidate, Joe Biden. [...] The result of this nakedly partisan news coverage is that Americans will go to the polls well versed on matters such as Trump's ill-advised tweets over the years but with no sense of where candidate Biden stands on many important issues.

Chuck Todd:  The Michigan Supreme Court Did Not "Cite Any Law" In Ruling Whitmer's Actions Unconstitutional.  Chuck Todd interviewed Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer this morning and turned to the recent decision of the Michigan Supreme Court that ruled that she had violated the Michigan Constitution in her extended pandemic orders.  Todd did not challenge Whitmer stating falsely that the opinion was a "partisan" decision.  It was not.  The "Democrat justices" agreed that Whitmer violated the Constitution.  They only disagreed on the remedy.  However, that untruth was quickly lost in what was a flagrantly untrue statement by Todd himself.  He told NBC viewers that the justices did not cite any law to support their decision against Whitmer.  Todd stated as fact that the Court did not "cite any Michigan law, they didn't cite any law in deciding that you didn't have this power."  The roughly 50 page opinion contains over 60 cases discussed in support of the decision.  It does not seem to matter anymore at Meet The Press or NBC.  NBC is not alone.

Mainstream media treats Joe Biden like he's incapable of handling challenges.  Mainstream media has zero respect for Joe Biden.  None.  They've learned from multiple experiences the last few months that anytime he's asked a question that does not have a simple answer given to him on a silver platter, he botches it badly.  Last night's town hall was no exception.  He wasn't just lobbed softballs.  They walked the balls over to him and threw them at the bat.  And sometimes, he still found a way to miss.  In lieu of a question-by-question breakdown, I'll skip the torture and cut to the chase.  Biden was not asked about the extraordinarily credible accusations against him and his son, Hunter.  If it were President Trump, they would have asked.  If it were Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton, they would have asked and had the confidence that either of them would be prepared to properly diffuse the situation and put Americans' minds at ease.  But with Joe Biden, they won't ask him.  They know he'll butcher it because they know the accusations are spot on.

ABC's George Stephanopoulos Fails to Ask Joe Biden About Hunter Biden Emails.  ABC News' George Stephanopoulos failed to ask former Vice President Joe Biden at a town hall Thursday night about new email evidence that his son, Hunter Biden, arranged a meeting with him for an adviser to the corrupt Ukrainian energy company Burisma in 2015.  As Breitbart News noted Wednesday, the New York Post reported on emails it had obtained from an abandoned laptop in which Hunter Biden's correspondence with a senior Burisma official was preserved.

Biden Muddles Through Gentle, Hunter-Free Town Hall.  Joe Biden came into Thursday night's town hall, which was originally supposed to be a debate, stung by new allegations of influence-peddling involving his son Hunter.  The question on everyone's mind going in was whether he would be allowed to answer any question harder than chocolate or tapioca? [...] What didn't come up was Hunter Biden.  What didn't come up was credible claims from the New York Post, the oldest daily newspaper in America, showing that the former vice president met with a Ukrainian businessman connected to his son.  The biggest story in America right now was just ignored.  That tells us pretty much everything.

Behind the social-media blackout of Biden family corruption.  Hunter Biden is now the subject of multiple stories involving serious corruption.  Whether he committed any crimes is a question for prosecutors and the courts.  Whether he was paid handsomely for his family's political clout is a question for voters.  You wouldn't know that from ABC's pathetic town hall with his father Joe Biden on Thursday night [10/25/2020].  They spoke with him for 90 minutes and didn't ask a single question about the shocking emails published by the New York Post.  That's either journalistic malpractice or public-relations work.  After all, the emails raise profound questions that the candidate needs to answer.  They appear to show his son, Hunter, repeatedly using his last name to fill his pockets.  Hunter's family is his only asset.  How else did someone with no special skills manage to collect such huge payments from foreign companies with deep interests in US policy?  He has no knowledge of Ukraine or China, no experience in energy or banking, and a crack pipe full of personal problems.  So, how exactly did he get rich?

Media risks malpractice by dismissing alleged anti-Biden bombshell.  The New York Post story alleging additional nefarious doings among the Biden family and Ukrainian entities put nearly as great an onus on the establishment media as it does on the Bidens.  Yes, let's stipulate that the involvement of President Trump's political henchman Rudy Giuliani in the provenance of the Post's story makes the anti-Biden report immediately suspect.  Still, the simple reality is that there's ample reason, both internal to the alleged emails in question and regarding other things we know about the Bidens' practices, that make the story plausible.  Because of that plausibility, every major media outlet in the country should now rush to follow up on the story with neutral, open minds and no agenda pro or con, so as to shed more light on its level of accuracy.  The actions of leftist social-media giants Facebook and Twitter to spike the story make it more imperative that real news outlets do even more reporting for the public's benefit.

Why are networks afraid to let voters ask Joe Biden some tough questions?  TV networks are airing free infomercials to help Joe Biden, then pretend, absurdly, that they are being even-handed.  ABC, CNN and NBC call them "town halls."  NBC this week even tried to fraudulently pass off blatant Biden backers as neutral, uncommitted voters.  "We are surrounded by dozens of undecided voters," NBC's Lester Holt claimed.  Yet what followed was a nonstop volley of softballs and loaded, anti-Trump questions:  Was Biden surprised President Trump got COVID?  How will Biden lead the nation when faced with "bullies" like Trump?  Not asked were questions like:  Does Biden embrace Democrats' threat to pack the Supreme Court if Amy Coney Barrett is confirmed?  And why hasn't he blasted Antifa or Black Lives Matter violence?  Nor did anyone ask about his waffling on fracking or the Green New Deal.  Or grill him on the millions his family earned from foreign sources while he was in office.

Corporate Media Is Vomiting Trump Coronavirus Reporting All Over The Bed.  The latest news cycle over President Trump's COVID-19 diagnosis illustrates yet again how destructive the U.S. corporate media are to national unity and a clear understanding of reality.  While we are all aware that COVID-19 can be a truly devastating and deadly disease for some, despite the volume of media coverage dedicated to it in the past seven months, the American public still lacks crucial context for understanding Trump's diagnosis.  Not only has major media coverage not brought clarity, but it has also, as usual, obscured reality.  This is especially harmful to a story with such significant potential ramifications for the nation and world.  As the president himself has alluded to in his post-diagnosis social media posts, it's common knowledge that the Wuhan virus hits the elderly especially hard.  Trump is 74.  Yet even among his age demographic, surviving the disease, not death, is by far the norm.

The Shame of Chris Wallace.  America's cities have been burning over the last four months.  Seattle, Portland, New York, Chicago, Minneapolis, Kenosha, Louisville — all have suffered tremendous and possibly irreversible damage.  This destruction has come at the hands of the Left, in the persons of Antifa and Black Lives Matter.  There has been no rioting, no arson, no looting, by any conservative groups.  All such criminality has come from the Left, specifically Antifa and Black Lives Matter, two organizations that act so consistently in concert that there no longer seems to be any distinction between them.  That is the background to Chris Wallace's disgraceful conduct on Tuesday: [...] Note that Wallace never asked Biden to disavow Antifa or BLM, and in fact Biden has not done so.  The riots in Portland and Kenosha were carried out by Antifa and BLM, not by any right-wing groups.  Apparently Wallace's theory is that leftists are entitled to riot, loot and burn down cities with impunity and without criticism or opposition.

Liberal Hack Chris Wallace Asked President Trump the Exact Same Question on Racism in 2016 as in 2020 When He Spoke Over Trump.  The latest planned and coordinated attack on President Donald Trump by the Democrat-Media coup cabal is their attempt to pin the racism card on this great president.  President Trump is THE ONLY politician in history who has had to condemn the Ku Klux Klan and white supremacists on numerous occasions!  And when he or his advisors do this, just like today at the White House press briefing, the Democrats and their media lackeys refuse to listen.  It really is disgusting.  President Trump has one of the most favorable records in history in his treatment of blacks and gays.  But the media has to create a hoax to take him down.  Joe Biden is the one who has repeatedly dropped racist and hateful comments throughout his career.

The downfall of Fox News's Chris Wallace and John Roberts.  Some men are alphas, like President Trump, and some men are betas, like Al Gore and the sneering, puffing Biden.  And then there are men who aren't even strong enough to be betas.  They are, instead, weak, mewling creatures who lack either presence or power, and who then cry about it afterward.  Chris Wallace and John Roberts, both employees at Fox News, have exhibited behavior that's so craven and humiliated themselves so badly in the eyes of Fox News's core audience that they should be retired immediately.  It all started with Chris Wallace's stint as a debate moderator for the first presidential debate.  Right out of the gate, he failed to stop Biden from interrupting Donald Trump: [...]

Chris Wallace Just Gave The Most Embarrassing Moderator Performance In History.  Debating one person is difficult, especially if he's had oodles of alone time in his basement to prepare while you've been a little busy leading the country.  Debating that person and a partisan media hack at the same time is just BS.  That, however, was President Donald Trump's exact plight Tuesday night at the first 2020 presidential debate, when he was treated to a two-on-one showdown with his actual opponent Joe Biden and his honorary rival, Fox News moderator Chris Wallace.  Wallace, a registered Democrat, failed to maintain any control over the debate.  Even members of the left pointed out what a chaotic "disgrace" the whole ordeal was.  But after a while, it was hard to pay attention to anything but Wallace's Biden bias.  Media moderators playing favorites with presidential contenders is nothing new, but Wallace's persistent partisanship reached a new low.

Joe Biden's Vacant Debate (And Eyes).  [Scroll down]  Moderator Chris Wallace, who was locked in seclusion with his team in preparation for the debate, must've decided to just Netflix and chill rather than familiarize themselves Biden's policies and history.  Wallace also didn't bother discussing truthfully the president's history of condemning white supremacists, which he has done multiple times.  Instead, he repeated the Charlottesville lie, claiming he didn't condemn neo-Nazis (which he did).  When the president happily condemned it again, Wallace and Biden, as if a tag team in the WWE, talked over him, then denied he'd said it.

The Stupidest Fact-Check in the History of Fact-Checking.  Last week, conservative Christian satire site The Babylon Bee published one of its daily array of gags, headlined "Ninth Circuit Court Overturns Death Of Ruth Bader Ginsburg." [...] A week later, USAToday found it necessary, for some reason, to publish a "Fact Check" of this, by fact-checker Chelsey Cox, entitled "Fact check:  Satirical claim that the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals overturned Ginsburg's death." [...] You read that right.  An editor at a national newspaper assigned a "fact-checker" to determine whether Ruth Bader Ginsburg had been raised from the dead by court order.  It took that fact-checker a week to review over a dozen sources of information and conclude "based on our research" that this had not happened.  Imagine being the editor who thought this was a good use of journalistic resources, or the writer who took this assignment this seriously.  On the editor's part, that is an admission that you either have too many reporters working for you or that you have the world's worst news judgment and should never work as an editor of anything ever again.

Here Are The 11 Dumbest, Most Slanted Questions Asked By Chris Wallace.  Chris Wallace has received negative marks for his constant interruptions of President Donald Trump, and for his poor time management, but the worst thing about his moderation of the first presidential debate on Wednesday were the questions he asked. [... For example, question #3] 'Why are you holding big rallies?'  "Are you not worried about the disease issues, sir?" Wallace asked, minutes after Trump explained his COVID-19 vaccine plan.  Wallace felt the need to ask why a presidential candidate was campaigning on-the-ground and then insinuated that maybe he shouldn't be campaigning because of COVID-19. This matches the Democrat Party talking point about COVID-19 requiring the banning of children from schools, the closure of businesses, and the denial of conservative First Amendment activities such as church and political gathering.  But as demonstrated by the widespread media support for mass gatherings and riots in support of the BLM agenda, this is not a genuine concern but one deployed for partisan political gain.

Civil War At Fox News?  Ingraham, Gutfeld, Others Attack Chris Wallace After Debate.  Multiple Fox News hosts attacked one of their own, anchor Chris Wallace, after Tuesday's [9/29/2020] first presidential debate.  Wallace struggled to control Tuesday's debate, which saw President Donald Trump and Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden clash and insult each other numerous times.  Following the debate, some of Wallace's co-workers began to criticize how he handled the evening, with many saying Trump was forced to debate him in addition to Biden.  "Trump is debating the moderator and Biden," Fox's Laura Ingraham tweeted.  Host Greg Gutfeld seemed to agree with Ingraham, re-tweeting multiple comments about Trump debating two people.  In one retweet, podcast host Stephen L. Miller wrote that "Wallace is grilling Trump on his supporters taking to the streets when antifa is burning businesses down right now."

Chris Wallace Calls Out Trump to Tell His Supporters to Not Riot!.  The final question of the night by debate "moderator" Chris Wallace was to ask President Trump and Joe Biden to tell his supporters not to riot.  Violent leftist groups have rioted and looted in city after city across the US since May.  Leftist rioters have caused over a billion dollars in damage.  In Minneapolis over 1,500 buildings and businesses have been damaged or destroyed.  For Wallace to ask Trump supporters to quit rioting is an absolute disgrace!  Chris Wallace was an embarrassment to journalism.

Chris Wallace Faces Intense Backlash, Including From Colleagues, Over Bias During Debate.  Fox News host Chris Wallace, a registered Democrat, faced intense backlash on Tuesday night for what was widely deemed as bias in the debate in the favor of Democrat Joe Biden and against Republican President Donald Trump. [...] Attorney Harmeet Dhillon wrote on Twitter:  "Chris Wallace is a disgrace.  Republicans need to stop allowing the slanted media to have any role in debates in future years."  Actor James Woods wrote on Twitter:  "Chris Wallace is shamelessly biased.  It's a beautiful demonstration of fake news in action.  I'm actually glad it's happening, because you can see it for yourself."  Journalist Yashar Ali, who was Hillary Clinton's co-chair on her 2008 presidential campaign, wrote on Twitter that there was "no doubt" that "Wallace is not doing a good job as a debate moderator."  Newsweek editor Josh Hammer wrote on Twitter:  "Just an inexcusable effort tonight from Chris Wallace.  And I say that as someone who is generally a fan of his."  Federal co-founder Sean Davis wrote on Twitter:  "Chris Wallace is now reading Biden's energy plan back to him to remind Biden what's in his plan.  I have never, never seen anything like this from a moderator."

Chris Wallace is a miserable debate moderator.  Chris Wallace was always going to be a terrible choice as a moderator for any of the three presidential debates, let alone the first one, but good God, did he fulfill that destiny with flying colors.  We knew it back in July when Wallace attempted to fact-check President Trump on the accurate claim that former Vice President Joe Biden was on the record committing to defunding police departments.  Biden is, in fact, on record committing to that, and yet, Wallace pretended we hadn't heard it with our own ears.  The Fox News anchor was supposed to show up and moderate a debate, with it having expressly been stated that he wouldn't operate as a fact-checker, and yet, that's all he did for at least the first hour of the debate.

Ric Grenell Tears Into CNN's Jake Tapper for Allowing Jill Biden to Shut Down Question on Biden's Gaffes.  That CNN treats the Biden campaign with kid gloves by routinely "asking" biased questions to senior spokespeople, advisors, and Biden himself is not a new development.  But watching them allow the terms of an interview to be dictated to them as cameras roll for all to see is something else entirely.  On Sunday [9/27/2020], "State of the Union" host Jake Tapper interviewed the Democratic presidential nominee's wife Jill Biden.  As expected, softball after softball was thrown, with Tapper at times coming off as a campaign spokesman himself. [...] Though it's been said many times before, it needs to be said again:  CNN is not a news network.  They just aren't.

Why Are They Capitalizing 'Black'?  A few months ago, I noticed that my published column spelled "black" "Black."  As I had submitted the column with "black" spelled with a lower case "b," I contacted my editor to find out why what I had written was changed.  She responded that the syndicate was following the Associated Press' rules of style, a common practice in journalism and book writing.  On July 20, 2020, the AP published "Explaining AP style on Black and white," in which it explained:  "AP's style is now to capitalize Black in a racial, ethnic or cultural sense, conveying an essential and shared sense of history, identity and community among people who identify as Black, including those in the African diaspora and within Africa.  The lowercase black is a color, not a person.  AP style will continue to lowercase the term white in racial, ethnic and cultural senses."  The AP explanation is drivel.  There is no "shared sense of history, identity and community among people who identify as Black, including those in the African diaspora and within Africa."

Biden's Town Hall Event Shows Why CNN Isn't Moderating the Presidential Debates.  Joe Biden praised the idea of incorporating fact-checkers into the presidential debates, but those desperately needed fact-checkers were nowhere to be found at CNN's town hall event with Biden on Thursday [9/17/2020].  In stark contrast to President Trump's town hall event with ABC's George Stephanopoulos earlier this week, CNN's Anderson Cooper and a crowd of mostly friendly supporters took turns asking the 77-year-old candidate softball questions.  Biden told all sorts of lies during the one-hour event on CNN, a fitting location for such fake news.  Biden lied when he accused President Trump of not mentioning the coronavirus in his State of the Union Address.  "My administration will take all necessary steps to safeguard our citizens from this threat," Trump said in his State of the Union Address, which Nancy Pelosi ripped up in anger.

The Ghost Media.  [Scroll down]  There are few things more spooky than the modern journalists who live inside the abandoned structures and pretensions of a once respectable profession.  They can embrace a position for or against any set of circumstances.  The New York Times made this the establishment view 40 years ago.  The people running that paper announced that there is no objective reality, only a reporter's feelings and prejudices.  Nothing is real but the reporter's unreality. [...] Journalism's formula used to be factual:  who, what, when, where, and why.  Now reporting is different.  You fabricate.  You tell what George Soros wants you to tell.  You create alternative realities, not even knowing that this is what you do.  Once upon a time, a reporter needed to know history, geography, and science.  Now those things only get in the way.

Thanks, Fox News, for reminding us of the Soros role in creating America's riot-coddling DAs.  Fox News has drawn our attention to the fact that George Soros is bankrolling the leftist district attorneys who are fostering so much rioting in America's blue cities, based on their refusal to prosecute looters and rioters.  But probably not in the way they meant to.  Here's what went down over at the semi-cheesy news commentary show called 'Outnumbered' whose format is a group of leggy women sitting on a circular sofa with some man in the news and grilling him with chick-like excited shouts and exclamations.  It's now a Zoom thing without the leg business.  And in this case, it led to a very unexpected outcome: [...] [Former Speaker of the House Newt] Gingrich pointed out that the riots were happing because of district attorneys, financed by George Soros, who refuse to prosecute rioting.  It wasn't really news.  Nor was it controversial.  It's been reported in detail by conservative outfits for years.  Fox News itself, news division, reported it.  What was strange was that bizarrely unprofessional reaction from this one show, [...]

Some tough questions for Biden, instead of the softballs the press has been pitching.  Joe Biden finally held what was billed as a news conference.  The result was a truly embarrassing display of hackery from the media.  A reporter asked the ex-veep about anonymously sourced claims that President Trump had belittled veterans:  "When you hear these remarks ... what does it tell you about Trump's soul and the life he leads?"  Another query:  "We ... know that Russia has been trying to sow doubt about the system.  Are you concerned at all that this messaging may be working, that your supporters may give up on voting by mail because they're concerned that it may be rigged?"  Still another:  "You said today is the angriest you've been as a presidential candidate, but you said you're trying to restrain yourself.  Aren't there a lot of people out there who are supporting you or inclined to not vote for the president, who would say, 'Why isn't Joe Biden angrier about all of this?'"  And so on.

Video montage shows how media take it easy on Biden.  A new video montage from The Washington Free Beacon shows how easy the questions Joe Biden receives from the media truly are.  Free Beacon senior writer and "video guy" David Rutz put together a sampling of the rather simplistic line of questioning the Democratic candidate has received in recent weeks.  "Really, your strength is in traveling around the country and connecting with people... you can't do any of that right now.  Mr. Vice President, does that worry you?" CNN anchor Brooke Baldwin is seen asking Biden at the beginning of the interview.  The video featured multiple journalists who asked softball questions at last week's rare Biden press conference.

Woodward and Bernstein's take on anonymous sources reveals media incompetence.  Famed Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein ("Woodstein") have recently weighed in on the use of anonymous sources in the reporting of President Trump's alleged slurs of deceased soldiers.  While they use their iconic status to support the "truth" spoken by such unnamed witnesses, they unwittingly prove the profound incapability of modern journalism in its assumed role as the arbiter of truth.  There can be no better example of this than Woodstein's discussion of their use of anonymous sources in Watergate.  These sources, Woodstein argues, were all proven truthful and brought down a sitting president.  Therefore, they contend, the present anonymous sources must be telling the truth.  But this jejune reasoning shows precisely how modern journalism got out over its skis in Watergate and continues to careen wildly downhill.

Time to Bury the Corpse.  Journalism died years ago, not long after publishers sold the soul of the front page for a few dollars.  "Journalists" now violate virtually every previous standard and principle once held dear.  From anonymous sources who may or not exist, to outright deceptive coverage, journalists' goals are now self-serving and focused only on the goals determined by the masters who control them.  In their hasty pursuit of money, influence, and power, they never bothered to bury the body.

NPR regrets elevating pro-looting anti-Semite.  National Public Radio is scrambling to do damage control this week after it promoted the views of a dangerously ignorant pro-looting activist who is also a gigantic anti-Semite.  In late August, NPR's Code Switch department published an interview with Vicky Osterweil, author of In Defense of Looting.  In the interview, Osterweil was given free rein to spout several major falsehoods, drawing little to no pushback from NPR.  "This Q&A with a provocative author did not serve NPR's audience," the newsgroup's public editor, Kelly McBride, said Thursday [9/3/2020].  "On top of being wrong about recent events, the author's characterization of the Civil Rights Movement is a distortion and oversimplification."

The media and those who want to curry favor with the media have a dual agenda.  All of what has made the media even less trusted by the public than Congress and used car salesmen was on display last week with the reporting from Kenosha, Wisconsin.  Over the past few days due to the shooting of Jacob Blake, the media converged on the city using the same playbook that worked for them in Minneapolis earlier this summer.  First, spread misinformation and half-baked reporting, then help light the fuse for violent riots and social chaos, then staggeringly pretend that the protests are "fiery but mostly peaceful."  In the case of Blake, the initial reporting indicated that the man was simply walking away from police for no apparent reason before being shot seven times.  That reporting alone, with no context or additional information touched off a level of violence, looting, property damage, and physical harm more common to the nightly rioting in Chicago than a suburban community in Wisconsin.

Bogus Fact Checks on Suburban Zoning Issue.  Although a small army of media fact-checkers claim otherwise, Joe Biden wants to end single-family zoning in America's suburbs.  On the first night Republican National Convention, Patricia McClosky said that Joe Biden and the radicals now running the Democratic Party "want to abolish the suburbs altogether by ending single-family home zoning."  McCloskey's claim set off a frenzy of media fact-checks, all insisting that it just isn't so.  Nonetheless, McCloskey had it right.  The most egregiously mistaken McCloskey fact check was also the most widely disseminated.  Thomas Beaumont's fact check for the Associated Press was, like many other AP stories, reposted and reprinted at scores of local news outlets.  Yet this supposed fact check was utterly confused and thoroughly mistaken.

Larry Schweikart:  How the 24-Hour News Cycle is Leading the Loss of the English Language.  Plenty of commentators have dealt with the lunacy that affects the English language today, from banning certain words as "racist," "sexist," or "something-ist."  Certainly that's obvious to all.  But there is another, more subtle change going on, even among the "friendly" or "reliable news pages.  It began when the 24-hour news cycle started to run out of, well, news.  It took more than a decade for this development to settle in.  At first, the networks filled the void with simply more talking heads, guests, and "analysts" telling you what the news was.  More recently however — I started really noticing it during the Mueller investigation — a host of non-news words began to creep into news stories.  We began to see mush phrases such as "Mueller mulling demand that Trump testify," or "Mueller considering charging Don, Jr."  These kinds of hourly non-news stories utterly took over, for reporters weren't supposed to know what was happening in the first place (the investigation after all — wink, wink, nudge, nudge — was to be secret.  Since the Mueller team was leaking like the Titanic however, so-called journalists could not produce actual documents to prove anything.  As it turned out, in fact, they had nothing to prove anything with.  Instead, reporters reverted to the post-1980 favorite journalistic trick, the "unnamed source."  Realize it was not all that long ago that no reputable newspaper would ever run a piece with a single "anonymous source."  Indeed, according to a Chicago Tribune reporter I interviewed during a foreword I wrote for Professor Jim Kuypers' book, Partisan Journalism (2013), every major fact in a story was to be doubly sourced with public sources.  In case you didn't notice, "mulling," "considering," "poised to," "about to," "prepared to," "intends," and other such mush words are utterly unprovable.

Media Rose Garden Outrage is the Stuff of Fertilizer as They Get Every Detail Wrong.  It seems the derangement in the press to demean anything the president and his wife are connected with can be limitless.  As Becca Lower mentioned there was an immediate backlash from the press when it was announced that the First Lady Melania Trump was unveiling the restored White House Rose Garden.  Rather than praise, or at least some introspection as to what had been undertaken in the process, members of the media were content to simply lash out, and in so doing avoided anything resembling facts.  A number of journalists were content to just leap at the First Lady for trashing Jaqueline Kennedy's beloved garden, for chopping down her cherry blossom trees, and for smearing the honor of John F. Kennedy.  Some of these vaunted minds in the press felt they made a stinging point by showing pictures of the garden in full bloom during the Obama years and then showing the "joyless", oblivious to growing seasons and the flower types.  They of course went as far to call the light colors of the new roses "racist".

Florida And New York:  Examining A Media Coronavirus Narrative Failure.  Florida and New York are two of the four most populous states in the country.  Since March both states have received among the most media attention in the country for their responses to the coronavirus.  The mainstream media has almost universally praised New York governor Andrew Cuomo for his leadership while almost universally denigrating the leadership of Florida governor Ron DeSantis.  New York has been held up as a model for all states to follow — lauded as a success story by almost all mainstream media — while Florida has been ridiculed as representing all that is wrong with the nation's response to the coronavirus.  Yet when you look at the data, it's quite clear the media has gotten this completely wrong.

CBS News in Palm Beach posts 2020 primary election results before election day.  Early voting has just ended in Florida and election day is on Tuesday, August 18th, but that hasn't stopped CBS12 in Palm Beach County, Florida from posting their election results in the 2020 primary election.  President Donald Trump and Republicans have warned of voter fraud and voter suppression in the 2020 presidential election, so could CBS12 pre-election day, election results be a sampling of what is to come in the coming months?  How can CBS12 be reporting the election results before election day?  Or better yet, why is CBS12 reporting 100% precincts reporting 48 hours before the polls even open.

CBS News Posts Results In Laura Loomer's Race, Days Before Election!.  A South Florida CBS affiliate, CBS 12, posted the primary election results for over a half-dozen races last night to their website, days before the final votes are to be counted.  Florida's final absentee ballots and in-person election day voting occurs on Tuesday from 7am to 7pm.  Despite this, congressional candidate Laura Loomer, who is running in the Republican primary to take on far-left career politician Lois Frankel, found herself shocked to see that 100% of precincts reporting their tallies late Sunday night.

Florida Is A Case Study In Media-Induced COVID-19 Panic.  What do all these news accounts have in common?  "Florida Sets Yet Another Coronavirus Record: 173 Deaths In A Day."  "A record 173 Floridians died from the virus Thursday, an average of more than one every eight minutes."  "The 134 new confirmed deaths is the second-largest increase on record, coming five days after the largest one-day jump of 156 last week."  "COVID-19 has ravaged Florida, with more than 237,000 people testing positive and 2,013 dying from the virus in July alone."  So what characteristic do all of the reports share?  They are all false.  It is not true that 173 people died from COVID-19 "in a day" in Florida.  Nor did 134, or 156 on previous days.  It is also untrue than 2,013 had died in July when that story was published.  All of these scary headlines are based on the number of deaths reported by the state on any given day.  This is not the same as the number of deaths that occurred on those days.

CNN's Stelter accused of breaching network's confidentiality agreement with Sandmann: 'May cost him his job'.  CNN's chief media correspondent Brian Stelter may have landed himself in hot water, according to the attorney of Covington Catholic High School student Nicholas Sandmann.  Last week, Sandmann announced that The Washington Post settled the $250 million defamation lawsuit he filed over its botched coverage of a viral confrontation with a Native American elder that had portrayed the Kentucky teen as the aggressor.  This followed the multi-million dollar settlement CNN made with the teenager back in January.  However, Sandmann's attorney Lin Wood spotted a retweet from Stelter of a tweet written by attorney Mark Zaid, who speculated about how much money the teen walked away with from the settlement.  "Those with zero legal experience (as far as I can tell) should not be conjecturing on lawsuits they know nothing about.  What kind of journalism is that?" Zaid asked.

Don Lemon Takes Cognitive Test On Air to Own the Orange Man, Screws It Up.  One of the cardinal rules about mocking someone is that you yourself should not do worse than the person you are mocking in your attempts to mock them.  CNN's Don Lemon, in all his brilliance, apparently didn't realize that last night when he took the airwaves.  In what I'm sure he thought was going to be an absolutely killer segment owning the orange man, he decided to take a cognitive test on air.  This was an attempt to make fun of Trump for talking about the cognitive test he had recently taken.  That discussion happened during a Fox News interview.  The problem?  Lemon screwed up the cognitive test on live TV.

Progressive Policies Wreck Everything.  I laughed when I saw The Washington Post headline:  "Minneapolis had progressive policies, but its economy still left black families behind." The media are so clueless.  Instead of "but," the headline should have said, "therefore," or "so, obviously."  Of course, progressive policies failed!  They almost always do.

New York Times-Hyped Korean Report Actually Shows Kids Are Not Spreading Coronavirus.  In an incredible redux of when they hyped the Christian Drosten fake paper claiming children were highly infectious — when his math actually showed the opposite — the New York Times and Chicago Tribune pushed screaming headlines that a new Korean government report proves children ages 10 to 19 are highly infectious.  The Korean government report, based on data from March and ignoring all newer research, does make that claim, with qualifications, in its narrative summary.  Its actual math, however, shows exactly the opposite.  Do the elite newspapers even bother to consult anyone numerate?  As Professor Francois Balloux of the University of Lausanne Genetics Institute immediately replied, the New York Times writer completely misunderstood the report.

The Insidious Impact of Twitter.  Twitter claims to be a modern-day public square wherein those without a forum can discuss, debate and share their opinions and views.  However, it has evolved into a primary source of fabricated stories and copy farming for the media, the principal driver of policy for the political parties, particularly the Democrats, and a vehicle to intimidate businesses and major corporations. [...] It is not just a reliance on Twitter for stories.  Editors and publishers oftentimes react to the volume of tweets directed at their news outlet to determine what stories to publish, whether to rebuke a reporter or commentator or to tint a story with a certain, in virtually all cases left-wing, point of view.  Falsely believing that Twitter is representative of not only their readership but the viewpoint of a vast swath of the citizenry, they react accordingly.  It is not the accuracy or fairness of their reporting that is paramount but clicks on the internet and the number of positive Twitter comments and likes.

Kayleigh McEnany Schools Media on Federal Response in Portland and Jonathan Turley Finishes Them Off.  The ignorance and/or spin by the Democrats and the media in regard to what has been going on in Portland has been something else.  ABC's Jonathan Karl thought he was going to trap Kayleigh McEnany with questions about the federal response in Portland.  But Harvard Law School educated McEnany who is hyper-organized with tabbed briefing books showed him what it's like to be informed, unlike much of the media.

Old Joe's In a Pickle — Young People Are Not Getting Behind Senile Septuagenarian Joe Biden.  The left has been using polls since before Ann Coulter wrote her masterpiece "Slander" in 2002.  In the book where she shows the many liberal lies against the American right, Coulter points out how polls are used by Democrats to discourage conservatives, bias and steal elections.  We certainly say how Democrats and their Mainstream Media (MSM) used dishonest polls in the last election.  Day after day we were told how Hillary was going to run away with the election.  Then came the election — they were all wrong — Hillary was steamrolled with outsider Trump winning more than 30 states (30 states plus one delegate in Maine) and crushing Hillary in the electoral college with a 3 to 2 margin.

Andrew Cuomo Is Not a COVID Hero.  The media have decided to play along with New York governor Andrew Cuomo's bizarre effort to reinvent himself as the hero of the fight against COVID-19. Cuomo's motivation is transparent enough, and we are duly impressed at the chutzpah required to even attempt such a thing.  But there is no excuse for anyone else enabling him.

It's the Chicago NBC station.  What do they know about NASCAR?
NBC Chicago forced to delete tweet after NASCAR fans point out massive photo error.  An NBC affiliate in Chicago was forced to delete a tweet promoting a NASCAR All-Star race after fans alerted them of a major photo gaffe.  NBC Chicago took to Twitter Wednesday to tout NASCAR's race at Bristol Motor Speedway later that night, noting that the sport would be hosting the "largest sporting event crowd" since the coronavirus pandemic outbreak.  But in its effort to make a visual reference to the crowds in the speedway's grandstand, the NBC owned-and-operated affiliate used a photo featuring the late Dale Earnhardt Sr.  The image showed Earnhardt in 1999 standing in the foreground of a photo which included the half-empty grandstand.

LA Times article calls to cancel 'Star-Spangled Banner,' replace with 'Lean on Me'.  An article published in the Los Angeles Times Tuesday said that the "Star-Spangled Banner" should be replaced by Bill Withers' "Lean on Me."  LA Times contributor Jody Rosen cited "viral posts on social media" which said the anthem is racist, then argued it is aesthetically a bad song in the article.  Rosen concluded saying the message of "Lean on Me" can be a foundation for a "decent" society.  "If the point of a national anthem is to provide a mnemonic, a reminder in music and words of the ideas and values that this place is supposed to stand for, you could do worse than 'Lean on Me,'" Rosen wrote.

Maybe the media should do their job and fact check people like Fauci instead of just repeating what they are told.  In [January] WHO and others said COVID-19 would not spread human to human.  In Jan., Feb., and early March, Fauci, the CDC, most of the media, and other Democrats said the virus wasn't very dangerous in the U.S.  In late Jan., Trump put a travel ban on China, and he was widely criticized by the experts, Democrats, and most of the media.  They called it an overreaction and called Trump racist and xenophobic, which is what they have called Trump for four years.  In early March, the CDC, Fauci, the NIH, and others said don't wear face masks.  On March 9, Fauci said it was OK to go on cruise ships.  Then, suddenly, on March 13, Fauci and the CDC made up numbers and said millions would die and hundreds of millions would get the disease.  There was no science to support this. [...] After months of saying COVID-19 would pass easily on surfaces, they said never mind.  Essentially, they just made it up, just like making up the original modeling numbers.

The Wrong Governors.  [Scroll down]  The decisions of Cuomo, Whitmer, Newsom, and Murphy regarding the movement of infected patients from hospitals to nursing homes and other long-term care facilities might be the worst and most consequential of the crisis.  Whitmer made odd and difficult-to-justify decisions, including banning the purchase of seeds, and her husband apparently "jokes" about being exempt from state orders.  California's coronavirus-testing programs stumbled right out of the gate.  Murphy violated his own order on large gatherings.  Very little of this has affected the job-approval ratings of these governors — in part because only some portions of the media world are interested in the flaws of the records of these governors.  The others prefer to stick to their preselected happy narrative.

MSNBC host dumbfounded as his panel of pediatricians unanimously support schools reopening.  Here is a half-minute of pure political pleasure for conservatives — and parents of school age children.  With many European countries already re-opening schools, and with science(!) telling us that otherwise healthy children almost ever get or transmit the COVID-19 virus, it really isn't surprising that all 6 pediatricians on the video panel enthusiastically endorsed re-opening the schools and sending their own children to them.  But it pretty clearly came as a shock to the MSNBC host.

First-hand account of Chinese COVID-19 censorship underscores just how much our media failed us.  It was obvious in March, back when members of the free press first began to praise China for supposedly defeating the coronavirus pandemic, that many journalists and commentators were parroting literal Chinese Communist Party propaganda. [...] "We were all familiar with China's growing censorship and had avoided using words and phrases that the Chinese government didn't like," writes freelance journalist Tracy Wen Liu, "but we fell victim to an expanding system anyway. ... A wave of new censorship has grown during the coronavirus pandemic, most of it focused on covering up the stories around COVID-19 itself."

The Media and 2020: Deja vu All Over Again.  As Michael Barboro wrote in the [New York] Times on November 9th, 2016, the morning of Trump's historic victory, "It's 3:30 a.m. in the newsroom, and we're in a state of shock.  Donald J. Trump, against what we thought were all odds, collected swing state after swing state after swing state.  Hillary Clinton has conceded the race.  Mr. Trump has won.  How did he pull off such a stunning victory?  How did almost no one — not the pundits, not the pollsters, not us in the media — see it coming?"  Well, here we are, nearly four years later, and the media and the so-called "intellectual elites" have learned absolutely nothing from 2016.  They have not even attempted to try to answer the most fundamental questions that Barboro posed.  Instead they have fully committed themselves to their ritualistic practice of hatred and antagonism towards the president and his supporters in an attempt to influence the outcome of the 2020 election.

Fake News Media Jumps the Shark.  On Thursday [7/2/2020] the Trump economy created 4.8 million jobs.  It was the best economic report in US history!  The unemployment rate dropped from 13.3% to 11%!  President Trump made the announcement today in front of the White House Press Corps.  But rather than focus on the historic economic news — The White House press corps asked if President Trump is "more focused in preserving the confederacy."

The Insufferable and Political Media Stupidity Around "The Russian Bounty" Narrative.  In case you might have missed the latest faux-controversy assigned by political operatives to the media narrative engineers, the issue surrounds leaked sketchy intelligence reports, to the New York Times, claiming Russians were willing to pay Taliban members to kill U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan. [...] Setting aside for the moment that nothing claimed by media or the DNC political operatives in/around capitol hill has any substantive intelligence to prove the claim, let's first look at the underlying premise:  'Russians are paying the Taliban to kill American soldiers.'  First, obviously these same voices need to ignore that in 2010 Iran was paying insurgent fighters in multiple fields of combat including Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria, to kill Americans.

Biden's Puffballs From the Press.  Everything about the June 30 press conference with Joe Biden underlines how the snarling, vicious watchdogs of the Trump administration will transform into cuddly little lapdogs if Biden is elected president.  Biden began with a 20-minute speech, and CNN and MSNBC ran the whole speech live.  These networks often refuse to air White House press briefings and try not to give free air time to President Donald Trump ... just as CNN and MSNBC refused to air 96% of Trump's Tulsa rally.  Then came the questions.  The one that would seriously cause the president to tear out chunks of his hair came from Mike Memoli of NBC News.  It can be summed up as this:  "You have a sizable lead.  How do you keep winning?"  By their softball questions, the press is signaling this question:  "And what can we do to help?"

Why Did the Washington Post Get This Woman Fired?  Last week, when Sue Schafer learned that the Washington Post planned to publish a story about one of the dumbest things she had ever done, she had the same question that many readers would have about the resulting 3,000-word article, "Blackface Incident at Post Cartoonist's 2018 Halloween Party Resurfaces Amid Protests": Why is this newsworthy?  Readers within the Post newsroom were asking the question, too.  "No one I've spoken with at the Post can figure out why we published this story," said one prominent reporter at the paper.  "We blew up this woman's life for no reason."

Hail of late-night gunfire in Uptown kills 1, wounds 11.  Gunmen unleashed a torrent of gunfire in a crowded Uptown block early Sunday in Minneapolis, killing one person and wounding 11 others in one of the city's most violent shootings in recent memory.  Police said the 11 survivors were scattered at area hospitals with "various severity levels of injuries."  They said the victim who died was a man, but gave no other identifying details.  All of the victims were adults.  Nor did they offer a motive for the shooting, which apparently involved people shooting each other.

The Editor says...
Yes, most shootings involve people shooting each other, as opposed to guns shooting each other.

All that media praise for Andrew Cuomo looks pretty stupid now.  The press, for the most part, got the story wrong, as usual.  The way most reporters and commentators told it, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo led one of the best, if not the best, government responses to the coronavirus pandemic.  The way members of the press told it, Cuomo's wisdom, steely determination, and steady hand were guiding the Empire State through one of the most dangerous and deadly episodes in its history.  But these glowing characterizations of Cuomo have not been borne out by the facts.  Indeed, when it comes to the coronavirus, the governor of New York seems to be every bit as incompetent and out of his depth as New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, and that is saying a lot.

The dangers of bowing to the mob and defunding the police.  With the backdrop of an upcoming election in November, many politicians are making knee-jerk reactions, frightened by their poll numbers and popularity amongst the fringe, yet vocal, activists that confront them on Twitter and on the streets in protest.  Many people do not realize that these Twitter activists are NOT the majority, and do not speak for large portions of the country.  In actuality, Twitter only has a reported 48 million users, only 10% of which make up 80% of the tweets on the platform.  From there, the platform has had to address allegations from shareholders that up to 70% of all users on the platform are "bots", and they have purged 20% of their "userbase" in a single day in years past after evaluating the fact that they were fake accounts.  Statistically, if we assume a generous 2 million users are outraged about a particular political issue on Twitter out of 330 million Americans, that would be roughly 0.6% of the population.  What are seemingly large political movements across this country, are in reality very small groups, buying fake followers on twitter, and getting their messages shared by fake users across social media, which are then regurgitated by mainstream media outlets as fact.

CNN's Brian Stelter goes on the attack, only to have his prey turn on him.  Brian Stelter, aged 34, rotund, and squeaky, went from creating a college blog about TV and cable news, to working as a media reporter at the New York Times right out of college, to becoming the host of CNN's (ahem) Reliable Sources and a chief media correspondent.  He's had that last gig for seven years.  Stelter thinks he's a journalist.  However, when he had senior Trump legal adviser Jenna Ellis on his Sunday show and tried to humiliate her for daring to support Trump's entirely accurate attacks against the drive-by media, Ellis called Stelter out for what he is:  An activist, rather than a journalist.  Before diving into the Ellis beatdown on Stelter, it's worth remembering that Stelter does not report on the news.  Instead, he serves as a conduit for the Democrat party.

CNN Anchor Who Sounds Like She'd Never Seen 'Live PD' Infuriates Former Host.  "Live PD" is the latest victim of cancel culture.  The show, which followed law enforcement officers on duty, was deemed problematic because, according to critics, it "glorified" police in the wake of the police killing of George Floyd and the racial and social unrest that has resulted from it.  "Live PD" was cancelled just a day after the cancellation of the classic TV show "COPS."  The former host of "Live PD," Dan Abrams, expressed some of his frustration on Fox News's "Bill Hemmer Reports" on Thursday.  Abrams said he hoped his show would survive because it focused on transparency among police departments, exactly what today's protesters are demanding.

Celebrating the Talented Members of the MSNBC All-Decade Team.  [For example] Joy-Ann Reid:  Forced to apologize, but never punished, for a series of homophobic blog posts that resurfaced in 2018. Despite apologizing and accepting responsibility for the posts, Reid later claimed she was the victim of a malicious hacker who planted "fabricated" posts on her old blog.  FBI cybersecurity experts were called in to investigate, but have yet to identify the hacker.  Brian Williams:  Suspended in 2015 for telling false war stories about coming under fire in Iraq, continues to struggle with basic math.  Melissa Harris-Perry:  Show canceled due to low ratings and the host's preference for discussing Beyoncé music videos instead of politics, forced to apologize for making fun of Mitt Romney's adopted black grandchild.  Once described as "America's foremost public intellectual," she once argued that the word "Obamacare" was racist.

Far-Left Professor Marc Lamont Hill Tells Black Protesters They're Messing up His Marxist Movement.  I've been aware of Marc Lamont Hill as a long-time political contributor at CNN, but apparently, he's weaseled his way into not only a professorship (Professor of Media Studies and Urban Education at Temple University) but a news gig at BET.  Now, if what Hill does has any connection to news, then I'm Minnie Mouse.  He's one-hundred percent a radical, leftist activist who gives his opinion all day long.  The most recent example came Monday night, in a video Hill shared on Twitter.  In the video, which runs just over two minutes, he chides black protesters who he claims aren't down with the Revolution.

Mayhem made in Venezuela?: Take a look at the photos of BLM leaders whooping it up with Nicolas Maduro in Harlem and Caracas.  The mainstream media would have you think the riots and looting that have erupted across the country are just spontaneous explosions of pent-up anger over the callous killing of a black suspect, at the hands of a blue-city Minneapolis police officer.  Well, I've covered a lot of riots — from Indonesia to Argentina to Russia to East Timor to Thailand to Venezuela, plus domestic ones in Seattle, Los Angeles, and San Francisco — as a journalist.  The one thing that's always come out in the aftermath is that none of these mass rioting and looting events was ever a simple spontaneous eruption.  All big riot events are man-made.  If the press had any curiosity at all, it would look to where the current mayhem is coming from.

Watch CNN's Sara Sidner Encourage More Riots in Democrat-Run Cities.  CNNLOL's Sara Sidner, who identifies as a "journalist," encouraged and championed rioting in Democrat-run cities on Sunday [5/31/2020].  Below is a clip of Sidner "reporting" from Minneapolis, Minnesota.  Minneapolis is, of course, a Democrat-run city (and has been for 48 years) that, on Sunday, was still facing a devastating series of riots led by left-wing terrorist groups like Antifa.  [Video clip]

Greg Gutfeld Blasts Liberal Media's Biased Coverage Of Riots, Dishonest Blaming Of Trump.  The liberal media's coverage of the riots has been as awful as anyone would expect.  They are defending rioters while falsely blaming Trump and trying to politicize the crimes and destruction whenever possible.  Greg Gutfeld of FOX News tore into the media on Tuesday [6/2/2020] during 'The Five.'

D.C. media is now focused on confrontational coverage and approved narratives.  Speaking from some decades of personal experience, in bygone times, each individual story was generally constructed to recount the who, what, when, where and why of the subject at hand, including select background as necessary.  It was a stand-alone story.  No longer.  Today, there is a narrative, a story template that each report must fit into.  Those that don't fit, like your high school jersey, get dismissed or ignored.  Oh, and narratives prefer actors, not reporters.  We've witnessed numerous confrontational performances by journalists, who could gain lucrative book contracts from such virtuous notoriety.  Professional journalists should be adversaries questioning, challenging authority, not antagonists.  Truth be told, in an Age of Outrage that assesses little consequence for incorrect, incomplete or even fictitious "news," confrontational coverage does produce more profitable clicks and viewers.  That was reflected in last week's media layoffs, deleting some more of the few surviving play-it-straight journalists.

CNN Is Basically InfoWars Now as Don Lemon Has a Mental Break Live on Air.  CNN's evening broadcasts are typically a lesson is partisan ridiculousness, which would be somewhat palatable if they didn't pretend that their prime time lineup are unbiased journalists.  But last night [6/1/2020] was different.  Last night, we witnessed CNN walk up to the edge of the cliff and jump off with a mixture of hysterical laughter and mumbling about aliens. [...] This came shortly after a fairly mundane speech by the President in which he warned that he would take action against widespread violence and looting currently hampering many cities.  Somehow, that was code to Don Lemon that we are now about to become a dictatorship and that a declaration of war has been made on Americans.  This is the kind of delusion that used to get you thrown into a straight jacket, not broadcast on national TV.

Journalists Forget Their Own Predictions:  Millions of Americans to Die.  [Scroll down]  By this point, there were estimates aplenty in the media that there would be anywhere from almost a half million to 1.5 million to 2.2 million dead Americans.  But mysteriously in all the stories about the 100,000 dead Americans there is no mention — zero — of earlier media predictions that there would be ten or twenty times that number of deaths.  Not to mention that the media seems reluctant to focus on just why the number is up to 100,000 in the first place.

Andrew Cuomo and brother Chris make a mockery of journalism, viewers and CNN.  The news media that gave us Bill Clinton, "The Man from Hope," are now trying to sell us on New York Democrat Gov. Andrew Cuomo, The Candidate From CNN — where his brother Chris anchors.  From Hope to hopeless.  The Brothers Cuomo created yet another journalism outrage Wednesday night.  Younger brother Chris, who anchors for CNN, once again interviewed his older, more successful brother.  It wasn't news.  In fact, it was so horrific that it made news.

Obamagate Must Result in Criminal Prosecutions.  [Scroll down]  A reporter recently asked White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany what crimes had allegedly been committed during the Obamagate scandal.  The question struck me as weird because I thought that journalists normally investigated that sort of thing themselves, rather than asking to be spoon-fed by press secretaries.  McEnany did an outstanding job ignoring the "gotcha" potential of the question and rattled off a number of crimes connected to the case against Flynn, which included Andrew McCabe for leaking to the Wall Street Journal and lying about it, and James Clapper and John Brennan for both lying to Congress under oath.

Trump Gives CBS News Journo Paula Reid the Answer She Deserves After Ridiculous Jobs Plan Question.  The latest instance of a credentialed White House press corps "journalist" showing out came earlier today [5/19/2020], when CBS News White House correspondent Paula Reid asked one of the most ridiculously biased questions any of the press corps reporters have since the start of the daily coronavirus task force briefings back in early March.  Reid, who has clashed with Trump and other members of the administration in recent weeks, grabbed for another moment in the media spotlight by asking this question of Trump:  "Mr. President, why haven't you announced a plan to get 36 million unemployed Americans back to work?  You are overseeing historic economic despair.  What's the delay?  Where's the plan?"  It was an idiotic question, considering journalists like Reid have been dunking on him non-stop for wanting states to reopen sooner which, you know, is actually the only thing that can revive the economy.

Does Greta Thunberg have the answer to COVID-19?  COVID-19 is a riddle wrapped inside an enigma and hidden within a Chinese wet market, or possibly a CCP laboratory.  World leaders are baffled by how to respond.  The science keeps contradicting itself.  The world's greatest mathematicians can't keep up with the ever-changing data sets.  Who can the poor and frightened public turn to for help?  Never fear, Greta's here.  That's right.  Little Miss Thunberg, a 17-year-old Swedish girl who dropped out of high school to sound the climate change alarm, is turning her mega-brain towards COVID-19, just when we need her most.  On Thursday evening [5/14/2020], CNN will host a live town hall called 'Coronavirus:  Facts and Fears', featuring former acting CDC director Richard Besser, former HHS secretary Kathleen Sebelius, and Miss Thunberg.

CNN Hit with Widespread Criticism After Announcing Coronavirus Town Hall To Feature Greta Thunberg.  CNN is facing widespread mockery and condemnation after the network announced it will welcome teen climate change activist Greta Thunberg to a town hall event about the coronavirus. [...] For what reason she will appear, CNN did not disclose.  But the announcement ignited a firestorm of criticism online.  The now-17-year-old climate activist will have some role in the broadcast, and CNN is being hit hard by people who are asking what insight about the coronavirus, if any, Thunberg brings to the table.

CNN's 'Expert' Coronavirus Panel Is a Must See and Will Have You Laughing Out Loud.  I mean "must see" from the standpoint of pointing and laughing, not that you should actually waste your time watching CNN.  The network is hosting an "expert" panel on the coronavirus pandemic in a town hall format on Thursday.  Who's on the panel?  Well, you'll be less than shocked to learn two of the three people appearing are failed, former Obama officials who presided over disastrous aspects of Obamacare.  You may be more surprised, though, that CNN lacks enough shame for the third participant to be none other than Greta Thunberg, the teen climate activist from Sweden.

Brooklyn Police Arrest 40 People For Violations of "Social Distancing", The Media Worry What Color They Are.  NBC has an article today [5/8/2020] discussing forty people arrested in Brooklyn, New York, for violations of the "social distance" rules. [...] That alone should be the jaw-dropping headline that shoots flares and warning signals into the stratosphere alerting America that something is seriously screwed up in New York City.  Alas, it is not the simple fact that police are ridiculously arresting people; no, what concerns NBC media is the color of the people being ridiculously arrested.

A Little Something for Everyone... to Hate.  In the meantime, everyone should turn off cable news.  All of it.  At least a few days per week.  If the shows were reruns, most people wouldn't notice.  With rare exception, they're recycled monologues, repetitive questions posed to the same guests; you'll actually come away dumber.  Honestly, have you seen a show in the last month where you didn't know exactly what was going to be said, no matter which cast member they turned to "for reaction"?

Who Would Be Your First Pick if Americans Could Vote Reporters Off the White House Briefing Island?  I have watched nearly every Corona Task Force presser.  I took a day off after the Lysol ridiculousness to lower my blood pressure.  However, I find the briefings to be very informative.  The president gives an overview and then introduces members of the Task Force to update on specific items.  The media hates these forums, because they can't control the information that is available to the public.  This is a great reason to keep airing them.  The most tedious portion of the pressers are the questions from the members of the White House Press Corps.  They are political reporters trying to ingest health, science and business information.  Either their employers do not pay for internet access, or they are deliberately obtuse.

Media Push Fake News About FDA Official Supposedly Fired Over Opposing Hydroxychloroquine, Then the Real Story Comes Out.  It's almost like The New York Times is nothing but a partisan gossip rag.  Yesterday [4/22/2020], a story was put out by Maggie Haberman that made a rather convenient claim that just so happened to reinforce every media narrative.  Namely, that an FDA official named Rick Bright was fired for selflessly sounding the alarm on the supposed vast dangers of hydroxychloroquine.  [Tweets]  But, like all stories that appear in the Times and other mainstream outlets, it's always best to give them a few hours.  In this case, it didn't take long for the real story to start coming out and you'll be shocked to learn that Haberman's original piece was completely wrong.

Media's Latest Strategy To Fight Trump:  Remove Him From His Press Conferences.  For years, the media complained that President Donald Trump wasn't holding enough press conferences.  Now, as the media's poor performance in his daily coronavirus press conferences is on worldwide display, they're begging him to leave his own press conferences, and leave them alone to craft their anti-Trump storylines.  When March polls showed Trump receiving unusually high marks for his handling of the Coronavirus pandemic, and the media receiving their traditionally low marks for it, many journalists began pushing for censorship of the press conferences.  While many outlets tried this approach, it obviously failed with viewers who turned to other outlets for the news they sought.  The media, however, continued to be mocked for the prevalence of silly and unserious questions from reporters who clearly think they come off better outside their echo chambers than they do[.]

CNN's Jim Acosta:  Great at Making a Scene, Not So Great at Actual Reporting.  When it comes to making a scene, Acosta is the best in the game.  However, not all of his colleagues in journalism are impressed by his unique skill set.  ABC's Jon Karl, for example, had some harsh words for Acosta in his own recently published book, Front Row at the Trump Show.  Karl, the president of the White House Correspondents' Association, criticized Acosta for frequently behaving like an "opinion journalist" and taking a "soapbox" approach that played "right into the explicit Trump strategy of portraying the press as the opposition party."  When it comes to actual reporting, Acosta is at best mediocre — no better or worse than a random college journalism student.  If cable news did not exist, few if any newspapers would be scrambling to hire him.

Hack Reporter Asks President Trump About Shutting Down Grocery Stores to Stop Spread of Coronavirus - So We All Can Starve.  President Trump on Sunday held another Coronavirus press conference.  A hack reporter actually asked President Trump about shutting down grocery stores and fast food joints.  "So why even have a few businesses open?  Why don't they shut everything down?  Groceries stores are open, fast food places — why even take a little chance?  Just shut all of it down temporarily," the reporter said.  Really?!  So we will all just starve to death — as long as we don't die of Coronavirus!

Keywords: Insipid, fluff, filler, meaningless pap.
News station launches 'What Day Is It?' segment: 'Cleveland news has officially lost their minds'.  [Scroll down]  Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson indicated Friday [4/3/2020] that the city will likely continue to ban mass gatherings and events into the summer.  "Anywhere there is a potential mass gathering, we will not be issuing a permit for it," Jackson said, according to Cleveland.com.  Confirmed cases of COVID-19 in the U.S. have climbed past 278,000 and Ohio has reported just over 3,300 cases with 91 deaths, according to figures from Johns Hopkins University.  Extended periods of self-quarantine as people are ordered to stay at home have led to many facing a hard time remembering which day of the week it is.  The "What Day Is It?" feature on Fox 8 Cleveland has provided a public service — and some levity.

A Sick Media.  The other day Chris Hayes of MSNBC was pouting about the media's coverage of Donald Trump's press briefings.  He called the airing of them "crazy."  He particularly didn't like MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell using one of them to talk about "reading the Bible."  Hayes' pouting captures the arrogance and secularist prejudice of the media perfectly.  The media sees its role not as a reporter of news but as a propagandistic arbiter — a Big Brother that will tell the public what it can and cannot take seriously. [...] The more propagandistic the media becomes, the more it insists that its coverage is "factual."  But no one takes that seriously.  As Trump once told the media, "You guys have a real problem.  No one believes you anymore."  The media has become all opinion, all the time.  All the journalistic rigors of yesteryear have disappeared.

Our Super Smart Elite Shines During This Pandemic!.  We Americans are truly blessed by having a mainstream media full of brilliant renaissance men, women, and gender non-specific entities who are masters of so many varied and intermittently useful skills and who are eager to share their knowledge with us benighted souls.  The pandemic has revealed that every urban Twitter blue check scribbler, MSNBCNN panelist, NYT/WaPo doofus, and barely legal "senior editor" of a website you never heard of, is a Nobel Prize-winning epidemiologist, a master logistician, and a diversity consultant to boot. [...] Each of them is an Official Junior Epidemiologist now, weighing-in on curve flattening and RO rates like they have any idea what any of it means.  What's really funny is how they now want to decide what we should hear by censoring the president and his team's press conferences and then reporting to us only what they consider to be things we should know.  Yes, the media presumes to decide what we need to know, not Dr. Fauci, not Dr. Brix, no, the media.

Does America need Journalists?  Chris Cillizza of CNN sent one of the most unintentionally hilarious posts into the Twittersphere when he proudly displayed his new (and ugly) sweater that read "America Needs Journalists."  Apart from the obvious tone-deafness of the message being sent at a time when most American would gladly trade the entire CNN staff for a single grocery store worker, trucker, medic, or just about anything else, this intrepid CNN American hero stumbled upon a sentiment that conservatives can fully get behind.  America does need journalists.  Too bad we have so few of them.

We need press briefings without the press.  In the high school of life, we have these grade schoolers sitting on press row.  They smirk at the the world.  We are all rubes, say the people who blindly follow the Democrat Narrative of the Day.  The presidential press briefings are a ratings smash because President Donald John Trump puts on a good show.  He is large and in charge.  Obama needed a teleprompter.  His staff had to tell him what to say.  The Donald writes the script and directs the action.  He surrounds himself with experts and idiots, and remains at the center of attention the whole time.  Doctor Fauci works for him.  Doctor Birx works for him.  The idiots sit on press row.

How the Partisan Media Are Harming America's Pandemic Response.  The Founding Fathers had hoped a free and unfettered press would remedy the toxic "factionalism" endemic to democracy.  Unfortunately, today, a monolithic mainstream media establishment has exacerbated rather than remedied this factionalism.  This crisis shows how harmful our dishonest partisan media can be.  A postmortem on the pandemic will show that the mainstream media were our country's most shameful crisis actors.

The Political Media Are Failing America.  [Scroll down]  The institutional bias at the Washington Post and the New York Times certainly isn't new.  But there used to be a corresponding level of professional gravitas that engendered reader trust.  Some of that trust has been corroded over years of Obama adulation, echo chambers, conspiracy mongering, and knee-jerk partisanship.  Some of that trust has also been corroded by the litany of Trump-slaying "bombshells" that have fizzled over the past years.  I don't know how many times I've recently heard people affix "if it turns out to be true" to a breaking news story.

CBS Allows a Scant 10 Seconds on [Its] Own Poll Showing Majority Support for Trump on Corona.  CBS This Morning on Tuesday [3/24/2020] mostly ignored the findings of its own poll on the coronavirus and the government's handling of it.  The network allowed a scant 10 seconds to the news that a majority, 53 percent, approve of the President's response.  Relegated to online is the news that more Americans trust Donald Trump to given information than the media itself.  In total, the morning show allowed just 19 seconds on CBS's own poll.  Co-host Gayle King opened the show with this bit of data from the poll:  "A new CBS news poll says three quarters of Americans, 72 percent, believe it will take months or longer for this virus to be contained."

The Editor says...
In other words, the news media is engaging in baseless speculation about other people's baseless speculation.  The virus situation will be contained (to the satisfaction of the power-hungry bureaucrats, who have an interest in prolonging it) whenever the bureaucrats decide it's contained.  The general public has no way of knowing when that will be.

Ted Cruz slaps down NBC reporter pushing obvious Chinese anti-US propaganda.  In a bizarre report from NBC, reporter Keir Simmons finishes their video by literally saying that China did a great job containing the definitely-not-Chinese-Wuhan-Chinese-coronavirus, and that the U.S. is now threatening the world with re-infection. [...] It's amazing just how eager the media is to ape the propaganda coming out of a communist government, but we see more and more examples every day.

We're Paying The Price For The Death Of Journalism.  That journalism is dead has been a punchline for so long that we've forgotten how that fact has real world consequences.  We're now paying the price for the failure of that profession to hold itself to any semblance of standards.  As worry and straight-up panic sweep large swaths of the country, causing irrational toilet paper hoarding and runs on canned goods, there is no outlet and no journalist worthy of trust when it comes to conveying truthful information to the public or to hold anyone in power accountable.  Eight years of sycophantic, throne sniffing coverage under President Barack Obama gave way to four years of nitpicking, hostility, and conspiracy theories.  There are no standards anymore; if someone on TV hates President Trump, there is no outrageous, medically dubious statement they can make on CNN or MSNBC that will be challenged and if they love him, there is nothing that will be challenged on Fox.  The opposite is true on those networks if you replace "President Trump" with any Democrat.

Math is hard, even for an MSNBC panic-spreading virology expert.  It was just a few days ago that Brian Williams and Mara Gay mindlessly repeated a meme saying that, instead of spending $500 million on advertising, Bloomberg should just have given all 327 million Americans a million dollars each.  The correct answer is that Bloomberg spent $1.52 per American.  On Monday [3/9/2020], a guest again went stupid about math, this time while trying to explain how many Americans will die from coronavirus.  According to Dr. Joseph Fair, only 80% of the population will survive: [...] Mediaite, from which the above quotation comes, doesn't question Fair's math.  Instead, it takes the numbers at face value and then attacks Trump. [...] Fair made a foolish mistake (presumably he knows better), but both MSNBC and Mediaite ran with the error to undermine Trump's presidency.  These people are both evil and stupid.  Here's the deal with the media:  they don't know what they're talking about, so analyze everything they say before you start to worry.

Wash Post Journalist Responds to Humiliating '$1 Million For Every American' Fail.  As we highlighted earlier, Mekita Rivas responded to Bloomberg dropping out of the presidential race by claiming that the money he spent on campaign commercials could have made every American a millionaire with lots of spare change.  With math obviously not being Rivas' strong point, it was immediately pointed out that Bloomberg's $500 billion doled out to all 327 million Americans would mean they get just $1.53 each.  That didn't stop MSNBC's Brian Williams and New York Times editorial board member Mara Gay repeating the claim as if it was accurate.

The 'Million Dollars Per Person' Affair Is Telling.  Obviously, the math here is spectacularly off.  If Michael Bloomberg had divided the money he spent on his presidential run evenly among Americans, we would each have got $1.53, not $1 million. [...] This, right here, is why so many left-leaning Americans think that "the billionaires" can pay for everything.  It's why Elizabeth Warren was enthusiastically boosted by the media despite her ridiculous pretense that she could pay for a series of gargantuan initiatives without raising taxes on anyone but the extremely rich.  It's why Democrat after Democrat promises not to raise "middle class taxes" while promising programs that require the raising of middle class taxes.  How did this bad tweet make it onto TV to be endorsed?  Why did Mara Gay agree with it?  Why didn't Brian Williams notice?  Because the people involved in this clip thought it was true.  This is how they see the world.

NYT Editor and Brian Williams: Bloomberg Could Have Given Every American $1 Million With the Money He Spent on Ads.  I've started this sentence three times already.  I hardly even know how to describe what I saw on social media tonight.  In the most bad-at-math tweet I've ever seen in my entire twitter life, Mekita Rivas — a writer with bylines in Glamour Magazine and the Washington Post — lamented that Bloomberg's half a billion in ad money could have provided one million dollars for every American and still have money to spare.  Not a typo.  [Tweet]  This seems bad.  It is bad.  But it gets worse.  Mara Gay — New York Times editorial board member — was on MSNBC with Brian Williams — Yes, THAT Brian Williams — when he brought up this tweet that put it "all in perspective" for the longtime new analyst and noted lover of fish tales.  You may imagine that at some point in this video one of them thinks about the math.  They did not.

MSNBC's Brian Williams, NY Times editor marvel at tweet that got Bloomberg math really wrong.  If someone had simply stopped and double-checked some math, they might have saved MSNBC's Brian Williams and New York Times editorial board member Mara Gay some embarrassment Thursday night.  Instead, both Williams and Gay marveled on air in reaction to a Twitter user's post about Mike Bloomberg's campaign spending.  Trouble is, the post had gotten the math all wrong — yet neither Williams nor Gay seemed to notice.

You Are Not Going to Believe This Was Broadcast on MSNBC — But it Was.  If you've ever wondered why it is impossible to have a conversation with modern liberals about politics, this video snippet is a case study in the answer.  MSNBC host Brian Williams and New York Times editorial board member Mara Gay are having a serious discussion about money, politics and Michael Bloomberg's spending in the primary election.  You have to watch it to believe it.  Think about how many people were involved in creating, preparing and producing what you are about to witness.  [Video clip]

Whoopi Goldberg falls victim to Jill Biden.  A woman by the name of Caryn Jackson has become a major force in shaping the political opinions of many American women.  You probably know her as Whoopi Goldberg, a stage name she culturally appropriated, presumably for its shock value as a distinctively Jewish moniker attached to an African American woman.  Thanks to ABC featuring her on its daytime talk show aimed at women, The View, Whoopi Goldberg's opinions reach and influence many female voters.  Yesterday [3/4/2020], she revealed herself to be an ignorant phony, claiming that the wife of Democrat frontrunner Joe Biden is a "[very good] doctor... an amazing doctor" and ought to be considered for Surgeon General in the future Biden administration that she hopes for.  [Video clip]

How News Coverage Changed For The Worse.  The trouble with the Internet age is its insistent, nonstop demand for news faster than news happens.  To satisfy this perceived need for new news products, writers are forced to improvise.  The result is consumers are too often offered instead questions:  Will Obama finally take sides?  Can Bernie be beaten?  Or, What's at stake on Super Tuesday?  Worse, 5 takeaways from South Carolina.  None of them have real answers, just conjecture.  Which isn't news.  Anything to attract eyes and clicks when, to be honest, nothing new has actually happened.  Most of such pieces are empty of much new except opinion, which is called analysis, and reworked information from previous things you've read.

Media ignore Adam Schiff's record of lying, fawn over him as hero of impeachment proceedings.  Democratic Congressman Adam Schiff of California showed himself to be a liar during the special counsel's investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election, repeatedly claiming to have knowledge of "direct" and "ample" evidence proving President Trump's campaign colluded with the Kremlin.  Yet despite outing himself as an untrustworthy partisan operative, many of the same members of the press who uncritically parroted Schiff and members the intelligence community during the collusion and FBI spying episodes are promoting the congressman now as a heroic and awe-inspiring manager of the impeachment proceedings; because we have learned nothing from the last three years.

CNN reporter gets ruthlessly mocked after flipping out over Babylon Bee satire.  The least trusted name in news just proved its title again.  A CNN reporter whose job is "covering disinformation, politics and technology" has kicked off a social media ruckus by showing just how bad much of the mainstream media is at covering any of those topics with a "public meltdown" over the conservative satirical website The Babylon Bee.

Attacks on the Babylon Bee Are Attacks on Free Expression.  Did you know that CNN has a reporter on the "disinformation" beat?  I'll skip the cheap joke about his never having to leave the office, and note that the network is now grousing about the Christian conservative satire site the Babylon Bee, which has earned the ire of a number of liberals for making jokes at their expense.

'CBS Evening News' Airs Picture Of Elijah Cummings During Segment About Rep. John Lewis's Battle With Cancer.  "CBS Evening News" accidentally aired a picture of former Democratic Maryland Rep. Elijah Cummings during a segment on Democratic Georgia Rep. John Lewis' cancer diagnosis Monday.  CBS chief Washington correspondent Major Garrett was filling in for anchor Norah O'Donnell Monday evening and began to talk about Lewis' recent health announcement.

Richard Jewell and Donald Trump:  Both Victims of a Corrupt Media, Academia, and FBI.  [Scroll down]  In concert with the FBI's malicious bungling of Jewell's investigation, a media firestorm ensued.  The firestorm was ignited by the efforts of Georgia's largest newspaper, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution (AJC), which, according to American Nightmare, since the resignation of "distinguished editor" Bill Kovach in 1988, had suffered "a severe loss of reputation."  While covering the Olympic Park bombing, perhaps in their zeal to prove they were the "definitive paper of the New South," the AJC operated with a "frenzy to be first."  As Vanity Fair reported in 1997, "The American Journalism Review sharply criticized The A.J.C. for the scanty confirmation and lack of skepticism in its coverage of Jewell."

12 Stories The Media Got Horribly Wrong In 2019.  March:  The Mueller Report.  In perhaps one of the media's most magnificent mistakes this year, special counsel Robert Mueller unveiled his findings from a two-year unlimited resource investigation completely exonerating President Donald Trump of being a Russian agent after years of the media's peddling of the Russia hoax.  Mueller found not one person from the Trump campaign, let alone Trump himself, colluded with the Russian government in 2016 to defeat Hillary Clinton.  Mueller's report also acquitted Trump of any obstruction of justice charges for firing one of the most corrupt directors of the FBI, James Comey.  "He has no idea that he's going down," MSNBC host Joe Scarborough declared on Morning Joe as a result of the report.

The Media's Worst Moments of 2019.  Our friends at Grabien prepared this montage of some of the media's worst moments of 2019.  Given the media malpractice of the last year, the video could be the length of Ben-Hur, but they've whittled it down to a mere eight minutes.  And it is a fun walk down memory lane, as pretty much all of the media's worst moments have, by now, blown up in their faces.  [Video clip]

The Media Has Some Apologizing to Do After the IG Report.  Thanks to the Department of Justice Inspector General's report, we now know for certain what has been, for those paying attention, fairly obvious.  The Steele dossier played a central role in the genesis of the Russia hoax and was used to justify extensive spying on former naval officer and Annapolis graduate Carter Page.  The top two leaders of the FBI were closely involved in this fiasco.  Other powerful people knew what was happening and lied to cover it up.  That all was confirmed by the IG report.  The report was a disaster for the credibility of top leaders in Barack Obama's FBI, and it's also a big problem for the American news media.

OANN Goes to Ukraine to Investigate Yovanovitch, Biden — and Graham.  [Scroll down]  Has it struck any of you that not one network, not one paper has sent a reporter to Ukraine to ferret this story out?  The media seems to be reporting verbatim what government officials are telling them, like Lieutenant Colonel Vindman — O say can you see — and Yovanovitch and Fiona Hill and Bill Taylor and George Kent and whoever the hell else.  Whatever they say is what gets printed.  Whatever Clapper says gets printed.  Whatever Brennan says gets printed.  There hasn't been one investigative story about this.  Everything that's been reported has been what deep state, administrative state officials are saying about Donald Trump.  That's it.  So in this instance, it is the deep state running the media.  You know, my theory is that the media has been running the Democrat Party, and I still think that's the case.  But we don't have even the slightest bit of curiosity.  The Drive-By Media has no desire to ferret out the real truth of this story.

Newsweek fires reporter who wrote inaccurate story on Trump's Thanksgiving Day plans.  The Newsweek reporter who wrote an inaccurate story about President Trump's Thanksgiving Day plans has been fired.  The outlet's original story claimed the president only planned on tweeting and golfing during his holiday break, neglecting to mention his trip to Afghanistan.  Newsweek's Jessica Kwong, whose Twitter handle identifies her as a political reporter "covering Trump administration and family," initially published the article Thursday morning [11/28/2019], before the president's trip to Afghanistan was announced publicly.  The story's initial headline was, "How is Trump spending Thanksgiving?  Tweeting, golfing and more."

Afghanistan Thanksgiving:  Trump makes the press look like boobs.  For the U.S. troops abroad, President Trump made a major personal sacrifice by skipping his own Thanksgiving in order to surprise them by helping to serve them theirs.  Under cover of secrecy, he flew nearly 7,000 miles, met with them, praised and cheered them, took selfies with them, served them in the chow line, and generally gave the brave fighting men and women in the world's most forlorn hellhole something to smile about.  It was a lovely presidential gesture, well in keeping with past presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama, who also made holiday trips to cheer the troops.  But unlike them, he also had a goodie for us back home:  he managed to expose the press as presumptuous boobs. [...] Newsweek meant to criticize Trump for golfing on Thanksgiving, which actually would have been an acceptable thing for him to do, given that it was a holiday and every chief executive needs what project managers call "maintenance time."

Newsweek Fires Anti-Trump Reporter Behind False Thanksgiving Story.  Until today [11/30/2019], Jessica Kwong was a political reporter for Newsweek.  More specifically, it was her job to keep an eye on the Trump administration, the Trump family, and the 2020 race for president.  This week, however, she was fired.  The reason?  On Thanksgiving Day, she published an article in which she claimed that the president and first lady planned to spend the holiday golfing, tweeting, "and more" some such.  Sadly for her, President Trump secretly flew to Afghanistan, where he met the troops (and served them turkey).  After President Trump had landed, pro-Trump Twitter users rightfully went after her.  One of her fiercest critics was First Son Donald Trump Jr.  "The President spends his Thanksgiving with American troops deployed in Afghanistan, including serving them lunch," he wrote on Twitter.

Newsweek Fires Journalist Responsible for False Story About President Trump's Thanksgiving.  Newsweek has fired the journalist who was responsible for the false story that President Donald Trump spent Thanksgiving "tweeting" and "golfing," when in fact the president was secretly traveling to Afghanistan to surprise U.S. troops for the holiday.  Newsweek told Breitbart News in a statement that the magazine has moved away from "knee-jerk political snarkiness" to focus on real reporting.

Trump blasts Newsweek over story on his Thanksgiving plans.  President Trump slammed Newsweek over its story on his Thanksgiving plans, which the mag said would include "tweeting, golfing and more" — before he ended up making a surprise visit to US troops in Afghanistan.  "I thought Newsweek was out of business?" the president wrote, quote-tweeting his son Donald Trump Jr.'s photo of the commander in chief serving Thanksgiving dinner to the service members at Bagram Airfield, north of Kabul.  Attached to the image was a screenshot of Newsweek's Thursday morning story, with the headline:  "How is Trump spending Thanksgiving?  Tweeting, golfing and more."

The Media Neither Read the Transcripts Nor Watched the Hearings.  The media seem not to have watched the impeachment hearings:  they stopped paying attention the moment the witnesses' prepared statements were leaked and the Democrats' talking points were posted.  Nor did many journalists bother to read the transcripts of the witnesses' depositions in the earlier, closed-door hearings.

Reuters Deletes Story Meant to Make Trump Look Bad After Realizing it Made Obama Look Bad.  Reuters completely deleted a wire story concerning the number of children in migrant detention centers after discovering that the author's figures were from 2015 and do not reflect the current number of children in such centers.  Adding an editor's note or something of the like was tossed for a complete revocation, which is always last and worst case scenario in the news world.

Today's Liberal Media Fail.  A left-wing doofus at the United Nations did an analysis of how many children are "in detention" in countries around the world, and concluded that the U.S. has more than anyone else — presumably as a result of the flood of illegal immigrants at our Southern border.  Pretty much every news organization in the world jumped on the story:  the Associated Press, Reuters, NBC News, NPR, the Huffington Post, all the usual suspects.  But then a funny thing happened.  The U.N. guy explained that his number for children detained in the U.S. was not current, but dated from 2015.  That is, during the Obama administration.  So news organizations were faced with a dilemma.  What to do?  As Ed Driscoll notes, some, like AFP and Reuters, simply deleted their articles.

When the villain is Obama, not Trump, news suddenly becomes not worth reporting.  So the United States has "the world's highest rate of children in detention."  Is this worth reporting?  Maybe, maybe not.  Nevertheless, Agence France-Presse, or AFP, and Reuters did report it, attributing the information to a "United Nations study" on migrant children detained at the US-Mexico border.  Then the two agencies retracted the story.  Deleted, withdrew, demolished.  If they could have used one of those Men in Black memory-zappers on us, they would have.  Sheepishly, the two news organizations explained that, you see, the UN data was from 2015 — part of a border crackdown that had begun years earlier.  We all know who the president was in 2015.  It wasn't evil, child-caging monster President Trump.  It was that nice, compassionate, child-caging monster President Barack Obama.  Zap.  The story made Obama look bad.  Hence the story was removed.  Not updated or corrected, removed.

Mark Levin blasts 'absurd' media analysis of impeachment hearings.  Mark Levin took aim at House Democrats and the media Friday [11/15/2019] in response to the televised impeachment inquiry testimony by former Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanavich.  "I hope the American people know what you're witnessing is tyranny," Levin said on "Hannity."  You can have tyranny of the legislature.  You can have tyranny of the executive branch.  You can have tyranny of the judiciary.  You're witnessing tyranny in the House of Representatives, in the Intelligence Committee, that doesn't do intelligence work anymore."  Levin compared the American media to Russian media and accused them of being unfair to President Trump.  "I mean ... to listen to the media analysis of what's taking place in these hearings is absurd.  It's disgraceful," Levin said.  "They talk about Russia.  They sound like the Russian media."

'Climate emergency' declaration takes heat for fictional 'world scientists'.  There was something goofy about the petition signed by 11,258 "world scientists" from 153 countries declaring a "climate emergency."  One "scientist" was named "Mouse, Micky" from the "Micky Mouse Institute for the Blind, Nambia."  Another was Albus Dumbledore, headmaster of Hogwarts.  And then there was "Araminta Aardvark" from the fictional University of Neasden.  Among the "Alliance of World Scientists" members who were apparently real people, many identified themselves as teachers, students, administrators, statisticians, economists, technicians, therapists, doctors, psychologists — not climate scientists. [...] "More than 11,000 scientists from around the world declare a 'climate emergency,'" said the headline in the Washington Post.  Said the CNN article:  "11,000 scientists warn of 'untold suffering' caused by climate change."  "Climate crisis: 11,000 scientists warn of 'untold suffering,'" said the [U.K.] Guardian, while ABC News reported, "11,000 scientists sign declaration of global climate emergency."

Everything You Hear About Billion-Dollar Disasters Is Wrong.  The U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) counts the number of disasters in the United States that result in losses of greater than $1 billion, starting in 1980.  Over the past three decades that count has shown a sharp increase, from five or less such disasters each year in the decade of the 1980s to ten or more in each of the past 4 years.  That increase must be due to climate change, right?  Actually, no.  The billion-dollar disaster tally is easy to understand, simple to communicate, but — regrettably — incredibly misleading and just plain bad economics.

ABC News, CBS News face growing backlash over handling of Epstein leaker:  They 'colluded' and fired the 'wrong person'.  Earlier this week, reports circulated that ABC had identified the employee suspected of leaking the Robach video to controversial watchdog group Project Veritas.  According to the reports, ABC executives informed their counterparts at CBS, where the staffer had recently been hired, of their suspicions and the employee soon lost her job.  However, on Friday [11/8/2019], ousted CBS staffer Ashley Bianco publicly denied that she was the leaker.  At almost the exact same moment, Project Veritas published a note from the alleged "ABC insider" it claimed was behind the leak.

11,000 Scientists?  Just Kidding.  Earlier this week, the world's news media reported breathlessly that 11,000 scientists had issued a report contending that the Earth faces a "climate emergency."  NBC News, to cite just one example, described a "study" produced by an "international consortium of more than 11,000 scientists." [...] Actually, there was no study, there was just a press release.  And it wasn't 11,000 scientists, it was 11,000 random people who put their names on a web page.  But today's reporters are so biased and so incompetent that when it comes to "climate change," they will swallow anything.

Trump Derangement Is Destroying Political Analysis.  The last four years of political punditry and analysis have been objectively wretched.  Regardless of your feelings about the present political moment, precisely no one can defend the quality of the analysis that dominates the airwaves and pages of our corporate media.  They told us throughout the 2016 campaign that the notion of Donald Trump winning the presidency was a joke.  The mockery increased as election day drew near.  From the Washington Post:  "Donald Trump's chances of winning are approaching zero."  At 10:20 P.M. on election night, The New York Times assured us that "Hillary Clinton has an 85% chance of winning." [...] Their numerical confidence colored their reporting throughout the campaign in ways that materially supported their political cohorts, chiefly Hillary Clinton.

'Do your job!': Rand Paul demands media reveal whistleblower and Congress defend Trump.  Sen. Rand Paul claimed the name of the Ukraine whisteblower is known but said the media is refusing to publish it.  "President Trump has great courage," the Kentucky Republican said at a Monday [11/4/2019] campaign rally for the president.  "He faces down the fake media every day.  But Congress needs to step up and have equal courage to defend the president."  "We also now know the name of the whistleblower," Paul continued.  "The whistleblower needs to come before Congress as a material witness because he worked with Joe Biden at the same time Hunter Biden was getting money from corrupt oligarchs.  I say tonight to the media, 'Do your job and print his name!'  And I say this to my fellow colleagues in Congress, to every Republican in Washington, 'Step up and subpoena Hunter Biden and subpoena the whistleblower!'"

Bonfire of the Democratic Party's Once-Rising Stars.  [Scroll down]  In a way, getting good press is just not that difficult for a young-ish Democratic lawmaker with decent public speaking skills.  Just invite a big newspaper or magazine reporter to hang around for a few days, let them marvel as you charm little old ladies and speak some eighth-grade Spanish to a local Latino organization, offer some trite observations that "technology changes everything" and "government can do so much more if we only have the will," and then roll up your sleeves and pose for your looking-off-in-the-distance photo shoot.  Presto!  Instant presidential "buzz."

Most of broadcast TV's Trump impeachment coverage relies on anonymous sources, study.  A new study has found that the majority of coverage dedicated to the ongoing impeachment inquiry into President Trump is based on reports from anonymous sources.  The Media Research Center revealed on Tuesday that in the month after House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., formally announced the launch of the impeachment inquiry, 322 minutes of air-time was tallied between ABC News, CBS News, and NBC News with 140 individual news segments.  Among those segments, roughly 57 percent "relied at least in part on information from anonymous sources."  Comparing the evening news programs, both "CBS Nightly News" and "NBC Nightly News" tied with approximately 60 percent of their coverage relying on anonymous sources while "ABC's World News Tonight" came in at 54 percent.

Fox News Chump Howard Kurtz Buys Adam Schiff's Selective Leaks.  Fox News' Howard Kurtz not only advertises himself as a newsman, he advertises himself as a newsman's newsman — as a gatekeeper and watcher of newsmen, as an imperious referee whose oh-so-vital job it is to guide the news and its newsmen to a more enlightened place.  But he's really just another hack. [...] Good grief, this is not supposed to be hard.  Schiff is a proven liar and partisan, William Taylor is a proven Never Trumper, there are three [...] years of the Russia Collusion Hoax as precedent, and you have only heard one side of the story — and even that side has come via a selective leak!  On top of that, you have three Republican congressmen claiming Taylor's (third-hand hearsay) testimony completely collapsed when challenged, and Kurtz is falling for it, in public, AGAIN!

Norah O'Donnell Is Killing What's Left of the CBS Evening News.  The Brits call them "newsreaders."  Their job is to sit behind a desk on a TV set and read the news — ostensibly written by actual journalists, but also by the propagandists at the BBC — off the teleprompter in a professional-sounding manner while looking reassuringly into the camera.  In America we call them "anchors."  Their job is to be the star of the show, to determine what goes on the air, to provide the desired slant to the news, and then at some point during the evening, to read the news off the teleprompter in a professional-sounding manner while looking reassuringly into the camera.  In Britain, being a newsreader is a nice job.  In America, being an anchor is to sit atop the pinnacle of the fabulously wealthy and self-important infotainment industry.

Media faked out by 84-year-old phony Vietnam veteran army nurse.  If journalism isn't dead, it must certainly be on life support when it can be [so easily fooled] by an 84-year-old Stolen Valor fraud, who flimflammed even Fox News with her tales of wartime heroics, faux medals, and a handful of push-ups.  Margaret DeSanti, a self-proclaimed retired lieutenant colonel (sometimes captain) Army nurse, is a known phony Vietnam vet who was first exposed as such five years ago by TAH (This Ain't Hell), one of the military blogs that long ago took on the mission of guarding the veterans' community from those who falsely claim honorable service.  Maggie, as she calls herself, isn't some harmless little old grannie regaling gullible reporters with impossible tales of derring-do.  She is now, thanks to her latest exploits, a potential felon.

Margaret "Maggie" DeSanti.  Margaret C. DeSanti comes to us from Mesa, Arizona.  DeSanti is 84 years old as of October 2019.  This is an old story, really, since Ms. DeSanti was published by This Ain't Hell in 2014.  They could find no Army records on her to support her claims.

Whatever You Do, Don't Send Your Kids To J-School.  Jay Rosen has had it up to here with CNN moderators asking front-running Democratic Party primary candidates to explain their signature policy positions.  "The 'make Elizabeth Warren say she would raise taxes on the middle class' question should be a credibility killer.  For the journalists who keep asking it," Rosen tweeted.  Not long ago, any person arguing that reporters should shun politically inconvenient questions of their favored candidates would be struggling to maintain credibility.  Rosen, though, is a professor of journalism — it says "I teach journalism" right there on his Twitter bio. [...] If Warren's answer to a straightforward question regarding her signature policy initiative happens to make "a nice GOP campaign ad" it's only because some aspect of the policy is unpopular.  If journalists concerned themselves with how partisans repurpose legitimate queries, they'd never be able to ask a difficult question.  Maybe that's the point.

Journalists Have Become Hoaxers.  I had the recent opportunity to watch filmmaker Joel Gilbert's latest film, The Trayvon Hoax.  Joel demonstrated a long-lost art, investigative journalism, and he did it in a fun and entertaining manner.  Unlike cable news gabbers who get their talking points from echo chamber left-wing distributions networks like the former JournoList, Joel examined phone records, photos, and yearbooks.  He knocked on doors and actually talked to people.  Once upon a time this would be called gumshoe journalism, walking around, investigating, putting in actual effort.  Modern journalists only use their thumbs, checking Twitter and reporting tweets as verified news.  Gilbert's film, aside from debunking the Trayvon Martin hoax, demonstrated how journalism should be done, in contrast to the shoddy reporting that now passes for journalism.

The New York Times, NBC, and Other Outlets Don't Trust You To Handle the Truth.  According to polling done for the Columbia Journalism Review, fewer than 20 percent of us have a "great deal of confidence" in the press.  The only institution held in lower esteem is Congress.  Yet the media seem happy to keep digging their own grave.

Watch Chuck Todd Admit He's Suppressing News.  The public unraveling of Chuck "the presidential race is over" Todd continued last week when the Meet the Press moderator bragged about suppressing news.  This was actually the second time last week that proved President Trump has thoroughly broken Chuck Todd, has undone the poor guy to a point where he keeps publicly humiliating himself with bizarre behavior.

Rand Paul Schools Chuck Todd on Pragmatic Foreign Policy.  In this interview Senator Rand Paul explains the pragmatic policy of withdrawing 50 U.S. troops from Northern Syria to avoid them becoming victims to a cross-border incursion by a NATO ally, Turkey, while the ridiculously pontificating European collective does nothing except criticize the U.S. for not defending their interests.  Chuck Todd is flummoxed.  Additionally, Senator Paul creates a 'splodey head when the conversation turns to the Ukraine and Rand Paul points out the hypocrisy of Democrats trying to impeach President Trump for political foreign policy the Democrats initiated.

The Toxic Scourge of Twitter.  [Scroll down]  The reporting might look objective, fact-checked and sourced appropriately, with even-keeled forbearance, but it is undeniably the product of so many thumbing journalists staring with pallid eyes into the glaucous glow of their handheld devices.  All the "news" we are now serviced with is crowdsourced and designed, not to inform, but appease the liberal crawthumpers on Twitter.  This is why CNN sics reporters on Reddit users who post pro-Trump memes. [...] f you want to see how the news really works in this country, read Twitter.  It is the waterhead for all of journalism's broken practices.  If you'd rather be informed, stay off social media.  Look up primary sources.  Don't rely on twentysomething mediators.

Anger Over Impeachment is Best Directed at the Fake News Media.  The newsfakers at the Associated Press have a report out this morning pushing the claim that Attorney General William Barr was "surprised and angry" when he found out that President Trump had mentioned him on his July call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelinsky.  The source for the AP's fake report?  A "person familiar with Barr's thinking," who "was not authorized to speak about the matter publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity."  In other words, there are two possibilities here:  [#1] an Obama loyalist still embeded in the DOJ who just made it all up, or [#2] the AP reporter just made it all up out of whole cloth in order to create a juicy "news" story.  This reliance on a single anonymous "source" is the worst kind of journalistic hackery, and it is what has enabled the Democrats and their deep state army to keep the nation in a state of perpetual uproar for three solid years now.

The Des Moines Register did everything wrong this week.  It all stinks — from how the paper's hit piece targeting a local hero was prepared, to what was allowed to go to print, to its initial response to the furor over the article, all the way to its decision this week to pin all of the blame on and fire the report's author.  It is rare to get this much wrong with a single story, but the Register seems to be a special publication.

Reporter Who Got Carson King Canceled over Old Tweets Is Fired for Old Tweets.  [Scroll down]  Instead of leading, instead of lamenting the state of the cancel culture, instead of learning a lesson from all this [nonsense], the Register is justifying what it did.  Not only that, but we also learned that it spends more time digging into the past of a guy who raised over a million dollars for charity than it does its own reporters.  How difficult would it have been for the Register to show a little moral leadership here and call for an end to this madness?

ABC News Forced to Correct 'Bombshell' About Trump's Ukraine Call.  ABC News was forced Thursday morning to correct and walk back the latest Trump-Ukraine bombshell that wasn't.  In a world where America enjoyed the services of legitimate news organizations, the far-left ABC News would have already retracted this story, would have removed it completely, because, as you will see below, the story is now a non-story.  The central premise of the story has been wiped out by the facts.

Trump-Ukraine story is what you get when the media imagines the facts.  The now-released transcript of President Trump's July phone call with Ukraine's prez, Volodymyr Zelensky, shows just why Americans have so little faith in the news media.  Turns out, the document shows none of the Trump abuses suggested in press accounts over the past few days — distortions that have already triggered Speaker Nancy Pelosi's "official impeachment inquiry."

Dumbest Thing Said By A News Reporter!.  [Short video clip.  Live TV is tough sometimes.]

NY Times Completes Its Long Journey Down the Toilet With 'Women Poop' Article.  After spending four days mired in controversy over some of the sloppiest journalism in an era of sloppy journalism, The New York Times decided to jettison its last vestiges of being a serious news source with a long article on the bowel movements of women.

Brett Kavanaugh Breaks the Democrats.  Rarely does a story implode as spectacularly as the New York Times' latest effort to resurrect the claim that Justice Brett Kavanaugh was a teenage sexual predator.  By now, you know the facts:  The Times published an excerpt from a forthcoming book alleging that another woman suffered the same form of abuse and objectification from Kavanaugh that was alleged by another accuser, Deborah Ramirez.  No sooner had the universe of liberal political observers and politicians worked themselves up into a frenzy than the story fell apart.  The woman whose uncorroborated experience supposedly substantiated Ramirez's uncorroborated assertions wasn't even the one making these accusations.  Rather, they came from a Washington D.C. attorney with conflicts of interest who did not contact the Senate Judiciary Committee during Kavanaugh's confirmation proceedings.  What's more, she doesn't even remember the experience that was supposedly so traumatizing — a revelation that was inexplicably omitted from the Times' original draft.

Sure Democrats Will Lose in 2020, But They Are Dangerous Now, And Must Be Stopped!  The "debates" themselves have grown increasingly worthless because the networks and personalities conducting them are staging reality TV as opposed to forums where genuine ideas can be spotlighted side by side.

Media Fails to Report Update on Debunked Study on Links between Trump Rallies and Hate Crimes.  Earlier this year, the mainstream media ran a story that 2016 Trump rallies led to a spike in hate crimes in the areas in which they were held.  Specifically, a study claimed that there was a 226 percent increase in counties which hosted rallies for then-candidate Donald Trump in 2016.  The study, entitled, "The Trump Effect:  How 2016 Campaign Rallies Explain Spikes in Hate," was submitted by Ayal Feinberg, assistant professor at Texas A&M University ya Commerce, and professors Regina Branton and Valerie Martinez-Ebers at the University of North Texas.  The study tracked hate crime reports from the Anti-Defamation League in counties that hosted 300 Trump rallies from 2015-2016.  But, before the study went through the academic peer-review process, the mainstream media picked the story and ran with it.  CNN, the Washington Post and Vox published stories on the study at the time, claiming that Trump's words led to a wave of hate crimes.  However, two graduate students debunked the study by replicating the methodology.

An even mixture of sensationalism, dishonesty, and incompetence:
CNN's big 'mistakes' all run in one direction: anti-Trump.  CNN blared an "exclusive" headline Monday [9/9/2019] with a story purporting that US intelligence made the decision to "extract" a spy that it had working within the Russian government because officials believed his cover may have been compromised by President Trump having "repeatedly mishandled classified intelligence."  That dispatch from Jim Sciutto, CNN's "chief national security correspondent," would have certainly been a smash if it weren't for vehement denials by the administration and subsequent reporting that contradicted the crux of the story — that it had been Trump who screwed up the intelligence operation.  During a White House press briefing on Tuesday, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo called CNN's reporting "materially inaccurate."

Newsrooms all ran with junk study purportedly showing Trump rallies cause hate crimes.  Several major newsrooms owe their readers a retraction.  Media outlets fell over each other this year to promote a study purportedly showing that counties that hosted Trump 2016 campaign rallies later experienced a 226% increase in hate crimes.  The study has been thoroughly debunked this week, leaving several news organizations with egg on their face.  As it turns out, uncritically parroting the findings of an unpublished study that conforms perfectly to specific political biases is apparently a dangerous gamble for ostensibly serious news organizations.

CBS Flatters Itself for '60 Minutes'.  Think of the media's daily disgust at President Trump's patting himself on the back.  Then watch something like "60 Minutes" and find CBS aerobically praising its own genius and celebrating the career of its retiring correspondent Steve Kroft in an hourlong episode on Sept. 8. [...] Nobody spent a second on how this show housed accused serial sexual harassers Charlie Rose and executive producer Jeff Fager.  Only the legend is allowed.  When you retire from the coal mine or the meatpacking plant, you might get a cake, or a round of beers.  At television networks, they air a pile of your video clips for the entire country to watch and suggest the world would be a dismal place without your amazing talents.  Steve Kroft is best known for his scads of interviews with candidate and President Barack Obama.  Even CBS acknowledged this.  But it did not admit that Kroft's questions were typically soft-foam word pillows, starting with "Do you think the country's ready for a black president?" and "Did you play basketball on Super Tuesday?"

Bloomberg News Yet Again Screws Up Major Story and Doubles Down on Stupid.  President Trump often characterizes the media as the enemy of the people.  It is really hard to say he is wrong in the case of Bloomberg.  It has gotten multiple major stories demonstrably, harmed the reputations of American companies, cost a man his job, and stands by its demonstrably wrong reporting.  Bloomberg is harming other news outlets with its behavior.

Chris Hayes On The Electoral College: 'If It Wasn't Specifically In The Constitution... It Would Be Unconstitutional'.  MSNBC host Chris Hayes attempted to again sow distrust in the Electoral College during his show Friday night [8/30/2019], but his comments have earned mockery on social media.  While speaking to an "All In With Chris Hayes" audience, the host suggested that the Electoral College — America's system for selecting its president since the Constitution was written — is unconstitutional.  "The weirdest thing about the electoral college is the fact that if it wasn't specifically in the Constitution for the presidency, it would be unconstitutional," Hayes said.  The host briefly paused and looked to the audience, as if this was supposed to be an applause line.

Drudge tries to spook Trump voters again.  Another Friday and another hamfisted attempt by the Drudge Report to undermine support for President Donald John Trump.  A week ago, Matt Drudge was sure that the trade war with Red China was going to do The Donald in because the Dow Jones Industrial Average was down.  A week before that Drudge had us in a recession not caused by Red China.  Drudge has linked and bannered stories about wars with Iran, North Korea and Syria, which never materialized.

24 Hours of Media Malpractice.  [Scroll down]  Exactly two minutes before Lawrence O'Donnell's admission of error, a reporter at the military news website Task and Purpose tweeted out a story headlined "Children of US troops born overseas will no longer get automatic American citizenship, Trump administration says."  The story merited obvious skepticism from the get-go and was soon revealed to be premised on a misreading of a minor policy change.  The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service quickly clarified:  The new policy would not affect all kids of service members.  It would affect only a tiny minority of service members in rare circumstances.  Nonetheless, the story was dutifully regurgitated by many other media outlets — many of which appear to have done no reporting of their own — and spread far and wide by journalists on social media.  On Wednesday night [8/28/2019], Twitter was still full of misinformation and anti-Trump invective generated by an inaccurate story.

A Dead Cat, A Lawyer's Call and a 5-Figure Donation:  How Media Fell Short on Epstein.  Before his death earlier this month, [Jeffrey] Epstein owned the largest townhouse in Manhattan, little more than a mile from many of the nation's leading news organizations.  He counted a former and a future president among his friends.  He partied with royalty and supermodels.  He was said to advise billionaires.  Epstein killed himself, authorities say, in federal prison as he faced criminal charges alleging sex trafficking of underage girls, some as young as 14, in his mansions in New York and Florida.  And yet with a few notable exceptions, the national media infrequently covered Epstein's behavior and rarely looked at the associates who helped him evade accountability for his actions — at least, not until the Miami Herald's Julie K. Brown's investigative series late last year.

If What's Going On At CNN Was Occurring At Any Other News Outlet With Their Employees, They Wouldn't Have A Station.  It has been a problematic week for CNN.  Perhaps the stress of working for a #fakenews peddler has some of CNN's employees on the edge.  In a rather bizarre culmination, this past week saw one reporter (I can't call these people journalists with a straight face) lose his ever-loving mind because someone said a word to him.  Another reporter sicced her henchmen on a news editor. [...] For whatever reason, CNN's reporters are wound up pretty tightly.  They probably are concerned that ever since the Russian collusion hoax fell apart, and they cannot spend 24/7 repeating the same talking points repeatedly, to the sheep that hang on every word that this #fakenews organization peddles, that they might actually need to work and report on real news now.

History Ignoramus Geraldo Rivera Claims Israel Is Occupying Palestine.  Reps.  Tlaib's and Omar's constant lying about Palestine, which they do in hopes of destroying Israel, is having an effect.  Fox News' commentator Geraldo Rivera now thinks Israel is occupying Palestine, a land, not a nation, where many Jews lived before it became Israel.  Jews living in 'Palestine' were called Palestinians.

CNN discovers that combining Trump Derangement Syndrome with ignorant reporters leads to embarrassing corrections.  CNN's Chris Cillizza tried valiantly to hew to the Party Line when writing about the story that President Trump is exploring the concept of acquiring Greenland from Denmark.  We know that everything the 45th President does is bad, so the only question for CNN people is how to pick and present the data that tries to prove the point. [...] Who could possibly write such drivel?  And what kind of editor would let the contention that we'd be better off with Russia owning Alaska (and its vast natural resources including oil and many minerals) strategically placed at the top of the Western Hemisphere?  And what about the nearly three quarters of a million Alaskans?  I know that CNN wishes Sarah Palin had never been governor of a state, but really do we want to tell all those other Alaskans that they and their home state are a mistake?

Blaming Every Bad Economic Indicator On The Trade War Just Proves You Don't Know What You're Talking About.  [Scroll down]  Generally, these pundits have no idea what they are talking about.  Another measure of the yield curve, the three month-10 year Treasury spread — which is more predictive than the two year-10 year Treasury spread — has been negative for months.  You didn't see a bunch of punditry about that when it first went negative in March.  That's because everyone is being political.  The left wants a recession because they hate President Trump, and they are economically illiterate to boot.  Hillary Clinton once said the Bush tax cuts caused the 2008 financial crisis, which is ridiculous.  And today's Democrat policies would make any recession we did have far worse, via the government increasing taxes and further cannibalizing the private sector.  Yet there are elements of the establishment GOP, including Never-Trumpers, who hate Trump almost as much as the left does.

Waterloo of Boomer Catholics.  A couple of Portland readers have sent me this story about what happened when the Catholic archbishop of Portland sent a priest in to reform a wackadoodle progressive parish that had gone native.  The Oregonian's report on it is hysterically biased, making the priest look like a monster; the reporter never once appears to have considered that Catholicism is a religion that has clear norms, and this parish's previous leadership had seriously violated them, for a long time.

One giant flub for the [New York] Daily News.  Describing the moon shot that started 50 years ago, the Daily Snooze Tuesday [8/6/2019] tweeted:  "Four Days later, John Glenn would step onto the only other planet we've ever walked on uttering the famous, 'one small step for a man, one giant step for mankind.'"

Keywords: speculation, baseless conjecture.
CNN speculates injured El Paso victims afraid to go to hospitals because of immigration status.  In what appears to be an attempt to link President Donald Trump to the El Paso shooting, CNN claimed on Saturday that some victims of the mass shooting "likely" avoided seeking medical treatment because of their "immigration status."  The implication was that the Trump administration's tough but widely supported policies against illegal immigration — a CBS poll from two months ago found that three-fourths of Americans believe illegal aliens should indeed be detained and deported — were responsible for this alleged fear.

What ails the US Press?  [Scroll down]  The subhead to the column puts it this way:  "The media's lack of interest in the Steele dossier amounts to collusion in a coverup."  The lack of journalistic interest calls for an explanation.  Laziness, stupidity, herd mentality, and partisanship all seem to have something to do with the utter lack of interest in what it's all about, although any one of these factors all by itself may be enough to explain it.

Newspaper goes out of its way to alienate readers.  The Billings Gazette is the largest newspaper in Montana.  It also puts out a Wyoming edition.  President Donald John Trump carried Montana by 20 points, and Wyoming by 45.  Montana also elected Republican Steve Daines to the Senate by 17 points in 2014.  The editorial board of the Gazette is so out of step with its readers that it attacked Senator Daines for being too supportive of President Donald John Trump.  In school, I learned an editorial does one of three things:  inform, entertain or persuade.  In writing editorials for 26 years, I learned you cannot easily persuade people that their last vote was a mistake.  I do not think the editorial board of the Gazette realizes that yet.

The American Left Is Racist, Not President Trump.  As Hong Kong teeters on the brink of mass insurgency against the fascist mainland government, and Iran's brutal theocracy accelerates their nuclear weapons program, the top story this week is "Trump is a racist."  How do the news anchors and commentators who spew this Trump-bashing pabulum, day after day, year after year, do so with a straight face?

Media coverage of Hurricane Barry was the real disaster.  There will be no media awards for Al Roker or the Washington Post in recognition of their coverage of Hurricane Barry.  At least if the people living in New Orleans have a say in the matter.  The weekend weather event, fortunately, was nowhere nearly as bad as was predicted in some media accounts.  That's a good thing.  The bad thing, though, is the over-hyped media coverage of Tropical Storm Barry that briefly became Hurricane Barry (a Category 1 storm) before it returned to being a tropical storm.  Barry made landfall Saturday at Intracoastal City, about 160 miles west of New Orleans.  Unfortunately, to read or listen to media coverage, you would have heard calls for mass evacuation in New Orleans, well outside of where the storm hit.  The word "evacuation" has its own connotations for residents on the Gulf Coast and it is not a word to be used lightly.  For a television weather forecaster to suggest such an action when the local authorities are not calling for it, the situation can turn unnecessarily dangerous.

Media got Mexican deal wrong.  When President Donald John Trump told Mexico to help us defend our border or pay tariffs, the media went into hysteria.  They forecast an Avocadolypse.  CNN reported, "Chipotle could raise burrito prices by 5¢ if Mexico tariffs become permanent."  When President Trump won that Mexican war, the media cast shade on his victory.  The New York Times scoffed, "The deal to avert tariffs that President Trump announced with great fanfare on Friday night consists largely of actions that Mexico had already promised to take in prior discussions with the United States over the past several months, according to officials from both countries who are familiar with the negotiations."  Mexico had been promising such help for years.  That's what politicians do.  They promise.  President Trump got them to keep their word.  That's what a real leader does.

Media Predictions of "Tiny Crowd" For Trump July 4 Speech Proven Spectacularly Wrong.  The media ran headlines right up to the day of President Trump's July 4 speech predicting only a "tiny crowd" would show up.  How spectacularly wrong they were. [...] In reality, photos from the event show crowds stretching the full length of the national mall.

An embarrassment to village idiots.  At a time when the American political press could not possibly do any more to embarrass itself, CNN's Jim Acosta strikes again.  This time overseas after President Trump spent the weekend meeting with the world's most powerful leaders.

Coffee will Kill You, Until it Won't, and Other Fake Health News.  Every week there is another health pronouncement saying what is now good for you and what is going to kill you.  Unfortunately, the "what" is often interchangeable — what was supposed to kill you last week is now suddenly good for you or vice versa.  Foods, supplements, and activities, all studied extensively and determined to be either good or bad, then subject to a new study, with the opposite conclusion.  How can this be?

Journalists [are] Surprised D-Day Veterans Support President Donald Trump.  Journalists were surprised to learn Thursday [6/6/2019], on the 75th anniversary of the D-Day landings in Normandy, that many of the American veterans of that historic battle support President Donald Trump.  The common theme in the media was that Trump is challenging the transatlantic alliances that were forged during the march to victory in the Second World War.

The hoax and due diligence.  Nothing illustrates the decline of serious journalism more than the fact that many of the major media, particularly CNN and MSNBC, have participated (and to some extent continue to participate) in massive hoaxes which would have been easily disproved with basic due diligence.  The first and least important hoax was that of Michael Avenatti.  He appeared on CNN and MSNBC more than 100 times where he was touted as an expert on many things, particularly the alleged misdeeds of President Trump.  Fawning hosts on these networks even referred to him as presidential material — yet he was nothing more than a conman.  He now faces about 400 years in prison if he is convicted on the many charges in several different courts.

The Democrat Puff Piece Challenge.  [Scroll down]  When it comes to newcomer Pete Buttigieg, the trivia is already encyclopedic.  Favorite food/book/music is way too shallow — how about his favorite socks, whisky, wristwatch, multi-tool, and beef jerky?  New York Magazine went all out for their guy with a The Things They Carried-style vanity piece.  The picture his possessions paint is a man who is practical (learned it in the military), tasteful (somehow relates to his military service), and wise.  Oh, and he served his country.  We know he speaks eight languages, loves his husband, and will never contend without the black vote.  Hmm...  Mayor Pete's Hot Sauce, anyone?  How is it that we come to learn so much about Democrat candidates running for president, and so little about Republicans?

Our Collective Dive off the Cliff.  The burning of the Cathedral of Notre Dame — in the heart of Paris, in the heart of France, in the heart of Europe, in the heart of Christendom and Western civilization — was an absolute cultural catastrophe. [...] Over at CNN, Frida Ghitis penned a heartwarming, sincere panegyric, but one in which she cannot help but refer to Notre Dame as "a building, technically a religious structure."  Technically a religious structure?  I wonder what tipped Ghitis off.  The giant crucifix bestriding the altar?  The religious imagery that adorns literally every surface of the place?  The masses of people who gather there daily to pray?  What facet of the building does Ghitis consider technically a non-religious structure?

UN hysteria linking climate change and species extinction mindlessly parroted by media.  Why [...] would anyone with a brain take U.N. reports as factual when so many have been spectacularly wrong by direction and amount?  Why would politicians base any policies on these crackpot reports, especially since we know that scientists have manipulated the numbers when their previous predictions have been wrong?  Should the public just be willing to hand over trillions to government bureaucrats to control our lives?  Does anyone believe that politicians and bureaucrats can control temperatures, sea levels, and storm activity if we hand over trillions to them?  If they do, they are a few bricks short of a load.  The big question is, why would journalists, who are supposed to fact-check and investigate what they publish or report, just repeat all these things as if they are factual?

If Donald Trump Is A Con Man, The Media Are The Biggest Marks In History.  The New York Times is running a story that shows President Donald Trump lost nearly a billion dollars in failed businesses over the course of a decade.  As expected, many in the media are out in force, noting that it is more proof that Trump is a con man and a liar.  The stories of Trump's failed businesses are stories that were run at many right-leaning outlets back in 2016 — including here at RedState — and would not be new to the media if they had covered Trump honestly back then.  It is funny, truly funny, to see many of the same people who gave Trump enormous coverage in the primaries and paved the way for his nomination call him a con man acting like a wealthy mogul in order to increase his own popularity and social value.  Essentially, they are outing themselves as the people who fell for his con in the primaries.

The Increasingly Narrow, Parochial Prism of Journalism.  Last month, immediately after fire had almost destroyed the cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris, the Washington Post ran a piece with the headline, "The Notre Dame fire ignites the West's far-right."  The author, Ishaan Tharoor, used his piece to expand on that untimely and inaccurate claim. [...] What is strangest — and most defamatory — is to call people "far-right", or insinuate that they are linked to the far-right because they are saddened by the fire at Notre Dame.  It might be possible to think this article was just the dishonest and dishonourable smear-job attempted by one jobbing hack.  Yet a week later, and the Washington Post was back at a similar trick.  In the aftermath of the appalling Easter Sunday attacks on Christians and tourists in Sri Lanka, the Washington Post ran a story, "Christianity under attack?  Sri Lanka church bombings stoke far-right anger in the West."

Thirdhand Hearsay Story Says Mueller Prosecutors Had the Goods on Trump to Charge Obstruction.  [Scroll down]  This violates almost every rule set out by Perry Bacon of FiveThirtyEight in "When To Trust A Story That Uses Unnamed Sources."  It is attributed to only two people, and even then, it is a third-party recollection of a conversation in which the reporter did not participate.  Given the sourcing, the quotes are virtually impossible to verify — another tipoff that a story probably is not true.  The third-hand sources are identified only as "former Mueller prosecutors," which means the story runs up against Bacon's recommendation that "specifics matter" when identifying anonymous sources.  Waas claims the Mueller team prosecutors "would have advocated" that Trump face federal criminal charges for obstruction.

Greta: 'Overuse of Anonymous Sources' One of the 'Biggest Crimes' in Journalism Today.  Greta Van Susteren, a former Fox News and MSNBC host, said one of the "biggest crimes" in journalism today is the "overuse of anonymous sources," specifically in press coverage of President Trump and the White House.  Van Susteren was asked about former Nightline anchor Ted Koppel, who recently criticized some newspapers for putting commentary about Trump on the front page, adding that Trump is "not mistaken" in his perception that the press is "out to get him."  Van Susteren, who now works for Gray TV, told PJM she agrees with Koppel.

"Reporting" on the Sri Lanka Jihadist Massacres.  If you think the mainstream media in America are shameless in their devotion to leftist orthodoxy — well, of course you're right.  But there are exceptions:  at least some major outlets in the U.S. don't march in ideological lockstep.  Even the New York Times has a good, honest reporter or two.  In any event, you don't have to pay to read these people's claptrap if you don't want to.  Imagine, by contrast, living in Norway, where the political left has a total lock on the mainstream news media, and the country's five million people are forced to pay big time for their non-stop propaganda. [...] Aside from its lockstep ideology, Norwegian journalism is notorious for its laziness, irresponsibility, and all-around mediocrity.  Much of it reads like stuff out of a sub-par American high-school paper.  Simple grammatical errors abound.

Astonishing ignorance:
Actual AP Headline:  "Tourist Mecca Notre Dame Also Revered As Place Of Worship".  The AP's story about this is much better than the unfortunate headline appended to it.  It doesn't typify the secular perspective of the title as much as it responds to it, informing readers who might regard Notre Dame as chiefly a cultural landmark that the cathedral remains important to Catholic spiritual life.

Top 10 things the media got wrong about 'collusion' and 'obstruction'.  The prestige press has some explaining to do — for subjecting the nation to a long, cruel ordeal named "collusion" and "obstruction."  Almost two years and millions of column inches later, special counsel Robert Mueller has revealed the theory that President Trump and his campaign conspired with Russia has been just that.  All that remains of collusion and obstruction is the media's shattered credibility.

AOC Isn't Even a Good Environmentalist.  Every Dem presidential candidate has endorsed the Green New Deal.  The media has covered what should be laughable notions like no automobiles, regulating diet and eliminating cows, with all the gravitas of innovations in heart surgery.  They cover it like it's a real thing and more, they paint anyone critical of the ideas as bigoted, closed minded, old-fashioned climate deniers and anti-science crazies.  Yes, that's an inversion of the truth, but that's how it's covered.

Funny how all the 'Russia-Russia-Russia' coverage went 'poof' at the Pulitzers after the Mueller report.  Up until now, Russia-Russia-Russia coverage as fodder for Pulitzer prize nominations was big-game prize material.  Here's a big one in the national reporting category that the Washington Post got last year, and there were others among the nominations through the years.  This year?  Nothing.

Why Last Year's Trump-Russia Pulitzer Was No Prize.  With the announcement of the 2019 Pulitzer Prizes set for next Monday, last year's award to the New York Times and Washington Post for Trump-Russia coverage is already looking like a crumpled first draft of history lofting in a high arc to the dustbin.  It's eclipsed by the double-whammy of the Special Counsel's finding of no collusion with the Kremlin and Attorney General William Barr's disclosure this week that he'll investigate spying by federal authorities on the Trump campaign.  Eclipsed and how.  But the deep flaws in this honored coverage, instrumental in pushing the collusion narrative, shouldn't be overlooked just because it's been overtaken by events, or many journalists would prefer to move on, or because President Trump calls it "fake news."  The flaws reveal broader problems in reporting this continuing story and journalism in general.

CNN Host Asks If FBI Should Have 'Shut Down' Trump Supporters Chanting 'Lock Her Up'.  CNN anchor Christiane Amanpour called "lock her up" chants by Donald Trump supporters "hate speech" in a new interview and asked James Comey if he wished he had "shut down that language" in his capacity as FBI Director at the time.  Amanpour recounted the frequent chants at Trump 2016 campaign rallies about imprisoning Hillary Clinton for her perceived crimes and wondered if they should have been legal, but Comey responded it was not the role of government officials to censor that speech.

Why do the least-bright people rise to the top?  For over two years, we have been tormented or delighted, depending on one's political preference, by the opinions and or declarations avowing President Trump's guilt with regard to collusion with Russia.  It was all a made-up scam from the beginning, but the media and the leftist loons have beaten this dead horse relentlessly in the fervid hope it would see Trump forced from the office he legitimately won.  Our horrific media who has long worked hand in glove with the Democrats, has spent hundreds of hours, over 500,000 columns, articles and op-eds asserting Trump's guilt.  It was all a hoax from the outset, fabricated within a few days of Hillary 's loss to Trump.  Most of those who got on board the Russia collusion hoax knew it was a lie from day one.  But they embraced the lie wholeheartedly.

AP offers correction after reporting Beto O'Rourke spoke 'in his native Spanish'.  The Associated Press faced backlash on social media Monday [4/1/2019] after writing that Democratic presidential candidate Beto O'Rourke spoke "in his native Spanish" at a rally in El Paso, Texas.  Although O'Rourke speaks Spanish, he a fourth-generation Irish-American whose full name is Robert Francis O'Rouke.  The AP report originally wrote:  "O'Rourke also spoke at length in his native Spanish, eliciting loud and sustained cheers."

From Trayvon to RussiaGate:  No Media Reckoning, Only Denial and Tragedy.  CNN's Brian Stelter opened his Sunday [3/24/2019] show arguing the media did nothing wrong in its coverage of the Russia Collusion Hoax.  So now we know how the media will react to this latest disgrace — with denial, total and complete denial.

The Mueller-Industrial Complex Collapses.  So much media is premediated now, it's almost impossible to find something whose payload isn't partly composed of practice for future events.  Most of the time, nobody even notices this phenomenon.  Premediation works because it homes in on natural anxieties or desires amplified by the hyper-mediated ecosystem in which television, smartphones, social media, and all the rest rot and reanimate.  Whom should I consider voting for in the next election?  Am I going to die if I board a plane?  Those are questions whose future answers seem to demand consideration today.

Mediacide over Trump.  Matt Taibbi of Rolling Stone, hardly a fan of President Donald John Trump, had good news:  Russiagate is the death of American media.  He compared the press carrying of Democrat water in this case to the media's unquestioning belief in government that Saddam Hussein had enough weapons of mass destruction to warrant an invasion in 2003.  That seems an apt comparison.  We in the media wanted to believe a war was justified, and so we never questioned what we were told.  Worthless is the man or organization that does not learn from the past.

Bonfire of the Media Vanities.  Every major news outfit from CNN to the New York Times loves to use the phrase "conspiracy theory" to label some notion crazy, regardless of whether it is actually a conspiracy theory.  These and most other news outlets just spent two years peddling a cockamamie conspiracy theory that the blunderers inside the Donald Trump presidential campaign somehow pulled off an illegal collusion scheme with the Russians to sway the outcome of the 2016 election.  This theory was never anything but far-fetched, given what we know.  It was mainly driven by disbelief that Trump could have been elected without cheating.

Mueller Madness:  The media pundits who got it most wrong.  Special counsel Robert Mueller has definitively put to rest the collusion theory of President Trump's election.  That's not a little embarrassing for the many journalists, talking heads, celebrities and instant experts who spent more than two years furiously speculating about Moscow "pee-pee" tapes, treasonous rendezvous and the president's imminent arrest.  The president's haters no doubt wish to memory-hole collusion and move on to the next anti-Trump theory.  But not so fast:  We want to laurel the punditry "champion" — the one who peddled the most nonsensical nonsense, the wildest inanities, the weirdest theories and unsubstantiated stories.

A bad couple of years for anonymous sources.  [I]t was a really bad couple of years for those reporters, and their editors, who decided to break stories based on all those "sources familiar with the investigation."  I wonder if any will have the character to step up and say "we messed up badly."

The American Media Destroyed Themselves over the Mueller Investigation.  With only a few exceptions — Fox News, the editorial pages (not the front pages) of the Wall Street Journal, and a handful of websites — the better part of the American media has spent the last two years fulminating about Trump-Russia collusion we now know never existed.  Actually, we always knew that, but finally, it's official.  It was always a bunch of — excuse the expression — trumped up baloney that made no sense except to those who wished so deeply to believe it was true.  Which makes the people who were doing that fulminating — media, politicians and (usually retired) intelligence figures, who were, as is becoming increasingly clear, betraying the American Constitutional system with impunity — sick and evil.

Five things that didn't happen in the Mueller investigation. 
  [#1]   Mueller did not indict Donald Trump Jr., Jared Kushner, or other people whose purported legal jeopardy was the subject of intense media speculation in the last year.
  [#2]   Mueller did not charge anyone in the Trump campaign or circle with conspiring with Russia to fix the 2016 election, as was the subject of intense media speculation in the last year.
  [#3]   Mueller did not subpoena the president, as was the subject of intense media speculation in the last year.
  [#4]   The president did not fire Mueller, as was the subject of intense media speculation in the last year.
  [#5]   The president did not interfere with the Mueller investigation, as was the subject of intense media speculation in the last year.

Blankenship Is Right:  Sue the Mainstream Media Out of Existence.  [Scroll down]  [S]wamp-bought media hitjobs such as the one perpetrated against [Don] Blankenship prevent anti-establishment candidates from taking office and discourage them from running.  Can we say with certainty that now-Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh would have dared accept his nomination by President Trump had he known in advance the flurry of irresponsible reporting on unsubstantiated sexual misconduct allegations to come?  And our concern shouldn't be limited just to these cases:  consider the reckless endangerment of the very lives and careers of the Covington Catholic children by the mainstream media.

CNN Wins Cronkite Award For That Garbage Gun-Control Town Hall It Held After Parkland.  Literally one of the most demagogic stunts CNN has ever aired, but it had the right politics so naturally it just won a Cronkite Award for "journalism" from USC's Norman Lear Center.  The full title of the award, by the way, is "The Walter Cronkite Award for Excellence in Television Political Journalism."  The official title of the CNN town hall was "Stand Up:  The Students of Stoneman Douglas Demand Action."  It wasn't journalism and wasn't even presented as such.  It was gun-control advocacy by its own terms.

CNN mistakenly uses photo of dead judge in report on Paul Manafort case.  CNN was caught accidentally using a photo of a judge who's been dead for more than a decade to illustrate a Thursday afternoon [3/7/32019] report about the sentencing of Paul Manafort.  The cable network displayed a picture of the late Chief Judge Edward Becker of the Third Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia over the name of federal Judge T.S. Ellis III, according to the Law and Crime website.  Ellis presided over Manafort's trial and was preparing to hand down his punishment for bank and tax fraud.  Becker died of prostate cancer in 2006 at age 73.

Oops Journalism.  The coverage of the Covington HS incident during this year's March for Life may have shown journalism at its worse.  Depending on your personal bias, you could find a version of the event to confirm it.  In this age of 24/7 news and instantaneous coverage of events, journalists and the media that employs them have incentives to be first with a piece of news.  If they get it wrong, many don't engage in introspection; they simply move on.

Democrats Con Their Base with Green New Deal.  [Scroll down]  If you believe for one second that any material provision of the Green New Deal will become policy, you're being conned.  A competent media could and should prove as much in mere moments.  A competent media could and should ask Kamala Harris at every campaign stop for her precise plan to "guarantee a job with a family-sustaining wage" to every person in the U.S.  A competent media could and should rush to press Elizabeth Warren about her precise plan to completely overhaul American power generation in a mere ten-year span without crushing the economy.  After all, if a series of Republican presidential candidates pledged together to, say, abolish Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid yet still also guarantee health care and retirement security for all Americans, wouldn't the media be extremely curious as to how they could pull off such an astounding achievement?

Democratic and Republican Résumé-Enhancers.  After serving as a Chicago community organizer and Illinois state senator, Barack Obama rose from a pedestrian three years as a U.S. senator to become the 44th president of the United States.  Coming out of a corrupt city and a corrupt state with corrupt politicians (four of the last seven Illinois governors have been jailed), Obama had a few election irregularities of his own that were basically unreported by the media.  Also largely ignored by the media was Obama's choice of mentor-pastor, Jeremiah Wright, who would regularly condemn America and white people from the pulpit on Sunday mornings, using coarse and inflammatory language.  Obama gave great speeches about bringing Hope and Change, which were short on specifics but emotionally appealing to many voters.  The lack of any specific plans to make America better was an appalling shortcoming of Obama's campaign, but the media ignored it.  Instead, the media fell in love with the idea that America had a chance to elect its first black president, so Obama's actual accomplishments, character, and intended policies were given short shrift.  Tom Brokaw and Charlie Rose, two of America's most recognized journalists, admitted in an interview a few days before the 2008 election that they didn't know what books might be important to Obama and didn't know anything about his foreign policy views.  The fact that these highly influential media figures purposely chose to remain clueless about Obama's beliefs and the policies he would promote as leader of the free world is a stunning admission of incompetency and journalistic malpractice.  Instead of being journalists presenting facts, the media hid important facts about Obama from the voters in an obvious attempt to influence the election.

Smollett case proves that journalism in this country is dead and buried.  In case after case after case, the mainstream media, they devour any story that just fits their radical, extreme extension of the Democratic socialist party agenda.  If it advances the narrative that Donald Trump is evil and his supporters are bad and America is scary and racist and sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic, the media mob will shift into full gear without performing any due diligence — without even picking up the telephone, without any kind of investigation, not even five minutes worth.  Look at what they did to the 16-year-old Covington high school student, Nick Sandmann.  Off a 15-second blurb, they accused him of being a racist, harassed him, accused him of assaulting a 65-year-old activist and getting in his face.  They tried to ruin this kid's life with slander, smearing, besmirching, character assassination.  They accused Justice Brett Kavanaugh of gang rape, saying that every other weekend, he and his friends were drugging teenage girls and literally, you know, lining up in the hall for gang rapes that nobody ever reported.  They tried to ruin his life, tried to call him an alcoholic.  We know how that ended.  He is now a Supreme Court justice.

Did the Media Jump the Gun on the Jussie Smollett Story?  In light of new details in the investigation of the alleged assault on actor Jussie Smollett, fingers have been pointed at "the media" for jumping the gun on the story.  In pushing back against that, there is an emerging effort to draw distinction between rapid fire activists and celebrities on social media, and members of the press.

Fact Check:  Barack Obama Installed Golf Simulator in White House.  Barack Obama was the first U.S. president to install a golf simulator in the White House, according to a bombshell report in the far-left Washington Post. [...] [W]hat we have here is yet another example of just how determined the Washington Post and the rest of the media are to live in their own heads; because they don't even realize what a dazzling self-own this report is.  Seriously, think about it:  the Washington Post "bombshell" on President Trump updating Obama's golf simulator, and doing so with his own money, just proves once again how useless and corrupt the establishment media are.  But with its stupid bombshell about Trump's golf simulator, all the far-left Post is doing is admitting it did not report on Obama's golf simulator, is admitting that were it not for the Post's obsessive hatred of Trump, the public never would have learned about Obama's golf simulator.

The Tail Of Twitter Is Wagging The Dog Of Media.  Mark Cuban got fact-checked in 2017 for approximating that Twitter only reaches about 15 percent of the population.  In all likelihood, he wasn't very far off.  It's almost impossible to estimate how many of us Twitter actually "reaches," but mapping out the limits of its scope is now an important project.  Twitter makes and breaks careers.  It makes and breaks lives.  Perhaps most saliently, the platform shapes news cycles, which, in turn, shape how people see the world.  Because journalists spend disproportionate time on the website relative to most of their audience, outlets increasingly amplify Twitter's viral stories, and seemingly without questioning their broader relevance.

Yet Another Reason Why CNN Isn't A Real News Organization.  Nowadays, it's typical for reporters to berate President Trump.  Gone are the days when decorum and simple manners reigned in the White House briefing room.  The situation has grown even worse in recent days.

The Progressive Race to the Bottom.  The media are not just becoming left-wing; they're no longer even a news-gathering operation.  Reporting is synonymous with editorializing.  Fake news — whether the latest BuzzFeed myth or the Covington charade — is simply a word for thirtysomethings who believe that they have a duty to promote race, class, and gender agendas that they were spoon-fed in college.  They too often define accuracy as the higher Truth that transcends the fossilized idea of truth predicated on obsolete ideas such as evidence, facts, and empiricism.

The Media Still Don't Get It.  Journalists and pundits ran with an incomplete story about an out-of-context video, showing a student at the March For Life wearing a red MAGA hat smiling in front of a Native American man beating a drum.  They said the boy, Nick Sandmann, and the surrounding students were mocking and harassing the man, Nathan Phillips. [...] The media ran with this.  They had to — the story checked all of the boxes they are ever-so-eager to check:  white, Christian, pro-life Trump supporter is a racist.  They couldn't have concocted a more delicious recipe if they tried. [...] Then the truth came out.  Nearly two hours of footage was published, and the context it provided exonerated the Sandmann and the other Covington students.  As it turns out, members of the cult, Black Hebrew Israelites, were the real perpetrators of hate on the scene, hurling homophobic and racist insults at the teens (haven't heard a peep from leftists about them, though — fascinating).

More about News Media vs Covington Catholic High School.

Media's anti-Trump addiction amps up the outrage and fuels the public's suspicion.  Alas, much of today's political journalism has fallen into advocacy, intentionally inflammatory, using or omitting selective details, quotes and background to make a case against President Donald Trump.  The criticism generally centers on something he did or said he would do — or something someone, usually unidentified, said he might do or is considering possibly doing.  And then in a kind of staged Kabuki dance, journalists run to gather reaction from waiting opponents who provide a predictably outraged quote calling for counteraction.  Yes, this president's name boosts ratings and clicks from both sides.  But the media's addiction to anything Trump lets this president manipulate them, which he does skillfully.  It squeezes out other important news.  And it denies Americans a set of generally-accepted facts to debate, merely providing fodder for an anti-Trump agenda and more argumentative ammo for both sides.

Kyrsten Sinema's dress draws attention at Senate swearing-in.  Kyrsten Sinema and Martha McSally made history Thursday [1/3/2019], becoming the first two women from Arizona sworn into the U.S. Senate.  Sinema made even more history than that, becoming the first openly bisexual person in the Senate.  So, naturally, everyone talked about her dress.

Basic Premises.  If you rely on the mass media to inform you about your community, state and nation, you will, with rare exceptions, be woefully ignorant of what is really going on. [...] [S]ince most media companies are now controlled by a handful of corporations whose sole interest is in maintaining a high profit margin, you are getting mostly fluff instead of hard news.  Hard news is labor-intensive.  It is cheaper to go with the fluff.

Ripping Trump on Shutdown, MSNBC 'Republican' Elise Jordan Unaware Trump Donates Prez Pay.  Subbing for [Nicolle] Wallace on her MSNBC show this afternoon [12/28/2018], Elise Jordan, a former aide to Pres.  George W. Bush, provided another example of the genre.  Ripping President Trump over the shutdown, an overwrought Jordan declared that Trump "won't skip paychecks" as a result of the shutdown.  Technically that's true, since by law the President is deemed an essential employee.  But Jordan is apparently unaware that Trump has never cashed a presidential paycheck, donating each one instead to different government departments to fund good works.

McClatchy News Beclowns Themselves With Michael Cohen Sourcing.  After claiming to have proprietary information that Michael Cohen visited Prague, McClatchy News reporter Greg Gordon appeared on MSNBC to share the origin of the story.  Not only did the reporters who wrote the article not see the evidence, the sources they used for the claim that Cohen visited Prague also did not see the evidence.  Apparently, a person told another person, who then told Greg Gordon and Peter Stone what the 3rd hand person told them.  That's the sourcing for the claim that Michael Cohen's cell phone was in Prague.

Michael Cohen Report Is Based On Third-Hand Information, Reporter Reveals.  The reporters who broke a potentially bombshell story claiming evidence that Michael Cohen visited Prague during the 2016 presidential campaign did not see for themselves some of the underlying intelligence cited in their report, one of the journalists who wrote the story revealed Thursday [12/27/2018].  In an interview on MSNBC, Greg Gordon said that he and his McClatchy colleague, Peter Stone, did not physically see cell tower records and intelligence intercepts that they claim placed Cohen in Prague in summer 2016.  Gordon also suggested that the four anonymous sources he and Stone cite in their article also did not see the intelligence for themselves, meaning that the report is based on third-hand information.

Military writer does not understand chain of command.  Tara Copp is the Pentagon Bureau Chief for Military Times, which is owned by Gannett.  She wrote a column over the weekend, "What checks are left on the president's military power now that Mattis is gone?"  She has a master's degree from Georgetown, was an embedded reporter in the Iraq War, and has 15 years experience covering the Pentagon.  Despite all this, she never learned what the chain of command is.

The Biggest Junk Science of 2018.  [#11] Doctor Oz Endorses Astrology.  Celebrity physician Dr. Mehmet Oz is a quack doctor, plain and simple.  Once a respected surgeon, he left behind his legitimacy long ago by touting questionable health advice, bogus cures, and weight loss "miracles" on his popular daytime television show.  This summer, he fell even further down the rabbit hole by tweeting an endorsement of astrology.  Astrology, not to be confused with astronomy, suggests that the positions of celestial objects affect the fortunes of people and outcome of events here on Earth.  Though patently ridiculous, the pseudoscience has still been tested and — unsurprisingly — been found to be completely bogus.  But bogus is good enough for Doctor Oz, it seems.

The real tragedy of human-caused climate change theories is not environmental.  MSNBC anchor Katy Tur read an article in the New Yorker about the devastating effect California's wildfires have had due to climate change and proclaimed, ["]I read that New Yorker article today, and I thought, 'Gosh, how pointless is my life and how pointless are the decisions that I'm making on a day-to-day basis, when we are not focused on climate change every day, when it's not leading every one of our newscasts?'["]  That's not funny and not to be ridiculed.  It's sad.  It's sad because it appears she has been trained to say that ridiculous thing through deceit and pressure.

Knowles:  Mika Brzezinski's Name-Calling Typifies The Left's Political Discourse.  The Left likes to say that Donald Trump is the reason that American political discourse has fallen to its current low point, but is he really?  Or is this just more blame-shifting by the left-wing media?

This Is CNN: Stupid-Stupid-Stupid.  A classic look back at when longtime CNN anti-Trumper Wolf Blitzer was smoked and quickly discarded like a cheap Honduran cigar (by comedian Andy Richter no less) after finishing -$4600 on Celebrity Jeopardy.  As you watch this you would do well to remember that Mr. Blitzer is among the brightest of the dim-bulbed Establishment Media.  [Video clip]

Jim Acosta's lecturing of President Trump about harmlessness of caravan requires an apology.  After the scornful laughter subsides, Jim Acosta of CNN really owes an apology to President Trump for his inaccurate contentions about the harmlessness of the caravan and his prediction that they wouldn't storm the border.

Fake News along the border.  On Sunday [11/25/2018], the Associated Press reported, "Migrants approaching the U.S. border from Mexico were enveloped with tear gas Sunday after a few tried to breach the fence separating the two countries.  U.S. agents shot the gas, according to an Associated Press reporter on the scene.  Children were screaming and coughing in the mayhem."  The wire service quoted the invaders and Mexican officials, but not one U.S. official in its 582-word report.  That is not journalism because journalism requires telling both sides of the story.

Andrea Mitchell of MSNBC wins the prize for the stupidest comment on the border assault.  There is a lot of competition, but one Trump-hater stands out for utter, implausible, easily-refuted inanity in attempting to demonize opposition to the organized attempt to force our southern border open to anyone who wants to come here and sign up for the rich subsidies and benefits offered to poor people.  Congratulations to Andrea Mitchell:  you have now earned your place in broadcast history with the claim that calling the mob intent on violating our border a "caravan" demonizes them.

Newsweek Reporter:  Almost Everyone I've Ever Heard Of Who Owns An AR-15 Is A Mass Murderer.  What she said is a smear (a highly paranoid one too, ironically) but in her case it's probably the truth.  She's a professional journalist who lives in New York City.  She writes on feminism, Washington politics, and the Middle East.  How many people could she possibly know who own an AR-15? The only time she's apt to run across one is on the printed newspaper page, in stories about lunatics living out their revenge fantasies by reaching for something powerful that resembles an M-16.

CNN's Acosta vs Trump White House Lawsuit Reads Like It Was Written In Crayon.  CNN, apparently not satisfied with merely having nearly cornered the market on fake news, is going for the most incompetent news network as well.  Most have likely heard about its attempt to sue the Trump White House (and a Secret Service agent — stay classy, CNN) for having revoked bratty correspondent Jim Acosta's press pass.  Funny thing is, that lawsuit is now exposing CNN for how little it actually knows about anything — including the U.S. Constitution, the truth, and basic good manners.

Houston Chronicle retracts eight stories, corrects 64 more over questionable sourcing.  The Houston Chronicle has retracted eight stories by a former political reporter after an independent investigation found they were based on sources whose existence couldn't be confirmed.

The View's Joy Behar Blames Gerrymandering for Democratic Senate Losses.  Joy Behar of The View displayed her lack of knowledge on Wednesday [11/7/2018] when she blamed the Democratic Senate losses in the midterm elections on gerrymandering — despite that U.S. Senators represent the whole state rather than individual districts.  Behar made her comment during a discussion with ABC political analyst Matthew Dowd about how Democrats lost seats in the Senate on Tuesday despite having more overall votes than Republicans.

Shameful Election Coverage by Fox News.  "Why can we call the Democrats taking the House this early?" Fox News anchor Bret Baier asked analyst Chris Stirewalt.  "Because we're just that good," Stirewalt replied with a proud smirk.  That just about sums up Fox's election coverage of the 2018 midterms.  It was a self-indulgent display of self-promotion, bickering, and irresponsibility as the entire House was called before polls in the western part of the country had even closed.  One has to wonder how many people were deterred from voting when they heard Republicans had already lost the House.  There was a time when news media covered elections without needing to be the first horse out of the gate with results.

Huh? Reuters Reporter Urges US Government to Give Each Caravan Member $1 Million — And Save the US $175 Million!  Third caravan of illegal aliens marched through the hills of and rivers of Central America on its way to the US southern border. [...] Of course, the liberal media is in overdrive defending these illegal invaders.  Reuters reporter Patricia Zengerie posted this suggestion on Monday [11/5/2018] — Give them all a million dollars!  That ought to cut down on the illegal invaders, huh?

MSNBC's test 'misfire' airs results in Florida race for governor a day early.  MSNBC called the race early — by a day.  The cable news channel got ahead of itself Monday evening [11/5/2018] when it put a graphic onscreen showing the results of the Florida governor's race — roughly 24 hours before polls in the Sunshine State even closed.

MSNBC beclowned themselves handling Gillum's loss in Florida.  The most hilarious coverage of the midterms was MSNBC's handling of Andrew Gillum's losing campaign for Florida's governorship.  The 90% of the media that hates Trump and his supporters really, really wanted Andrew Gillum to win:  he's a radical leftist who is charismatic, articulate, and very left wing.  Oh, and he is black, which means he has the potential to drive black turnout to Obama-like levels.  MSNBC reported a Gillum victory before voting even started.

Disabled Vet Can't Vote After NBC Sets Up Camera In Handicapped Parking Space, Refuses To Move.  A disabled Air Force veteran says an MSNBC news crew blocked his way into a polling site in Houston when it parked in a handicapped parking spot.  "Went to vote, and found this waiting for us," James Berrie, who has multiple sclerosis, wrote on Facebook.  "The only van accessible spot and they're filming in it.  We asked them to move, pointed out how it was wrong, then went to vote, because it takes time to load up.  But came out and still there.  Not even packing up, still getting ready for their shot."

Should News Anchors Wear Ties?  One Station No Longer Thinks So.  Pretty much since the first television newscast, one wardrobe rule has been fairly consistent:  anchors wear ties.  One Boston station is trying to rewrite that rule.  Most of the time, news anchors wear ties and jackets when they deliver the news.  There are some individual newscasts, particularly at less usual news times, such as 4:00 pm or 7:00 pm, where male anchors can get away with not wearing or tie or wearing a tie with no sports coat.  But as a general rule, the biggest newscasts of the day still follow the old fashion format.  In Boston, that just changed for three NBC-owned outlets.

Media "Hot Takes" About Breaking News Are Dumb, Irresponsible.  As a species, we love chaos.  Excitement makes us excited.  Real world drama feeds our lives when television dramas cannot.  This fascination with death, destruction and misery is just a part of the human condition and I'm no way condemning or condoning it.  It is neither bad nor good, moral nor immoral.  It just is.  But our fascination with that which goes wrong is intentionally exploited by a media vying for our attention.  Heck, you may well argue this very column is nothing but an attempt to get your attention during a period of chaos and drama.  I wouldn't even argue with you.  In order to get your attention, in order to win your clicks, media ramps up the chaos.  With irresponsible speculation.

Suspicious packages, not bombs.  Always wait 24 hours before reacting politically to crime news because the media generally does a terrible job in reporting national crime stories.  Rumors and hype hound the coverage because the amount of actual news does not warrant the amount of time devoted to the story on cable television.  Commentary from people ignorant of the facts (and limited in their intellect) dominate the airwaves. [...] Finally, the media's history of falling for hoaxes complicates the situation.  Liberals have succeeded in destroying America's ability to trust its media.  Calling a suspicious package a bomb did little to reassure us that the media is run by competent people.

Media Bias Examples for the Week of 10/15/2018.  [For example,] The Washington Post published an article suggesting Georgetown Prep, the high school that was relentlessly smeared during the Kavanaugh saga, is now seeking a new Director for Alumni Relations.  The article claimed that the opening was new and related to the bad press the school had received during from the Kavanaugh stories.  Only problem?  As the correction on the article now states, the school actually started looking for someone to fill this position back in July.  Something that they should have clearly checked before publishing this piece.

The Liberal Mob Must Be Stopped in November.  This week saw liberals obsessed with the disappearance, and now we know murder, of Jamal Khashoggi.  The obsession was not over how he was killed, despotic governments kill their citizens all the time and no one bats an eye, it was a combination of two things — his job and the opportunity to attack President Trump.  Khashoggi was billed as a journalist, but he was more of a columnist.  Either way, if he had any other job you never would have heard his name.  But journalists love stories about journalism the way Hollywood loves movies about the movie business.  Add in the ability to blame his murder on the President's criticism and you've got the perfect media storm.  And Democrats were more than happy to jump on board.

Hilarious: Andrea Mitchell asks historian to debunk a Trump claim and gets an unpleasant surprise.  An odd form of hubris has overtaken Democrats in both their political and media branches.  They are so certain that President Trump is ignorant and they are smart that they march right into traps of their own devising.

Media Mangles Its Duty to Question Ford.  A reasonable, objective, establishment media would have spent far more time than it has in delving into Dr. Christine Blasey Ford's background and credibility, and her veracity under oath — especially if they think it relevant to endlessly parse Brett Kavanaugh's high school yearbook, jokey memos about Beach Week, and collegiate throwing of ice from a barroom glass.  Granted, there is an important line, not to be crossed, between rational examination of relevant information and, on the other hand, blaming or bullying the putative victim.  Yet the examination must be done.  The accused cannot be automatically assumed to be guilty.  This isn't just a legal principle, but a moral one.  A false allegation, even if it never reached a court of law, can ruin reputations and even lives.  Yet most of the media has acted as if the only one whose veracity and character are legitimate grounds for investigation is the one accused of heinous acts.

The Mainstream Media Fraud.  In their anger and retaliation, far too many mainstream reporters, editors, anchors, and columnists exhibit an inability to generate an original thought or comprehend basic concepts, hence fabrications, innuendo, and "fake news" are the hallmark of the mainstream media today.  Further, they are much more impatient than those who preceded them — thus, the herd mentality in the despicable reporting on Judge Kavanaugh, the distorted coverage of Donald Trump, and the determination to foment tribalism and resentment.  These overt actions are why Americans, as polling reveals, have become increasingly suspicious of the mainstream media and are searching for alternative sources of news.

You Idiot Reporters Are Making It Worse.  Democratic senators who announced they would never vote for Kavanaugh under any circumstance keep getting asked if the FBI investigation they demanded will be "enough for them."  Enough for what?  To still vote no?  I'm not criticizing the Democrats themselves — though I obviously could — I'm criticizing the people who interview these senators.  Time and again, these journalists interview the Democrats as if they were open-minded about this investigation when in every breath they insist that the investigation will be illegitimate if it doesn't prove what they want it to prove.

Critics condemn New Yorker over uncorroborated Kavanaugh story: 'Lazy at best, slimy at worst'.  The New Yorker's sketchy report that Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh may have exposed himself to a college classmate decades ago has media critics asking if the prestigious magazine cares more about getting a story or getting it right.

Are We on the Verge of Civil War?  The internet and social media often descend into an electronic lynch mob.  In a nanosecond, an insignificant local news story goes viral.  Immediately hundreds of millions of people use it to drum up the evils or virtues of either progressivism or conservatism.  Anonymity is a force multiplier of these tensions.  Fake online identities provide cover for ever greater extremism — on the logic that no one is ever called to account for his or her words.  Speed is also the enemy of common sense and restraint.  Millions of bloggers rush to be the first to post their take on a news event, without much worry about whether it soon becomes a "fake news" moment of unsubstantiated gossip and fiction.

News the press buried today.  President Trump is a more trustworthy source of news than the media.  No wonder they hate him.

Brian Stelter Ignores CNN's Bungled Trump Tower Story.  The host of CNN's media criticism show "Reliable Sources" on Sunday [8/26/2018] interviewed Carl Bernstein, one of the reporters who wrote a since-debunked story asserting that former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen claimed President Donald Trump approved the infamous Trump Tower meeting.  But Bernstein's faulty reporting was not one of the topics of discussion on the CNN show, which is hosted by Brian Stelter.  Instead, Stelter led a panel discussion in which Trump was called a "liar" several times.

The 'Echo Chamber' Isn't A Conspiracy Theory, It's A Fact.  When I finally got to the end of a supposed blockbuster piece by the New Yorker's Adam Entous and Ronan Farrow regarding a dark conspiracy theory that had been spreading within the Trump White House, I was struck by two things:  1) the innocuousness of the memo in question, and 2) how the basis of the memo was plainly true.  The piece, in fact, goes a long way in substantiating the memo's contention about the media, allowing former Obama administration officials and their allies to offer ludicrous claims without even a scintilla of journalistic skepticism.

MSNBC shows incorrect 'How Impeachment Works' graphic for 2 straight days.  MSNBC anchor Ali Velshi and his production team misinformed viewers for two consecutive days this week with faulty graphics for its "How Impeachment Works" coverage.  Political junkies and reporters at The Washington Free Beacon informedMSNBC on Wednesday that its lesson on the impeachment process got basic facts wrong, but the network still presented incorrect graphics on Thursday [8/23/2018].  Mr. Velshi lived out his own moment from the movie "Groundhog Day" when he was presented with a slide on "60 votes out of 100" needed in the Senate for impeachment.  A two-thirds majority is the real requirement.

Brian Williams insults viewers and all of America with Pathetic segment on Trump and dogs.  MSNBC host Brian Williams stretched his journalistic muscles with a ridiculous segment falsely claiming that President Donald Trump has only been photographed with one dog.  Under the guise of investigating Trump's history with canines and his use of the word "dog," Williams examined during "The 11th Hour" on Tuesday [8/14/2018] whether the president actually dislikes man's best friend since an "extensive search" of a "few minutes" turned up only one photo.

The Omarosa News Cycle is Everything that's Wrong with Media Coverage of Trump.  Here's a montage of her whining about how America is doomed at the hands of Trump mashed up with footage of her gleefully declaring a year earlier that everyone who criticized Trump was going to have to eat crow.  [Video clip]  She was all about Trump when he made her famous.  Now that she's on the outs with him, she's adopted a critical tone in order to win favor with the mainstream media who cannot resist booking people who will say critical things about Trump — especially from a former surrogate.  She's playing members of the media and they are letting her do it to them, because tapes!

CNN Reporter Shares Peter Strzok Tweet — From A Parody Account.  CNN's Chris Cillizza was in such a hurry to share a tweet from former FBI agent Peter Strzok that he didn't stop to look at it very closely.  It was from a parody account called "NotPeterStrzok."

Watch Liberal Media Hacks Scream At Top Of Their Lungs at President Trump in Oval Office.  The reporters know when they come into a meeting whether or not the president will take questions.  On Monday [7/30/2018] the president was not planning on taking questions.  The liberal media hacks wanted desperately to harass the president about the Russian-collusion witch hunt while he was sitting with a foreign leader.  So they started SCREAMING at President Trump!  It sounded like they were SCREAMING at the top of their lungs!  [Video clip]

Anatomy of a Media Error.  Which is worse, academic sloppiness or fake news?  Hard to say, for both present a challenge to a functioning democracy.  I've so often documented the outlandish errors that leftist and Islamist academics make about me, I even have a bibliography on the topic.  So, here's one about the press.

Nets Refuse to Declare Trump Victorious as E.U. Buckles on Trade.  At a Wednesday [7/25/2018] press conference in the White House Rose Garden, President Trump and E.U. Chief Executive Jean-Claude Juncker announced that the two trade partners were moving forward on a plan to end their trade war.  Juncker's presence at the White House illustrated that it was the E.U. that caved under pressure, but the liberal broadcast networks (ABC, CBS, and NBC) were having none of it and refused to give Trump the win.  During World News Tonight, ABC was so against declaring Trump the victor that they insisted he was the one that failed under pressure.  "To the President tonight, under pressure after his own tariffs igniting a trade war," sensationalist anchor David Muir began the segment.  "Well tonight, the President with a new promise.  Reaching out to the European Union, he called them a foe just a week ago, but late today, calling a press conference outside the White House to say they will now work together."

The Editor says...
In the following sentence, see if you can find a verb:  "Well tonight, the President with a new promise."  That's not even English.  It's Headline-ese.  How are the millions of illegal aliens supposed to learn English with incompetent tripe like that on the air?  (Answer:  They don't intend to learn English — they're watching Univision and Telemundo.)

How Far Will the Left Go?  All the Way.  [Scroll down]  Each day brings a new outrage, a development enthusiastically promulgated by a brain-dead media that thinks a headline must contain the words "sparks outrage" or "comes under fire," to be newsworthy.  The foxes of anger and resentment have been set among the hens of political cohesion, and every day the squawking grows louder — as it will until that day comes when there are no more hens left to lay the eggs.

Another waiter lying about bigotry.  The world as we know it collapsed briefly this weekend when waiter Khalil Cavil in Odessa, Texas, scribbled, "We don't tip terrorist," on a receipt and claimed a couple had left it.  Matthew Martinez of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram ignored earlier waiter hoaxes of a similar nature, and went with the story, [...] They would have you believe that someone was stupid enough to write that and use a traceable credit card to identify them.  Martinez and his editors ignored the November 26, 2013, report, "Couple Denies Leaving Anti-Gay Note in Lieu of Tip, Says It's a Scam."  That was waitress Dayna Morales.  Martinez and his editors ignored the February 27, 2017, report, "Lawyer:  Waitress showered in cash after 'don't tip black people' story a fraud."  The was waitress Kelly Carter.  Martinez and his editors ignored the May 24, 2014, report, "Man accused of leaving racist receipt at Red Lobster sues waitress, restaurant."  That was waitress Toni Christina Jenkins.

Please, Please, Please Stop Reporting on Viral Receipt Stories.  Most recently, outlets as varied as the Washington Post, USA Today, HuffPo, the Dallas Morning News, Associated Press, Fox News, and CBS News, all reported on a Facebook post from Odessa, Texas, waiter named Khalil Cavill.  The 20-year-old posted a picture of a receipt he received while working at Saltgrass Steak House in which his first name was circled and "We don't tip terrorist" was written next to it.  Cavill is Christian, but wrote that he was "sick to my stomach" and said he was sharing it "because I want people to understand that this is racism, and this hatred still exists."  The restaurant stood up for Cavill and banned the customer, earning applause from Muslim civil rights organizations like CAIR.  But less than a week later, Cavill admitted that he forged the racist note.  Cavill was fired, and Saltgrass Steak House apologized to the customer and invited him back for a free meal.

The Editor says...
One free meal?  That's it?  After being falsely accused and banned from the restaurant, the least they could do is let him eat there absolutely free of charge for the rest of his life — assuming that he would ever return to Saltgrass, which I certainly wouldn't.  (I've never been there.)

Mainstream media are awash in a tsunami of trivia.  Newspaper publishers, pressed to do all manner of things that were once thought disreputable and wrong, just to keep the ship afloat, are always on the scout for corners and budgets to cut, and sometimes they're tempted to cut the wrong things first.  The editor of a major newspaper once told me that his publisher suggested cutting everyone whose bylines never appear in the paper.  These are usually anonymous copy editors who give a story its last read before going to press.  They have saved many a writer — and many an editor and publisher — from disaster.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez makes another embarrassing gaffe — and Bernie Sanders tweets it out.  In an embarrassing gaffe that is being ridiculed by left and right, far left New York candidate Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez accidentally misidentified what party she is campaigning for.

Ocasio-Cortez In Kansas: 'We're Going To Flip This Seat RED In November'.  Socialist Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez appeared in a video that was posted on Sen. Bernie Sanders' (I-VT) Twitter account on Friday where she said that she was working to flip the seat "red."  "Hello everybody," Ocasio-Cortez began.  "I'm so excited to be hopping on here, on Senator Sanders' account, and we're here in Kansas City to rally for Brent Welder."  Then Ocasio-Cortez made her gaffe.  "We're going to flip this seat red in November," Ocasio-Cortez said.

The Editor says...
That might not have been a mistake.  She might mean RED, as in communist.

Media Train wreck:  Yeah, About That Picture Of The Alleged Russian Spy In The Oval Office... It's Not Her.  [Scroll down]  There was a picture of a woman with red hair--Butina is a redhead--in the Oval Office with President Trump.  Great Odin's raven!  But it's not her.  It's an NSC staffer with red hair.

Identical letters appear in 21 newspapers across 12 states slamming Trump's Supreme Court pick — and they're all signed by different people.  Judge Brett Kavanaugh is going into the Supreme Court confirmation process with a hail of rhetorical arrows zinging by him, including a phony letter-writing campaign aimed at unsuspecting American newspaper editors[.]  At least 21 papers were duped last week, including big-market brands like the Dallas Morning News and The Washington Times.  They ran identical letters over a four-day period, each signed by a different person.  The effort is an example of public-relations 'astroturfing,' a technique meant to simulate genuine grassroots support for an idea or cause.

Trump-Bashing Rants By Late-Night 'Comics' Now Get Treated As Real News.  If you rely on the nation's top news sites to determine what was really important about the Trump-Putin Helsinki summit, the answer would be:  How did Trump-hating late-night talk-show hosts react?  We are not kidding.  This is how low the mainstream press has sunk.

How not to negotiate.  Democrats and their lackeys in the Fourth Estate demanded President Trump confront Putin about Crimea, about human rights, and election meddling.  That is how they negotiate? [...] Instead, President Trump complimented Putin's hosting of that soccer thingy, and worked on areas of agreement.  They have many common concerns:  Afghanistan, Korea, and Syria, although they are today on opposite sides of that issue.  But the journalists are either too stupid, too dishonest, or too stupidly dishonest to accept that.

[The] Associated Press Botched [a recent] Story On [the] GOP Immigration Bill.  The Associated Press ran a story about the GOP immigration bill in June that carelessly handled information from Arizona Rep. Martha McSally.  McSally, who is running for Senate in Arizona, spoke to AP reporter Steve Peoples for a story about the "compromise" immigration bill that included amnesty for 1.8 million immigrants, ended family separations at the border and secured funding for a border wall.  The bill failed in the House after the AP story was published, but at the time, Peoples painted McSally as being insensitive to the plight of separated families.

Brian Ross is leaving ABC after botched Michael Flynn report.  ABC News' Brian Ross — who was suspended last year as chief investigative correspondent for a faulty report on Michael Flynn — is leaving the network, Page Six has exclusively learned.  ABC suspended Ross last December for a month without pay for a botched report on ousted White House national security adviser Flynn that reported President Trump directed Flynn to make contact with Russian officials.  The mistake even sent stocks tumbling, and ABC issued an apology saying:  "We deeply regret and apologize for the serious error."  We hear that Ross on Monday [7/2/2018] announced he's leaving the network.

Opposing viewpoint:
Brian Ross Didn't Resign Over the Fake News Flynn Story, He Resigned Because He Was "Reporter 4" Within James Wolfe Indictment.  By now everyone has reported about ABC journalist Brian Ross and his Producer Rhonda Swartz resigning from the network.  However, almost everyone pointing back to Ross's fake news report on Michael Flynn in December; and almost no-one is pointing out the more obvious motive for the resignation.  Brian Ross was almost guaranteed to be "Reporter 4" in the federal indictment of Senate former senior senate intelligence committee staffer James Wolfe.  The notorious Senate Intelligence "leaker".

Is the First Amendment an Excuse for SLOPPY, AWFUL Journalism?  As most people know, once speech is "constitutionalized" by discussing public figures, public officials or matters of public concern, the aggrieved party must prove that the publication was issued with "actual malice", defined as "knowing falsity or reckless disregard for the truth."  Understanding the "knowing falsity" prong is simple.  If a publication invented a defamatory allegation out of thin air, they're likely to be ruled against.  Most media entities in that situation will argue in court that the statement isn't really defamatory or isn't really about the complainant.  More often than not when the press loses attempts to have a case dismissed on those grounds they write a check to make the problem go away.  The "reckless disregard" prong is much more difficult to navigate.

The Zombie Media.  The playbook of the leftist media isn't a particularly thick volume, but it's all they know.  In the absence of any success, except among the bitter brainwashed progeny of what passes for universities, they have little choice but to carry out the instruction on their playbook's last page: when all else fails — repeat, repeat, repeat!  While it is true that repetition has a certain power to convince, it does have limits.  You can sway a few weak minds by publicizing and politicizing every single cop-shoots-black-man incident in the country, but the Trump-is-Putin's-puppet narrative gets a little old when the best you can come up with are campaign people speaking to miscellaneous Russians about nothing much.  Sooner or later, "unnamed sources" need to be named.  At this stage, substituting "unnamed government officials" doesn't really help.  They might as well say "unnamed Hillary Clinton supporters."  Or, just as likely "the reporter sitting next to me."

NBC's Pete Williams Struggles To Describe How Shotguns Work.  NBC correspondent Pete Williams employed an interesting analogy on Friday when trying to describe how shotguns work.  According to Williams, describing the gun used by the shooter in the Capital Gazette newsroom on Thursday, insisted that shotguns operate like a "backwards funnel."  "A shotgun, uh, uh, you know, if you're not familiar with a shotgun, it sets out a spray of pellets and because a bullet simply goes in a straight line and shotgun is sort of like a backwards funnel, it spreads it out so that you don't have to aim very precisely," Williams claimed on MSNBC on Friday [6/29/2018].

The Editor says...
It sounds like the only shotgun he's ever seen was in the hands of Elmer Fudd.

Journalists 'Fraudulently' Posed as Translators at Migrant Center, Say Feds.  U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officials said "several journalists" claimed to be translators in order to gain access to illegal immigrants being processed by Border Patrol agents after they illegally crossed the border from Mexico.  Two were identified as journalists by officials and turned away.  However, a third successfully gained entry on Tuesday [6/26/2018] and made their way "fraudulently" into the processing center during a time scheduled for attorney-client privileged meetings, CBP officials stated.

Ex-CNN producer blasts Jim Acosta for 'self-serving antics'.  A former CNN producer took to Twitter on Friday [6/29/2018] to blast Jim Acosta, the network's White House correspondent, for what he called Acosta's "self-serving antics," saying they "give all good journalists a bad name."  The posts by Steve Krakauer, a former senior digital producer for the network who is now is a top executive at Commerce House, a Dallas-based advertising firm, were prompted by a question that Acosta shouted to President Donald Trump on Friday [6/29/2018] during a White House event on the economy and tax cuts.

New Yorker staffer resigns after falsely accusing ICE agent of having Nazi tattoo.  The fact-checker for the New Yorker who mistook a Marine veteran's tattoo for a Nazi symbol has resigned, saying the "small mistake" has ruined her life.  Talia Lavin is out of a job following her June 18 tweet that caused mass outrage.  "I feel like I made a small mistake and it's destroyed my life," she told New York Magazine's The Cut.  Lavin's since-deleted tweet was about Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent Justin Gaertner, whom she falsely accused of having a tattoo of the Nazis' Iron Cross.

Moms to Daughters: Don't Be Ali Watkins.  The case of Ali Watkins offers mothers an opening to have an uncomfortable yet necessary conversation with their daughters:  Don't sleep your way to the top.  One would think in this #metoo, female empowerment, equal pay, don't-even-tell-me-my-dress-is-pretty climate of workplace taboos, that conversation would be unnecessary.  Twenty-something women and their successors have been programmed to be independent of men — especially white, older men. [...] So, it's surprising to discover that young liberal women are still getting ahead the old-fashioned way.  And not only is this behavior accepted, it is rewarded by the same news media overlords who have fueled the gender wars; boasted about their fealty to women in the workplace; and ridiculed powerful men preying on ambitious young women.

Terms of surrender.  President Trump and Kim Jong Un signed a terse agreement after their historic meeting in Singapore. [...] The American press will get it all wrong.  That's what they do.

Jaws drop when Jim Acosta busts up historic moment for peace with disgraceful inappropriate questions.  Will it finally be the end for Jim Acosta's White House press credentials?  Civilized Americans eager to see an end to a decades-long contentious relationship with North Korea were mortified to hear a "journalist" yell out a combative questions at a highly inappropriate time... "Did you talk about Otto Warmbier, sir?"  Acosta's antics during the moment when President Trump and Kim Jong Un sat down to sign a joint declaration after discussing peace between nations didn't end there.

At Historic Moment for Peace, CNN's Jim Acosta Shouts Something Jaw-Dropping.  Jim Acosta, CNN's White House correspondent best-known for being the most vocal provocateur in the press pool, took it to a new level in Singapore yesterday.  Watch (below) as Acosta interrupts the historic summit between President Donald J. Trump and North Korean Dictator Kim Jong-un by shouting questions at the most inappropriate time imaginable.  As President Trump was signing the document, Acosta indignantly shouted, "Mr. President, did we agree to denuclearize?"  As it would have been an inappropriate moment to react, Trump remains silent.  That is when Acosta asked another question:  "Did you talk about Otto Warmbier, sir?"

Levin: The media have no clue on the Constitution or Trump's pardon power.  Monday on the radio, LevinTV host Mark Levin addressed a claim by President Donald Trump's lawyer Rudy Giuliani that the president has the power to pardon himself.  "The media have determined that [Trump] can't," Levin said.  "Now, they have no constitutional background, they can't point to a single thing at the Constitutional Convention or any of the ratification conventions."  He went on to explain what the U.S. Constitution says and why the media are wrong.  [Audio clip.]

NYPD officially phases out revolvers as 25-year vets transition to 9-mm.  The last crop of cops transitioning from the old-school revolver to the modern semi-automatic handguns reported to the NYPD shooting range in the Bronx for training Wednesday [5/30/2018].  The remaining 150 police officers — who all joined the force before 1993, when the the .9-mm [sic] semi-automatic became the department's service weapon — had until Aug. 31 to be be trained on new guns.

The Editor says...
I'd like to see that 0.9-millimeter model mentioned by the New York Daily News.

Mainstream Media's Credibility Problem Is Of Their Own Making.  Not only are stories on mainstream news reports biased; they are often mistake-ridden.  In the past few years, there are dozens upon dozens of examples of factual mistakes in the mainstream media.  CNN has had to issue multiple corrections on their ongoing Trump-Russia collusion reporting.  ABC's Brian Ross was suspended for mistakenly reporting that President Trump ordered former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn to make contact with the Russian authorities. [...] So, not only are the mainstream media biased, they're also incompetent.  Headlines and scandalous snippets that the news shows can flash on chyrons trump facts, and they are what is important to the mainstream media.  They eschew fact checking in favor of sensational headlines.  They create salacious news narratives, meant not to inform but to sell advertising.

Mueller Year One:  The Real Heroes in Journalism.  CNN won an award for its January 2017 report about President-elect Trump being briefed on the bogus Steele dossier.  While we now know the story was improperly leaked by former Director of National Intelligence (and virulent Trump foe) James Clapper to shotgun the Trump-Russia collusion plotline days before the inauguration — and the celebrated CNN reporters did little more than regurgitate talking points spoon-fed to them by political operatives (one is known to have close ties to Fusion GPS) — the network was applauded for its "depth of reporting."

Daily Barrage of Anonymous Sources Is Neither News nor Journalism.  First, this is barely a story.  Volatility in the Trump administration ceased being front-page stuff a long time ago.  Presidents getting mad at those who work for them isn't new either, it just doesn't get reported when a Democrat occupies the Oval Office.  The problem with this "story" is that it relies on a source or sources who aren't named.  Before I proceed it should be pointed out that I am merely using this story as an example.  It may prove to be 100% true — but a good many of these don't.

Media lies are the real scandal.  John C. Harwood at CNBC wrote a piece, "Most voters have become numb to each new Trump scandal because they don't believe what he says anyway."  Wrong.  Most voters are numb because we no longer believe the media.

The 'experts' were wrong in 2016; they could be wrong in 2018 too.  As you watch the 2018 campaign being analyzed by pundits on TV, in newspapers, and in blogs, just remember how wrong they all were in 2016.  They were wrong about candidate Donald J. Trump all through the primaries.  They were wrong about the impact of the Republican and Democratic conventions.  They were wrong throughout the fall campaign — and they kept telling us why each new headline signified the end of Trump's candidacy.  Finally, they were wrong on Election Day, up until the actual results gave them no alternative but to accept the reality that Trump had won as a total outsider and defeated the ultimate insider — a former first lady, U.S. senator, and secretary of state.  Since then, the national media have remained ignorant of political realities.

Our Deranged White House Press Corps.  The White House press corps is utterly deranged by its hatred for President Trump and its determination to help its party crush his administration.  A lot of people, sadly, aren't very good at their jobs.  But I doubt that you could find, anywhere in our vast country, a group of people who are as terrible at their jobs as the members of the White House press corps.

Drew Cloud Is a Well-Known Expert on Student Loans.  One Problem:  He's Not Real.  Drew Cloud is everywhere.  The self-described journalist who specializes in student-loan debt has been quoted in major news outlets, including The Washington Post, The Boston Globe,, and CNBC, and is a fixture in the smaller, specialized blogosphere of student debt. [...] After The Chronicle spent more than a week trying to verify Cloud's existence, the company that owns The Student Loan Report confirmed that Cloud was fake.  "Drew Cloud is a pseudonym that a diverse group of authors at Student Loan Report, LLC use to share experiences and information related to the challenges college students face with funding their education," wrote Nate Matherson, CEO of LendEDU.  Before that admission, however, Cloud had corresponded at length with many journalists, pitching them stories and offering email interviews, many of which were published.

Revealed: Robert Mueller's FBI Repeatedly Abused Prosecutorial Discretion.  Journalist Mike Allen of Axios recently said that one word described Special Counsel Robert Mueller, and that word was "unafraid."  The context for his remarks on Fox News' "Special Report" was that Mueller had just spun off to the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York a bit of his limitless investigation into President Donald J. Trump.  Allen's comment was like so many others from media and pundit types since the special counsel was launched.  If there's one word to describe the media's relationship to Mueller, it's "unquestioning."

American Journalists Are Hysterical Knuckleheads.  This column has, on occasion, been disparaging toward American journalism, but only because it is now populated by the biggest bunch of knuckleheads ever to be assembled outside of Knucklehead City on the planet Knucklehead.  Remember the sitcom news anchor Ted Baxter with the big voice and the slick haircut and minuscule IQ?  Well, if you added the emotional stability of a three-year-old having a temper tantrum, you would have your typical American journalist and commentator, not just on cable but at the networks and newspapers too.  I could lasso a gorilla, give him a lobotomy, and teach him to do the job better than these clowns in fifteen minutes.

NBC's Chuck Todd Doesn't Understand Good Friday.  NBC News' Chuck Todd said Friday that he likes to remind people on Good Friday that "any day can become 'good,'" causing many to question if he understands the religious significance of the holiday.

NBC's Chuck Todd and his Good Friday tweet showed disrespect for Christians, and for America itself.  Last Friday [3/30/2018], Good Friday in the Western Christian Church, the archetypical broadcast journalist, NBC's "Meet the Press" host Chuck Todd, used his media bullhorn to mock and further divide America over religion.  Todd tweeted:  "I'm a bit hokey when it comes to 'Good Friday.'  I don't mean disrespect to the religious aspect of the day, but I love the idea of reminding folks that any day can become 'good,' all it takes is a little selflessness on our own part.  Works EVERY time."

Soros's ProPublica makes a major, embarrassing correction.  ProPublica, the high-and-mighty investigative-reporting foundation financed by George Soros, Herbert and Marion Sandler, the Ford Foundation, and the MacArthur Foundation and other leftwing elitist moneybags, has been forced to issue an embarassing correction to one of its vaunted investigative reports.

ProPublica Retracts Report that Trump's CIA Pick Oversaw Waterboarding of Abu Zubaydah.  The nonprofit journalism site ProPublica posted a correction Thursday of a 2017 report that Gina Haspel oversaw the waterboarding of Abu Zubaydah.  Haspel has been nominated by President Donald Trump to take over the CIA in place of Mike Pompeo, who in turn has been nominated to be the next Secretary of State to replace Rex Tillerson.  ProPublica initially reported on Feb. 22, 2017 — after Haspel was nominated to be CIA Deputy Director — that she oversaw the "black site" base in Thailand when Zubaydah, a suspected leader of the terror group al Qaeda, was waterboarded, and it also said she mocked his suffering.

ProPublica's massive screw-up catches many outlets.  The February 2017 story was a hit job on CIA Deputy Director Gina Haspel.  It involved the interrogation of Abu Zubaydah, who the CIA says was an Al Qaeda leader.  The ProPublica story said Haspel had overseen his waterboarding "and other coercive interrogation methods that are widely seen as torture."  She allegedly "mocked the prisoner's suffering," demonizing her even further.  Except it didn't happen.  "Neither of these assertions is correct and we retract them," ProPublica wrote in a correction published Thursday — more than a year after the original incorrect story was published and, coincidentally, on the Ides of March.

Corn? Wheat?  It's All The Same to the New Yorker.  I subscribed to the New Yorker for a number of years, but finally canceled my subscription when I couldn't take the magazine's left-wing politics any more.  Those were the days when the New Yorker was famous for its scrupulous fact-checking.  That time is long gone.[...] The sad decline of the New Yorker is one of countless examples of how leftism destroys respected institutions from the inside.  From famously dogged fact-checking to an inability to tell corn from wheat:  that trajectory traces the New Yorker's descent into irrelevance, at least when it comes to non-fiction.

President Trump's Economic Approach Toward National Security Wins — U.S. Media Ignore.  The corporate media are hopelessly deficient in their coverage and explanations of how strategic objectives for national security are being delivered through a geopolitical Trump Doctrine via economic leverage.  The results are stunningly effective, yet few have noticed and even fewer seem willing to articulate; perhaps their inability is because they simply just don't get it.

16 Stupidest Comments About the Parkland Shooting Massacre (So Far).  In the wake of the Parkland school shooting massacre, and in order to deflect away from the only answer to this contagion of school shootings (which of course is hardening school security), our media and the left in general have to manufacture one stupid-hour after another in order to keep the focus on gun-grabbing.  The results of this cynical and desperate crusade have not only exposed these provincial elites as completely opposed to keeping our children safe, but as liars, and morons.  Here are the 16 most dishonest and/or stupidest things we have heard so far...

Snopes Fact Checks, Facebook Threatens Satire Site for Mocking CNN.  The Christian satire site Babylon Bee has been fact-checked by Snopes and threatened by Facebook after it published an Onion-style article about CNN about purchasing a washing machine to "spin the news."

Satire Website Babylon Bee is Being Marked as Fake News on Facebook.  I'll be the first to admit I've been snagged by a few Babylon Bee headlines.  Not to the point I needed them fact-checked.  More of a double-take.  "Wait, did this really happen... oh, you Babylon Bee guys!"  But that's just me.  Others have needed the stories fact-checked for them.  To the point where Facebook is threatening to penalize the Bee's Facebook page.

Laughably Stupid Media Mistakes In Gun Reporting:  How Much Do They Matter?  As surely as night follows day, a mass shooting is followed by national grief, cries of "politicization" and various forms of kabuki (blustery speeches, staged "town hall" events augmented with social media thoughts and prayers, and of course, hashtags). [...] Part of the massacre-grief-anger-blame cycle includes journalists too-frequently beclowning themselves with stunningly idiotic statement about firearms.

Busybodies battle outbreaks of freedom.  The majority leader of California's state Assembly has introduced legislation that would impose a fine of up to $1,000 on any waiter or waitress who offers a plastic drinking straw to a customer without being asked.  The Washington Post notes that this is part of a growing anti-straw movement, which is driven by alarm over the 500 million straws that are used every single day — which is almost certainly a fake number, seeing as how it is based on an unconfirmed phone survey by a 9-year-old boy.  (Yes, really.)

Trump supporter, 76, blames 'fake news' CNN for threats following reporter ambush.  Florine Gruen Goldfarb, 76, never thought her Trump-inspired activism during the 2016 election would earn her infamy and ridicule — but that's what happened thanks to CNN.  CNN correspondent Drew Griffin ambushed the Trump supporter outside her home earlier this week because she may have unwittingly promoted a Russian-coordinated event during the 2016 election.  Now she's receiving threats on social media, and she lays the blame at the news network's feet.

Media Falsely Reports Florida Shooter Had Ties to White Nationalists.  The mainstream media has falsely reported that the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting suspect Nikolas Cruz was a member of a white nationalist militia.  Cruz's connections to any white nationalist group have been unverified, but the damage has already been done as rumors of this alleged affiliation continue to prevail.  Republic of Florida leader Jordan Jereb allegeldy told the Anti-Defamation League that Cruz was a member of his white nationalist militia and participated in paramilitary drills.  The AP tweeted last Thursday:  "Leader of white nationalist group has confirmed suspect in Florida school shooting was a member of his organization."  Minutes later, however, the AP sent a second tweet, in which the headline was changed to read, "Leader of a white nationalist milita says" that Cruz was a member.  That tweet was accompanied by a story in which a law-enforcement official stated he was unaware of any ties between Cruz and the white nationalist group.  Unfortunately, the second story did not have the viewership of the first story.

Perhaps certain anchors should get a refund for their college tuition.  Journalism, you are doing it wrong!  [Video clip]

Analysts on TV don't understand how our economy works.  Since Clinton's presidency, rates have been falling, as have real wages after health care, college tuitions and other costs are figured in.  Under Trump, Americans have quietly begun to do better today than they had just a year ago — or many years before that.  And that prosperity is what is ultimately driving the bond market into the ground and yields through the roof.  But most talking heads can't comprehend that good growth equals good wages and good stock returns while rates rise.

NBC still going for the gold in on-air blunders.  Most recently, sportscaster Dan Hicks [...] covered an Alpine race in which little-known Ester Ledecka of the Czech Republic beat Austria's Anna Veith, and won the gold medal.  Ledecka, who ranked No. 43 in the world, was considered to have so little chance to win that Hicks declared Veith the winner and NBC switched away. [...] But the race wasn't over.

The snookered press at Pyeongchang.  When Kim Jong-un dispatched his crack propaganda team to Pyeongchang (and not P.F. Chang, the Chinese restaurant chain, as reported by NBC News) to cover the Winter Olympics, he couldn't have imagined that the American media in town would have been so easy to con.  It was so easy, in fact, that a girl could do it, and she did.  "If 'diplomatic dance' were an event at the Winter Olympics," CNN reported with gasps of breathless wonder, "Kim Jong-un's younger sister would be favored to win the gold."  "Without a word, and only flashing smiles," observed The New York Times, "Kim Jong-un's sister outflanked Vice President Mike Pence in diplomacy."

Earth to NBC: Russians did not change one vote in 2016.  CNN just lost its Fake News crown to NBC.  Its effort to win the gold has been Olympic this month.  The network sent its anchor to Pyongyang to show what a paradise North Korea is.  Then it (and the rest of the Fake News media) fawned over Caligula Jong Un's sister.  Then it lied and said Koreans admire the Japanese.  No, Koreans hate the Japanese after 35 years of cruelty when Japan colonized Korea.  Now the Trump administration is pushing back twice as hard.  The subject is not the Olympics.  The subject is Fake News reporting by NBC on the long discredited Democratic Party's excuse that Russia meddled in the past presidential election.

Triumph of the Shills.  North Korea sent Kim Yo-jong, sister of Kim Jong-un and the nation's director of "Propaganda and Agitation," on a "charm offensive" to South Korea over the weekend.  With cheerleaders and pop-stars in tow, her mission was to help rehabilitate North Korea's image and shift focus away from the regime's human rights abuses and away from the fact that the Hermit Kingdom, essentially, is a giant prison.  The Western media was all too happy to report on Kim's sense of style, her shoes, her hair, and lack of makeup — to the exclusion of the moaning, emaciated elephant in the room.  There could be many reasons for this embarrassing spectacle — ranging from outright complicity, to political malice, to plain old laziness.  Most likely it's that pre-existing biases and journalistic laziness are creating a witch's brew that threatens to glamorize evil.  Western journalists are so blinded by disdain for the Trump Administration that any chance to embarrass the president and hurt his agenda is seen as a welcome opportunity.

CNN's Bizarre Praise of Kim Jong Un's Sister at the Winter Olympics.  CNN ran an absurd story Saturday afternoon, seemingly praising the sister of one the world's most evil dictators for "stealing the show" at the 2018 Winter Olympics in PyeongChang, South Korea.  The piece starts off, saying, "If 'diplomatic dance' were an event at the Winter Olympics, Kim Jong Un's younger sister would be favored to win gold."

15 Media Outlets that Colluded with North Korea to Romanticize Their Slave State.  Now that normal Americans have completely written off the disgraced institution of the American media, these amoral news outlets have been forced to pander to the only audience they have left — the far-left.  This is why, over the weekend, we witnessed almost every major news outlet prostitute itself to offer North Korea's Hitler the kind of positive press coverage President Trump would never receive, even if he rescued our economy and decimated the Islamic State (oh, wait, he did).

Dear America: Your News Media Absolutely Hates You.  [Scroll down]  Having judged the American project kaput after the election of Donald Trump, they are now stooping to the level of defending the North Koreans — perhaps the most brutal and heinous regime in the world today — thanks to some side-eye from its minister of propaganda, the sister of Kim Jong Un.  If the headlines are to be believed, "North Korea heading for diplomacy gold medal at Olympics" is the story American media want to tell about this moment.  I wish this was an exaggeration.  Witness this story from CNN today, with its dripping credulousness in attacking Mike Pence with a story sourced entirely to a diplomatic source close to the North Korean regime. [...] Let's be clear about what this is:  this is 15 year veteran reporter at CNN, Will Ripley, just straight up delivering North Korean propaganda whole cloth to an American audience, simply because it criticizes the Trump administration.

Journalism is Dead.  This week we saw a perfect example of how corrupt journalism has become.  There was an opportunity to report the news and journalists and their fellow travelers in the pundit class balked.  While that wasn't unusual, what was is how they did it in the lead up to the news, not bothering to wait until they'd seen what they were attempting to discredit. [...] The lying by Democrats in the lead up to the memo's release wasn't surprising, nor was the complicity of journalists in spreading that lie.  What was is how there was virtually no curiosity or interest in the memo and its contents in the days leading to its release from the people whose job it is supposed to be to convey information to the public.  All journalists did was attempt to taint it's release so as to foster disinterest in it in their audience when they could finally see it.

The true threat to our freedom and democracy is a compliant media.  James Comey illegally leaks government documents to a professor who releases it to the media.  Much later, Comey says the professor was his attorney.  Dianne Feinstein leaks testimony about the Russian investigation to the media.  She later blames a cold for her malfeasance.  Adam Schiff repeatedly goes to the media and claims there is evidence of a Russian collusion with Trump even though there is no actual evidence.  The media gladly repeats what Schiff says, acting as if it is factual.  Anonymous sources have repeatedly leaked material from private conversations at the White House and the media gladly takes the leaks and treats them as factual.  Information is repeatedly leaked from the "secret" Mueller investigation and it shows up in newspapers and on cable and network news.  But now, we are told that Democrats and the FBI say how dangerous it would be to the FBI and how it would undermine the justice system if a memo from Republicans were released to the public.

CNN Contributor Attempted To Slam Trump On National Motto, It Went Horribly Wrong.  Brian Karem is the White House correspondent for Playboy, executive editor for local Maryland newspapers, and a liberal CNN political analyst, is not an expert on American history.  During the State of the Union Address, Karem thought he'd caught President Donald Trump making a mistake when he said the motto of the United States is "In God we trust."  Karem tweeted, "Our motto is 'in God we trust.'" — WRONG.  Our motto has been E Pluribus Unum — out of many One."  He was wrong, and people immediately pounced.  "In God we trust" officially became the national motto in 1956.  It was reaffirmed in 2002, 2006, and 2011, with it passing the House of Representatives in 2011 by a vote of 396 to 9.

Reporters Spread Fake News Claiming Ivanka Kicked a Spanish Chef From a Restaurant.  When journalists don't fact-check, fake news spreads faster than chickenpox in a kindergarten with shared toothbrushes.  Spoiler:  that happened here.  With immigration issues fresh in the head cavities of leftists, a couple of Hispanic peoples decided to make up a racist story.  Surprise, surprise, reporters bought it.

15 Times Major Media Outlets Used a Statistic about Plastic Straws Based on Research by a 9-Year-Old.  Yesterday [1/25/2018], I reported that the oft-cited, debate-driving statistic that Americans use 500 million plastic straws a day was the product of a 9-year-old's guesstimations.  Despite those shaky factual foundations, the 500 million figure has quickly spread, virus-like, across the media landscape and even into our shops and schools. [...] Meanwhile, impressionable children at the Mount Vernon Community School in nearby Alexandria, Virginia, are coming home with "Straw Wars" handouts citing the same dubious figure.  It's easy to understand how the school could have been led astray, given how ubiquitous this claim is in the media.  Please see below for a list of just a few of the news outlets that have cited this "fact" — or otherwise quoted people saying it without any critical pushback — in their reporting: [...]

CNN's Hilary Rosen Shows She Might Just Be A Lot Dumber Than You Ever Imagined.  Life can come at you pretty hard when you are a shameless hypocrite.  Yesterday [1/27/2018], "Democrat strategist" and CNN contributor Hilary Rosen was slagging on President' Donald Trump's twitter account. [...] The fact is that when you have several million followers you really can't police them unless you hire staff to do it.  People follow you for all kinds of reasons.  Some are your fans.  Some hate you and are documenting everything you say.  You can't keep bots from following you and you can't keep bots from retweeting you.  Not only is it time consuming it doesn't matter.  But there is a big difference between having bots follow you and this: [...]

Embarrassment for NBC News after Lester Holt apparently falls for North Korean propaganda.  NBC News is reeling after "Nightly News" anchor Lester Holt appears to have been badly fooled by North Korean propagandists — giving a cheery report from a ski resort in the Hermit Kingdom that looked to be bustling when it was widely known to actually be a ghost town.  Holt — who returned early from North Korea after scathing reviews — reported for "Nightly News" from the Masikryong ski resort on Monday [1/22/2018], a facility that is the brainchild of Supreme Leader Kim Jong Un and is typically empty.  The resort, built to create the appearance of a prosperous nation, was largely deserted during peak 2017 ski season, according to multiple reports.

Nets Censor Revelation FBI Lost 400 Texts.  There were disturbing revelations out of the FBI over the weekend when it was made public that the Bureau had somehow lost roughly 400 text messages between an anti-Trump investigator and a lawyer he was romantically involved with.  Since then, there have been calls from Republican members of Congress for another special counsel to investigate the FBI's shady handling of the Clinton e-mail and Russia investigations.  But despite this bombshell news, the three major network news outlets (ABC, CBS, and NBC) have been dead silent.  During their Monday evening [1/22/2018] newscasts, there was not a single second dedicated to bringing up this highly damaging development.  Instead of reporting on the FBI, ABC's World News Tonight gushed about the Super Bowl, CBS Evening News reported that Minnie Mouse got her own star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, and NBC Nightly News fawned over yet another royal wedding in the U.K.

CNN Has Jumped the Shark.  Every day it is becoming clearer that CNN, the once proud ratings giant and unquestioned cable network news leader, has abandoned objective journalism to cultivate obsessive hatred for President Donald Trump.  It has "jumped the shark," meaning that a once distinguished broadcaster has become absurd. [...] CNN is a shadow of its former self and functions in a manner that is the complete opposite of how a fair and balanced network should operate.  In its infancy, the network cared about reporting the real facts, maintaining objectivity, while being dedicated to true journalism.  Today, the network devotes 24 hours a day to one main goal, attacking a man they despise, Donald Trump.

In 2017, the media flunked the Trump challenge.  President Trump's Jan. 20 inauguration was notable for more than just its small crowd sizes.  It was notable because it marked the beginning of the worst year of political journalism in modern history.  On the same day that Trump was sworn into office, a White House reporter claimed incorrectly that the Trump transition team had removed a bust of Martin Luther King Jr. from the Oval Office.  Sadly, this erroneous report and a handful of others on that same day breathlessly and unquestioningly parrotted by reporters across platforms and outlets proved to be the norm, not the exception, for a year that has seen a dismaying and troubling decline in the quality of political journalism.

CJR is making journalism worse.  The once prestigious Columbia Journalism Review showed just how awful it has become in its year-in-review by Pete Vernon.  While recognizing good works — and I will have to take Vernon's word on a few of the stories he praised — Vernon failed to acknowledge that Fake News is real and growing.  Vernon did not say one word about the big investigative report on CNN on June 22 — "Congress investigating Russian investment fund with ties to Trump officials" — that resulted in three people losing their jobs:  the reporter, the editor, and their boss.  Instead of taking a serious look at the Fake News in the business, Vernon took a few potshots and called it a day.

Dishonest Reporter of the Year Award 2017.  While journalists covering the Mideast can base themselves wherever they and their editors choose, correspondents still have a responsibility to "make the rounds" and spend time in the countries that are part of their beat.  Seeing the situation first-hand, meeting the people face-to-face, sharing the experiences of individuals on both sides of the conflict is possible only by physically being there, even if only periodically.  That's why stories have datelines.  A dateline is a standard measure of media transparency, letting readers know where the story was written.  Specifically, a dateline can shed light on the circumstances that the reporter works in, and sometimes the methodology behind the correspondent's work.  When several journalists in multiple locations are credited, an editor's note should disclose who worked where.  In short, this often-overlooked disclosure allows readers to better judge the coverage for themselves.  The Independent relies heavily on 'laptop journalists' — reporters covering stories remotely — for many of its articles about Israel.  Some articles are written from London by writers collecting info online, typically rehashing info originally reported in Israeli and Palestinian media, wire services, social media and press releases.  Laptop journalists can literally write articles from anywhere in the world.  With just a laptop and reasonable internet connection, reporters can write from the home or office, an internet cafe, airport lounge, bus or even a park bench.

2017 — the year the media lost America.  [Scroll down]  That's how we feel about it here in the United States.  That's how we feel about the news media.  We don't trust them.  We don't believe them.  It's been so for decades.  But this year was the worst, and all because, being mostly Liberal and still hankering for Obama and whoring for Hillary, they are out to Get Trump.  They will find any pretext to do him harm.  Over at ABC, Brian Ross rushed to judgment when he reported that Michael Flynn was prepared to testify that Trump "as a candidate" asked him to contact the Russians.  That was a mistake.  ABC took it back.  Ross was suspended.  Other news outlets made the same mistake on that and upon other Russia-related scandals that never happened.  Russia was the big story of 2017, and always the wrong story.  The media tried every which way to get Trump on collusion and they kept coming up empty.  From one false lead to another, they wasted our time.  They wasted our trust.

Political Journalists Have Themselves to Blame for Sinking Credibility.  "Our record as journalists in covering this Trump story and the Russian story is pretty good," legendary reporter Carl Bernstein recently claimed.  Pretty good?  If there's a major news story over the past 70 years that the American media has botched more often because of bias and wishful thinking, I'd love to hear about it.  Four big scoops recently run by major news organizations — written by top reporters and, presumably, churned through layers of scrupulous editing — turned out to be completely wrong.  Reuters, Bloomberg, The Wall Street Journal and others reported that special counsel Robert Mueller's office had subpoenaed President Donald Trump's records from Deutsche Bank.  Trump's attorney says it hadn't.  ABC reported that candidate Trump had directed Michael Flynn to make contact with Russian officials before the election.  He didn't (as far as we know). The New York Times ran a story claiming that K.T. McFarland, a former member of the Trump transition team, had acknowledged collusion.  She hadn't.  Then, CNN topped off the week by falsely reporting that the Trump campaign had been offered access to hacked Democratic National Committee emails before they were published.  It wasn't.  Forget your routine bias.  These were four bombshells disseminated to millions of Americans by breathless anchors, pundits and analysts, all of whom are feeding frenzied expectations about Trump-Russia collusion that have now been internalized by many as indisputable truths.  All four pieces, incidentally, are useless without their central faulty claims.  Yet there they sit.  And these are only four of dozens of other stories that have fizzled over the year.

Another CNN Fail?  They Finally Admit AG Sessions Wasn't Required To Disclose Foreign Contacts As A Senator.  Well, CNN stepped on a rake again.  Last week, they totally botched a story about Donald Trump, his son, and his inner circle receiving an email from Michael Erickson that contained a decryption key to a trove of Wikileaks emails from John Podesta and the DNC.  The insinuation was that these documents weren't public when in fact, they were.  They also got the dates wrong.  Getting dates wrong is what landed ABC News' Brian Ross in hot water when he reported earlier this month that Trump had directed Michael Flynn to make contact with the Russians during the 2016 campaign.  It was actually after Donald Trump had won the election.  Setting up a diplomatic framework is not an unusual move for an incoming administration.  Ross was suspended for a month for this report.  It's just sloppiness from the mainstream liberal news media that seems incapable of reporting on this White House accurately.

Guest Slams CNN: 'People Don't Trust You Guys' Because You Tell Them They Are Wrong, Stupid, And Racist.  Alabama talk radio host Dale Jackson ripped CNN and the rest of the mainstream media on Sunday [12/10/2017] during an episode of "Reliable Sources" with host Brian Stelter, as he explained why people do not trust the network.  During the segment, Stelter was trying to understand why people in Alabama were still supporting Roy Moore after explosive allegations published by The Washington Post several weeks ago.  "Why in the world would people believe the things that are said if it's always negative over and over and over and over again?" Jackson said.  "That weaponizes the term fake news."

The End of Media History and the Last Honest Man.  Ever since postwar American journalism sacrificed its soul on the altar of celebrity sometime in the mid-'80s, a terrible day of reckoning for the craft has been in the works.  The "gets" and the gotchas, the "how do you respond to" questions, the how-do-you-feels; the unseemly scrums, the willingness to endure any humiliation from their betters in the hopes of basking, however fleetingly, in reflected glory — that day finally arrived this week with a series of unforced errors that has stripped bare the profession's pretenses to objectivity and truth-seeking, and exposed them for the tawdry, politicized whores they really are. [...] The most recent spate of self-inflicted media disasters is not the end but the beginning — of the media's end.

The Mainstream Media Suffered its Most Humiliating Debacle in Ages Yesterday.  Friday [12/8/2017] was one of the most embarrassing days for the U.S. media in quite a long time.  The humiliation orgy was kicked off by CNN, with MSNBC and CBS close behind, with countless pundits, commentators and operatives joining the party throughout the day.  By the end of the day, it was clear that several of the nation's largest and most influential news outlets had spread an explosive but completely false news story to millions of people, while refusing to provide any explanation of how it happened.

The media's Russia probe meltdown: 3 screw-ups in one week.  The media is having a rough week when it comes to reporting on the federal government's multiple ongoing Russia investigations.  Three stories in the past seven days have crumbled under greater scrutiny.  Why it matters:  In today's hyperpolarized world, "fake news" has become a refrain to describe stories that observers on both sides of the spectrum decide that they don't like.  These reporting issues by esteemed media organizations give credence to that ignorance, which further damages the value of insightful, impactful reporting — especially when it comes to one of the biggest, most polarizing stories of our political age:  the Russia probe.

Laura Ingraham Rips CNN For 'Sloppy Reporting': 'Sometimes It's Not Fake News, It's Just Wrong News'.  On Friday night [12/8/2017], Laura Ingraham slammed CNN for their botched report on Donald Trump Jr.  'Sometime it's not fake news; it's just wrong news," Ingraham began.  Earlier that morning, CNN reported that during the election, WikiLeaks gave Don Jr. accesses to hacked DNC emails before they were made public.  That report turned out to be inaccurate and was corrected in the afternoon.  The Fox News host said that the error left CNN "once again with fried egg on its face."  She then listed some of the media's mistakes, [...]

Another anti-Trump 'smoking gun' turns out to be nothing.  The media went berserk Friday [12/1/2017] on news that former Trump confidante Mike Flynn had copped a plea deal with special counsel Bob Mueller.  All the usual suspects launched an orgy of speculation on what beans Flynn "must" have spilled.  It all went into overdrive when ABC's Brian Ross reported that Flynn had been instructed to reach out to Moscow during the campaign:  This seemed to be the long-awaited proof of collusion with Vladimir Putin against Hillary Clinton.  Except that Ross retracted the claim hours later:  The reach-out was only after Election Day, when any president-elect is expected to start connecting with other world leaders, US-friendly or not.  ABC has now suspended Ross for four weeks without pay — modest punishment for an error that probably had a lot to do with the stock market's dive early Friday.

The Mainstream Media Doesn't Deserve Our Respect or Our Trust.  The mainstream liberal media is primarily composed of stumblebum leftist jerks who want all the glory and respect due a caste of objective, moral truth-seekers, yet who don't want to do the hard work of actually being objective or moral or seeking the truth. [...] Remember, to our intrepid media, news is only news if it helps the liberal narrative.  If it doesn't, it's not news.  It's not anything.  It's un-news.  Like the stock market boom.  Like wiping out the ISIS caliphate.  Like Mueller's manifest conflicts of interest.  Un-news.  Remember, half the job of the mainstream media is generating metaphorical tumbleweeds.

Incorrigibly biased, but still on the staff:
ABC News President:  Brian Ross Will No Longer Cover Stories Related To Trump.  It's one thing to suspend a reporter for making an incredibly damaging error of basic fact on air.  But to remove him from covering a particular subject altogether?  That's the sort of thing you might do if you'd concluded he's incapable of covering that topic fairly.  If it's an innocent mistake borne of carelessness, there's no need to declare certain topics off-limits.  You do that only when you think the reporter's view of that topic will necessarily compromise his judgment.

ABC News suspends Brian Ross for 4 weeks over erroneous Flynn story.  ABC News announced Saturday [12/2/2017] that it has suspended investigative reporter Brian Ross for four weeks without pay after Ross was forced to correct a bombshell on-air report about Michael Flynn.  "We deeply regret and apologize for the serious error we made yesterday.  The reporting conveyed by Brian Ross during the special report had not been fully vetted through our editorial standards process," ABC said in a statement.

Trump suggests investors sue ABC reporter whose erroneous report sent stocks down.  President Trump suggested investors who lost money when the stock market fell following ABC's erroneous report alleging Trump told Mike Flynn to make contact with the Russians as a candidate sue the reporter who made the error.  "People who lost money when the Stock Market went down 350 points based on the False and Dishonest reporting of Brian Ross of @ABC News (he has been suspended), should consider hiring a lawyer and suing ABC for the damages this bad reporting has caused — many millions of dollars!" Trump tweeted Sunday [12/3/2017].

ABC may discover the price of fake news.  People lost money thanks to Brian Ross moving the market with his false reporting.  He's been suspended, but will we see lawsuits against him and ABC on behalf of investors who lost money?

Brian Ross Suspended By ABC.  Hack Brian Ross who has a legacy of fake news and embarrassed ABC yesterday with his Flynn-Russia BS report has been suspended by ABC for a "serious error." Ross' "serious error" caused billions of losses in the stock market that promptly crashed 350 points after his fake news report.  Ross has been suspended for four months.  He should be fired and investigated by the SEC.  This is too light of a punishment for that hack and that fake news network.

ABC News suspends Brian Ross over 'serious error' in Flynn report.  ABC News announced Saturday that Chief Investigative Correspondent Brian Ross had been suspended for four weeks without pay over a botched "exclusive" about former national security adviser Michael Flynn.  Ross' suspension is effective immediately.  ABC News spokeswoman Heather Riley would not comment on whether anyone else had been suspended in connection with the error.

ABC Suspends "Chief Investigative Correspondent" for Anti-Trump Fake News.  After this past week, the good news is that ABC News is suspending a top journalist for something having nothing to do with sexual harassment.  The bad news is that ABC News screwed this one up so badly that it affected the stock market. [...] But this is still a report that should never have aired.  And we can now seen how such attacks on Trump don't just harm our political system, but cause financial damage as well.  The media's war on Trump is producing all sorts of collateral damage.  Furthermore, even if Ross' original report had been correct, that is in no way impeachable behavior.  And the media's repeated impeachment-baiting is causing serious harm to our country.

The Editor says...
Yes, Brian Ross is going on an unpaid vacation, but he will be back in four weeks to pick up where he left off.

ABC News Makes HUGE Mistake In Report On Flynn Plea Deal.  ABC News reported on Friday that former national security advisor Michael Flynn pleaded guilty to lying to FBI investigators in special counsel Robert Mueller's probe into possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Russian officials.  ABC News also claimed that Flynn promised "full cooperation to the Mueller team" and that he is prepared to testify that then-candidate Donald Trump "directed him to make contact with the Russians."  There is just one significant problem with ABC News' report:  CNN reported late on Friday that an "ABC News spokesperson" said that "'World News' will clarify that this should be president-elect Trump, not candidate Trump."

How did unsubstantiated rumors make it to the front pages of newspapers?  I get more disgusted every day with what I see on the front page of my morning paper.  Today I get the rumor story that Trump is considering replacing Rex Tillerson as secretary of state.  This is essentially a rumor based on unnamed sources, yet the AP and others report it as if it were factual news. [...] The more these rumors are reported, the more people in the administration get mad at each other.  No matter where the rumors come from, they start to be believed, and some may come true.  I might as well read the National Enquirer or Star in the supermarket line if I want to read rumors on the front page.  The National Enquirer gets some things right also.

ABC News corrects bombshell Flynn report.  ABC News on Friday evening [12/1/2017] corrected an explosive special report that aired in the morning saying that Donald Trump, as a candidate for president, had asked Michael Flynn to make contact with Russians.  During "World News Tonight," ABC News investigative reporter Brian Ross said the source who had provided the initial information for his story later told him that it was as president-elect, not as a candidate, that Trump asked Flynn to contact the Russians.

ABC's Brian Ross again under fire for explosive error on Trump, Flynn.  ABC's famously error-prone chief investigative correspondent, Brian Ross was at it again on Friday when the network was forced to issue an embarrassing correction when Ross botched a bombshell "exclusive" about retired general Michael Flynn.  An ABC spokesperson declined to comment on whether Ross will be disciplined.  He has not been sanctioned for past errors.  Ross's report, delivered live to ABC stations during a "special report" on Friday, said that Flynn would testify that Donald Trump had ordered him to make contact with Russians about foreign policy while he was still a candidate — which raised the specter of impeachment and sent the Dow careening down.

Not All Stings Work.  [Scroll down]  In 2009, for instance, [James] O'Keefe and a young friend ran integrity tests on ACORN offices in six separate cities.  ACORN execs celebrated upon realizing that their Philadelphia office saw through the sting.  This was before they realized that their officials in Washington, Baltimore, Brooklyn, and San Bernardino had no problem advising a pimp on how to find housing for his underage Central American sex slaves.  The major media had turned a blind eye to the flagrant corruption of their ACORN allies for years.  As a direct result of Project Veritas's exposure, this billion-dollar enterprise collapsed within months.  When it did, the media turned on O'Keefe.  He had not only brought down a useful leftist institution, but also embarrassed the reporters who should have done that job themselves. [...] The media have welcomed this integrity test about as much as a corrupt cop does a visit from Internal Affairs.  At every level of these news organizations, employees recognize they are making a mockery of their mission.

Fire Leandra English.  Has no one in the press read the Constitution?  "Article II, Section 1, 1: The executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America."  That means President Trump could fire James Comey as FBI director without any explanation.  It also means Leandra English was never acting director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and her attempted coup de bureaucracy should result in the end of her employment.  There is no such thing as an "independent agency" in the federal government.

Pippa Biddle, America's Whitest Reporter, Takes Up the Black Cause.  If white people had their own publication, it would be Wired magazine.  From top to bottom, this is a uniquely Caucasian experience:  from the white readers, to the white advertisers, to the white employees, to the white town where it is headquartered, to the white subject matter of high tech, to the white owners at Conde Nast, which also owns just about every other magazine on the planet not named Jet or Ebony or Black anything.  Of the 80 people pictured on the masthead of Wired, only two are black.  That is why I was a bit surprised to see Wired magazine recently appoint itself as the arbiter of all things black.

The 'good guy with a gun' had an AR-15.  When a mass murder takes place, the media always focuses on the weapon and downplays focus on the person wielding it, whether it is a vehicle, as in New York City, or a gun, as in Las Vegas and Texas.  Moreover, the media likes to trumpet the term "assault weapon" when talking about an AR-15.  Except when the "good guy with a gun" used an AR-15.  Then it was just a rifle.  Here are some cases in point:  CNN, the NY Post, and NPR.

Four Viral Claims Spread by Journalists on Twitter in the Last Week Alone That are False.  There is ample talk, particularly of late, about the threats posed by social media to democracy and political discourse.  Yet one of the primary ways that democracy is degraded by platforms such as Facebook and Twitter is, for obvious reasons, typically ignored in such discussions:  the way they are used by American journalists to endorse factually false claims that quickly spread and become viral, entrenched into narratives, and thus, can never be adequately corrected.  The design of Twitter, where many political journalists spend their time, is in large part responsible for this damage.  Its space constraints mean that tweeted headlines or tiny summaries of reporting are often assumed to be true with no critical analysis of their accuracy and are easily spread.  Claims from journalists that people want to believe are shared like wildfire, while less popular subsequent corrections or nuanced debunking are easily ignored.

Two popular conservative Twitter personalities were just outed as Russian trolls.  Jenna Abrams was a popular figure in right-wing social media circles.  Boasting nearly 70,000 followers, Abrams was featured in numerous news articles during the 2016 election, spotlighted by outlets as varied as USA Today, the Washington Post, the BBC, and Yahoo!  Sports. [...] But Abrams never existed.  According to information released by House Democrats earlier this week, Abrams was one of more than 2,750 fake Twitter accounts created by employees at the Internet Research Agency, a "troll farm" funded by the Russian government based in St. Petersburg.

Story Laundering:  Fusion GPS, Fake News, Russians And Reporters.  "The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old, and their only reporting experience consists of being around political campaigns," Ben Rhodes gloated.  "That's a sea change.  They literally know nothing."  Rhodes, the White House's "Obama whisperer", was explaining how he had pulled the wool over the media's eyes on the Iran Deal to a journalist.  The media responded to the story by attacking the journalist who reported it, not Rhodes for viewing them as easily manipulated useful idiots.  The media knew that it knew nothing.  And it didn't care.  It just didn't want outsiders to know it.  What ties together the debate about Russian collusion, fake news and Fusion GPS is the implosion of the media.  What were the professional reporters doing while Rhodes was manipulating the 27-year-olds?  They were working at places like Fusion GPS and 'story laundering' narratives to the kiddies.

Chris Matthews is baffled why an Uzbeki would want to attack us.  Chris Matthews has put in a strong entry for the title of stupidest reaction to the Halloween jihad massacre in Lower Manhattan.  Was there a memo at NBC News that forbade any mention of Islam or Jihad in discussing Sayfullo Saipov?  Or is Matthews really that stupid?  Was this madness passed down from the suits at 30 Rock?  Or does Chris Matthews wear such huge blinders that he can't connect the dots and see that this attack is like Barcelona, Nice, and several other examples of jihadis renting trucks and mowing down infidels?

Time to Admit It:  CNN's Jake Tapper Is Failing.  While those of us who once admired CNN's Jake Tapper as a rarity in the mainstream media — an honest and objective journalist, have been shocked by his transformation into a dishonest, sanctimonious, left-wing virtue-signaler, we assumed his lying and peacocking was in pursuit of the applause and fame he so transparently craves.  His laughably bad ratings, though, appear to show that like most people who sell their soul, Tapper was tricked by the Devil.  To be fair to Tapper, CNN's transition into a hard-left social justice network, something Breitbart News was the first to document and warn about nearly five years ago, has dragged the entire network down, from second place behind Fox News, into last place behind MSNBC.

Another Week, Another Pathetic Low for Opposition Party Media.  What does it say about the State of Journalism in America today that when some kook wants to smuggle a bunch of Russian flags into the highly secured U.S. Capitol to throw at the president, he dresses up like a reporter?  And it works!

The liberal media's meltdown.  Reaching deep in their drawer of smug, CNN unleashed a "Facts First" initiative, starting with an ad featuring an apple, with a voice-over warning viewers that some awful, yet unnamed, person or network is trying to convince you the apple is a banana.  While a juvenile attempt to discredit President Trump's complaints about the network's shoddy news coverage, they manage only to remind us of why they're in this fix in the first place.  What CNN reveals with this abject sanctimony is their contempt for the viewers themselves.

WaPo Reports Clinton Campaign and DNC Paid For Trump Dossier.  First, do not think the Washington Post is ever going to frame a damaging article against the Clinton's or DNC; it is beyond their inherent ideology to do so.  Therefore the motive of any media expose' must be kept in mind.  Second, while the article itself states the Clinton Campaign and the DNC paid Fusion GPS to contract Christopher Steele, the researcher and dossier author, the article also tries to lend some credibility toward the content therein.  This is another possible angle. [...] Fifth, the sourcing within the Washington Post article is weak, vague and disingenuous with verbiage such as:  "people familiar with the matter", "according to those people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity", "people involved in the matter", etc.  Notice how the term "matter" repeats.  That familiar term is frequent throughout the article.

10 Times CNN Told Us An Apple Was A Banana.  Considering the numerous mistakes and misleading stories CNN has produced over the past several years, you'd think that they'd be a tad less sanctimonious. [...] We're talking about CNN contributors who are tagged as experts but don't understand even the rudimentary working of the topic they're tasked with explaining.

Secrets and Lies:  Three Russian Stories.  The major developing stories this week have been so scantily and poorly covered in the mainstream press that you may want an easy primer.  To fully understand it you have to look at alternative media, because just as Harvey Weinstein counted on complicit enablers — his colleagues, victims and the press — Hillary Clinton, Robert Mueller and a cast of characters, including a press determined to cover for them have hidden what occurred.

The general schools doltish press corps.  Gen. John Kelly stepped to the podium in the White House briefing room and delivered a bare-bottom, wire-brush, red-rash public spanking of the political press Thursday [10/12/2017] — the likes of which we have never seen in the age of modern media. [...] Ordinarily, military generals are not called on to give journalism lectures.  But you don't have to be an expert in journalism to know how utterly ridiculous these people have gotten, "reporting" about made-up squabbles between people inside the administration.

Ann Coulter:  Las Vegas Massacre — The Story Is Coming Apart.  The media are either doing PR for the gambling industry or they don't want anyone considering the possibility that Paddock was using gambling to launder money. [...] The media think about money the way Democrats do.  They have absolutely no conception of where it originates.  Those casino owners sure are generous! reporters think to themselves.  Economist Thomas Sowell is always ridiculing journalists for not understanding basic economics.  It turns out, they don't understand the spreadsheet of a lemonade stand.  The New York Times explained that the "top" video poker machines pay out 99.17 percent.  That's great that Paddock was only losing cents on the dollar (if true), but it's still losing.  The Times quickly explained that he could have more than made up his losses with all the "comps" — the free rooms, meals and "50-year-old port that costs $500 a glass," as his brother Eric said.  Gamblers who are beating the house are not given $500 glasses of port.  Refer to the profit/loss spreadsheet.  And yet, according to his brother, Paddock was treated like royalty by the casinos.  Which means he was losing.

Someone tell CNN's Chris Cillizza that words actually matter in the gun control debate.  The debate over gun control rages after mass shootings, and it is almost painful to watch how poorly reporters try and stumble around an issue they're apparently not familiar with reporting.  When reporters use terms such as "automatic rounds" and "semi-automatic machine guns," the public is less informed on public policy.  There is no such thing as an "automatic round" or "semi-automatic machine guns," but the terms sound intimidating and mislead the public into thinking they exist.  Chris Cillizza wrote an article at CNN that is loaded with errors and shouldn't have made it past an editor with any knowledge of firearms and firearm laws.

Trump EPA to propose repealing Obama's climate regulation: document.  The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency will propose repealing the Clean Power Plan — the Obama administration's centerpiece regulation to fight climate change — and plans to solicit input on a rule to replace it, according to an EPA document seen by Reuters.

The Editor says...
This article is accompanied by a photograph (left) which appears to be a photo of an industrial plant of some sort, with the dishonest caption, "Smoke is released into the sky at a refinery in Wilmington, California March 24, 2012."  The "smoke" being released is obviously water vapor, since it appears to be absorbed into the surrounding atmosphere within a few seconds of its release.  The contrast on the photo appears to have been enhanced to make the emission appear to be black as it leaves the vent, but smoke doesn't turn white and then disappear within a few seconds.  This appears to me to be a shamelessly dishonest attempt to make harmless vapor look like smoke.

Was Las Vegas Shooter "Radicalized"?  The deadliest mass shooting in modern American history has been cravenly transformed into anti-American propaganda by the Left, as Democrat commentators race to ghoulishly disparage white men, gun rights and the NRA, Republicans, and President Trump, blaming them for what otherwise looks like a Muslim terrorist atrocity.  Islamic State continues to claim responsibility for the massacre.  The terrorist group also claims Paddock converted to Islam six months ago and refers to him by a nom de guerre, Abu Abdul Barr al-Amriki.  In Las Vegas Wednesday [10/4/2017] FBI Special Agent in Charge Aaron Rouse said, "We have found no evidence to this point to indicate terrorism, but this is an ongoing investigation.  We're going to look at all avenues, not close any."  Paddock may have been "radicalized unbeknownst to us," Clark County, Nevada, Sheriff Joe Lombardo said at a presser without elaborating.  The reporters present for the statement did not bother to follow up.  For much of the mainstream media, the fact that Paddock was a white male explained his violent rampage.

The media doesn't understand guns — and doesn't want to.  The American political left and mainstream media pundits at large do not understand guns.  They are not educated about them and they refuse to learn about them.  They could not tell you the difference between an automatic or semi-automatic firearm.  They don't understand what a suppressor does or does not do.

Three Big Stories Imploded This Week.  The Department of Homeland Security stated last Friday [9/22/2017] that Russian hackers tried to hack into the voting systems of 21 states including Wisconsin and California.  But DHS backtracked this week, stating that hackers targeted the California Department of Technology and the Wisconsin Department of Workforce Development but not voting systems in those states.  "Either they were right on Friday and this is a cover up, or they were wrong on Friday and we deserve an apology," Mark Thomsen, chairman of Wisconsin's Elections Commission, said Tuesday.

Democrats will use any excuse not to give power back to the states or the people.  A major culprit in the ACA, health care mess we have today are the significant majority reporters that just go out and repeat Democrat talking points.  They never cared and still don't that Obama continually lied to get the ACA passed and that the disastrous premium and cost increases are because of Democrats.  The story will be written that Republicans and Trump caused the collapse even though that is demonstrably not true.

Chuck Todd is a constitutional illiterate.  Roy Moore's primary victory in Alabama is terrifying progressives, and so the all-out assault on Moore and the Republican party has begun.  Tripping over themselves to paint Moore as an extremist theocrat, some liberal anchors like MSNBC's Chuck Todd are stepping in it.  On Wednesday evening's [9/27/2017] episode of "Meet the Press," Todd alleged that Moore "doesn't appear to believe in the Constitution as it's written."  "Roy Moore, where the phrase 'Christian conservative' doesn't even begin to describe him," Todd said, "could very well be your next U.S. senator."

CNN Howler:  Abraham Lincoln Was Pro-Science Back in... 1963?  Celebrity scientist Neil deGrasse Tyson appeared on CNN, Sunday [9/17/2017], to lecture those he deemed too stupid to accept the linkage of climate change to Hurricanes Harvey and Irma.  Proving he should stick to science on TV, deGrasse pompously botched history:  "Abraham Lincoln, the first Republican president, signed into law in 1963 — a year when he had important things to be thinking about — the National Academy of Sciences."  Of course, Lincoln had been dead for 98 years in 1963.

Apology, apology, who's got an apology?  ESPN, the sports network, is part of Disney entertainment enterprises, and last week one of its "anchors," a $1.98 cent [sic] word for "announcer," or "reader," had to be disciplined by the network for telling her semi-vast following that "Donald Trump is a white supremacist who has largely surrounded himself w/other white supremacists."  She said it in a tweet, naturally, the preferred communication of those unable to speak words of more than one syllable.  She offended a lot of people, or at least some people.  How could she not?  Taking offense is the great American pastime.  Ms. Hill is, of course, entitled to her opinion, however ill-informed by liberal group-think, but she should have known that even as a commentator, entitled to pop off about whatever pops into her mind, she should beware of making a fool of herself.

Wile E. Coyote press says Trump betrayed you.  Each month, the press magically has a bunch of stories that center on the same theme.  Last month, it was President Trump as inciting violence.  This month, it is President Trump is stabbing his supporters in the back. [...] However, real journalism requires that you get the White House to comment before you publish as a "fact" that President Trump reversed himself.  An attribution to a third party does not cut it.

Trump Killed the New York Daily News.  The sale of the New York Daily News for a dollar isn't the death of the sleazy leftist tabloid.  It died a while back.  Today, the Daily News is best known for its trolling front pages.  That and bizarre trolling hate pieces from a staff of repurposed and unqualified trash like Linda Stasi, a former Post movie critic turned hate spewing bigot, and sportswriter Mike Lupica, trying to churn out political commentary.  Stasi summoned a boycott of the already failing paper when she blamed one of the victims of the Muslim terror attack in San Bernardino because he was a Republican.  Lupica has no idea when the Constitution was written.  The Daily News had once been a powerhouse.  But as the end approached, it lacked any actual talent.

NBC News Incorrectly Labels Menendez a Republican Before Correcting Article Hours Later.  NBC News published an article Wednesday incorrectly labeling Sen. Robert Menendez (D., N.J.), currently in federal court on bribery charges, a Republican.  NBC styled Menendez as a Republican in the lede of the article, then confusingly labeled him a Democrat at the end of the introductory paragraph, the Daily Caller reported.  The article appears to be a wire from the Associated Press, but the original piece on the AP's website does not feature the mistake, suggesting it was added in by NBC.

Scientific American Sokalized.  A few years ago, I learned of an article by Mark Z. Jacobson and Mark A. Delucchi in the November 2009 issue of Scientific American called "A Path to Sustainable Energy."  My first impression was, "These guys must be joking."  My second impression was, "Yes, they are joking, and the joke is on Scientific American."

Soros-Funded Groups Fueled Joel Osteen Church Story.  Megachurch pastor Joel Osteen was taking considerable heat Monday evening [7/28/2017] for allegedly not opening his 16,000-capacity Houston church to flooding victims in that city.  But the story appears to have been concocted by members of a George Soros-backed group keen on simply smearing Osteen and Lakewood Church.  Once it became viral on social media, the liberal mainstream media picked up on it — seemingly without ever asking if it was true.

Media Stunned — President Trump Support Stronger Than Ever, and Growing.  President Trump has been in office for 30 weeks, and 20 of those weeks have been called "the worst" by media.  However, if you actually engage with people living their lives and not focused on who the media blame for the latest round of horrid offenses; well, then you might recognize the scope of how over-emphasized and out-of-touch the media perspective really is.  CBS and The Associated Press each found themselves picking their corporate media jaws off the floor when they actually did ask people.  You know, ordinary people.  Folks like you and me.  The media didn't anticipate the power of common sense to see through their [duplicity].

Let's Treat College Admissions like Immigration.  Last week, President Donald Trump endorsed an immigration bill put forth by Senators David Perdue and Tom Cotton.  The reaction was swift yet predictable. [...] CNN's Jim Acosta, auditioning for Wolf Blitzer's or Don Lemon's gig on CNN, beclowned himself during a White House press conference by equating a contest-winning poem with the US Constitution.  Big deal.  CNN doesn't recognize the US Constitution as a founding document, instead relying on the front page of the New York Times or the Washington Post as the law of the land.

Does The New York Times Even Have Editors?  On September 30, the New York Times published a long article about Donald Trump's wife Melania in its Fashion and Style section.  The article said little of substance — Mrs. Trump is a nice lady, apparently — but it resulted in an epic sequence of five corrections: [...]

All the Speculation That's Fit to Print.  Over the weekend, the New York Times published a story on Republicans who supposedly are angling for their party's 2020 presidential nomination:  "Republican Shadow Campaign for 2020 Takes Shape as Trump Doubts Grow."  The story was, of course, part of the paper's daily war on President Trump.  Its purpose was to cause "doubts" about President Trump's being the GOP nominee in 2020 to "grow."  The Times article contains no actual news.

CNN Anchor Doesn't Recognize US National Anthem.  CNN anchor Poppy Harlow apparently didn't recognize the Star Spangled Banner on Thursday, mistaking it for the French national anthem.  Harlow was covering President Trump's arrival in Paris, France to meet with French president Emmanuel Macron.  After the two world leaders shook hands, they stood together as a band played the United States national anthem.  However, Harlow cut to the scene by saying, "Let's just listen in to the French national anthem for just a moment."  It took at least ten seconds before whispering could be heard in the background — presumably a producer who caught Harlow's error — and Harlow had to correct herself.

Stupid Hostile Media.  President Donald Trump drives people crazy.  Especially those in the media.  They hate him so much, they leap on every anti-Trump rumor.  The Federalist's Jordyn Pair points out that the press repeatedly told us that a dozen Trump administration members were about to be fired, including Attorney General Jeff Sessions, Press Secretary Sean Spicer and strategists Steve Bannon and Jared Kushner.  Months later, all still work for or with the administration.

Rubio pushes back on media for calling Bible verses 'Republican'.  Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) on Sunday pushed back at a news article that claimed the conservative lawmaker was tweeting "the most Republican part of the Bible."  "Proverbs is the Republican part of the bible?  I don't think Solomon had yet joined the GOP when he wrote the first 29 chapters of Proverbs," Rubio said tongue-in-check, while retweeting Politico Magazine's story on the matter.

The Editor says...
I have worked with a number of people who call themselves "journalists," and 90 percent of them appear to know next to nothing about the Bible.  I'm not a Bible scholar, either, but if you're going to write about Biblical issues and make accusations in the media, perhaps you should have the facts on your side.

Democracy Dies Due To Journalists' Lies.  One of CNN's reporters complained that the president had the audacity to take questions in Poland from a reporter who had applied for a job with the Trump Administration.  Please pay no attention to the actual number of reporters who went to work for Barack Obama and those who did not but chose to carry his water for him.  After the election, the media pushed out the story that Russia had stolen the election for President Trump.  One newspaper claimed Russia had hacked the American power grid.  That story had to be retracted. [...] In February, the Associated Press ran a story that President Trump intended to mobilize the National Guard to round up illegal aliens.  The story was not true, but just about every major media outlet ran with it.  In May, the media claimed the GOP had trucked in beer to congress to celebrate repealing Obamacare.  That was not true either.

CNN Just Published A Fake Quote From Abraham Lincoln.  The quote, which is also displayed at the Newseum, was interpreted as yet another attack from the media giant against the president. [...] Insofar as a hearsay quote should ever be tweeted out or inscribed in walls, at least it should be accurate.  Particularly when it's about "truth" and "facts."

Trump's visit to Poland and the incoherent media.  CNN is already against the wall after recently retracting a report on a Trump associate's supposed ties to Russian money.  But in a rush to find something wrong with Trump on his trip, White House correspondent Jim Acosta bruised his network again.  Before his speech in Poland, Trump said in a press conference that he had found that only "three or four" out 17 U.S. intelligence agencies made formal conclusions about Russia's election interference.  Acosta called Trump's comments "fake news" and wondered, "Where does that number come from?  Where does this 'three or four' number come from?  My suspicion ... is that if we go to the administration and ask them for this question, I'm not so sure we're going to get an answer."  Except everyone else by that point, including the New York Times, had known that Trump was correct.  Just four agencies have formally and independently made their conclusions about the election interference.

Reminder: Many reporters are basically clueless about Christianity.  No topics confound media with greater regularity than firearms and Christianity.  To put it plainly, many commentators and reporters have no idea what they're talking about when it comes to either of these subjects.

Sketchy Media Now Retreating From Sketchy Russian Conspiracy Reports.  Hillary Clinton and aligned political operatives manufactured the illusion of a connection between Russian entities and the Trump campaign/organization.  Those manufactured points of evidence, including a sketchy Russian Dossier, were used by the political intelligence community (Clapper, Brennan Comey) to open an investigation of nothingness — to nowhere.  The mere existence of the investigation was then used as the originating point for a series of media intel leaks (the narrative) intended to cloud and damage the Trump campaign/organization.

Three CNN Employees Resign Over Retracted Story on Russia Ties.  Three CNN employees have handed in their resignations over a retracted story linking President Trump to Russia, the network announced Monday [6/26/2017].  Thomas Frank, who wrote the story in question; Eric Lichtblau, an editor in the unit; and Lex Haris, who oversaw the unit, have all left CNN.  "In the aftermath of the retraction of a story published on CNN.com, CNN has accepted the resignation of the employees involved in the story's publication," a network spokesperson said in a statement Monday [6/26/2017].

Three Employees Resign from CNN Amid Very Fake News Scandal.  Three CNN employees have resigned amid the network's very fake news scandal in which it was forced to retract a hit piece on President Donald Trump and his associates.  "CNN said Monday [6/26/2017] that three journalists, including the executive editor in charge of a new investigative unit, have resigned after the publication of a Russia-related article that was retracted," CNN's Brian Stelter reported late Monday.  "Thomas Frank, who wrote the story in question; Eric Lichtblau, an editor in the unit; and Lex Haris, who oversaw the unit, have all left CNN."

Report: CNN Imposing New Rules On Russia Coverage After Another Botched Story.  Higher-ups at CNN are cracking down after another botched story regarding President Trump and Russia.  The network retracted and deleted a story late last week that claimed Anthony Scaramucci, who served on Trump's transition team, was under FBI investigation for a meeting he had with a Russian executive.  That story, which was based on one unnamed congressional source, was false.

Why CNN can't have nice things.  In an extraordinary move, CNN's staff, from social media, to video, to editorial, to MoneyStream, has been told "No Russia reporting for you!" without adult supervision. [...] It's probably a reasonable response, given that the network's claim about Trump transition team member, Anthony Scaramucci, claiming he was under investigation for Russia ties, turned out to be pure garbage and the network had to apologize to him, probably to stay out of libel court.  But oh, what an embarrassing thing to get out in the journalism world!  Not just the order to clear it with the adults, the leaked memo, too.

CNN Has to Completely Retract a Major Anti-Trump Story.  CNN, you will recall, ran a major story about James Comey claiming that Comey would contradict the President on whether the President is being investigated.  They went wall to wall with the coverage of that story.  Then James Comey did not contradict the President.  CNN had to walk it all back.  Now they have done it again.  On June 22, CNN ran a story claiming that Anthony Scaramucci had dealings with a Russian investment group.

Making It Up As You Go Along.  Two articles that could have come from different universes were actually written in the same week.  The first is a Washington Post article describing how president Obama, aware of Russian plans to influence the 2016 election "choked" by not responding forcefully, lulled by "the assumption that Clinton would win" anyway.  The second article by Emile Simpson at Foreign Policy warns that Trump may be stumbling into a war involving the very same Russia.  They are representative of stories that depict the administration either at Putin's throat or at his feet, in collusion or conflict with the Kremlin.  Although this is contradictory nobody seems to notice.  In fact both can simultaneously be true if you assume the political system is inconsistent, as if driven by a random number generator.  That may in fact be the case.  The entire political system, not just Trump administration, is zig-zagging through public policy.

They're Wrong About Everything.  What I have heard from the media and political class over the last several years has been so spectacularly proven wrong by events, again and again, that I sometimes wonder why I continue to read two newspapers a day before spending time following journalists on Twitter. [...] The fact is that almost the entirety of what one reads in the paper or on the web is speculation.  The writer isn't telling you what happened, he is offering an interpretation of what happened, or offering a projection of the future.  The best scenario is that these theories are novel, compelling, informed, and based on reporting and research.  But that is rarely the case.  More often the interpretations of current events, and prophesies of future ones, are merely the products of groupthink or dogma or emotions or wish-casting, memos to friends written by 27-year-olds who, in the words of Ben Rhodes, "literally know nothing."

Infuriating: Gun 'Expert' on NBC Doesn't Know How Guns Work.  Evy Poumpouras, a correspondent and security analyst for NBC, MSNBC, CNN, and HLN, was invited on NBC to give expert opinion on the assassination attempt of congressional Republicans on Wednesday [6/14/2017].  This former Secret Service agent under President Obama and current cast member on the CBS show Hunted inaccurately described how semiautomatic rifles and pistols function.  Her remarks are what continue pushing the narrative that assault rifles are somehow more deadly than other firearms.

Journalism is dead; whatever these guys are doing isn't journalism.  What do all of these stories have in common?  They're completely unsourced.  No names.  No real people.  Just claims that come from, in order, "two administration officials and three outside advisers familiar with the matter," an anonymous tweeter who set up a dummy Twitter account, and "a Downing Street adviser."  None of the latest stories have anyone on the record making the accusations.  Instead, the "news" sites that posted the stories — Politico, the Daily Mail and the Guardian — simply make the surprising claims and cite anonymous sources.  The subjects of the anonymous slurs have no recourse whatsoever, no right to face their accusers, no way to fight back.  The accusation streams out onto the internet, where it lives forever — whether it's true or not.

What it takes to be fired by CNN.  But even at CNN, there are limits.  First the network fired "comedian" Kathy Griffin from what was apparently her only CNN gig, co-hosting the network's New Year's Eve show.  Griffin's offense, as we all know, was displaying a model of the president's severed, bloody head.  Given the magnitude of the offense, finding a new New Year's Eve co-host didn't seem like much of a price to pay.  Now CNN has brought down the hammer again.  It has fired Reza Aslan, who hosted a CNN series.  Aslan has a degree, among others, from Harvard Divinity School.  Divinity isn't what it once was; his offense was this tweet about President Trump: [...]

Fired Philadelphia Journalist, Colleen Campbell, Upset After Video Goes Viral.  Play stupid games, ya win stupid prizes.  Journalist Colleen Campbell called work at PHL 17 to tell her boss why she was unable to come to work.  [It is unknown whether she told her boss she was in jail.]  Ms. Campbell was surprised to discover she was fired.  There was video.  "Video, what video"? She protested.

Police: Colleen Campbell Later Assaulted the World's Most Patient Cop.  By now, you're probably familiar with the viral video of since-fired PHL 17 reporter Colleen Campbell ranting and raving and getting arrested outside of Helium Comedy Club on Sunday night.  Earlier, we told you that the 28-year-old South Philadelphia woman had been charged with resisting arrest, criminal mischief, and disorderly conduct, but now the Philadelphia Police Department is saying that it's worse than we originally thought.  According to a police statement about the incident, shortly after the calm, cool, and collected cop who responded to the scene led her away in cuffs and the video stopped, Campbell, a recent Temple University graduate, allegedly assaulted him.  Police say that she kicked him repeatedly and also kicked the doors and windows of a police car.

Media Bias In Action:  NY Times Makes Obama The Victim Of His Incompetence.  The concern here is we are a culture that demands a ton of information, and we want it fast.  Twitter, Facebook, Apple News, news alerts and email alerts keep us up to date on every bit of news we want from sports to politics.  Unfortunately, an environment also exists wherein people are happy to read a headline and not read an article.

Leakers and Journalists Are Destroying Our Republic.  Leakers and journalists are tied together like drug dealers and junkies.  Unfair analogy?  Maybe a bit, but people who live "respectable middle-class lives" can be just as dangerous, more dangerous, ultimately, than the murderous El Chapos of the world and that's pretty bad.  Only the other day some U.S. intel people or person leaked to the New York Times about the Manchester terrorist, causing news to be reported that could have instigated more Islamist child murders.  We have an epidemic of leaking in our society unlike anything I have seen in my lifetime.

Journalists' brains below average due to alcohol and caffeine:  Study.  [Dr. Tara Swart's] research titled "Study Into The Mental Resilience of Journalists," blames journalists' cognitive shortcomings on dehydration caused by excessive alcohol consumption along with poor diet, including higher levels of sugar and caffeine.  Less than 5% of journalists drink enough — or any — water while 41% drank more than 18 alcoholic drinks per week.  The study measured "executive functioning" which, as Swart writes in her report, is "the ability of the brain to regulate emotions, suppress bias, switch between tasks, solve complex problems and think flexibly and creatively."  She notes that some of the deficiencies may be a result of a high-pressure work environment that doesn't allow time for mindfulness.

Study Into the Mental Resilience of Journalists.  Results indicated that, on average, the journalists who participated were no more physically stressed than the average person.  Blood test data, which would have shown high levels of cortisol to indicate stress, was mostly normal — save for two anomalies, one showing high cortisol and the other high testosterone levels.  Anecdotally, a high proportion of the group reported experiencing some stress, but often cited factors other than their job, including family and finances, as being the cause of this.  This was supported by heart rate variability data in several instances indicating a higher degree of stress during hours spent at home.  The demands of digital were often cited as contributing to feelings of stress at work.  The headline conclusion reached is that journalists are undoubtedly subject to a range of pressures at work and home, but the meaning and purpose they attribute to their work contributes to helping them remain mentally resilient despite this.

The Mass Media Cult Goes Pathological.  If these people weren't so malignant, I'd feel sorry for them.  This is a kind of death anxiety for the American ruling class, which is also why they constantly fantasize about killing Donald Trump.  For psychiatrists, it's an interesting mental disorder, and it's too bad that millions of Americans still depend on Mass Cult for their daily news.  This is not a college textbook; it's America today. [...] Most people don't realize that "media concentration" — a functional news monopoly, day after day — has the same effect as cult indoctrination.  It doesn't matter if Disney Corp. has a different name from the New York Times.  It matters only that they tell the same "news" story every day.  For a mental mass monopoly, you don't need to violate anti-trust law.  All you need is mass media that make up the "news" by consensus, not by empirical reality.

CNN's Cutting-Edge Reporting Brings You ... Ice Cream?  CNN seems to have taken Trump's 'You Are Fake News' statement as a challenge to lower their bar.  The seem to be SEEKING out stories to prove JUST how fake their reporting can be.  They breathlessly report on ANYTHING that could possibly put President Trump in a bad light.  Even secondhand whispers about rumors are presented as though they were established fact.

Mark Levin On Comey:  "A Lot Of Legal And Historical Illiterates Posing As TV Hosts And Commentators".  Nationally syndicated radio host Mark Levin rips the media and pundits posing as legal and historical experts, namely CNN's Jeffrey Toobin.  [Video clip]

NBC's Lester Holt Interrupts Trump 9 Times in Less than 3 Minutes.  NBCNews.com on Thursday posted a two minute and 34 second preview clip of anchor Lester Holt's exclusive sit-down with President Donald Trump.  The clip features Holt conducting an interrogation-like interview in which the NBC personality interrupted Trump nine times and spoke over the president on many of those occasions.  The short clip is part of a 31-minute White House interview set to air Thursday night [5/11/2017] on NBC Nightly News.  [Video clip]

What Caused Venezuela's Collapse Is No Mystery — Except To Economically Illiterate Journalists.  When the New York Times wrote about Venezuela's ongoing collapse a year ago, it described how the country was suffering "painful shortages ... even of basic foods," and how "electricity and water are being rationed, and huge areas of the country have spent months with little of either."  Here is how the Times explained the reason for Venezuela's dire situation:  "The growing economic crisis (was) fueled by low prices for oil, the country's main export; a drought that has crippled Venezuela's ability to generate hydroelectric power; and a long decline in manufacturing and agricultural production." There's no mention — not one — of the fact that Hugo Chávez tried to turn Venezuela into a socialist paradise, policies that his successor Nicolás Maduro has continued.  The Times' coverage is par for the course.

The Left's Culture Of Contempt.  The left is devoutly convinced that this snickering can save America.  That it's better than the news.  The Peabody awards celebrated the Daily Show as "a trusted source of news for citizens united in their disappointment and disgust with politics and cable news".  But the media was the first in line to anoint the politics of contempt, ridicule and disgust as the future of journalism.  Now the future is here.  The Washington Post, once a paper of record, swarms with snarky Stewartesque headlines like, "Jeff Sessions doesn't think a judge in Hawaii — a.k.a. 'an island in the Pacific' — should overrule Trump".  Journalism is dead.  And replacing it with snarky lefty spin hasn't saved the Republic.  Or anything else.

When Will The Media Realize That Anonymous Sources Undermine Their Credibility?  [Scroll down]  Why does all this matter?  Because precision matters.  Accountability matters.  When they support their arguments with the lazy and hazy "some" and "many," the fabled New Yorker is no better than the "anonymous" message boards and blogs the mainstream media routinely ridicules.  And because while this might go unnoticed by many, some are still paying attention.

How many buzzwords can the liberal media write in one sentence?  I was reading a very poorly written Los Angeles Times article about North Carolina legislators introducing a bill to define marriage as between a man and a woman, and I was surprised to read the following sentence:  ["]Opponents of the legislation castigated it as an unnecessary step that will stoke division in a state still reeling from the fallout of a controversial bill regulating which bathrooms transgender people can use.["]  I have rarely seen a sentence so sensationalistically, so chock-full of so many liberal buzzwords.  The over-dramatization of facts makes this news article read like an action thriller.

When reporters slip on ICE.  Hmm.  What a coincidence.  Two illegal alien moms from Mexico, each with four kids, living in Lorain, Ohio, worry about deportation after a traffic stop in the same month in Sheffield Village.  Sheffield's population is 3,982.  It is 6% Hispanic in a county that is 8% Hispanic in a state that is 3% Hispanic.  The truth is, they are the same person.  Anabel Barron Sanchez works as a caseworker at El Centro DE Servicios Sociales INC in Lorain, Ohio.  Until she was 16, she migrated back and forth between San Antonio and Mexico.  Then she moved to Ohio.  She knows the system.  She knows the media.  That is how she got a national magazine to cover her story — as Anabel Barron.

Is the Media Too Comfortable with Its Own Mistakes?  In November, New York magazine excitedly reported on the claims of computer scientists that "results in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania may have been manipulated or hacked."  No credible evidence of hacking was ever presented.  In December, Politico reported that the bank of Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin had "foreclosed on a 90-year-old woman after a 27-cent payment error," a claim widely repeated in publications such as Vanity Fair.  As the Competitive Enterprise Institute's Ted Frank pointed out, the "widow was never foreclosed on and never lost her home, and it wasn't Mnuchin's bank that brought the suit."  Seven hate crimes widely reported after the 2016 election turned out to be hoaxes.  Do members of the media feel bad when they get facts wrong or gullibly repeat implausible claims?  Guilty?  Angry at themselves?  Do they resolve to do better next time?

ABC, CNN, Washington Post can't find evidence of vote fraud that a 9-year old could using Google.  The problem for these big brains is that a 9-year old using Google could raise enough questions about systematic, rampant vote fraud to completely legitimize Miller.  Here's a starter kit for the  idiots  reporters on the Left:
  •   On hidden camera, an authority on the subject — Democrat election commissioner Alan Schulkin from New York City — admitted that "there's a lot of voter fraud... they bus people around to vote"
  •   In the 2014 publication of Election Studies Journal, the authors estimate that 2.8 million illegal aliens voted in both the 2008 and 2010 elections
  •   In just three Virginia counties, more than 1,000 illegal voters are eligible to cast a ballot
  •   California's Los Angeles county reported the most provisional ballots — the easiest to game — in the country, representing a stunning 40 percent of all votes cast.

Trump's Got a Big Job Reining In Voter Fraud.  It is hard to fathom how anyone, especially those inquiring minds of the Washington press corps, legitimately would be so uninterested in finding the truth.  Despite insisting that the President provide evidence of voter fraud, he is being assailed even more vehemently by the Democrat pols, late-night talk show hosts and reporters when he offers to do just that. [...] Fraud long has been an ugly element of American politics, and it has been almost exclusively the dominion of Democrats.

Errors From The Press Are Piling Up In The Opening Weeks Of The Trump Administration.  Journalists can't seem to get their stories straight in the opening weeks of the Trump administration, whether in tweets or in articles where falsehoods have been spread almost daily.  The mistakes have not just been from newer liberal news outlets such The Huffington Post or BuzzFeed, but from legacy media like Reuters, The Washington Post, and The New York Times.  What follows are several botched stories or conflicting reports since President Trump took office.

Here's A List Of Stories The Media Got Wrong This Week.  It was an embarrassing week for the mainstream media.  In case after case, stories pushed by news outlets turned out to be either unsubstantiated or fell apart upon closer scrutiny.

Yet Another Media Meltdown Turns Out To Be Totally Wrong.  News that President Donald Trump was easing sanctions against Russia was refuted almost immediately, like so many other stories.  The Department of the Treasury said Thursday that it would allow U.S. companies to make limited transactions with the Federal Security Service (FSB), Russia's intelligence agency.  Possibly eager to establish a connection between the new U.S. president and Russia, numerous media outlets and journalists were quick to claim that Trump was easing, and even lifting, sanctions against Russia.  "I haven't eased anything," Trump told reporters at the White House Thursday [2/2/2017].

Media Covers Trump's First Executive Orders With The Worst Camera Work In History Of Broadcast Journalism.  Donald Trump signed his first executive orders as president Monday morning, and for some reason, the cameraman the White House press pool assigned to cover the event appeared to have never operated a camera before.

'Tell Me What Your Real Name Is': Tucker Carlson Confronts Guest Over Hoax in Bonkers Interview.  The video above contains quite possibly one of the most bizarre interviews you will ever watch.  Here's how Tucker Carlson began the interview:  "This is a sham, your company isn't real, your website is fake, the claims you have made are lies, this is a hoax.  Let me start at the beginning, however, with your name, Dom Tullipso, which is not your real name.  It's a fake name, we ran you through law enforcement-level background checks and that name does not exist.  So let's start out with the truth.  Tell me what your real name is."  [Video clip]

The Editor says...
This fellow apparently was invited on to Fox News Channel only after they discovered he had been fooling other news organizations into publicizing his fictitious claims.

Hoax ads in two dozen cities offered protesters up to $2,500 to agitate at Trump inaugural.  The polished Demand Protest website, the Backpage.com ads recruiting paid protesters for the Trump inauguration:  Apparently it was all a hoax.  A man using the alias "Dominic Tullipso" said Tuesday [1/17/2017] on Fox News Channel — well, it was hard to figure out what he was trying to say, but it was also clear that he wasn't running a business that involved spending thousands on hiring activists.

Unserious anchor wastes Pence's time.  Governor Mike Pence, who will become vice president on Friday, gave John Dickerson an interview on Sunday [1/15/2017] on CBS's "Face the Nation."  Waste the Nation was more like it as Dickerson asked no substantive questions.  Not one.  Instead Dickerson pestered Pence about John Lewis pouting over President Trump's election, and about the totally discredited Russian dossier.

Fake News, Or: 'The Art of the Fail'.  Actually, I am starting to think that maybe the mainstream media is not dishonest at all, just incapable of serious analysis or examination of ideas.

Politico discovers "new" network that's been around 74 years.  Today in Fake News, Politico reported:  "President-elect Donald Trump is about to inherit a newly empowered Voice of America that some officials fear could serve as an unfettered propaganda arm for the former reality TV star who has flirted for years with launching his own network."  The network began in World War II, on February 17, 1942 to be exact.

Prominent Journos Uncritically Retweet Fake Rex Tillerson Twitter Account.  New York Times energy reporter Clifford Krauss thought he had President-elect Donald Trump's secretary of sate pick on the ropes when he retweeted what he thought was ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson's Twitter account.  It wasn't.  Krauss went after a fake Tillerson Twitter account that was apparently created Saturday — the day before he retweeted it.  Krauss went after Tillerson for tweeting "he is a patriot," but other journalists on Twitter quickly questioned the legitimacy of the fake Tillerson account.

Newsweek editor:  We didn't read 'Madam President' issue before publishing.  A Newsweek editor admitted Wednesday [11/30/2016] that he and other staffers didn't actually read their recalled commemorative "Madam President" election issue before it was published.  Newsweek political editor Matthew Cooper said Wednesday on Fox News' "Tucker Carlson Tonight" that the magazine's issue, which incorrectly anticipated a Hillary Clinton win, was not produced by Newsweek but by a third party.  "Well, no one on our staff wrote that," Cooper said.  "Again, we subcontract out to a company."

Newsweek Didn't Even Read Its Own Recalled President Hillary Commemorative Issue.  An editor at Newsweek magazine admitted on Tucker Carlson Tonight that the magazine hadn't even proofread a commemorative issue honoring Hillary Clinton before having it distributed in anticipation of her winning the 2016 presidential election.  Like many others, Newsweek believed Clinton was a strong favorite to defeat Donald Trump in November's election.  Seeking to take advantage of her win, the company printed out 125,000 copies of a commemorative issue honoring the triumph of "Madam President," and even had Clinton sign some of them.

Nigel Farage Spoke at a Media Conference and Journalists Lost Their Minds.  Nigel Farage has sent the international establishment media into a tailspin by telling them that they are wrong on climate change, wrong on immigraion, wrong on radical Islam — and that they need to change.  Appearing in Copenhagen at the News Xchange annual conference for the international broadcast news industry Farage addressed the audience of around 630 journalists from around the world and promptly sent them into a Twitter frenzy by informing them they were out of touch.

Reuters Explains How It "Fudged" Its Polls.  Over the past couple of weeks, we have constantly pointed out that polling data was seemingly being manipulated to "manufacture" artificial leads for the mainstream media's chosen candidate, Hillary Clinton.  By "oversampling" democrats and/or various minority groups, pollster after pollster kept rolling out predictions that seemed utterly ridiculous to us but were gobbled up by complicit media outlets.

Media Reaction:  We And Our Self-Obsessed Liberal Friends Were All Wrong.  Journalists flatly admitted they completely failed to understand the 2016 presidential election following Republican nominee Donald Trump's win Tuesday [11/8/2016].  "To put it bluntly, the media missed the story," Margaret Sullivan wrote in The Washington Post.  "We were all wrong," Anna Palmer and Jake Sherman wrote in Politico's Playbook newsletter.  "That seems obvious, right?  But we were more than wrong.  We were laughably oblivious.  The entire Washington political-media complex completely missed the mark.  Not by inches or feet, but by miles."

Celebrities, Have the Grace to Fulfill Your Promises.  The Left was quite positive that the first woman to be president would triumph, and obviously the whole thing was quite a shock.  Celebrities, always eager to get their faces or persons before any available camera, did so.  But just what is a celebrity?  They are people who are famous because you might recognize their face or their name.  They prefer to think that because they may or may not have some name recognition, that the world is interested in their political opinions — it isn't.  Unfortunately there are always some star-struck reporters around who are.

News Media Yet Again Misreads America's Complex Pulse.  The misfire on Tuesday night [11/8/2016] was about a lot more than a failure in polling.  It was a failure to capture the boiling anger of a large portion of the American electorate that feels left behind by a selective recovery, betrayed by trade deals that they see as threats to their jobs and disrespected by establishment Washington, Wall Street and the mainstream media.  Journalists didn't question the polling data when it confirmed their gut feeling that Mr. Trump could never in a million years pull it off.  They portrayed Trump supporters who still believed he had a shot as being out of touch with reality.  In the end, it was the other way around.

Hacking concern on Election Day:  The companies that bring you the news.  Experts have been warning for months that hackers could try to disrupt Tuesday's election by penetrating local voting systems.  But another target could prove easier to hack:  U.S. media outlets offering election night results.  Upguard, a Mountain View, California, company that assesses how well companies are protecting themselves from hackers, has found that three major news organizations — The Associated Press, The Wall Street Journal and CBS News — tallied "pretty abysmal" scores on key criteria to thwart breaches.  All three are key sources of election night results, with the AP perhaps the largest provider of election tabulations in the country.

CNN's Carol Costello to Millennial Republican:  I'm Not Sure What You Mean by 'Traditional Values'.  In a CNN panel for first-time voters, a young conservative explained that Millennial voters could learn a lot from the "older generations" and their "traditional values".  CNN's Carol Costello admitted that she wasn't sure what that meant.  Robert Wines, who is casting his first vote for independent conservative candidate Evan McMullin, said, "Millennials have to be more accepting of traditional values ... that are greatly found in the older generations."  "Hm," Costello said, "I'm trying to figure out what you mean by that."

Too Stupid To Rule.  [Scroll down]  Once e-mail was sent from the domain to outsiders, it was only a matter of time before the secret was out.  They were lucky that most media people are remarkably stupid so they lack the wherewithal to wonder why Hillary Clinton did not have a State Department e-mail account.  Watch the cable channels and you come away thinking that the people on TV just learned about e-mail last week.  Eventually the Romanian cab driver unearthed the whole thing and the enterprise came crashing down. [...] There are a lot of angles to these Clinton scandals, but the thing that transcends all of it is the rank stupidity of the people involved.

Clueless CBS Anchors on Obamacare Premium Hikes:  "What Happened?".  How did this happen?  Well, Charlie, Norah and Gayle:  You carried the water for your 'messiah,' Barack Hussein Obama, for eight years, you all hailed Obamacare as an amazing success, and you ignored the suffering of real Americans as Obamacare began to implode.

Liberal CBS Morning News Anchors Act Shocked at Totally Predictable, Huge ObamaCare Rates Increases.  Watch the liberal CBS Morning News Anchor crew act totally shocked at the totally predictable huge premium rate increases announced for ObamaCare.  Premiums are going up 25% on average, and many providers are dropping out of the system.  CBS' Norah O'Donnell acts like it is a total mystery.  Yet, conservatives said years ago this is what would happen with ObamaCare.  It is a total disaster.  [Video clip]

CBS Anchors Bamboozled by Obamacare Rate Hikes.  Have a look at the CBS This Morning anchors, totally mystified about why Obamacare premiums are rising.  I mean, do they administer IQ tests to these people before they put them on TV?  Listen to Norah O'Donnell — "The premiums are skyrocketing!"  She sounds like she just found out Martians had landed and opened up a chain of delicatessens.  [Video clip]

CNN Host Tries to Burn Trump, Thinks Members of Congress Already Have Term Limits.  CNN anchor Brooke Baldwin criticized Donald Trump's call for term limits on members of Congress on Tuesday [10/18/2016] by incorrectly saying that such limits already existed.  As part of a new policy to "drain the swamp" in Washington, D.C., Trump announced Tuesday he would push for a constitutional amendment as president to impose term limits on all members of Congress.  "Correct me, there already are term limits, so what does he mean?" Baldwin skeptically asked reporter Dana Bash.  Indeed, Baldwin had to be corrected.  Bash did so politely.

Smug CNN Moonbat Claims "There are already term limits in congress".  In what can only be described as the current intelligence customarily found amid the Clinton News Network, host and pundit Brooke Baldwin looks at her panel, smugly and condescendingly replying:  ... "there are already term limits, so what does he mean"?  [Video clip]

CNN Anchor Brooke Baldwin Doesn't Know There Are No Term Limits for Members of Congress.  The liberal media that is pushing Hillary Clinton down our throats while trashing Donald Trump every chance they get may not be as informed as they portray themselves.  Take for instance CNN anchor Brooke Baldwin who is under the impression that there are term limits for members of the US Congress.  Even funnier is that she made this mistaken point while trying to stick it to Trump.  Brooke Baldwin is a fairly attractive woman and perhaps she got her job more on her looks than her journalist chops.  On Tuesday she was reporting that Donald Trump has made a pledge that if he were elected president, he would propose a Constitutional amendment that would place term limits on Congress.  Here's what Baldwin had to say about this: [...]

NPR Reporter Has No Idea What 'Come And Take It' Means.  Sunday marked the 181st anniversary of the Battle of Gonzales, the first military engagement of the Texas Revolution, when Texian militiamen, responding to Mexican soldiers demanding the surrender of a small brass cannon, coined the now-famous battle cry, "Come and Take It!"  An NPR reporter decided to mark this anniversary with a story about how the phrase has been stolen by Second Amendment activists, "with no appreciation of its origins."  Some local residents of modern-day Gonzales, we're told, "think it's been cheapened — and they want it back."  But neither the hapless NPR reporter nor the several anti-gun residents of Gonzales interviewed for the story know the actual origin of the phrase, or why its application to the ongoing national debate about gun control and the Second Amendment is entirely appropriate — and historically accurate.

Tax Expert:  All Journalists Proved About Donald Trump's 1995 Return Was Their Own Ignorance.  Tax preparer and Forbes contributor Ryan Ellis writes that "professional" journalists' hot takes about Donald Trump's 1995 tax return show how little they know about taxes and business.

Trump Tax Return Story Exposes Policy Ignorance Of Political Reporters.  Over the weekend, the New York Times reported that they had obtained a copy of Donald Trump's 1995 New York state tax return (whoever sent it committed a felony).  It showed that he claimed a net operating loss (NOL) of about $900 million that year.  What followed was a collective explosion of talking heads over the weekend, with the theatrics inversely proportional to the pundit's knowledge of tax policy.  To state the obvious, political reporters don't know [any] thing about taxes.

How the media caused the 2000 Florida recount.  On November 7, 2000, during the final hour and a half of voting in Florida's most conservative region, the Panhandle, 13 national television journalists, representing all six major outlets, asserted a total of 39 times that the polls in that region closed an hour earlier than they really did.  Not once did anyone on ABC, CBS, CNN, Fox News Channel, NBC, or MSNBC inform the audience that Florida has two time zones and two poll closing times.  They hammered away that there was only one poll-closing time throughout the entire state of Florida:  7 p.m.  Eastern.  The polls in the ten westernmost Panhandle counties — all heavily Republican — were actually open until 8 p.m.  Eastern.

"Election Fraud Underway" — NBC Affiliate Posts "Election Results" For Florida Race That Hasn't Happened Yet.  Republican candidate for Florida House District 86, Laurel Bennett, was a bit shocked over the weekend when she discovered that a local West Palm Beach NBC affiliate, WPTV, reported that she had lost a race even though votes hadn't been cast yet.  Why do we need voters when it's far easier to just skip straight to the results?

Relying too much on polls doesn't serve public.  Every major broadcast and cable network, and many major newspapers, feel compelled to sponsor their own political polls.  But the polling conducted today by news outlets and universities does little to serve the public interest.  The polls do, however, serve the branding and marketing interests of the sponsoring organizations.  That financial motivation drives the polling frenzy more than any sense of civic duty.  When CNN, Fox News or NBC releases periodic poll results, the news channels benefit from having those results reported across the journalistic world, raising the profile of the respective news outlets.  Polls provide journalists with something to report about, fill time and endlessly analyze.  That's easier for news organizations than covering issues and providing election news of substance.  Such "horse race" coverage diminishes the process of democracy to the level of a sporting event.

Media Push Obama's 'Cool Brand,' Present Summer Playlist as 'News'.  Who in the world decided that revealing Obama's summertime playlist actually constituted as newsworthy?  Apparently ABC News did, as well as CNN, Politico, The Washington Post — and even Obama himself when he tweeted:  "Been waiting to drop this: summer playlist, the encore.  What's everybody listening to?"

Brexit fueled by backlash against media bias and deception.  On Thursday [6/23/2016], the British voted by a 52% to 48% margin to take the United Kingdom out of the European Union, an action known as "Brexit."  In doing so they ignored virtually all of the self-styled "experts" cited in British newspapers, who opposed leaving, and the majority (although by no means all) of Britain's media (including the Guardian, the BBC, the Financial Times, The Times, the Daily Mirror, The Economist, etc.).  As Alexandra Petri writes in the Washington Post, "The people who were in favor of remaining were Basically All Experts ... the Economist, the Financial Times)... and Every Prime Minister of Britain Who Is Still Alive, but what do these establishment types know? ... All of this has come about thanks to a world that is increasingly suspicious of experts."

Oops: Politico mistakes disgraced Democrat for Republican.  Politico misidentified disgraced Rep.  Chaka Fattah, D-Pa., this week as a Republican. [...] The article as it appeared on social media carried the headline "Fattah submits resignation but wants to stay until October," and it included a picture captioned, "Convicted Pennsylvania Republican wants to remain in House until sentencing."

New York Times quietly backs away from story on Orlando terrorist's weapon.  After widespread complaints on social media, the New York Times has quietly backed away this afternoon from inaccurate reporting on the weapon used in Saturday's Orlando terror attack.  Second Amendment supporters and others have repeatedly questioned why "AR-15 Rifles Are Beloved, Reviled and a Common Element in Mass Shootings" was so quick to incorrectly draw a common theme between other domestic incidents and this one based on the killer's weapon of choice.

Media fail:  Orlando terrorist did not use an AR-15.  Since Sunday's terrorist attack on an Orlando gay nightclub, the Democrat-media complex has gone on a tear demonizing the AR-15.  A number of ignorant outlets and biased operators (as opposed to "reporters" who actually try to get the story right) breathlessly reported that the shooter used an AR-15.  Here's an example of the false reporting.  A video at the Washington Post is captioned:  "Orlando shooter Omar Mateen used an AR-15 style rifle to kill at least 49 people, officials say.  Here's what you need to know about the gun some are calling 'the gold standard for mass murder.'"  But, Bob Owens wrote at Bearing Arms, they got it wrong.

The Orlando Killer Didn't Use An AR-15 Rifle.  [T]he demonization of the AR-15 rifle has begun in the media.  The usual talking points about its lethality, its rate of fire, and its scariness are coursing through the veins of the anti-gun Left following the Orlando attack.  Omar Mateen committed the worst mass shooting in U.S. history on Sunday morning, which will likely be reclassified as a terrorist attack, when he murdered 49 people at a gay nightclub (Pulse).  As Bob Owens and Streiff noted at Bearing Arms and RedState respectively, Mateen didn't use an AR-15 rifle, but the media has a narrative to dole out.

NBC 'Law Enforcement Expert' Blamed Orlando Terror Shooting on Anti-Gay 'White Hate Groups'.  Early on Sunday before the world learned the identity and religion of the man who murdered up to 50 people in an Orlando, Florida, gay bar, a "law enforcement expert" for NBC went on the air on MSNBC and hinted that the shooter was probably a Christian and a member of a "white hate group."

NPR + NYT: A Recipe for Cluelessness.  What happens when a National Public Radio host interviews a New York Times reporter on the subject of Venezuela's economic collapse?  You get a perfect storm of cluelessness.  The host is Terry Gross, the guest is New York Times reporter Nicholas Casey, and the program is Fresh Air.  Gross asks Casey about the utter disaster that Venezuela has become.  Casey understands the depth to which Venezuela has fallen — he lives in Caracas! — but he can't bring himself to offer an honest diagnosis.

John Dickerson's Face the Nation Interview with Hillary a Disgrace to CBS News;.  John Dickerson was one of the better moderators we saw during the campaign season.  He asked solid questions and follow-up questions, didn't editorialize and kept the trains running on time with multiple candidates to juggle.  This space gave him an 'A' for the way he handled a Democratic presidential debate back in December.  But an interview with Hillary Clinton that was broadcast this morning [5/8/2016] on CBS' Face the Nation was not only profoundly disappointing, but even disgraceful... particularly for someone as seasoned as the 47-year-old CBS political director and host.  Never have there been so many questions to a presumptive presidential nominee that were so unfocused, so tilted, so teed-up, so non-probing than whatever that was Dickerson served up during his long sit-down this morning.

Chris Matthews: 'We Don't Even Know What the Facility's Called' Where the Benghazi Attack Happened.  MSNBC host Chris Matthews said Wednesday [4/27/2016] that "we don't even know what the facility's called" where the 2012 Benghazi terrorist attack occurred that killed Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans.  Discussing Donald Trump's attack on former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for not being awake for the phone call about the attack, Matthews appeared not to remember it occurred at the diplomatic compound in the Libyan city.

Florida news group runs picture of a rifle for story about a pistol.  A Florida newsweekly on Monday [4/25/2016] used a picture of religious liberty activist holding a rifle instead of the pistol that was the subject of its story, and justified it by saying the image of the larger, more powerful firearm was "just too good to pass up."

How and Why the Conservative Media Sold Its Soul To Facilitate Trump's Nomination.  In short, the vast majority of "conservative" media is simply just a business cynically disguised as a cause.  The reason this is the case is actually quite simple.  Because the vast majority of "newsish" media outlets are overtly liberal, the business model and employment opportunities (or lack thereof) on the right are vastly different from the rest of the media.  Liberals have an abundance of chances to opine on network television, major newspapers and books from mainstream publishers, usually without any serious worries about having to sell products or get ratings.  Meanwhile, radio talk show hosts and Fox News anchors are forced to fight for every possible ratings point (usually against people allegedly on the same "team") and often sell their souls to maintain their ability to sell soap.  Conservative websites, with the exception of the Drudge Report, are in a constant battle to stay afloat, often with badly broken business models.  This dynamic set up a perfect storm of circumstances for "Trumpsanity" to overtake the process and ultimately produce a result about as unjust and destructive as the OJ Simpson verdict.  There is even evidence that Trump understood this reality and designed his campaign's launch during the slowest news period to take advantage of it.

The Hill Calls Lifelong Democrat Segregationist George Wallace a Republican in Piece About Donald Trump.  Mark Hensch, a staff writer for The Hill, wrote an article tiltled, "Kiefer Sutherland: Trump recalls segregationist George Wallace," in which Hensch wrote, "Actor Kiefer Sutherland sees similarities between GOP presidential front-runner Donald Trump and former Alabama Gov. George Wallace (R), one of American history's most vocal segregationists."  The glaring problem here is George Wallace was never a Republican.

CBS Interview Devolves Into Asking Obama What's in His Pockets.  After sitting down with the President and the First Lady on Sunday [2/7/2016] for a friendly chat before the Super Bowl, CBS This Morning co-host Gayle King was not finished with her sycophantic fawning as she followed Obama into the Oval Office for a one-on-one exchange highlighted by her asking what "cool things" he was carrying in his pockets that day.

Of Course Whites Commit Most Of The Crime In Fargo You Idiots.  It's time for another fantastically stupid "exclusive" news story from the folks at Fargo-based television news station Valley News Live.  Their big revelation?  White people commit most of the crime in Fargo.  A city where, according to the U.S. Census, is 90.2 percent white.

The seven deadly stupidities of 2015 political coverage.  [Scroll down]  One particular bit of bah-humbuggery:  three tweets are not a story.  Once, reporters had to call people on the telephone or even, heaven forfend, go places in order to get information.  In time, the fax machine started dropping story ideas and statements into our laps.  That electronic dependency deepened a decade ago when cut-and-pasteable emails started populating our inboxes.  But now, Twitter feeds provide ongoing press conferences in Crazytown.  It is a ruthlessly efficient outrage generation machine.

'It's Because I'm Black, Isn't It?'  Race makes people crazy, but often not in the way you'd expect.  A nation watched wide-eyed as Melissa Harris-Perry of MSNBC complained that the Star Wars franchise was racist because the major villain is "black."  Darth Vader is black in the sense that Johnny Cash or Ben Roethlisberger or certain figures from Arthurian legend are "black" — white guys in black outfits — so people kept waiting for Harris-Perry, "America's foremost public intellectual," to crack and let us know that she was joking.  But she wasn't joking.

Journalists Refuse to Talk About Storming San Bernardino Suspects' Home.  Journalists gathered at the home of Syed Farook and Tashfeen Malik, the terrorists who carried out Wednesday's attack in San Bernardino, will not talk about whether they had permission to storm inside.  Breitbart News' Michelle Moons and Raheem Kassam arrived on the scene shortly after MSNBC, CNN, and other networks burst through the door, which had been opened with a crowbar after the landlord allegedly gave permission to journalists to enter.

During Paris Attacks, MSNBC's Brian Williams Asks About Impact On Climate Conference.  A climate conference is underway in Paris, and Weather Channel Managing Editor Sam Champion is there, along with former Vice President Al Gore, filming the event and doing promotion there for the cause.  Champion was on MSNBC to discuss the terror attacks in Paris as they were occurring.  After some back and forth, tone deaf Williams asked Champion how the conference would be affected.  Williams did not merely ask about how the event would proceed, or whether security would be affected, which might be natural questions even if grossly untimely.  But instead he asks specifically, how this attack would impact the messaging.

Brian Williams Asks About How Paris Attacks Will Affect Climate Summit Messaging.  Right in the middle of the reports of the Paris attacks yesterday [11/13/2015] comes a really bizarre and tone deaf note of concern from Brian Williams of MSNBC.  Brian was concerned about how the attacks will affect the messaging of the Paris Climate Change Conference which is scheduled to begin at the end of this month.

Media Bias Goes Extreme.  The national and local media bias against the Second Amendment reached bizarre heights this week when a newspaper headline proclaimed "Shooter kills 4; 30 injured."  The problem?  Well, even a casual reader would note that the tragedy described in the article had nothing to do with a "shooter" but was about a individual who drove her car through a homecoming parade at Oklahoma State University.  While the motives of the driver's actions remain unclear, we find it simply incredible that a headline could be so abundantly off the mark.

1,001 Times the Media Acted Shocked That Trump Was Running a Real Campaign.  Indeed, by succeeding so easily at the campaign game, Trump has made a mockery of political journalism's obsession with campaign strategy.

MSNBC Admits Anti-Israel Graphics Were 'Wrong'.  MSNBC has admitted that highly controversial graphics aired on the network that depicted Israel as stealing land from the Palestinians were "factually wrong" and that the broadcast would be corrected on Monday [10/19/2015], according to a network spokesperson.  The cable news network has been fighting off criticism after it aired the graphics and analysis, including a map linked to conspiracy groups branded as anti-Semitic, that portrayed Israel as existing on territory expropriated from Palestine.  The graphics garnered criticism from pro-Israel advocates and has now prompted the network to acknowledge that the graphics were highly misleading.

He stopped a jihadist in France. Now he's been stabbed in California.  The original story about Skarlatos and Harper-Mercer evidently has legs.  In all there have now been three high-profile, possibly related violent attacks in France, Oregon, and California that might be connected to the world of Islamofascist (some prefer the descriptor Islamo-Nazi) terrorism.  In this writer's opinion, no reasonable person who follows current affairs can reflexively dismiss the seeming connection of attackers and victims, given what's going on in the world right now.  This is not to say that there necessarily is (or was) an Islamist plot against the three American men.  But the mainstream media, as usual, isn't doing its job.  Journalists are sitting on their hands, regurgitating talking points, and failing to consider the big picture.

CNN's Chris Cuomo Has Absolutely No Idea Where Babies Come From.  Chris Cuomo is a broadcast journalist, currently anchoring at CNN. [...] He interviewed Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Florida) the day after the first GOP presidential primary debate last week.  And Cuomo came out hard in support of abortion.  That's not particularly noteworthy in the current media environment, where journalists openly advocate for abortion.  But it is worth noting that he did it in a mind-numbingly idiotic manner.

Clueless Reporters Question President Pinocchio: A Pathetic Press Conference.  Today [7/15/2015] President Obama met the White House press corps at length to defend his Iran nuclear deal.  One could deconstruct his evasions line by line, but that would largely duplicate the content of many posts we have done over the past weeks and months.  Instead, I want to focus on a few key issues.  But first, this observation:  if any of the reporters present had read the agreement, which is only 159 pages long, it was not apparent.  Maybe reporters are not accustomed to reading legal documents; maybe they are too lazy to try; maybe they have read and understood the agreement and are just partisan hacks, covering for their president.  But I have a full-time job, and nevertheless have read the agreement several times.  Why can't reporters do the same?  That would seem to be a prerequisite to participating intelligently in a press conference on the subject.

Hillary-Slayer Fiorina: Give Me Shot on Debate Stage to Ask Every Question Press Won't.  [Scroll down]  "She was not asked a single question about her track record as secretary of State.  She wasn't asked about why she thought a gimmicky reset button would stop Vladimir Putin.  She wasn't asked about why she called President Bashar al-Assad of Syria a positive reformer.  She wasn't asked why she declared victory in Iraq in 2011.  She wasn't asked if she thought she had lied to the American people about Benghazi and what she thinks now of the fact that Libya is a failed state and a haven for terrorists," she continued.  "In other words, she isn't going to be asked all the questions she needs to be asked, which is why we must have a nominee who will face her on a general election debate stage and ask every single one of those questions so that the American people have the facts they need to make a good judgment."

A shocking breach of professionalism:
CNN's GoPro antics rile Supreme Court.  The Supreme Court of the United States briefly removed media interns from its press room on Monday after a CNN intern was caught recording video footage with a GoPro camera that he had strapped to his chest, the On Media blog has learned.  The episode led to an impromptu meeting among top CNN executives and editors in Washington, a call to the company's legal department, and a profuse apology to the Supreme Court's public affairs team.

New York Times 'Reporter' Who Can't Tell a 'Luxury Speedboat' from a Fishing Boat Upset that People Think He's an Idiot.  For the second time in a week, the New York Times made an attempt to do some damage and, once again, it was a spectacular failure.  [Michael] Barbaro could have avoided his embarrassment if he'd engaged in the most basic of journalistic activities:  making a phone call.

ABC's '08 Prediction: NYC Under Water from Climate Change By June 2015.  New York City underwater?  Gas over $9 a gallon?  A carton of milk costs almost $13?  Welcome to June 12, 2015.  Or at least that was the wildly-inaccurate version of 2015 predicted by ABC News exactly seven years ago.  Appearing on Good Morning America in 2008, Bob Woodruff hyped Earth 2100, a special that pushed apocalyptic predictions of the then-futuristic 2015.  The segment included supposedly prophetic videos, such as a teenager declaring, "It's June 8th, 2015.  One carton of milk is $12.99."  (On the actual June 8, 2015, a gallon of milk cost, on average, $3.39.)  Another clip featured this prediction for the current year:  "Gas reached over $9 a gallon."  (In reality, gas costs an average of $2.75.)

Journalists: Do Your Job.  If someone says something, you have an obligation to report it accurately and without bias.  Your job is not to tell people how to think.  In a free and open society, your job is to inform readers and viewers so that they may form their own opinions.  You keep your views in check while presenting the information.  Is it near impossible to keep all bias out of a story?  Admittedly, yes.  But, if you bring up all points and lets readers and viewers decide for themselves, you have done your job.

Who is a Journalist?  My first job in journalism was as a copyboy at the NBC News Bureau in Washington, D.C.  In my early 20s, I asked Bill Corrigan, the newsroom manager, "What must I do to get on the air?"  He replied, "Get a college degree and a minimum of five years writing experience with a newspaper or wire service." [...] The rules of the road to journalistic success have changed dramatically, as has the definition of journalist.  Today, one can self-identify as a journalist without any background or experience.  Which brings me to George Stephanopoulos, the ABC News anchor and co-host of "Good Morning America."

Members of the Media Downplaying, Making Excuses for Baltimore Riots.  Last week the media tried to characterize the increasingly violent protests in Baltimore as "peaceful."  Now, even after the demonstrations have turned into outright riots, some members of the media are still trying to excuse the violence or are otherwise downplaying what has been going on since last Thursday.  The rioting in Baltimore has gotten so bad that now the Maryland National Guard has been called in to try and restore order, yet some members of the media are spinning the unrest to take blame off the rioters.

News media's sloppy week.  [Scroll down]  Last week Bloomberg News ran, and then retracted a report that Nancy Reagan had endorsed Hillary Clinton.  Except that it came from a parody news site and wasn't even slightly true.  Again, this was something that the editors just wanted to believe.  In reportorial parlance, it was a story "too good to check."

The Very Deep Thoughts of Sally Kohn.  Would it be uncivil to suggest that lesbianese CNN pundit Sally Kohn is the dumber, blonder version of Rachel Maddow?  I know I'm not supposed to be uncivil, but what else can you say about someone who... almost daily... spews idiocy like this: [...]

Reports: MSM Reporters Give Hillary Clinton Standing Ovation.  On Monday evening, mainstream media reporters reportedly gave Hillary Clinton a standing ovation after she joked about her private email scandal and took no questions from the press — at an event honoring excellence in journalism.

Ted Cruz Befuddles MSNBC Hack on Congressional Role in Foreign Policy Using... History, Facts.  For some reason, Ted Cruz decided to appear on MSNBC's The Morning Shmoe (Mark Levin's name for the lowest-rated news program on the lowest-rated network), where the combined IQ of the hosts — the science is settled — is roughly the square root of that of a goldfish.  Which makes Ted Cruz schooling Mika Brzezinski akin to teaching calculus to a Maine lobster.

How Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama Became Media Control Freaks.  Embattled former secretary of state Hillary Clinton can console herself with the knowledge that she's not alone.  The presumptive presidential candidate and email deleter — whose apparent reluctance to release public records and documents prompted the Associated Press to sue the State Department this week — is by no means unique in her wish to starve the insatiable media, or at least restrict ravenous reporters to a bland diet of happy news.

MSNBC solidifies its standing as the clown version of cable news.  I suppose you call this another historic first for Eric Holder:  the first attorney general asked by a TV interviewer to quack like a duck on air.  The incident came toward the end of a fawning interview by Melissa Harris-Perry (no stranger to clownish and embarrassing stunts, some of which caused tearful on air apologies).

Obama Depicted as Rape Suspect in Fox 5 News Graphic Error.  In a stroke of Friday the 13th bad luck, Fox 5 San Diego briefly portrayed President Obama as a sex-assault suspect on its 10 o'clock news.  At 10:04 p.m., viewers heard anchor Kathleen Bade say:  "The only suspect in a sex assault at SDSU will not be charged."  At the same time, a picture of Obama appeared with the legend "NO CHARGES."  The Obama shot lasted about 5 seconds, but it was noticed immediately in the newsroom, said Mike Wille, an assignment editor.

The Editor says...
I wasn't there, but I can tell you exactly how that happened:  The owners of television stations all over the country, especially the stations with "local news" programs, enjoy tremendous profits.  And yet they are constantly looking for ways to increase those profits.  The actual amount of yearly profit doesn't seem to matter — only the annual increase in profits over last year.  As a result, the station owners cut costs in any possible way, and many of them have decided that labor costs are the easiest to reduce.  (I could write another couple of paragraphs in this space, but I'll skip ahead.)  The television stations used to have graphic artists who would take stock photos and apply a certain amount of typesetting to make the "over the shoulder" graphics we've seen on TV since the 1960's.  Then an associate producer would check the graphics before the big show to see that they all matched the scripts.  Even then, if one of the graphics had an egregious error, either the director or the technical director or the "still store" operator would catch the error, a last second change of plans would occur, and the on-air news reader would appear on camera without the graphic beside him or her.  But, as you may have guessed by now, almost all of those jobs have been eliminated, and one person can now put graphics requests into a template, specifying (in this case incorrectly) the underlying photo and the text, and a computer system a thousand miles away assembles the graphic and stacks it in the playlist for the big show.  (You'll notice I don't call it the news.)  Then the director, now sitting alone in the automated control room, steps through the playlist and, since he probably hasn't had a chance to run through the entire show in advance, he sees these graphics for the first time when you see them at home.  This is what would be known as being penny wise and pound foolish, except that the commercial breaks still air, so the station still gets paid.  In fact, in this case about half of the viewers probably found the error more entertaining than the constant drone of the rip-and-read announcer telling us about all the great things Big Government has done for us in the last 12 hours.  I should write a book.

Army of 'fact checkers' and 'proof readers' at NY Times fails again.  How out of touch with the rest of the country are employees of the New York Times?  An editorial skewering Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker was a typical Times hit piece on a potentially dangerous opponent in 2016 — typical except earlier versions of the editorial referred to Mr. Walker as "Mr. Scott." [...] The governor of Wisconsin is just not imporant enough to register on the Times' radar.  Besides, he's a Republican.  Those two factors make errors like "Mr. Scott" possible.

The New York Times Commits One of Its Funniest Blunders Ever.  [Scroll down]  The paper eventually realized its mistake and corrected it, although without acknowledging the correction.  I suppose it was just too embarrassing.  You can see how this kind of thing might happen; people occasionally have such synapse failures.  But some people expect more from the Times editorial board.  (I don't, but some others do.)  In fact, the Times editorial board is no better than, or different from, a minor-league left wing blogger.  Actually, that's where they get a lot of their material.

Debunked: Media Hoax Claims 'American Sniper' Inspired Anti-Muslim Threats.  It looks as though the Left and the mainstream media gathered in their hollowed-out volcano over the weekend to cook up another anti-science Narrative to destroy Clint Eastwood's "American Sniper."  The latest lie is that the film is inspiring a surge of death threats against Muslims.  A thorough search of the countless stories launched by this well-coordinated Narrative found exactly 3 Twitter examples in a country of nearly 350 million.

According to the government, there's no inflation.  Government data reports are so funny.  The blaring headlines today tells us that prices dropped in December.  We are all saving billions from the drop in oil and gas.  Hallelujah!!  The corporate MSM never digs into the numbers to get the real truth.  These reports and their distribution to the sheep are designed to keep you sedated and calm.  Facts are not necessary.  How this data pertains to your everyday life is not important to the .1% who control the flow of information.

Ronan Farrow's Awkwardly Condescending Exchange with Black Teen.  As we've written here many times before, Ronan Farrow's MSNBC show is something to behold: An awkward mess of obvious inexperience, nepotism, self-congratulatory sanctimony, and preening condescension. Today's [1/20/2015] edition of the program showcased the lattermost element.

Notorious Red Exploits King Legacy.  Janel Davis of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports that a "noted scholar, author and veteran civil rights activist" by the name of Angela Davis will deliver the keynote address January 18 at Kennesaw State University's annual Martin Luther King Jr. Day observance.  This is the same Angela Davis "who supported the imprisonment of Soviet political dissidents (calling them common criminals), cheered on the 1968 Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia, and was awarded the International Lenin Peace Prize (formerly the International Stalin Peace Prize) by communist East Germany," as noted by another paper, the British Telegraph.  The differences reflect the abysmal state of our media today, as compared to a foreign newspaper that conducted some basic research.

Three Major December Media Misfires.  [#3] The imaginary Kwanzaa "parade."  In recent years, the annual late-December Kwanzaa parade in South Central Los Angeles has fallen on hard times.  In 2011, the second-last year the Los Angeles Times covered it, the paper claimed that "hundreds" attended, but could only muster a photo showing a half-dozen participants and about the same number of onlookers.  On December 26, 2014, apathy won.  A CBS-Los Angeles reporter tweeted a photo showing an empty boulevard with no spectators captioned, "People in #SouthLosAngeles disappointed by lack of turn-out for #Kwanza parade.  Parade lasted 10 mins."  (What "people"?)

More than 90 Percent of a Group of Illegal Immigrants Never Showed Up to Their Immigration Hearings.  Once again, local-TV investigative reporters are showing up their national counterparts.  Recall that this summer the administration insisted the thousands of Central American illegal immigrants it was waving across the border would be put into deportation proceedings and those who did not qualify for asylum would be removed.  You'd think, then, that there'd be bigshot D.C. journalists interested in finding out how many actually bothered to attend their immigration hearings.  You'd be wrong.

The worst journalism of 2014.  As one of the most recognizable anchors on CNN, Don Lemon has helped lead the cable network's coverage of the biggest stories of the year.  Live television is exceedingly difficult to produce, of course, but Lemon's gaffes this year offer a case study in how to choose words wisely — or not.

72 Million More Reasons To Doubt The Mainstream Press.  In less than two weeks, bombshell stories of a vicious gang rape and a millionaire teen investor were exposed as frauds that never would have made it into print but for gross negligence and liberal bias.

Progressive Media Failed Again in the Brown Case.  What we saw in their handling of the Brown case is a rerun of the Martin case.  The facts don't seem to fit with the left's views and even after substantial evidence comes to light showing what did happen, they refuse to believe it. [...] Comparisons to the Martin case began with the NAACP which made the connection almost immediately.  That comparison was more apt than the spokesman knew and not in the way he probably intended.  In case the details are no longer in the forefront of your mind, recall that major news outlets repeatedly bungled the evidence in the Martin story and always in a way that made Zimmerman out to be something worse that he was.

More about Ferguson.

Scientists Warn About Bias In The Facebook And Twitter Data Used In Millions Of Studies.  Writing in today's [11/27/2014] issue of Science, Carnxegie Mellon's Juergen Pfeffer and McGill's Derek Ruths have warned that scientists are treating the wealth of data gathered by social networks as a goldmine of what people are thinking — but frequently they aren't correcting for inherent biases in the dataset.  If folks didn't already know that scientists were turning to social media for easy access to the pat statistics on thousands of people, they found out about it when Facebook allowed researchers to adjust users' news feeds to manipulate their emotions.

Gross exaggeration alert:
How is it possible that "millions of studies" have been conducted since Facebook and Twitter were created? Facebook started up in 2004, and Twitter was launched in 2006.

Man Who Has Found Damning Gruber Vids Faults Media's Failure to Uncover Them.  The Associated Press deserves a special mention here.  AP assigned eleven reporters to review 2008 Republican Vice Presidential nominee Sarah Palin's book in 2009, but wire service health reporter Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar and others involved in covering the Affordable Care Act during the past several years somehow never found (or if they found it or knew it, never reported it) what Weinstein was able to find.  How can that be?  (That said, Obamacare's opponents didn't find it either, which makes one wonder how they could also be so ineffective.)  The press has also been extremely reluctant to report on another "architect," namely "Zeke the Bleak" Emanuel, who has a history of advocating the rationing of medical care to patients depending on their age and other "useful lives" factors.

Debate Moderator Apologizes to Scott Brown After Falsely Correcting His Geography.  Last night, a debate moderator was forced to apologize to former Massachusetts Sen. Scott Brown, after the GOP candidate proved that he, in fact, did know something about New Hampshire, which he now hopes to represent in the Senate.

Palin-bashing CNN anchor claimed Michelle Obama signed bill into law.  A sillier moment than earlier this week for CNN's Carol Costello, but perhaps just as revealing. [...] The state of civics education in this country may be poor, but it's not that poor.  Schoolchildren can make this distinction, and an average high-school student would know better than to claim that a First Lady signed a bill into law.  Perhaps Costello should have taken a refresher course of Schoolhouse Rock in J-school.

The News Is Fit to Print But Are Major News Organizations Fit to Report It?  Over the past several months, a variety of polls and reports have documented the declining trust of the American people in the news media.  A starting point for reversing this trend is for the heads of major American news organization to look in the mirror and ask whether their organizations or their journalists are part of the problem.

Reporter Thought Earplugs Were Rubber Bullets. Does It Matter?  The thing about not knowing that earplugs are not rubber bullets is that it makes it really hard to take any other reporting about police tactics, much less guns, seriously.  It's one of those unfortunately boneheaded errors that destroys credibility.

Media Clueless About the Inner City.  The media's frenzy that descended upon Ferguson, Mo. once again demonstrates its complete ignorance of life in the inner city.  Anyone who has survived the barrios and the ghettos would recognize the usual cast of characters that converge on these incidents and would stay far away from them.  But no-these media lapdogs shove mikes in their faces and actually believe their 'eyewitness' versions that nearly always turn out to be bogus and nothing other than a self-serving photo op.

Most Americans Disapprove of Media's Coverage of Ferguson.  Most Americans say that things would be different in Ferguson, Mo., if the racial roles had been reversed.  According to a Rasmussen Poll released today, many believe the media's coverage of the incident would differ if a black police officer had shot a white teenager.  A majority, 54 percent, agree the media would have reported the death of Michael Brown differently according to the color of his skin.  Regardless of race — white, black and other minority adults — most believe the shooting would garner less media attention.

Gross Media Irresponsibility in Showing House of Accused Officer.  Jim Hoft is reporting that several news media outlets are brazenly broadcasting in front of the house of accused Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson. [...] What are these people thinking?

Was a UN School in Gaza Really Bombed?  (Update: No, It Wasn't).  The UN is going bonkers because they say another one of their schools in Gaza was shelled.  Ten people were killed and dozens injured, but read this account carefully from The Guardian: [...] The UN is going bonkers because they say another one of their schools in Gaza was shelled.  Ten people were killed and dozens injured, but read this account carefully from The Guardian: [...] The attack was not on the school.  The bomb hit the street outside the gates of the school and killed and injured people standing at the gate — not in the school itself which was being used as a shelter.

Did Ben Nelson Doom Obamacare?  Is this the first time you've read about Nelson's misgivings?  Well, it would appear that you're not alone.  Many alleged reporters who claim to have thoroughly covered the Obamacare debate from the Pleistocene era until the present are also ignorant of the role he played in determining the destiny of the exchanges.  Indeed, some these "journalists" have advised their readers that there couldn't have been any serious discussion in Congress about differing rules for state and federal exchanges because no one told them about it.

Five Things You Need to Know About Chelsea Clinton.  [#3]  Chelsea began her business career making MBA degree salary, despite having no experience[.]  NBC was criticized for Chelsea's $600,000 "special correspondent" salary, but that is not the most absurd offer sheet that Chelsea has agreed to.  After deciding that various career paths weren't right for her, Chelsea settled at the age of 23 for a $120,000 a year salary at premier consulting firm McKinsey & Company.  She was their youngest hire that year and made as much as consultants with MBA degrees, even though her Stanford degree was in history.

Media Ignorance is Becoming a Serious Problem.  [Scroll down]  The real problem is the arrogance that goes with the ignorance.  Take Kate Zernike's 2010 attempt at an expose of the ideas that motivate tea party activists that ran in the New York Times.  She wrote:  ["]But when it comes to ideology, it has reached back to dusty bookshelves for long-dormant ideas.  It has resurrected once-obscure texts by dead writers — in some cases elevating them to best-seller status — to form a kind of Tea Party canon.["]  Who are these obscure authors of long-dormant ideas?  She points to Friedrich Hayek, for one.  Yes, the same Hayek who won the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in 1974 and died way, way back in ... 1992.  Whose Road To Serfdom was so obscure that it has never been out of print and was excerpted in Reader's Digest, that obscure publication with only 17 million readers.

Here's How Little Chelsea Clinton Cares About Money, In Dollars.  [Chelsea] Clinton is currently pulling down $600,000 per year for the kind of no-show job you probably thought had disappeared with the demise of the American mafia.  She is officially employed as an on-air correspondent for NBC News even though she hasn't appeared on NBC for the past four months.  Clips of Clinton's work for the Peacock Network are hard to find online, and one of the few accessible segments — her interview with the GEICO gecko — reveals that NBC's coaching failed to improve her affectless voice, lazy delivery and absolute lack of charm, charisma or talent.

Chelsea Clinton hasn't been on NBC News for four months but still earns $50,000 a month.  Chelsea Clinton — under scrutiny for her pricey contract with NBC News — hasn't been featured since January, but the network says it does expect two completed stories to air soon, and two others are in the works.  Bill and Hillary Clinton's daughter, who was hired in 2011, has done just a smattering of reporting for NBC News.  Last week, Politico reported she is being paid $600,000 a year.

Sources: NBC not concerned about Chelsea Clinton's alleged 'overpriced' salary.  Chelsea Clinton's contract as an NBC "special correspondent" has come under intense public questioning given that she hasn't been featured on-air since January despite being on a $600,000 annual salary deal, as reported by Politico.  But according to a well-placed media insider, the network higher-ups are hardly perturbed by the high price tag for little TV time.

A Basic Primer On The Scott Walker Case For Ignorant Reporters.  This is a true story:  in 2012, Democratic district attorneys in Wisconsin launched a secret probe known as a John Doe investigation with the goal of proving that conservative groups illegally coordinated activities during Gov. Scott Walker's recall election.  They issued more than 100 subpoenas, demanded the private information of conservatives and conservative groups, and actually conducted secret raids.  And under state law, individuals who were targeted or witness to the investigation were forbidden from making knowledge of it public.  Fortunately, judges saw right through this partisan abuse of power.  Early this year, a state judge, ruling in a secret proceeding, quashed the subpoenas and all but ended the investigation.

CNN Anchor Gives Michelle Obama Power to Sign Bills into Law.  CNN anchor Carol Costello ascribed new powers to the ceremonial office of first lady of the United States on Tuesday [5/27/2014] in a report about Michelle Obama's healthy school lunch initiative and the opposition it is receiving from Republicans and members of the food industry.  Costello declared that Michelle Obama signed a bill regarding her initiative into law in 2010 after it passed Congress.  The Constitution, however, limits the power to sign legislation into law to Mrs. Obama's husband, the president.

The downfall of American journalists.  It ought to be a matter of deep shame that the most popular news website in the United States is the U.K. Daily Mail.  And the fact that so many top editors and journalists in the United States happen to be from Britain is something that ought to disturb all those professors of journalism at elite schools like Columbia.  You know, the ones that hand out big prizes like the Pulitzer, touting how wonderful our journalists are.  Strangely enough, with all the university and foundation resources available for conferences, commissions, studies, and the like, nobody seems much interested in this embarrassing situation.  There's a good reason for that.

The White House Impressed Corps.  On Friday, the speaker of the House ordered a special probe into a White House cover-up of terrorism.  On Saturday, the White House press corps buried the news and yukked it up with the president at the black-tie dinner.  Once viewed as a serious news network, CNN blacked out hard news for five full hours to cover the gala, including "live updates of the red carpet arrivals."  Instead of interviewing White House officials about Benghazi emails, anchors interviewed comedian Joel McHale, who roasted Republicans as racists.

America's Appalling Ignorance of Christianity.  New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof [...] admitted that when he was covering the presidential campaign of George W. Bush, he was surprised at how the candidate connected with Americans because of his evangelical faith; more surprisingly, Kristof admitted that he had "only the vaguest idea at the time what an evangelical was."

Reporter Caught Scribbling 'Blah Blah' While GOP Senate Candidate Speaks; Drama Ensues.  Staffers of the alt-weekly newspaper Willamette Week recently met with Oregon Republican U.S. Senate candidates seeking an endorsement and things got quite dramatic after one reporter was caught scribbling "blah blah blah" on his notepad while a candidate spoke.

Boston Marathon victim storms off 'Meet the Press' set after being 'disrespected'.  A survivor of the Boston Marathon bombing stormed out of a scheduled interview with NBC's "Meet the Press" in tears on Friday.  Adrianne Haslet-Davis, a dancer who lost part of one leg during the attack, said NBC promised not to name alleged bombers Dzhokhar and Tamerlan Tsarnaev in her presence but did not follow through on the request.

Sebelius: Health Care Launch 'Terribly Flawed'.  Outgoing Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius says the administration's own predictions that the new health care law's online sign-up system would be ready by Oct. 1 were "just flat out wrong."  Sebelius told NBC's "Meet the Press" in an interview airing Sunday the health care website's launch was "terribly flawed and terribly difficult."

Oops: ISU losing its nuke program due to concealed carry law not exactly accurate.  When the Idaho State Journal and the Associated Press reported last week that Idaho State University in Pocatello could lose its nuclear program if legislators pass a bill to allow guns on campus, the news wire and social media hummed with the revelation.  Problem is, the story's not exactly accurate and no one wants to take blame for misleading the public on the volatile issue.

Haven't I Seen You Before? Why News Reports Quote The Same People.  Al Cross has been all over the news lately.  Just in the past couple of weeks, he's been quoted in Time, The New York Times and The Washington Post on no fewer than three separate occasions.  Who is Al Cross, and what has he done to earn such exposure?  Cross is a longtime political columnist for the Louisville Courier-Journal. When national reporters are exploring the Kentucky Senate race, they often turn to him for perspective on the ground.

You've got to know the territory.  The uproar over "Duck Dynasty" should be studied forever in the business schools as a priceless teaching exercise in marketing quackery.  Television executives are so highly paid because they're supposed to be so smart.  Rarely have so many smart guys been so out to lunch.

When '60 Minutes' Checks Its Journalistic Skepticism at the Door.  [V]iewers expect the show to bring its A game, and deserve it, when it takes on a huge issue like the N.S.A., to serve as a stand-in for the American people and ask the uncomfortable questions.

CNN's Top-Five Credibility Catastrophes of 2013.  This was supposed to be a rebuilding year for the former Most Trusted Name In News.  The belief was that CNN's ratings couldn't sink much lower than its 2012 lows and that newly-installed president Jeff Zucker couldn't possibly make things worse.  Wrong.  After months of retooling, CNN is still in last place and its primetime viewership has improbably sunk even further.

In Defense Of Lara Logan.  Once it became clear they had been duped, Logan publicly apologized for the mistake saying on CBS This Morning that "The most important thing to every person at 60 Minutes is the truth, and today, the truth is that we made a mistake," she said, calling it a very "disappointing" situation.  After all, what makes a show like 60 Minutes different from, say, a cable news show is that every word in the script is supposed to be heavily vetted by producers and lawyers alike.  So on the scale of news screw-ups, this was pretty egregious.  It wasn't just an error — their entire report was based on what seems to have been a lie.

Trey Gowdy Rips MSM For Media Malpractice On Benghazi.  On October 30, Senator Lindsey Graham reiterated his threat to hold up all future Senate confirmations unless the Regime is more forthcoming with the information Republicans are seeking.  And Trey Gowdy took the opportunity to shame the MSM for being basically AWOL on the story.  He asked if they could answer a series of pertinent questions about the attack — knowing, of course — that the answer would be no, because the media as a whole allowed the Regime to lie and stonewall on Benghazi so Obama could be reelected.  Some great investigative journalism was called for, and they totally dropped the ball.

Media Malpractice, Chapter 12,894.  A few months back we were treated to MSNBC identifying George Wallace as a Republican.  Yesterday [10/27/2013], CBS News proved itself unable to distinguish J. Edgar Hoover from Herbert Hoover.  It's a wonder they can still tell the Kennedys apart.

A Quick Note on Weaponry and Language.  I just watched the press conference from Los Angeles airport and I was irritated as usual by the way in which law enforcement agents and politicians who should know better throw around incorrect terminology to the press.  Over and over, we were told that the shooter at LAX used an "assault rifle."  This is now being repeated widely.  There is one key problem with this:  It's not true.  We can argue all day about the silly "assault weapon" term, but "assault rifle" actually has a meaning.  An "assault rifle" means that the rifle can be switched between safe (off, in layman's terms), semi-automatic, and automatic fire.

The Press Endures Obama's Unrequited Love.  Journalists pride themselves for being on the cutting edge of events and trends, but they have been slow to realize or to admit that they have been instrumental in electing a pathological liar to the highest office in the land.

Wussies! Every Last One of You.  The liberal media can't help themselves.  They have a huge crush on the President.  He can do no wrong. [...] There's something very dangerous about the liberal love affair with the President.  Fear of asking the tough questions crushes accountability.  And without accountability, tyranny follows.

J-school failure: Just 26 percent of new reporters have skills to do the job.  A journalism degree can cost nearly $100,000 for graduate students, but for many it's a waste of money because they are leaving school without the skills needed in the new age of digital reporting and publishing, according to a sweeping new survey of the industry.  The highly-regarded Poynter Institute, an international strategy center and leader in journalism education, found in their 2013 "Future of Journalism" study that only one quarter of journalism school students showed up on the job ready for work.

Media, The Navy and the DC Shooter: A Retired Navy Security Officer's View.  If you are watching the news in the early stages of the Navy Yard shooting, you may not be surprised that you hear one thing and hours later hear something totally different. [...] That's why we first believed there were 3 shooters, then 2, now 1.  That's why we still don't know how many or which guns were used.  Supposedly there is a shotgun, a Glock pistol and an AR-15.  It was first reported that he bought an AR-15 in Virginia but later determined he rented in during a practice session.  Now they don't even know if there was an AR-15 on the scene or if that is just typical hype.

Professional media ID wrong man as Navy Yard shooter.  That would be CBS and NBC, who offered the name Rollie Chance as the dead suspect in the Washington Navy Yard, responsible for six deaths and a number of wounded.  The only problem?  Rollie Chance is still alive and had nothing to do with the shooting, apparently.

Less than three weeks after the conclusion of the Fort Hood terrorist shooting trial:
CNN Fail: Anchor Can't Remember the Last Shooting at 'U.S. Military Facility'.  During CNN's coverage of the Washington D.C. Navy Yard shooting Monday morning [9/16/2013], Carol Costello asked when the last time a gunman wrecked "havoc at a U.S. military facility."  It would seem that Costello forgot about the 2009 Ft. Hood shooting that claimed the lives of 13 Americans.

Limbaugh Compiles Round-Up of Media Celebrating Obama's 'Genius' Embrace of Kerry's Gaffe.  Conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh tore into the media on Tuesday and accused them of malpractice in their reporting of how the so-called Russian proposal to impose a diplomatic solution on Syria.  Limbaugh played a montage of clips of members of the media celebrating the "genius" of President Barack Obama for embracing a misstatement by Sec. John Kerry and making it the centerpiece of American policy towards that country's civil war.  "Turns out, this was the plan all along — at least what the media wants us to believe," Limbaugh said of the Russian solution.  "This is journalistic malpractice."

Miley Cyrus and the Pornification of America.  Consider this:  during a week in which news reports on NSA mass surveillance, militarized police forces, and a war brewing with Syria were vying for attention, CNN's number one news story was Miley Cyrus' VMA performance.  Sounds like the death knell of an empire to me.

America the Trivial.  President Obama is making the argument that the executive branch by presidential fiat can pick and choose which laws should and should not be faithfully executed — whether Obamacare, immigration amnesties, or No Child Left Behind statutes.  The fate of the entire concept of voluntary tax compliance is currently endangered by the politicization of the Internal Revenue Service.  Whether the government can monitor the communications of either reporters or average citizens depends on getting to the bottom of the National Security Agency and Justice Department/Associated Press scandals.  Instead, the media seem more interested in whether Obama is playing golf on Martha's Vineyard.

Meet the worst Sunday morning show.  [NBC's Meet the Press], you see, is at a 21-year low in ratings. [...] David Gregory is a weak host, the weakest of any Sunday show.  I've documented the lame questions, the absence of follow ups and the blatant bias.  That's bad journalism and uninteresting TV.

Millennial Generation Is Abandoning Liberalism.  The media have claimed that conservatives must become more moderate or face permanent irrelevancy after the supposedly solid liberal Millennial generation of 18-29 year olds overwhelmingly supported reelection of Barack Obama.  These dire warnings reminded me of the media geniuses who proclaimed after Jimmy Carter's Presidential victory in 1976 that the 18-29 year olds of the Baby Boomer generation would always vote as a liberal block.  Four years later, Baby Boomers abandoned liberalism and began reliably voting as Ronald Reagan conservatives for the next three decades.

The Editor says...
The news media peddles predictions favorable to the Left, hoping their predictions will be self-fulfilling.

Limbaugh, Hannity, Levin eyed as 2016 GOP debate moderators.  Miffed that their candidates were singled out for personal questions or CNN John King's "This or That," when he asked candidates quirky questions like "Elvis or Johnny Cash," GOP insiders tell [The Washington Examiner] that they are considering other choices, even a heavyweight panel of radio bigs Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and Mark Levin.

Reporters Afraid To Ask Obama White House About Benghazi.  Obama has apparently taken his cue for this from Hollywood.  It is a well-known fact that movie stars in Hollywood will not grant access to those reporters and media outlets that do not write or report favorably about them. [...] The end result of this is that there is no honest reporting coming out of Hollywood these days.  This has likely been obvious to most everyone for quite some time.  Now that Obama is doing the same thing, how long will it be before there is no longer any honest reporting coming out of the White House Press corps?  Perhaps we are at that point already?

Deferential Press Corps Meets President, Takes Careful Notes.  President Barack Obama held a rare press conference on Friday afternoon [8/9/2013] in the East Room of the White House, and was treated to all-too-common deference by the White House Press Corps.  Only Ed Henry of Fox News asked a question that challenged the president in any way.  The rest asked soft questions that often invited him to take shots at the Republican opposition and revisit talking points he has made repeatedly in recent speeches.

Liberals will believe anything if you call it a 'study'.  [L]iberals in the left wing media, led by the HuffPo, are citing a "study" claiming that doubling the wages of McDonald's workers would only result in a 17% price rise:  "Doubling McDonald's Salaries Would Cause Your Big Mac To Cost Just 68 ¢ More: Study" headlined the story by Christine Fairchild, citing a study by someone described as a "researcher at the University of Kansas."  Ms. Fairchild later had to acknowledge that author Arnobio Morelix "is registered as a undergraduate student at the university, according to University of Kansas School of Business Communications Director Austin Falley."  A not particularly bright undergraduate, it turns out.  As in laughably ignorant about the nature of the business McDonald's is in.

How did mainstream media get the NSA PRISM story so hopelessly wrong?  If you don't understand the technical workings of these surveillance programs, you can't understand whether they're working as intended, you can't identify where the government has overstepped its bounds, and you can't intelligently debate the proper response.  The fact that the government has maintained rigid secrecy compounds the problem. [...] The basic facts in that story aren't news.  We've known since at least 2006 that the U.S. security establishment is collecting details of phone calls and mining that data to identify calling patterns consistent with terrorist activity.

Study: 22% of TV Journalists Face Job Burnout.  You think carrying The State's water is easy work?  Think again, my friends.  A study of 900 journalists done by the University of Kansas found that a full 22% of television journalists were facing burnout.  Why, one morning show host complained that she was required to tweet three times every half-hour while she was on the air.  Imagine how difficult that must be with only ten minutes of commercial breaks.

MSNBC Mistaken History: Segregationist George Wallace Was A Republican?  Former Alabama Governor George Wallace was many things:  segregationist, lawyer, Methodist.  But one thing he most certainly was not:  a Republican.  But during a segment of last night's [6/11/2013] All In on MSNBC, a chyron mistakenly identified the well-known racist governor as a member of the GOP, despite his affiliation with the Democratic Party of that era.

Mainstream Media Fail to Break Even One of Four Obama Scandals.  Over the past few weeks, four major scandals have broken over the Obama administration, and it is a very sad (and frightening) truth that our pathetic, American, lapdog mainstream media is not responsible for breaking even a single one.

Brace yourself for deep disillusionment.
Another News Channel Abandons 'Advertising Trick' Of 'Breaking News' Coverage.  In a slick new advertisement released Monday afternoon [6/3/2013], WDRB urged its viewers to recognize that "breaking news" is simply a "marketing ploy."  The narrator asserted that stations claiming to be "first" in "breaking news" use that branding as an "advertising trick" despite it being "simply not true."  "Breaking news is seldom breaking," the narrator continued, "and quite often isn't even news."

MSNBC Chief Phil Griffin: Our Network Is 'Not The Place' For Breaking News.  Over the last several months, it has become pretty clear that when it comes to ratings, MSNBC struggles during breaking news events, while CNN and Fox both receive boosts.  In an interview with the New York Times this morning, MSNBC chief Phil Griffin essentially conceded the "breaking news" mantle to the other networks, telling viewers that his network is not focused on that sort of coverage.

The article itself is off-topic — see remarks below.
Aust signs global arms control treaty.  Australia has signed a landmark global arms treaty, joining 60 other countries in a move to stop the vast illicit trade in weapons.  The treaty, co-authored by Australia, is designed to end the free-for-all of international arms sales.

The Editor says...
This is the first and only time I've ever seen Australia referred to as Aust.  Is bandwidth (or ink) so scarce that Australia can't be spelled out, or is it just a matter of laziness?

Sins Of The Fourth Estate (Part I).  The one clear thing that came out of last week's chaotic activity in Boston, Massachusetts is that real reporters were missing.  For that matter, they've been missing since last year's attack in Benghazi.  From Benghazi, the Gosnell abortion trial, gun control debates, immigration and then the Boston Marathon bombings, television news reporting has become positively painful to watch.  The First Amendment to the Constitution grants freedom of the press but this was supposed to endow it with a responsibility to be the people's watchdog.  The modern Fourth Estate represented by the mainstream media has made a mockery of this privilege.

Media outlets can't get their stories straight.  Here is what we know thus far:  The cops have photos of one of the suspects, or two.  The suspect(s) may be either "dark-skinned" (CNN) or "white" (CBS).  They were carrying backpacks, or maybe bags.  The backpacks, or bags, were black, unless they were blue.  The bombs were detonated by control boards, unless it was cellphones, unless it was egg timers.  Yesterday's [4/17/2013] press conference was supposed to take place at 5, until it was supposed to take place at 8, until it was canceled.

The media's 'marathon' meltdown.  The fast-moving news out of Boston on Wednesday [4/17/2013] snared some of the most respected reporters and news outlets in the country into offering false or conflicting information about whether a suspect had been arrested — leaving CNN and the Associated Press, among others, scrambling to clean up their reports as the day went on.

Two NY Times Columnists Embarrass Themselves on Guns in Sunday Review.  Two New York Times columnists embarrassed themselves over the weekend, betraying anti-gun ignorance in the paper's Sunday Review.  Frank Bruni went hunting for the first time (with the chef of a ritzy Manhattan restaurant), and remarked "what an unfair fight" hunting is, as if he was the first person to think that up.

WaPo page one oops: '70 deer per square acre'.  In the fifth paragraph, right there on the front page, it reads, "With 70 deer per square acre, the park has about four times the density considered ideal."  Error one:  an acre is a square measurement.  It's redundant and ignorant to say "square acre."  Error two:  anyone who has any idea of how big an acre is would know that "70 deer per square acre" is pretty much impossible.

Ravens fans celebrate Super Bowl win by car tipping and looting a Baltimore 7-11.  But AP told us there were no reports of "disturbances" after the Ravens' Super Bowl win.  Once again, Twitter has the news first.

DHS Backdooring Gun Registration in Missouri.  Missouri cannot be alone in this scandal; doubtless numerous other states have complied with DHS requests as well.  We are seeing but the tip of the iceberg.

The Editor says...
Backdoor is not a word, and certainly isn't a verb.  Please develop an adequate vocabulary before becoming a writer.

'Heckle' and Jive.  It started as an awkwardly written article by Ken Dixon, a reporter at the Connecticut Post of Bridgeport.  It became a fast-moving rumor and in some cases an outright lie propagated by national journalists.

It's Time for Media Control.  Was there anything about the Sandy Hook massacre the media got right on the day it happened?  In their rush to be first, they ignored their obligation to be right.  Nearly every detail they disseminated Friday was wrong, even down to the name of the killer. [...] As liberals love to remind us, broadcasters make their living over "public airwaves."  Conveying false information over them is a violation of the trust placed in those institutions by the public and should be punished.

Chris Matthews Claims GOP Ignorant of Science While Claiming Plants Absorb Carbon Monoxide.  Note to Chris Matthews:  when seeking to slam Republicans for their supposed ignorance of science, try not to expose your own.  On Tuesday's [11/13/2012] Hardball, Matthews — mocking the Republican congressmen vying for the chairmanship of the House Science Committee — committed this whopper:  "As we all learned in grammar school — young people watching — trees absorb carbon monoxide."

This is an original compilation, Copyright © 2024 by Andrew K. Dart

15 Most Annoying Expressions in Politics.  Irritating phrases and words are not confined to political circles, or solely to Washington, although here in the nation's capital they burrow in and proliferate like obsolete, but entrenched, government programs.

150 journalism cliches — and counting.  Over the past few years, some colleagues at The Washington Post and I have played our own parlor game, assembling a list of verbal crutches, stock phrases, filler words, cliches and perpetually misused expressions that we should avoid in The Post's Sunday Outlook section — or at least think hard about before using.