Journalism

She nails it AGAIN!!!! https://t.co/IlDIiutQTR

— (((𝖑𝖎𝖘𝖘𝖆))) (@lissa77) September 4, 2020

Yes, we are nakedly partisan; yes, we are plainly dishonest, but we're journalists!

Ace of Spades writes,

CNN is a nakedly partisan actor as well as a plainly dishonest actor, but they're still wearing the SkinSuit of "Journalism" and demanding that others pay them respect.

That comment is in reference to complaints about Vice President Pence not allowing members of his task force to appear on CNN.

Read more here.

"Who counts as a journalist?"

Sebastian Gorka marches up to a reporter from Playboy and tells him he is a punk, not a journalist.

Wanted to get the part where a guest at a White House function begins walking toward the press and James O’Keefe is filming and Joy Villa is showing off her FREEDOM gown. pic.twitter.com/ZPIXRRVo6K

— Katie Rogers (@katierogers) July 11, 2019

Thanks to Caroline McCarthy, writing in Spectator USA.

...At the core of the debate is whether journalists are supposedly owed something that the rest of the population isn’t. If you’re a reporter showing up to a protest in the name of covering it, sure, you should have the right to not be socked in the face (or worse). But in an ideal world, shouldn’t we all be afforded that same dignity? Unfortunately, things aren’t trending that way.

Read more here.

Turning journalism into a spying operation

In Tablet, Lee Smith writes,

spies are the new journalists and with the help of big names in the media they are turning journalism into an intelligence operation.

After giving many details to support the above sentence, he concludes with this paragraph:

There is little chance the Post or Times reporters will be prosecuted for doing what Assange did—and much worse. However, the Assange indictments coupled with the rewards reaped by America’s premier newspapers for their role in a spy agency information campaign send a clear message not only to journalists but also to the public at large. In abusing both the rights of a free press and national security programs designed to keep Americans safe from terrorism, the press and intelligence bureaucracy have made us less free and less safe. The larger message they’re sending is, it’s not your country anymore. It’s ours.

Read more here.

The state of journalism today

In American Greatness, Victor Davis Hanson writes,

There still exists a physical media in the sense of airing current events. But it is not journalism as we once understood the disinterested reporting of the news. Journalism is now dead. The media lives on.

Reporters today believe that their coverage serves higher agendas of social justice, identity politics, “equality,” and diversity. To the degree a news account is expanded or ignored, praised or blasted, depends on its supposed utility to the effort to fundamentally transform the country into something unlike its founding.

...No journalist who pontificates now about the supposedly First Amendment-violating Trump ever mentions that Barack Obama had Fox News’s James Rosen (and his relatives) monitored, that he surveilled the communications records of Associated Press reporters, or that he spoke with the press far less often than did Trump, and often fixated on Fox News.

Journalists themselves had no problem with colleagues colluding with the Clinton campaign as evidenced in the Wikileaks Podesta trove. There was never much introspection about why the elite press and media corps—loudly progressive and feminist—was decimated by #MeToo Movement allegations of long-standing sexual harassment and assault.

Were there serious worries voiced over journalistic ethics when CNN’s Donna Brazile leaked primary debate questions to the 2016 Clinton campaign? Did journalists speak out when journalist Candy Crowley abandoned her moderator role and turned into an Obama partisan in the 2012 second presidential debate? Were reporters at all worried when the Shorenstein Center cited 90 percent negative media coverage of the Trump campaign and presidency? Did they object much when Twitter and Facebook exiled conservative voices that they found inconvenient?

Are journalists concerned when campuses shout down visiting lecturers or pass speech codes to restrict free expression? Was the strange Obama-era state surveillance of fellow journalist Sharyl Attkisson of any importance to the journalistic brotherhood? Did they fret that the Obama-era FBI likely inserted informants into a political campaign, or deliberately deceived a FISA court to spy on an American citizen?

Journalism in a downward spiral

Inthe Washington Examiner, Salena Zito writes about journalism in today's America.

Our industry is in a downward spiral. Part of the problem is our lack of diversity in newsrooms — not just on race and gender, but also in the place and experiences reporters come from. We need more reporters who went to state schools, come from working-class backgrounds and don’t hold that background in contempt, who are pro-life, sit in a pew regularly, and own a gun or two.

Look at the coverage of working-class people, which is consistently condescending. Same with coverage for Christian conservatives and pro-lifers (if they get covered at all). Own a gun? Basically, you are a dangerous nut in the eyes of most journalists.

People outside of Washington wonder why the major media deploy an army of fact-checkers to seek a fault in every word the president says, but somehow they have failed to investigate the past of any of Virginia’s statewide elected officials.

Reporters often blame Trump for the cantankerous relationship between the D.C. press and the rest of the country. Their blame is misplaced. This has been brewing for decades, and had they traveled outside of D.C., they would know that.

Read more here.

Admitting bias

Ace of Spades writes,

...How strange it is that the leftwing press is willing to admit to a series of biases it does not have and yet be so damnably recalcitrant about the one bias it obviously does have.

One might even say, "Ah yes, it's a noted psychological phenomenon that people will admit to flaws they either don't have or barely have, or are pretty mild and unimportant, while getting angry and defensive if you bring up their real, serious flaws."

Or one might say: they are simply corrupt liars incapable of telling the truth.

Read more here.

Credibility problem

This morning Oregon Muse writes,

"You know, it's kind of sad to see journos getting all pissypants about being yelled at to "learn to code" on social media because they've been laid off. Their attitude is, like, what did we ever do to deserve such calumny. Well, let me tell you: I think the reason you see so many commenters on my side of the aisle sporting such gigantic schadenboners because of the loss of jobs in "journalism" is the fact that modern journalism is nothing but a litany of failure, and it's chief perpetrators refuse to see it, or even see there that there even *might be* a credibility problem: The UVA rapes that never happened, Duke Lacrosse rape case, Covington Catholic, the NAACP "bombing" that wasn’t, church fires and swastikas painted on synagogues that turn out to be set by liberal activists, attacks by Trump supporters, that weren't, the Jewish cemetery vandalism, racist remarks scribbled on credit card receipts at restaurants, etc. And all reported with hair-on-fire urgency and hyped 24/7. And all fake news. And the bad actors never seem to suffer any consequences for their spreading of fake news. They just drop the fake story and go on to the next fake story. And it's not like they get a few things wrong, they seem to get *everything* wrong. And the more they screw it up, the more outraged they become when we sneer at them. It's like they're not real journalists. They've killed real journalism and they're now walking around in journalism's skin and demanding respect."

The death of journalism

In Frontpage Magazine David Greenfield asks,

If the media falls with no one to report it, does it make a sound? Last week, the $450 million temple constructed by the media to worship itself was sold off for $372 million to Johns Hopkins.

...The last desperate strategy of the media is blackmailing the big dot coms for operating income. Amazon’s boss is behind the Washington Post. And Google and Facebook are pouring in hundreds of millions of dollars into the media.

...The media declared a fake news crisis and demanded that Facebook and Google prioritize their traffic. As a piece at Columbia Journalism Review argued, "the one thing journalism actually needs: a guarantee that the conditions on the platform will benefit those producing high-quality reporting."

Google and Facebook have already privileged media content and censored conservative media, even though that’s not what their users have signed up for. But that makes the media dependent on the business model of a handful of internet monopolies already being targeted by the GOP and the Dems. And the same disruptive trends that wrecked the media’s old business models will wreck its new one.

...The media has never addressed the fundamental problem with its business model. It wants a monopoly on the marketplace of ideas even as its own positions drift further leftward. It has tried to outgrow that problem by becoming a bigger monopoly, but the internet limited the extent to which its old infrastructure investments could monopolize the public square, leaving its expensive investments in broadcasting and printing equipment as useless as the massive square footage of the Newseum.

...But its new masters rightly view it with contempt.

“They call us to explain to them what’s happening in Moscow and Cairo,” Ben Rhodes once sneered to the New York Times. “Most of the outlets are reporting on world events from Washington. The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old, and their only reporting experience consists of being around political campaigns. That’s a sea change. They literally know nothing.”

The Obama adviser wasn’t wrong.

...The dedication of the Newseum in 2008 also marked the death of journalism. That was the year when the media tossed aside any appearance of independence and officially joined a political campaign. A decade later, journalism may be occasionally practiced on the sly, but it doesn’t exist as a profession.

Read more here.

"Verify first. Then do it again. And again. And again. Ad nauseam. And only then, if you must, trust."

This post by Roger L. Simon is over a week old in PJ Media.

...What possible credential makes one a journalist? A degree from the Columbia School of Journalism? Well, that proves your parents can afford a hundred grand. Either that or you're heavily in debt. Anyone can be a journalist. All you have to do is start typing.

And as for journalists we know, whether they write it or speak it and wherever they do it, they're all basically pundits, whether they admit it or not. Beneath the verbiage and the proofs, the quoted experts and anonymous sources, deny it though they might, everyone's got a narrative.

...Even the Wall Street Journal appears to be part of the "get Trump" competition that makes up whatever one calls journalism today. "Fake news" is actually a misnomer. It's far more deliberate than that. It's straight-out good old-fashioned disinformation.

But let's go back to the issue of "journalism" as a trade. It wasn't always this way. Back before the New York Times, et al., got pretentious with the "All the News That's Fit to Print" nonsense and Woodward and Bernstein got turned into movie stars because they could answer the phone, people knew journalists — more properly reporters — were working stiffs trying to make a living, not culture heroes. And I think we liked them better too then, even though, like all human beings, they were biased.

An example of how far the bias has gone in our time is, as someone noted on Twitter, that not a single media outlet dared to question the BuzzFeed report until the Mueller investigation itself spoke up. All of them were too engaged in the Get-Trump Derby to do, well, a little investigating.

...We know — oh, how we know — not to trust any so-called information coming out these days. Trust but verify is no longer operative. Verify first. Then do it again. And again. And again. Ad nauseam. And only then, if you must, trust.

Read more here.

1000 "journalists" lost their jobs yesterday!

In Breitbart, John Nolte reports that 1000 "journalists" lost their jobs yesterday.

The far-left conspiracy site Buzzfeed laid off 220 — which is 15 percent of its staff; Verizon wiped out 800 media jobs, including an entire division at the Huffington Post, and America’s largest newspaper chain, Gannett, let go dozens across the country.

Verizon owns Huffington Post? Who knew?

More from Nolte:

Trump treats the establishment media with the contempt it so richly deserves, so them responding with, “Nanny-nanny-boo-boo, you’re making us stronger” makes perfect sense.

But just like everything else the media report, this too is fake news.

Read more here.

Unpacking a stupid lede

Oregon Muse responds:

Let's unpack this stupid lede:

"A viral story spread."
(Translation: we reported a bunch of lies and bullshit)

"The mainstream media rushed to keep up"
(Translation: When we started getting called out on our lies and bullshit, we doubled down on it)

"The Trump internet pounced."
(Translation: when it became obvious that our reporting was all lies and bullshit, we made ourselves out to be the victims)

And what, exactly, is "the Trump Internet", anyway? Is there some part of the internet that he owns, and where he can dictate what users can and cannot say?

Fact-checking? What's that?

Oregon Muse writes his Morning Rant:

"So, this week, the media's Covington narrative collapsed faster than Bill Clinton's pants at a hookers' convention. It was discovered that Nathan Phillips, touted by the MSM as a 'respected tribal elder', was lying his ass off: He lied about who he was, he lied about being mocked, he lied 8 different ways about his military service, he lied about why he approached a group of kids at a pro-life march, in short, he lied about everything. Heck, Jane Fonda has spent more time in Vietnam than Phillips ever has. All Phillips does is annoy people. He can be accurately described as a professional protestor/agitator and far from being a 'respected' elder, Native Americans don't think much of him. He was at the pro-life march for one reason only: to provoke an incident, and then cry about it to a sympathetic media. Of course the media believed every word he said and didn't bother to do any actual fact-checking. Yeah, 2019 is looking like another kick-ass year for the MSM. And it's not even February."

Is he right?

Journalism today

Michael Walsh writes in PJ Media about journalism as practiced today in America.

...How times have changed. Today's reporters may still think they're helping save both the human race and the planet, but the context is now completely different. Unlike the older reporters, who generally had majored in the liberal arts in college and often drifted accidentally into journalism, they've been schooled in it, and not just in journalism but in the entire panoply of contemporary Leftist issues, including environmentalism, feminism, and the moral rightness of the Democrat Party, which they view as the locomotive of the civil-rights movement and thus forever on the side of the angels. They are not just reporters out for a story; they are in service to a Cause.

Read more here.

Journalists are living in a bubble of dishonesty! The biggest lie they tell is the lie they tell themselves: that they are being objective!

Journalists are living in a bubble of dishonesty! The biggest lie they tell is the lie they tell themselves: that they are being objective!

Mailbag
How you can tell bigotry: if the speaker believes he or she is better than the people he is describing.

Someone writes Andrew: There is evil on earth because God does not want to force us to follow Him. In order for it to be a true relationship there must be freedom of choice. But the prospect of eternal damnation for choosing not to have a relationship with the Creator seems like putting a gun to your head and telling you that you are totally free to choose!

Andrew answers, "We live in a world where there are consequences. If you follow your instincts toward virtue, you are going to get there. If not, you already know you are doing the wrong thing., and that there will be consequences. As you go into the afterlife, the consequences continue.

Dennis Miller will be the guest on tomorrow's program!

New U.S. Office of Journalism

Jeffrey Lord has a hilarious piece at The American Spectator.

So you want to be a journalist — or you are one now?

In light of the news that the media finds that Sean Hannity’s friendship with Trump lawyer Michael Cohen should have been noted in every Hannity-Cohen interview, and with the news that the Guardian is now making Hannity’s private real estate dealings a news story? Now the new rules of journalism are clear — and the Trump Administration is responding quickly.

Henceforth, all practicing journalists in the United States must fill out a required Form for Transparent Journalism and file with the U.S. Office of Journalism that the Trump Administration has now established by executive order within the Department of Justice, retroactive to April 1, 2018. It is known informally as “The Hannity Rule.”

Read all the requirements here.

The death of journalism

Derek Hunter writes at Town Hall,

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. There was an unprecedented attempt to make the release of the FISA memo NOT NEWS before anyone knew what was in it.

Over the past two weeks, Democrats scrambled to “warn” the public that the release of the FISA memo would “damage national security” were it released. Journalists picked up the mantra and ran with it, unquestioningly parroting it in badgering Republicans about why they would support its release considering this charge. There was virtually no discussion as to whether or not this allegation was true or an attempted partisan distraction, it was simply accepted and repeated as if it had been carved into stone tablets by a burning bush and sent directly to the teleprompter in their TV studios.

The memo, of course, was nothing of the sort. There was nothing that was a threat in any way to national security, no remote mention of sources or methods. It was all a Democratic Party lie immediately adopted by journalists. As with past false stories that needed to be retracted or corrected, there was no comeuppance for those who spread the lie to the media, nor the media figures who regurgitated it. It happened, and when it was proven to be a lie, it was memory-holed.

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.

Once it was released to the public, the discussion shifted to anything but its contents or the fact that unverified Clinton campaign opposition research was used as justification to spy on an American citizen without disclosing that’s what it was.

Now, I don’t know anything about Carter Page, the subject of that spying, beyond the fact that he’s an American citizen. He could be a Russian robot, for all I know. But he’s apparently been the subject of constant government surveillance since 2013 and hasn’t been arrested. That means he’s either the world’s greatest spy who doesn’t leave a fingerprint anywhere, or he’s just some weird guy who, once the government started watching him, they couldn’t stop. I suspect it the latter since the Clinton oppo file had to be used, at least in part, to justify the continued spying.

...CNN and MSNBC had panels exclusively of liberals denouncing the memo without discussing its implications or content. If the government can award itself the power to spy on Americans simply because someone got drunk and talked themselves up in front of others (George Papadopoulos) and someone else made allegations about that person (Page), there is virtually no one in the country who couldn’t be subjected to government spying.

...They don’t care. Journalism is dead. It didn’t die of natural causes, it was murdered by its practitioners in the name of attacking Republicans, in particular Donald Trump.

Read more here.

"mule-headed willful stupidity"

Ace has a piece up about the media being wrong again and again. Some excerpts:

Don Surber coincidentally has a piece demonstrating that they're literally always wrong about everything, noting that they have learned absolutely nothing since November.

That's not just laziness. Even a lazy person learns by osmosis.

To actively reject all information is a purposeful exertion. They're remaining proudly ignorant as a demonstration of mule-headed willful stupidity.

Obama, Trump, Russia, and journalism

Lee Smith writes at Tablet,

...Obama didn’t kill journalism, but he took advantage of it in its weakness, because he knew the press would do anything to feel relevant again. All those 27-year-olds at the Times, the Washington Post and others hired as bloggers—“who literally know nothing,” as Rhodes told the Times Magazine—when the foreign and national bureaus were closed, they didn’t know it wasn’t OK to be a journalist and a political operative at the same time. They thought it made them more valuable, even patriotic, to put themselves in the service of a historic presidency. And they’d replaced for pennies on the dollar all the adults who could have taught them otherwise.

That’s the raw material out of which the Obama administration built its echo chamber, the purpose of which was to drown out the few remaining vestiges of journalism in order to sell the president’s policies.

...What everyone saw at the time was that the press had put itself in the service of executive power. This was no longer simply tilting left, rather, it was turning an American political institution against the American public.

...The public is astonished and appalled that the media has now returned after an eight-year absence to arrogate to itself the role of conscience of the nation.

It’s not working out very well.

...The Russia story is evidence that top reporters are still feeding from the same trough—political operatives, intelligence agencies, etc.—because they don’t know how to do anything else, and their editors don’t dare let the competition get out ahead. Why would the Post, for instance, let the Times carve out a bigger market share of the anti-Trump resistance? And what’s the alternative? Report the story honestly? Don’t publish questionably sourced innuendo as news?

And still, you ask, how could the Russia story be nonsense? All the major media outlets are on it. Better to cover yourself—maybe it’s true, because the press can’t really be this inept and corrupt, so there’s got to be something to it.

I say this not only out of respect for a late colleague, but in the hope that journalism may once again merit the trust of the American public. Wayne Barrett had this file for 40 years, and if neither he nor the reporters he trained got this story, it’s not a story.

Read more here.