News Outlets’ Rittenhouse Coverage Attempts to Indoctrinate Rather than Inform

Several things to read or watch featuring the widespread journalistic malpractice evident throughout the "news" coverage regarding Kyle Rittenhouse:

Drew Holden at Twitter.

At Reason, article by Robby Soave

The ACLU Thinks Kyle Rittenhouse's Civil Liberties Got Too Much Protection The American Civil Liberties Union should not cavalierly take the side of prosecutors against the concept of self-defense.

Matt Taibbi at Substack:

Now Rittenhouse has been found innocent, and surprise, surprise, the immediate reaction is that it can only be explained by white supremacy. To a degree, I don’t even blame people who’ve come to this conclusion, because it’s all they’ve heard for a year: Rittenhouse is a racist murderer who went way out of his way to shoot innocent people, and was given a pass by an evil system. . . . Kyle Rittenhouse was found not guilty on all six charges today, already causing a great exploding of heads in the pundit-o-sphere. Unrest wouldn’t be surprising. How could it be otherwise? Colleagues in national media spent over a year telling the country the 18-year-old was not just guilty, but a moral monster whose acquittal would be an in-your-face affirmation of systemic white supremacy." . . .

Media figures got every element of this story wrong. . . Joe Scarborough on MSNBC said Rittenhouse unloaded “about sixty rounds” into the crowd (it was eight), adding in another segment that he “drove across state lines and started shooting people up,” and in still another that he was “shooting wildly, running around acting like a rent a cop, trying to protect property in a town he doesn't know.” (His father and other relatives live there). John Heilemann on the same channel said Rittenhouse was “arguably a domestic terrorist” who “crossed state lines to go and shoot people.” Bakari Sellers, CNN: “The only person who fired shots that night was Kyle Rittenhouse” (he didn’t fire first, and protesters actually fired more rounds).

In the early days after the shooting, there were widespread reports that Rittenhouse either was a “militia member” or “thought of himself as a militia member,” but these turned out to not be true (he was actually only a member of a Police Explorers program).

A scant few outlets bothered to do what The New Yorker did in July of this year, in examining each of these claims one by one. This involved simple things like citing the Anti-Defamation League report covering Rittenhouse:

"There is to date no evidence that Rittenhouse was involved with the Kenosha Guard or showed up as a result of their call to action. Nor is there evidence of ties to other extremist groups, either militia groups or white supremacist groups. Rittenhouse’s social media accounts provided no evidence of ties to extremism prior to the killings."

The New Yorker also took a sober look at the oft-howled objection that Rittenhouse “crossed state lines,” as if this were somehow an offense in itself (see the Matt Orfalea video above) and quickly determined that news outlets simply didn’t bother to ask a few basic questions about the case: "Because he lived in Illinois, people assumed that he had travelled some distance, for nefarious purposes, and had “crossed state lines” with his rifle. (The Rittenhouse apartment was a mile south of the Wisconsin border, and Rittenhouse had been storing his gun in Kenosha, at the house of a friend’s stepfather.)" . . . "

The more they looked into it, the more reporters should have been able to see this verdict coming, and why. Instead, they picked a sloppy caricature on day one, and dug in. Now, mass audiences will be far more shocked than they should have been, and who knows what problems might arise from that.

Glenn Greenwald discussing the trial in the aftermath, nailing a prediction of what the allegedly pro-civil-rights ACLU would say in response to the verdict.

Greenwald shedding some much-needed light on a completely unprincipled GoFundMe announcement. Apparently the Constitutionally guaranteed right to an attorney means nothing to GoFundMe:

GoFundMe’s Terms of Service prohibit raising money for the legal defense of an alleged violent crime. In light of the Kyle Rittenhouse trial, we want to clarify when and why we removed certain fundraisers in the past.

Once charges for a violent crime were brought against Kyle Rittenhouse in 2020, GoFundMe removed fundraisers that were started for the defendant’s legal defense. We did this as part of our regular monitoring efforts; in addition to those fundraisers, our Trust & Safety team removed hundreds of other fundraisers between August and December 2020 — unrelated to Rittenhouse — that we determined were in violation of this long-standing policy.

I'm now wondering . . . is THIS the policy of GFM that the Rittenhouse case violates, where people are trying to raise money for Kyle Rittenhouse's legal defense? If so, is GFM suggesting that it is EVER again public policy to raise $ to help someone have access than attorney? If so, that is absurd, in that the U.S. Constitution provides that criminal defendants have the right to counsel:

Amendment VI

In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the state and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the assistance of counsel for his defense.

Glenn on Tucker Carlson's Show:

Glenn Greenwald pointing out Joe Biden's acquiescence to the mob:

Here is what I thought was true about Kyle Rittenhouse during the last days of August 2020 based on mainstream media accounts: The 17-year-old was a racist vigilante. I thought he drove across state lines, to Kenosha, Wisc., with an illegally acquired semi-automatic rifle to a town to which he had no connection. I thought he went there because he knew there were Black Lives Matter protests and he wanted to start a fight. And I thought that by the end of the evening of August 25, 2020, he had done just that, killing two peaceful protestors and injuring a third.

It turns out that account was mostly wrong.. . .

This wasn’t a disinformation campaign waged by Reddit trolls or anonymous Twitter accounts. It was one pushed by the mainstream media and sitting members of Congress for the sake of an expedient political narrative—a narrative that asked people to believe, among other unrealities, that blocks of burning buildings somehow constituted peaceful protests.

[Added November 21 2021]

Glenn Greenwald:

No reasonable person can deny that there are still major inequities in the US criminal justice system based on class and race. But there's a reason Kyle Rittenhouse is a household name, while Eric J. DeValkenaere (the now-convicted police detective) and Andrew Coffee IV are not.

Continue ReadingNews Outlets’ Rittenhouse Coverage Attempts to Indoctrinate Rather than Inform

About Trump’s “Friendly” Relationship with Russia

Tribal forces are strong and counter-narratives are a bitch. Glenn Greenwald points out that on two key issues, Trump was most definitely not under Russian control. These incidents should have stopped Russiagate in its tracks, but they didn't.

Here's more evidence of the counter-narrative that was ignored and suppressed. It should have been big news and it should have given left-leaning news media pause. Acknowledging facts like this makes you less popular at your friends' cocktail parties.  Greenwald's words are harsh but well-deserved:

Continue ReadingAbout Trump’s “Friendly” Relationship with Russia

Doctor’s Career Damaged for Believing in the Dream of Martin Luther King

Here's what the current climate of hyper-race-consciousness is getting us. It has derailed the career of a top-flight OB/GYN doctor who describes herself as a "bi-racial woman with multi-racial children." Her sin was to believe in the vision of Martin Luther King. She discusses what her employer, Hennepin Healthcare System (HHS), did to her in this short video.

"Dr. Tara Gustilo is of Filipino descent, the mother of black children, and a Harvard-educated physician at Hennepin Healthcare System (HHS) in Minneapolis. She was Chair of the OB/GYN Department, until HHS decided her personal views on race did not correspond with her skin color and revealed her supposed “internalized whiteness.”

Over the last decade, Dr. Gustilo has served successfully in various leadership roles at HHS. She created a program to reflect cultural differences in birthing practices to better serve her diverse patients. But over time, her colleagues transformed this program into racially segregated care.

When Dr. Gustilo voiced her objections, advocated for race-neutral care, and criticized racial essentialism on her personal Facebook page, her colleagues told her that she, as a person of color, should hold the same race-essentialist views they do and could not lead because she does not share those beliefs. HHS then removed her from her position as Chair of the OB/GYN department. Dr. Gustilo has now filed an EEOC discrimination charge against HHS."

Unfortunately, there are many more stories like this. You can read about many of them at Foundation Against Intolerance and Racism ("FAIR").

Continue ReadingDoctor’s Career Damaged for Believing in the Dream of Martin Luther King

A Tsunami of Fake News Supporting the Political Left (and Right)

Andrew Sullivan offers a long litany of stories that the left-leaning legacy media got extremely wrong. So incredibly wrong that it reveals more than journalistic malpractice. It reveals a news media industry that treats its readers like children who it thinks are incapable of making good decisions based on complex real life evidence. It's a new media that systematically makes shit up and hides stories that run counter to its narrative, its mission, which on the left side of the news media is to elect Democrats. It is the mirror image of FOX on the right. Both of these news "teams" violate many of the journalism rules of ethics promulgated by the Society of Professional Journalists. For instance,

– Take responsibility for the accuracy of their work. Verify information before releasing it. Use original sources whenever possible.

– Provide context. Take special care not to misrepresent or oversimplify in promoting, previewing or summarizing a story.

– Avoid undercover or other surreptitious methods of gathering information unless traditional, open methods will not yield information vital to the public.

– Be vigilant and courageous about holding those with power accountable. Give voice to the voiceless.

– Support the open and civil exchange of views, even views they find repugnant.

– Recognize a special obligation to serve as watchdogs over public affairs and government. Seek to ensure that the public’s business is conducted in the open, and that public records are open to all.

On the Democrat news media, recently concocted stories described by Sullivan involve: Kyle Rittenhouse:

Money quote from the defense lawyer: “It wasn’t until you pointed your gun at him, advanced on him, with your gun (and your hands down) pointed at him, that he fired? Right?” To which Grosskreutz answered: “Correct.” Here’s how the NYT first described this a year ago, on August 26: “Video footage from the scene of the shooting appears to show Mr. Rittenhouse running and then firing his gun, striking a man in the head. He then flees and is chased by bystanders before tripping, falling to the ground and shooting another man.”

Here are many examples of how the news media are intentionally (or at least recklessly) misunderstanding the rule of law and our system of justice relevant to Rittenhouse.   One of the favorite tactics of Democrat media is to mention that Rittenhouse is "white" (how is this relevant?) while failing to mention that the three people he shot are also "white" (what's good for the goose . . . ) (See here and here). You might rightly think that the news media is revving up conflict pornography (stoking race conflict) in order to sell advertisements.

Other recent wretched excuses for journalism include:

Almost everything reported on the left about Trump and Russia, Rachel Maddow doing disgraceful reporting on this topic for years - See here and here.

Claims about the Covington Boys;

Claims that there were bounties on U.S. Soldiers;

Claims that the Lab-Leak origin of COVID was a conspiracy theory;

Claims regarding the motives of the Pulse Mass Shooting and the Atlanta spa shooter;

Claims that attacks on Asian-Americans were by "white supremacists," when they were "disproportionately by African Americans and the mentally ill;

The claim that Officer Sicknick's skull was savagely bashed in with a fire extinguisher by a pro-Trump mob until he died;

The claim that a laptop was not property of Hunter Biden but, rather, it was Russian disinformation;

The claim that inflation was not increasing dramatically;

The claim that vaccines would end the pandemic;

The claims that critical race theory isn't in high schools and grade schools when CRT teachings are being pushed in hundreds of schools and school districts.

I could add a few things.  For instance, from the NYT/NPR/WP center of the news universe we heard almost nothing about extensive nightly riots and looting in the wake of George Floyd's killing.  Rather, we were told about the "mostly peaceful protests."  More specifically, it was as though Seattle CHAZ/CHOP and Portland Oregon didn't exist.

How do media outlets get away with these lies and corruption?  Here's my simplistic answer:

Brandolini's law, also known as the bullshit asymmetry principle, is an internet adage which emphasizes the difficulty of debunking false, facetious, or otherwise misleading information: "The amount of energy needed to refute bullshit is an order of magnitude larger than to produce it."

Andrew Sullivan's article is titled: "When All The Media Narratives Collapse: In case after case, the US MSM just keeps getting it wrong." As Sullivan notes, all of these false stories he listed favored Democrats.

Sullivan, sounding demoralize, concludes:

And at some point, you wonder: what narrative are they pushing now that is also bullshit? One comes to mind: the assurance that the insane amount of debt we have incurred this century is absolutely nothing to be concerned about because interest rates are super-low and borrowing more and more now is a no-brainer. But when inflation spikes and sets off a potential spiral in wages to catch up, will interest rates stay so quiescent? And if interest rates go up, how will we service the debt so easily?

I still rely on the MSM for so much. I still read the NYT first thing in the morning. I don’t want to feel as if everything I read is basically tilted through wish-fulfillment, narrative-proving, and ideology. But with this kind of record, how can I not?

We need facts and objectivity more than ever. Trump showed that. What we got in the MSM was an over-reaction, a reflexive overreach to make the news fit the broader political fight. This is humanly understandable. It is professionally unacceptable. And someone has got to stop it.

Here's the "news media" getting it extremely wrong once again, a few days ago, on the Rittenhouse case, on of the ubiquitous intentional/reckless articles we are seeing from the Official Democrat News Media:

The NYP quotes Andrew Sullivan:

Some mistakes are natural, 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,” warns Andrew Sullivan at his Substack. Agenda-driven reporting on the Kenosha shootings “effectively excluded the possibility that [Kyle] Rittenhouse was a naive, dangerous fool . . . who, in the end, shot assailants in self-defense,” so testimony that he did just that “came as a shock.”

Bonus Evidence: When Barack Obama visited Mount Rushmore, CNN described Obama's visit:

“Obama arrived there late last night and got a good look around Mount Rushmore — it’s quite a sight if you haven’t seen it,” said CNN anchor Rob Marciano.

“Barack Obama is in South Dakota today. He arrived there last night. Take a look at this. He got a good glimpse of the majestic Mount Rushmore,” fellow CNN anchor Betty Nguyen said later in the same broadcast.

A few days later, CNN’s Jim Acosta described Obama’s visit to Mount Rushmore like this: “It’s a fitting campaign stop for a presidential contender looking to make history. Standing before Mount Rushmore over the weekend, Barack Obama was asked whether he sees his face joining the likes of Washington and Lincoln.”

When Donald Trump visited Mount Rushmore, CNN had this to say:

“President Trump will be at Mt. Rushmore where he’ll be standing in front of a monument of two slave owners and on land wrestled away from Native Americans told that [they are] focusing on the effort to, quote, tear down our country’s history,” reported CNN Leyla Santiago on The Lead with Jake Tapper.

Last year I would have thought that Glenn Greenwald's rhetoric (below) was over the top, shrill, hyperbole. No longer. I'm there too after seeing the unending flow of false news--fake news--from the left.

Virtually everyone who ends up having first-hand experience with the national media realizes they're amoral liars and smear artists with no scruples, who publish and broadcast things constantly that have no relationship to the truth. And the public knows this, too

On the national level, many news outlets that I formerly trusted no longer deserved any trust. I trust no outlet, whether it be FOX or any of the "good guys" on the political left, who have abandoned all of the principles they were ever taught in J school and now see themselves as servants of their favorite political party.

Continue ReadingA Tsunami of Fake News Supporting the Political Left (and Right)

Sizing up Diversity Training: Is it Education or is it Indoctrination?

At Counterweight, Chuck Almdale has offered a thoughtful list of ten warning signs in his article at Counterweight: "Ten Signs your Diversity Training Session is CSJ Indoctrination."

Here are the titles to the ten warning signs:

1. It’s mandatory.

2. “Listen with curiosity, without judgment.”

3. “Check your privilege.”

4. “How do you identify?”

5. “What are your pronouns?”

6. Black Allyship.

7. No humor.

8. Shaming for disagreement or critical questions.

9. Diversity of race, gender and ethnicity but not of thought or speech.

10. New terms, rarely supported or defined.

Here's an excerpt on point 8:

Questions are permitted only to increase your shame and acquiescence to their program, as in “How do I stop behaving as a privileged white woman?” Critical questions about their statements or behavior are not permitted. They’ll say, “You’re pulling a power play”—trying to resist them, trying to influence others, subverting the training, and your disagreement proves your racism, that you are “on the wrong side of history”; the future belongs to the Woke. Want to belong? “Do the Work.”

Don’t believe them if they say that the “still, small voice” of your inner self is your White Fragility, panicking at vanishing. If they succeed at inhibiting that voice, your psychological recovery from Wokeness becomes very difficult, as some psychological therapists and others have discovered. Psychotherapist Seerut K. Chawla, practicing in London, dislikes Wokeness for the damage it has caused to many of her patients. Mike Brooks writes in Psychology Today about how Woke shaming destroys compassion. Also in Psychology Today Rupert W Nacoste writes that name-calling is bigotry, not social justice. The pressure to conform from facilitators and other trainees can be overwhelming. Your ounce of resistance is worth a pound of cure. Resist. Question. Tell a joke. Humor subverts Wokeness. One voice of resistance can unleash a chorus of support.

I would add the following. If you are forced to attend such an indoctrination session, go in knowing that you are going to make a lot of people irritated by committing the sin of being honest.  You will be called names and you will be shamed.  You will survive and live another day.  In the middle of the shamefest remember that Martin Luther King put up with abuse a thousand times worse for a period of decades.  Talk loud, hold your head high and know that there are a lot of quiet people in that room who are proud of you and relieved that you are speaking up.

Continue ReadingSizing up Diversity Training: Is it Education or is it Indoctrination?