Chapter 7,982: Journalists Refusing to do Journalism

Matt Taibbi's recent Tweet thread noting the silence by the mainstream media when it comes to stunning revelations based on the Twitter Files.

Instead of taking as leads stories like Hamilton 68 or CENTCOM’s fake social media accounts abroad or the FBI, DOS and DHS cranking out thousands of moderation requests, “reputable” journalists are spending all their time attacking me and throwing stupid partisan tantrums. Why?

Because they’re not real journalists. The lot of them are invested in protecting people in power and defending their own screwups (like their stories about #ReleaseTheMemo being driven by Russian bots), so they’re refusing to follow up on dozens of newsworthy stories.

How journalism works when the press is real: One reporter does a story. It may not be the whole story, but it’s newsworthy. The next reporter finds the next piece of the puzzle. A third adds more. We compete, but all push the story forward. The TF response exposes a fake press:

This is why I now have to hire people to help chase down all the stuff in the Twitter Files — because the “community” of reputable journalists not only won’t investigate as they once would have, they’re trying to shut such inquiries down.

Based on what passes as "news" in most regional and national outlets, Joseph Pulitzer must be spinning in his grave. Here is his 1907 Platform:

I know that my retirement will make no difference in its cardinal principles, that it will always fight for progress and reform, never tolerate injustice or corruption, always fight demagogues of all parties, never belong to any party, always oppose privileged classes and public plunderers, never lack sympathy with the poor, always remain devoted to the public welfare, never be satisfied with merely printing news, always be drastically independent, never be afraid to attack wrong, whether by predatory plutocracy or predatory poverty.
JOSEPH PULITZER • APRIL 10, 1907

Continue ReadingChapter 7,982: Journalists Refusing to do Journalism

Jimmy Dore Offers Some History Regarding the Ukraine War

Jimmy Dore recently appeared on Ep 237 of the PBD Podcast with Patrick Bet-David. I transcribed a portion of his interview, in which is described the relevant history of Ukraine as it pertains to the ongoing war. He contrasts the vast military aid the U.S. if providing to Ukraine to the desperate economic situation of millions of Americans.

Jimmy Dore:

Well, it's obvious that they don't want you to know the real history. They don't want you to know that when Germany was allowed to reunify the promise from NATO to Russia was that we won't expand NATO. And then of course, it did. I think there's thirteen more countries that they put it into NATO. And now they wanted to put Ukraine into NATO or threatened to do that. That would be like if Russia got into a military alliance with Mexico and they wanted to start putting military bases in Mexico. We wouldn't allow that we wouldn't allow it. And just like what happened with Cuba with the missile crisis in the 60s, we wouldn't allow stuff like that. But we're doing that and they don't want you to know that NATO is not a defensive, it is offensive. This is a war that was started and provoked by NATO and the West. Zelensky ran on peace. He brought on bringing the country back together, right? The Russian speakers in the east, the Donbas. But he didn't do it. Why? Because he got threatened by NATO and the ultra right, the Nazis, in Ukraine. And so they'll threaten to kill--he knows he's a dead man--if he does a peace deal with Russia. So that's why he won't. They had a peace deal in March and that's when Boris Johnson from the UK flew there and said, Hey, you better you don't do this. And he he killed the peace deal. So Russia is the one that wants peace in this deal. And Ukraine and NATO do not. They want to bleed Russia economically. And that's why they blew up the Nord Stream 2 pipeline. They've always said they were going to do it and they did it. For the life of me, I can't get why the European nations are going along with this. There was the foreign minister of Germany said I don't care about my people, if they don't want this. I care about the people of Ukraine. What leader of a country says they don't care about their own people, but they care more about somebody else's country? It's crazy what's going on.

People don't realize that NATO has provoked this. In fact, there was a peace agreement in 2014. The CIA helped overthrow the Ukraine Government. And then the people in the Donbas didn't want to go along with this coup'ed government, because the leader of Ukraine wanted to be friendly or economically with Russia instead of join, like the European Union, and that they couldn't have that right. So that's why they did a coup. And Russian speakers in the Donbas didn't want to go along with that coup. And so they kind of wanted to break away. The Ukraine Government started shelling the Donbas. And so they had a peace agreement called the Minsk agreements. That was supposed to give them independence. They were supposed to have their own elections and they were going to stop shelling them, but they never did. They ended up killing like 14 or 15,000 people in the Donbas over the last eight years.

And now it's been revealed that that peace agreement was never real. Merkel, the former prime minister of Germany, just admitted that the only reason they did that peace agreement was to give Ukraine enough time to build up its military. So when they finally did provoke an invasion, which is what they did, that they would have a military ready to fight Russia. People don't know this is what happens. They just think that one day Putin woke up and said, I want to go invade Ukraine, because I'm a maniac. And they think that he's the bad guy. He's acting rationally. We always knew he would do this. In fact, we were counting on him doing this. That's why we did what we did. And [Americans] don't know that Ukraine ramped up their bombing right before the war started last year. They doubled their bombing. They were really trying to provoke it. And they did it. They got it. They provoked it. And Russia would rather have a peace agreement and the rest of the world rather have a peace agreement. Not NATO. Not Joe Biden. Not the military industrial complex. That's where we are and people don't know that. That's what [Reporter Matt Lee] is saying: Hey, NATO's the one expanding. That's the reason why he said it. The reason why NATO's army is on the doorstep of Russia is because we moved, not Russia.

[More . . . ]

Continue ReadingJimmy Dore Offers Some History Regarding the Ukraine War

Mainstream Media Remains Silent on Nord Stream 2 Destruction

The lack of news coverage regarding what appears to be the U.S. destruction of the Nord Stream pipeline looks like a major psy-op.

Continue ReadingMainstream Media Remains Silent on Nord Stream 2 Destruction

Andrew Sullivan Applauds NYT Decision to Practice Journalism Regarding Transgender Issues

Andrew Sullivan celebrates that the NYT has declared that will insist on doing real journalism on transgender issues, even though loud activists, many of them posing as journalists, demand otherwise:

[T]his week, we saw another campus maneuver: an open letter from a thousand or so New York Times contributors, accusing the NYT of “follow[ing] the lead of far-right hate groups” in its coverage of transgender issues. Other campus tactics: a loud demo outside; alliance between insiders and outsider activists; public shaming of named journalists; accusations that the NYT is a “workplace made hostile by bias” (the now-familiar HR gambit); and non-negotiable demands for even more hiring solely on the basis of identity and ideology.

It’s an echo of Evergreen and Yale and Middlebury and Reed. The ploys are repeated because they work and there’s no downside. And almost all the university presidents caved. They held meetings and meetings; they apologized; they appeased; they conceded core liberal principles of free speech and dissent; they terminated dissident faculty; they equivocated and collaborated in the pursuit of “diversity” and then “equity.” In a word, they were pathetic.

And in the summer of 2020, when campus tactics invaded newsrooms, and writers and editors were purged for committing journalism that violated the orthodoxies of social justice, we saw a similar collapse of nerve.

But this time was different. Check this out, from the executive editor of the NYT. It’s the response we always needed from the leadership of besieged liberal institutions before and never got:

It is not unusual for outside groups to critique our coverage or to rally supporters to seek to influence our journalism. In this case, however, members of our staff and contributors to The Times joined the effort. Their protest letter included direct attacks on several of our colleagues, singling them out by name. Participation in such a campaign is against the letter and spirit of our ethics policy … We have a clear policy prohibiting Times journalists from attacking one another's journalism publicly or signaling their support for such attacks …

We do not welcome, and will not tolerate, participation by Times journalists in protests organized by advocacy groups or attacks on colleagues on social media and other public forums.

Readers know I’m often merciless about the NYT, but Joseph Kahn is a hero for the clarity of this."

Continue ReadingAndrew Sullivan Applauds NYT Decision to Practice Journalism Regarding Transgender Issues

NYT’s Continued Meaningful Discussion of Transgender Issues

Apparently, the memo has gone out that we can start relying on common sense again. Pamela Paul, writing at the NYT, discusses the bizarre and unfair campaign of threatened violence against J.K. Rowling. Perhaps this is the beginning of what surely should be a more productive conversation that recognizes the reality of the two biological sexes:

So why would anyone accuse her of transphobia? Surely, Rowling must have played some part, you might think.

The answer is straightforward: Because she has asserted the right to spaces for biological women only, such as domestic abuse shelters and sex-segregated prisons. Because she has insisted that when it comes to determining a person’s legal gender status, self-declared gender identity is insufficient. Because she has expressed skepticism about phrases like “people who menstruate” in reference to biological women. Because she has defended herself and, far more important, supported others, including detransitioners and feminist scholars, who have come under attack from trans activists. And because she followed on Twitter and praised some of the work of Magdalen Berns, a lesbian feminist who had made incendiary comments about transgender people.

You might disagree — perhaps strongly — with Rowling’s views and actions here. You may believe that the prevalence of violence against transgender people means that airing any views contrary to those of vocal trans activists will aggravate animus toward a vulnerable population.

But nothing Rowling has said qualifies as transphobic. She is not disputing the existence of gender dysphoria. She has never voiced opposition to allowing people to transition under evidence-based therapeutic and medical care. She is not denying transgender people equal pay or housing. There is no evidence that she is putting trans people “in danger,” as has been claimed, nor is she denying their right to exist.

Take it from one of her former critics. E.J. Rosetta, a journalist who once denounced Rowling for her supposed transphobia, was commissioned last year to write an article called “20 Transphobic J.K. Rowling Quotes We’re Done With.” After 12 weeks of reporting and reading, Rosetta wrote, “I’ve not found a single truly transphobic message.” On Twitter she declared, “You’re burning the wrong witch.”

On Feb 15, 2023, GLAAD and its allies sent a letter to the NYT, broadcasting clearly that they don't want people to have real conversations about transgender topics. They insist that there is only one side to the story, and their allies have done their damndest to silence anyone with a differing viewpoint with shame, cancelation, economic loss and violence. GLAAD's letter was signed by more than a few people who have written for the New York Times. I waited with interest, curious about how the NYT would respond. The NYT response was very difficult to find on Google, which pretends to be an unbiased search engine, but was worth the wait:

The NYT also released this message that they will not tolerate the authoritarian tactics of those who pretend to seek to discuss trans issues:

Continue ReadingNYT’s Continued Meaningful Discussion of Transgender Issues