NYT and WP Play Coy Regarding Sources for their COVID “Natural Origins” Cheerleading

The Biden Administration is rightfully looking into the COVID lab origin theory (even though it was seen as shameful to even ask this question in recent times). In the meantime, NYT and WP are now cheerleading for the "natural origin" theory based, in part, on the opinions of two thoroughly discredited infectious disease researchers. Follow the public evidence offered by Glenn Greenwald to see that Peter Daszak has a well-documented career-threatening conflict of interest (and history of deceit) and Robert Garry received a multi-million dollar NIAID research grant shortly before his 180 degree change of opinion. Glenn Greenwald's story is focused on the irresponsible reporting by the NYT and WP. Why would these newspapers fail to inform their readers that there are concrete reasons to distrust both of these two experts upon whom their recent stories rely? National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) is the well funded agency directed by Anthony Fauci, who also has some explaining to do.

Greenwald's article is titled: "To Deny the "Lab Leak" COVID Theory, the NYT and WPost Use Dubious and Conflicted SourcesA bizarre and abrupt reversal by scientists regarding COVID's origins, along with clear conflicts of interest, create serious doubts about their integrity. Yet major news outlets keep relying on them."

Here is Daszak explaining his state of the art research back in 2017:

Here's another link to Daszak's video.

Continue ReadingNYT and WP Play Coy Regarding Sources for their COVID “Natural Origins” Cheerleading

A Growing Collection: News Media Not Wanting Us to Know Important Things

I will be adding items to this list, apparently for a long time. I was provoked to create this list after reading Andrew Sullivan's collection of topics that the left-leaning news media works hard to not cover. I'll begin this list up here in a post and then continue adding items in the comments.

This list begins today, with this entry by Batya Ungar-Sargon coupled with this NYP article, "Journalists today aren’t muckrakers — they are defenders of the liberal elite":

[Added Dec 5, 2021]

They treat us like toddlers who are incapable of hearing the facts and coming to our own conclusions.

Glenn Greenwald:

In the last 18 months, US political discourse has been mass-censored over significant issues based on 2 lies:

1) The Biden email archive was "Russian disinformation."

2) The Science™ had proven COVID was zoonotic rather than from a lab.

Both lies led to widespread repression.

Continue ReadingA Growing Collection: News Media Not Wanting Us to Know Important Things

Democrat Media Goes Radio-Silent after Joe Biden Adopts Donald Trump’s Immigration Policy

The content of this thread following Glenn Greenwald's Tweet is exactly what we should expect to get more of as long as so many of us continue relishing two-party tribalism rather than engaging in nuanced heterodox thinking. Read the thread and you will find cheap theater staged by Rachel Maddow and AOC on this issue. Too many of us are working in overtime to score cheap political points instead of working to have meaningful discussions regarding complex issues. The HxA way would be a good start.  

Looking back  only 18 months . . .

Continue ReadingDemocrat Media Goes Radio-Silent after Joe Biden Adopts Donald Trump’s Immigration Policy

Andrew Sullivan: David Frum Moves the Goalposts on Russian “Collusion”

Andrew Sullivan, responding to David Frum's latest defense of Trump's alleged collusion with Russia. The title to Sullivan's article: "It Wasn't A Hoax. It Was Media Overkill: Parsing the truths in the "collusion" narrative."

I agree with almost everything David writes — which he does with his usual concision and pellucidity. There is no question that Trump had countless conflicts of interest in Russia, with his Moscow hotel plans high among them, and had been money laundering for Russian oligarchs for years. No question that he was absolutely willing to accept Russia’s — or any country’s — illicit support, and no doubt he actually asked for it. I saw him do it, on national television, in the campaign. We all did.

The Russians also tried to corrupt the election through online shenanigans; and Manafort’s delivery of polling data to Moscow was deeply shifty. And everyone lied about almost everything. There’s equally no doubt that Trump obstructed justice in trying to stymie the Russia investigation. Again, he told us so on television. More pertinently, people have been prosecuted and gone to jail for their misdeeds in this whole miasma of near-treasonous sleaze.

But this was not what the MSM tried to sell us from the get-go. What they and the Democrats argued — with endless, breathless, high-drama reporting — was that there was some kind of plot between Trump and Russia to rig the election and it had succeeded. Investigating this was hugely important because it could expose near-treason and instantly remove Trump from power via impeachment. This was the dream to cope with the nightmare. . . .

So David now moves the goalposts to “cooperation.” What’s with all these progressively less culpable c-words? But who wouldn’t have Trump “cooperated” with to get elected? He was an all-round huckster, with no ethics, no sense of propriety, and essentially a thug, who got a boner watching human beings being crushed by tanks in Tiananmen Square. And do we have any evidence ever of Trump having the brains, the discretion, the attention to minute detail, or the competent staffing that would have been needed to pull off such a scheme? Please.

Glenn Greenwald has pointed out that Frum should have learned from the other time he was duped in a major way: Iraq WMD.

Here's Greenwald after the Muller Report explaining that Democrat obsession with "collusion" has been costly to the Democrats and helpful to Trump.

Continue ReadingAndrew Sullivan: David Frum Moves the Goalposts on Russian “Collusion”

Another Lament about Fake News

Several years ago, I distrusted the phrase "fake news." It was often uttered by Donald Trump, for whom I have almost no respect.

I’m convinced that the great majority of us act rationally based upon the information to which we expose ourselves. If we are exposing ourselves only to false information, however, we will believe and act “rationally” based on that false information. Once upon a time, I heavily relied upon NYT/WP/NPR/MSNBC, but am no longer able to freely trust these sources. These are big organizations with high-paid reporters, editors and purported fact-checkers. Over the past few years, despite all of this high-paid talent, I have seen each of these organizations blatantly and proudly trumpet false information. I’m not claiming that everything these outlets publish is false. Far from it. They are all big tents and they all publish many excellent articles. That said, they have failed so thoroughly and dramatically on so many high-profile stories in the past few years (including basic facts concerning Kyle Rittenhouse and Russiagate) that I have reset my default setting to “Suspicious” on their high-profile news stories, especially when the story could effect a national election.

And not only have each of these outlets published steady streams of false stories, each of them has intentionally suppressed important stories that run counter to their chosen narratives. Some of the biggest lies are told by writing statements that are completely true while simultaneously suppressing evidence that will put these “true” facts into a completely different frame (e.g., following the death of George Floyd, the above outlets refused to publish Harvard economist Roland G. Fryer’s 2019 statistical analysis on police shootings (Discussed by Sam Harris here), statistics that run counter some of the main narratives of the “defund the police” crowd. This is my introduction to Andrew Sullivan’s recent article, “When all the Media Narratives Collapse: In case after case, the US MSM just keep getting it wrong.” I have expanded on Sullivan’s article with my own.

Continue ReadingAnother Lament about Fake News