Tag: media

I once asked a reporter known for writing hit pieces why journalists always write “X, real name Y,” when writing about people they don’t like while simply using the pen and stage names of those of whom they approve. She explained that it was for the same reason every statement by the target of the hit piece “claims” something even when it is a statement confirmed to be factual, to cast doubt on the legitimacy of the targeted individual.

Apparently the New York Times is now taking a similarly one-sided approach to the anonymity of sources:

A prominent pseudonymous blogger has shut down his site after a New York Times reporter refused to conceal his identity in a forthcoming piece, putting his livelihood and life in danger.

Psychiatrist Scott Alexander (his first and middle, but not last, name) has worked for years to cultivate a small but thriving intellectual community through his blog Slate Star Codex. That came to a halt Monday evening, however, when Alexander deleted the blog, replacing it with a post entitled “NYT Is Threatening My Safety By Revealing My Real Name, So I Am Deleting The Blog.”

The deletion was the culmination of a week of buzz that a Times reporter, Cade Metz, was reporting a story on Alexander’s site and the community it spawned, prompting widespread fears that Alexander would be the next figure “canceled” by a media exposé, possibly as retribution for his criticisms of modern progressivism.

Neither Metz nor his editor Pui-Wing Tam responded to a request for comment. Times vice president for communications Danielle Rhoades Ha told the Washington Free Beacon, “we do not comment on what we may or may not publish in the future. But when we report on newsworthy or influential figures, our goal is always to give readers all the accurate and relevant information we can.”

Alexander and others interviewed by Metz told the Free Beacon that they do not believe Metz wanted to write a “hit piece.” But Metz did insist that Times guidelines compelled him to disclose Alexander’s real name, derailing an interview with the blogger.

There is little evidence that such a policy exists at the Times, which has granted anonymity or pseudonymity to an Apple news executive, a left-wing podcaster, and even other subjects of Metz’s story.

The media is now wholly weaponized against America and against Western civilization, the Good, the Beautiful, and the True. And there is no excuse for still falling for the same lies reporters have been telling people for decades.

When Metz reached out, Alexander says, he wanted to discuss not these controversies, but the community SSC had built, in a largely positive way.

Sure he did. They use the same set of tricks every time. “I just want to let you tell you side of the story. I just want to understand this new thing that you’re the expert on. I just want to discuss this success that you’ve had.” First the bait, then the switch.

Most people are like toddlers being offered candy when it comes to the prospect of media attention. Perhaps it may help to keep this in mind: if it was going to benefit you, they would charge you for it.

The BBC has removed a famous episode of Fawlty Towers:

An episode of Fawlty Towers from which the N-word and other offensive terms had previously been cut has been taken down from the BBC’s UKTV player.

The 1975 episode titled The Germans – fondly remembered for the repeated line ‘don’t mention the war’ – is the latest in a series of British programmes to be culled from streaming sites.

Controversial Little Britain has been removed from Netflix, BBC iPlayer and BritBox.

I expect Monty Python is next. The Big Bear is right. This SJW cultural revolution is the death of comedy.

It’s also extremely informative to see who is allowed to get away with “a sincere apology” and who isn’t, as the SJWs begin to devour themselves. It won’t be long before the only SJW-free content will be found on independent sites like UATV.

Even high-ranking liberals who are in the media are discovering that decades of dutifully parroting the Narrative will not suffice to save them when they fail to keep up with the instantaneous twists and turns of the rest of the SJW school:

Stan Wischnowski, the top editor of The Philadelphia Inquirer, has announced his resignation, days after discontent among the newspaper’s staff erupted over a headline on a column about the impact of the civil unrest following the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis.

Wischnowski, 58, led the paper over two turbulent periods in recent years, driving it; its sister paper, the Daily News; and its website, Inquirer.com, to reshape themselves as the digital age transformed the news business. He was key in the creation of Spotlight PA, a new multireporter team to provide news outlets across Pennsylvania with investigative coverage of state government. He also was in charge in 2011 when The Inquirer investigated violence within Philadelphia schools, a series awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service.

It was the placement of an insensitive headline over Inga Saffron’s column in the Tuesday newspaper that may have set the stage for Wischnowski’s departure. He joined the two other top editors in signing an apology to readers and staff, characterizing the headline, “Buildings Matter, Too,” as “deeply offensive” and apologizing for it. The column had explored the destruction of buildings amid the looting that accompanied some of the nationwide protests over police violence.

The editor of The New York Times editorial page has also been canceled and forced to resign over a single op/ed:

The editor of The New York Times’ editorial page, James Bennet, has resigned, publisher A.G. Sulzberger announced Sunday. Bennet’s resignation comes after the publication of a controversial op-ed from Republican Sen. Tom Cotton earlier in the week drew significant criticism, including from dozens of the newspaper’s staffers.

Sulzberger also said that Jim Dao, a deputy editorial page editor who had publicly taken responsibility as overseeing the editing of the piece, would be stepping off the masthead and reassigned to the newsroom. Katie Kingsbury, another deputy editorial page editor, will oversee the editorial page through the 2020 election.

Our enemies are devouring themselves because that which has already dead to them cannot be killed, but rises again, stronger and harder.

White privilege is civilization. We are the inevitable.

President Trump signs the executive order to stop the abusive behavior of the social media giants:

Sec. 2.  Protections Against Online Censorship.  (a)  It is the policy of the United States to foster clear ground rules promoting free and open debate on the internet.  Prominent among the ground rules governing that debate is the immunity from liability created by section 230(c) of the Communications Decency Act (section 230(c)).  47 U.S.C. 230(c).  It is the policy of the United States that the scope of that immunity should be clarified: the immunity should not extend beyond its text and purpose to provide protection for those who purport to provide users a forum for free and open speech, but in reality use their power over a vital means of communication to engage in deceptive or pretextual actions stifling free and open debate by censoring certain viewpoints.

Section 230(c) was designed to address early court decisions holding that, if an online platform restricted access to some content posted by others, it would thereby become a “publisher” of all the content posted on its site for purposes of torts such as defamation.  As the title of section 230(c) makes clear, the provision provides limited liability “protection” to a provider of an interactive computer service (such as an online platform) that engages in “‘Good Samaritan’ blocking” of harmful content.  In particular, the Congress sought to provide protections for online platforms that attempted to protect minors from harmful content and intended to ensure that such providers would not be discouraged from taking down harmful material.  The provision was also intended to further the express vision of the Congress that the internet is a “forum for a true diversity of political discourse.”  47 U.S.C. 230(a)(3).  The limited protections provided by the statute should be construed with these purposes in mind.

In particular, subparagraph (c)(2) expressly addresses protections from “civil liability” and specifies that an interactive computer service provider may not be made liable “on account of” its decision in “good faith” to restrict access to content that it considers to be “obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy, excessively violent, harassing or otherwise objectionable.”  It is the policy of the United States to ensure that, to the maximum extent permissible under the law, this provision is not distorted to provide liability protection for online platforms that — far from acting in “good faith” to remove objectionable content — instead engage in deceptive or pretextual actions (often contrary to their stated terms of service) to stifle viewpoints with which they disagree.  Section 230 was not intended to allow a handful of companies to grow into titans controlling vital avenues for our national discourse under the guise of promoting open forums for debate, and then to provide those behemoths blanket immunity when they use their power to censor content and silence viewpoints that they dislike.  When an interactive computer service provider removes or restricts access to content and its actions do not meet the criteria of subparagraph (c)(2)(A), it is engaged in editorial conduct.  It is the policy of the United States that such a provider should properly lose the limited liability shield of subparagraph (c)(2)(A) and be exposed to liability like any traditional editor and publisher that is not an online provider.

Section 230(c) is the key to the publisher/not publisher dance behind which the social media giants hide.

The former president of CBS News encourages the mainstream media to give up its pretense of balance and impartiality:

There’s in all probability no technique to seal the hole between the media and a big phase of the general public. The media likes what it’s doing. Admires it. Celebrates it. There isn’t any private, skilled or monetary cause to vary. If something, the hole will develop. In the end, the media finds the “deplorables” deplorable.

Dan Abrams, ABC’s chief legal-affairs anchor and founding father of the web site Mediaite, has a novel however helpful concept for the media—candor. Chatting with the matter at February’s Rancho Mirage Writers Pageant, Mr. Abrams mentioned “I feel the very first thing that may assist . . . is to confess . . . that the individuals within the media are left of heart.”

It might be pleasant if a writer, an editor, a reporter, would simply say: Sure, I’m left of heart! I’m pleased with it. I feel our reporting is correct. It finest serves the general public. And the credibility of the media. So there!

Publications open about their bias would possibly really feel freer to give attention to the specifics: story choice, presentation, info, equity, stability. Not devoid of subtlety for certain, however manageable.

Honesty about their obvious political leanings would be preferable, without question. I doubt it will make all that much difference, however, since they’re not fooling anyone except perhaps Baby Boomers who haven’t been paying any attention since 1978.

Just thought I’d put these out there for future reference:

The Chinese authorities have found no clear evidence of human-to-human transmission of the novel #coronavirus (2019-nCoV) identified in #Wuhan, #China.
January 14, 2020, World Health Organization

There is no evidence that the coronavirus was created in a laboratory.
April 20, 2020, The Conversation

The World Health Organization reiterated that the coronavirus which causes COVID-19 is “natural in origin.” Scientists who are examining the genetic sequences of the virus have assured “again and again that this virus is natural in origin.”
May 1, 2020

Dr. Anthony Fauci, a renowned U.S. infectious disease expert, has said that there is no scientific evidence to back the theory that the coronavirus was made in a Chinese laboratory. “If you look at the evolution of the virus in bats and what’s out there now, the scientific evidence is very, very strongly leaning toward this could not have been artificially or deliberately manipulated,” he said.
May 4, 2020, National Geographic

WHO says it has no evidence to support ‘speculative’ Covid-19 lab theory
May 5, 2020, The Guardian

The British government has not seen any evidence to suggest that the novel coronavirus that causes COVID-19 was man-made.
May 9, 2020, UK Health Minister Matt Hancock

Scientists: ‘Exactly zero’ evidence COVID-19 came from a lab.
May 12, 2020, Center for Infections Disease Research and Policy

Evidence of COVID’s natural origin mounts even as conspiracy theory about Chinese lab refuses to die
May 13, 2020, Cornell Alliance for Science

I wonder what took so long for the mainstream media to get around to updating the usual narrative?

“You’ve got to remember that the Chinese regime is deeply racist with its Han nationalist ideology. This is something we haven’t quite seen since The Third Reich.”

Gordon Chang, an expert on United States-China relations, and author of The Coming China Collapse, spoke with Campus Reform Editor-in-Chief Cabot Phillips to break down what it all means and what must be done in response.

Never mind all those other post-WWII New Hitlers. It would appear the Great Leap is definitely off. I wonder what’s next?

Ron Unz inadvertently discovers why taking the ticket is a fool’s short-lived game:

Just over a month ago I was riding high and celebrating the steady upward progress of our alternative media webzine. I proudly noted that our traffic had now far surpassed that of the venerable New Republic, a century old publication that had spent decades as America’s most influential opinion magazine.

But pride goeth before the fall. At the end of April we were suddenly purged and banned by Facebook, the world’s leading social network. Not only was our rudimentary Facebook page removed, but every last item of our website content was declared illegal, with all past and future links eliminated. Any attempt to post our material on Facebook now produces an error message reporting that the content is “abusive” and a violation of “community standards.”

Although I personally don’t use Facebook or other social networks, billions of people do, and totally excluding all of our content from that important distribution channel eventually produced a 20{105b5945f2a7891a3dd860d3a09046b26c32f8a07d097b566642738deee8841e} drop in our regular daily traffic, a serious blow that set us back many months.

Whatever they give you, they can – and they will – take away from you. And contra the backwards reasoning of the average conservative, the bigger you are, the more at risk you become. That’s why UATV’s Basic subscribers will all be receiving invitations to the new site today as well as why you will never see a Facebook page for UATV or a Facebook ad for it.

The good news for Mr. Unz is that only 20 percent of his audience was Facebook-based. He’s better off growing organically without it. After all, this blog is still averaging around 100k pageviews per day despite the best efforts of the social media mafia to deny it links.

It’s rather remarkable to see the normally phlegmatic Ron Unz publicly bitchslapping a commenter. But he does it rather well:

Its amazing the irrelevant factoids people here throw out to obscure and deflect Chinese responsibility for unleashing a deadly pandemic on the world. I can understand Chinese threats and bullying to keep global opinion from demanding accountability from the criminals in Beijing. Its what totalitarian dictatorships do. Doesn’t change the facts though.

Well, ignorant retards like you can believe whatever ridiculous nonsense you get from FoxNews or similar sources. But the actual evidence is pretty strong that the Coronavirus outbreak was an American biowarfare attack on China (and Iran), presumably arranged by the Deep State Neocons in the Trump Administration.

Otherwise, how could our Defense Intelligence Agency have distributed a November report to all our top government officials and European allies describing a “cataclysmic” disease epidemic taking place in Wuhan OVER A MONTH before any Chinese officials had become aware of it:

Four separate government sources described the report to ABC News and its existence was independently confirmed by Israeli TV:

Now go back to watching Mike Pompeo’s silly accusations on FoxNews…

If you’re not sure who to believe, remember to apply Vox’s First Law of Media: the Official Story put forth by the mainstream media is always false. 

The current China-China-China refrain concerning the coronavirus is no more legitimate than was the Russia-Russia-Russia refrain concerning the 2016 presidential election. Remember, it was barely six weeks ago that the media was telling you that the whole thing started with bat soup.

Unz further lays out his logic:

There are multiple, independent sources in both the US government and Israel that agree that our Defense Intelligence Agency distributed a report in November warning of the “cataclysmic” disease outbreak that was taking place in Wuhan. Those facts seem almost incontrovertible.

As it happens, that was indeed right around the time that the Coronavirus outbreak in Wuhan had actually begun, but at such an early stage that no Chinese officials were yet aware of it, just like the virus later began circulating in various parts of America several weeks before people noticed it.

So unless you believe that our DIA has developed “precognitive technology”, how can they have possibly been aware of the outbreak before anyone in China unless elements of our national security establishment had themselves released the virus in Wuhan as a biowarfare attack against China?

At this point, it appears to be fairly obvious that the coronavirus pandemic was a Deep State biowarfare attack on China intended to create global disruption as well as direct conflict between the Chinese government and the Trump administration. With a side dish of a biowarfare attack on the Iranian elite.

Ron Unz observes, with mild bemusement, the fact that Facebook has belatedly banned The Unz Review:

My morning newspapers had recently mentioned Facebook’s plans to crack down on misinformation related to our ongoing Covid-19 epidemic, and probably like most other readers I just nodded my head. After all, many Americans might die if cranks or pranksters began promoting highly dubious cures to the deadly disease, perhaps even suggesting that people should inject themselves with Lysol to ward off an infection.

However, those bland public statements took on an entirely different meaning yesterday afternoon when I discovered that all material from The Unz Review had suddenly been banned for alleged violations of “community standards” and our own Facebook page eliminated.

I don’t use Social Media much myself, but others obviously due, and blocking all our website content from access to the 1.7 billion Facebook users seems a pretty drastic step. So it’s quite reasonable to wonder why, and especially why now?

From the very first, the motto of our publication has been A Collection of Interesting, Important, and Controversial Perspectives Largely Excluded from the American Mainstream Media, and I think we have fulfilled that pledge, publishing many thousands of articles and posts on an enormous range of extraordinarily controversial and even forbidden topics, notably including my own American Pravda series.

Under such circumstances, being banned by Facebook might hardly seem surprising. However, many of our most extremely controversial pieces were published years ago, drawing angry denunciations from various quarters, but received with apparent equanimity from the Lords of the Social Network. Nearly all of the “touchy” pieces we published in the last couple of weeks seem no more “touchy” than the ones from a year or two years or even three years ago. So what suddenly sparked this unprecedented action?

Although I can’t be sure, I strongly suspect that the triggering event was my own most recent American Pravda article, dealing as it did with the Coronavirus epidemic, the supposed focus of Facebook’s current crackdown. And this piece not only accumulated more early readership than any of my previous articles here, but also two or three times as many Facebook Likes, which might have raised serious concerns in certain quarters.

Fortunately, since Unz has long practiced the dark art of building his own platforms, this won’t harm the Review in the slightest. But it does serve as a reminder that even in times of extreme difficulty, SJWs won’t hesitate to cut off their own nose if they imagine doing so will harm you.

I left Facebook long ago, of my own volition, and I’m confident that my life is the better for it. Don’t live in their walled gardens.