Tag: Hack Journalism

Moron

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Writing in Jeff Bezos’s Washington Post, Steven Pearlstein describes Amazon’s hissy fit in New York as a, “Political Mugging,” implying that somehow public comment on the deal was a mark of the lack of civility in today’s political discourse.

Of course you do, Mr. Perlstein, Jeff Bezos is paying you to write such tripe as, “There is little doubt that poor and working-class New Yorkers would have benefited from Amazon’s presence,” and, “That money would have allowed New York to quickly recoup the $3 billion in tax breaks it gave to Amazon, with plenty left over to expand infrastructure, help the needy or build more affordable housing.”

This is simply false.

Even in the most Panglossian scenarios, payback is somewhere between 75 years and never, and as to those poor and working class that Steven professes so much concern about would be driven out of their neighborhoods by increasing rents, and the small businesses that would have to pay higher taxes to accommodate those subsidies, and the services that the people that would be coming in.

There are any number of reasons to argue about either side of this argument, but bald faced lies are not a good faith argument.

And the Hunt for Jeff Bezos’ Penis Continues

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It turns out that American Media, LLC, the parent company of the National Enquirer, asked for an opinion from the Justice Department on whether it had to register as a foreign agent for the House of Saud, which,, even for the National Enquirer, is rather a mind f%$#:

The dust-up between Amazon.com Inc. founder Jeff Bezos and National Enquirer parent American Media LLC has raised questions about the media company’s connections to Saudi Arabia.

American Media has had plenty of contacts with Saudi Arabia in recent years, including seeking financial backing from Saudi investors to fund acquisitions and producing a magazine celebrating the country’s new crown prince.

It also sought advice last year from the U.S. Justice Department over whether the publisher should register as a foreign agent, a person familiar with the matter told The Wall Street Journal.

The issue of the ties came up last week when Mr. Bezos took to the internet to push back against what he said was an extortion attempt by the National Enquirer against him over an extramarital affair that the tabloid reported on last month featuring photos and texts. He said he launched his own probe into how the publication obtained his texts as well as its motives and wrote that the “Saudi angle seems to hit a particularly sensitive nerve.”

Gee, you think?

This is what happens when people start turning over rocks, and it is nice that the worm has turned on the National Enquirer.

Good News Everyone, the Fox News Audience is Dying Off!

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Fox news audience and ad revenue is on a significant down trend.
I’m a pessimist, so I think that this was demographics.

It had to happen eventually: Their audience is old, and getting older fast.

Optimists think that their audience has finally tired of their phony “Journalism”, but I think that it’s just because they are dying off:

The news just keeps getting worse for Donald Trump’s favorite television network. Over the past three months Fox News has been thrashed in the Nielsen ratings by MSNBC, particularly by Rachel Maddow who has topped her competition, Sean Hannity, almost every night since the November midterm election.

Now TheWrap is reporting that Hannity’s primetime colleagues have problems of their own. Tucker Carlson and Laura Ingraham have both been the targets of advertiser boycotts as a result of commentaries that were especially loathsome. Not that their regular topics don’t routinely offend decent people. But even these weasels can cross lines that are impossible to ignore:

“According to an analysis for TheWrap by advertising data firm Standard Media Index, Fox News’ 10 p.m. slot, hosted by Ingraham, was down at least $16 million in ad revenue in 2018. Carlson’s show, which airs at 8 p.m., has lost another $2.2 million thanks to an ad boycott that began in December after he said mass immigration makes the U.S. ‘poorer, and dirtier, and more divided.’”

Tucker Carlson’s flagrant white nationalism has become a staple of his nightly program. It’s unconscionable that any advertisers continue to support him. But the exodus of ads has definitely proven to be more than a temporary setback. Carlson is currently is running about half of the ads he had prior to the boycott. And they have been replaced by unpaid Fox promos and public service announcements.

Laura Ingraham’s problems began after she attacked the survivors of the Parkland, Florida high school shooting. These are kids who suffered a nightmare that no one should ever face, but who Ingraham considered fair game for even more abuse. She is also notorious for her racist and elitist views, such as when she said that basketball legend and philanthropist LeBron James should “shut up and dribble.” Now her advertisers have also been cut in half.

I do not think that ratings are falling because Fox News have shocked the conscience of their audience.

In fact, I do not think that is possible.

To quote the Bard of Baltimore: (This is the actual quote from Menken, it is frequently misquoted)

No one in this world, so far as I know — and I have searched the records for years, and employed agents to help me — has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people. Nor has anyone ever lost public office thereby.

Max Boot? Seriously?

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Max Boot, a man who has been advocating blowing up brown people in useless wars for his entire career, has had an epiphany.

He now realizes that the Republican party is an authoritarian institution.

I cannot help but think that this is sour grapes.

If the Trump administration were receptive to his foreign policy “insights”, and had spent some time padding Boot’s ego, I’m sure that he would be wearing a MAGA hat.

We’re Gonna Need a Smaller Violin

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It appears taht Bill Kristol’s Weekly Standard is at risk of closure:

Things don’t look good for The Weekly Standard. Yesterday, CNN’s Oliver Darcy reported that the conservative magazine may shutter after sparring between its leadership and owners MediaDC, who told the magazine’s editor, Stephen Hayes, that he could court potential buyers, then went back on the pledge. While MediaDC’s parent company wouldn’t be drawn publicly last night, MediaDC’s chairman, Ryan McKibben, has reportedly requested a meeting with Hayes next week. Ominously, Darcy reports, he’s requested that the entire Standard staff be made available immediately afterward.

The Standard has steadfastly opposed the Trump presidency, making it a relative rarity in conservative media circles. Its anti-Trump stance—and stated commitment to fact-driven and nuanced debate—helps explain why CNN’s scoop elicited such widespread concern in the mediasphere. On the right, Noah Rothman, an associate editor at Commentary magazine, tweeted, “This would be a disaster. The Weekly Standard is indispensable.” Further left, Mother Jones CEO Monika Bauerlein called CNN’s story “terrible news.” The Atlantic’s Adam Serwer added, “I’m obviously not the target audience for The Weekly Standard but its output in the Trump era has mostly avoided the bizarre tone of Trumpist sycophancy dominating much of conservative media and losing it would be bad.”

No.

The fact that The Weekly Standard is right, for all the wrong reasons, for once, does not justified its continued existence.

Even now, as a “fact checker” for Facebook, it continues its role as a pox on public discourse and a welfare program for overpriviliged conservatives.

The hand-wringing for a publication that was begun to pursue Bill Clinton’s penis and to advocate for destabilizing wars throughout the world does not deserve support for anyone who might consider themselves a journalist.

Buh Bye Megyn

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It looks like Megyn Kelly’s long history of racism has finally caught up with her:

Megyn Kelly is expected to wind down her 9 a.m. ‘Today‘ show hour by the end of the season, THR reported late Wednesday.

Megyn Kelly Today will be airing reruns in wake of the NBC News host’s controversial comments about wearing blackface and amid an uncertain future surrounding her place at the network.
 

………

The host is expected to end her show on the 9 a.m. hour of Today by the end of the season, a source told THR. Kelly was set to meet with executives to work out the future of her role at the network. During meetings held before the eruption from her blackface remarks, Kelly had expressed a desire to cover more news and politics and move away from the lighter fare she often covers on her morning show. Now, backlash from the remarks seem to have only exacerbated the conversation about the future of both Megyn Kelly Today and Kelly at NBC. It’s unclear what NBC News would put in place of Kelly’s show.

I don’t understand how NBC can be surprised by this.

Kelly spent a decade giving racist dog whistles, when she wasn’t blowing a racist tuba, at Fox News.

Time for Another Blogger Ethics Panel

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CNN had an interview with “Typical female Republicans,” and ((big surprise) they are all actually highly tied in party activists.

It’s kind of like asking Josef Stalin about the Holodmor:

This CNN panel of “Republican women voters” was a massive fail, as we’ve pointed out over the weekend. We now have a guide to each of the women on the panel and who they actually are.

And yes, the consensus is that CNN failed all journalistic standards in this segment. But I would argue their standards are about “both sides,” not journalism, and in that respect they acted completely according to plan.

This segment is pure propaganda worthy of Fox News, and it’s more pernicious because we are expected to think of CNN as the “unbiased” one. CNN is forever desperate to bring a “both sides” angle to every issue for “balance,” but by insisting that the side that excuses sexual assault must have a place at the table, they legitimize rape culture rather than bring balance to the discussion.

As I have said many times, “Both Siderism” picks a side, and it is the side that lies and cheats that always wins in a both-sider argument.

And CNN was so desperate to have a pro-Kavanaugh segment that they formed a panel of “average Republican women voters” made up of easily discoverable Republican paid operatives and political candidates. I think the term is “crisis actor.” Heh.

The panel of 5 women includes 3 candidates, 2 party officials, a major Ted Cruz donor, and a Fox News regular.

It’s like the the “Rent-a-Crowd” outside of the American Embassy in Tehran in 1979.

Phuque Phacebook

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In the annals of stupid sh%$ to come from Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook using The Weekly Standard to fact check articles is right up there with home colonoscopy kits: (No, Zuckerberg has never to my knowledge invested in home colonoscopy kits)

When Facebook selected the right-wing, Iraq War-boosting magazine The Weekly Standard [DO NOT CLICK THRU ON THIS LINK] as an official fact-checking partner last year as part of its effort to combat “misinformation,” progressives warned that the conservative publication would use its power to suppress accurate articles published by center-left and left-wing outlets.

That’s precisely what happened.

After ThinkProgress published an article by Ian Millhiser last week arguing that Supreme Court pick Brett Kavanaugh’s comments during his Senate confirmation hearings combined with a speech he gave in 2017 eliminates “any doubt” that the judge opposes the Supreme Court’s decision in Roe v. Wade, the Weekly Standard deemed the article “false“—a designation that, given Facebook’s rules and the platform’s enormous power, cuts off 80 percent of the piece’s future traffic and penalizes other pages that dare to post the article.

Expressing opposition to Facebook’s decision to hand the factually-challenged Weekly Standard the power to decide what is and isn’t fact-based news, The Intercept republished Millhiser’s piece on Friday with a statement from The Intercept’s editor-in-chief Betsy Reed, who condemned the social media giant’s decision to tank “a fairly straightforward legal analysis” at the behest of a right-wing magazine.

By way of perspective, the Weekly Standard gave full throated support to segregation in the 1950s and 60s, and Facebook has made them arbiters of “Truth”.

Way to go Mark.

Oh My God, Think of the Children!

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The New Yorker holds a festival every year.

It’s you standard exercise in pseudo-intellectual mental masturbation, so all the deep thinkers, people like, “John Mulaney, Judd Apatow, Jack Antonoff and Jim Carrey.”  (In case you are wondering, this is me mocking the whole enterprise.)

Well, the editor of the New Yorker, David Remnick, decided that it would be a good idea to invite white supremacist Steve Bannon, and the cancellations rained down like cluster bombs in Yemen:

Stephen K. Bannon, President Trump’s former chief strategist, will no longer appear as a headliner at this year’s New Yorker Festival, David Remnick, the editor of The New Yorker, announced in an email to the magazine’s staff on Monday evening.

The announcement followed several scathing rebukes and high-profile dropouts after the festival’s lineup, with Mr. Bannon featured, was announced. Within 30 minutes of one another, John Mulaney, Judd Apatow, Jack Antonoff and Jim Carrey said on social media that they would be pulling out of scheduled events at the festival. Right around the time when Mr. Remnick announced the cancellation of Mr. Bannon’s participation, Patton Oswalt did the same.

………

In Mr. Remnick’s email to his staff, he said that even New Yorker staff members had expressed discomfort at the decision to invite Mr. Bannon to be interviewed at the festival.

Gee, you think?

How does someone who is too stupid to cut his own meat end up editing the New Yorker anyway?

Interesting What Happens When Your Own Ox Is Gored

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Case in point, New York Times opinion columnist Frank Bruni, who is freaking out over the possibility of Trump being impeached and Mike Pence becoming President.

If you look at some of his recent articles, you find a paean to Maryland’s Republican Governor, that the real problem with Trump is that his supporters are excessively partisan, how, the political center is sexy (his term, not mine), and that we should not inconvenience politicians doing unspeakable evil while they dine.

But Mike Pence, Bruni is running around with his hair on fire over that:

There are problems with impeaching Donald Trump. A big one is the holy terror waiting in the wings.

That would be Mike Pence, who mirrors the boss more than you realize. He’s also self-infatuated. Also a bigot. Also a liar. Also cruel.

To that brimming potpourri he adds two ingredients that Trump doesn’t genuinely possess: the conviction that he’s on a mission from God and a determination to mold the entire nation in the shape of his own faith, a regressive, repressive version of Christianity. Trade Trump for Pence and you go from kleptocracy to theocracy.

I agree with Bruni that Pence is an absolute horror show.

He is the Handmaiden’s Tale made flesh.

But this is not what has diverted Bruni from his normal invocations toward bipartisan kumbayas, it is the fact that Mike Pence is a very unique and personal threat to him, because while his bigotries are legion,  Mike Pence hates gays with a particular ferocity, and Frank Bruni is gay.

It’s why Bruni finds Pence scarier than Trump, because it hits him where he lives.

This is a normal human reaction, but as a journalist, Bruni should have known that there was a real possibility that the would end up on the hate hit parade when he was concern trolling over Robert De Niro or the comfort of child snatchers and pathological liars at restaurants.

A Right Wing Freakout that is Completely Wrong

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They are freaking out over a court ruling in the UK.

The court recognized that a decades long Islamic marriage was covered by British law, and so the civil divorce laws apply, meaning that the husband cannot just leave, and keep everything:

A high court judge has decided that a couple’s Islamic marriage falls within the scope of English matrimonial law, in a ruling that could have implications for thousands of Muslims in the UK.

Nasreen Akhter wanted to divorce Mohammed Shabaz Khan, her husband of 20 years, but he blocked it, arguing that the couple were not married under English law.

Akhter and Khan underwent a religious marriage ceremony, known as a nikah, conducted by an imam in 1998.

This year Akhter, a solicitor, petitioned for divorce, saying the nikah constituted a valid marriage. Khan, a businessman, wanted to prevent Akhtar from bringing a case for a divorce settlement to court, and said they were married only under sharia or Islamic law.

In a written ruling, Mr Justice Williams, who heard the case in the family division of the high court in London, concluded that the marriage fell within the scope of the 1973 Matrimonial Causes Act.

He said the marriage was void under section 11 of the act because it was “entered into in disregard of certain requirements as to the formation of marriage. It is therefore a void marriage and the wife is entitled to a decree of nullity.”

………

Previous cases involving nikah marriages have concluded that they were legally non-existent, meaning spouses had no redress to the courts for a division of matrimonial assets such as the family home and spouse’s pension if a marriage broke down.

Hazel Wright, a family law specialist at Hunters Solicitors, said the ruling had “given heart to many who otherwise suffer discrimination”. She said it was vital for Akhter that the “English divorce court rule in her favour, that the marriage should be recognised as void and not a non-marriage. Otherwise she would not have any rights to make any financial claims for herself.”

This seems to be a fairly anodyne story:  The court has reviewed religious divorces, and determined that women don’t lose their rights.

But the flying monkeys of the right wing, upon hearing that the law of the land trumps religious law, as been screaming “High Court Recognises Shariah Law in Divorce Case in UK Legal First!!!!”

Yes, that is the actual headline from Breitbart, but no link, because ……… Well ……… Breitbart.

It’s a Damn Shame

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I have mentioned how it seems to me that Rachael Maddow is having a full Mort Sahl styl meltdown on MSNBC.

I’m wrong, it’s the whole f%$#ing network:

As FAIR has noted before (1/8/18, 3/20/18), to MSNBC, the carnage and destruction the US and its Gulf Monarchy allies are leveling against the poorest country in the Arab world is simply a non-issue.

On July 2, a year had passed since the cable network’s last segment mentioning US participation in the war on Yemen, which has killed in excess of 15,000 people and resulted in over a million cases of cholera. The US is backing a Saudi-led bombing campaign with intelligence, refueling, political cover, military hardware and, as of March, ground troops. None of this matters at all to what Adweek (4/3/18) calls “the network of the Resistance,” which has since its last mention of the US’s role in the destruction of Yemen found time to run over a dozen segments highlighting war crimes committed by the Syrian and Russian governments in Syria.

By way of contrast, as MSNBC was marking a year without mentioning the US role in Yemen, the PBS NewsHour was running a three-part series on the war, with the second part (7/3/18) headlined, “American-Made Bombs in Yemen Are Killing Civilians, Destroying Infrastructure and Fueling Anger at the US.” The NewsHour’s Jane Ferguson reported:

The aerial bombing campaign has not managed to dislodge the rebels, but has hit weddings, hospitals and homes. The US military supports the Saudi coalition with logistics and intelligence. The United States it also sells the Saudis and coalition partners many of the bombs they drop on Yemen.

455 to 0.  That makes the Washington Generals record against the Harlem Globetrotters look impressive.

It’s understandable though, as FAIR notes, “In any event, it’s not like any Yemenis are going to pull ads, turn down appearances, or phone Comcast higher-ups complaining. So, who cares?”

Jeff Bezos: Fire Fred Hiatt

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I get that Hiatt has a fetish for putting lying right wingers on the WaPo OP/Ed pages, but we have an explicit call for ethnic cleansing that he just published.

I won’t link directly to the article, but you can read analysis here and here.

I will make some notes as to why this is a firing offense.

First, he let the following quote through:

Second, it specifies two criteria for American citizenship: birth or naturalization (i.e., lawful immigration), and being subject to U.S. jurisdiction. We know what the framers of the amendment meant by the latter because they told us. Sen. Lyman Trumbull of Illinois, a principal figure in drafting the amendment, defined “subject to the jurisdiction” as “not owing allegiance to anybody else,” that is, to no other country or tribe. Sen. Jacob Howard of Michigan, a sponsor of the clause, further clarified that the amendment explicitly excludes from citizenship “persons born in the United States who are foreigners, aliens, [or] who belong to the families of ambassadors or foreign ministers.”

Trumbull never said “or”, hence the brackets.

By adding the [or] he reverses the meaning of the quote.

In fact, Trumbull explicitly said during the debates on the amendment that the children “Chinese and Gypsies” would “undoubtedly” be citizens, which was tremendously inflammatory at the time.

That’s not the reason that Hiatt should be fired though.

Not fact checking the drivel that appears in his section appears to be one of his primary responsibilities, and if it isn’t, it clearly is his trademark.

What he should be fired for is letting this to hit the pages of his paper:

It is no wonder that citizens of other countries take advantage of our foolishness. Life is still better here than almost anywhere else, including rising China and relatively prosperous Mexico. The wonder is that we Americans continue to allow our laws to be flouted and our citizenship debased

This is an explicitly racist call to ethnic cleansing, and it crosses a line that never should be crossed. Ever.

Fire him.

Fire him now.

Oh Dear Lord, This Is Not The Onion!

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The Washington Post just published this OP/Ed:

I Don’t Know Kavanaugh the Judge. But Kavanaugh the Carpool Dad Is One Great Guy.

First, let me say that the misuse of periods in the headline are from the original, though I corrected capitalization.

Second, this is some random mom in the DC suburbs raving about the job that he does coaching a 6th grade girls’ basketball team.

I’ve done a quick Google, and I haven’t found any Republican connections.

She appears to be a designer (web and interior design) and a neighbor of the nominee, and honestly, I don’t see anything wrong with her “article”.

It’s a completely run-of-the-mill letter to the editor by a friend.

On the other hand, the fact that the failed middle school science project that is Fred Hiatt’s editorial board published this as a full blown editorial is truly, and thoroughly, screwed up.

Freddy ……… You really need to spend more time with your family.

I Blame the Editors

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It’s Called Google

SE Cupp published an OP/ED in the New York Times because ……… I don’t know why really ……… I think that it’s either a rather bizarre form of performance art from the Times editors, or if it’s because they have some sort of affirmative action program for stupid conservatives.

What is interesting about her OP/Ed (no link, for reasons which will become obvious) is that it it prominently features one, “Amy Maurer, a 43-year-old well-educated suburban mom in Kenosha, Wis.,” who were aggressively targeted by the Clinton campaign.

One small thing though, Ms. Maurer is not just a well educated Soccer mom, she is the corresponding secretary for the executive committee of the Republican Party of Kenosha County.

Hilary Clinton’s campaign may have had mind boggling levels of incompetence, but even they weren’t wasting resources going after Republican Party cadres.

Gee, I wonder why Amy was spewing Republican talking points when she was talking to the Heritage Foundation’s Salena Zito, who Cupp sites copiously in article.

The New York Times really needs to hire a fact checker for their editorial page.

H/t Atrios.

Good Point

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The good folks at FAIR note, and disapprove of the fact that when white people engage in racist behavior, the press does their level best to maintain their anonymity:

The presumption of innocence is supposed to protect those accused of a crime, in law and in the press. In corporate media, that rule also seems to apply to white people who report people of color to the police for doing innocuous things. As FAIR found, their identities are far more closely protected than those of people falsely targeted for “suspicious” behavior.

In the past few weeks, major news media have been flooded with coverage of incidents of alleged racial profiling and implicit bias—from golfers reported to police for playing “too slowly,” to picnickers fingered for using the wrong type of grill at a park. This coverage was prompted by viral videos and other social media posts released by the accused or by concerned bystanders, in real time or soon after these events occurred. The characters in these stories had one thing in common: The callers and officers involved were white; the alleged offenders, black or brown.

In a survey of coverage of four recent racial profiling cases, FAIR examined articles or segments in the New York Times, Washington Post and USA Today; on NPR, CNN, Fox, and the CBS, NBC and ABC evening news; as well as in major papers in the region where the incidents occurred.

These stories, while similar in content (often using the same quotes or incorporating Associated Press reports), didn’t lack for details. Those accused, police, witnesses, and corporate and institutional leaders were interviewed. Multimedia elements were included, such as smartphone, regular, and police body cam videos, audio from 9/11 calls, police reports and screen captures of social media posts.

But almost across the board, while the accused’s names and personal details have been made public, the accusers remain unnamed. Though equally newsworthy, they were allowed to retain their anonymity.

It took a while for the racist Starbucks manager, or the racist Yale grad student, or the woman who called the police on black people barbecuing in the park, to be revealed, and the information was crowd sourced, and on Twitter, before the major news organizations deigned to publish this information.

For other news stories, the identity of the malefactor would be in the first two paragraphs of the story, but there seems to an editorial omerta as regards wypipo behaving badly.