He has clearly aged a helluva lot better than I. It's my own damn fault. I shoulda been the priest my momma wanted me to be. Intstead I chose a sordid career in the fake news business.
Can somebody tell me how Tucker Carlson is still allowed to be on the air?
A few months ago I was stunned to hear him say "people who see parents with children with their mask on should report them to child services".
Then a few months later I was sickened to hear him call Joint Chief of Staff General Mark Milley, "Not smart and not brave." and then concluded his rant with calling Gen Milley a "Stupid Pig".
(are you kiddig me?)
But a few nights ago he actually dared to accuse Capital Police officer Harry Dunn, who helped to defend the capital from the attack on January 6th with this quote;
“Dunn will pretend to speak for the country’s law enforcement community,” Carlson said. “But it turns out Dunn has very little in common with your average cop. Dunn is an "angry left-wing activist".
(oh by the way, Tucker Carlson has failed to mentioned that his own son, a capital "page" was inside the Capital building at the time.)
But as his predicessor, Bll O'Reilly used to say, "Oh, it's really not about the news. It's all about the ratings".
And yes, that's the same Bill O"Reilly tha has paid a fortune to keep several of his former female sexual assalt cases quiet.
Dave, Tucker Carlson is no more incendiary than Don Lemon or Joy Reid,....they are opinion commentators. The context for his remarks about Gen. Milley are in part what Rep. Dan Crenshaw, a war veteran, offered as very real concerns about what is happening in the military today.
Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R-Texas) reported on his website the following:
During training at Fort Bliss in Texas, in one particular instance, soldiers were forced to wear personal identification badges that listed their race, ethnicity, social class, and other things. The badges reduced soldiers to a list of characteristics that have “nothing to do with their service or their training or the content of their character.” He added:
Most soldiers do not believe that they are the sum of identity groups and it’s absurd that our military is instructing people to view themselves and others that way. In the SEAL teams, our bond is forged in large part by our common history, our ethos and our trial by fire training. We never asked each other for our social class or other identity groups, because that would be ridiculous.
The only thing that should be on a soldier’s uniform is their name, their rank and most importantly, the American flag. Yes, we are all individuals and we’re all different. The military requires us to put aside those differences and focus on one mission as one team, not highlight differences, this type of woke training doesn’t help strengthen a unit and weakens it severely and it must stop.
Crenshaw and Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) — both veterans — last month set up a whistleblower page for service members to submit examples of critical race theory and woke training spreading in the military. They said they have received more than 400 credible submissions. Crenshaw plans to highlight some of these submissions through videos on Instagram.
He added:
This places a huge amount of pressure to say something that you don’t believe at all. Did you have the audacity to claim that you’re not a racist, not a privileged bigot, well the instructor could fail you according to this report and the instructor is judging you, and if they don’t like what you have to say, or don’t think it’s sincere, you risk damage to your career.
This isn’t only insane, it’s actually a type of compelled speech, and certainly raises free speech concerns. And this training is clearly shaped by critical race theory in the sense that it’s designed to force participants to believe that any of their behaviors is just a product of their inherent racism and the dynamics of power associated with that.
In another video, Crenshaw said members of an Air Force squadron at Moody Air Force Base in Georgia were forced to do a “privilege walk.” He said airmen were told, “If you are white, take a step forward. If you are a male, take a step forward. And so on through every possible point of privilege one might have, according to their intersectional hierarchy.”
“So let’s just point out the obvious. This is meant to shame people and shame people for something they have no control over. It also literally creates manufactured divisions in an environment that requires comradery and puts down certain service members over others, not on merit, but on skin color or gender,” he said.
“We cannot let the armed forces become some sort of massive social justice experiment — which is clearly what some want,” he said. “We’re going to keep exposing this because there are too many senior officers in the military that are pushing for this.”
Crenshaw said in a video on Friday that special operators at U.S. Special Operations Command were being encouraged to read a book from 1989 called “White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack.”
“The military is still the strongest in the world, but wokeism, identity politics, critical race theory and blatant political activism have indeed seeped into this critical institution,” he said.
Note: Fort Bliss was contacted for comment, but did not reply by publishing deadline.
Here's a more even-handed look at it from The Military Times.
Arkansas Republican Sen. Tom Cotton continued his campaign against what he sees as a scourge of racist training in the military Thursday. In a webinar hosted by the Heritage Institute, he again alleged he has received hundreds of complaints of “critical race theory” teachings in military units.
Cotton and his allies have publicly confronted Pentagon leaders in recent weeks, concerned that the Defense Department’s push for diversity and inclusion training and education is a thinly veiled vehicle for indoctrinating troops into the idea that white men are oppressors, people of color are victims and that America is an intractably racist country.
“But what happens if it harms unit cohesion and morale and esprit de corps in our military?” Cotton asked. “Then we literally are risking our freedom. And that’s why it’s so important that the military’s highest priority should remain what it always has been: to fight and win real wars, not to get distracted by culture wars.”
The issue has come up in multiple budget hearings in the Senate and House Armed Services Committees in recent weeks, taking up time that lawmakers usually spend questioning leaders about procurement and personnel programs.
On Tuesday, during a press conference with reporters, House Armed Services Committee Chairman Adam Smith, D-Wash., said he hopes to avoid any amendments or lengthy arguments on the issue of critical race theory in drafting the defense authorization bill, which is already running behind schedule because the Biden administration didn’t release its budget proposal until May.
“I don’t see anything that needs to be put in our bill one way or the other,” he said. “That’s an administration ― that’s the DoD, and people can fight that out over there. We’re going to try to avoid legislating on that issue.”
What Cotton has diagnosed as “critical race theory” sounds much more like ham-fisted attempts at diversity and inclusion training.
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“It’s often hard to ignore when you’re being forced to watch a video that declares, there’s systemic racism and white privilege throughout our military, which is one of the complaints we received, or that white soldiers were singled out during equal-opportunity training, that they didn’t have much to say,” Cotton said, citing a whistleblower site he launched with Rep. Dan Crenshaw, R-Texas, in early June.
For a largely nascent effort, it’s not surprising that commanders would be experiencing some trial and error with how they convey the notion that the color of a person’s skin might affect their experiences in the world.
After all, the discussion of ideas like systemic racism and white privilege are new for a lot of Americans, who for decades have been told that simply not acknowledging race or ethnicity was the best way to demonstrate one’s own lack of bigotry.
“We cannot have an Army, Navy, Marine Corps, Air Force or Space Force, where young troopers are looking to their left and right, and seeing not fellow citizen took an oath to the Constitution ― someone who’s willing to lay down their life, not just for their country, but to keep you alive,” Cotton said, describing what was considered non-racist in the past. “We can’t have [troops] looking at their noncommissioned officers and their officers, wondering if they’re getting a tough duty because of the color of their skin. We need them to see each other simply as fellow Americans, and fellow warriors who are there to perform the mission.”
The irony is that military leaders would agree with Cotton ― that would be ideal, but feedback from the force has shown that’s not the experience troops are having. It’s seen not only in disparate outcomes in the military justice system, but also in Pentagon leadership, which is far more white and male than the rest of the force.
“You know, back then it was like, say, the fact that we all believed that this country is committed to colorblindness, and we respect everyone irrespective of the color of their skin or their ethnicity, or for that matter, their political beliefs or their religious views or anything else,” Cotton said. “And it was a regular reminder, that was the expectations we have for all of our soldiers and if they didn’t meet those expectations, there’d be severe consequences.”
The disagreement is over whether talking openly about diversity race or ethnicity, and the experiences that go along with it, is a boon to cohesion, or a death blow.
When everything changed
According to multiple surveys of active-duty troops by Military Times, white nationalist and supremacist rhetoric is not uncommon in the military workplace.
To change that, diversity and inclusion training has become a feature of many organizations, public and private alike. That includes DoD, after the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis set off nationwide protests.
The ripple effects in the Pentagon were less explosive, but still represented a tectonic shift.
Then-Chief Master Sergeant of the Air Force Kaleth Wright, who is Black, posted a Twitter thread in which he expressed identifying with a long list of Black men and boys who had been killed by police officers in recent years.
Leaders from the other services fell in behind Wright, expressing their dismay not only at Floyd’s death, but at the stories they’d heard from their own troops about the disparate treatment they’d received both in the military and out of it.
Diversity and inclusion projects launched in the Army, Navy and Air Force, while Defense Secretary Mark Esper stood up a team to make suggestions for immediate policy changes that could erase the racial bias so many service members said they had experienced, with an eye toward a more long-term board that would oversee diversity and inclusion efforts.
Promotion packets were the target of one of Esper’s first changes. Feedback from the force suggested removing headshots from the paperwork, removing any possibility that appearance could play a role in a board’s decision to green-light a service member for the first step in the promotion process.
Esper also got suggestions to remove name and sex from the paperwork, to narrow consideration down to nothing but accomplishments, though those changes haven’t been implemented.
More than outright racist comments, troops tell Defense Secretary Mark Esper that they face unintentional insults.
Meghann Myers
That same month, the current controversy over what has been erroneously called “critical race theory” was born.
It had been mostly known in legal and academic circles, as a framework for analyzing the American legal system and its historically unequal treatment of people of color.
In July 2020, according to a profile by the New Yorker, a conservative Washington state journalist used the term to describe some city of Seattle diversity training documents a source had sent him.
A series of stories caught the attention of Fox News pundit Tucker Carlson, who brought Christopher Rufo on his show on Sept. 2. The following morning, Mark Meadows, then the White House chief of staff, called Rufo. He told him President Donald Trump had tasked Meadows with eradicating this “critical race theory.”
In the months since, critical race theory has become something of a catch-all bogeyman, used to describe any sort of discussion about the disparities people of color report experiencing, framed as a dogmatic demonization of white people.
Critical race theory itself is defined as “an interdisciplinary approach that seeks to understand and combat race inequity in society. The approach views race as a socially constructed identity that plays a hugely important role, which goes largely unrecognized by members of the majority population. CRT defines racism more broadly than is usual in the mainstream. Rather than seeing racism as an individual manifestation of hatred, CRT explores the social structuring of racism as a complex, changing and often subtle aspect of society that operates to the benefit of White people, especially White elites.”
There are different schools of thought within the framework itself, though its 1970s roots can be traced back to some radical feminist and Marxist thought leaders.
Rufo, by his own admission, thought the term perfectly tapped into the fears conservatives had been expressing for years, about “political correctness” and “cancel culture,” despite only being loosely related.
“ ‘Its connotations are all negative to most middle-class Americans, including racial minorities, who see the world as ‘creative’ rather than ‘critical,’ ‘individual’ rather than ‘racial,’ ‘practical’ rather than ‘theoretical.’ Strung together, the phrase ‘critical race theory’ connotes hostile, academic, divisive, race-obsessed, poisonous, elitist, anti-American,” the New Yorker piece reads. “Most perfect of all, Rufo continued, critical race theory is not ‘an externally applied pejorative.’ Instead, ‘it’s the label the critical race theorists chose themselves.’ "
Since then, conservative pundits and politicians have warned that critical race theory is not only rampant in higher education, but seeping its way into elementary schools and, alarmingly, military training.
The rhetoric has steadily picked up steam since January, when DoD, in response to revelations that dozens of those arrested for rioting at the Capitol on Jan. 6 were either current or former service members, began a line of effort against extremism in the services.
While the Pentagon’s definition, still in the works, has leaned more toward white nationalist ideology and advocating for violence against certain groups or the government, some conservatives have seen that push as yet another thinly veiled attack on conservative, Christian beliefs.
CRT in the ranks?
The only clear example of critical race theory being taught in the military is at the U.S. Military Academy.
In April, Rep. Mike Waltz, R-Fla., sent a letter to West Point’s superintendent, inquiring about extracurricular workshops cadets had attended in the name of diversity, equity and inclusion education.
During a June 23 hearing, Waltz confronted Austin about a presentation titled “Understanding Whiteness and White Rage,” as well as lesson plans within some West Point classes that cover critical race theory.
Waltz conflated these academic settings with “military training,” which is of course one of the key features of West Point, in addition to the earning of bachelor degrees.
The comparison set off Army Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who launched into a monologue deriding the idea that critical race theory is so dangerous that not even college students should discuss it.
“The United States Military Academy is a university. And it is important that we train, and we understand ― and I want to understand white rage. And I’m white, and I want to understand it,” he said.
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Gen. Mark Milley, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, made a staunch defense of having a military that is well educated and well read on diverse topics.
Cotton on Thursday conceded that an academic setting was more appropriate for discussing controversial theories, though he did express concern that professional military education might too closely resemble civilian higher education.
“I think that’s especially, in professional military schools, a reflection that they become too much like graduate schools, for people who are going to get masters or PhDs, as opposed to going to hone their craft of war-fighting,” Cotton said. “Every minute they dedicate to some critical race theory primer could have been an hour better dedicated to books on seafaring or [Ulysses S.] Grant’s memoirs or studying Chinese military doctrine ― things that we actually expect and need our officers to know.”
Perhaps, he suggested, all general and flag officers should go before the Senate for confirmation hearings, the way it’s done for those who’ve been nominated for the chief of staff of a service or head of a combatant command.
“I may start, you know, probing nominees to be promoted to the ranks of O-7 to O-10 on their views on it, and what’s happened in their command,” he suggested.
“Maybe it’s time that we start ensuring that our flag officers subscribe to those very basic principles that are outlined” in the Declaration of Independence or Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech, he said.
I came across this article yesterday and would like to see if you, as a journalist, have an opinion on it. Yes, it was on Fox News but it is not so much about news items as it is about how news is reported. Much has been said about that topic and often denied by the reporters. This article appears to show that many reporters of news (not opinion) admit their use of bias and feel it is not only good, but also necessary.
Do you agree that this is happening and do you think it is good for journalism?
ok Jim I will look at it in the meantime a more pleasant diversion. This ran in the Washington Post today.
By Christine Dell'Amore
Yesterday at 10:00 a.m. EDT
35
“It’s Halloween in there, Mama?” my 2-year-old asked, gripping my hand tightly as we took in the dramatic tableau before us: a sandstone cliff, more than 100 feet high, cleaved neatly in half by a long, narrow cave. I could understand his trepidation: From our vantage point on the hiking trail, the opening in the rock looked like an endless maw. But, as we soon discovered, Old Man’s Cave — named for a hermit trapper who lived there in the 18th century — is a recess cave, a hollowed-out space with a gigantic rock ceiling. It’s also the perfect spot for a kid to play, or, in the case of my son, Everett, scamper about hooting like an owl.
Recess caves abound in Hocking Hills State Park, a compact natural wonder of hemlock forests, waterfalls, ravines and gorges in southeastern Ohio, accessible via a well-maintained trail network ideal for families with young kids. Most hikes, which follow an organized, one-way system, are short and relatively easy, yet showcase knock-your-socks-off scenery.
Having spent the pandemic hiking almost every weekend, my D.C.-based family of three is already used to long hours in the car getting to outdoor destinations. So, when my Indiana-based in-laws, Diana and Allan, suggested meeting up over July Fourth weekend to hike at an Ohio park I’d never heard of, the roughly seven-hour trip didn’t seem so daunting. In fact, for highway driving, it was beautiful — the first time I’d driven straight across the lush state of West Virginia. My husband, Everett and I left on a Friday morning, and by 6 p.m., we were relaxing with my in-laws at our secluded log cabin outside the park, equipped with a hot tub, pool table and fire pit — not to mention loads of free entertainment for Everett in the form of catching (and releasing) fireflies.
The next morning, we woke up early to tour the state park’s huge new visitor center, where we learned that native peoples had inhabited the region for centuries, the most recent being the Delaware, Shawnee and Wyandot peoples. European settlers took over the land in the 1700s, wiping out nearly all the original old-growth forests. Ohio began protecting the land in the 1920s, and in the 1930s, the Civilian Conservation Corps built much of the state park’s infrastructure, such as its stone steps and trails, and replanted many of the lost trees.
The park’s dominant black-hand sandstone — a label inspired by an ancient petroglyph of a handprint carved into a nearby cliff — formed about 350 million years ago, when a vast inland sea drained away, depositing sand and gravel that compacted over time into the impressive rock formations. During the last ice age, glaciers came close to Hocking Hills, leaving behind species, such as eastern hemlock and Canada yew, more often seen on the alpine tundra. Hocking derives from a native word, “hockhocking,” which means “bottleneck,” a reference to the Hocking River’s narrowed shape. As we absorbed all this history, Everett amused himself by running through the visitor center’s play cave and mini hiking trail.
Allan Howard and Everett Howard enter a tunnel carved out of sandstone on the Old Man’s Cave trail. Hocking Hills State Park has seven major hiking areas, most of them short and accessible to families. (Christine Dell’Amore for The Washington Post)
The Conkle’s Hollow trail features diverse vegetation, particularly ferns. Many of Hocking Hills’ plants, such as hemlocks and Canada yew, are more typically found on the alpine tundra. (Christine Dell’Amore for The Washington Post)
We set off on the 1.5-mile Old Man’s Cave loop trail, following Old Man’s Creek as it tumbled downstream, traipsing over bridges and past fern-blanketed cliffs. We stopped to admire Upper Falls, which pours into a jade-green pool, and Devil’s Bathtub, a basin of swirling water (a natural hot tub of sorts) scoured out by millennia of the creek’s relentless flow. Everett ran excitedly into a long tunnel gouged into the rock, which led to that impressive wide-angle view of Old Man’s Cave. A little farther south, at Lower Falls, Everett skipped rocks into the waterfall’s large, clear pool, framed by a halo of stately hemlocks. Though the holiday crowds were sparser here, we were disappointed to see people swimming in the waterfall pools, despite the many signs stating it’s not permitted.
In search of more solitude, we opted for a strenuous spur trail to Broken Rock Falls, which dead-ended in a single jet of water streaming from above, a more intimate waterfall experience that allowed us (and one delighted toddler) to feel the spray and hear its thunder. On our way back to the visitor center, we climbed up rock stairs through another CCC-hewn tunnel, dutifully looking for bats, at Everett’s suggestion. (We had no such luck.) “Bye, hike!” Everett called as we emerged from the forest, the air noticeably warmer than the refreshing coolness of the caves.
I was eager to get to the park’s marquee attraction: Ash Cave, a 700-foot-long recess cave that’s the largest east of the Mississippi. A short, flat walk through a narrow gorge gave way to the monumental space, capped by a 90-foot-high ceiling that stretched like a giant C over our heads. Settlers dubbed it Ash Cave when they found huge piles of campfire ashes, probably left by people who had sheltered here over the centuries. Native American arrows and pottery remnants, for instance, were discovered among the debris. “It’s the beach!” Everett cried when he saw the wide expanse of sand, plopping down to dig. Rock pigeons cooed and gurgled inside small crevices in the cave walls, marred in places by graffiti from long-ago visitors.
The 50-foot-high Cedar Falls is the most voluminous of the park’s waterfalls. It was misnamed by early settlers, who thought the nearby hemlocks were cedars. Although signs are posted to not enter the water, visitors sometimes disregard them. (Christine Dell’Amore for The Washington Post)
Rock House, the only true cave in Hocking Hills State Park, boasts a 200-foot-long, tunnel-like corridor and 25-foot-high ceilings. Bandits allegedly hid out here in the settler days, earning it the nickname “Robber’s Roost.” (Christine Dell’Amore for The Washington Post)
Ash Cave was hushed, its grandiosity begging you to slow down, to stop envisioning that silly Instagram picture and let all its natural goodness fill your cup. As we walked along the cave wall, covered in places with patches of lime-green lichen, my husband, Brian, said he felt a “cave kiss,” the term for a drop of water that hits you inside a cave. “It could have been a rock pigeon kiss,” Allan joked. On the far end of the cave, a thin waterfall emptied into a pool ablaze with a ray of late-afternoon sunshine, like a spotlight at the theater. We lingered as long as a 2-year-old would let us, sitting on boulders scattered around the cave floor and gazing upward at the massive overhang.
Over the following two days, we immersed ourselves in more Hocking Hills delights, such as Cedar Falls — the park’s most voluminous waterfall, misnamed by settlers who thought the hemlocks were cedars — and Conkle’s Hollow, one of the deepest gorges in Ohio, where super-tall hardwoods and hemmed-in cliffs block out almost all sunlight, enveloping you fully in the green, dewy valley.
One of our last — and most special — hikes took us into Rock House, the only true enclosed cave in the park, which boasts a 200-foot-long, tunnel-like corridor and 25-foot-high ceilings. Water eroding the sandstone over time scoured tall windows into the cave, providing multiple entrances through which to scramble into the main chamber.
This unique cave has long been a draw: In the 1800s, a 16-room hotel complete with a ballroom and U.S. post office stood not far from Rock House, and bandits allegedly hid out here, giving it the moniker “Robber’s Roost.” Carvings and other archaeological evidence show it was visited by native people, who carved out troughs in the cave floor to collect drinking water and used its hominy holes — horizontal openings in the rock — as baking ovens by building a fire inside. (I envisioned a delicious cave pizza, made in the Neapolitan brick-oven style.)
By this point in our trip, Everett was no longer wary of caves — or their inhabitants. As we scrambled out of Rock House, he looked up at me and smiled, his entire body caked in dust. “No ghosts!” he announced happily.
Dell’Amore is a National Geographic editor based in the District. Find her on Twitter: @cdellamore
Yes, I am aware of that trend towards abandoning objectivity, and it does involve both sides.
I was trained at a time when "objective" stories ran on the front page and the writers who wrote news stories used writing strategies meant to keep their own slant out of the story, mainly by quoting one side of the story and then the other side of the story and using a neutral tone in delivering the information.
You can find stories like that now but they are overwhelmed by the louder, flashier, opinionated voices on both sides.
This came up right here quite recently and at that point I tried to emphasize that it's buyer beware these days BUT individuals have access to so many many sources of news and if you keep yourself out of the silo mentality - namely reading and watching news that agrees with your point of view - you certain can educate yourself about a world that is far more complex than the one we knew decades ago.
I've had my students study conspiracy theories -- they are the most extreme examples of modern information overload -- just so they can see the pattern of stories that are fictional as opposed to those based on fact. For example, conspiracy theories are very, very complicated, with lots of characters. If, say, the moon landing was faked, the government was involved, the "astronauts" were involved, everybody at Nasa was involved, journalists were either fooled or bought off. If the covid vaccine is really a ploy to implant tracking devices in citizens - well, you get the picture. Think of all the people, highly intelligent people, who had to be part of the conspiracy. Life is complicated. But not THAT complicated. And yes, this formula can be applied to the notion that thousands upon thousands would have been involved had our election been rigged. Watch what they come up with out of their Arizona audit and if it's not a Rube Goldberg affair I will meet you at the edge of the earth and jump off.
I guess my advice boils down to: Pay attention to the source. Discount people who are playing on your fears and preconceptions. Know that the strategies of deception have kept up with the worthwhile and enlightened information now available at the touch of a finger. Read a lot. Educate your gut. Then trust it.
Mike, you left out the fake Russia collusion narrative which every traditional news media devoted endless hours broadcasting on for three consecutive years.
I am wondering why CNN suddenly developed a conscience by fact-checking Biden.....hmmmm, here is a conspiracy theory I am just developing on my own.....the Democrats must be worried that Biden is not handling,these media events very well and are planning to do something about it.
Please forgive me - I know I pledged to recede into the background for a while, but I ask your forbearance as my mind is addled due to the troubling magnetism I’m experiencing from my Moderna vaccinations.
Jim, on your Fox News article I would offer a couple of points:
1. People who comment on the media constantly confuse the “news” side of the organization with the “opinion” side, which in responsible organizations are separate. As an example, I have argued that I think the news reporting of the Wall Street Journal is reliable (and not that different from what you find in the New York Times or Washington Post) but is often at odds with WSJ opinion pages. Some of the examples in the Fox News article seem not to appreciate this distinction between news reporting and what appears on opinion pages.
2. No one denies that EVERYONE with a beating heart has their biases, but responsible mainstream news organizations follow time-honored journalistic standards that keep “news” reporter biases in check. This is mostly done by editors and fact checkers who check sources and make sure reporters don’t get out over their skis.
An example of applying the two points above is MSNBC, which I would rate as a half news/half opinion outlet (or maybe even more opinion than news if you average across the various prime time anchors). So MSNBC definitely blurs the traditional hard line between “news reporting” and “opinion”. But, in their defense, MSNBC’s parent company is NBC and NBC has in its DNA (evoking Huntley and Brinkley as well as John Chancellor) to ensure that at least that the “news” component of what MSNBC reports is factually correct. So MSNBC relies on video clips, verbatim quotes, etc to substantiate the opinions of its anchors. Some of the opinions may, depending on your point of view, may be a stretch, but what MSNBC reports as having factually occurred is accurate.
Contrast this with Fox News whose DNA is dominated by Rupert Murdoch, who got his start and made much of his fortune showing the tits of Page 6 girls in Australian and British tabloids (why he hasn’t utterly corrupted the news reporting of WSJ I’ll never know). Fox news anchors regularly spotlight stories that are demonstrably untrue – the Big Lie that Trump lost the 2020 election due to widespread voter fraud (if you place any credence on the outcomes of more than 50 lawsuits in state and federal courts), that the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines are not overwhelmingly safe and effective, or that human-caused climate change is not real (and serious).
And let me say I have only respect for Lester Holt’s “fairness is overrated” comment which, following the typical rightwing news playbook, was utterly wrenched from context. Responsible news outlets are obliged to report only CREDIBLE views, not random opinions from internet “experts” – see paragraph above about the stolen 2020 election, and other follies. I’m sure we still have a few flat-earthers around - should we give equal time to them?
Let me give a final example - the “lab leak” theory for COVID-19 - that I think illustrates the differences between the mainstream media and Fox News and most of right wing media. Mainstream media initially dismissed this idea, not out of bias, but because most of the scientific community expected the cause to be animal(bat)-to-human transmission similar to previous respiratory diseases from China/Asia such as bird flu and SARS. More information on this question, triggered by Biden’s May directive to the U.S. intelligence community to take a second look, seems to have raised the likelihood of the lab leak theory to 50-50 or even 60-40 (percentages totally my guess). Since that time, the mainstream media (NYT, WP, NBC, CBS, ABC) have been awash with reporting about the possibility that the virus was inadvertently released from the Wuhan lab.
Two points regarding the lab leak theory::
1. The mainstream media occasionally (in my mind once, in a very great while) gets it wrong although in the lab leak case they were reporting the consensus of the scientific community. However, I have to say I’m disappointed they did not dig deeper and ask hard questions (which is job 1 for any serious news organization). But I can’t think of another case in the past decade (or more) when mainstream media has failed to give a credible argument equal time or tried to dig below the surface.
2. In the extraordinarily rare incidents where the mainstream media gets it wrong, they self-correct as evidenced by an avalanche of stories 3-4 weeks ago suggesting that the lab leak theory deserves a second look. Contrast this with Fox News that continues to dig in and foment ridiculous stories that the 2020 election was stolen, and that climate change is overblown despite the overwhelming consensus among climate scientists (as well as the Exxons and GMs and Fords of the world) is that climate change is real and needs to be addressed if we care about the future of our kids and grandkids.
P.S. I applaud MM’s recent posting of CNN’s reporting of inaccuracies in Biden’s statements – our elected leaders should be accurate and careful with their words. But these inaccuracies were minor and Biden, when he misspeaks, at least has the intelligence and integrity to learn and either walk back or not repeat his mistakes. This is in contrast to his predecessor who, time and again, has doubled down and repeated inaccuracies/lies over weeks and months.
I did imply in my Post #9685 that I was reading that article in terms of news and not opinions and was asking for a journalist's viewpoint from Mike.
In regards to a couple of statements you mentioned:
"But I can’t think of another case in the past decade (or more) when mainstream media has failed to give a credible argument equal time or tried to dig below the surface."
I guess that's why the NYT and WaPo shared a Pulitzer Prize for their 3+ year long coverage of the Trump Russian Collusion story.
"But these inaccuracies were minor and Biden, when he misspeaks, at least has the intelligence and integrity to learn and either walk back or not repeat his mistakes."
At this point I have a problem with President Biden's "intelligence". It is sad to say - and sad for America - that his intelligence is, at the very least, questionable. As a physician I do not want to even attempt to render an accurate diagnosis on any person that I have not examined or on whom I have not even done a simple, basic test of cognition. Many called for President Trump to have such a test, which he did have, and passed it. Do you feel that President Biden should undergo such testing? Personally, I do, but then some might say that is just a conservative's conspiracy theory.
The Russian collusion issues of the preceding administration is far from settled, mm1. Something came to light quite recently if you are reading the news. And this would not be in the category of opinion news. In general you're gonna lose the battle bigtime if you want to pick and choose and compare disinformation from one side to the other. And Jim, I assume you're familiar with what has been said in multiple credible sources about Trump's psychological pathology.I think you too would lose a head to head battle on the Biden vs. Trump psychology derby.
Trump wanted to be buddies with Putin. You can't be buddies with Putin.
I swear, Jim, after what we've been through in the past few years the motto for an American president from here on out should be "first, do no harm." That's a lot more compact way of answering your question about Biden.
Meanwhile thumbs up to this writer for inventing the phrase "circumplanetary foundry."
Now, after years of observations of a pair of Jupiter-like exoplanets nearly 400 light-years from Earth, astronomers have found the next best thing: a disk of debris orbiting one of these worlds, a ring of rock and gas gradually coalescing under its own gravity. In other words, astronomers have caught a circumplanetary foundry in the act of making moons.
I will say this, Jim: he is being far too patient and optimistic about the voting rights assault.
He's a practical guy. We need an inspirational figure. I am getting tired of being grateful he's just not trump and he's making practical moves. We need a lot more than that given what is being threatened.
First can any of you who still are finding collusion of trump and russia, it's over! As far as Biden and his quid quo pro, @ I told the minister that if that guy want fired no billion dollars for you " really and that's ok with you dems? Biden in his infinite wisdom of shutting down the pipeline shear f$$$king genius. I happen to be fortunate to drive America's only true sports car which requires high test gasoline in order to operate correctly, BB ( before Biden) my gas was $1.85 a gallon! Yesterday my gas was $3.99 per gallon. So what you say drive an economical car, I do! In the city I get average 18 mpg on the highway I average about 28mpg. Better that most of yours mileage wise, comfort wise, and far cooler than any of the average models! So thanks joe for all your help with fuel economy! Oh yoy say it will be great when everyone has a Tesla! Ash where will the electric cars get their power from? Fossil fuel to generate electricity to charge your electric gas saving car. On the brighter side of the news e are awaiting all of Barr's investigations and i' Ve been told by reputable sources, stay tuned! Now as far as the mental capacity and the ability to at least finish A sentence your boy Joe can not finish a sentence, is confused when reading the teleprompter And has no idea what making sense is all about. Note about putin and trump what is your proof that they want to be buddies is preposterous! If I am trying to make a pact of some kind Temi find it easier if you can talk from the same position rather than confrontational. One last point or in this case a question regarding CRT, I think that's right! Am I too suppose that because I'm whites I owe everyone in the world some sort of reparations for all the past sins of white explorers. Columbus just bordering. The Jesuits for murder and cruelty to natives if they didn't follow their word. Whites created slavery! What a lie. In addition I had nothing to do with any of that. I thought Jesus came to earth to preach and pray for our sins. So all the people who believe this crap please inform us as to what it is
Jim, you have scientific/medical training and if you’re going to reference those credentials you shouldn’t rely on innuendos. So you need to step up to the plate and give us concrete examples for why you think “that his (Biden’s) intelligence is, at the very least, questionable”. If you can’t do that (and be prepared to defend your answers), you should stop implying that your political views have any kind of medical basis.
Mike, I do not understand what you are referring to when you state that voting rights are being "assaulted". Every American citizen has the ability to vote. If one cannot get to their polling site on election day, they can request an absentee ballot. It is not at all complicated, it does, however, require a little forethought and a small amount of effort to do so. As for mail-in voting, I can relate one personal story. My son's mother-in-law and her mother moved to Ohio from Georgia over 4 years ago. At the time of the 2020 election they both received mal-in ballots from Georgia. Do you not wonder how many times that happens? Shouldn't we all want to see voter lists get updated and cleaned up well ahead of any state or general elections? In regards to requiring a voter ID, which some say targets minorities, I would offer the following notice as an example of one of the many situations in an American's daily life where a photo ID is required. To infer that a person who lives below the poverty line or who may be a person who legally immigrated to the U.S. and has subsequently become an American citizen, is somehow incapable of getting some type of photo ID is insulting. Such a belief perpetuates the false notion that only people living in certain zip codes have an intellect.
MM - if, as every responsible study has found, there is no widespread voting fraud, what problem are the new laws trying to fix? Could it be that people like you are trying to make it harder for people who disagree with your views to vote? Wasn't this what Jim Crow laws were all about?
Make it harder for people of color to vote next time around. (You have been watching the stories about voting regulations, right MM1? And you do know some people live in neighborhoods different from yours, have lives different than yours, need help in terms of when and how and where they can vote?)
To continue: launch a sly assault on voting rights, particularly when it comes to the underprivileged.
Then try to make it look like there's some vicious, methodical plan afoot called critical race theory that is attacking white folks and brainwashing our children so you'll stir up your conservative base.
I gotta hand it to 'em. They have a plan, and a good one.
Oh and there's this on the russia thing:
See what I mean? Whatever you have to say about news today you have a ton of info to go through to make up your minds. Or changed them. Or confirm your preconceptions.
It’s official: The Trump campaign colluded with Russia.
In an explosive development, the Biden administration confirmed that a Russian government agent with close connections to Donald Trump’s top 2016 campaign official “provided the Russian Intelligence Services with sensitive information on polling and [Trump] campaign strategy.”
This revelation demolishes, once and for all, Trump’s ceaseless claims that he was the victim of the “greatest witch hunt in the history of our country.” (Recall that a Trump appointee directedRobert Mueller to investigate “any links and/or coordination between the Russian government and individuals associated with the campaign of President Donald Trump.”)
But just how valuable was the polling and campaign strategy data that Paul Manafort, Trump’s campaign chairman, gave to a Russian agent?
According to Brad Parscale, Trump’s election data guru, the information that Manafort handed directly to Russian intelligence was of critical importance, determining “98 percent” of the campaign’s resource allocations (such as spending on TV, radio and social media ads, rallies, field operations, and so on).
Indeed, the data was so important that Parscale kept a visualization of the information on his iPad at all times, allowing him to tell then-candidate Trump where to conduct his next rally at a moment’s notice.
According to the then-Republican-led Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, the ultrasensitive campaign information that Manafort passed to a Russian spy “identified voter bases in blue-collar, democratic-leaning states which Trump could swing,” including in “Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Minnesota.”
Moreover, the Russian intelligence officer who received the information “was capable of comprehending the complex polling data.”
That leaves a lot of unanswered questions as to what Russia’s spies did with the information.
Perhaps worse, Trump ultimately pardoned Manafort. Trump’s potential political rivals would be wise to remember that he handed the ultimate political favor to the man who colluded with Russia amid Moscow’s campaign to undermine American democracy.
But Manafort’s malfeasance fits a broader pattern.
At the same time, the then-GOP-led Senate committee made clear that Trump knew of and discussed the release of tens of thousands of Russian-hacked documents and emails pilfered from the Democratic National Committee.
Indeed, Trump may have instructed a close confidant, Roger Stone, to orchestrate the leak of Russian-stolen documents as a political distraction at a make-or-break moment during the 2016 campaign.
But it gets worse. According to former Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates, in surreptitious conversations with a top Russian official, Trump’s soon-to-be national security adviser Michael Flynn was “neutering” American sanctions designed to punish Moscow for interfering in the 2016 election on Trump’s behalf.
At the time, Flynn’s previous links to Russia made him the target of a counterintelligence probe, thoroughly justifying the FBI’s investigation into his collusive calls with a senior Russian government official.
Perhaps worst of all, Trump’s political allies released sensitive document after sensitive document in a desperate — and ill-fated — bid to score cheap political points for their boss.
Among other damaging revelations, these selective, politically driven leaks of once highly classified information gave America’s adversaries an intimate look into how America’s secretive spy catchers conduct their work. The long-term damage to national security and to America’s counterintelligence efforts will be debated for years to come.
