Random Media Thread

[LFC]

Here's a mish-mosh of stories from TDB but the one that jumps out is the right-wingerification of Newsweek and its op-ed authors. And Jared Kushner has his hands in it.

WHERE KUSH GETS HIS NEWS(WEEK): Media observers have recently noted how Newsweek, once The Daily Beast’s partner publication, has lurched further and further rightward in its editorial voice. Source Material has learned that readers can at least partly thank Trump adviser Jared Kushner, who, according to two people with direct knowledge of the matter, has maintained a cozy relationship with the outlet. Throughout his father-in-law’s presidency, people familiar with the matter said, Kush often sought positive story placement, frequently talked as an unnamed source, and, where politically expedient, granted access to the White House (see: “Exclusive: Jared Kushner Gets Candid About Struggling Trump Campaign, Mideast Peace, More”). Newsweek CEO Dev Pragad is believed to have helped foster the relationship. Meanwhile, under conservative firebrand Josh Hammer, who once caused a staff revolt over a racist birther op-ed, the outlet’s opinion page has seemingly gone off the deep end, publishing far-right “Pizzagate” conspiracy theorist Jack Posobiec and MAGA diehard Charlie Kirk, whose utterings have become fodder for generic news write-ups at the outlet. “News organizations are in contact with White House advisers as a matter of course, and our coverage of the Trump administration speaks for itself,” wrote a representative for Newsweek. “Our Opinion section also reflects our commitment to offering views and voices from across the spectrum, as our mission statement says.” Kushner didn’t immediately respond to Source Material’s requests for comment.

[LFC]

This sums up the worth of one man's life.

[LFC]

Remember when Tulsi Gabbard didn't seem like a real Democrat? Now she's looking like a straight up Russian asset.

Fox News host Tucker Carlson’s and former Rep. Tulsi Gabbard’s defenses of Russian President Vladimir Putin have evidently landed them comfortably in the Kremlin’s good graces.

During a broadcast on Russian state television this week, Gabbard was apparently referenced in very friendly terms by one of Putin’s most prominent propagandists, Vladimir Soloviev.

He introduced Gabbard, a Democratic primary candidate for the 2020 presidential race, as “our girlfriend Tulsi,” according to a translation by Russian media analyst Julia Davis, a columnist for the Daily Beast.

A clip was then aired of Gabbard’s appearance on Monday’s episode of “Tucker Carlson Tonight” in which she suggested President Joe Biden was secretly plotting to remove Putin from power.

After the clip aired, a panelist reportedly asked, “Is she some sort of Russian agent?”

According to Davis’ translation, Soloviev said she was.

During Monday’s interview, Gabbard argued that Biden was pushing for regime change in Russia through “economic warfare.”

“They are doing so by waging this modern-day siege against Russia, isolating, containing, destroying their economy, starving the Russian people in the hope that the Russian people or the military will rise up and revolt and overthrow their government and get rid of Putin,” she said during part of the excerpt that aired in Russia.

[goldenvalley]

Apr 1, 2022 17:11:49 GMT LFC said:

Remember when Tulsi Gabbard didn't seem like a real Democrat? Now she's looking like a straight up Russian asset.

Fox News host Tucker Carlson’s and former Rep. Tulsi Gabbard’s defenses of Russian President Vladimir Putin have evidently landed them comfortably in the Kremlin’s good graces.

During a broadcast on Russian state television this week, Gabbard was apparently referenced in very friendly terms by one of Putin’s most prominent propagandists, Vladimir Soloviev.

He introduced Gabbard, a Democratic primary candidate for the 2020 presidential race, as “our girlfriend Tulsi,” according to a translation by Russian media analyst Julia Davis, a columnist for the Daily Beast.

A clip was then aired of Gabbard’s appearance on Monday’s episode of “Tucker Carlson Tonight” in which she suggested President Joe Biden was secretly plotting to remove Putin from power.

After the clip aired, a panelist reportedly asked, “Is she some sort of Russian agent?”

According to Davis’ translation, Soloviev said she was.

During Monday’s interview, Gabbard argued that Biden was pushing for regime change in Russia through “economic warfare.”

“They are doing so by waging this modern-day siege against Russia, isolating, containing, destroying their economy, starving the Russian people in the hope that the Russian people or the military will rise up and revolt and overthrow their government and get rid of Putin,” she said during part of the excerpt that aired in Russia.

Well Flynn seems to be the wrong fit now, having been outed as a Russian stooge.  Manafort...sort of the same thing.  Tulsi is it.  And Tucker.  

[AnBr]

Apr 1, 2022 17:11:49 GMT LFC said:

Remember when Tulsi Gabbard didn't seem like a real Democrat? Now she's looking like a straight up Russian asset.

Over and over Hillary keeps being right before most others realize. Few question the existence of the deplorables anymore. And Tulsi? The evidence keeps mounting.

[LFC]

Poor George Will. He just can't help but support his team even in the face of sedition and insurrection.

His latest is about Ginni Thomas, the spouse of Justice Clarence Thomas. It was reported last month that she was connected to the J6 insurrection. Though the extent of her involvement is unclear, she was nevertheless involved. That fact is beyond dispute. She exchanged 29 text messages with former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows before and after J6 urging him to help overturn the 2020 election.

Given her husband is the longest serving member of the current court who has produced legions of copy-cat jurists, and given that her access to power is made possible by their marriage, it’s natural to ask if and to what degree he knew about her political activities, especially whether he shared her views, which were, you might say, treasonous.

It’s natural to ask whether Thomas should recuse himself from future cases involving J6 defendants. (He has already presided over one case on the question of whether the former president’s former executive privilege still applied to documents that might feature his wife. He was the only vote of dissent.) Ginni Thomas was invested in it. Recusal would be the minimum required to dispel the appearance of conflict.

Enter George F. Will for a round of pooh-poohing.

With a sneering phony erudition he is reputed for, Will argues that Clarence Thomas need not recuse himself. Why? he asked.

Unless there was a bribe, there’s no corruption. Judges and justices recuse themselves too much over petty things anyway. And what if the tables were turned: “Would Thomas’s current critics argue that a justice whose spouse is an environmental activist should recuse in cases involving the Environmental Protection Agency? Unlikely.”

It’s hard for me to imagine what it feels like to say with a straight face that “an environmental activist” is the same as a person cheering the downfall of the republic before being disappointed in the former vice president for not playing along with a conspiracy to bring it down.

Then again, maybe it’s not that hard. The question is not one of right and wrong, good and bad but instead of who is doing what to whom.

It’s moral corruption.

Sure, George Will is heading to pasture. But even this so-called anti-Trump conservative can’t help himself. He must defend a Republican justice by narrowing the meaning of corruption so that unless money is exchanged, it’s no such thing, by minimizing Ginni Thomas’s role in J6 and undermining the ethics of recusal.

I really started to pay attention to him 10+ years ago when he went full on global warming denier, all wrapped in caveats, language, and attitude of course, but all that did was make him a smoother package. Even when several scientists offered to explain to him the very things he clearly didn't understand he refused and kept repeating them. Was he always this way? Was his entire career nothing more than being a patrician Chuck Todd?

[LFC]

The reporting on the Uvalde, TX mass school shooting has been nothing short of insane. This is what happens when you have lie factories destroying objective reality coupled with a news media that, for some insane reason, feels that it's been victorious if they report something two minutes before other outlets. (paywalled)

We’ve noted a number of times that early accounts of school shootings are subject to the “fog of war” – chaotic uncertainty about what is happening, factual claims that turn out not to be true and more. That is ending up to be the case in the Uvalde shooting even more than I expected. The initial story was that the shooter was confronted by and exchanged gunfire with a school police officer and then exchanged gunfire with two municipal police officers just after he had entered the school. Body armor was a key part of why the shooter came out on top in those engagements. An account I read early yesterday said that each of those three officers received gun shot wounds – a fact that stands in contrast to the idea that they just ran for cover and didn’t do their job.

But now it seems like basically none of that happened.

We still lack definitive accounts. So perhaps the pendulum will swing back in the other direction. But at least as of this moment, it appears that the shooter did not have body armor and that no one confronted him or exchanged gunfire with him as he made his way into the school. You can get a sense of the back and forth and withdrawn claims in this new piece from the Post. The school police officer couldn’t get shot because, apparently, he wasn’t even there.

The crashing of the shooter’s car has been an oddball fact in this saga from the start. He shoots his grandmother in the face, drives to the school, crashes his car, gets out of the car and storms into the school. How does the crash fit into the chain of events? Was it intentional? An accident caused by the shooter’s unfolding rage?

Now it seems that the shooter didn’t rush right into the school either. According to the latest official account relayed by the Post, after crashing his vehicle the shooter was outside the school for 12 minutes “firing his gun at nearby people and the school.” By the time officers arrived, the shooter had already gone inside.

All this said, the performance of the local authorities and the changing stories is something of a distraction. That’s not to defend them. Certainly the local community should hold everyone to account when all the facts are known. But as a policy matter, it is mostly a distraction. We’ve seen from numerous examples that when a crazed loser storms a school the school service police officer probably isn’t going to save the day. They’re likely to be massively outgunned and the shooter is as likely as not to be wearing body armor – though that doesn’t appear to have been the case here.

It’s like running a massively septic hospital and then getting mad at the antibiotics for not saving everyone. Some problems need to be addressed at the source.

[Bact PhD]

I can tell you this has occurred by a thousand cuts in our local rag over the series of buyouts in the last decade. In our case, it went from Editorial Board plus cartoon plus Letters plus three syndicated columnists daily to Editorial Board plus cartoon plus Letters plus one syndicated columnist daily to Thing from Another Paper’s Editorial Board plus cartoon plus Letters plus maybe a syndicated columnist daily to in the year since the Gannett-GateHouse merger, oh, we’re doing away with the cartoons to, most recently, we’re only running Op-Eds at all on certain days of the week…

www.washingtonpost.com/media/2022/06/09/gannett-opinion-pages/

The nation’s largest newspaper chain is of the opinion that its opinion pages are alienating readers and becoming obsolete.

So newspapers owned by Gannett Co. — publisher of USA Today and more than 250 dailies — have begun to radically shrink and reimagine their editorial sections, publishing them on fewer days each week and dropping traditional features such as syndicated columns and editorial cartoons. Even political endorsements and letters to the editor are being scaled back.

The company has been pushing for the cutbacks for years, and they have become increasingly visible to readers since a committee of editors formally recommended them at a meeting in April. “Readers don’t want us to tell them what to think,” the editors, who come from Gannett newsrooms across the country, declared in an internal presentation. “They don’t believe we have the expertise to tell anyone what to think on most issues. They perceive us as having a biased agenda.”

As I re-read this passage, I suspect this is a GateHouse tactic, rather than something from the “old-line” Gannett crowd.

[pg]

This one is a toughie and is worth a look-back. Like so much of the old guard of media newspaper, Gannett has suffered for decades under the weight of readership unwillingness to subscribe- especially as content became free-ish, on the Internet. I watched my DH go through it in real-time. He had control of a huge marketing/advertising nationwide budget. As readership/financial support (think subscriptions) declined, so did the $$$$ he and staff were willing to put into these vehicles. As shift in media the first to go were some of our country's largest city-based newspapers. Mr. really suffered with the decisions he was making but was cutthroat in in that which was in his purvey. Hey- he had his own bottom line, which didn't make it any easier for him and team. As a joke, Mr. told me one time: "If I ever end up dead in suspicious circumstances, blame Gannett". We got a good laugh...

As the decades went on, it became obvious: "Give the people what they want" was the rule of the land. Lost in it all were the real journalists/content/editorial writers. Instead of being paid like professionals, they now got to become their own social marketers. Don't get your profile up and out into the public? Perish. Rough stuff for even the. best of the best. And really? Who gives a darn about real editorial opinion, when you can get it for free on all the spaces that are tracking and tracing us all?

News organizations stopped caring so much in favor of bottom line profits. It became a war of "likes and shares" etc. And they started to cater to base instincts and (god forgive me, but true) to youngest, some of the older and more stupid and most susceptible to "OMG- look at Kim Kardashian's butt" among us. Gone were the days where people thirsty for real knowledge, real understanding.

Most people were no longer willing to pay for reasonable media in favor of "free" content. Honestly-GateHouse is but a newer iteration of what our country gave/craves. Which is to say they no longer gave a darn.

It's a bit confrontational but do ask yourselves: How many of you have stayed within subscriptions for local news (even if online content is better/more up to date) or national news instead of doing an Internet end-run around it? If you haven't kept up- preferring to do the "end runs"? You share culpability.

Bact- I have the utmost respect for you and all here. But enough of the "whine time." Media has changed. And in one way or the other, most on this board are equally as culpable as RW. How many posts are there on either this board or the older on that detail EXACTLY how to do the "get around" paying for it?

Food for thought

[jackd]

Then there are the aggregators who solicit donations to support their work arounds.

[goldenvalley]

Jun 19, 2022 19:05:05 GMT pg said:

As the decades went on, it became obvious: "Give the people what they want" was the rule of the land. Lost in it all were the real journalists/content/editorial writers. Instead of being paid like professionals, they now got to become their own social marketers. Don't get your profile up and out into the public? Perish. Rough stuff for even the. best of the best. And really? Who gives a darn about real editorial opinion, when you can get it for free on all the spaces that are tracking and tracing us all?

News organizations stopped caring so much in favor of bottom line profits. It became a war of "likes and shares" etc. And they started to cater to base instincts and (god forgive me, but true) to youngest, some of the older and more stupid and most susceptible to "OMG- look at Kim Kardashian's butt" among us. Gone were the days where people thirsty for real knowledge, real understanding.

Most people were no longer willing to pay for reasonable media in favor of "free" content. Honestly-GateHouse is but a newer iteration of what our country gave/craves. Which is to say they no longer gave a darn.

It's a bit confrontational but do ask yourselves: How many of you have stayed within subscriptions for local news (even if online content is better/more up to date) or national news instead of doing an Internet end-run around it? If you haven't kept up- preferring to do the "end runs"? You share culpability.

Bact- I have the utmost respect for you and all here. But enough of the "whine time." Media has changed. And in one way or the other, most on this board are equally as culpable as RW. How many posts are there on either this board or the older on that detail EXACTLY how to do the "get around" paying for it?

Food for thought

Thanks pg.  I have a friend who is a local newspaper reporter. He and what was left of the reporters were informed that the number of clicks his articles got on social media was extremely important.

A real danger is that social media has spawned a number of so called online newspapers (newsletters really) at the local levels that are thinly veiled fronts for the opinions of those who create them with the resulting "news" being very skewed.  And people can't seem to tell the difference between articles written by real reporters for real news outlets and those freebie social media newsletters. 

I do think my local paper has improved recently after years of decline.  The recent primary election was well covered in terms of local races.  Of course, the statewide governors race was a yawner so maybe the paper turned to local races in order to have something to write about.

[Bact PhD]

Jun 19, 2022 19:05:05 GMT pg said:

This one is a toughie and is worth a look-back. Like so much of the old guard of media newspaper, Gannett has suffered for decades under the weight of readership unwillingness to subscribe- especially as content became free-ish, on the Internet. I watched my DH go through it in real-time. He had control of a huge marketing/advertising nationwide budget. As readership/financial support (think subscriptions) declined, so did the $$$$ he and staff were willing to put into these vehicles. As shift in media the first to go were some of our country's largest city-based newspapers. Mr. really suffered with the decisions he was making but was cutthroat in in that which was in his purvey. Hey- he had his own bottom line, which didn't make it any easier for him and team. As a joke, Mr. told me one time: "If I ever end up dead in suspicious circumstances, blame Gannett". We got a good laugh...

As the decades went on, it became obvious: "Give the people what they want" was the rule of the land. Lost in it all were the real journalists/content/editorial writers. Instead of being paid like professionals, they now got to become their own social marketers. Don't get your profile up and out into the public? Perish. Rough stuff for even the. best of the best. And really? Who gives a darn about real editorial opinion, when you can get it for free on all the spaces that are tracking and tracing us all?

News organizations stopped caring so much in favor of bottom line profits. It became a war of "likes and shares" etc. And they started to cater to base instincts and (god forgive me, but true) to youngest, some of the older and more stupid and most susceptible to "OMG- look at Kim Kardashian's butt" among us. Gone were the days where people thirsty for real knowledge, real understanding.

You’re preaching to the choir here. The printed (later legacy-gone-digital) journalism realm was the family’s bread & butter into the current millennium (Daddy Dear retired when Dear Son was a mere tyke). There was not only a half-decade at a Gannett paper way back when, there was the quarter-century-plus gig at a daily bought out by another major player. I got to hear about the decline of legacy print journalism since I was in college.

Most people were no longer willing to pay for reasonable media in favor of "free" content. Honestly-GateHouse is but a newer iteration of what our country gave/craves. Which is to say they no longer gave a darn.

Of course, the adage “you get what you pay for” is operative. IME legacy print media was so slow to the digital marketplace that they were already playing catch-up to upstart bloggers & aggregators. The freebies had flooded the market by the time the legacy players realized what had hit them.

Sucks to be associated with the legacy print journalism outfits these days.

[Bact PhD]

Jun 20, 2022 15:23:21 GMT goldenvalley said:

Thanks pg.  I have a friend who is a local newspaper reporter. He and what was left of the reporters were informed that the number of clicks his articles got on social media was extremely important.

A real danger is that social media has spawned a number of so called online newspapers (newsletters really) at the local levels that are thinly veiled fronts for the opinions of those who create them with the resulting "news" being very skewed.  And people can't seem to tell the difference between articles written by real reporters for real news outlets and those freebie social media newsletters. 

I do think my local paper has improved recently after years of decline.  The recent primary election was well covered in terms of local races.  Of course, the statewide governors race was a yawner so maybe the paper turned to local races in order to have something to write about.

Even in my relatively small media market, we have not one, but two “alternative” online papers. One is very clearly nothing more than the thinly veiled opinion front you refer to; the other has at least made a legitimate effort to cover local stories, including sports coverage for the smaller and more rural schools in our area.

I’m glad your local rag has bucked the trend and stepped up its game.

[LFC]

Good for Harry and Meghan. I hope he bleeds them dry.

In their undeclared Forever War with certain quarters of the British press, Prince Harry and Meghan Markle are enjoying yet more success against one particularly persistent adversary. On Friday, a judge in London’s High Court ruled in the Duke of Sussex’s favor that parts of a Mail on Sunday article were defamatory—less than a year after the same paper had to pay damages to Meghan Markle for breaching her copyright.

The latest case centered around an article published by the outlet regarding a separate lawsuit brought by Prince Harry against the British government over his security arrangements. Harry’s legal counsel said he was suing Associated Newspapers Limited (ANL)—which owns the Mail on Sunday—because the story had falsely suggested that he had “lied” and “cynically” attempted to influence public opinion about his case against the U.K. government. ANL said the article wasn’t defamatory.

The court, however, sided with Harry in its ruling. As per media law in England, the ruling is just the first stage of a libel claim; the newspaper can now file a defense if it wants to carry on fighting the case. “It will be a matter for determination later in the proceedings whether the claim succeeds or fails, and if so on what basis,” the judge, Mr Justice Nicklin, said.

[LFC]

Just out of interest I decided to look up just the list of pieces that Andrew Sullivan has been publishing. Each is just a title and a very short subtitle. The results? Some form of "woke" pops up 9 times so far this year plus a couple of mentions (3 in 2 days) of CRT.  Trump only gets 6 mentions this year, several of which are topics brought up by people he's talking about. In 2021 he mentioned "woke" 10 times.

I can't get to the articles but these two titles/subtitles show an incredible cluelessness about the politics of the day.

May 27:
Can A Cult Become A Movement?
Some signs of a Trump-free Trumpism emerged on Tuesday.

June 17:
A Man And A Mob
Our Constitutional crisis is due to Donald Trump. And Donald Trump alone.

These are profoundly weird headlines after acknowledging reality a year and a half ago.

January 8, 2021:
This Is The Face Of The GOP Now
The descent from conservatism to nihilism is now complete.

It's like he doesn't grasp what any of the other players in the single greatest threat to American democracy have done. It's sad to see. He used to be relatively clear-eyed even if he broke awfully hard towards his religion and it's supposed importance to the world but now he's just Dreher-lite.

[LFC]

Jordan Peterson tried to play the intellectual who was above it. Turns out he's full of shit (what a shock) and is simply just another right-wing Christian scold who play acts for money.

In the case of Jordan Peterson, there’s no mistaking it. He’s working a grift.

Peterson—the Canadian professor and clinical psychologist turned self-help guru and best-selling author turned anti-woke firebrand commentator—was recently suspended from Twitter. At issue is a tweet (really a quote tweet) of a New York Post article with the caption “Elliot Page is ‘proud’ to introduce trans character on ‘Umbrella Academy.’”

The 12 Rules For Life author (Rule 10: Be Precise in Your Speech) author quote-tweeted in response: “Remember when pride was a sin? And Ellen Page just had her breasts removed by a criminal physician.” Peterson was subsequently suspended from Twitter for violating its terms of service.

The idea that Peterson didn’t know what he was doing when he twice misgendered Page in a mere 18 words is risible. He and his fellow Intellectual Dark Web culture warriors have been pissing and moaning over Twitter’s content moderation policies for years. These avowed-free market capitalists know quite specifically that intentional misgendering is a no-no on the privately owned social media website.

Moreover, Peterson has been on an attention-seeking tear of late, becoming Twitter’s main character several times in recent months for conflating a plus-sized model on the cover of Sports Illustrated with “authoritarianism,” then performatively “quitting” Twitter because people were being super mean to him in response, then breaking his Twitter retirement within weeks to rant about corporate Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) scores as a “a centralized planning neoMarxist eco fascist economic disaster in the making.”

Was Peterson just going through a particularly cranky period? Or was he gearing up to announce his new high-profile media venture, where he’ll be the star of paid bonus content for The Daily Wire—the right-wing news aggregation site made famous by fellow Intellectual Dark Webber Ben Shapiro?

It could all just be a big coincidence, but you can’t pay for the kind of publicity Peterson got from being suspended by Twitter. And if his first Daily Wire video—released days after his suspension—is any indication, he knows it.

Awkwardly reading from a teleprompter, Peterson said his suspension was essentially a banning because he’d “rather die” than delete the tweet (which would lift his suspension) that violated Twitter’s rules, and that he considers his suspension a “badge of honor.”

“What rules, you sons of bitches? Exactly? Precisely? Because such things matter when the accusations start flying,” Peterson rhetorically asked in his Daily Wire video.

This isn’t a court of law, but (as previously noted) there are reasons to disbelieve the premise that it was merely fortuitous timing for Peterson to achieve “free speech martyrdom” at the same exact time he was preparing to announce his lucrative Daily Wire partnership.

But his manufactured controversy is not the only reason Peterson can, precisely, be called a grifter.

The author really goes to town on how much Peterson has shown his hand recently.

[LFC]

NewsNation has decided that "names" who collapsed under scandal are a good buy.

NewsNation is apparently not done stacking its roster with media men accused of misconduct.

Bill O’Reilly is in talks to join the fledgling cable channel five years after he was fired by Fox News following an avalanche of sexual-harassment allegations, Confider has learned.

NewsNation bosses are negotiating with the disgraced broadcaster to join as a contributor, two people familiar with the situation said. O’Reilly has already appeared several times as a guest on Dan Abrams’ nightly NewsNation show, including one hit in which he boasted about the “millions and millions of viewers and billions of dollars” he brought in for Fox News during his two-decade run as the king of the network’s primetime lineup.

O’Reilly’s TV comeback means NewsNation would have three high-profile men accused of sexual harassment on its payroll. Chris Cuomo, who announced his NewsNation hiring last week, was accused of sexual harassment amid his CNN downfall last fall, and former Good Morning America exec producer Michael Corn, now president of NewsNation, was accused of sexually assaulting two junior ABC News staffers.

[LFC]

A bit of history on right-wing news leading up to WWII. What was old is new again.

In our hazy collective memory about Franklin Roosevelt, the Great Depression and the march toward World War II in the 1930s, we sometimes assume the people of the United States were absorbing the printed and broadcasted words of an objective and fair news media.

Nothing could be farther from the truth, as University of California, Davis history professor Kathryn S. Olmsted ably proves in her deeply researched book The Newspaper Axis: Six Press Barons Who Enabled Hitler. Not only were some of the foremost newspaper publishers of the day needling FDR with stilettos on their editorial pages, but they also even imposed their views on their reporters. “Fake news” was as evident in those days as it is today.

Hitler and FDR came to power within a couple of months of each other in 1933. When we think of the dire situation in the country when Roosevelt was elected in 1932 — 25 percent unemployment, the banking system collapsing — it’s amazing to think that he was endorsed over Herbert Hoover by just 41 percent of the nation’s newspapers — and that was the high-water mark. The fact that FDR continued to win re-election — carrying all but two states in 1936 — is a testament to the popularity of his programs and the power of his personality.

FDR was opposed on both the domestic and foreign fronts during most of his time in office by the press lords Willam Randolph Hearst, owner of a network of newspapers and radio stations whose motto was “America First,” and Col. Robert McCormick, publisher of the Chicago Tribune, the self-proclaimed “world’s greatest newspaper.” While initially supportive, McCormick’s cousins, siblings Joseph and Eleanor “Cissy” Patterson, eventually turned on FDR too. Joe Patterson published the largest circulation newspaper in the country, the New York Daily News, while Cissy published the largest circulation newspaper in Washington, the Times-Herald. As a group, they reached 30 percent of the American newspaper-reading public every day.

Not only that, but Hearst, McCormick and the Pattersons had cozy ties with two powerful press lords in England, Lord Rothermere and Lord Beaverbrook, who were supportive of Mussolini and Hitler until the day German armies attacked Poland in 1939 and continued preaching appeasement until the war escalated with the attacks on the Netherlands and France the following spring.

McCormick’s vitriol easily matched that of the better-known Hearst. He called the New Deal the “Raw Deal” and instructed his White House correspondent to label the federal work relief programs “government easy money.” When the Lend-Lease bill was debated by Congress in 1940, the Chicago Tribune called it “the Dictator Bill” in all its coverage — without using quotes around the mocking nickname. McCormick was convinced that every Roosevelt program and action was designed to make him the country’s dictator, but he was willing to give a true dictator like Hitler a pass because of his own fierce isolationism and hatred of communism. Apparently, a fascist dictator trumped a communist one.

[Bact PhD]

Consider this: The Fairness Doctrine came about in the era of broadcast journalism…

[LFC]

It sounds like CNN might be getting attacked internally by a right-wing billionaire board member.

The fallout from the firing of Brian Stelter and the cancellation of Reliable Sources continues this week.

CNN insiders tell Confider that staffers cannot shake the feeling the shocking move was made to appease John Malone, a right-leaning billionaire, close friend of the Murdoch family, and key Warner Bros. Discovery board member who has made it well-known that he would like CNN to be more “centrist”—whatever that means.

While Malone has denied he is “directly involved” in any decisions about CNN, multiple current and former staffers who spoke to us relayed a fear that the libertarian mogul is indirectly dictating an agenda to newly installed CNN boss Chris Licht.

Sources further suggested that internal fears about future changes stem from how Licht has kept his cards close to his chest, with members of his own management team being left in the dark about next moves.

The news of Stelter’s axing was actually supposed to be announced Friday with a carefully managed story placed with NPR, sources told Confider, but the news leaked early, including—perhaps curiously—to two conservative outlets, the Daily Mail and the Tucker Carlson-founded Daily Caller, which were both tipped off on Thursday morning.

Stelter had been an antagonist of right-wing media for much of his time at the Reliable Sources desk, but other similarly vocal CNN stars like Don Lemon and Jim Acosta are safe for now, sources familiar with the matter told Confider.

[LFC]

I guess lying and dishonest video editing wasn't paying well enough so James O'Keefe and the crew at Project Veritas went to outright theft and moving stolen property across state lines. Oops.

Two guilty pleas in Manhattan federal court on Thursday highlight how far Project Veritas went to obtain stolen items belonging to Ashley Biden — including allegedly paying for a private diary belonging to the President’s daughter.

The group and its operatives directed two Floridians to obtain items belonging to Biden, paid for the pair’s travel, and sent an employee to ship the property from Florida back to the group’s headquarters in New York state, according to a criminal information filed against Florida residents Robert Kurlander and Aimee Harris.

Prosecutors said that Project Veritas received property that Harris and Kurlander stole from the Biden daughter – with Harris allegedly telling employees of the right-wing group how she obtained the material.

Kurlander and Harris each pleaded guilty on Thursday to conspiracy to move stolen property across state lines. Harris initially found Ashley Biden’s diary in the run-up to the 2020 election at a home in which she and the President’s daughter both spent time, before telling Kurlander, a friend of hers, about the discovery.

The pair eventually sold it to Project Veritas for $40,000, prosecutors said.

Paul Calli, an attorney for Project Veritas, disputed in a statement to TPM that the group knew the items had been stolen.

“Project Veritas’s news gathering was ethical and legal,” Calli said. “A journalist’s lawful receipt of material later alleged to be stolen is routine, commonplace, and protected by the First Amendment.”

But guilty pleas and prosecutorial statements tell a far different story, suggesting that the group helmed by right-wing operative James O’Keefe may have not only solicited property from the pair — but also directed them to obtain more of it.

Prosecutors do not name Project Veritas in the information to which Harris and Kurlander pleaded guilty. But the group described in the document closely matches public reporting about Project Veritas’ role in obtaining Ashley Biden’s diary, and is identifiable based on its Mamaroneck, New York address, named in the filing.

[LFC]

A bit more on how O'Keefe crossed a big line.

We’ll have an accompanying news story shortly. But this is a case where I have some specific insight and perspective as an editor and publisher about how to stay out of trouble or, as Project Veritas seems to have done here, get in a lot of trouble.

So here goes.

Sources are not always good people. And even when they are good people they’ve often done bad things. Often they’ve done illegal things. As a publisher or editor or reporter you want to get the story while being sure you don’t get tangled up in the source’s crimes. Here’s the general principle for how to keep out of trouble.

Let’s say that you’re minding your own business and some stolen documents just fall out of the sky. Or, more realistically, they just show up in the mail or someone hands them to you. You didn’t know they were coming. You didn’t ask for them. They just appeared. Hopefully you don’t actually know that they’re stolen. But even if you do, if some version of the facts above apply you likely have a pretty good First Amendment claim to reporting on the material. You didn’t do anything. You took no affirmative steps. The source’s crimes aren’t your problem. Or at least you have a pretty good defense if a prosecutor says they are.

But let’s say someone comes to you and says, hey, I think I can steal these documents for you. Interested? Rookie journalists out there: the answer is no. Absolutely no.

Or another scenario. Let’s say Mr. Shady Source shows up at the newsroom with his stolen documents. You look them over and you like what you see. Then you say, ‘Great stuff here. As long as you know your way into the house, can you maybe steal these other documents for me too?’

At this point any First Amendment defense you have has basically gone up in smoke. You are a participant in the crime. If the story is important enough to you and you don’t mind being a thief, you can take your chances. But if you get caught you’re going to do time like any other common criminal. Being a journalist just won’t matter.

It’s all the more the case if you pay the thief for the news stuff, or you fund their new crime, or you’re actually needlessly stupid enough to transport the stolen property across state lines yourself. If the claims in these plea deals are accurate, Project Veritas did all these things. And more.

My colleague Josh Kovensky received a statement from Project Veritas’s attorney, which denies the relevant alleged facts and reads: “Project Veritas’s news gathering was ethical and legal. A journalist’s lawful receipt of material later alleged to be stolen is routine, commonplace, and protected by the First Amendment.”

If we back up to the arguably blameless scenario above, this is where legitimate journalists sometimes operate. And you go to great lengths not to even nudge up against that line. I don’t want to know anything. I didn’t tell you to do anything. I’m not telling you to do anything else. But when you are paying people to commit crimes at your direction and for your benefit you are 100% part of the crime. And really, this isn’t a case where prosecutors should exercise some sort of restraint in the interests of press freedom. Journalists have no more right to steal your property than anyone else. That is literally what separates the honorable and sometimes morally ambiguous practice of journalism from being a crook PI or common criminal.

[pnwguy]

Grifters got to grift. Sh*tbaggers got to sh*t...

[LFC]

Aug 26, 2022 14:53:12 GMT pnwguy said:

Grifters got to grift. Sh*tbaggers got to sh*t...

Sounds like O'Keefe's grift was running out so he stepped up to committing a felony.

[LFC]

Dennis Prager is off his meds and his stunted ability to deal with women has come shining through. Read the thread for all the things women are to blame for. I think he might be sort of like an older incel. He has been married 3 times.