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Open in TheBrain

balance / false equivalence

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see mirroring?

see jrnl fail 1-04

see what about-ism

a sort of norm?

invert/ perv

aha related to crypto? trad media seeks balance/both sides, thus will promote bogus (also reduces attacks from both sides?)

yikes: Graham Brookie directs the Digital Forensic Research Lab, an arm of the nonprofit Atlantic Council that works to identify and expose disinformation. While the campaign “is not outright disinformation,” Brookie said in an email, it “does bear resemblance to a model we use called the 4d’s — dismiss the message, distort the facts, distract the audience, and express dismay at the whole thing.”

Brookie added: “The tactic is intended to create an equivalency in spokespeople and message. In this case, it is a false equivalency between a message based in climate science that went viral organically and a message based in climate_{ skepticism trying to catch up using paid promotion.}_”

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with crypto spin?!

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mma see pardon trump anno 2 25

Right-wing media figures rushed to defend President Donald Trump’s decision to issue pardons or commutations to over 1,500 people who participated in the January 6 insurrection at the United States Capitol — including those convicted of violence against police.

They offered a number of arguments to support their defense: They baselessly claimed legal efforts to hold participants accountable were “show trials” or unfair compared to legal repercussions for the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests, said the pardons are justified because of former President Joe Biden’s pardons, and diminished the violence on January 6 by recasting those criminally charged as “ordinary patriots.”

Other right-wing figures defended the clemency by noting that Trump had campaigned on the issue, declaring, “Promises made, promises kept."

Right-wing media figures spent years urging pardons for January 6 participants, which Trump granted on the first day of his second term

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gingrich trash bias press pre-emption --> SOP; here false equivalence/ i am victim

an

May 23, 2024

US Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) was one of the 17 Texas Republicans who refused to certify the 2020 election results, according to the Texas Tribune.

During a Wednesday night interview with the GOP senator, CNN's Kaitlan Collins noted Cruz's refusal to acknowledge President Joe Biden win over Donald Trump in 2020, and asked whether the Texas leader plans to accept the November election results in the case Biden wins again.

"Do you plan to object or will you accept the results regardless of who wins the election?" Collins asked.

READ MORE:**Ted Cruz slapped with campaign finance laws violation complaint**

"Kaitlan, I got to say, I think that's actually a ridiculous question," Cruz replied.

"It's a yes or no question," Collins insisted.

"Let me explain why it's ridiculous question," the Texas leader said, asking, "Have you've ever asked a Democrat that?"

Collins replied, "Have you ever had a sitting president who refused to facilitate the peaceful transition of power, refused to acknowledge that his successor won the presidency?

Cruz claimed, "We had peaceful transfer of power, I was there on January 20."

"Barely," Collins replied, before noting that in 2016, when Biden was vice president, "he went to the Senate floor and certified the votes."

READ MORE:**'Ted Cruz isn’t fooling anyone': Texas senator slammed over outreach to Democrats**

Cruz said, "You only ask Republicans" this question.

Collins replied, "Because it was Republicans who tried to block the transition of power. You have to acknowledge that. We've never seen it on a scale of what happened in 2020. And We've never seen the president refuse. He wouldn't even let Joe Biden get classified briefings at the beginning.I recall that. So my question for you again: Free and fair election, will you accept the results regardless of who wins?"

The senator replied, "If the Democrats win, I will accept the result, but I'm not going to ignore fraud," before claiming there was voter fraud in 2020. Collins replied, "No there wasn't, and you still objected."

"Oh you know, for a fact, there were zero voter-fraud?" Cruz asked. "What's your basis for that? Show me your evidence.'

Collins said, "We've spoken with [Georgia Republican] Governor [Brian] Kemp. They did three hand recounts in the state of Georgia. the director of CISA [Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency] said that this was one of the safest most legitimate elections."

READ MORE:['Taking a lot of ribbing': Ted Cruz now the butt of senators’ jokes amid FAA bill markup

The CNN host emphasized, "Republicans are twisting themselves in knots."

Cruz claimed Collins never asks Hillary Clinton, Stacey Abrams, or Al Gore whether they will certify election results.

"I haven't had any of them on my show," Collins said. "We'll talk to them, but I don't remember there being a president who was refusing to turn over the transition of power."

Watch the video below or at this link.

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Mainstream media don’t have to take the right's phony outrage over Biden’s “garbage” comments seriously

Written by Gideon Taaffe

Published 10/30/24 mma

Some mainstream media outlets aided the inevitable right-wing outrage cycle regarding President Joe Biden's comments about a racist joke made at a Trump rally by adopting right-wing media's framing.

Speaking to nonprofit Voto Latino, Biden reacted to a comedian at Trump’s weekend rally calling Puerto Rico a “floating island of garbage,” saying, “The only garbage I see floating out there is his supporter’s — his — his demonization of Latinos is unconscionable, and it’s un-American. It’s totally contrary to everything we’ve done, everything we’ve been.”

NBC senior White House correspondent Gabe Gutierrez initially reportedthe comments as Biden calling Trump supporters “garbage”; Biden later clarified what he said, writing on social media, “Earlier today I referred to the hateful rhetoric about Puerto Rico spewed by Trump's supporter at his Madison Square Garden rally as garbage—which is the only word I can think of to describe it. His demonization of Latinos is unconscionable. That's all I meant to say. The comments at that rally don't reflect who we are as a nation.”

basket of deplorables problem? trying to get last few undecided?]

The next day, Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris told reporters that Biden “clarified his comments, but let me be clear: I strongly disagree with any criticism of people based on who they vote for.” She mentioned that she had called for unity in a speech the previous night, saying, “You heard my speech last night. I believe the work that I do is about representing all the people, whether they support me or not. I will be a President for all Americans.”

Even though Biden clarified his comments, many in the mainstream media posted headlines suggesting Biden called Trump supporters “garbage” and that his comments could give the right “a way to pivot away” from the overwhelming racism at Trump’s Madison Square Garden rally.

The Associated Press incorrectly wrote that Biden “suggests Trump supporters are ‘garbage’ after comic’s insult of Puerto Rico.” ABC News wrote up right-wing media’s bad-faith outrage, saying in a headline that Biden “angers GOP associating ‘garbage’ with Trump supporters.” NPR framed Biden’s comment as “a divisive remark” in a piece titled “Harris urged unity in her closing argument. Biden's ‘garbage’ line undercut that.”

Biden’s comment predictably led to a deluge of apoplectic reactions from right-wing media figures, who falsely claimed that the president called all Trump supporters “garbage” and made comparisons to former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s “basket of deplorables” comment during the 2016 election cycle. (That comment was also misleadingly covered at the time, with some saying she was referring to all Trump supporters, when Clinton was specifically talking about voters who supported Trump for “racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic” reasons.)

Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk fearmongered that Biden “is using dehumanizing language towards 80 million Americans,” adding, “They think you are garbage, therefore worthy of elimination.” Fox News called the comments the “2024 campaign’s October Surprise.” The Daily Wire’s Matt Walsh said that the comments are “the kind of seething, anti-American contempt that you only find among Democrat elites.”

While right-wing media engage in bad-faith outrage over Biden’s comments, Trump has repeatedly disparaged the United States and Democrats during his campaign. He recently said America is “like a garbage can for the world” and has ramped up demonizing rhetoric toward immigrants and political foes. Trump has called Democrats “evil,” “dangerous,” and “enemies from within,” going as far as suggesting he will use the military against “radical left lunatics.”

By adopting the right-wing framing about Biden’s remarks, the mainstream media are enabling a false narrative that both sides are ramping up hostile rhetoric. They don’t need to engage in the right’s latest efforts to deflect from Trump’s racism and extremism.

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Right-wing media claim that Biden’s handling of classified documents was similar or worse than Trump’s | Media Matters for America

2 24

The political press runs with Hur’s scurrilous partisan attack | Media Matters for America

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an 1 24

as the third anniversary of the deadly January 6 insurrection approaches this weekend, one columnist is calling on journalists and editors to stop treating the future of democracy like a standard partisan issue.

In her latest column for The Guardian, Margaret Sullivan expressed her frustration about the beltway media's tendency to find a both-sides angle when covering former President Donald Trump's repeated threats to democracy.

"In a constant show of performative neutrality, journalists tend to equalize the unequal, taking coverage down the middle even though that’s not where true fairness lies," Sullivan wrote, urging reporters to "get beyond delivery and appearances, to get beyond poll numbers and approval numbers – all the things that they are most comfortable with."

"The mainstream media is not nearly as comfortable with communicating the larger concepts, even when the stakes are this high," Sullivan continued. "Constantly under attack from the right, they fear looking like they are 'in the tank' for a particular candidate or party, so they fall back on those traditional building blocks of coverage – numbers, polls, approval ratings."

"That may have worked in the past, or at least been relatively unobjectionable," she added. "Not any more."

Sullivan cited several examples of false "both sides" narratives in prominent publications, including a New York Times article that she said was "typical of the mainstream media’s tone and focus." That article noted that President Joe Biden was giving a speech in Valley Forge, Pennsylvania on the anniversary of January 6 to remind Americans that his predecessor's lies about the 2020 election helped fuel an attack on the US Capitol, but framed it as "an effort to redirect attention from Mr. Biden’s low approval numbers." ABC News had a similar approach in a recent article with the headline "One attack, two interpretations: Biden and Trump both make the Jan. 6 riot a political rallying cry."

Vanity Fair special correspondent Molly Jong-Fast criticized that headline in a post to X (formerly Twitter).

READ MORE:Michigan elections chief: 'Direct line' between Trump's Detroit call and January 6 riot

"There aren’t two sides to a violent insurrection in the United States capitol," she tweeted.

In her column, Sullivan lauded former Washington Post executive editor Marty Baron's blunt evaluation of the threat to democracy Trump posed when he said the ex-president is "the only politician I’ve heard actually talk about suspending the constitution."

"He’s talked about using the military to suppress entirely legitimate protests using the Insurrection Act. He’s talked about bringing treason charges against the then-outgoing chairman of the joint chiefs of staff. He’s talked about bringing treason charges against Comcast, the owner of NBC and MSNBC. He’s talked explicitly about weaponizing the government against his political enemies," Baron said. "And, of course, he continues to talk about crushing an independent press... all of those [threats], by nature, by definition, are authoritarian."

Sullivan ended her column by asking journalists and editors to "remember that being in favor of democracy isn’t a journalistic crime. In fact, it’s a journalistic obligation."

READ MORE:'We're going to come after the people in the media': Trump ally calls for prosecuting journalists

Read Sullivan's full columnby clicking here.

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an 1 23  cdv

There is no such thing as "the liberal media."

That is language concocted by the Republican Party and right-wing consultants with the goal of bullying the American news media into being compliant and subservient to the "conservative" agenda.

And they were remarkably successful in achieving that goal.

Decades later it is now an accepted "fact" among America's political class, the general public, and the mainstream news media itself that there is such a thing as "liberal bias" in the news industry. The enduring myth of the "liberal media" is one of many examples of how the American right has successfully weaponized language with a propaganda campaign to shape the country's political terrain in their interests.

Republicans have marketed themselves as defenders of "freedom." In reality, they are authoritarians who support a range of policies that limit human and civil rights.

The Republican Party has created a brand that is based upon "family values." This is fiction. The policies and ideology of the modern GOP are centered upon gutting the social safety net and ending the county's already very weak and still developing social democracy. If they are successful in that agenda, the overall well-being of American families will be greatly diminished.

The "conservative" movement staunchly claims to be "pro-life." This is not true. Their policies and ideology have actually shortened the lives of the American people as seen with health care, gun violence, the global climate crisis and environment, the COVID pandemic, and social inequality more generally.

Former Rep. Newt Gingrich is one of the main architects of the strategy that allowed the Republican Party to win the language wars and the central role of the myth of "the liberal media" in that outcome. In 1995, the media watchdog group FAIR explained how:

Since winning control of Congress, Rep. Newt Gingrich (R.-Ga.) has constantly complained about "destructive" and "negative" coverage from the "liberal elite media."… In fact, the new speaker of the House—who once described his goal as "reshaping the entire nation through the news media" (New York Times, 12/14/94)—has given a great deal of thought to the media and how to manipulate them.One Newtonian axiom is "fights make news" (Boston Globe, 11/20/94). Another skill he has taught to Republican candidates through his political organization, GOPAC, is how to create a "shield issue" to deflect criticism…

But the clearest expression of Gingrich's philosophy of media came in a GOPAC memo entitled "Language: A Key Mechanism of Control." Distributed to GOP candidates across the country, the memo's list of words for Democrats and words for Republicans was endorsed by Gingrich in a cover letter: "The words in that paper are tested language from a recent series of focus groups where we actually tested ideas and language." Next time you hear Gingrich complain about media focusing on the negative, refer back to these lists.

In a widely cited 2003 essay at The Nation, media critic and author Eric Alterman said the following about the myth of "the liberal media":

Move over to the mainstream publications and broadcasts often labeled "liberal," and you see how ridiculous the notion of liberal dominance becomes. ….

I could go on, but the point is clear: Conservatives are extremely well represented in every facet of the media. The correlative point is that even the genuine liberal media are not so liberal. And they are no match–either in size, ferocity or commitment–for the massive conservative media structure that, more than ever, determines the shape and scope of our political agenda.

In a careful 1999 study published in the academic journal Communications Research, four scholars examined the use of the "liberal media" argument and discovered a fourfold increase in the number of Americans telling pollsters that they discerned a liberal bias in their news. But a review of the media's actual ideological content, collected and coded over a twelve-year period, offered no corroboration whatever for this view. The obvious conclusion: News consumers were responding to "increasing news coverage of liberal bias media claims, which have been increasingly emanating from Republican Party candidates and officials."

The right is working the refs. And it's working. Much of the public believes a useful but unsupportable myth about the so-called liberal media, and the media themselves have been cowed by conservatives into repeating their nonsensical nostrums virtually nonstop. :{As the economist/pundit Paul Krugman observes of Republican efforts to bully the media into accepting the party's Orwellian arguments about Social Security privatization: "The next time the administration insists that chocolate is vanilla,:{much of the media–fearing accusations of liberal bias, trying to create the appearance of 'balance'}:–won't report that the stuff is actually brown; at best they'll report that some Democrats claim that it's brown."

}:

In the real world of the right-wing media, the pundits are the conservatives' shock troops. Even the ones who constantly complain about alleged liberal control of the media cannot ignore the vast advantage their side enjoys when it comes to airing their views on television, in the opinion pages, on the radio and the Internet.

In total, the mainstream news media is inherently "small c" conservative. As a social institution it prioritizes making money and is averse to change. As such, the American mainstream news media also serves an agenda-setting and boundary-enforcing function that sets limits on the "approved public discourse." In that role, liberal and progressives are routinely silenced out of deference to "conservative" and right-wing voices – however extreme the latter may be.

Because the mainstream news media are aligned with the powerful as a class, they prioritize having access to them in what is a parasitic and symbiotic relationship. In practice, this meant that access to the powerful — especially for DC beltway journalists — is more important than bold truth-telling and consistently speaking truth to power.The conservative nature of the American news media and its institutional bias towards "normalcy" helps to explain why it has been so unable to properly pivot and adapt to the realities of the Age of Trump, rising neofascism, and the country's ongoing democracy crisis. Thus, the continued habit of using obsolete norms such as "bothsideism," an overempahsis on "horserace coverage," an obsession with political personalities instead of systems and power, and an amplification of the controversy of the day instead of on fundamental issues.

One of the most dangerous examples of how the media has been conditioned by the right through the myth of "liberal bias" is how it is now helping to launder the reputations of several Trump regime members and other Republican fascists. In a very high-profile example of reputation laundering, The New York Times — which is routinely attacked by right-wing media for committing the "crime" of "liberal bias" (a baseless and absurd claim) — recently featured a guest opinion essay by former Trump regime advisor and propagandist**Kellyanne Conway.Her Times op-ed contained Trump political pornography such as this:

Donald J. Trump shocked the world in 2016 by winning the White House and becoming the first president in U.S. history with no prior military or government experience. He upended the fiction of electability pushed by pundits, the news media and many political consultants, which arrogantly projects who will or will not win long before votes are cast. He focused instead on capturing a majority in the Electoral College, which is how a candidate does or does not win. Not unlike Barack Obama eight years earlier, Mr. Trump exposed the limits of Hillary Clinton's political inevitability and personal likability,connected directly with people, ran an outsider's campaign taking on the establishment, and tapped into the frustrations and aspirations of millions of Americans.

Some people have never gotten over it. Trump Derangement Syndrome is real. There is no vaccine and no booster for it. Cosseted in their social media bubbles and comforted within self-selected communities suffering from sameness, the afflicted disguise their hatred for Mr. Trump as a righteous call for justice or a solemn love of democracy and country. So desperate is the incessant cry to "get Trump!" that millions of otherwise pleasant and productive citizens have become naggingly less so. They ignore the shortcomings, failings and unpopularity of President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris and abide the casual misstatements of an administration that says the "border is secure," inflation is "transitory," "sanctions are intended to deter" Vladimir Putin from invading Ukraineand they will "shut down the virus." They've also done precious little to learn and understand what drives the 74 million fellow Americans who were Trump-Pence voters in 2020 and not in the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

In her New York Times audition for a job on Trump's 2024 presidential campaign, Conway also wrote:

:{A popular sentiment these days is, "I want the Trump policies without the Trump personality." It is true that limiting the name-calling frees up time and space for persuasion and solutions. Still, it may not be possible to have one without the other. :{Mr. Trump would remind people that it was a combination of his personality and policies that forced Mexico to help secure our border;structured new trade agreements and renewed manufacturing, mining and energy economies; pushed to get Covid vaccines at warp speed; engaged Kim Jong-un; played hardball with China; routed ISIS and removed Qassim Suleimani, Iran's most powerful military commander;forced NATO countries to increase their defense spending and stared down Mr. Putin before he felt free to invade Ukraine.}:

}:

When it comes to Donald J. Trump, people see what they wish to see. Much like with the audio debate a few years ago "Do you hear 'Laurel' or 'Yanny'?," what some perceive as an abrasive, scornful man bent on despotism, others see as a candid, resolute leader unflinchingly committed to America's interests.

There were thousands of comments on the New York Times website in response to Conway's column and the publication's decision to allow her such a privileged platform. Based on a cursory review, a good many, if not most of these comments were negative. The Times even featured one such complaint in a letter to the editor:

A diversity of opinions and perspectives is a fantastic goal, and one reason I've been a longtime subscriber. Generally speaking, your opinion guest essays are well written and thoughtful and provide a point of view that makes one examine a topic with fresh eyes.

The opinion from Ms. Conway is not that.

Time and again she employs sloganeering to sling arrows at Democrats and non-Trumpists in an attempt to burnish the reputation of her former boss.

She continues to attempt to turn neighbor against neighbor by perpetuating the othering of Trump detractors and the denial of Mr. Trump's and her attacks on voting, democracy and simple decency.

Hers is not another "opinion"; it is carefully crafted and intentional spin to appeal to people's sense of grievance and to reaffirm the lies and misinformation they are so ready to believe.

Her inclusion in your paper diminishes the quality of debate, and galvanizes a person America would be better off forgetting.

Conway is representative of a larger pattern where such leading news media outlets as the New York Times, CNN, CBS, NBC and others are deciding to amplify and provide a platform for Trumpists, Republican-fascists, and other right-wing anti-democracy voices. They are doing this behind the cover of "fairness" and "balancing" when in reality such a decision is based on fear, profit-maximizing, and strategically positioning themselves to be in good favor with the Republican Party, "conservatives" and other anti-democratic forces as a type of insurance policy and security blanket for what promises to be a very perilous and unsettled future.

In an essay at Medium, journalist and author Wajahat Ali warns that "Even in the face of increased threats and a failed coup, too many journalists in mainstream media outlets will continue to pave the road toward fascism with their 'both sides' coverage." He continues, "Access journalism is a parasitic relationship.Some of these journalists are like small remoras, or shark suckers, who attach to sharks to get to their destination. If they were riding the shark in JAWS, they'd write an article blaming the townspeople for forcing the shark to eat them":

There's a class of journalists belonging to legacy outlets and corporate media who are incapable of shedding their antiquated, toxic skin and adapting to the changing political and cultural landscape where disinformation, white supremacist conspiracy theories, and right-wing stochastic terrorism is the norm. Instead, they chase the North Star, which isn't the truth, but rather access to power, ratings, and a path toward personal success….

Instead of bending the knee to right-wing intimidation, platforming their lies, mainstreaming their hate, and engaging in "both sides" nonsense to create the fiction of symmetry in an utterly asymmetrical reality, these political journalists need to be biased in favor of the truth and democracy.

Ultimately, the American mainstream news media needs to engage in a type of personal inventory and critical self-reflection about its role in democracy and failings (and successes) in the Age of Trump and beyond.In short, it must do better as it strives to live up to the ideals of the Fourth Estate in a democracy. A big step in that direction would be refusing to participate in the reputation laundering and rehabilitation of Trump's regime members and other neo-fascists and enemies of democracy in today's Republican Party and larger right-wing and "conservative" movement.

If the American mainstream news media does not do this necessary and hard work it is just contributing to its own legitimacy crisis and lack of trust among the American people, which in turn means aiding the Republican fascists and other enemies of a free press and democracy.

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an 1 23

why do this country’s most lucrative media properties spend so much time and so many resources covering the “dangers” of political extremism?

It’s not because of the fear of Donald Trump and his redhat fascism.

It’s not because of the fear of Bernie Sanders and his cosplay socialism.

READ MORE: Donald Trump's griping about evangelical 'disloyalty' was an order to get in line

It’s because political extremes reveal something about this country’s most lucrative media properties that they would rather not have revealed.

Their own political extremism.

None the wiser

Bullsh*t? Not when you think about it.

READ MORE: Unpublished January 6th report exposes social media platforms allowing right-wing exploitation

The difference between the country’s two major political parties is cavernous, deeper and wider than it has ever been in our lifetimes.

The Democrats, as I said last week, have grown to become under Joe Biden the party of statecraft.The Republicans have grown to become under Trump the party of stagecraft. The Democrats have ideas. The GOP has Fox.

Yet this country’s most lucrative media properties, in their coverage of the parties and in their choices in determining what’s news, treat the parties, which they take to represent one-half each of this country, as if they were equal in nature, theory and practice, though the differences are obvious.

Taking two things that are not the same in nature, theory and practice and making them appear the same is an act of democratic politics, a way of persuading an audience to believe that a particular worldview (“centrism”) is normal by comparison to parties equal in nature, theory and practice.

Taking two things that are not the same and making them appear the same is an act of political extremism, too. There is no other credible way to describe taking two things that are not the same and making them appear the same for the purpose of manufacturing, by comparison, an imaginary “center”?

How else can we describe this country’s most lucrative media properties presenting themselves as impartial arbiters of the status quo despite the fact that they go to extreme lengths to persuade their audiences that a particular worldview (theirs) is normal, moderate and “centrist.”

That’s what an act of politics looks like.

That’s what a warped reality, and our understanding of it, looks like.

This country’s most lucrative media properties do not want to appear to be political entities, but nevertheless, they are. They are invested in defining, controlling, protecting, defending and maintaining a political status quo that has made them this country’s most lucrative media properties.

So they focus on the far right.

They focus on the far left

You’re none the wiser.

“The way things are” is never natural

My point here is that “centrism” is actually a radical political ideology that often turns observable reality upside down, backward and prolapsed.

It does that by making unequal things seem equal for the purpose of appearing to be normal, moderate and “centrist.” One consequence is that the “political center” overlaps with their particular kind of extreme politics.

And “natural.”

The people who benefit most from the maintenance and advancement of “centrism” – the beneficiaries of hierarchies of political and social power that constitute a status quo – want us to believe that their radical political ideology is aproduct of nature. It’s the politics of “the way things are.”

“The way things are” is never natural.

“The way things are” is the product of history, contingency and choice. It’s the progressive accretion of decisions made for a particular time, for a particular place for reasons particular to those times and places.

The people who benefit most from the maintenance and advancement of “centrism” want us to believe “the ways things are” is natural and therefore politically neutral, as a consequence of being just “the way things are.”

But “the way things are” is never politically neutral. The proof is the insistence by the beneficiaries of a radical political ideology called “centrism” that the way things are is just “the way things are.”

Beneficial incoherence

My second point here is that an observable reality that’s been turned upside down, backward and prolapsed is beneficial to those who maintain and advance a radical political ideology that they call “the way things are.”

An incoherent status quo is a good thing.

As I said last week, in a separate context,false equivalence is the art of forcing unequal things to seem equal and making the morally better of the two seem not so good, the morally worse of the two seem not so bad.

Those people who benefit most from the status quo are most likely to insist that politics has nothing to do with their being the people who benefit most from the status quo. That, again, is a political act, a choice made among other choices that together constitute what most say is the way things are.

Apply this to Joe Biden’s documents “scandal.”

It is not equal to Donald Trump’s documents scandal.

The former lost some government secrets, found them, returned them and conceded to an official investigation to ensure everything’s above board.

The latter stole government secrets, lied about stealing them, refused to give them back after his theft was revealed, gave back a few, lied about giving back all, had to be forced to give back all, and then cried about the injustice of an official investigation to ensure everything’s above board.

Apply this to shooting massacres.

At least 10 people were shot to pieces during the Chinese Lunar holiday in a Chinese-American neighborhood in Los Angeles County. It is among many shooting massacres targeting minorities. In Charleston, it was Black people. In El Paso, it was Hispanics. In Pittsburgh, it was Jews. In Colorado, it was LGBT-plus people. The pattern is clear to anyone who’s willing to see it.

But this country’s most lucrative media properties don’t want to.

They regularly find ways to balance mass death with constitutional rights, as if one is related to the other, as if one is as important as the other, as if one balances out the other, as if this country’s most lucrative media properties are politically neutral arbiters of a status quo that is also ideally suited to rationalizing this country’s most lucrative media properties.

Mass death is not equal to constitutional rights. Only an adherent of a radical political ideology would say two unequal things are “in fact” equal.

And here we are.

Apply this to any “issue” with “two sides.”

USA Today’s Michael Collins: “Biden said he was ‘surprised’ to learn of the discovery of the records. He had branded his predecessor … ‘irresponsible’ for storing classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida.”

The stress is mine.

The radical political ideology, however, is theirs.

READ MORE: 'Asinine': Conservative lawyer shreds Republicans for equating Donald Trump and Joe Biden document cases

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an 11 22

To those who really are hard-left in their politics — for example, author Noam Chomsky or U.K. politician George Galloway — the notion that the United States’ mainstream news media are overwhelmingly to the left is laughable. Chomsky, for decades, has argued that mainstream news outlets have a corporate bias, not a leftist bias.

MSNBC has been described by some reporters as a left-wing version of Fox News, but MSNBC’s focus is really center-left rather than hard-left. The cable news outlet has its share of liberal hosts, from Rachel Maddow to Joy Reid to Lawrence O’Donnell. But some well-known Never Trump conservatives are also MSNBC hosts, including Joe Scarborough (a former GOP congressman) and Nicolle Wallace (who was in the George W. Bush Administration). And Never Trumpers like Charlie Sykes, attorney George Conway, Michael Steele (former chairman of the Republican National Committee) and former GOP strategist Rick Wilson have been frequent MSNBC guests.

Washington Post media critic Erik Wemple, in his November 7 column, lays out some reasons why he believes it is inaccurate to describe MSNBC as the Fox News of the left.

READ MORE:Tucker Carlson spins new race-baiting conspiracy theory about white women

“While Fox News remains a talking-point-promotion outlet for Republican candidates,” Wemple argues, “its liberal counterpart on the cable box does something vastly different for Democratic candidates. It covers them, that is.”

Wemple illustrates his point by noting how Pennsylvania Lt. Gov. John Fetterman’s campaign has been covered on MSNBC compared to far-right Sean Hannity’s show on Fox News.

“Many critics over the years have posited that MSNBC is the lefty mirror image of Fox News,” Wemple writes. “If so, it needs to pick up its game in the propaganda department. There’s no question that it can be more hospitable to Fetterman and his Democratic peers than Fox News and some other outlets. Following Fetterman’s debate troubles, for example, MSNBC host Lawrence O’Donnell compared him to Franklin D. Roosevelt and Winston Churchill….Yet MSNBC has no analogue to Hannity, a guy with the message discipline of a coxswain. Nor does it relish forking over its airwaves to promotional interviews with like-minded candidates.”

Wemple goes on to say that “mainstream outlets writ large simply don’t do for Democrats what Fox News does for Republicans, an argument recently advanced by Media Matters senior fellow Matthew Gertz.”

READ MORE:Why reviews of Fetterman’s debate performance were 'oddly disconnected' from Americans’ experience with illness in office

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an 10 22

CNN's Jake Tapper recently weighed in on the assault of Paul Pelosi, the husband of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) as he called out a faction of "elected officials" and members of the media who he believes are responsible for promoting "political violence" and dehumanizing opponents.

On Friday, October 28, the CNN anchor offered details about Paul Pelosi's injury confirming that he'd suffered a skull fracture in the aftermath of a home invasion. According to Tapper, the lawmaker's husband had undergone surgery at a hospital in the San Francisco, Calif., area.

It was also reported that the assailant who entered their home asked, “Where’s Nancy?” Multiple reports also confirmed the suspect involved in the assault supported conspiracy theories about the COVID-19 pandemic and criticized the House Select Committee's efforts to investigate the insurrection on the U.S. Capitol.

READ MORE: 'They ruined everything': Jake Tapper tears into boomers during interview with Gen. Z candidate

Tapper went on to play a clip of the violence that ensued on Jan. 6 where a rioter asked a question similar to the one the assailant asked during the Pelosi home invasion.

“This horrifying act of violence today, I wish I could tell you it’s an outlier,” Tapper said. “It’s not. It is the inevitable product of a poisonous political climate where unchecked lies and hate-filled dehumanizing rhetoric combine to create a perfect storm of political violence.”

Expressing concern about the hate-filled rhetoric, the news anchor also referenced the results of a poll that determined 34% of Americans believe "it’s justifiable for citizens to take violent action against the government.”

He noted how conservatives are not alone in pushing political violence. "As much as Donald Trump is part of the problem here, you need to know these threats and horrific acts are not only from the right,” he continued. “Back in 2017, Republican congressman Steve Scalise was nearly killed after being shot during an attack on a congressional baseball game. Supreme Court justices are also under threat. This summer, a man traveled to D.C. From California armed to the teeth with the stated intention of killing Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh.”

READ MORE: 'Disappointed': Jake Tapper grills GOP Virginia governor over support of election denier Kari Lake

Tapper went on to argue that these incidents of violence are not isolated as he blamed some members of the media and certain politicians for their role in perpetuating political violence.

We’re at a moment right now of extreme polarization, where calls for violence are leading to actual violence. We cannot pretend that these are all isolated, fringe events. There are people in mainstream accepted society – elected officials, TV anchors, others – who have been creating a permission structure that is helping to open the door to this violence, a permission structure created when they dehumanize opponents or smear them, or belittle or make light of acts or threats of violence against their perceived foes or spread conspiracy theories.

Watch the video below or at this link.

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an 6 22

some establishment Republicans, when asked about the far-right extremism of Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia or Rep. Paul Gosar of Arizona, will engage in “whataboutism” — saying, “What about Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Rep. Ilhan Omar?” It’s a weak, totally disingenuous attempt to downplay the radicalization of the GOP; AOC and Omar can be combative debaters, but they haven’t threatened anyone — and they obviously want to have a conversationwith those they disagree with, not intimidate them into silence.

Nonetheless, bogus “whataboutist” comparisons of the AOC/Omar/Rashida Tlaib wing of the Democratic Party and the Greene/Gosar/Lauren Boebert wing of the GOP are common among establishment Republicans. But in an op-ed written by the New York Times’ Thomas B. Edsall and published on June 8, a GOP staffer offered a very different — and more honest and accurate — take on the Democratic Party’s left versus the “MAGA Caucus.”

The Republican staffer, described by Edsall as “high-ranking” and interviewed on condition of anonymity, told the journalist, “They are different in that Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and The ‘Squad’ seem to me to be more ‘idealist.’ They actually do want to legislate/accomplish the very far-left social ideas they propose. They are willing to cause Pelosi headaches, but they have shown they are not going to go so far as to jeopardize the government (operations) and safety net that so many families depend on from a working government.”

The staffer went on to tell Edsall, “The ‘MAGA Caucus’ members operate more like bullies — legislative bullies. If they have the opportunity, they will gladly hold bills/government funding hostage for the sake of populism and social media. They would take pride in ‘shooting the hostage’ as that would be very popular with their tribal base and their social media.”

The Squad refers to a left/populist alliance of four Bernie Sanders allies, all Democrats, serving in the U.S. House of Representatives: AOC, Omar, Rep. Rashida Tlaib of Michigan and Rep. Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts. The name “MAGA Caucus” is typically used to describe Greene, Boebert, Gosar, Rep. Madison Cawthorn of North Carolina (who recently lost a GOP primary) and other MAGA extremists in the House.

Referring to The Squad as “far left” is misleading; their idea of “socialism” is the social democracy of Sweden, Norway and Denmark, not communism as it is practiced in Cuba or North Korea. Nonetheless, the GOP staffer generally made a good-faith argument — the type that is usually absent when Republicans appear on Fox News or Fox Business.

“The Squad and the MAGA Caucus are best known for their most visible members, Ocasio-Cortez, Democrat of New York, and Marjorie Taylor Greene, Republican of Georgia,” Edsall explains. “Both factions have caused major headaches for their respective party leaders.”

Edsall continues, “Centrist Democrats contend — citing poll data from USA Today Ipsos, Pew Research, a FiveThirtyEight polling summary and the University of Massachusetts-Amherst Survey — that support from members of The Squad and their allies for defunding the police has undermined the reelection chances of moderate House Democrats running in purple districts. The participation of members of the MAGA Caucus in events linked to White supremacists have increased the vulnerability of the Republican Party to charges of racism, alienating moderate suburban voters.”

Edsall, adds, however, that there are “major dissimilarities” between The Squad’s methods and the Maga Caucus’ methods.

John Lawrence, former chief of staff to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, told Edsall, “The MAGA people seem far more focused on personal celebrity and staking out extremist stances, whereas The Squad — while pushing the policy envelope to some extent — remain reliable party members.”

Norman Ornstein and Thomas Mann, authors of the book “It’s Even Worse Than It Looks: How the American Constitutional System Collided With the New Politics of Extremism,” also offered Edsall a Squad/MAGA Caucus comparison — and saw enormous differences between the two.

Mann told Edsall, “The MAGA Caucus is anti-democratic, authoritarian and completely divorced from reality and truth. The Squad embraces left views well within the democratic spectrum. What’s striking about the MAGA Caucus is that they are closer to the Republican mainstream these days, given the reticence of Republican officeholders to challenge Trump. We worry about the future of American democracy because the entire Republican Party has gone AWOL. The crazy extremists have taken over one of our two major parties.”

Ornstein told Edsall, “The true believers…. think Trump won, that there is rampant voter fraud, the country needs a caudillo, we have to crack down on trans people, critical race theory is an evil sweeping the country and more. The Squad is certainly on the left end of the party, but they do not have authoritarian tendencies and views.”

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david badash

3 22 an

The New York Times Editorial Board is under fire for what its own readers are calling an “appalling” editorial that claims “America Has a Free Speech Problem.” It is a massive treatise, well over 2500 words, that essentially blames liberals for “cancel culture” and conservatives for banning books –and manages to equate the two as equal, something the Times is criticized for doing on multiple topics frequently.

Rather than quote the Times piece – it can be read here – we’re going to quote some of what the Times’ own readers voted as the best comments responding to the editorial.

“This editorial is appalling,” writes a reader from Baltimore. “Clearly, the Editorial Board is feeling touchy about the widespread ridicule of its recent decision to characterize as a political crisis an undergrad’s discomfort at expressing her opinions in class. I guess you need to be reminded that the 1st Amendment does not guarantee the right not to be ‘shamed or shunned.’ You are creating a false equivalency between private citizens’ opposition to willful disinformation and points of view they find objectionable, and the recent Republican craze for using the levers of government to stifle discussion of particular topics.”

The Baltimore reader is referring to a widely-criticized op-ed the Times published earlier this month written by a college senior complaining about “cancel culture” and claiming she feels she has to “self-censor.” That student identified herself as a liberal yet writes for a right-wing outlet, cited right-wing media, and interned at a Koch-funded foundation. She even praised a right-wing professor at her school who is an anti-LGBTQ activist. As several said, she cited no actual examples of harm that came from her speaking her opinion.

A reader from New York City commenting on the Editorial Board’s piece says they “have never liked the phrase ‘Cancel Culture’ as it creates an easy scapegoat by attacking the terminology and not the underlying sentiment. When I replace the phrase ‘Cancel Culture’ with ‘Accountability Culture’ I am much more inclined to to accept it. I do not think people should be ‘Cancelled’ for their view points or what they say but I do feel people should be held ‘Accountable’ for their words just as they are for their actions.”

Theresa from Vermont says she is “stunned to read this. Free speech is protected in the First Amendment, which prohibits the government from restricting speech, protects the right not to speak, and protects against government censorship. It does not protect a speaker from accountability and responsibility for their speech. I’m a senior citizen, and never remember a time when everyone was expected to listen to every bad idea, all the bad science, every hateful expression, or every lie or misrepresentation of fact, in the name of free speech. Facts and truth, and validity of argument, matter if you want someone to listen. This opinion is totally off the mark, both in analysis of free speech and historical tradition.”

Another reader from New York says, “it seems to me this editorial went really far out of its way to attempt [to] blame the left and the right evenly for cancel culture. But it is not the left that is burning books, it’s not the left that are attacking people in school board meetings, in our Capital, on social media day in and day out. It is not left wing “news” shows that are spreading misinformation daily and it is not the left that have members of Congress shouting out in chambers as if they are calling to a rival at a NASCAR event. Once again the false equivalencybetween the left and the right helps normalize the behavior from the right that we abhor.”

Dan from Naples says: “I have never felt restrained or curtailed from stating my opinion or voicing my feelings with one exception. The violence that the Right in this country embrace and the gun culturethat has become a religion with the Right makes me consider where I am and in what kind of surrounding I’m in before stating what I believe.”

And from Washington, D.C., a reader adds: “If people are more uncomfortable talking about politics because they think they will be judged, it is because of the political moment that we are in. One of our two political parties is getting dangerously close to overthrowing our system of government. It should make you uncomfortable to support that. It should make you uncomfortable to go along with it because you refuse to acknowledge what is happening or because you want a tax cut or whatever.”

Lastly, a reader from SOMA says definitively, “NO. I think it is appropriate to shame and remove from public discourse those that repeat lies that hurt people–such as the lies about scientific information about Covid that kills. Because as we have seen–misinformation does kill. No I do not want to hear alternative truths in the name of free speech. It is destroying society. Especially when the undereducated are lauded by so many, and propaganda abounds that people cannot discern the difference between fact and fiction. We must set some boundaries for when public figures lie to the detriment of the public. They must be held accountable. I’m not sure how we do it, but I know we must.”

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no lnx

note: lying is asymmetricAL

The scary truth about the media's reaction to right-wing authoritarianism

https://www.alternet.org/2022/01/media-right-wing/

John Stoehr January 04, 2022

It’s conventional wisdom among newspaper reporters that we should let readers decide. Don’t come to moral conclusions. Just present the facts neutrally, objectively. Leave the rest to the opinion pages.

But that conventional wisdom is running into trouble, namely a period in political history in which normal isn’t normal anymore. Indeed, the more we cling to the conventional wisdom – to these normal reporting conventions – the more harm we do to the people we claim to serve.

That paradox is put into sharp relief by coverage of the aftermath of the January 6 insurrection. Its one-year anniversary is Thursday. The press corps had a year for soul-searching, but it’s still treating the event – still treating treason – as if there are two sides. The result is elevating lies to the level of truth, making everything seem as good or bad as everything else, and giving the impression that nothing matters.

I talked about this and more with Mark Jacob. He spent 41 years in the newspapers, mostly in Chicago. He’s the former Sunday editor at the Chicago Sun-Times and former metro editor at the Chicago Tribune. Since retiring, he’s reinvented himself as the sharpest press critic on social media. If anyone knows how journalism should be done, it’s Mark. I began by asking if the press corps has learned anything.

READ: 'A dangerous fascist': Critics blast Josh Hawley on the anniversary of his Fox News insurrection threat

Mark Jacob: They're learning slowly, too slowly. You see more instances of people saying flat-out that the Republican Party is an anti-democratic movement, which has been obvious for years. Of course, it's wrong to paint the Washington press corps with one brush, because some have been far better than others.

The Times editorial board likened the GOP to “authoritarian movements the world over.” Is that the progress you see?

Yes, that's a good example. But let's remember the Times was afraid to call Donald Trump a liar in 2015. There's really no question that the timidity and lack of truth-telling by major news outlets is partly responsible for the perilous state we're in today. I think many Washington journalists became very comfortable with the “stenographic school of journalism” and didn't want to give it up. If they quoted the Democrats and Republicans in equal numbers and acted like their comments were equally valid, they could stake out a comfortable position as "objective" and the small-talk at the cocktail parties would remain congenial.

Reporting both sides of cancer in other words.

READ: Report reveals new details about Liz Cheney's attempt to hold Trump accountable for Jan. 6

Yep. "Melanoma might have a point there." Even when the DC news media was fact-checking Republican lies, it would do it in a tidy and ineffective manner. Often news stories would say what Trump said and then would say what the truth was. But they wouldn't start out with a direct statement saying what the truth was and that Trump was lying about it. In effect, they were laying out the facts but requiring the readers and viewers to do the math. This was a practice that worked to the benefit of lying propagandists.

You can call it “objective.” Or you could call it “irresponsible.” Can you explain to non-news people like us why it's the latter?

First, I think the news media have been misled in a quest for some mythical version of objectivity. Deciding to conduct an interview or write a story is making a value judgment. For way too long, political journalists have thought objectivity meant letting both sides have their say, even when they knew one side was lying more than the other side. They were being "objective," but they weren't being fair to their customers, who depended on them to sort out what was true.

A lot of current political reporting is a dereliction of duty. Editors and reporters should never let a lie get into their publications without it being aggressively called out as a lie. Sad to say, a lot of American political journalism has been defensive – designed to prevent the editors and reporters from getting angry phone calls from one side or the other. But of course, John, we both know that if you don't get any angry phone calls, that's a sign that you're not doing your job.

I don't think most consumers of national political reporting know how bad it is, morally and practically, compared to their hometown papers. There are just different standards in each.

Well, local political lying is often less sophisticated than national political lying. National Republicans are masters of the lie. I think a big mistake the news media have made is giving the American people too much credit. I don't mean that as an insult. I mean it as a sad fact.

When the news media carefully avoided calling Donald Trump a liar and just laid out the facts, they were assuming, or at least hoping, that the public could weigh the evidence and figure out that Trump was lying.

But large segments of the public didn't reach that conclusion. Perhaps the most important lesson of this era is propaganda works.

READ: DeSantis demands feds allow Florida to buy $1 billion in COVID treatment top donor has invested in

When the right wing repeats a lie enough times, many people believe it. Most of the news media and the Democratic Party think that if they say something once or twice, everybody gets it and they can move on. That's obviously wrong. It's why news media are ineffective and Democratic messaging gets mugged by Republican messaging. When you say the truth twice and someone else says a lie 1,000 times, it's just human nature to think the lie might be true.

One of the founding principles of the Editorial Board is that most people most of the time have something better to do than pay attention to politics. It's our responsibility to tell them what they need to know. That requires, even demands, that we be judicious.

I'm so glad you said that. I don't think everyone needs to be a political nerd like I am to be a good American. There's an elitism in politics and media that tends to exclude people who are too busy registering their kids for soccer to find the time to read a Washington Post op-ed.

The real challenge for people who want to prevent a radical fascist minority from taking over this country is to get people who "don't care about politics" to realize they need to take actions now — register to vote, give money and time to good candidates — if they don't want to see their kids grow up in a dictatorship.

In one of your recent posts, you address a thorny question among news people. What counts as newsworthy? Usually, it's what’s not normal. That judgment privileges the status quo, which is a problem for another day, but it also creates a rationale for ignoring lies.

When the Republicans flood the zone with lies, making them normal, they’re not news anymore. What can we in the craft? My two cents: stop troubling yourself with phony rules. But that's just me.

We definitely need new definitions of newsworthiness. We're living in unprecedented times, with a threat to our democracy that hasn't been this serious in a century and a half. Yet you hear people on cable news citing midterm election trends from decades past as if they're discussing the laws of gravity. Nothing is normal now.

What we need to do as a profession is identify the most admirable American values – opportunity, fairness, openness to new cultures, for example – and identify actions that most deviate from those values. Dramatic deviations from Americanism are newsworthy.

In your question, you're referring to something I call "ethics norming," which is the tendency to readjust the definition of normality based on recent events, even if recent events have been horrific.

This benefits people doing horrible things. I, for one, think that even if cannibals have devoured a classroom of children for three straight days, it's still news when it happens for a fourth day.

The Republicans have a right-wing media apparatus. Do the Democrats need their own? Would that benefit democracy?

The problem with Fox News and other propaganda outfits isn't that they speak from a Judeo-Christian view or oppose single-payer health care or want low taxes. The problem is they are systematically lying.

Another problem is that they are putting viewers in a cult-like cocoon from which they distrust everything. Their viewers are brainwashed.

It would be good to see more news organizations producing factual news from a variety of viewpoints, including from the left. As I said, objectivity is a myth. Journalists can lead with their values and still remain faithful to facts. A few organizations are doing that, such as Courier Newsroom. I'm on its advisory board. But they're way outnumbered and out-funded by the industry of untruth on the right.

I might agree with “leading with their values” if the press corps were not populated by the children of the children of the children of elites whose principal value is social status. Most seem indifferent to democracy's fall on account of being insulated from democracy's fall.

That's the scary thing – that some people in journalism today might be just fine under a dictatorship. You'd like to think they would be so vocal in their defense of democratic values that they'd be arrested if a totalitarian regime took over, not invited to an annual dinner.

When you talk about elitism, it reminds me that a big task for both journalists and pro-democracy advocates is to make it clear to regular citizens that their lives would be far worse under a totalitarian system -- that dictatorships are a way that the elite steals from the public.

This might be the most important message to get across -- that dictatorship will make everything worse for the overwhelming majority of Americans. Cheating and corruption are built into dictatorship. Opportunity dies for the talented but unconnected.

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cya to prove no lib bias?!

https://www.alternet.org/2021/06/wuhan-lab-leak/

an salon

Last month, seemingly spurred on by this column from a controversial former science reporter for The New York Times, it became suddenly fashionable in some journalistic circles to scold the mainstream press for dismissing or ignoring something called the "lab leak theory" regarding the origins of the coronavirus that causes COVID-19.

To be sure, the possibility that the coronavirus was released in a lab accident in Wuhan, China, has never been fully discounted by the scientific establishment but long treated as less likely than that it emerged from a purely natural origin. Still, led by Matt Yglesias from his (sigh) Substack blog, a narrative started to form in May that the mainstream media was deliberately ignoring a scientifically valid hypothesis because of a, heaven help us, bias against conservatives. Otherwise reputable opinion writerslike Jonathan Chait of New York, eager to demonstrate that they are Not Biased© and Care About Hearing All Sides©, took up the mantle, scolding the mainstream press for supposedly dismissing the "lab leak hypothesis" out of hand, simply because Donald Trump and Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., were fond of it.

The scolding worked.

As Jon Allsop of Columbia Journalism Review wrote earlier this month, "we've seen a gusher of opinion essays in the same vein, indicting the mainstream press and prominent experts for characterizing a plausible hypothesis as a conspiracy theory for essentially political reasons." This, in turn, resulted in a slew "of news articles asserting that the lab-leak theory has 'gone mainstream,' and is getting a 'second look.'" Here at Salon, we addressed the sudden surge of interest in this theory by highlighting the basic reality: Scientists do not think it's likely, plus there is no new evidence that would suggest that it's become any more likely than it was before the pearl-clutching about "bias" began. Soon, however, President Joe Biden gave in to the pressure and ordered an intelligence investigation into the theory.

The problem with all this moralizing about "bias," however, is that the original reason that the media wasn't doing more to hype the "lab leak" hypothesis had little to do with politics and everything to do with science. As science educator Rebecca Watson explained in a video responding to the controversy last week, "There is currently no evidence that COVID-19 originated in a lab. None." And, as Justin Ling of Foreign Policy argued Tuesday, "Despite proclamations to the contrary, there has been scant new, hard evidence pointing to the lab leak theory," and, in fact, the hype around the idea is literally "just speculation."

Indeed, the finger-waggers had it backwards. The media isn't biased against the right but biased in favor of the right.

If it weren't for conservative pressure, there would probably be no substantive media interest the "lab leak" hypothesis. Typically, news outlets are loathed to publish speculation that emerges from fringe conspiracy theory boards that have offered little in the way of real evidence for their claims. But when the conspiracy theorists are politically motivated right-wingers, they tend to get more of a media hearing than say, Bigfoot enthusiasts.

Wednesday morning, the "why won't the media do more to indulge this evidence-free right-wing speculation" crowd got egg on their face with a new report from the Washington Postthat wreaked havoc on claims that the "lab leak hypothesis" failed to get a fair hearing. On the contrary, there has been "an ongoing, sometimes politicized and so far fruitless effort inside the U.S. government to determine whether the virus, SARS-CoV-2, could be the result of engineering or a lab leak."

The report documents an extensive hunt for evidence of the "lab leak" theory throughout the federal government. Much of it driven by Donald Trump's desire to blame someone else, ideally China, to divert attention from his own failures. But more responsible actors in the federal government, including prominent health officials like Director of the National Institutes of Health Francis Collins and Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Anthony Fauci also gave the "lab leak" hypothesis a good deal of time and attention. But while the White House was heavily pressuring every bureaucrat in sight to give them something, anything, they could use to push this "lab leak" hypothesis, the evidence simply wasn't there.

The report doesn't completely rule out the possibility of a lab leak, to be clear. But it is a reminder that it was incredibly irresponsible of mainstream media to hype an unevidenced theory simply to prove they aren't "biased" towards Republican actors like Cotton, Trump, and former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, people who have proven time and again that they will lie through their teeth for political gain.

The people with unsavory political motivations in this situation are not journalists who hesitated to run stories about a theory that has no real evidence to support it. It's Trump and his Republican enablers who, as Lindsay Beyerstein of Alternet explains, feel that if they "can convince his supporters that COVID is China's fault, they'll forget the parts that were his fault."

Attention journalists: The way to avoid political bias in media is to, well, avoid political bias. Which means avoiding giving life to poorly evidenced ideas, simply because they're being hyped by the right. What happened instead is that the press gave into right-wing bullying. In doing so, the press ignored the usual journalistic standards for weighing facts and evidence. Now it's likely most Americans have heard more about lab leaks than they have about the far more plausible theory that the coronavirus pandemic emerged from nature.

To make it all worse, the hyping of the "lab leak" hypothesis meant politely ignoring the fact that Trump, Cotton, and Pompeo were winking at an even less plausible conspiracy theory that holds that China deliberately manufactured the coronavirus as a bioweapon. People who have heard this bioweapon conspiracy theory and see headlines or cable news chryons touting the "lab leak" theory will assume that's what is being discussed, and assume that it's now been proved. And once that kind of misinformation is out there, it's pretty hard to claw it back.

A lot of critics who accused the media of ignoring the "lab leak" hypothesis claim to be interested in putting facts before political bias. They worry that mainstream journalists are disregarding good information simply because the sources are conservative or even because they have a history of lying. (As if credibility isn't an important consideration in sourcing information!)

But what this debacle shows is that the mainstream media has the opposite problem. They all too often give in to Republican bullying and allow themselves to be used as conduits for right-wing disinformation campaigns. Yes, prioritizing truth over politics often leads to news stories that have a "liberal" feel to them. That's because the American right is wholly committed to lying and disinformation. But journalism should put reality before the tender feelings of lying right-wingers. Especially when it comes to scientific disputes where we all supposedly agree it would be better if politics were kept out of it.

FROM YOUR SITE ARTICLES

RELATED ARTICLES AROUND THE WEB

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2/6/21 psaki

https://www.alternet.org/2021/02/reporter-roasted-for-trying-to-equate-jan-6-insurrection-terrorists-with-antifa/

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bunch of BS cya on insurrection eg:

DeSmog reviewed numerous accounts during and in the wake of the Capitol attack. Social media posts showthat severalother climate science deniers, like the UK-based columnist James Delingpole andSteve Milloy, publisher of the JunkScience.com website, joined many on the far-right in circulating false information suggesting that it was not the visible pro-Trump participants who had been planning online for weeks to “occupy the Capitol,” but instead members of their opposition — the loose, left-wing movement known as antifa — that actually invaded the building. On Thursday, the Washington Post reported that there was “no substantive evidence” thatany antifa supporters had participated in the pro-Trump insurrection, adding that many claims of antifa involvement had cited a soure that had, in fact, reported neo-Nazi participation.

Screenshot of retweet by @JunkScience on the afternoon of January 6, 2021.

Others in DeSmog’s Climate Disinformation Database, like the conservative media organization Prager U, used their social media presence to share messaging that sought to shift focus to last summer’s Black Lives Matter uprisings.[someone else did seattle autonomous zone]

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julie h fair

an 121

the media seem to have finally found the line they won't abide crossing. After both sides–ing the political situation for four years of Donald Trump, the storming of the Capitol by an armed rebellion incited by Trump himself has brought out swift and strong words [wapo op ed pix

...always bear the stigma of having contributed to the day's shameful events."

"Trump Caused the Assault on the Capitol. He Must Be Removed," declared the Washington Post editorial board (1/6/21). "Responsibility for this act of sedition lies squarely with the president, who has shown that his continued tenure in office poses a grave threat to US democracy," they wrote. "He should be removed." They continued:

The president is unfit to remain in office for the next 14 days. Every second he retains the vast powers of the presidency is a threat to public order and national security. Vice President Pence, who had to be whisked off the Senate floor for his own protection, should immediately gather the Cabinet to invoke the 25th Amendment, declaring that Mr. Trump is "unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office."

The Post deplored GOP lawmakers like Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley who continued to press their baseless attempt to overturn the election, and praised Mitch McConnell, who "to his lasting credit" did not join them, even if, as they noted, "almost all" GOP members "bear some blame for what occurred on Wednesday." The Republicans, the paper wrote, have an "overriding responsibility to the nation: stopping Mr. Trump and restoring faith in democracy."

It's a surprisingly forceful position. At the same time, imagine if the paper—and the rest of the establishment media—had taken the GOP's threat to democracy seriously before it reached the point of the president inciting an armed insurrection on Capitol Hill.Yesterday's events were the logical outcome of years of the GOP and Trump casting aside institutional rules and norms one by one with increasing boldness, as the press corps described this increasingly authoritarian behavior as "us[ing] all of the levers of his power" (FAIR.org, 10/15/20), and years of giving Trump and his allies space to make their bogus claims of election fraud (FAIR.org, 9/15/20). The media's long history of both sides–ing the issue of purported election fraud (Extra!, 11–12/08, 10/12; CounterSpin, 10/21/16) paved the way for Trump's mythology that has seduced a breathtakingly—and dangerously—large proportion of the public.

Imagine if corporate media didn't praise McConnell, Lindsey Graham or any other Republicans who propped up Trump's dangerous lies for so long, for finally turning on him. Do they really believe we could have gotten to this point if McConnell and the rest of the party hadn't gone along with Trump's dangerously escalating lies–not just for the last several weeks, but for the last four years? If you keep your foot on the gas as the car speeds toward a cliff, but jump out a few seconds before you reach the edge, do you really deserve "lasting credit" for that?

The real test of corporate media will be not whether they are able to forcefully condemn a president's seditious acts, but whether they go back to business as usual after Trump is gone, pretending that the GOP, a disturbing number of whose members in Congress still pushed to overturn the election after the armed insurrection, is a democratic party that can be counted on to restore faith in democracy. [pix op ed]

new York Times (1/5/20): "More than 150 Republican lawmakers have signed on to reject the votes of tens of millions of Americans."

The Times editorial board, while silent so far after the events of yesterday, did publish a fairly benign opinion the day before ("Trump Still Says He Won. What Happens Next?"—1/5/20), whose optimism clearly didn't take seriously the extensive planning underway in broad daylight on right-wing websites: "The Republican effort to derail Congress's electoral vote count on Wednesday will fail, and President-elect Joe Biden will be sworn in at noon on January 20, as the Constitution commands."

The Times could only muster the courage to say that "there is a strong argument" for impeachment (linking to an op-ed they published on January 4) without actually making that argument themselves;the piece concluded by praising Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger for resisting Trump's corrupt attempts at overturning the election results, and lamenting, "If only that weren't extraordinary in the Republican Party today."

What's missing so far is a mea culpa from the media for its own role in normalizing the GOP's long-term efforts to drag this country toward authoritarian rule—and their cynical enjoyment of the ratings bonanza provided by the enthralling spectacle of Trump's assault on democracy (FAIR.org, 3/1/16). Instead, we have the editor of Columbia Journalism Review (11/4/20) castigating the press for spending too much time in the past four years on Trump's "infinite faults," and not enough trying to understand Trump supporters (FAIR.org, 11/16/20).

Kudos to the Washington Post for finally calling for a political reckoning. Now it's time for you to call for a media reckoning.

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https://www.alternet.org/2020/12/trump-election-2649628130/

no lnx

In the original "Star Wars" film — now known as "Episode IV: A New Hope" — Obi-Wan Kenobi, Luke Skywalker and the droids R2-D2 and C-3P0 are stopped by a group of stormtroopers, the elite troops of the evil Empire.

The stormtroopers demand to see Luke and Obi-Wan's identification. With a wave of his hand, Obi-Wan Kenobi uses the mystical power of the Force to dispel their suspicions. Without doubt or hesitation, the stormtroopers say, "You can go about your business. Move along." The heroes escape to continue with their mission. The stormtroopers behave as though nothing unusual has happened.

When Luke Skywalker asks Obi-Wan for an explanation, the wizened Jedi knight explains that the Force can have a powerful influence on the weak-minded.

In their efforts to downplay the dangers of Donald Trump's ongoing coup against democracy, too many members of the commentariat and other "professional smart people" are attempting to use a form of the Jedi mind trick on the American people.

Based on the lack of broad public outrage about Trump's continuing effort to overturn the 2020 election, it would appear that many Americans may in fact be vulnerable to such a ploy.

Over the last few days, the Trump regime's coup attempts have escalated into an ever more desperate and dire stage. The New York Times reported that a cabal of Trump's conspirators met in the Oval Office last Friday where they had a "discussion" about how to overturn the 2020 presidential election by invoking martial law, using a special counsel to invalidate the election, and seizing voting machines to "inspect them" for "irregularities." Of course, the intended result of any such "investigation" would be to manufacture Trump's "re-election."

It should have been the headline in every newspaper and other news media outlet in the United States. But it was buried on page A28 of the print edition of the New York Times, and was also not a leading story in the online edition.

Predictably, Trump raged on Twitter that there were no such discussions and this was all another example of "fake news."

Axios added this additional reporting:

A senior administration official said that when Trump is "retweeting threats of putting politicians in jail, and spends his time talking to conspiracy nuts who openly say declaring martial law is no big deal, it's impossible not to start getting anxious about how this ends."

"People who are concerned and nervous aren't the weak-kneed bureaucrats that we loathe," the official added. "These are people who have endured arguably more insanity and mayhem than any administration officials in history."

On Monday evening, the Washington Post also reported on Trump's cabal, observing that the president "has turned to a ragtag group of conspiracy theorists, media-hungry lawyers and other political misfits in a desperate attempt to hold on to power after his election loss." Trump's "unofficial election advisory council now includes a felon, adherents of the QAnon conspiracy theory, a White House trade adviser and a Russian agent's former lover."

Once again, this report was not among the leading stories in the online edition.

Matters have become so serious that on Friday Army Secretary Ryan McCarthy and Chief of Staff Gen. James McConville felt compelled to issue a statement that there "is no role for the U.S. military in determining the outcome of an American election."

This is not the first time during Trump's reign that military leaders have publicly said they will not interfere in elections. As with most other things about Trump's presidency, such an announcement has no obvious precedent in American history.

Why have the chattering classes with a few notable exceptions, continued to minimize Trump's coup attempt?

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It is easier to mock and deride the Trump regime's coup attempt as being "lazy," "failed" or "incompetent," or to describe it in some other liberal-schadenfreude language than to speak of an on-going national emergency. Likewise, calling Trump's coup attempt just a "grift" or a "con job" also minimizes the danger to the country and ignores the kleptocratic aspects of authoritarian and fascist regimes.

Moreover, it is comforting for the mainstream news media to bask in the glow of Joe Biden's victory and the absence of widespread of political violence and then to declare that democracy endures and Trump's coup attempt is a joke.

By necessity, such high-minded talk excludes Trump and his allies' efforts to suppress the votes of nonwhite people, slow down the mail and otherwise interfere with democracy.

Members of the "Church of the Savvy" and other hope-peddlers and stenographers of current events have an instinctive revulsion to speaking too much truth to power. As a group they have refused until very recently to accurately describe Donald Trump and his regime as being fascistic or authoritarian. Likewise, the mainstream news media and other public voices have been reluctant to state that Donald Trump is a compulsive liar. Instead, they have used euphemisms: The president "misspoke," or "distorted" or "misrepresented" the facts.

Despite abundant evidence, these same voices still refuse to consistently describe Donald Trump as a racist or a white supremacist. All of this reflects a desperate desire to return to perceived "normalcy," as embodied by the incoming Biden administration.

Part of this "normalcy bias" is a function of legitimate fear and anxiety, and an instinct for self-preservation given Trump and his movement's violent threats against reporters and journalists.

This is an example of "organized forgetting": The Trump regime and this version of American neofascism have traumatized not just the American people but many of the country's elites as well. Both groups, albeit in different ways, are deeply invested in reassuring fictions about our "healthy institutions" and "the democratic system." Thus, the compulsion to rapidly forget the horrors of the Trump regime and embrace the hopeful possibilities of the Biden administration.

In practice, this means that the rot in our civic, political, and cultural institutions that produced the Trump regime remains, but has been whitewashed over.

For the mainstream news media, this organized forgetting also involves a rewriting of history in which journalists did not consistently fail in their responsibilities as guardians of democracy by normalizing Trump's politically aberrant behavior, and by downplaying the threat posed to American democracy by his movement. As a practical matter, when the country's mainstream political voices finally started speaking some truth to power during the final months of Trump's first term, they sounded insincere. Where were those criticisms before? Why are they suddenly speaking up now, after Biden has been elected? What explains this sudden "courage," or the force of revelation about the dangers of Trumpism?

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In many ways, the American media is stuck in a feedback loop of credibility failure, one which its leading figures largely created. The Age of Trump was merely a tipping point that exposed long-standing institutional problems.

As media scholar Eric Alterman observes at The Nation:

We know that our democracy is at stake and that the country may be on the precipice of significant political violence. If ever the mainstream media needed to shake its self-destructive addiction to false equivalence, now is the time....

Now those same network executives need to decide which side they are on: democracy or fascist rebellion. Network bookers should refuse toamplifythe words of anyone who denies Biden's victory without immediately pointing out that that person is a liar. Nothing is "disputed." Nothing is "controversial." Nothing is "lacking in evidence." There is only truth or lies….

This should be simple. The news divisions of the major networks, together with CNN (and to a lesser extent, the liberal-branded MSNBC), have all sacrificed much of their credibility during the Trump presidency. They should welcome the opportunity to win it back.

Ultimately, the mainstream media's refusal to highlight the true danger of Trump's ongoing coup attempt, and the depths of the country's democratic crisis more generally, are a symptom of a much broader denial of truth in our society.

In his latest column for Scheerpost — republished by Salon — Chris Hedges warns:

One of the lessons I learned from covering wars and revolutions as a foreign correspondent is that the political, economic and cultural systems that are erected by any society are very fragile…. We cannot use the word hope if we refuse to face the truth. All hope rooted in self-delusion is fantasy. We must lift the filter from our eyes to see the danger before us. We must heed the warnings of our own prophets. We must destroy the centers of power that lure us and our children, like the Pied Piper of Hamelin, to certain doom. The walls, daily, are closing in around us. The radical evil we face is as real under Trump as it will be under Biden. And if this radical evil is not smashed, then the world ahead will be one of torment and mass death.

There is less than a month remaining before Joe Biden becomes president of the United States. These next weeks, however, will be some of the most unpredictable and dangerous in the country's history. As time winds down for Donald Trump, he and his cabal will become even more desperate, dangerous and destructive. Like other authoritarians and fascist leaders, Trump will attack the country and its people as revenge for being "disloyal" to him.

The American media in this moment of crisis can choose to tell the truth, which may at least help to prepare the public for the struggle necessary to reclaim the country's democracy. Or it can remain in denial about the long struggle ahead to rehabilitate our democratic institutions and public life.

The first choice could also begin to address the American news media's crisis of legitimacy. The second will make that crisis exponentially worse.

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https://www.alternet.org/2020/10/why-fact-checking-may-be-futile-against-trumps-black-hole-of-lies/

Donald Trump has publicly lied at least 20,000 times since taking office, according to the Washington Post. He does this in part because he has shown himself to be mentally unwell, if not a sociopath. But he also lies because he is a fascist authoritarian. For such leaders, lies are a way of assaulting reality and truth as a means of achieving unlimited power. These explanations are not discrete. They overlap with one another.

In a season of massive death, Donald Trump and his regime's lies about the coronavirus are a public health emergency – one which has killed at least 216,000 people in the United States.

Donald Trump and his regime's lies have also severely damaged America's prestige, alliances and global power. The country's enemies have also been emboldened by the Trump regime's lies and overall lack of consistency in foreign policy and principles.

Most important, Trump and his regime's policy of lying (in conjunction with wanton cruelty and other evil) has undermined American democracy. A common understanding of reality is the foundation of a health democracy. The Trump regime's lies and those of its agents are rotting that foundation.

In "The Death of Truth," Michiko Kakutani explains that the damage Trump has done to the country's institutions and foreign policy will take "years to repair."

"And to the degree that his election was a reflection of larger dynamics in society—from the growing partisanship in politics, to the profusion of fake stories on social media, to our isolation in filter bubbles—his departure from the scene will not restore truth to health and well-being, at least not right away," Kakutani writes.

Why is Donald Trump such a powerful and effective liar? Why has the mainstream American news media largely surrendered to his lies, and by doing so normalized them? Would more aggressive fact-checking have blunted Donald Trump and his regime's strategy of lying? What explains why the mainstream American news media as a whole refused — and for the most part, continues to refuse — to describe Donald Trump and his regime accurately as being fascist and authoritarian?

In an effort answer these questions, I recently spoke with Eric Alterman, a columnist at The Nation and the author of more than 10 books, including the bestseller "What Liberal Media? The Truth About Bias and the News." His latest book is "Lying in State: Why Presidents Lie and Why Trump is Worse."

Why are there now so many more voices in the mainstream American news media who, several weeks from Election Day, are finally using language such as "fascism" and "authoritarianism" to describe Trump and his regime? This was obvious several years ago. Why the delay? What were they waiting for?

There are many disincentives to tell the truth about Donald Trump. The most obvious one is that he's the President of the United States and people consider it disrespectful to use certain words about the president, like "liar" and "racist" and "conman" and "conspiracy nut," even when they're true. It is worse in Washington D.C. to call someone a liar than for them to actually be a liar.

In Washington, that rule is part of how a person makes a living. Therefore, people in the news media have to show respect for the office of the presidency. The second reason is that the ideology of "journalistic objectivity" does not have a framework for determining what the truth is. It has no bias for truth. "Journalistic objectivity" says on the one hand, so-and-so said this; on the other hand, his opposition said that, and you, the reader, you, the viewer, you, the listener, it is up to you to decide what's true.

Donald Trump is an idiot in many ways, but he is a genius when it comes to media manipulation.

The Washington Post has now documented at least 25,000 or so lies by Donald Trump — and nothing has changed in his behavior. If anything, he has become more brazen.

I do not find fact-checking as done in that way to be very helpful, because Donald Trump is not being fact-checked as he says the lies. If a person reads the fact-checking article, they will learn what Trump said is not true. Trump's lie still has power because it is repeated by the president and circulated. Again, Donald Trump has been winning this battle against the mainstream news media every day and they still have not really caught up to his strategy. The New York Times still does not really know what to do about Donald Trump in this regard and others.

Is the reluctance, if not fear, of calling Donald Trump a liar a function of the corporate culture of American's mainstream news media? Are reporters and journalists afraid of being punished in terms of their careers if they tell the unpolished truth about Donald Trump?

I have a different idea of lying than most of the country's journalistic institutions do because they will almost never use the words "lie" or "liar" when it comes to the president or most politicians. Instead most in the mainstream news media will say, "We can't know his intent. We can't know what's in his heart." They assume that a lying politician may believe the nonsense that they are saying. My position is if a politician should know what is true and he does not, then he is lying.

I do not care what the excuse is. I don't care if Trump or some other politician thinks God is talking to him. I don't care if Trump is too disengaged from reality. I don't care if Trump is so much of a narcissist that he makes up stuff and he believes it. If it's the president's job to know something and he misinforms the country, then he's lying. Worry about his motivation some other time.

There has never been a historical moment in this country where a president, in this case Donald Trump, could be ignored because everyone knows he's so full of lies and nonsense.

Donald Trump might get reelected and destroy our democracy because so many in the mainstream news media are treating Donald Trump's lies and delusions as though it is all somehow normal.

Why has the White House press corps been so accommodating and enabling of Trump's lies? He also uses them as props for his fascist performances. Why do the members of the White House press corps not just walk about of the briefings or stand up and turn their backs to him?

They do not know how to do their job any other way. Their job is defined as getting whatever information is available at the White House. So even if it's lies, even if it's daily humiliation, the press corps has to go back the next day. Those reporters need to be on good terms with the people who are giving out the information — even if they're not giving out real or otherwise substantive information. It would be nice if the job of the White House press corps was to actually go out and find news, but that's not what they're there for. They're there as conduits for the White House....

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https://theintercept.com/2020/08/20/facebook-bans-antifascist-pages/

oN WEDNESDAY, Facebook announced an expansion of its “Dangerous Individuals and Organizations policy,” removing or restricting hundreds of pages associated with groups that it claims promote violence. Nearly 800 QAnon groups, committed to pernicious disinformation and potentially deadly conspiracy theories, have been removed. Facebook also shut down the pages of far-right militias, like the New Mexico Civil Guard, an armed vigilante organization, whose leaders sport swastika tattoos.

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Alongside groups openly committed to genocidal white supremacy, which constitute a very real threat to Black and Indigenous communities, as well as other people of color, Facebook also shut down the pages of numerous antifascist, anti-capitalist news, organizing, and information sites. The move follows a pattern now well-established by the Trump administration — and unchallenged by most every mainstream media outlet — that draws indefensible false equivalences between organized, racist fascists, and the antifascists who vigorously oppose them.

Among the pages removed were those of antifascist news and research site, It’s Going Down, a media platform that publishes news, analysis, and reports on social struggles, as well as investigative work to expose white supremacist and neo-Nazi networks. Crimethinc, a bastion of left-wing, anarchist publishing and thought since the 1990s, saw its Facebook page removed too. The pages of groups organizing around the ongoing and potent antiracist uprisings were also shut down, including the PNW Youth Liberation Front, a network of youth collectives in the Northwest committed to direct action protest.

"Lumping anarchists and anti-fascists together with far-right militias who explicitly support the current administration is a strategic move to muddy the issue,” said a statement from Crimethinc in response to the bans. “This is the same operation that William Barr” — the attorney general — “performed in creating a Department of Justice task force focused on ‘anti-government extremists’ that targets self-proclaimed fascists and anti-fascists alike. In the case of the Department of Justice, this enables them to point to far-right and militia attacks in order to demand resources with which to crack down on those who are on the front lines of defending communities against such attacks.”

Both rhetorically and through specific policies, the government has obfuscated and downplayed the threat of white supremacist extremism, while sensationalizing the risks posed by the far left.

With its latest bans, Facebook is following this same playbook.

The demonization of antifascists has become a centerpiece of President Donald Trump’s reelection propaganda, which functions both to criminalize dissent and delegitimize Black liberation struggle.Following the intolerable events of the Charlottesville, Virginia, “Unite the Right” rally in 2017, Trump famously praised “very fine” members of the white supremacist coalition and blamed “both sides” for the murderous far-right violence that occurred — a stance that’s since been crystallized in his policies.

Facebook’s decision to treat leftist social justice platforms as equivalent to racist militia groups is merely an extension of the government’s position. “For months, Donald Trump has demanded this crackdown in a series of social media posts explicitly blaming anarchists and anti-fascists for the countrywide wave of protests precipitated by persistent police violence in the United States,” said the Crimethinc statement.

EARLIER THIS MONTH, as I wrote,Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, chaired a farcical Senate Judiciary Subcommittee hearing on “stopping anarchist violence.” The senator repeatedly chastised Democrats for failing to condemn “antifa” for a murder that was in fact carried out by the far right — and refused to be corrected. Both It’s Going Down and Crimethinc were mentioned during the hearing, within baseless overtures on the threat of the far left.

In the three decades since Crimethinc’s founding, the Facebook ban is “the first thing like this that has occurred,” said a participant in the collective, who asked for anonymity out of concern for far-right retaliation and state scrutiny. Of course, none of the antifascist groups removed by Facebook expected any better from the social media leviathan. “We ultimately aren’t surprised by this move and personally all hate Facebook,” the It’s Going Down Twitter account said, noting that it was nonetheless a “vehicle to connect with people.”

At stake is not the moral standing of Mark Zuckerburg’s turpitudinous monopoly, but rather the further entrenching of a false equivalence, which stifles antifascist dissent at a time of emboldened state and movement fascism.

Related
Leaked Documents Show Police Knew Far-Right Extremists Were the Real Threat at Protests, Not “Antifa”

It bears repeating, ad nauseam, that the far right has carried out 329 murders in the last three decades; none have been attributed to antifa.Between 2009 and 2018, white supremacist and far-right extremists were responsible for 73 percent of extremist murders in the U.S. And that’s not even to mention the state-sanctioned, racist killings carried out by the police.

There’s no doubt that a number of the leftist platforms removed in the Facebook sweep advocate for disruptive dissent and protest. Antifa practice certainly involves a willingness to physically confront organized white supremacists in the streets. But Facebook’s bans, echoing Trump’s myths, equate the “violence” of disruptive antiracist protest with the violence of neo-Nazis murdering immigrants and people of color.

“This line of thinking continues to equate protest disruption and property destruction with far-right movements who fundamentally want to harm and kill large segments of the public,” It’s Going Down tweeted.

For Facebook to treat even militant, antiracist, antifascist organizing as a violence comparable to that of white supremacist militias is a statement, in no uncertain terms, about which lives it deems to matter.

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https://www.alternet.org/2020/09/voters-should-be-wary-of-usa-todays-false-balance-on-election-2020

no lnx grafx

voters should be wary of USA Today’s false balance on Election 2020

Written by Julie Hollar / FAIR September 18, 2020

One thing readers can count on every election season is false balance in the press (FAIR.org, 12/9/16, 10/3/12; Extra!, 11–12/08; FAIR.org, 9/30/04), and despite the current threats to democracy (FAIR.org, 9/15/20) that one might hope would lead journalists to up their game, this year is no different.

Case in point: USA Today‘s front-page piece on Monday (9/14/20) with the remarkable headline, “With 50 Days Till Election Day, Voters ‘Anxious,’ Wary of Trump, Biden Alike.” On the web, the headline ran: “‘Anxious, Fearful, Angry.’ At 50 days Out to Election Day, Many Voters Are Wary of Both Trump and Biden.”

USA Today: 'Anxious, fearful, angry.' At 50 days out to Election Day, many voters are wary of both Trump and Biden

USA Today‘s headline (9/14/20) elides a key difference between the two candidates: Generally, more people like Biden than dislike him, which hasn’t been true of Trump since January 2017.

“It’s 50 days until voters cast their ballots for president, and Americans are on edge,” the article, by Ledyard King and Phillip M. Bailey, began:

It’s not just that they have been cooped up at home to avoid a deadly contagion. Or that some downtown areas have been wracked with unrest fueled by protests over police violence and racism. Or that Americans are facing financial hardships because of the pandemic. Many voters view the White House race between President Donald Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden as crucial to America’s future. But while the president’s supporters are more enthusiastic than Biden’s, many voters grappling with multiple crises are unimpressed and uninspired by the choice they will face on November 3.

This framing clearly implies that there’s no clear answer at the voting booth for “many” people; the headline directly suggests that “voters” are equally wary of both candidates.

No one disputes that there is an enthusiasm gap between Trump and Biden supporters. But the idea that the choice seems like a toss-up to most people, and that the general sentiment in the country is one of equal wariness toward both candidates, is much harder to defend. Biden’s favorability ratings have consistently been much higher than Trump’s, and Biden has led national polling averages by a minimum of 4 percentage points (currently he’s averaging almost 6 points ahead) for the last several months. And while anxiety does dominate this election year, Biden supporters are much more anxious than Trump supporters—which is hardly surprising, given Trump’s clear efforts to subvert the election (FAIR.org, 9/15/20).

Real Clear Politics: 2020 Favorability Ratings

It’s misleading to describe voters as being equally wary of these two candidates (Real Clear Politics, 9/17/20).

You get a hint at the problem with the article in the line about protest: Are Americans on edge because there has been unrest in some downtowns—or because of the conditions of police violence and racism that have spurred that unrest? USA Today seems to be talking about a particular kind of reaction, had by a particular subset of people.

And in fact, despite referring to “Americans”—and the slightly narrower “voters”—multiple times in the headline and first few paragraphs, the article soon reveals that it’s actually talking about neither of the above. The anxiety referred to in the headline, it turns out, comes from a characterization of voters in swing states who voted for Barack Obama in 2012 and Trump in 2016—not exactly a representative group.

The paper then offers quotes from several “undecided voters” from swing states that they interviewed, including such statements as, “I can’t with good conscience say that I have an educated enough decision to vote either way. You constantly have to filter through the fighting to hear what they’re actually trying to say.” The reporters return to that voters’ words to conclude the piece: “Hopefully, we’ll hear more about what they actually plan on doing [in the debates]” she said. “And less about how much they hate each other.”

Interviewing undecided voters is one of journalists’ favorite election season pastimes. It’s not an irrelevant angle, though corporate reporters tend to overemphasize the white, conservative-leaning and rural swing voter to the exclusion of other crucial groups that might decide the election (FAIR.org, 5/20/14). But you have to wonder if people would remain so undecided if news media used more front-page real estate to cover candidates’ plans than to publish uninformed opinions about those candidates.

And it’s important that the obsession with swing state voters—while, again, justified to some extent, because of the way our Electoral College makes many voters’ opinions largely inconsequential—doesn’t so cloud reporters’ judgment that they use those voters to stand in for “Americans” as a whole. By doing so, outlets like USA Today overstate Trump’s support and create the impression of a balance that doesn’t exist.

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libtard reductionism:

north Carolina Republican Sen. Thom Tillis — viewed as one of the most vulnerable GOP senators in 2020 — has found himself in an uncomfortable situation after a staffer’s excessively honest comments to a constituent were caught on tape.

As first reported by WRAL, Bev Veals of Carolina Beach, a three-time cancer survivor, called her senator out of fear that her health insurance was at risk. She has previously faced medical bankruptcy and difficulty accessing care, WRAL said, andher husband was furloughed because of the pandemic. She wanted assurance that she’d have coverage if she lost her health insurance.

But Tillis’s office wasn’t helpful. While speaking to a dismissive staffer, Veals began to record their conversation, which was provided to WRAL and can be viewed above.

“You’re saying that, if you can’t afford it, you don’t get to have it?” she asked. “That includes health care?'

"Yeah, just like if I want to go to the store and buy a new dress shirt. If I can’t afford that dress shirt, I don’t get to get it,” the staffer explained.

“But health care is something that people need!” Veals said, clearly alarmed. “Especially if they have cancer.”

“Well, you got to find a way to get it,” the staffer said.

“So what do I do in the meantime, sir?” she asked, not hiding the irritation in her voice.

The response was snide: “Sounds like something you’re going to have to figure it out.”

Tillis’s office has apologized after Veals came forward about the exchange: “The way Mrs. Veals was talked to by a staff assistant in our Washington office was completely inappropriate and violates the code of conduct Senator Tillis has for his staff, which is why immediate disciplinary action has been taken.”

But the truth is that, insensitive and rude as the staffer’s comments to Veals were, they were simply a much more honest reflection of the Republican Party’s policies on health care than officials typically admit. But the truth isn’t hard to see. The Trump administration is currently arguing that the Supreme Court should overturn all of Obamacare, throwing millions of people off their insurance and invalidating protections for pre-existing conditions, along with other provisions that protect patients.

The unofficial Republican Party policy, though, is to lie about this fact. Trump is constantly telling voters that he protected pre-existing conditions — even though he has done nothing to ensure they’re covered — and that he’ll continue to keep these protections in place, even though he’s trying to destroy them.

The Tillis staffer, apparently, didn’t get the message. He has imbibed the attitude at the heart of the GOP’s policy preferences. His mistake was being honest with a member of the public about the policy.

Veals, for one, doesn’t seem deceived by the office’s apology. And that’s because she still hasn’t gotten the original answer to the question she called about.

“We need our legislators to listen to us and help us solve this problem because it’s not just my problem – not being able to afford health care,” she told WRAL. “It’s the problem of hundreds and thousands of North Carolinians.”

North Carolina is one of 12 states in the U.S. that has not adopted Medicaid expansion, a policy that would help cover people like Veals if they lost their insurance. Tillis opposes Medicaid expansion.

In a statement to WRAL, Tillis dishonestly defended his position:

“When he was Speaker of the House [in North Carolina],” the statement continues, “Senator Tillis inherited a Medicaid program that was mismanaged and plagued with overspending and inefficiency. Expanding Medicaid at the time would have been a promise that the state wouldn’t have been able to keep, requiring cuts to the program that would have harmed patients that states like New York and California have already been forced to make. Instead, Senator Tillis worked to strengthen the state’s Medicaid program to deliver quality health care to patients, and the reason the North Carolina is in a position to discuss expansion is because of Senator Tillis’ leadership.”

These claims are in spectacularly bad faith. Medicaid expansion has been wildly successful across the United States — it can even save states money. And claiming to be concerned about “cuts to the program” that harm patients is absurd when patients like Veals can be left with no coverage at all. It’s even more pernicious, though, because the recent stressed on state budgets in the wake of the pandemic come from the Senate Republicans’ refusal to provide recovery funds to state and local governments, as Democrats have sought to do.

It’s these comments — far more than a staffer’s rudeness — that should be the real scandal.

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c de v

https://www.alternet.org/2020/09/expert-on-the-radical-right-warns-that-vigilantes-are-preparing-to-launch-a-coup

in the Age of Trump, Portland, Oregon, is no longer just another city. Now it is a symbol and almost a Rorschach test for the country’s deep and explosive political divides.

For Trumpists, Republicans and members of the far right, Portland is all that is wrong with “the Left” and “Liberals,” a chaotic nightmare zone where Black Lives Matter, antifa and other“enemies”are running amok while they attack “patriotism” and “real American values.”

To TrumpWorld, Portland and other Democratic-led big cities (which of course is virtually all of them) are hives of scum and villainy, overrun by criminals and “rioters,” which must be conquered by Trump’s enforcersand armed vigilante supporters.

Trump’s “law and order” politics, and its inherent racism and violence, are believed by many to be his path back to the White House. In this view, Portland and other “Democrat cities” and communities are targets of opportunity for the Trump regime.

writing at Washington Monthly, David Atkins explains Trump’s mindset:

He sees the violence as politically beneficial, a useful cudgel against Democratic nominee Joe Biden — even though the violence is happening while Trump himself is president, not Biden.

Trump’s election theme is that Americans won’t be safe in a Biden presidency. The opposite is true. Americans won’t be safe as long as a white supremacist president is leading a movement of bigots to incite a civil war, and attempting to ensure that the majority of Americans with cosmopolitan, egalitarian values remain politically disenfranchised and under the thumb of those who fear and despise them.

Trump’s campaign of racial authoritarianism and stochastic terrorism, as well as overt threats of “law and order,” resulted in a group of his supporters driving into Portland last weekend, armed with mace and paintball guns, to seek out confrontations with Black Lives Matter and anti-fascist protesters. During one such encounter, a member of the right-wing militia group Patriot Prayer, Aaron Danielson,was shot and killed. On Thursday night, the apparent shooter,Michael Reinoehl, was himself shot and killed by U.S. marshals in Olympia, Washington.

Despite this lamentable violence — for which Trump and the right must bear ultimate responsibility — for progressives and other people of conscience Portland is a symbol of resistance and hope. As part of the nationwide people’s uprising sparked by the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis, protesters have been outside the Portland federal courthouse for more than 100 days.

The protests were largely peaceful until Trump and acting DHS Secretary Chad Wolf deployed federal police forces to the city in July. Their presence, as designed, escalated the tension and led to increasing levels of property damage and incidents of violence.

Previewing Trump’s plan for other parts of the nation, these federal shock troops made journalists and reporters a special focus of their violence. They also kidnapped protesters and other “enemies” of Donald Trump’s regime off the streetas though they were operating in a banana republic.

Much of the mainstream American news media’s coverage of the recent events in Portland lacks meaningful context. Writing at Medium, a Portland press collective describes one such example of this “parachute journalism”:

One night last week, during one of the smaller demonstrations, a tall white man in a clean ballistic helmet and brand-new plate carrier emblazoned with “PRESS” strolled through the crowd in front of the Hatfield Federal Courthouse in Portland, Oregon. He stopped by a gaggle of other journalists, most out-of-towners. “I’ve only been around for the last week,” he said, “but the protests in Portland feel a lot more performative than the ones I’ve seen in other cities. Less genuine.” A local journalist mentioned having been present for over 50 nights of the protests, starting in early June. “Yeah, I can only speak for what I’ve seen this week,” said Clean Helmet. “I’m flying back to DC tomorrow.” … Clean Helmet was on the ground in Portland, by his own description, for less than a week. This means that he was present for approximately 1/10th of Portland’s BLM protests, thus far. I’m sure he got some great footage.

The Parachutes (as we have come to know them) come with money, and zero community connections. Their goal is the clip that can make the nightly news. They want a story that will dominate the news cycle. They do not know what is happening in Portland, and they do not care. They are coming to a city with a vibrant, scrappy community of street-level journalists. By and large, they do not want the context that those journalists can provide. And soon they will come to a city near you. When the Feds and the Parachutes come to your town, you’ll want everyone to understand the context there, too. And they are coming. Clean Helmet is already back in DC, and on to the next assignment.

The important context which “the Parachutes” usually omit includes the way Portland is depicted as a liberal oasis in America’s popular imagination. In reality, Portland is a very race and class-segregated city. As historian and activist Walidah Imarisha and others have richly documented, the Oregon territory passed laws in 1844 explicitly excluding Black people from the region under punishment of whippings and other violence. The state of Oregon formally included white supremacy in its constitution, explicitly banning nonwhites.

To this day, Oregon remains a redoubt of white supremacy, where white supremacists and other right-wing extremists have a large presence in the state and surrounding region. Portland itself has a long and ongoing history of right-wing violence.

Alexander Reid Ross is a doctoral fellow at the Center for Analysis of the Radical Right. His most recent book is “Against the Fascist Creep.” Ross has also completed new research which documents more than 500 incidents in which white vigilantes and other right-wing extremists have confronted Black Lives Matter protests. This includes hundreds of acts of intimidation and other threats as well as dozens of examples in which right-wing extremists have assaulted or attacked Black Lives Matter protesters.

In this conversation Ross shares his firsthand experiences with the recent George Floyd protests in Portland. He also provides some context for those events and the police and federal response. Ross also details the long history of right-wing paramilitaries and political street gangs in Portland and their relationship with local police and other law enforcement.

Reid warns that Portland, the right-wing vigilante killings in Kenosha, Wisconsin, and the hundreds of other attacks by right-wing extremists on Black Lives Matter protesters is just a preview of the massive violence that Donald Trump and his movement may unleash before and after Election Day — perhaps including the arrest or imprisonment of prominent Democrats, journalists, and others deemed to be enemies of the state.

Q: After almost four years of Trump and his regime’s authoritarian, neofascist behavior, some voices in the mainstream American news media now use that correct and appropriate language to describe the reality of the situation. Why was there so much fear and denial about the obvious? Even when they use the correct terminology, the coverage is largely superficial and avoids serious discussion of the dire implications.

You must also take into account that many so-called left-leaning voices have also been interfering with bringing that truth to light. There were writers at the Guardian, for example, who were trying to sound the alarm about the dangers of right-wing extremism and fascism in America, but they were derided by their peers across the political spectrum.

I also believe that publications such as the Washington Post and the New York Times saw themselves as being aloof from questions of the mob and political violence in America.There is a tendency among elite voices to want to say that, “We’re above political violence here in America and we resolve our differences through conversation. Therefore, let’s give everyone a hearing and let’s debate these issues, regardless of how extreme they may be. That is what a democratic country should act like.”

In a sense, they put their faith completely in some abstract idea of “democracy” instead of taking the temperature of what is really happening on the ground.

You live in Portland. How is your experience different from the narrative being offered by the mainstream American news media and other outside observers?

We in Portland have been dealing with right-wing extremists and police abuse for a long time. Portland has experience with the likes of right-wing extremist groups such as Patriot Prayer and the Proud Boys. This is not new to us.

I would go out to protests and see how the political violence is not a result of the breakdown in the monopoly of violence held by the police. The political violence was a result of theProud Boys and the police effectively acting as two different elements of the same side. It wasn’t that the police had lost the monopoly of violence. It was the police were shooting us in order to allow the Proud Boys to march through the city without proper permits.

Most mainstream news media coverage of the protests which have taken place here in Portland, recently and before, totally fail to acknowledge or even fathom the police involvement in the rise of the far right in this community. That failure has cascaded to the point that we are now at a point where the press is painting the current crisis as some type of grudge match between the feds and the anarchists. In fact, the protest movement is a very diverse group of people — especially by Portland standards — who are coming out night after night and making extraordinarily clear demands and being absolutely brutalized in the streets every night.

What too many reporters in many cases are trying to do is figure out how to resolve the situation, rather than understanding it and properly explaining to the public what is really happening and the context for it. By doing so, too many reporters are creating false equivalencies regarding the various forces at play here in Portland.

What does Portland exemplify, in terms of the protests and the Trump’s regime’s reaction?

It is an example of Donald Trump attempting to rise to the level of a right-wing political strongman. Donald Trump is using classic authoritarian tactics that one does not often see in a healthy democracy. Donald Trump is deliberately undermining the Constitution by using federal law to circumvent local governments’ control over their police forces.

Trump and William Barr’s de facto secret police are literally disappearing people off the streets of Portland and in other parts of the country where the Democratic Party is in power. How do you explain what is happening to people who do not live in those communities? Who are not being targeted by Trump and his henchmen?

The specific federal forces involved are BORTAC — the Border Patrol Tactical Unit — and the U.S. Marshals Special Operations Group and others, under the coordination of the Department of Homeland Security. BORTAC have been in Portland shooting at people and launching tear gas. BORTAC is not trained for crowd or riot control. They are trained to engage in raids against migrants and to separate children from their mothers. That is what BORTAC does. They pride themselves on being the most militarized branch and group of the U.S. law enforcement community. BORTAC members are extreme Trump supporters. What is happening in Portland and other parts of the country is the border closing in on the citizens of the United States.

BORTAC is loyal to Donald Trump and that’s why he is using them.He’s not using them because they’re the most skilled and adept at riot and crowd control management. That also explains why there are so many incidents of people being shot in the face and otherwise abused here in Portland and other places where BORTAC and other such forces are being deployed by the Trump administration.They don’t know what they’re doing at all.

BORTAC is being used because Trump feels that they are his most loyal forces. That is fully in keeping with the tactics of authoritarian leaders who cultivate secret police whose main function is to serve as the government leader’s private force, one that operates outside of any restraints such as internal review.

The [former] Chilean dictatorship is explicitly supported by Trump’s own supporters, who wear T-shirts that say, “Right-wing death squad” and “Pinochet did nothing wrong.”The American mainstream news media is far too charitable with its narrative that “Trump is playing to his base.”

During the recent protests in Portland, were there moments where you feared that the federal forces were going to start shooting the crowd with lethal rounds?

The fear is very real and it’s constant. The federal forces have assault rifles. They are loaded with live rounds. There are protesters who were throwing fireworks and things of that sort at the courthouse. What if one of the feds has an itchy trigger finger? What if a firework explodes and they then open fire on an entire group of unarmed people?

Trump and their defenders and other apologists will just say, “Well, these poor agents have been overworked for 60 days and look at all the things that have been thrown at them” and so on and so forth. We know what the narrative will be. All a person can do when protesting is to act accordingly and stay focused.

You have been documenting what are now almost 500 attacks, acts of intimidation, vehicular assaults, shootings and other threats by Trump supporters and other members of the right against Black Lives Matter protests. What do we know?

I have never seen this amount of anti-left vigilantism from the right. During the first year of Barack Obama’s administration, the Tea Party was huge, and they mobilized with events all over the country. There were also armed protests in opposition to Obamacare. But those right-wing protesters were not coming out to confront and intimidate a much smaller group of anti-racists. Of course, those anti-Obama Tea Party and anti-health-care type protesters were extremely racist and a breath away from being fascists, but there was not that same energy and menace that we are seeing today.

The idea of these right-wing protesters and militia types being “anti-government” — again, a narrative circulated by the mainstream American news media — is very uncritical, a total misnomer. They are really pro-government. They are entirely in favor of the United States government as controlled by Donald Trump. Their claim to be “libertarians” is a joke.

Those right-wing militias and others sympathetic to them are arming in opposition to Democrats, liberals and progressives.

Right-wing extremists and other terrorists, including white supremacists and neo-Nazis, are also coordinating at times with the police.

They actually say that they are at the protests to “protect the police.” Think about that claim: They are “anti-government” vigilantes who promise that they are trying to protect the police. In essence, these right-wing militias and the like are American citizens who believe it is their role not to become police, but to guard the police. Such a claim is ludicrous.It is a paramilitary force. These right-wing forces are coordinating and positioning themselves to be able to launch a coup against American democracy and the Democratic Party, if the latter gains control of the presidency and government.

The closest parallel with what we are seeing with Trump’s movement would be the “massive resistance” by white people against racial integration in the South during the civil rights movement. I am of the opinion that the United States has not seen such a mobilization of violent, far-right forces to this extent since the 1960s.

Recently, a Trumpist and right-wing militia supporter traveled to Kenosha, Wisconsin and involved himself in the protests there. He apparently shot three people, killing two of them. He crossed state lines illegally with a weapon he was not allowed to own. He was only a teenager, and was radicalized online into right-wing extremism. He is now being valorized by the right-wing media machine. Trump has defended this young man as a hero who was fighting against “criminals” and “looters.” This apparent killer now has hundreds of thousands of dollars pledged to his defense.

Trump has defended Kyle Rittenhouse with the claim he was firing in “self-defense.” In essence, Donald Trump supports the right-wing vigilante movement, which represents the disintegration of the rule of law.

We are witnessing an erosion of democratic norms in this country by Republicans. They accept breaking the law as being viable if it supports “traditional values” — meaning racism. As a practical matter, Donald Trump is spearheading the movement of the Republican Party into a full-on violent racist organization that encourages vigilantism.

In terms of engaging in the worst type of “both-sides-ism” and false equivalencies that helped Trump win and now keep power, the American mainstream news media is now advancing a “mutual combat” narrative in its coverage of Trump’s supporters and the violence in Portland last weekend. How does that narrative contradict what really happened in Portland?

The “mutual combat” framing is inane, legally a non-starter, and obviously supportive of the aggressive party, which is typically the Trump supporters. Their strategy is to provoke fights and then call for “law and order” intervention from a corrupt president.

Patriot Prayer leader Joey Gibsonhas not been leading protests in Portland for a long time. He is a marginal figure, but the American news media has suddenly selected him and lifted him up for no apparent reason other than that he participated in an aggressive and bellicose Trump “caravan” last week during which right-wing vigilantes tried to run people over with their trucks, shot protesters and bystanders with paintball guns, and used pepper spray to attack people.

Should Black Lives Matter, antifascist and other human rights and social justice supporters stop protesting in order to deny Trump’s supporters and other right-wing hooligans a narrative that could hurt Joe Biden nd the the Democrats? In essence, should they make a tactical withdrawal to deny Trump a strategic victory, because of how events will likely be distorted by the media to his advantage?

I will not say what protesters should or shouldn’t do. I do not think what they choose to do or not do will matter much. What is significant is that the far right will deepen its insurgency against the left the more that Donald Trump falters and as he continues demanding “law and order.”

The left would be remiss to engage them on this level. The left is not in the streets to spark a civil war or escalate violent encounters to the point of breaking civil society into protracted sectarian warfare. The left is in the streets to make life better for ordinary people, and to present a version of the future that would be better and more prosperous for everyone. The more the left maintains its sanity against overwhelming odds, the more the right’s paranoia and hysteria will marginalize it in American society. This will create new spaces for progressive causes and movements.

What do you want to warn the American people about? What do you think happens next?

I am worried about crackdowns by Donald Trump and his forces against their direct enemies. This would involve dragging Democrats in front of kangaroo courts and starting to criminalize dissent such that the average American who has a bumper sticker or other affiliation with the Democratic Party or liberal or progressive causes becomes a target for Trump’s zealots.I worry that Trump will find some way to round up the leaders of the Democratic Party and put them in jail or execute them.

That is the future that right-wing conspiracists such as the QAnon people want. They are the crowd that Donald Trump is signaling to. I do not believe that there is much stopping Donald Trump from following through on his extreme impulses. At this point Donald Trump is desperate. If Trump wins again it will just be more fuel on the fire for his followers. The right wing will follow through on his cues and start attacking regular people, not just protesters, who they believe are Democrats.

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https://www.mediamatters.org/qanon-conspiracy-theory/drawing-false-equivalence-between-ilhan-omar-and-marjorie-taylor-greene-not

On  August 11, Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) won her primary campaign for reelection in Minnesota’s heavily Democratic 5th Congressional District. On the same day, Marjorie Taylor Greene, a supporter of the QAnon conspiracy theory, also prevailed in her congressional primary in Georgia, almost definitively securing her a spot in Congress from her Republican-majority district.

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The two could not be more different as political candidates -- Omar is the whip of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, while Greene has long supported the far-right QAnon conspiracy theory -- yet reporters and news outlets are falling into the disingenuous trap of decrying their supposedly shared radicalism and drawing false equivalencies between their beliefs.

In doing so, news outlets are both normalizing the violence-linked QAnon conspiracy theory and helping to push a targeted smear campaign against Omar.

The idea that Greene is somehow the Ilhan Omar of the Republican Party — an idea the National Republican Congressional Committee communications director alluded to when asked about Greene — is not only unfounded, but also a deflection on the part of Republicans to avoid any accountability for Greene’s QAnon roots.

Who is Marjorie Taylor Greene and what is her connection to QAnon?

Greene ran as a Republican and won her runoff GOP primary in Georgia’s 14th Congressional District, functionally securing her a seat in Congress. Greene is an outspoken QAnon supporter and a 9/11 conspiracy theorist who, according to The Washington Post, “has also made racist, anti-Semitic and Islamophobic comments.”

While some Republicans initially distanced themselves from Greene after reports of her QAnon support and other comments surfaced, many embraced her in the wake of the primary election. President Donald Trump enthusiastically praised Greene’s win on Twitter, calling her a “future Republican Star.”

An internal FBI memo published by Yahoo News in 2019 classified QAnon as a domestic terrorism threat because of its ties to violence. The memo explained that the conspiracy theory revolves around a supposedly high-level government official known as “Q” who “posts classified information online to reveal a covert effort, led by President Trump, to dismantle a conspiracy involving ‘deep state’ actors and global elites allegedly engaged in an international child sex trafficking ring." These violent ties include a man who murdered his brother with a sword and another who threatened to kill YouTube employees.

Why the false equivalence? 

In 2019, Omar and Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) publicly criticized Israel’s occupation of Palestine. Republican House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) called their comments worse than those of infamous white supremacist Rep. Steve King (R-IA), who had recently been stripped of his committee assignments. Omar then tweeted, “It's all about the Benjamins baby,” in response to an article reporting that McCarthy was working to punish members of Congress critical of Israel. Omar later apologized for some of her phrasing and accidental use of anti-Semitic tropes while also doubling down on her criticism of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) lobbying group. 

A month later, Omar again drew controversy for her remarks about lobbying by AIPAC:

Some Jewish leaders said she then revived an old trope about divided loyalties among Jewish-Americans when she said, “I want to talk about the political influence in this country that says it is OK for people to push for allegiance to a foreign country.”

She added, “I want to ask, ‘Why is it OK for me to talk about the influence of the (National Rifle Association), or fossil fuel industries or Big Pharma, and not talk about a powerful lobbying group that is influencing policy?’”

Omar’s critical stance gave rise to disingenuous attacks against her by right-wing media figures who claimed that her criticism of Israeli policies makes her horribly anti-Semitic.

Right-wing media outlets have now begun to compare Omar to Greene, falsely claiming that Greene is simply the Republican version of her.

What makes the comparison between the two women particularly outrageous is the fact that Politico unearthed hours of racist and anti-Muslim video rants from Greene’s Facebook, some of which specifically targeted Omar.

Greene described the election of Omar and Tlaib as “an Islamic invasion into our government offices” and called Omar “that woman out of Minnesota" who “has got to wear a head covering." She said, “If you want Islam and Sharia law, you stay over there in the Middle East. … You stay there, and you go to Mecca and do all your thing. And, you know what, you can have a whole bunch of wives, or goats, or sheep, or whatever you want.You stay over there. But in America, see, we’ve made it this great, great country. We don’t want it messed up."

In fact, following the AIPAC controversy, Greene traveled to Capitol Hill in 2019 and filmed herself attempting to confront Omar and Tlaib, who she falsely claimed are “illegitimate members of Congress because they took their congressional oaths of office on the Quran” (Greene said she wanted to make them retake their oath on the Bible). “She also said she wanted to tell them they ‘really should go back to the Middle East if they support Sharia.’”

Greene’s racist rants reportedly include a statement that Black people are being “held slaves to the Democratic Party.” She has also posted “an anti-Semitic conspiracy theory that [liberal philanthropist George] Soros, a Holocaust survivor, collaborated with the Nazis” and secretly controls “every single Democrat politician.”

Despite ample evidence of Greene’s bigotry and racism, right-wing media are still comparing her politics to those of Omar.

Examples of right-wing media drawing false equivalencies

Right-wing media outlets are unapologetically comparing Omar and Greene, implying that they are both equally radical but on opposite sides of the political spectrum.

Even mainstream media are drawing comparisons

While often more subtle than right-wing media, some mainstream media reporters are just as guilty in comparing Omar and Greene. NBC News contributor Dave Wasserman irresponsibly compared Omar and Greene:

After Wasserman posted his tweet, National Republican Congressional Committee Communications Director Chris Pack quote-tweeted it, asking, “What's the (D)iffe(R)ence between the two?”

A number of mainstream media outlets categorized Omar and Greene together when reporting election results, describing them both as controversial without sufficient nuance.

Yet in a sign of how tight Trump’s grip is on the GOP, few Republicans — including those who campaigned against Greene — spoke out in the wake of her primary win. Rep. Steve Scalise (R-LA), GOP Conference Chairwoman Liz Cheney of Wyoming and National Republican Congressional Committee Chairman Tom Emmer of Minnesota had no comment on Wednesday.

A spokesperson to Emmer responded by invoking Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), who came under fire for repeating Jewish tropes that many feel are anti-Semitic. Omar won her primary Tuesday night.

“Are Cheri Bustos and the DCCC going to support Ilhan Omar, given the concern House Democrats have expressed repeatedly with her racism and anti-Semitism?” NRCC spokesman Chris Pack said.

House Democrats responded to the Omar controversy last year by passing two resolutions decrying anti-Semitism, though the Minnesota Democrat wasn’t named in either measure.

McCarthy and GOP congressional leaders are hampered in how they can stop Greene by House rules and legal precedents. If Greene were to win in November, as expected, there’s no way the House can refuse to seat her, despite her incendiary comments.

Comparing Greene and Omar is not only incorrect, but normalizes QAnon 

Falsely suggesting the politics and beliefs of Greene and Omar are equally “radical” is both dangerous and incorrect. Equating Omar’s critical stance on the Israeli occupation of Palestine with Greene’s well-documented support for QAnon, which is rooted in beliefs about Satan-worshipping pedophiles running the world, creates a dangerous normalization of the conspiracy theory at a time when she will be one of at least 20 QAnon supporters on the ballot in November.

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Why is this happening? There are a few journalists out there who are in the tank for Trump and ready to sell whatever nutty conspiracy theory he throws out. But mostly it’s because so much of the mainstream media,terrified of being accused of having a “liberal bias,” will go out of its way to minimize real Republican scandals while blowing up often-imaginary Democratic scandals, all in a bid to appear “balanced.” am

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8/13

https://www.alternet.org/2020/08/trumps-campaign-is-quietly-getting-more-competent-but-its-age-old-strategy-still-seems-to-be-failing/

Mere hours after former Vice President Joe Biden made history by picking Sen. Kamala Harris of California as his running mate — making her the first Black and Asian woman on a presidential ticket — Donald Trump coughed up his response. A little after 10 p.m. on Wednesday night, Trump posted a tweet claiming that “Joe Biden has a racism problem.”

The response on Twitter was, as one can imagine, contemptuous, given that Trump is an overt racist who leans heavily on white nationalist rhetoric. His niece, psychologist Mary Trump, says she’s heard him use the N-word, an accusation that no one sincerely doubts.

“Let’s be real: Trump attacking Biden as racist after Biden nominates the first woman of color for vice president in American history is beyond idiotic,” tweeted Mark Follman, the national affairs editor at Mother Jones, in a typical response.

“Not to mention Trump’s ‘white power’ tweet, his boost for ‘very fine’ torch carrying neo-Nazis etc etc etc,” Follman added.

but this wasn’t yet another case of the president of the United States, intoxicated from Fox News, idiotically lashing out on Twitter. On the contrary, the “racism problem” tweet was a well-edited video that had clearly been put together by the Trump campaign, compiling audio clips of Biden misspeaking or saying tone-deaf things about race, including comments about his 1970s relationships with segregationist senators, for which Harris famously criticized him in a 2019 debate.

In other words, this was a strategic choice by the Trump campaign, which has quietly become more competent in recent weeks (despite having to manage an overgrown toddler as a candidate), after dumping relative newbie Brad Parscale as campaign manager in favor of the more experienced Bill Stepien. This was an example of thefalse-equivalence strategy, and Democrats should be on alert, since earlier versions of this same strategy were used to great effect to defeat Hillary Clinton, John Kerry and Al Gore in elections Democrats expected to win.

Folks who dunk on Trump on Twitter don’t understand that this strategy isn’t meant to convince anyone that Trump isn’ta racist, which Stepien and other campaign officials know full well is an impossible task. The point is to convince potential Democratic voters that both candidates are irredeemably flawed, and they might as well sit this election out rather than sullying themselves by voting for “the lesser of two evils.”

This isn’t even really a Trump innovation, but pretty standard operating procedure in Republican politics. A GOP candidate’s team figures out the various strengths that the Democrat has over their candidate and then systematically starts trying to sow doubt about that with voters, often by projecting their own candidate’s flaws onto the Democrat.

What Republicans understand, and too many political commentators don’t, is that no election is strictly a choice between two candidates. There are always other choices: Not voting at all or throwing your vote away on a third-party candidate. Republicans know they can’t win over more voters than the ones they’ve got, so they win by poisoning the well against the Democrat.

In 2016, the Republicans were saddled with a candidate who is a pathological liar with a long history of corruption, and who doesn’t seem to be in the greatest mental or physical condition. So they turned around and falsely accused Clinton of all these things, giving her the nickname “Crooked Hillary” and claiming she had secret health problems she was hiding from the public.

It was the same story with the 2004 election, when Democrats ran Kerry, a decorated Vietnam veteran, against George W. Bush, whose draft-dodging only made his eagerness to send other people’s kids into a quagmire of a foreign war more suspect. But the Bush campaign directly attacked Kerry’s record, falsely accusing him of embellishing his service record and implying he hadn’t earned his Purple Hearts.

Same story, again, with the 2000 election, in which the Bush campaign was successful in portraying Gore as a liar and a fabulist, and distracting from Bush’s own habit of telling lies — including the ones he unfortunately employed shortly after that, trying to justify his invasion of Iraq.

This “I know you are, but what am I” strategyonly works because the mainstream media — living in perpetual fear of conservatives accusing them of “bias” (which they’ll do no matter what) — is all too eager to play along with Republican efforts to wildly exaggerate Democratic flaws, all so journalists can crow about how they give it equally to “both sides,” and without quite noticing that they are abandoning their duty to the truth with these false equivalences.

The 2016 election offers a perfect example of how the media falls for this trick. Clinton is actually one of the most honest politicians in America, pretty much free of any proven “corruption” despite endless harassment and investigation. Nonetheless, journalists ran with every fake Clinton scandal right-wingers threw at them, from the false accusations against the Clinton Foundation to the email server debacle, because they were more motivated by the desire to look “balanced” than they were by telling the truth. (Sexist stereotypes about female mendacity also drove much of the coverage.) Kerry and Gore got similarly unfair treatment by the press in the name of “balance.”

As I warned repeatedly in 2019 — to no avail — Biden’s foot-in-mouth disease makes this an easy play for the Trump campaign. As my colleague Chauncey DeVega explained this week, Biden possesses a “sense of affinity” with Black voters that makes him too comfortable and leads him to share “impolitic observations at inappropriate times.”

In the past, that kind of nuanced explanation has too often fallen on deaf ears in a media environment more driven by the need to portray “both sides” as equivalent than to explore the truth.

That said, there’s reason this time around to be mildly optimistic that Trump’s efforts at sowing a “both sides are bad, so don’t vote” narrative might not work as well as it did for him in 2016, or as well as it did for Bush in 2000 and 2004. The media just doesn’t seem as interesting in elevating nonsense this time around.

That’s probably because the Trump presidency has been such a massive disaster that even the journalists most devoted to both-sides-ism have, however temporarily, been shocked out of their addiction to false equivalency. As the economy collapses and the U.S. succumbs to the coronavirus pandemic in a way unmatched by the rest of the world — all because of Trump’s maliciousness and recklessness, as well as Republican opposition to competent governance — it’s become impossible to keep a straight face while asserting any moral or political equivalence between Democrats and Republicans.

A similar situation happened in 2008, when the disaster of the George W. Bush presidency finally overcame the mainstream media’s desire to pretend there was no meaningful difference between Democrats and Republicans. Oh, there were efforts to scandalize Obama with nonsense, such as when right-wingers got journalists to take the bait of painting Obama’s Chicago pastor as anti-white and anti-American. But it basically never worked, because that kind of circus sideshow seemed weak in the face of the economic disaster of 2008, the failed response to Hurricane Katrina and the ill-fated invasion of Iraq.

Compared to Donald Trump, Bush is small potatoes in the failed-presidency department. The seriousness of our current crisis makes it difficult for the press to play their silly both-sides false games. So it’s not working for Trump so far.

But it’s still two and a half months until the election, and we know it will feel longer than that. The media’s desire to appear “unbiased” is strong, even in the face of an economic catastrophe and a soaring COVID-19 death rate. Trump will keep trying to make this election about bullshit, and it’s important to stay vigilant against a press that struggles to resist the siren call of false equivalency.

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https://www.alternet.org/2020/05/trump-is-depending-on-the-media-to-completely-fail-at-its-job-and-it-probably-will

even Donald Trump can’t tell us what “Obamagate” is — other than his newest obsession, designed to distract from his total failure to handle the coronavirus pandemic and the resulting economic catastrophe. But with a news media still and always eager to prove it’s equally tough on “both sides,” it’s conceivable that Trump can make Obamagate a thing.

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Eager to pretend that the rising death tolls and skyrocketing unemployment rates don’t exist, Trump has pivoted back to what he always planned on doing in the 2020 campaign: Pump out a bunch of conspiracy theories about former Vice President Joe Biden and other leading Democrats. His plan has always been to get the mainstream media to elevate these baseless smears until they dominate the 2020 election cycle, sucking attention away from Trump’s extensive history of failures, scandals, lies and outright crimes.

And why not? With the help of WikiLeaks and the Russian government — along with the the spinelessness of FBI Director James Comey — Trump was able to trick the media into turning a total non-scandal about Hillary Clinton using a private email account to do government business (something that Trump’s people have done on a much larger scale) into a five-alarm fire that lost her the election. Even though diligent journalists discovered that Trump had been accused of numerous sexual assaults, had defrauded countless people, and had run multiple businesses into the ground, voters in exit polls still thought “but her emails” was the bigger scandal.

Trump is trying to do it again, repeating the word “Obamagate” like a wind-up toy monkey, in hopes that the media will take the hint and start to populate this empty word with details that make it sound like a real scandal. But there’s no scandal there, as Trump himself proved on Monday during an amazing exchange with the Washington Post’s Philip Rucker outside the White House.

Rucker noted that Trump kept saying “Obamagate” was “the biggest political crime in American history,” and asked Trump directly: “What crime exactly are you accusing President Obama of committing?”

Trump, shocked that the press wasn’t doing his dirty work for him (for once), was flabbergasted.

“Uh, Obamagate. It’s been going on for a long time,” Trump said, rambling on without answering the question before concluding, “Some terrible things happened, and it should never be allowed to happen in our country again,” without saying what those “terrible things” were.

Rucker pressed him: “What is the crime?”

Trump replied, “You know what the crime is. The crime is very obvious to everybody.”

This was hilarious but telling. Trump didn’t think he needed to come up with an actual accusation, which is understandable. He’d never had to before! Insinuation and a pretense of outrage had worked well enough to send the press on a wild goose chase to generate fake scandals in the past. Consider the 2016 campaign, with story after story aboutClinton’s “emails,” which were always seen as “damaging,” even though no one could say what damage her emails had done to whom, or even what alleged crime had been committed. (The FBI declined to prosecute her, since there was literally nothing to prosecute.)

In 2011, when Trump’s multi-month project of “just asking questions” about Barack Obama’s birth certificate generated enough of a media frenzy that Obama was forced to release his long-form Hawaii birth certificate, something no white president has ever felt compelled to do.

Trump’s assumption that he doesn’t have to say what “Obamagate” is, exactly, for the media to run with it is sadly proving correct. As Greg Sargent of the Washington Post detailed Thursday, journalists, with help from Republican senators, are starting to color in the boxes of “Obamagate” with enough detail to make it seem substantive. But even the most cursory of glances makes clear there’s no there there.

Some in the mainstream press are struggling to circle in on a notion that the Obama administration acted improperly by investigating incoming national security adviser Michael Flynn’s shady conduct toward Russia during the presidential transition. But Obama didn’t do anything wrong. Trump did.

What actually happened is simple: Obama issued sanctions against Russian leaders in 2016 for interfering with the election. After that, Flynn, before taking office with the Trump administration, had a private conversation with Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak, in which he assured Kislyak not to worry about the sanctions because Trump would get rid of them. Intelligence officials recorded this conversation, since they had Kislyak under surveillance. Obama officials were understandably concerned about what American was making such assurances to Kislyak and wanted to know who it was. That was their legal right and, more importantly, their patriotic duty.

Republicans, with great fanfare, have announced their “discovery” that Flynn’s identity was shared with a number of top Obama officials, including Biden.

This is not a scandal of any kind. Obama’s White House was in charge of maintaining the integrity of American elections. The fact that a prominent figure in the incoming administration was secretly assuring Russian leaders that their interference in 2016 was A-OK was important information. The real scandal would have been if the Obama administration had ignored the fact that Flynn was behaving in a potentially treasonous manner.

This story is complicated, and I imagine readers’ eyes are starting to cross right about now, with simply trying to figure out what the hell is going on. That’s what Trump is counting on — the details are confusing, so voters simply back away with a vague sense that maybe the Obama team did something nefarious, without exactly knowing what that was. That’s precisely what happened with “her emails.”

Unfortunately, as Sargent notes, it’s working. Headlines declaring that the Republicans have released a list of who heard what about Flynn’s underhanded behavior are seen as somehow “boosting” Trump’s narrative or helping to “discredit” the Russia investigation.

“The new information actually does not ‘boost’ Trump’s claims about the Russia investigation or ‘discredit’ it,” Sargent writes. “And if there is ‘no evidence of wrongdoing,’ then it cannot legitimately be ‘turned into an election issue.'”

Remember, this is story where a high-ranking Trump official — Flynn — delivered a backstage high-five to the Russians for interfering with our election, and then lied to the FBI about it. Now the Trump administration, in a blatantly corrupt move, has tried to force the Department of Justice to drop the charges against Flynn, even though hepledguilty to the original charges. (A federal judge has temporarily put that effort on hold.)

What Trump is currently doing is far worse than anything Richard Nixon ever did with Watergate. Yet a gullible media is working overtime to inflate the narrative that somehow it was Obama who did something wrong, because his administration followed the law and tried to stop Michael Flynn from rewarding a foreign government for interfering with our presidential election.

Why is this happening? There are a few journalists out there who are in the tank for Trump and ready to sell whatever nutty conspiracy theory he throws out. But mostly it’s because so much of the mainstream media,terrified of being accused of having a “liberal bias,” will go out of its way to minimize real Republican scandals while blowing up often-imaginary Democratic scandals, all in a bid to appear “balanced.”

There is no balance here. Obama was a lawful and diligent president who was trying to protect our country’s democratic institutions. Trump is a grifting, cheating sleazeball who is weaponizing the DOJ to try to steal an election and who openly invites foreign interference. Any story that doesn’t offer clarity on this contrast is misleading the public and cannot be considered legitimate journalism.

This kind of distorted coverage and journalistic water-carrying can work all too well, unfortunately. In 2016, I had dinner with a friend who isn’t in politics or journalism, but is generally plugged in and follows the news far more closely than most people. Somehow the topic of Clinton’s emails came up and I asked my friend what she thought was in them. She replied that Clinton had accidentally mentioned important state secrets in unsecured emails.

She was shocked to hear, from me, apparently for the first time, that that wasn’t true. As Fred Kaplan of Slate, and apparently no one else, carefully laid out at the time, there was nothing in Clinton’s emailsthat even slightly resembled a threat to national security. Out of 30,000 emails, exactly eight contained information that was legally classified as “top secret.” Seven of those eight discussed information that had already been covered extensively in the press, even if the U.S. government still considered it classified. The other email discussed an inconsequential conversation with the president of Malawi, a nation no Republican could identify on a world map with 25 guesses. If any foreign spy had gotten to it — and none did, remember? — they would have walked away empty-handed.

My friend is smart. She reads the news voraciously. She understand politics better than half of political journalists, probably more. She didn’t know that Clinton’s emails had nothingof interest in them. If she didn’t know, who could? This was a massive failure on the part of the news media.

So the sad truth is that Donald Trump isn’t wrong to believe that he can keep saying “Obamagate” over and over and the news media will do the dirty work of creating a scandal where none exists. It’s always worked before. It is starting to work again. The only hope of saving our democracy is that the press finally stops letting its bizarre theology of “balance” lead once again to the promotion of conspiracy theories over facts. As Sargent’s article shows, the Washington Post is doing a good job. But will the rest of the media choose to pursue the facts over Trump’s invented scandals, or are we doomed to repeat 2016 all over again?

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an vox 520 no lnx

https://www.alternet.org/2020/05/dear-mainstream-media-you-dont-have-to-both-sides-trumps-bleach-injection-suggestion-its-bad-for-you-the-end/

you probably saw Donald Trump’s ridiculous, false and deadly claim last week: that ingesting chemical cleaners could cure humans of the coronavirus. At a White House press briefing on Thursday (4/23/20), the president said:

I see disinfectant, where it knocks it [coronavirus] out in a minute—one minute—and is there a way we can do something like that by injection inside, or almost a cleaning. Because you see it [coronavirus] gets in the lungs and it does a tremendous number on the lungs, so it’d be interesting to check that.

He also suggested that exposing patients to bright lights could help cure them, once again confusing what works on surfaces like tables with the inside of a human body.

It’s worth taking a step back for a second and pausing on the fact that the person in charge of the United States thinks injecting bleach might be a good idea. Trump has consistently spread false information about the pandemic, claiming in February that it would be gone by April due to the warmer weather, and insisting that “we’ll essentially have a flu shot for this in a fairly quick manner.”

His pronouncements have already been fatal: After promoting the drug chloroquine, an Arizona man died and his wife was hospitalized after they ingested fish tank cleaner that contained the substance. Surely more deadly but harder to quantify are his outbursts proclaiming that states should “LIBERATE” themselves from oppressive lockdown measures (some of the lightest in the developed world), encouraging people to go out and demonstrate, thereby spreading the virus.

Unfortunately, for journalists stuck in a corporate media system that promotes deference to authority and finds equivalency even when there is none, the president’s dangerous ramblings need to be treated as legitimate and worthy of discussion, even in apparently adversarial media. Vox (4/23/20), for example, said that it was only “highly unlikely that injecting humans with disinfectants will turn out to be a safe or effective treatment.” The Washington Post (4/24/20) described Trump’s statement as an “unsubstantiated and potentially dangerous” idea. At the risk of stating the obvious, it is not “highly unlikely” but impossible, and Trump’s idea is not merely “potentially” dangerous: No amount of bleach is safe to inject into your body. It will kill human beings, as chemical cleaning product manufacturers immediately warned. (The Post did include a disclaimer: “Do not ingest any bleach or disinfectant.”)

Despite this, USA Today (4/24/20) presented the story as a he-said she-said between two opposing views,describing (4/24/20) Trump’s ludicrous outburst merely as “the latest in a pattern of questionable claims.” “We should inject bleach for our health” is not a “questionable” claim, and would not be treated as such if someone without power or influence made it.

NYT: Trump Muses About Light as Remedy, but Also Disinfectant, Which Is Dangerous

The New York Times(4/24/20) referred to the idea that injecting bleach into your body may cure the coronavirus as an “unproven treatment.”

Perhaps the worst offender of phony both-sidesism, however, was the New York Times (4/24/20), which described the president as “eagerly theorizing—dangerously, in the view of some experts—about the powers of sunlight, ultraviolet light and household disinfectants to kill the coronavirus.”

In other words: “Can injecting bleach kill you? On the one hand, definitely yes. On the other, here is a dummy who thinks it will save you from Covid–19, so let’s teach the controversy.” Refusing to state categorically that ingesting known deadly substances is a bad idea, the wording of the Times article suggests that only “some experts” disagree with the idea, while there are other, pro-bleach drinking authorities out there.

After widespread pushback on social media, the Times amended the offending paragraph, but, if anything, made it worse, changing it to Trump “eagerly theorizing about treatments involving the powers of sunlight, ultraviolet light and household disinfectant that could be harmful if they were used to try to kill the coronavirus.” Injecting bleach “could” be harmful under certain circumstances, but who knows? Certainly not us at the New York Times.

This sort of reporting would be absurd beyond belief in other circumstances involving people without serious power. For example, there were no Times reports stating that, “at the Jonestown camp in Guyana, Rev. Jones eagerly theorized about the benefits of cyanide-laced Kool-Aid that could be harmful in certain circumstances.”

Even CNN’s Anderson Cooper (4/23/20), who has emerged as one of Trump’s most visible and aggressive critics, was anxious not to give an opinion, so strong is the culture of supposed “neutrality” in journalism.He asked his guest, “Is there any evidence about taking a disinfectant that’s used on the table where I’m sitting, and using it internally? That doesn’t seem like a good idea. Am I wrong?”

Cooper, like any adult, knows full well that it is a bad idea, but the spectacle of a CNN anchor asking a doctor about drinking bleach is a bizarre example of what can happen when you combine practices of deference to authority, both-sidesism, and a pretense of neutrality.

The failure of corporate media to call a spade a spade for fear of losing their status as objective arbiters of news has, of late, led to clearly racist actions and statements being laundered as “racially charged” or “racially tinged” or even just “race-related” (FAIR.org, 4/5/19, 11/1/19; CounterSpin, 7/23/19). Likewise, ICE concentration camps are described as “detention centers” (CounterSpin, 1/5/20), which has the effect of making them sound like places unruly school kids who fail to do their homework are sent.

To corporate media: It is OK. Facts are facts, even when the president of the United States disagrees. You don’t have to both-sides this one. Injecting bleach is bad.

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an 420

https://www.alternet.org/2020/04/nyt-slammed-for-terminal-both-sides-ism-after-reporting-on-trumps-household-disinfectant-suggestion/

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https://www.alternet.org/2020/03/the-right-wing-coronavirus-deniers-want-to-kill-expertise-and-they-could-entice-trump-to-court-disaster/

no lnx

The right-wing coronavirus deniers want to kill expertise — and they could entice Trump to court disaster

Written by Nancy LeTourneau / Washington Monthly March 31, 2020

Back in 2012, Donald Trump tweeted this:

Donald J. Trump

@realDonaldTrump

The concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive.

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Paul Krugman is right to suggest that we might experience a bit of déjà vu when we watch how the president and his enablers are responding to the coronavirus.

Let me summarize the Trump administration/right-wing media view on the coronavirus: It’s a hoax, or anyway no big deal. Besides, trying to do anything about it would destroy the economy. And it’s China’s fault, which is why we should call it the “Chinese virus.”

Just as there are climate science deniers, there are a whole range of coronavirus deniers out there as well. They come in many different shapes and sizes, but the most common are those who simply deny the scope of the problem. While they accept that the virus exists, they tend to believe that Democrats, the media, or the “deep state” (pick your villain) are simply exaggerating the problem in order to make Trump look bad.

The more perverse of these folks started the Twitter hashtag, #FilmYourHospital. They take videos of the outside of hospitals and claim that the lack of activity indicates that the hype is all a hoax.

DeAnna Lorraine????

?

@DeAnna4Congress

Just went to 2 hospitals in LA to check out these “War Zones” the MSM keeps telling us about.??

They are very quiet & EMPTY.

We are not being told the truth. Why?? Let’s get #FilmYourHospital trending. We ARE the news now. We can’t trust the news. Post pics of ur hospital here!

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One of the most prominent coronavirus deniers is radio talk show host Bill Mitchell. His most recent schtick has been to rail against the “stay at home” orders being issued by governors.

Bill Mitchell

@mitchellvii

I promise you, when we granted Governors these emergency powers, no one envisioned them shutting down their state for months at a time and imposing martial law.

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8:19 AM - Mar 31, 2020

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But it was Mitchell who initiated the right wing attacks on Dr. Anthony Fauci. It all started back on March 3rd.

Bill Mitchell

@mitchellvii

So this Dr. Anthony Fauci is pushing the panic button today.  Always helpful. Talking about closing schools and businesses?

Hell, why don't we just shut down the whole country over 104 sick, 6 dead?

Sorry President Trump, but replace this crackpot.

Almost immediately Fauci was accused of being a Democratic plant. The idea that he was a member of the so-called “deep state” took hold and eventually an email from Fauci surfaced among those that had been released by WikiLeaks. In it, the doctor had praised Hillary Clinton for her testimony before the House Benghazi Committee. Now the deniers were off to the races. They were soon doing the same thing to Dr. Deborah Birx.

Bill Mitchell

@mitchellvii

EXCLUSIVE: Dr. Birx's Connections with the Clinton Foundation and Obama Unfortunately Indicate Conflicted Loyaltieshttps://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2020/03/exclusive-dr-birxs-connections-with-the-clinton-foundation-and-obama-unfortunately-indicate-conflicted-loyalties/?utm_source=Twitter&utm_medium=PostTopSharingButtons&utm_campaign=websitesharingbuttons …

EXCLUSIVE: Dr. Birx's Connections with the Clinton Foundation and Obama Unfortunately Indicate...

Is Dr. Deborah Birx, the doctor with the scarf, a voice of reason or another Deep State doctor pushing economic disaster and suffering? Her past unfortunately provides the answer. Dr. Deborah Birx...

thegatewaypundit.com

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Isaac Stanley-Becker makes the important point about all of this (emphasis mine).

[T]he disregard for expert guidance being pushed by some conservative and libertarian voices goes further — aimed not simply at proving Fauci wrong but at painting him as an agent of the “deep state” that Trump has vowed to dismantle. The smear campaign taking root online, and laying the groundwork for Trump to cast aside the experts on his own coronavirus task force, relies centrally on the idea that there is no expertise that rises above partisanship, and that everyone has an agenda.

This is something we’ve seen over and over again from right-wingers. Whenever someone says something they don’t like—especially if it challenges “dear leader”—all they have to do is find a remote connection to a Democrat (preferably Hillary Clinton), and the opposing opinion can be discarded as nothing more than partisanship. That is how the right is attempting to kill the whole notion of expertise—be it on anything from climate change to coronavirus. The mainstream media provides an assist to those efforts when they assume a “both sides” approach to every issue instead of prioritizing the truth.

Over the course of the last three months, Donald Trump has dallied in many of the opinions espoused by these coronavirus deniers. His decision to extend the guidelines calling for social distancing and other measures to mitigate the virus indicate that at this point, he’s still listening to the experts—even if it is merely for his own self-interest. But we’re not out of the woods yet. The deniers are waiting in the wings with their conspiracy theory guns loaded for the moment he grows impatient with the experts.

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https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2020/02/23/meet-anti-greta-young-youtuber-campaigning-against-climate-alarmism/

no lnx vid

Climate and Environment

The anti-Greta: A conservative think tank takes on the global phenomenon

How a group allied with the Trump administration is paying a German teen to question established climate science.

Naomi Seibt poses for a portrait near her home in Munster, Germany. Seibt, 19, uses YouTube to denounce “climate alarmism,” countering the arguments of young climate activist Greta Thunberg.

Naomi Seibt poses for a portrait near her home in Munster, Germany. Seibt, 19, uses YouTube to denounce “climate alarmism,” countering the arguments of young climate activist Greta Thunberg. (Sebastien Van Malleghem for The Washington Post)

By

Desmond Butler and

Juliet Eilperin

Feb. 23, 2020

For climate skeptics, it’s hard to compete with the youthful appeal of global phenomenon Greta Thunberg. But one U.S. think tank hopes it’s found an answer: the anti-Greta.

Naomi Seibt is a 19-year-old German who, like Greta, is blond, eloquent and European. But Naomi denounces “climate alarmism,” calls climate consciousness “a despicably anti-human ideology,” and has even deployed Greta’s now famous “How dare you?” line to take on the mainstream German media.

“She’s a fantastic voice for free markets and for climate realism,” said James Taylor, director of the Arthur B. Robinson Center for Climate and Environmental Policy at the Heartland Institute, an influential libertarian think tank in suburban Chicago that has the ear of the Trump administration.

In December, Heartland headlined Naomi at its forum at the UN climate conference in Madrid, where Taylor described her as “the star” of the show. Last month, Heartland hired Naomi as the young face of its campaign to question the scientific consensus that human activity is causing dangerous global warming.

“Naomi Seibt vs. Greta Thunberg: whom should we trust?” asked Heartland in a digital video. Later this week, Naomi is set to make her American debut at the Conservative Political Action Conference, or CPAC, a high-profile annual gathering just outside Washington of right-leaning activists.

If imitation is the highest form of flattery, Heartland’s tactics amount to an acknowledgment that Greta has touched a nerve, especially among teens and young adults. Since launching her protest two years ago outside the Swedish parliament at age 15, Greta has sparked youth protests across the globe and in 2019 was named Time magazine’s “Person of the Year,” the youngest to ever win the honor.

The teenager has called on the nations of the world to cut their total carbon output by at least half over the next decade, saying that if they don’t, “then there will be horrible consequences.”

“I want you to panic,” she told attendees at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, last year. “I want you to feel the fear I feel every day. And then I want you to act.”

Naomi, for her part, argues that these predictions of dire consequences are exaggerated. In a video posted on Heartland’s website, she gazes into the camera and says, “I don’t want you to panic. I want you to think.”

Graham Brookie directs the Digital Forensic Research Lab, an arm of the nonprofit Atlantic Council that works to identify and expose disinformation. While the campaign “is not outright disinformation,” Brookie said in an email, it “does bear resemblance to a model we use called the 4d’s — dismiss the message, distort the facts, distract the audience, and express dismay at the whole thing.”

Brookie added: “The tactic is intended to create an equivalency in spokespeople and message. In this case, it is a false equivalency between a message based in climate science that went viral organically and a message based in climate skepticism trying to catch up using paid promotion.”

Naomi said her political activism was sparked a few years ago when she began asking questions in school about Germany’s liberal immigration policies. She said the backlash from teachers and other students hardened her skepticism about mainstream German thinking. More recently, she said that watching young people joining weekly “Fridays For Future” protests inspired by Greta helped spur her opposition to climate change activism.

“I get chills when I see those young people, especially at Fridays for Future. They are screaming and shouting and they’re generally terrified,” she said in an interview. “They don’t want the world to end.”

Naomi said she does not dispute that greenhouse gas emissions are warming the planet, but she argues that many scientists and activists have overstated their impact.

“I don’t want to get people to stop believing in man-made climate change, not at all,” she said. “Are manmade CO2 emissions having that much impact on the climate? I think that’s ridiculous to believe.”...

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https://www.drillednews.com/post/why-is-news-coverage-leaving-out-the-fossil-fuel-funding-of-the-anti-greta

[pix]

Journalists are creating a false equivalence between environmental activist Greta Thunberg and a 19-year-old German Youtuber named Naomi Seibt, without including information about the fossil fuel ties of the group funding her.

Seibt recently joined the Heartland Institute, a think tank with documented fossil fuel industry funding, and is scheduled to speak at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington, D.C., this week.

The coverage of Seibt, which has appeared in outlets including The Washington Post and The Independent, has focused on her “skepticism” while failing to note her fossil fuel ties, which are not limited to the funding connection. Several of her talking points are demonstrably false, decades-old talking points cooked up by the fossil fuel industry itself.

When mainstream media outlets generally considered to be credible leave out such details, subsequent pieces in smaller outlets tend to follow their framing, which can allow disinformation to propagate more quickly.

The Washington Post, which was the first American media outlet to cover Seibt, described her as “like Greta...blond, eloquent and European.” Thunberg is a brunette, but the more important difference between her and Seibt is that she cites scientific studies, while many of Seibt’s points on climate come from industry, not science.

The Post's story stated that the Heartland Institute is “funded largely by anonymous donors” without mentioning any of the known donors, some of which are fossil fuel companies or trade groups that represent the industry.

When the Post story came out, Seibt had about 50,000 YouTube followers, a relatively small audience for the platform. In the days since, she has gained more than 10,000 more.

During a recentinvestigation by German outlets CORRECTIV and Frontal21, Heartland director James Taylor told undercover journalists that much of the organization's money is funneled through the dark money group Donors Trust, which has ties to Charles Koch.

“Donors Trust is now directing between two-thirds and three-quarters of its budget to Heartland to support its climate-skeptical positions," Taylor told the undercover reporters.

The American Fuel and Petrochemical Manufacturers, an industry trade group whose members include ExxonMobil, Chevron and BP, also gave $75,000 to the Heartland Institute in 2017.

The Post story also quoted Graham Brookie, who directs the Digital Forensic Research Lab, an arm of the nonprofit Atlantic Council. Brookie said the ideology Seibt presents “is not outright disinformation," but that it does "bear resemblance to a model we use called the 4d’s — dismiss the message, distort the facts, distract the audience, and express dismay at the whole thing.”

The Post's story did not mention that the Atlantic Council is funded by ExxonMobil, ConocoPhillips, the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company, Chevron, Shell, and BP.

In response to a request for comment, The Washington Post’s Molly Gannon said only, “Our story speaks for itself.”

Other news outlets seem to have copied the omission. The Guardian, The Independent, France24, the Daily Mail, Mediaite, Mic, and MassLive all published follow-on stories that did not mention the Heartland Institute’s financial backing from the fossil fuel industry.

The Heartland Institute seems to be trying to look like it has the youth on its side. So it has found a Gen Z surrogate who can parrot decades-old fossil fuel talking points, and earned major press coverage that frames her as a figure who compares to Thunberg, while completely leaving out the group's obvious, and documented, oil and gas industry connections.

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https://www.alternet.org/2020/01/how-cnns-jake-tapper-is-failing-to-tell-the-truth-about-republican-disinformation-campaigns/

no lnx

How CNN’s Jake Tapper is failing to tell the truth about Republican disinformation campaigns

Written by Nancy LeTourneau / Washington Monthly January 14, 2020

Jake Tapper has shown himself to be one of the more responsible journalists when it comes to prioritizing the truth over balance in his reporting. For example, here is his response to Republicans who have suggested that Democrats were mourning the death of Soleimani.

Recently Tapper made an important point about how disinformation campaigns don’t always originate with foreign adversaries.

“While we are all bracing for what the Iranians might to do to us as this conflict escalates, let’s not lose sight of what Americans are already doing to each other,” says @JakeTapper about misleading and false information being spread on social media. #CNNSOTU pic.twitter.com/EwWfEKNLQ0

— State of the Union (@CNNSotu) January 5, 2020

As I have already noted, it wasn’t just Russia that launched a disinformation campaign against Hillary Clinton in order to influence the 2016 election. Peter Schweizer, with an assist from mainstream media, spread a smear against the former secretary of state that was demonstrably false.

But I have to take issue with how Tapper framed his concern. Notice the examples he gave of people who spread knowingly false information. They included:

Bob Salera, Deputy Communications Director for the National Republican Congressional Committee, who tweeted a doctored video of a Biden speech, referring to the former vice president as a “white nationalist.”

Tony Shaffer, a member of Trump’s 2020 advisory board, who tweeted a doctored video that makes Speaker Nancy Pelosi appear to be intoxicated.

Donald Trump, who tweeted a video of Rep. Ilhan Omar dancing, along with the lie that it was filmed on 9/11.

The White House press secretary, who tweeted a doctored video of a Trump press conference, suggesting that a reporter had rough-housed a staff member.

It strikes me that all four of those examples have one important thing in common: they came from Republicans. Yet, during his commentary, Tapper blames this kind of disinformation on “folks in the political world” and ends by cautioning us not to lose sight of “what Americans are doing to each other.” In an apparent nod to balance, he failed to tell the truth, which is that we shouldn’t lose sight of what Republicans are doing to our political discourse.

I believe that this is an example of how ingrained the whole idea of bothsiderism has become for almost everyone in the mainstream media. It runs so deep that even Jake Tapper feels the need to hedge his bets when it comes to naming the source of domestic disinformation campaigns. Republicans will continue to exploit that opening as long as journalists fail to hold them accountable.

Nancy LeTourneau is a contributing writer for the Washington Monthly. Follow her on Twitter @Smartypants60.

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https://www.alternet.org/2019/12/chuck-todd-needs-to-do-more-than-issue-a-mea-culpa/

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Chuck Todd needs to do more than issue a mea culpa

Written by Nancy LeTourneau / Washington MonthlyDecember 27, 2019

During an interview with Peter Wade for Rolling Stone, Chuck Todd admitted that he was “naive” when Kellyanne Conway referred to “alternative facts” on his show, Meet the Press.

The Ukraine story for me really crystallized it. And for good or bad, our show has been at the forefront of this. The first Sunday of the Trump administration is when the phrase, “alternative facts” was debuted. It was on Meet the Press Rudy that Giuliani used the phrase “Truth isn’t truth.” So look, whether we’d liked it or not, our platform has been used, or they’ve attempted to use our platform to essentially disseminate, or to sort of, what I would say, is lay the groundwork for this…

I fully admit, listening to you ask that question now, and me giving you the honest answer of, yeah, I guess I really believed they wouldn’t do this. Just so absurdly naive in hindsight.

Jay Rosen rejects the idea that Todd’s performance can be written off as naive. Instead, he calls it “strategic blindness.”

By “strategic blindness” I mean what people mean when they quote Upton Sinclair: “It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.”

How naive could Todd have been during all of those months that Donald Trump was peddling the birther lie about Barack Obama as a way to launch himself on the national political stage? Where was Todd back in 2012 when political scientists Thomas Mann and Norman Ornstein wrote that “the GOP has become an insurgent outlier in American politics. It is ideologically extreme; scornful of compromise; unmoved by conventional understanding of facts, evidence and science; and dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition?”

Chuck Todd has been the political director at NBC News since 2007. He is heralded as an expert on the subject. And yet it has taken him until 2019 to grasp that Republicans have been manipulating him with their lies.

The interview with Wade was primarily a promotion for a special edition of Meet the Press on December 29 that will focus on the weaponization of disinformation. But as Rosen notes, nowhere does Todd talk about what he will do differently based on this new awareness.

So what will they do now? My answer: they have no earthly idea. This is what I mean by an epistemological crisis. Chuck Todd has essentially said that on the right there is an incentive structure that compels Republican office holders to use their time on Meet the Press for the spread of disinformation. So do you keep inviting them on the air to do just that? If so, then you are breaking faith with the audience and creating a massive problem in real time fact-checking. If not, then you just broke the show in half.

There is simply nothing in the playbook at Meet the Press that tells the producers what to do in this situation.

You might recall that, back in 2013, Todd famously stated that it was not the media’s job to correct Republican disinformation about Obamacare. Lest anyone assume that kind of thinking is limited to Todd, I would remind you that during the Scooter Libby trial, a Cheney press aide revealed that the Bush administration preferred going on Meet the Press with Tim Russert because it was “our best format,” a program where political handlers can “control the message.” Linda Hirshman explained why.

The Russert Test was a disaster because it rewarded people willing to lie unabashedly on TV.They lied because they could not truthfully defend their positions. But Russert’s famed “gotcha” research couldn’t catch them. Much has been said this eulogizing week about Russert’s hard-working ways assembling the material in advance of the show. Old metal. When someone told a new lie on Meet the Press, such as when Dick Cheney flat-out denied he had ever said that intelligence confirmed the Al Qaeda/Iraq link, Meet the Press had no procedure for producing the contrary evidence.

Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about how David Roberts coined the phrase “post-truth politics” to describe Republicans back in 2011.

Republicans thus talk about “taxes” and “spending” and “regulation” in the abstract, since Americans oppose them in the abstract even as they support their specific manifestations. They talk about cutting the deficit even as they slash taxes on the rich and launch unfunded wars. They talk about free markets even as they subsidize fossil fuels. They talk about American exceptionalism even as they protect fossil-fuel incumbents and fight research and infrastructure investments.

In short, Republicans have mastered post-truth politics. They’ve realized that their rhetoric doesn’t have to bear any connection to their policy agenda. They can go through different slogans, different rationales, different fights, depending on the political landscape of the moment. They need not feel bound by previous slogans, rationales, or fights.

In that endeavor, Republicans have had a willing partner in a media whose playbook was limited to viewing every issue from the two sides of the partisan divide. In the process, they abandoned the idea of seeking the truth. That allowed the GOP to traffic in disinformation and culminated in a president who has now told over 15,000 lies since being inaugurated.

While we all welcome Todd’s recent mea culpa, none of this gets resolved until the media finds a way to prioritize truth over balance.

Nancy LeTourneau is a contributing writer for the Washington Monthly. Follow her on Twitter @Smartypants60.

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https://www.alternet.org/2019/12/how-the-new-york-times-is-botching-its-impeachment-coverage-and-empowering-republicans

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How the New York Times is botching its impeachment coverage and empowering Republicans

Written by Nancy LeTourneau / Washington Monthly December 16, 2019

On Sunday, the Washington Post reported that the editorial boards of over a dozen newspapers have called for the impeachment of Donald Trump.

Washington Post: The case for impeachment

USA Today: USA TODAY’s Editorial Board: Impeach President Trump

New York Times: Impeach

New York Daily News: The truth hurts: The House Intelligence Committee presents a coherent and compelling case for impeachment

Philadelphia Inquirer: Impeach President Donald Trump | Philadelphia Inquirer Editorial Board

Boston Globe: Impeach the president???????

Los Angeles Times: Editorial: We’ve Seen Enough: Trump should be impeached

San Francisco Chronicle: Editorial: What is the alternative to impeachment????????

Tampa Bay Times: The case for impeachment | Editorial???????

Orlando Sentinel: The House should vote to impeach Trump, and the Senate should remove him from office | Editorial???????

Chicago Sun-Times: The case for impeachment over censure for President Donald Trump???????

Salt Lake Tribune: Tribune Editorial: Impeachment proceeds as it should

Honolulu Star-Advertiser: Editorial: It’s now time to impeach Trump???????

Following a brief summary of where things stand, the New York Times editorial board wrote this about congressional Republicans.

So far, Republican legislators have shown little sign of treating this constitutional process with the seriousness it demands.

Instead, they have been working overtime to abet the president’s wrongdoing. They have spread toxic misinformation and conspiracy theories to try to justify his actions and raged about the unfairness of the inquiry, complaining that Democrats have been trying to impeach Mr. Trump since he took office…

The Republicans’ most common defenses of Mr. Trump’s behavior fall flat in the face of the evidence.

They go on to summarize the evidence of the president’s impeachable offenses.

That is in stark contrast to how the news division of the same publication handled their coverage of the impeachment vote in the House Judiciary Committee. Jay Rosen noted the language that was employed.

Jay Rosen

@jayrosen_nyu

This is it, people. This is all they got. All phrasing from a single story in the New York Times today. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/13/us/politics/impeachment-partisan-trump.html … Asymmetrical polarization is just too much for the institution as currently led. So they changed it to 50/50 polarization and put it on page one.

In the article Rosen linked to, reporter Michael Shear highlighted several exchanges like this.

Even for members of a profession who are used to talking past each other, it was striking how unwilling both Republicans and Democrats on the committee were to concede even an inch to the other side.

“Ukraine was not aware of the aid,” Mr. Johnson insisted Thursday, referring to the $391 million in security assistance that Mr. Trump had ordered withheld. If they didn’t know the money had been frozen, he explained, Ukraine couldn’t have been on the receiving end of a pressure campaign by the president.

When it was his turn, Representative Steve Cohen, Democrat of Tennessee, asserted exactly the opposite, alluding to email evidence and testimony that disproved Mr. Johnson’s argument. “They knew it on July the 25,” Mr. Cohen said of the Ukranians. “There were communications from the embassy that have been released that they knew the aid was being held up. They knew it was being held up.”

Shear could have referred to other reporting in the New York Times to demonstrate that it was Representative Cohen who was being factual.

As deputy foreign minister, it was Olena Zerkal’s job to read incoming diplomatic cables from embassies around the world. One from Washington caught her eye back in July, she recalled: It said the Trump administration had frozen military aid for Ukraine.

“We had this information,” Ms. Zerkal said in an interview. “It was definitely mentioned there were some issues.”

Instead, Shear went on to relay several other instances where Democrats said one thing and Republicans the opposite. He assumes that there is some value in reporting that there were “disputes over basic facts” without informing his readers what the evidence tells us about those facts. That is how he reaches the conclusion that “both sides engaged in a kind of mutually assured destruction.” Nowhere in his reporting does Shear acknowledge what the New York Times editorial board stated so clearly: that Republicans “have spread toxic misinformation and conspiracy theories to try to justify [Trump’s] actions.”

What is most revealing about these two pieces from the New York Times is that the editorial board of the publication is providing facts in support of their opinion, while the news division is trafficking in bothsiderism and ignoring the facts.

At a time in our history when one of the greatest dangers we face is an assault on the truth, the kind of bothsiderism promulgated by reporters like Shear plays right into the hands of the attempt by congressional Republicans to be the “merchants of doubt.” Their goal is to muddy the evidence and promote the idea that there is an “unresolved controversy with two sides.” It is an insidious form of propaganda that undermines facts and evidence.

As Thomas Mann and Norman Ornstein wrote back in 2012 when political polarization had become obviously asymmetrical, “a balanced treatment of an unbalanced phenomenon distorts reality.” In 2014, Ornstein went on the make a remarkably prescient prediction.

Saying both sides are equally responsible, insisting on equivalence as the mantra of mainstream journalism, leaves the average voter at sea, unable to identify and vote against those perpetrating the problem. The public is left with a deeper disdain for all politics and all politicians, and voters become more receptive to demagogues and those whose main qualification for office is that they have never served, won’t compromise, and see everything in stark black-and-white terms.

Ornstein wrote that five years ago when a lot of media outlets were taking a “both sides do it” approach to the Republican strategy of total obstruction. He was right to suggest that it left the average voter unable to “identify and vote against those perpetuating the problem.” As a result, we wound up with a demagogue in the White House and one of his chief enablers in charge of the Senate trial for his removal from office.

If ever there was a time for journalists to prioritize truth over balance, this is it. Pretending to stay above the fray by avoiding the facts is not a neutral position. The news room at the New York Times could learn a thing or two about that from their editorial board.

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https://www.alternet.org/2019/11/the-media-must-admit-that-the-republican-party-is-completely-detached-from-reality/

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The media must admit that the Republican Party is completely detached from reality

President Donald J. Trump talks to reporters outside the South Portico entrance of the White House Friday, July 5, 2019, prior to boarding Marine One to begin a weekend trip to Bedminster, N.J. (Official White House Photo by Joyce N. Boghosian)

Written by Eric Boehlert / Daily Kos November 15, 2019

Republicans proudly advertised their radical ways during Wednesday’s impeachment hearings into Donald Trump, wallowing in conspiracies and embracing debunked claims. The question now: How does the Beltway media cover a party that has aggressively removed itself from reality? How does the news business describe and treat a political party that routinely echoes the most unbelievable claims from Fox News and the darkest corners of the right-wing media?

The truth is, this is a decadeslong game of dare that Republicans have been playing with the press, as members of the party uniformly become more radical and more antidemocratic, and basically challenge the press to call them out, knowing full well it won’t happen. That’s because the Beltway press basically revolves around the central idea that there are two major competing parties in this country and that they are mirror opposites of each other. Republicans are just as conservative as Democrats are liberal. Republicans are just as serious as Democrats are. Republicans are just as fact-based and honorable as Democrats are. That false equivalency drives political coverage in this country, and has for decades.

Why this obsession? Because to concede that one party operates under a radically different set of guidelines (or no guidelines at all, in the case of the GOP), journalists have to do two things. They have to defend themselves against allegations of “liberal media bias,” and they have to throw out the old, dependable rule book that allowed the press to lazily suggest that Republicans and Democrats function on the same plane, and therefore had to be treated similarly.

But how on earth do you watch the Republican performances during the public impeachment hearings and still cling to that claim? How do you pretend a party that spent hours asking witnesses about Alex Jones-type conspiracy theories somehow functions on a parallel track with Democrats, who spent the hearings ensconced in facts, testimony, and firsthand witness accounts?

The equivalent would be if, during a 2002 congressional hearing, Democrats had spent hours badgering witnesses with 9/11 Truther questions, and the press had pretended that it was totally normal. It’s not! And neither is today’s irrational and reckless GOP.

The problem is that the press won’t accept that glaring fact. But there were signs after the first impeachment hearing that more and more D.C. journalists are willing to discuss just how far afield the Republican Party has gone as it follows Fox News down the rabbit hole. “We are living in a moment where we have a part of one of our major political parties that is just not accepting the premise, is just not accepting facts that are facts,” conceded NBC’s Chuck Todd.

Journalists really had no choice, given the stunning display Republicans put on at the hearings. And it wasn’t just one or two rogue members who used their time to push fictional narratives about Ukraine supposedly double-crossing the United States during the 2016 American election, or claimed that there’s simply no proof of an attempted “quid pro quo” with Ukraine, even though the White House transcript of a summer phone call with the country’s leader clearly spells out exactly that.

It was the vast majority of Republican committee members, as well as the GOP’s general counsel, who oversaw truly bizarre bouts of questioning that seemed to leave the witnesses at times stumped and confused, simply because the questions were not based in reality. Instead, they were based on close viewings of Sean Hannity’s television program.

It wasn’t spin or impassioned defense that was on display. It was up-is-down Orwellian rhetoric, and it had been telegraphed by Republicans for weeks, ever since the impeachment story broke, and ever since a parade of government officials began testifying about the obvious bribery scheme that was cooked up inside the White House. What happened with the hearings, though, was that the entire nation got to see the GOP’s descent into folly in full view.

But here’s the key point: Most casual news consumers don’t know that Republicans have become detached from reality as they watch the hearings unfold. (I mean, Republicans sound convincing when they spout convoluted claims about Ukraine working to elect Hillary Clinton.) And that’s why it’s important that journalists do their jobs and spell out what’s truly going on, and not depend on the lazy both-sides crutch in order to avoid necessary truth-telling about the state of today’s GOP.

This was a hallmark media failure during the Obama years, as the D.C. press steadfastly refused to report plainly on how radical the GOP was becoming.  Republicans routinely obliterated Beltway precedents when it came to granting Obama the leeway that previous presidents were given by their partisan foes in Congress. Yet at each step along the way, journalists pulled back, refusing to detail the seismic shift taking place.Instead, news outlets  portrayed the obstruction as routine, and often blamed Obama for not being able to avoid the showdowns.

We saw it with the GOP’s gun law obstructionism, the sequester obstructionism, the government shutdown obstructionism, the Chuck Hagel confirmation obstructionism, the Susan Rice secretary of state nomination obstructionism, the Hurricane Sandy emergency relief obstructionism, and the consistent obstruction of judicial nominees.

When Republicans wouldn’t allow a vote on the Obama-backed background check bill in the wake of the Sandy Hook Elementary School gun massacre in Connecticut, even though the initiative enjoyed 90% public support, the press didn’t depict the obstruction as radical.Instead, the news media often blamed Obama for not being able to work with Republicans. (He doesn’t schmooze enough!)

When Republicans announced in the winter of 2016 that they would categorically ignore any Supreme Court nominee Obama put forward in the wake of Justice Antonin Scalia’s death, the press pretended that it was Obama who was sparking a “partisan” fight simply by fulfilling his constitutional duty.

The impeachment hearings confirm that Republicans have taken complete flight from reality. It’s the media’s job to say so.

Eric Boehlert is a veteran progressive writer and media analyst, formerly with Media Matters and Salon. He is the author of Lapdogs: How the Press Rolled Over for Bush and Bloggers on the Bus. You can follow him on Twitter @EricBoehlert.

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https://www.alternet.org/2019/11/false-balance-infects-the-entire-mainstream-media-making-it-regurgitate-nonsense-as-if-it-were-news/

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False ‘balance’ infects the entire mainstream media — making it regurgitate nonsense as if it were news

Written by John Atcheson / Common Dreams November 3, 2019

The other day, while listening to that liberal bastion, NPR, the newscaster mentioned that another witness had given testimony that would be damaging to Trump in the House’s impeachment inquiry.  In a transition so seamless it was an integral part of the story, the anchor immediately went on to say that Republicans claim the process is flawed, illegitimate, and partisan.

Well, yes. But is this news?  Of course, they object to the process.  Don’t criminals object to being arrested? Don’t speeders object to getting a speeding ticket?  The only reason to give the Republicans’ objection essentially equivalent status to damning testimony in a Presidential impeachment inquiry would be if it were valid.

But it isn’t.  Not even close.  And NPR isn’t alone in this false “balance” which infects the entire mainstream media, making it puke out nonsense as if it were news.

Republicans are mounting a counter-narrative that is not only baseless and intentionally deceptive, but it is also motivated by a dangerous tendency to put loyalty to party above loyalty to country.  Things like the constitution, the rule of law, and the truth are swept aside in order to preserve the party’s grip on power.

Remember those Republican Congressmen storming the Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility – a highly secure meeting room – just before Deputy Assistant Defense Secretary Laura Cooper gave damning testimony confirming Trump’s use of public money and abuse of national security policy to blackmail Ukraine?  Many of those demanding entry were, in fact, members of one of the committees in charge of the investigation and therefore allowed entry. This whole charade was simply a desperate attempt to change the narrative from Trump’s increasingly obvious guilt to one about a flawed process. And of course there was a press conference, and of course, the press repeated Matt Gaetz’ utter nonsense about Democrats running a “kangaroo court.”

Yes, Vox and a few others noted that the Republican’s stunt may have compromised national security; and yes, many deplored the lack of decorum, and yes, there were calls for less partisan behavior – as if both sides were equally at fault for the riot.

But those are the least of the problems with the media’s coverage of the impeachment proceedings.

When even the so-called liberal media’s response to any impeachment story is a knee-jerk reaction that gives equal time and credence to Republican talking points and red herrings, something is deeply wrong with the media in America.

And it didn’t begin with Trump’s impeachment.

In a recent column, Paul Krugman pointed out, once again, that the media has given credence to the Republican’s hypocrisy on budget deficits for decades now. The on-again-off-again hysteria over the deficits corresponds precisely with who’s in power.  When Democrats control the White House, deficits are horrible, no-good, evil things to be avoided at all costs.  When Republicans are and they want to pass a deficit exploding tax cut, no worries.

And the media has been complicit in giving their obvious lies legitimate coverage.  It’s all done in the name of “balance,” an attribute NPR has lately taken to bragging about in their news.

One of the beneficiaries of the partisan political food fight is cable news, as partisans from both sides constantly tune in to get their “side” reinforced.  Fanning the national id has been profitable for them.

Social media gets clicks galore and the nation descends into rabid screaming matches as each side squares off in preparation for the now dreaded Thanksgiving Dinner where Uncle Al holds forth on the latest conspiracy theories and threatens civil war if Trump is impeached.

If discourse in the US has descended into the level of the insane, it’s because the media doesn’t treat idiotic red herrings and bald-faced lies as what they are – attempts to distract, deceive, and destroy.  And it’s not just Rush Limbaugh and Fox News. Their misinformation campaigns couldn’t withstand a concerted effort to actually inform Americans by the rest of the media.  But that’s not what they do.

The Ukraine incident is – if it occurred as witnesses and Trump himself have described it — a high crime. It appears – by his own words – that Trump used the public’s money in an attempt to extort a personal political favor from an ally, putting them at risk and compromising the US’s security in the process.  Certainly, it’s an impeachable offense, if he did it, and certainly, it must be investigated.

When Republicans storm a secure facility; knowingly lie about economic policy; block legitimate inquiries into impeachable offenses; deny climate science; or roll back environmental, health and safety regulations, the real news story should be that one of our major political parties has gone off the rails and turned bat-shit crazy, not a he-said, she-said appeal featuring balanced reporting, and bemoaning partisanship – which the media itself inflames by according the same weight to utter nonsense and lies as it does to factual reporting.

One can achieve balance by putting a ton of bullshit on one side of the scale, and a ton of gold on the other, but that doesn’t make them equivalent.  Unfortunately, our media doesn’t see fit to report the fact, that’s what’s going on.

It doesn’t help that they also present the progressive candidates and policies that most Americans favor as unpopular, costly, or … gasp … socialist, while they present the neoliberals in charge of the Democratic Party as “prudent” and popular. This makes obvious the role of big money in our politics and media for both parties.

But it’s one thing to be beholden to corporate money, and quite another to be beholden to corporate money and to be conducting an assault on government that is – literally – dangerously tyrannical.

The Constitution was written on fragile parchment.  It has no power other than the history of respect, reverence and custom supporting the principles written upon it since it was ratified 231 years ago.

The real story in journalism today is that one party has abandoned that respect and reverence.  It is a party that hates government, yet wants to govern.  It is a party that puts power over principle.  It is a party that routinely lies. It is a party that rejects science, the Enlightenment, and seeks to usher in a New Dark Age. And finally, it is a party that threatens the principles and institutions we rely on for whatever semblance of freedom remains.

That’s what should be in the headlines; that’s what should be leading off the news at 7; that’s what should be blaring from the radio. It’s the story of our time, and it’s barely being told.

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an 1119 jrnl fail msm not symmetry house approve impeach rules

"...nothing of this sort, or even close to it, is going on with the Democrats. On the contrary, the 2018 midterms, in which the newly elected Democrats who helped take the House of Representatives ran the gamut from centrists to socialists, was a reminder of how ideologically diverse the coalition is. The Democratic presidential primary, too, makes that candidates from the center, the left and everywhere in between are getting support in the polls.

The “polarization” framework is profoundly misleading because it suggests that the two parties are like magnets repelling each other with identical force and velocity. But the real story is that while Democrats have moved modestly to the left on some issues, most of the divisions in the country are the result of Republicans becoming both more fascistic and completely untethered to reality.

This isn’t about “both sides” acting in an equal manner. It’s about Republicans losing their minds and everyone else, understandably, reacting against that.

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https://www.alternet.org/2019/10/a-national-nightmare-is-upon-us-heres-what-happens-what-a-journalist-chooses-truth-over-balance

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‘A national nightmare is upon us’: Here’s what happens when a journalist chooses truth over ‘balance’

Written by Nancy LeTourneau / Washington Monthly October 9, 2019

Chuck Todd has often been criticized as a journalist for his adherence to bothsiderism.The most egregious example was when he blamed Democrats for the unpopularity of Obamacare and proclaimed that it wasn’t the media’s job to call out Republican lies. But here’s a more recent example.

Chuck Todd

?

@chucktodd

Let’s be blunt, our political parties are waging a “cold” civil war... And as ?@amyewalter? argues so well, each side rationalizes their bad behavior by pointing to the bad behavior of their “opponent”.  The incentive structure punishes moderation https://www.cookpolitical.com/analysis/national/national-politics/war-never-ends …

The War That Never Ends | The Cook Political Report

The vote on Brett Kavanaugh is likely to be taken this weekend. But, the impact of the battle over his confirmation is likely to have short and long-term consequences.

cookpolitical.com

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7:25 AM - Oct 5, 2018

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That struck me as a form of gaslighting. But as Jay Rosen notes, something recently changed.

Jay Rosen

?

@jayrosen_nyu

Something has happened to Chuck Todd. I view @MeetThePress almost every week. Today his tone — I mean his voice itself — was different, as if the gravity of events had sunk in and his patience with denial had run out. Now go to 0:32 in this clip and watch.

Embedded video...

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https://www.democracynow.org/2019/9/16/covering_climate_now_media_project

major new project from The Nation and the Columbia Journalism Review hopes to improve global coverage of the climate crisis, with more than 250 media outlets around the world — including Democracy Now! — signing on to the effort to publish or broadcast stories on climate. Organizers say this is one of the most ambitious efforts ever to organize the world’s media around a single topic. The week of coverage, which leads up to next week’s U.N. Climate Action Summit, kicked off on Sunday. As part of the effort, CBS News released a new poll of over 2,000 U.S. residents that measured attitudes around climate change, which found that two-thirds of Americans believe climate change is either a crisis or a serious problem, and a majority want immediate action to address the Earth’s temperature rise. In San Francisco, we speak with Mark Hertsgaard, one of the co-founders of the project, called Covering Climate Now, and The Nation’s environment correspondent and investigative editor.

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Transcript

AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now! I’m Amy Goodman. Covering Climate Now. That’s the name of a new global initiative by The Nation and Columbia Journalism Review to improve global coverage of the climate crisis. More than 250 media outlets around the world, including Democracy Now!, have signed on to the effort to focus on climate stories ahead of next week’s U.N. Climate Action Summit.

For years, the corporate media has been criticized for failing to connect the dots between climate change and extreme weather around the globe. A recent study by Public Citizen found the country’s leading print publications devoted 363 articles to Hurricane Dorian; only nine mentioned climate change. Another study, by Media Matters, in the first week after Dorian hit, from August 28th to September 5th, found, of the 216 segments aired on main television networks on Dorian, only one mentioned climate change.

We’re joined now by Mark Hertsgaard, one of the co-founders of Covering Climate Now. His new article, out today in The Nation, is headlined “A New Beginning for Climate Reporting.” He’s The Nation's environment correspondent, investigative editor. He's also author of seven books, including Hot: Living Through the Next Fifty Years on Earth.

Mark Hertsgaard, welcome back to Democracy Now! Explain the scope of this project and what is coming out now around the world in the news media and how you put it together.

MARK HERTSGAARD: It’s great to be with you, Amy and everybody at Democracy Now! We’re so happy to have you as one of our partners in this project, Covering Climate Now, which has really taken off way beyond what we expected. As you mentioned, we have 250 news outlets from all around the world, across the U.S. and overseas, who have committed, in the following seven to eight days, to do serious climate coverage, leading up to the September 23rd United Nations Climate Action Summit there in New York at United Nations headquarters. And we calculated that if you put all these 250-plus news outlets together, our combined audience is over 1 billion people — with a B. And so, when we started this six months ago, we had no idea it would take off like this, but we’re very, very pleased that it has.

And I think it shows, actually, that — something that we suspected at the beginning of this, which is that we thought that a lot of our colleagues, including in the mainstream media, wanted to do more climate coverage, knew that this is the big story of our time, and just needed a little push, and that if there was a way for us to highlight this critical mass of journalists and news outlets that wanted to do more climate coverage, by highlighting that, we could grow that critical mass of coverage. And that’s exactly what’s happened. We thought that we’d have, you know, a couple dozen smaller outlets here in the U.S. joining us, and it’s just grown and grown and grown, as more and more journalists across the country and around the world have found out about this initiative. And now we’re up to 250 news outlets. And frankly, we’re hoping to make a little noise this week.

AMY GOODMAN: I mean, it’s very interesting when you look at these numbers on the coverage of Hurricane Dorian. You had massive, 24-hour-a-day, it almost seemed, certainly on the cable networks, coverage of the hurricane, as we should have seen it — you know, the slamming of the Bahamas and the devastation there — but almost no mention of climate crisis, of the climate change, of the —

MARK HERTSGAARD: Yeah.

AMY GOODMAN: — intensity of these hurricanes, the frequency of these hurricanes, caused by human — well, behind it, it’s human actions, human activities, human-fueled climate change.

MARK HERTSGAARD: Sure. Yeah, the science on this is pretty clear. And unfortunately, the U.S. media, in particular, has a long ways to go in its climate coverage. You know, we are trying, first of all, to break the climate silence that you’re talking about here, Amy, that has been the main problem with media coverage of this issue going back for more than 20 years now. You know, I’ve been reporting on climate change since the 1990s, and I spent a lot of that decade traveling around the world. And it’s been clear ever since then that the U.S. media is about 10 years behind the media in Europe and Asia in reporting the climate crisis. First of all, we don’t mention it, as you just talked about. And when we do do the climate story, we often get it wrong.

For many years we had this false balance, where we felt that if we had on a real NASA scientist talking about climate science, that somehow, to be fair to the audience, we also had to have on somebody who said the climate science was bunk. And that person was usually just a paid propagandist for the fossil fuel industry. So, there is not a proud history here on the part of the media.

AMY GOODMAN: Be careful about mentioning that the world is round, Mark, because we’re going to have to bring on someone from the Flat Earth Society to counter what you say, just to give, you know, a fair and balanced approach to it.

MARK HERTSGAARD: Yeah, that has been just a disastrous point of view. And luckily, that is now fading, I think, this false balance. But still we have to break the silence. And I think this week is going to help do that.

==

nb how desperate they are to deflect mirror mass shooter

beto now official target?

suspended campaign to go home to take care of shooter [ post- elpaso] Odessa? ppl:

no lnx

How bots and far-right figures spread a lie about Beto O'Rourke and the Odessa shooting

A likely bot network, QAnon accounts, a TPUSA advisory council member, the Proud Boys, Sebastian Gorka, and a member of Trump's 2020 advisory board helped push the false claim

WRITTEN BY ALEX KAPLAN

PUBLISHED 09/04/19 1:52 PM EDT

UPDATED 09/05/19 9:08 AM EDT

Multiple far-right figures helped a likely network of bot accounts spread a false claim on social media connecting former Texas congressman and Democratic presidential candidate Beto O’Rourke with an alleged mass shooter in Texas.

On August 31, a gunman in Odessa and Midland, TX, killed seven people. While the alleged shooter’s motive is still unknown,a false claim appeared afterward on social media that the alleged shooter had an O’Rourke sticker on his car (authorities said there is no evidence for this) and reportedly spread with the help of likely bot accounts. Other crucial players that spread the falsity included multiple accounts supporting the QAnon conspiracy theory, a member of Turning Point USA’s advisory council, far-right gang the Proud Boys, former Trump White House adviser and current Sinclair contributor Sebastian Gorka, and current Trump campaign adviser Tony Shaffer.

How the lie spread

On the afternoon of September 1, Twitter account @suemo54 tweeted that the shooter was “a Democrat Socialist who has a Beto sticker on his truck.” As a data analyst noted on Twitter, even though the @suemo54 account had few followers, the tweet containing the false claim received hundreds and eventually thousands of retweets. A misinformation-tracking firm told The Washington Post that “the post appears to have been amplified mainly by bot accounts.” The account was later suspended but has since been reinstated.

@suemo54 image

The @suemo54 account’s Facebook page has previously shared material from JoeM, a major QAnon account.

Also that afternoon, a Facebook user called Lupe Fuentes posted almost identical language to @suemo54’s tweet in a meme, along with “BINGO!” The account had also previously postedQAnon material from JoeM. The meme was subsequently shared tens of thousands of times, and Fuentes bragged about the post’s virality.

Fuentes Facebook Beto false claim

Following these posts, other Twitter accounts began tweeting similar language, with some, according to the data analyst, getting “traction on their shooter/Beto tweet above and beyond what one might expect from their follower count.” Some of the accounts spreading the false claim that received thousands of retweets included @paphotog, an account that used to support QAnon; @nightingalern, a QAnon account that has the QAnon slogan “Where we go one, we go all,” or “WWG1WGA” in its profile; and @bbusa617, which also supports QAnon.

@paphotog

@nightingalern

@bbusa617

Joel Fischer, an advisory council member for Turning Point USA, also tweeted the false claim by the evening, receiving thousands of retweets. Fischer has a history of pushing social media falsities, including those from the QAnon community.

Joel Fischer Beto false claim

Fischer’s tweet was spread by other right-wing figures and outlets, including the Telegram channel for the far-right group the Proud Boys, a Daily Wire writer whose tweet has since been deleted, and former White House official and current Sinclair contributor Sebastian Gorka, who has previously amplified false content spread by QAnon supporters.

Gorka Beto false claim

Telegram Proud Boys Beto false claim

Meanwhile, the false claim also continued to spread on Facebook, where some directly cited Fischer and Gorka and, as noted by The Associated Press, some “posted a picture of a white truck with a ‘Beto 2020’ sticker on the back window, saying it belonged to Ator”; on Twitter, including from Dustin Nemos, a co-author of a bestselling QAnon book who pushed @suemo54’s tweet; and on white nationalist hotspot 4chan,where a user shared Fuentes’ meme.

Dustin Nemos

Facebook Beto false claim Gorka Fischer

4chan Beto false claim

4chan Beto false claim2

Tony Shaffer, a former intelligence officer and member of President Donald Trump’s 2020 advisory board,shared @suemo54’s tweet on the morning of September 2, adding that it showed the alleged shooter “was a @BetoORourke supporter.”

Tony Shaffer Beto false claim

When The Washington Post told Shaffer in a brief interview that the claim in his tweet is false, Shaffer doubled down, saying, “That’s not what I’ve seen from people.”

The baseless claim tying the shooter to a Democratic presidential candidate -- and to the left more broadly -- appears to have jumped from social media to right-wing talk radio; on September 4, host Rush Limbaugh falsely claimed the alleged shooter “was an out-of-control Democrat.”

A Facebook spokesperson, in response to criticism from O'Rourke's campaign about the falsity's spread on social media, told the Post that it was looking into whether “inauthentic behavior amplified content promoting the false story on its platform.” Neither Google nor Twitter responded to the paper's inquiries about the false claim.

==

---

https://www.desmog.co.uk/2019/08/13/climate-deniers-receive-more-media-attention-climate-scientists-research

New media organisations feature climate science deniers more than climate scientists, while the mainstream media promotes “false balance”, according to a new study published today in Nature Communications.

The authors examined some 100,000 English-language media articles relating to climate change for how often they mentioned a hand-picked group of 386 scientists and 386 contrarians.

The mainstream media is regularly accused of ‘false balance’ — where a climate science denier is invited to ‘balance’ the debate, despite the fact that rising temperatures driven by human-caused emissions is not scientifically disputed. But the study finds that across a sample of mainstream and new media, non-experts are actually given more visibility than experts.

Across all media sources, climate change contrarians were mentioned around 26,000 times – 49 percent more than climate change scientists.

The comparative attention afforded to scientists increased when the authors reduced their search to30 mainstream media outlets, including the Guardian, the New York Times and the Washington Post.

Across these mainstream publications, sceptics and scientists were mentioned roughly the same number or times.Indeed, the most elite 224 scientists were mentioned 38 percent more times than the 224 contrarians that had at least one scientific paper to their name.

Visibility

Does that mean the mainstream media is doing a good job? Not really. Alexander Petersen, the paper’s lead author and assistant professor at the University of California Merced, questions why contrarians are still visible in the media at all.

“This is a challenge to modern information systems, which can readily scale up any voice to a very large magnitude. We’ve demonstrated objectively the degree to which new media can really amplify small positions,” he told DeSmog.

“Journalists should have moved beyond this supposed debate that really doesn’t exist, and should move onto other aspects of climate change communication – for example discussing how policy should proceed to really take action. Yes, there’s a small pool of these sceptics but it’s not clear to me why they’re even in the conversation.”

High Profile Voices

The paper highlights the media sources that publish most prolifically on climate change, alongside those that most frequently mention climate scientists. Among the blogs and publications that are frequently publishing on climate change, and which have a known preference for publishing sceptics, are Climate Depot and Heartland.

The three most visible climate scientists are Michael Mann, Kevin Trenberth and Andrew Weaver (the latter is also the leader of the Green Party in British Columbia). The contrarians on which the paper focuses are kept anonymous. The database was assembled partly through data gathered by DeSmog, which did not have any role in the research.

The paper suggests that the parity between sceptics and scientists in the mainstream media could be down to an ingrained tendency among journalists to seek “balance” – until 1987, contrarians in the US were guaranteed airtime by the U.S. Federal Communications Commission Fairness Doctrine.

By now, false balance should be a thing of the past, as the evidence for climate change becomes undeniable, says Petersen. “There should be a better effort on both sides, both by the journalist seeking sources and the scientists promoting their work, to have more of an interactive dialogue that brings the scientists into these media articles as authorities,” he suggests.

“We need to give the microphone back to the scientists so they can make various findings and recommendations crystal clear.”

---

==

I assume false bal soundbites is why in part this persists:

http://inthesetimes.com/article/21980/i-went-to-a-climate-change-denial-conference-heartland-institute-trump

There’s no need to worry about reducing the greenhouse gases driving climate change—all that carbon dioxide is actually “greening the planet.” The Green New Deal, on the other hand, would send the country back to the stone age, or at least the pre-industrial era. Those were among the eye-popping and often-conflicting views expressed yesterday at the Heartland Institute’s 13th International Climate Change Conference, a gathering of climate change deniers that took place at theTrump Hotel in Washington, D.C., just blocks from the White House.

The vast majority of the world’s climate scientists agree that climate change could prove devastating to life as we know it unless we take swift and sweeping action to decarbonize the economy . But those “wild predictions have been pronouncedly exaggerated,” according to the British gadfly Lord Christopher Monckton, who holds the title 3rd Viscount Monckton of Brenchley.

One of the more colorful figures in the climate denial universe, Monckton ticked off a list of problems scientists have linked to climate change that Monckton says we really don’t need to worry about. According to him, the world is seeing less, not more, drought; sea levels are falling not rising; forest fires are causing less damage; hurricane activity is decreasing, too; and carbon dioxide is actually improving the global environment by “greening” places like Australia’s Great Sandy Desert. “That’s why we need more CO2, because it greens the planet,” he declared.

Other conference panelists joined Monckton in cycling through a series of theories long debunked by peer-reviewed science. Some believe, like Monckton, that carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere are growing but provide more benefits than threats. (One Heritage Foundation official went so far as to suggest carbon dioxide emitters should get paid a subsidy rather than face the kind of carbon tax scheme policymakers have discussed; of course, the oil industry already does receive billions in subsidies.) Others argued that CO2 levels are in fact not rising, while still others say we should be more concerned about a coming ice age.

“The real problem is we have a lot more to worry about with global cooling than with global warming,” said Rodger Bezdek, an energy analyst and Heartland policy advisor.

If the speakers and audience members don’t all agree on why we shouldn’t worry about climate change, the few hundred people assembled in a hotel ballroom yesterday doshare a number of other ideas: chiefly, that the fossil fuel industry is under unfair attack and deserves public support, while the Green New Deal is a totalitarian communist plot to steal American liberties and cast the world into “energy poverty.”

Kevin D. Dayaratna, a senior statistician at the Heritage Foundation, told the audience the Left had already begun to take control of the country and would continue its authoritarian advance with a Green New Deal.

On the surface, times would seem to be good for Heartland and the climate change denial movement, with the world’s most prominent climate change denier living in the White House. President Donald Trump has run with many of this group’s longtime demands such as withdrawing the United States from the United Nations’ Paris climate accord and rolling back Obama-era pollution rules.

But the evidence has never been stronger that climate change is already happening and will have increasingly catastrophic impacts on human civilization (not to mention other species) unless the world takes action. Meanwhile, the surprisingly fierce rise of children activists demanding climate action has boosted public concern worldwide and helped sweep progressive politicians supporting a Green New Deal into U.S. Congress.

This may be part of why climate denialists (who prefer to be called “climate realists”) appear to be struggling to remain relevant and attract younger followers. Yesterday’s speakers and audience members were overwhelmingly old, white and male. After the first panel session, there were so many white-haired men waiting for the men’s room that a long line snaked out the door, past the gold-plated trash bins embossed with the Trump name. The line for the women’s room, by contrast, was significantly shorter.

To recruit younger generations, one audience member suggested warning them that Green New Deal supporters want to take their iPhones away and return the country to a time before electricity—never mind that electricity, in the form of solar and wind, is central to the Green New Deal proposal. (Of course, panelists and audiences expressed extreme skepticism about renewables, as well.)

Not only does the climate denial movement appear in danger of aging out, raising funds is getting more difficult.Traditionally funded by fossil fuel companies, Heartland’s oil and gas money has dried up in recent years as the scientific consensus around climate change has grown stronger, putting oil and gas companies under pressure from shareholders and the public to stop funding groups that deny the problem.

Earlier this year the libertarian Cato Institute disbanded its climate denial program, the Center for the Study of Science. And yesterday’s Heartland conference had fewer than half the number of speakers and panelists as its first International Climate Change Conference in 2008. The number of sponsoring organizations has also fallen by more than half since 2008.

Despite these developments, climate changedenialism continues to get more than its fair share of media coverage, according to an analysis by the Public Citizen published Wednesday to coincide with the conference. The nonprofit consumer advocacy organization found thatmedia coverage of climate denial by Heartland, Heritage and three other think tanks increased from 2014 to 2018.

“The mounds of scientific evidence … should lead to a radical decline in the influence of climate deniers in the media,” Allison Fisher, outreach program director for Public Citizen’s climate program, said in a press release. “Amazingly, coverage of the deniers’ messages has risen over the past five years as the climate crisis has worsened, with much of it being uncritical.”

It seems possible to conceive of a time, not all that far off in the future, when the effects of climate change will become so evident and frequent that denying it’s happening will no longer be an option. But that’s hardly a comforting thought.

==

---

https://www.mediamatters.org/blog/2019/05/30/how-disinformation-works-news-outlets-are-filtering-muellers-statement-through-trumps-lies/223837

no lnx pix twit

How disinformation works: News outlets are filtering Mueller's statement through Trump's lies

Blog ››› May 30, 2019 2:27 PM EDT ››› MATT GERTZ

Special counsel Robert Mueller’s Wednesday statement served as an indictment of the press for its failure to effectively convey the damning conclusions of his investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election to the public and its willingness to accept the dishonest spin of President Donald Trump and the members of his administration. But the behavior of many major news outlets since Mueller stepped down from the Justice Department’s lectern suggests that few lessons have been learned, and journalists continue their business-as-usual practice of filtering their coverage through the lens of Trump’s deceptive critiques.

New York Times reporter Peter Baker’s analysis is a key example of journalists reporting on Mueller’s statement as a good faith disagreement between Democrats and the president. The story appeared online on Wednesday under the headline “Mueller Delivered a Message. Washington Couldn’t Agree on What It Was,” and it was splashed across the paper’s front page the next day. “At long last, the sphinx of Washington spoke on Wednesday,” Baker wrote, “and here is what President Trump heard: ‘Case closed.’ Here is what the president’s adversaries heard: ‘Time to impeach.’”

These are statements that can be assessed for their accuracy, with the reporter concluding that one party’s interpretation is correct. Instead, Baker chose to examine the remarks from both sides and then all but throw up his hands in dismay, framing his story as a case of Washington partisans simply failing to agree on the facts. But the Times scribe’s own reporting in the piece showed that Trump is not credible when he discusses Mueller’s probe. As Baker noted, Mueller’s statement “effectively refuted Mr. Trump’s no-collusion, no-obstruction mantra,” demonstrating the president’s mendacity. He also wrote that the special counsel “implied that Congress could pursue impeachment without directly recommending it,” thus supporting the opinion he ascribed to “the president’s adversaries.”

Baker’s piece rewarded what Washington Post opinion writer Greg Sargent has called the Trump administration’s “full-saturation propaganda casting the investigation itself as the real crime — disinformation designed to blot out shared agreement on the most basic facts about what just happened before all of our very eyes.”

Jay Rosen

?

@jayrosen_nyu

 This is whyjournalists can't simply stand in the middle between warring parties— Barr vs. the House — and report what they say. Stakes are too big. For without 'shared agreement on the most basic facts,' journalism itself becomes impossible or pointless. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/05/29/comeys-new-attack-trump-highlights-big-danger-democrats/ …

This style of political journalism -- setting out the claims of both the Trump administration and its critics and leaving it to the reader to decide which interpretation is correct -- simply doesn’t work in the face of Trump’s systemic disinformation.

Trump and his allies know that they can take advantage of this media vulnerability by offering arguments in bad faith on every last detail. This pushes reporters to cover stories with an “on the one hand, but on the other hand” frame, leaving the public confused about basic facts.

:{:{}:

}:

This vulnerability is particularly acute when it comes to headlines -- the only part of a story that most people actually read. Since journalists tend to treat a politician’s statements as intrinsically newsworthy, Trump’s comments are often quoted without context in headlines. That pattern held true yesterday, as several major news outlets produced headlines quoting Trump’s “case is closed” reaction to Mueller’s statement without any context:

This pattern of amplifying the president’s claimscontinued the next day. Speaking to reporters on Thursday morning, Trump laid into Mueller with a fact-free screed, calling him a “true never-Trumper” who “should have never been chosen” as special counsel because he is “totally conflicted.” While the president’s allies have been pushing Mueller’s purported conflicts for years as a way of delegitimizing his investigation, those claims have long been debunked. But that didn’t stop a flurry of tweets from major media outlets promoting his claims in tweets:

@CBSEveningNews

 Pres. Trump slams special counsel Robert Mueller Thursday, saying he "should have never been chosen" to lead the investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election, a day after the longtime DOJ official made his first public statement on Russia probe https://cbsn.ws/2JLqnJl

ABC News

?

@ABC

Pres. Trump on special counsel Robert Mueller: "I think he is a total conflicted person. I think Mueller is a true never-Trumper. He's somebody that dislikes Donald Trump." https://abcn.ws/2EKwUQi

CNN Politics

?

@CNNPolitics

President Trump calls special counsel Robert Mueller a “true Never Trumper”

The Hill

?

@thehill

President Trump: "There's no obstruction, there's no collusion, there's no nothing. It's nothing but a witch hunt. A witch hunt by the media and the Democrats, they're partners."

And their on-air chyrons:

View image on TwitterView image on TwitterView image on Twitter

Lis Power

@LisPower1

Replying to @LisPower1

Houston, we have a chyron problem

(and it's not just Fox ... though, they're the worst)

Meanwhile, the president’s right-wing media allies continued hammering the message of Mueller’s malfeasance to their huge audiences, depicting the special counsel as a “sleazy and dishonest” “Trump-hating partisan” who participated in a Democratic plot to “steal” the 2018 midterm elections.

The propaganda machine marches on, and credible news outlets aren’t doing nearly enough to hold back its disinformation.

==

==

DN guk will no longer use term global warming vs crisis catastrophe? heating

==

off bs

https://www.heartland.org/news-opinion/news/heartland-weekly-leadership-changes-at-the-heartland-institute

Lakely is the Interim President and Director of Communications of The Heartland Institute.

Reporters, editors, producers, and hosts can reach Jim to book a Heartland interview at jlakely@heartland.org or via text/call to his mobile: 312-731-9364.

Heartland has an in-house TV studio from which we can connect to any outlet in the world on a moment's notice. [RED TEXT]

==

see false equiv/ balancing norms, weaponization of rw mirror strategy? aha

http://www.alternet.org/activism/media-busy-creating-left-wing-threat-balance-out-awful-racist-right-wing-hordes-who

---

yeah but what about-ism

Whataboutism (also known as whataboutery) is a variant of the tu quoque logical fallacy that attempts to discredit an opponent's position by charging them with hypocrisy without directly refuting or disproving their argument,[1][2][3] which in the United States is particularly associated with Soviet and Russian propaganda.[4][5][6] When criticisms were leveled at the Soviet Union during the Cold War, the Soviet response would often be "What about..." followed by an event in the Western world.[7][8][9]

The term "whataboutery" has been used in Britain and Ireland since the period of the Troubles (conflict) in Northern Ireland.[10][11][12] Lexicographers date the first appearance of the variant whataboutism to the 1990s[1][10] or 1970s,[13] while other historians state that during the Cold War, Western officials referred to the Soviet propaganda strategy by that term.[7][14] The tactic saw a resurgence in post-Soviet Russia, relating to human rights violations committed by, and criticisms of, the Russian government.[7][15][16] The technique received new attention during Russia's 2014 annexation of Crimea and military intervention in Ukraine.[17][18] Usage of the tactic extended to Russian President Vladimir Putin and his spokesman, Dmitry Peskov.[19][20][21]

A The Guardian journalist described Russian whataboutism as"practically a national ideology".[22] Journalist Julia Ioffe wrote that "Anyone who has ever studied the Soviet Union" was aware of the technique, citing the Soviet rejoinder to criticism, And you are lynching Negroes, as a "classic" example of the tactic.[23] Writing for Bloomberg News, Leonid Bershidsky called whataboutism a "Russian tradition",[24] while The New Yorker described the technique as "a strategy of false moral equivalences".[25] Jill Dougherty called whataboutism a "sacred Russian tactic",[26][27] and compared it to accusing the pot of calling the kettle black.[28]

##

Etymology and history of the term

...

President Donald Trump has used whataboutism in response to criticism leveled at him, his policies, or his support of controversial world leaders.[4][88][89] National Public Radio (NPR) reported, "President Trump has developed a consistent tactic when he's criticized: say that someone else is worse."[4] NPR noted Trump chose to criticize the Affordable Care Act when he himself faced criticism over the proposed American Health Care Act of 2017, "Instead of giving a reasoned defense, he went for blunt offense, which is a hallmark of whataboutism."[4] NPR noted similarities in use of the tactic by Putin and Trump, "it's no less striking that while Putin's Russia is causing the Trump administration so much trouble, Trump nevertheless often sounds an awful lot like Putin".[4]

When criticized or asked to defend his behavior, Trump has frequently changed the subject by criticizing Hillary Clinton, the Obama Administration,[89] and the Affordable Care Act.[4] When asked about Russian human rights violations, Trump has shifted focus to the US itself,[88][80] employing whataboutism tactics similar to those used by Russian President Vladimir Putin.[4][90]

After Fox News host Bill O'Reilly and MSNBC host Joe Scarborough called Putin a killer, Trump responded by saying that the US government was also guilty of killing people.[4][80][91] Garry Kasparov commented to Columbia Journalism Review on Trump's use of whataboutism: "Moral relativism, 'whataboutism', has always been a favorite weapon of illiberal regimes. For a US president to employ it against his own country is tragic."[45]

During a news conference on infrastructure at Trump Tower after the 2017 Unite the Right Rally in Charlottesville, a reporter linked the alt-right to the fatal vehicle-ramming attack that was inflicted against counter-demonstrators, to which Donald Trump responded by demanding the reporter to "define alt-right to me" and subsequently interrupting the reporter to ask, "what about the alt-left that came charging at [the alt-right]?"[92][93] Various experts[who?] have criticized Trump's usage of the term "alt-left" by arguing that no members of the progressive left have used that term to describe themselves[94][95] and furthermore that Trump fabricated the term to falsely equate the alt-right to the counter-demonstrators.[96][97]

^...

^see ^also ^

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https://www.alternet.org/2019/04/rump-is-facing-impeachment-the-nra-is-facing-bankruptcy-its-a-good-day-in-america/

Here’s a good one for you. Wayne LaPierre, the executive director of the National Rifle Association (NRA) sent out a fundraising appeal in March pleading with its members for donations. “We’re facing an attack that’s unprecedented not just in the history of the N.R.A. but in the entire history of our country,” LaPierre whined. “ cannot survive without the N.R.A., and the N.R.A. cannot survive without your help right now.”

Then what did LaPierre do? Why he stepped-up NRA lobbying against The Violence Against Women Act, which the House of Representatives reauthorized a few weeks later. Because of course the NRA doesn’t need the donations of women who might benefit from the provision in the Violence Against Women Act which prohibits sales of firearms to anyone who has been convicted of stalking, assaulting, or otherwise harming a domestic partner.

The NRA can’t afford to lose too many lobbying battles like that one anymore. As The New Yorker reported this month, “the N.R.A. is troubled; in recent years, it has run annual deficits of as much as forty million dollars.” LaPierre has presided over a reduction in the main mission of the NRA – gun safety, training, and representing hunters – to less than 10 percent of its budget. What do they spend the other 90 percent on, you might ask? Messaging, according to The New Yorker. “The N.R.A. is now mainly a media company, promoting a life style built around loving guns and hating anyone who might take them away.”

The only thing the NRA loves more than guns is Donald Trump. The gun organization spent more than $30 million on Trump’s campaign for the presidency in 2016, more than three times what they spent in 2012 in support of Republican candidate Mitt Romney, according to McClatchy. Total NRA election spending in 2016 was close to $70 million, according to an NRA committee member McClatchy spoke to.

It’s no wonder the NRA has been running in the red financially. Total NRA spending during 2016 “exploded to more than $419 million, up from $312 million the previous year,” according to OpenSecrets.org, a website that keeps track of campaign spending and is owned by the liberal-leaning Center for Responsive Politics. The NRA recently sued an Oklahoma-based public relations firm it has paid hundreds of millions of dollars to over the last several decades, and there is speculation that the group might be facing bankruptcy in the near future.

When Trump stepped before the NRA’s microphone yesterday in Indianapolis, he was riding to the rescue. Or is it the other way around? On his way out of the White House on Friday morning, Trump was asked about Vice President Biden’s citation of his speech after the white supremacist riot in Charlottesville in 2017, when he said there were “very fine people on both sides” in Charlottesville. “I’ve answered that question and I was talking about people who went because they felt very strongly about the statue of Robert E. Lee,” Trump told reporters on the White House lawn. “Whether you like it or not, he was one of the great generals.”

Facing a chorus of calls for his impeachment by the House of Representatives and continuing questions after the release of the Mueller report about whether he obstructed justice, Trump decided that his best course of action was to double-down on his support of the slave-owning general who presided over the defeat of the Confederacy and signed the surrender at Appomattox. That one ought to get him big cheers from the surrender-monkeys of the NRA, because there is nothing like surrendering your army and your weapons to get your juices flowing in the morning.

Aaaahhh, for the days when it was good enough to trundle out a tired old has-been like Charlton Heston in front of the NRA rowdies and have him hold up a replica of a flintlock rifle someone gave him backstage and wave it over his head and scream, “You’ll take my gun from my cold dead hands!” That’s what Heston did at every NRA convention he addressed after assuming the presidency of the gun rights group in 1998. He screamed the slogan a year after two students killed 13 and wounded 24 at Columbine High School. NRA members opened their checkbooks and flooded the gun rights organization. Heston remained the NRA president until 2003.

I got myself in the NRA’s crosshairs in 1998 when I wrote a prominently featured op-ed for The New York Times on the killings by two boys in Jonesboro, Arkansas. The two shooters, aged 11 and 13, took rifles and ammunition from the home of one of their grandparents and killed four students and one teacher, wounding 10 more before they fled the scene. One of the students pulled the fire alarm, causing the teachers and students to be outside the school. The shooters fired on them from a nearby hillside.

Coverage of the killings emphasized that the boys had attended NRA-sponsored “practical shooting courses” before they fired on their schoolmates and teachers. My Times op-ed explained that the 11 and 13-year-old boys had been taken by their parents to the “practical shooting courses” where they underwent live-fire combat-style training and were taught to shoot at human silhouette targets.

This revelation earned me multiple invitations by television shows. One of them was the Today Show, where I appeared opposite Tanya Metaxa, then the spokesperson for the NRA. During the show, I asked Tanya if the NRA thought it was a good idea for parents to teach their children how to shoot at human silhouettes. She fumbled around for an answer, and finally after Katie Couric pressed her said that in fact, the NRA supported such training for children.

The next day, the NRA, under the direction of its executive director Wayne LaPierre and president Charlton Heston sent out a blast email to all of its chapters nationwide telling them not to provide an NRA representative to appear opposite me on any radio or television interviews. In the following days, I received numerous requests to appear on shows around the country, but when they couldn’t get an NRA person to debate me, they canceled the appearances. Suffice to say I wasn’t the NRA’s favorite person.

:{:{....}:

}:

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se mma on tucker c pal with proud boys, NYC beatings

see proud boys update

While the Proud Boys are beating people on the streets of New York, right-wing media figures have instead fearmongered about peaceful protesters on the left. Right-wing media figures likened anti-Kavanaugh protesters to deranged monsters, compared them to children, claimed that they are on drugs, called for punitive measures against them, and more. The attacks are out of control.

This is all part of a larger tactic on the right. As Matt Gertz explained, the right-wing midterm engagement strategy is telling viewers that Democrats are coming to kill them: “With the midterm elections only four weeks away, a slew of Fox News commentators are warning their conservative viewers that they are physically imperiled by a ‘violent’ leftist ‘mob’ and must vote to keep Republicans in power in order to protect themselves. Their argument is an effort to turn out the GOP base by weaponizing conservative criticism of the protestors who opposed Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation to the Supreme Court.”

Also: It's not just Fox News. CNN's right-wing pundits are running with this same talking point.

https://www.mediamatters.org/blog/2018/10/11/cnns-conservative-pundits-are-helping-gop-fearmonger-over-scary-liberal-protesters/221653

In  the run-up to the 2018 midterm elections, right-wing media and Republican officials have found a new favorite scare tactic: hyping nonsensical claims of radical Democrats and an “angry mob” of “scary,” violent, liberal protesters trying to disrupt American values and take over the country. This transparent effort at turning out Republicans to the polls has been parotted by a number of  right-wing pundits paid by CNN for their political analysis.

Right-wing media, especially the Trump-aligned Fox News Channel, responded to the confirmation battle of now Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh by accusing Democrats, protesters (many of whom were sexual assault survivors)  and the left broadly of violent radicalism. Republican politicians, including the president, have been quick to echo these claims. Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-IA) argued that Democrats “encouraged mob rule” during the Kavanaugh hearings, and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) commended Republicans for standing “up to the mob.” During an October 9 rally in Iowa, President Donald Trump -- who regularly called for actual violence during the 2016 campaign and who said last year that there were “very fine people” at a white supremacist rally that resulted in one person dying -- condemned Democrats as an “angry left-wing mob” that is “too dangerous to govern.” The president insisted that the party cannot be trusted with power because “you don't hand matches to an arsonist.”

Conservative denouncements of left-wing violence are obviously absurd, and markedly hypocritical, but that hasn’t stopped right-wing CNN pundits from fearmongering about the supposed “mob behavior” of the left. On CNN’sAnderson Cooper 360, commentator Steve Cortes called it “scary” that the left has been using “mob tactics” and “violence” to a “dramatic degree.” During the October 9 edition of CNN Tonight with Don Lemon, political commentator Alice Stewart claimed that Republicans were correct in calling protesters a “mob” because they were “banging on the doors of the Supreme Court and chasing senators out of public restaurants and yelling at senators in an elevator.”

During the same segment, CNN’s Matt Lewis equated protesters to the alt-right and specifically white supremacist Richard Spencer before host Don Lemon interrupted him. He then accused the protesters of “mob behavior,” and got into a heated exchange with Lemon about whether activists disrupting people who are complicit in the administration’s inhumane policies constitutes mob action.  And on The Lead with Jake Tapper, network contributor Scott Jennings argued that the Kavanaugh hearings showed conservatives “what life would be like if you let the angry mob take over,” and claimed that if he were running a campaign he would use “video of this angry mob.”

There is, of course, tremendous irony here; CNN hired Corey Lewandowski as a political commentator after Lewandowski was forced out of the Trump campaign for assaulting a reporter. CNN was also duped by conservatives earlier this year into fretting over “civility” as it conflated examples of liberals being rude with conservatives being racist.

CNN’s model of false balance and “both sides” punditry and its obsession with employing and hosting a roster of right-wing ideologues is nothing new, but it does continue to lead to the espousal of extremist opinions on the network.

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ref

https://www.mediamatters.org/blog/2018/06/26/CNN-bemoans-a-lack-of-civility-after-spending-years-hiring-pro-Trump-commentators/220549

no lnx

CNN bemoans a lack of civility after spending years hiring pro-Trump commentators

Blog ››› June 26, 2018 5:59 PM EDT ››› JOHN WHITEHOUSE

Melissa Joskow / Media Matters

CNN has been on a civility kick. A transcript search shows that variations of the words were said over a hundred times on June 25 alone. One good example is the network’s June 25 highlight reel of allegedly incivil things that have recently been said by various people. As my colleague noted, the video conflated examples of liberals being mean with conservatives being racist:

Steve Morris

@stevemorris__

Hang this in the Louvre. CNN's "both sides" montage perfectly encapsulating the fallacy of mainstream media equivalence: all the conservatives examples are bald racism and all the liberal examples are...being rude

...

CNN then brought on longtime centrist commentator David Gergen and pro-Trump whisperer Salena Zito to discuss the supposed decline in civility. Apparently no progressive voices were available.

Later in the day, when discussing Trump’s separation and detention of immigrant families with immigration lawyer David Leopold, CNN anchor Kate Bolduan interrupted Leopold and chided him for calling White House senior policy adviser Stephen Miller a white nationalist, asking, “Where is the fact on that??”

John Whitehouse

@existentialfish

 CNN anchor: "I just did an entire segment about civility here, I don't know if you want to call Stephen Miller a white nationalist"

9:07 AM - Jun 25, 2018

Calling Miller a white nationalist is not some gratuitous insult. It is a simple, straight-forward analysis of his ideology. Splinter News’ Clio Chang aptly noted the evidence:

There is plenty of evidence that Stephen Miller, the architect of Donald Trump’s hard-line racist immigration policies, is a white nationalist. He crafted Trump’s Muslim ban. His thumbprint is smeared all over the administration’s family separation policy, the point of which is to tear immigrant families apart and deter others from entering the country. Miller reportedly laughed during a meeting when Trump made up names for immigrants and described imaginary crimes they might have committed. He has pushed for some of the harshest overhauls of our immigration system, including cutting legal immigration by half over the next decade. A White House aide recently told Vanity Fair Miller “actually enjoys” seeing pictures of children detained at the border: “He’s Waffen-SS,” the person said.

As journalist Chris Hooks also noted, Miller and white nationalist Richard Spencer worked together at Duke University to bring in white nationalist Peter Brimelow to speak about immigration. Spencer even told Mother Jones that he was glad no one was reporting on this connection:

“It’s funny no one’s picked up on the Stephen Miller connection,” Spencer says. “I knew him very well when I was at Duke. But I am kind of glad no one’s talked about this because I don’t want to harm Trump.”

This determined ignorance of the Trump team’s white nationalism is particularly galling since CNN has been profiting off of Trump’s team for years now. The network has hired a parade of pro-Trump analysts who, like the children at Willy Wonka’s factory, have been inevitably dropped as they become too toxic.

The hirings started during the 2016 campaign when Trump told CNN executives to hire Jeffrey Lord.Soon after, CNN programming was inundated with Lord, Corey Lewandowski, Kayleigh McEnany, and Scottie Nell Hughes. These hirings frequently raised ethical questions. Current Vox correspondent Carlos Maza examined the problem for Media Matters before the election:

As Maza noted, the presence of pro-Trump voices turned discussions into screaming matches more suited to reality television than to a news network. And like reality television, the names rotated in and out with the content staying the same.

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Lewandowski resigned from CNN following the election (CNN refused to fire him even after reporting revealed the Trump campaign was still paying him). McEnany moved on to become the spokesperson of the Republican National Committee. Hughes left CNN before the inauguration. And most notably, CNN eventually fired Lord after he issued a Nazi salute on Twitter.

In their stead, CNN rolled in new pro-Trump voices. One of the first was former Trump senior communications adviser Jason Miller. By mid 2017, the channel’s paid Trump shills were flooding the network:

Media Matters’ senior fellow Matt Gertz noted in October 2017 how the network continued to flood its airwaves with bullshit:

[Ben] Ferguson, for example, has repeatedly been called out by his CNN colleagues this month for offering nonsensical diversions in discussions of Trump’s attacks on NFL players who protest racial inequality during the National Anthem. And [Stephen] Moore -- who typically appears on the network to lie about Trump-backed health care proposals -- on Monday derailed a CNN panel discussion about then-Fox News host Bill O’Reilly paying a hefty sexual harassment settlement by saying that the real solution is for powerful men to never be alone in a room alone with a woman. [Jack] Kingston, for his part, last night attempted to make excuses for Trump’s unprecedented falsehoods, saying that “the American perception is that politicians lie” and Trump is no worse than other presidents; the rest of the panel denounced him, with anchor Don Lemon scolding him for “condoning bad behavior.”

When major stories break, such as Trump’s string of indefensible responses to the lethal white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, VA, Trump’s CNN supporters blanket the network’s coverage. That result was a trainwreck, with the president’s shills sidelining discussions with praise for Trump’s response and dismissals of the importance of the rally.

In September 2017, CNN hired Ed Martin, president of the Eagle Forum Education & Legal Defense Fund, ostensibly as Lord’s replacement. CNN was either ignorant or tolerant of the fact that Martin had previously called CNN “fake news” and had made flatly racist statements. In 2016, Martin told a crowd at a right-wing rally: "You're not racist if you don't like Mexicans. They're from a nation. If you don't think Muslims are vetted enough, because they blow things up, that's not racist."

Martin predictably used his appearances to turn CNN into a trainwreck, while using his radio show to rail against the network:

Martin called on the air for a total end to immigration, saying, “Stop all immigration right now.” (11/2/17)

Martin argued that Leigh Corfman, the woman who reported that former Republican Senate candidate Roy Moore molested her as a child, should not be believed, saying, “What is this woman? She’s got multiple bankruptcies." (11/11/17)

Martin endorsed Moore and tried to get him elected even as CNN was doing great reporting on him. (11/7/17)

Martin said that Trump’s racist remarks about LaVar Ball, father of one of the basketball players arrested in China, could not be a “racial thing” because Trump also attacked Sen. Jeff Flake (R-AZ). (11/20/17)

Martin defended Trump’s racist “Pocahontas” comment to World War II Navajo code talkers as “100 percent” appropriate. (11/27/17)

Martin contended that Trump’s racist anti-Muslim tweets were actually helpful because they were “starting a conversation.” (11/30/17)

After Roy Moore said that America was at its best during slavery, Martin argued that Jewish slaves had families: “When the Jews were in bondage for years, they still loved each other.” (12/11/17)

Martin called fellow CNN employees and co-panelists “black racists.” (12/14/17)

Martin praised Trump for ordering CNN’s chief White House correspondent out of the Oval Office, saying it was “amazing to see” and “really funny.” (1/18/18)

Martin gave an award to disgraced conservative operative James O’Keefe,who had on numerous occasions run deceitful stings against CNN. O’Keefe once attempted to lure then-CNN correspondent Abbie Boudreau onto a boat full of sex paraphernalia. (1/12/18)

Martin stopped appearing on CNN after December 14 when Media Matters posted audio of Martin complaining about appearing on a panel with CNN commentators “who were just rabid feminists, actually racial, racists -- two of the women were racists, they were just were racists, black racists.” CNN eventually confirmed to The Hollywood Reporter on January 18 that Martin no longer worked for the network.

Martin’s role was soon taken by pro-Trump commentator Steve Cortes, who has said that he went to CNN “partly at the suggestion of the White House itself and the president himself.” Like Martin, Cortes also had previously called CNN “fake news.” During his time as a contributor at Fox News, Cortes had compared undocumented immigrants to violent thieves. And on CNN, Cortes has not only made similar statements, he’s also made laughably false and ridiculous claims. Michelle Wolf called out CNN’s charade with Cortes:

MICHELLE WOLF (HOST): Aw man, as a fan I just love this kind of TV magic. Watching the host act like the guest forced his way into the studio is so compelling, you almost forget that he was invited on and paid! Good job, Don, you knew full well Steve was going to lie and you gave a fun clip to share, and that's exactly why you invite him back all the time.

Here’s a brief history of things that paid CNN commentators have said on-air since the inauguration:

Stephen Moore made a completely false claim about coal jobs that an actual economist immediately corrected. (3/29/17)

Jason Miller made sexist remarks about Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA), calling her “hysterical.” (6/13/17)

After Trump encouraged police brutality, Jeffrey Lord dismissed it as a "New Yorker sense of humor." (7/31/17)

Lord called Trump “the Martin Luther King of health care.” CNN then talked about it for an entire day. (4/13/17)

Lord compared the Congressional Black Caucus to the KKK. (2/16/17)

Ben Ferguson criticized civil rights icon John Lewis for not educating Trump about civil rights. (12/8/17)

Rick Santorum said that Parkland school shooting survivors aren't taking personal responsibility and should learn CPR instead of engaging in activism. (3/25/18)

Kayleigh McEnany attacked Barack Obama for golfing in 2002 when George W. Bush was president. (3/28/17)

Ken Cuccinelli told panelist Symone Sanders to shut up while discussing white supremacists in Charlottesville. (8/14/17)

Paris Dennard posited that Trump was better than Obama at calling out white supremacists. (8/14/17)

Kayleigh McEnany defended Trump’s sexist remarks to an Irish reporter: "The press should be applauding the fact that he's bringing reporters into the Oval Office, calling them out and including them." (6/28/17)

Rick Santorum attacked reporters for asking Secretary of State Mike Pompeo for details about North Korea and nuclear weapons. (6/14/18)

Miller dismissed reports that Trump had an affair with adult actor Stormy Daniels and paid her hush money because, according to him, the alleged payoff was nothing to a billionaire. (3/7/18)

Santorum accused Obama of exacerbating racism in America. (6/3/18)

After a suicide bombing killed 22 people at an Ariana Grande concert, Lord said that it would be fair for Trump to criticize Grande for not providing enough security. (6/5/17)

Lord used a Nazi analogy to attack London Mayor Sadiq Khan. (6/5/17)

Stephen Moore repeatedly lied about the Affordable Care Act, often without CNN fact-checking him. (7/17/17)

After Roy Moore was accused of child molestation, Stephen Moore argued that his opponent was “no saint either” because he supported abortion. (11/20/17)

Jack Kingston pushed a conspiracy theory that shadowy forces were behind the rally against gun violence organized by Parkland survivors. (2/20/18)

While discussing sexual harassment, Stephen Moore said that he would never take a one-on-one meeting with a woman. (10/23/17)

Jack Kingston said that Bill O'Reilly's racist remarks about Waters' hair were just like liberals calling Trump “orange.” (3/29/17)

Bryan Lanza argued that discussing sexual assault allegations against Trump "seems like a waste of time." (12/20/17)

And it’s not only the paid commentators who are a part of CNN's “false equivalency” problem. Just last week, after Lewandowski mocked a 10-year-old with Down syndrome who was separated from her mother at the U.S. border, CNN invited him on to talk more about his remark.

At the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner, Michelle Wolf called out this sycophantic relationship between the media and those in power. Wolf later told Vulture (emphasis original): “It was gross! Like, I saw [CNN President] Jeff Zucker hugging Kellyanne Conway, and it was just like, Oh! You’re all in this together! People are really getting hurt, and you guys are just celebrating your money. It’s all a game, nothing more than ‘How will we best profit off of this?’ It was icky.” Nevertheless, a CNN panel criticized Wolf’s jokes, with a CNN host saying that some of her jokes were “way too personal.”

America is not enduring a crisis of civility. America is enduring a crisis of facts, brought on largely by the rise of the filter bubble, with specious liars given credibility by feckless media and tech companies. It’d be nice if they were all at least a bit more self-aware about it.

Katie Sullivan contributed research to this post.

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also ref

https://www.mediamatters.org/blog/2017/10/25/study-cnns-paid-trump-shills-made-more-500-appearances-over-last-three-months/218325

"Thhis is an apple,” begins the voice-over for an ad CNN is running as part of its new “Facts First” promotional campaign. “Some people might try to tell you that it’s a banana,” the narration continues. “They might scream banana, banana, banana over and over and over again. They might put banana in ALL CAPS. You might even start to believe that this is a banana. But it’s not. This is an apple.”

The network’s new branding stresses that “there is no alternative to a fact” and that “opinions matter” but “don’t change the facts.”

CNN’s campaign seems driven by the post-truth political environment. President Donald Trump and his administration lie constantly and try to undermine the credibility of other sources of information, including CNN and other media outlets. By confusing the public about what is happening, they hope to maintain power. With top White House aides openly declaring their adherence to “alternative facts,” it makes sense for credible journalists to try to rally around the need for reporting to reflect reality.

But if CNN is truly worried about the sort of people who tell you that an apple is really a banana, the network should deal with the stable of pundits it has hired to provide viewers with knee-jerk defenses of the president. Those Trump apologists -- some of whom were previously on Trump’s payroll -- actively harm CNN’s journalism, frequently bringing panel discussions to a screeching halt with claims so dishonest they approach parody, at times drawing on-air rebukes from the network’s anchors. The pundits force the network to constantly debate whether the apple is really a banana.

In August, media reporter Michael Calderone identified 13 pundits on the CNN payroll “who, to varying degrees, can be identified as pro-Trump”: former Republican Georgia Rep. Jack Kingston, former Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli, talk radio host Ben Ferguson, former Bush White House official Scott Jennings, former South Carolina Lt. Gov. Andre Bauer, former Trump campaign spokesperson Jason Miller, former Trump adviser Stephen Moore, former Sen. Rick Santorum (R-PA), Republican strategist Alice Stewart, former Trump campaign official David Urban, talk radio host John Phillips, former Bush White House staffer Paris Dennard and former U.S. Attorney Matthew Whitaker. Since then, the network has hired Ed Martin, former chair of the Missouri Republican Party, to round out the roster.

As Calderone notes, the pundits are not monolithic, with some even offering criticism for the president from time to time. But on balance, the group reliably tilts discussions, often negatively impacting the ability of viewers to come away from the network’s coverage with a strong grasp of the facts.

Over the past three months, those 14 pundits have made 510 appearances on CNN -- an average of more than five appearances a day -- according to a Media Matters review. Jennings and Ferguson have led the way, with 73 and 69 appearances, respectively. Moore, Kingston, and Stewart round out the top five, each with at least 50 appearances.

[chart]...

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