The Press Is Destroying Itself
Matt Taibbi says The American Press Is Destroying Itself.
He is correct, but it’s not just the media.
Trump is in on the act as are both political parties.
Taibbi even starts with Trump.
Our president, Donald Trump, is a clown who makes a great reality-show villain but is uniquely toolless as the leader of a superpower nation. Watching him try to think through two society-imperiling crises is like waiting for a gerbil to solve Fermat’s theorem.
On the other side of the political aisle, among self-described liberals, we’re watching an intellectual revolution. It feels liberating to say after years of tiptoeing around the fact, but the American left has lost its mind. It’s become a cowardly mob of upper-class social media addicts, Twitter Robespierres who move from discipline to discipline torching reputations and jobs with breathtaking casualness.
They’ve conned organization after organization into empowering panels to search out thoughtcrime, and it’s established now that anything can be an offense, from a UCLA professor placed under investigation for reading Martin Luther King’s “Letter from a Birmingham Jail” out loud to a data scientist fired* from a research firm for — get this — retweeting an academic study suggesting nonviolent protests may be more politically effective than violent ones!
Probably the most disturbing story involved Intercept writer Lee Fang, one of a fast-shrinking number of young reporters actually skilled in investigative journalism. Fang’s work in the area of campaign finance especially has led to concrete impact, including a record fine to a conservative Super PAC: few young reporters have done more to combat corruption.
Yet Fang found himself denounced online as a racist, then hauled before H.R.
In the most discussed incident, Times editorial page editor James Bennet was ousted for green-lighting an anti-protest editorial by Arkansas Republican Senator Tom Cotton entitled, “Send in the troops.”
Taibbi goes on with case after case.
Thought Police
I disagree with Cotton, but I found it chilling that the Times issued a retraction and an apology for the article.
The thought police are everywhere.
Taibbi notes that we are seeing headlines previously imaginable only in The Onion, e.g., “27 police officers injured during largely peaceful anti-racism protests in London.”
One needs to read the entire article to grasp the magnitude in which the thought police are in control.
Here are a couple more examples:
The editor of Variety, Claudia Eller, was placed on leave after calling a South Asian freelance writer “bitter” in a Twitter exchange about minority hiring at her company. The self-abasing apology (“I have tried to diversify our newsroom over the past seven years, but I HAVE NOT DONE ENOUGH”) was insufficient.
Meanwhile, the Philadelphia Inquirer’s editor, Stan Wischowski, was forced out after approving a headline, “Buildings matter, too.”
Intercept Most Galling
I find the left-wing slant of The Intercept galling but I did not expect the political correctness stunt they pulled.
Fang got into trouble for questioning the logic of protesters attacking immigrant-owned businesses “with no connection to police brutality at all.”
Synopsis
A close friend of mine accurately summed up the situation as follows:
“The point of journalism and the point of educational institutions is to promote free and thoughtful inquiry.
But most Democrats will not speak out as they fear the wrath of the woke crowd just as Republicans fear the wrath of Trump.“
Nearly everyone but Trump and the ever-Trumpers are afraid of the thought police.
The result is one “clown”, as Taibbi describes Trump, vs two packs of cowards, one on the left, the other on the right with Trump egging both sides on.
If you say anything at all against Trump you automatically are accused of having TDS.
And heaven help you if you run a newspaper and say something like White Lives Matter or Buildings Matter, because if you do, you will soon be out of a job.
The middle is very fearful of the radical Left and the radical Right. This is a very dangerous slope we are on.
Mish
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The thought police can not monitor our thoughts. I wonder what the 320 million people think 10,000 kids that are protesting. I wonder what they think of the statues being torn down. I wonder what they think of Trump, we might find out at the next
Trump rally.
If the Trump Presidency takes down 2 political parties, the mainstream media, elite higher ed and does not get the country into more wars, then it absolutely, positively was well-worth it. Contrary to what you say, Mish, most people I know who voted for him said it was for the purposes of wrecking the status quo of the past ~ 30 years; very few liked him personally.
My opinion: This@Mish posting is very on-point. Like.
I’d feel like a referee if I did that, and find it more amusing to comment…not that I would judge anyone for flagging.
The Taibbi article is really good, thanks for the link
“And heaven help you if you run a newspaper and say something like White Lives Matter or Buildings Matter, because if you do, you will soon be out of a job. “
And this is one reason why the ability to post anonymously is important. Newspapers and websites that require true names to be published or register put your job, life and family at risk if you are on the wrong side of whatever beliefs the majority currently embrace.
June 10, 2020
NoFundThem: Conservative Commentator’s Fundraising Blocked Over Floyd Criticism
Jonathan Turley
Which is why liability for publishing on online media is an important question. If media have to attribute real author or be liable themselves, then they find obligation to register commentators fully, and anonymity plus those who write anonymously will either dissappear , or self censor. I guess there would remain online out-holds somewhere, but relegated and mostly tailored out of public view. As stands the US has probably the best offer in terms of freedom of speech, in that you have a choice of relatively open forums to suit all tastes/”tastes”, from the tasteless to the over moderated, and everything in between. In more difficult countries or regions, you find open discussion not so common, not nescessarily for the rules themselves, but because the ability to speak openly is clearly suppressed in the population, and so the ability think more objectively also. It is like people have already accepted that their own authentic view is not worthwhile anyway, that it has to pass approval of one kind or another. Traditionally, all that was required before speaking was a sense of civility, misplaced intent would soon be observed or argued. Now civility is lower or absent, replaced by standards of political correctness and whatever pent up expression of dislike is still permissible. When you read a lot of posts you can often tell people are trying to get it right to fit in, even those who think they are alternate or ahead of a topic often have a sort of prepped approach that is designed to be acceptable to the current standards.
Maybe that is why media as a whole is going nuts, because people are trying to put on a glove that clearly doesn’t fit. In the US the media is not so restricted so you watch that happen, because outside of media the feeling of censorship and political correctness is a very present reality, and that frustration just expresses once online. Obviously online is virtual, so you aren’t likely to find any clear idea with everyone just spilling out whatever position their day has brought them and the rest trying to remote guide anyone to some hypothetical answer, like people left clueless searching for answers from others who have no clue either.
Even here, you note I’m not offering an answer, because I’m as clueless as anyone else as to what is really going on. I just try not to add oil to it all, but media is often a bonfire looking for arsonists.
What the inner city needs are decent policing and decent schools. What inner city residents need to be is fathers and tiger moms to their children. Poverty is no excuse for drug abuse, ignorance and sloth. Being poor does not excuse one from cracking a book or getting a job. My next door neighbors were Vietnamese boat people. They came here penniless and spoke no English. They now have a 4 bedroom house, two lovely children that will go to college with golf scholarships. People ultimately have to take care of themselves and their children. Entitlement programs and constant reinforcement of the poor in this country that they do not have a chance and are victims is keeping people in a constant debilitated state, generation after generation. Victim politics is disgusting. There was a study by the GAO before congress passed the Great Society legislation in 1965 the predicted this. Congress passed it anyway. Look it up. Also check the poverty rate in 1964 and now. After $Trillions, nothing is better.
The National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders, known as the Kerner Commission after its chair, Governor Otto Kerner, Jr. of Illinois, was an 11-member Presidential Commission established by Prez Lyndon B. Johnson in Executive Order 11365 to investigate the causes of the 1967 race riots in the United States and to provide recommendations for the future Prez Johnson appointed the commission on July 28, 1967, while rioting was still underway in Detroit, Michigan. Mounting civil unrest since 1965 had spawned riots in the black & Latino neighborhoods of major U.S. cities, including Los Angeles (Watts riots of 1965), Chicago (Division Street Riots of 1966 [the first Puerto Rican riot in US History]), & Newark (1967 Newark riots) Wikipedia
Johnson asked for answers to three basic questions about the riots:
“What happened? Why did it happen? What can be done to prevent it from happening again and again?
The 1968 Kerner Commission Got It Right, But Nobody Listened
Released 50 years ago, the infamous report found that poverty and institutional racism were driving inner-city violence
Has ANYTHING changed after over FIFTY YEARS? Wonder why we are still here! THINK!
I’m sorta finding it hard to think when I read the same message posted several times throughout a comments section.
An outstanding comment WildBull. Every community, I’ve seen, that really values education has good schools. It has certainly been proven, over the past decades, that you cannot buy good schools. A host of big cities have tried and failed.
That is because the most important factor in education, is not how much money is spent, but the families and their values. What do parents teach their children, by example of their own lives. It’s preparing your kids to expect a life of learning and striving and supporting and encouraging them along the way.
When a community doesn’t offer that, you have to move.
‘an academic study suggesting nonviolent protests may be more politically effective than violent ones!”
Afterwide Race riots in the 60s, Prez Johnson set up Kerr Commission to find out the causes and the remedy. (Wikipedia)
The 1968 Kerner Commission Got It Right, But Nobody Listened
Released over 50 years ago, the infamous report found that poverty and institutional racism were driving inner-city violence
DID ANY THING after 50 yrs??
This is the natural result of 250 years of kicking the can down the road. Churchill is purported to have said, “America always does the right thing … after it has tried everything else.”
It will be interesting to see how much longer the can will be kicked.
100% honesty here. My brother is in the media. He is fully blown irrational about Trump and makes excuses for anything, because he claims that Trump is a dictator that will shutdown the election and try to be dictator for life. If I tell him that this has 0% chance of happening, because the people and military wouldn’t be cool with it he accused me of being part of the problem and betraying the US even though I don’t like Trump. I could go on and on with examples.
Oh yeah, he says he is objective politically when reporting.
This trend is very disturbing; without the freedom to speak out without fear of retaliation—especially from the media—the truth becomes what the mob says it is
Just as there is no possible “middle ground” between freedom and socialism https://mises.org/library/middle-road-leads-socialism,
neither is there some “middle ground” between freedom of speech and complete, totalitarian censorship. You can either yell fire in crowded theater, n-words at BLM events and advocate for blowing up the country at your discretion, or you live in a place no substantively different at all from North Korea.
Once you have a government, and government organs, allowing their enforcement apparatus to be used to restrict speech, those who feel they may benefit from speech being restricted, will keep expanding what is banned, until we are where North America, Northern Europe and North Korea are today. It’s not just that there are no known exceptions to that. There are indeed no possible exceptions.
None of that is even an extrapolation on Mises’ argument. Just a reminder that free speech, like all freedom, is also an economic good. Hence, no different from any other good for which a “Middle of the Road” exists nowhere; but in the propaganda of privileged apparatchiks and Dear Leaders, as well as (apparently and unfortunately) in the childlike, uncritical, stunted and indoctrinated little minds of those dumb enough to fall for even a single, invariably dead wrong, word any of those have ever spoken.
The US was founded on the idealism of “live and let live” under the loose framework of a government.
That ideal has always been imperiled by those who want to control you, your family, your environment, your culture, your race. And I think it is quite likely that you want to control your neighbors life too. And it is no longer people to people, it corporations and organizations acting to direct you in your life.
It’s time to say FU to those outside influences.
Resume the American ideal of “live and let live”–don’t hold people down, don’t pull people down, it’s their country and dream also.
Say FU to those groups and organizations that say its us against them
….With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation’s wounds; to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow, and his orphan. to do all which may achieve and cherish a just, and a lasting peace, among ourselves, and all nations.
I agree but sadly I find people have neither the self control, discipline nor inclination to make a stand. How many people (on both sides) decry facebook, twitter and the rest yet do not extricate themselves from it? How many people revile the social engineering agenda of modern Hollywood yet still pay for their cable, streaming, and or movies? Having done those things I seem like an oddity to most – and people can’t get past their ‘huggy-monkey’ need to be like all the other apes in the troupe.
With all due respect…
“The US was founded on the idealism of “live and let live” under the loose framework of a government.”
For white male landowners and their families.
Funny, the descendents of those people haven’t been too keen to “live and let live.”
“Community-led Public Safety System”
I think I was 8 when I first heard that the statue of Lord Baden Powell in the park across from my house, revered as founder of the Boy Scouts (I was in cubs, and later in Scouts), was the inventor of the concentration camp. In the summertime, when a band would play O Canada in the park’s band stand, everybody would sing, but when they finished with God Save the Queen, 90% of the crowd (French) kept their lips tightly sealed. Lord Baden Powell reminded them of the mutinies that had ensued when they tried to conscript Frenchman to fight against the Boers, instead of against the English
At the time, (early sixties) there was a 9:00 general curfew in the summer, announced by siren, which meant unaccompanied youth 16 years and under were supposed to go home.
Nobody suggested getting rid of Baden Powell’s statue.
Nobody thought about quitting scouts.
Nobody defaced the band stand.
Nobody thought anybody was a fascist.
The favorite ploy of the left is to “change” the world by changing the words.
We are witnessing the triumph of magical thinking.
In many cases, there are better people to honor. I don’t see any good in continuing to honor mass murderers like Columbus. To me, it’s as much “magical thinking” to want to replace statues as it is to want to retain them.
Well yes, but I don’t look at statues as things I should honor, I see them as artefacts of the past, like forts or whatever. There’s no point changing the record. I’ve long thought Alexander the Great was an a delusional psychopath, but he still had a big influence. I never contemplate renaming Alexandria or any such thing.
New statues are a different thing, although dedicating everything to the first homosexual, transgender, or woman who did this or not is also not my first inclination, but neither is honoring dead aldermen or “generous” philanthropes. I hope I don’t encounter any George Floyd freeways. But there are enough other historical figures to put on statues … and we can always put up something else to look at.
It’s a good thing we have a healer at the helm…
“So I think I’ve done more for the Black community than any other president, and let’s take a pass on Abraham Lincoln because he did good, although it’s always questionable, you know, in other words, the end result —” Trump said…
Sounds like Trump, unlike the liberal myth-maker professors and media, has actually read Lincoln’s letters and transcripts of what Lincoln said in the debates with Stephen Douglas.
It feels like it is too late to try to Make America Great Again. This wokeness is just too ingrained and now growing and becoming increasingly absurd. I can’t imagine the end game of the civil war that is unfolding and evolving from cold to hot.
Fourth Turning coming right on schedule.
Not just “wokeness”. Not since Bill Black helped prosecute bankers during the S&L crisis has there been anything resembling law and order among the elites. (Well, a couple of Enron guys and Martha Stewart did time. That was the tail end.) I can hardly blame mobs for looting or stupidity under these circumstances. Look at the trillions the elites are handing themselves. Look at trump with the Bible or the D’s with their kneeling photo-op (which they didnt do when it took courage but only now after riots). The rot at the top is complete. We are ruled by the worst people.
Yes, good book about why nothing happened crooks in Corporate America after Enron, Martha and Bernie Ebbers is The Chickenshit Club. The Feds and the states AG are the chickens.
The National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders, known as the Kerner Commission after its chair, Governor Otto Kerner, Jr. of Illinois, was an 11-member Presidential Commission established by Prez Lyndon B. Johnson in Executive Order 11365 to investigate the causes of the 1967 race riots in the United States and to provide recommendations for the future Prez Johnson appointed the commission on July 28, 1967, while rioting was still underway in Detroit, Michigan. Mounting civil unrest since 1965 had spawned riots in the black & Latino neighborhoods of major U.S. cities, including Los Angeles (Watts riots of 1965), Chicago (Division Street Riots of 1966 [the first Puerto Rican riot in US History]), & Newark (1967 Newark riots)
Johnson asked for answers to three basic questions about the riots: “What happened? Why did it happen? What can be done to prevent it from happening again and again?
Has ANYTHING changed after over FIFTY YEARS? Wonder why we are still here! THINK!
Faced with either having my house or business looted and burnt to the ground vs. being accused of having TDS, I’ll take TDS.
TDS is fated to be a temporary accusation with a lifetime of at most 8 years. How long before the radical leftists turn to any house or business that does not meet their ideological purity test to be burned down?