Finally, someone in the establishment media is acknowledging that the Southern Poverty Law Center has a credibility problem. Politico writer Ben Schreckinger raised the issue in a long piece posted June 28 titled “Has a Civil Rights Stalwart Lost its Way?”
SPLC is the hate group that exists to scream “HATE!” at anyone on the right and scare aging hippies into sending it money. Lots of money. It’s the organization whose designation of the Family Research Council as a “hate group” inspired a gay rights nut to try to kill everyone in FRC’s office in 2012 (The office was helpfully designated on SPLC’s “Hate Map”). It was founded to fight the Klan, but now it targets Christian groups, immigration think-tanks and critics of militant Islam.
And though Schreckinger clearly is a liberal (“Trump swept into the Oval Office by disparaging Mexican immigrants, fanning Islamophobia and activating a resurgent strain of racism rebranded as ‘alt-right’”) and an admirer of SPLC founder Morris Dees, he doesn’t shy away from criticism.
William Jacobson, a law professor at Cornell and critic of the SPLC, says the group has wrapped itself in the mantle of the civil rights struggle to engage in partisan political crusading. “Time and again, I see the SPLC using the reputation it gained decades ago fighting the Klan as a tool to bludgeon mainstream politically conservative opponents,” he says. “For groups that do not threaten violence, the use of SPLC ‘hate group’ or ‘extremist’ designations frequently are exploited as an excuse to silence speech and speakers,” Jacobson adds. “It taints not only the group or person, but others who associate with them.”
The article also discusses at length SPLC’s financial shadiness, quoting another (liberal) critic saying “The organization has always tried to find ways to milk money out of the public by finding whatever threat they can most credibly promote.”
Conservative Mark Krikorian of the Center for Immigration Studies – another SPLC-designated “hate group” – told Schreckinger, “I think SPLC has jumped the shark … the idea that a think tank on K Street is comparable to some skinhead group is laughable.”
Yes it is. But what’s not funny is this, also from the piece: SPLC “pump[s] out reports that are regularly cited by just about every major mainstream media outlet, including Politico, and their researchers have become the go-to experts for quotes on those topics.”
Let’s hope the Politico article is a step toward changing that.
After Tuesday’s NBC Nightly News falsely tried to frame a New York City subway derailment as a sign of “America’s aging infrastructure,” Wednesday’s Today acknowledged that the accident was actually due to “human error.” However, that correction did not stop correspondent Thomas Roberts from using the incident to attack President Trump’s proposed budget that would reduce Transportation Department spending.
Roberts began the morning show segment by admitting: “...we did get new information overnight with the MTA confirming that this is an issue of human error. It’s not what was originally reported, to be something wrong with the infrastructure.” Despite that fact, he warned moments later: “But still, it’s the latest in a string of embarrassments to New York’s subway....And it’s a national problem. Earlier this month, President Trump gave a speech about infrastructure.”
Following a soundbite of the President calling for “a safe, reliable, and modern infrastructure,” Roberts scolded: “But President Trump’s proposed 2018 budget cuts funding to the Department of Transportation by nearly 13%, to $16.2 billion.” He conveniently left out the fact that Trump also called for a $1 trillion infrastructure package in his budget plan.
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Amazingly, the failure of former President Obama’s nearly trillion-dollar 2009 stimulus package, allegedly designed to improve the nation’s infrastructure, was not mentioned.
Here is a full transcript of the June 28 report:
7:14 AM ET
MATT LAUER: In other news, we are learning more this morning about what caused a frightening subway train derailment right here in New York. Dozens of passengers were injured, service was disrupted for hours. The accident, the latest in a series of problems facing transit officials and frustrating riders. NBC’s Thomas Roberts has the latest on this. Thomas, good morning to you.
THOMAS ROBERTS: Matt, good morning to you. And the a.m. rush hour just getting started here. But we did get new information overnight with the MTA confirming that this is an issue of human error. It’s not what was originally reported, to be something wrong with the infrastructure. They use spare rail – for efficiency, stored down on the tracks so that they can repair them. But in this case, the spare rail wasn’t bolted down. It’s a nationwide practice. But that is not enough for millions of people who have to commute today who recognize that this is not a track defect.
[ON-SCREEN HEADLINE: Subway Derailment Blamed on “Human Error”; Crash Comes Amid Infrastructure Issues Across U.S.]
Chaos, deep underground. A subway train derailing, violently tossing people to the floor.
UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN [NYC SUBWAY DISPATCH]: We have an emergency, stand by.
ROBERTS: Smoke, darkness, and fear.
UNIDENTIFIED MAN [SUBWAY PASSENGER]: We were going up and down, all up the sides. People were flying all over the cars.
UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN B [SUBWAY PASSENGER]: It was just very traumatizing.
UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN C [SUBWAY PASSENGER]: I’m, like, really shooken up [sic] right now.
UNIDENTIFIED MAN B [SUBWAY PASSENGER]: We gotta go this way!
ROBERTS: The passenger who took this video said he thought he was going to die. These photos show the derailment’s damage. Twisted metal and debris, passengers taking pictures of a door ripped off their train car. Passengers shuffling out, car by car or dangerously walking along the tracks.
UNIDENTIFIED MAN C [SUBWAY PASSENGER]: The thing right there is the third rail.
ROBERTS: Until they made it safely to the platform.
UNIDENTIFIED MAN D [SUBWAY PASSENGER]: We survived.
ROBERTS: Overnight, the MTA said, “the cause was an improperly secured piece of replacement rail that was stored on the tracks; the cause appears to be human error, not a track defect.”
But still, it’s the latest in a string of embarrassments to New York’s subway. Earlier this month, passengers desperately tried to claw their way out of this dark and steamy F train after it was stuck underground for an hour after it lost power. “For F’s Sake,” the New York Post wrote, “Fix the Subways!” New Yorkers are already bracing for a so-called summer of hell for commuters. Amtrak racing to overhaul Penn Station after two derailments earlier this year.
And it’s a national problem. Earlier this month, President Trump gave a speech about infrastructure.
DONALD TRUMP [JUNE 7]: The promise of a safe, reliable, and modern infrastructure hasn’t been kept. But we’re going to keep it.
ROBERTS: But President Trump’s proposed 2018 budget cuts funding to the Department of Transportation by nearly 13%, to $16.2 billion. The American Society of Civil Engineers has slapped the U.S. transit system with a D-minus grade, noting there’s a $90 billion rehabilitation backlog.
So, work crews have been here overnight, trying to get everything back up and running for those that are commuting this morning. Three dozen people were injured in this accident, they are all expected to be okay.
Now one commuter I spoke to this morning, roughly around 6:30, she said she didn’t have any trouble getting here, Matt and Hoda, she was “in one, two, three,” she said. I also tried to speak to some of the MTA workers who were on a break. They were courteous, but said that they couldn’t give me a statement, they were going to be getting back to work.
But I think you can tell by the great weather – and Al and Dylan can confirm this – if you’re going to be a little late for work today, and it’s because of an issue with the subway, today’s a beautiful day to walk. So take that into account.
HODA KOTB: Alright.
LAUER: Alright, Thomas, thank you very much.
“You can’t fudge the numbers of the Medicaid cuts,” Joe Scarborough warned in an ominous tone on Wednesday’s Morning Joe. Decrying the “lying” Republicans, he then hypocritically exclaimed, “You slash $750 billion...after you’ve already slashed another $300 or $400 billion in an underlying budget, over $1 trillion in Medicaid cuts, that destroys health care in Trump America.” Following suit in an unsurprisingly toadyish manner, Mike Barnicle, then proceeded to laughably state that,“math is the reality here.”
The line of attack by the liberal media that supposed "cuts" to Medicaid in the Republican health care bill will destroy health care is ludicrous. In reality, there are no "cuts" to anything. The proposal would actually increase Medicaid spending, but at a slower rate over time than under ObamaCare. Furthermore, there is nothing in the legislation preventing our esteemed elected officials from revising such spending as time goes on, so the idea that Medicaid itself will undergo any sort of profound change is unlikely at best. In addition, the MSNBC host ignored the massive expansion of Medicaid that occurred under President Obama's signature law.
MIKE HALPERIN: McConnell could give more money in the short term to the moderates, long-term reform to the more conservative members of the conference and then tell the house take it or leave it. No conference just take it or leave it.
JOE SCARBOROUGH: Wrong! And let me tell you why it's wrong and not only because I want to sound like John Mclaughlin there, but also the one thing you can't fudge are the numbers of the Medicaid cuts. You can't fudge them. You can lie if you're Donald Trump, you can lie about whatever you want to lie about. If you're Republicans, and you feel like lying about saying nobody's going t
o lose their health care coverage, you can do that, too. But you slash $750 billion, Mike Barnacle, from Medicaid, after you’ve already slashed another $300 or $400 billion in an underlying budget, over $1 trillion in Medicaid cuts, that destroys health care in rural America, in Trump America. We've said it again, let me say it again, not just for the poor. For the middle class and the upper middle class, their parents in nursing home, their children in NICU units, you name it, it devastates health care for half of America.
MIKE BARNICLE: Yesterday we had Angus King on, we just had Chris Murphy from Connecticut on, math is the reality here, that's why it's a 'no' vote in Maine. 8 of 16 counties, the hospitals, the regional hospitals, rural hospitals are the biggest employer. Chris Murphy talking about nursing homes in Connecticut, that’s state after state with these Medicare cuts you’re gonna have to choose between five days of school or four days of school. You’ve got a child a special needs child you’re gonna have to worry what you're going to do with that child because of Medicaid cuts. You’re gonna have to worry about, hey, do I get the Castro pullout couch for grandpa because he’s coming home from the nursing home with Medicaid cuts.
SCARBOROUGH: Oh, he’d love that.
BARNICLE: And that’s state after state after state.
Duplicitous math and reasoning serve as prime examples of everything that is currently wrong with the state of the media in America today. When a news person accuses an elected official of lying and supports it by telling his own lies, he not only undermines himself, but also any possible merit that his arguments may have possessed on their own.
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Today’s Morning Joe was brought to you by Booking.com, Liberty Mutual, and La Quinta Inn & Suites.
Cosmopolitan devoted an article to a particularly theatrical Planned Parenthood protest – in which volunteers donned white bonnets and red capes. The aim of the protest was to draw a parallel between the novel, which, according to Cosmo, illustrates “a dystopian future in which women are stripped of their reproductive rights” and our current political climate.
Planned Parenthood volunteers ‘made a stand’ in front of the U.S. Capitol building, wearing the red and white garb of the Hulu show and novel The Handmaid’s Tale. According to Cosmo, the protest reflected Planned Parenthood’s concerns that “if a new health bill is passed limiting women’s rights to abortion even further than they already are, the country could be heading for a similarly bleak future.”
This isn’t the first Handmaid’s Tale themed protest on so-called abortion ‘rights.’ Give Him the Finger, an organization dedicated to sending the president hate mail, tweeted a photo June 23 of protestesters holding rainbow flags. One, smiling, held a poster reading “abort Mike Pence.”
These protests are, frankly, absurd. The very fact that costumed protesters can freely parade about wishing death to the Vice President reveals just how far America is from Handmaid’s Tale dystopianism.
It’s been one year since the Lebanese Christian village of Qaa was targeted by eight ISIS suicide bombers – an atrocity that killed five and wounded 32. Had this horror happened in the west, it would have garnered copious media coverage. But the American network news shows didn’t mention it.
In an op-ed written for Newsweek, In Defense of Christians vice president Andrew Doran commemorated the one-year anniversary of the lives that were lost. Noting Qaa’s role as a “symbol for the courage of Christians of Lebanon,” he explained that the targeting of Christians is not a new issue in the little nation – or the Middle East at large.
While Christians were once a majority in Lebanon, that is no longer the case. From the civil war which began in the 1970s, to the Syrian occupation, to ISIS aggression, followers of Christ have suffered intensely.
But Qaa’s mayor, Bachir Matar, does not intend to evacuate. “We will never abandon Qaa,” he said. “For forty years we have been attacked. One hundred fifty of our people have been martyrs. First the Palestinians, then the Syrians, and now Daesh. We won’t be driven out by Daesh.”
If they ever did leave the region, some believe it would be fatal for Europe. According to Doran, many Lebanese say that “Lebanon is the front line for the West.”
This fact makes the lack of awareness of Christians’ plight especially disturbing.
Yosef Farris, a policeman whose brother died in the Qaa attack, expressed frustration about the world’s ignorance. “America had nineteen attackers and that led to a global war. We had eight and no one even knows about it.”
In Iraq, the situation is even worse. There, the Christian population has dramatically dwindled; while there were once 1.4 million Christians, there are now less than 200,000. There, and in Syria, Christians and Yazidis face a full-scale genocide at the hands of ISIS. This is a reality that the State Department, President Trump, and Vice President Pence have all acknowledged. Even still, the broadcast news networks have been reticent to use the “g-word.”
Now, though several formerly ISIS-controlled towns have been deemed safe for reoccupation, Christians aren’t returning. That is a highly concerning blow to the prospects of pluralism in the region.
According to Newsweek reporters Tommy Trenchard and Aurelie Marrier D’Unienville, the reasons for the hesitancy are threefold. Iraqi Christians believe that the law will not protect them. And indeed, they are constitutionally second-class citizens. Additionally, they fear neighbors sympathetic to ISIS and wonder whether another terrorist group will force their evacuation later down the road.
It seems that the return journey is not worth the risk. And so, many languish in Internally Displaced Persons (IDP) camps, which do not receive UN aid. Some fear UN administered camps because they fear discrimination and violence because of their minority faith status.
But the United States is trying to help. Christian advocacy groups like the Knights of Columbus have raised over 1 million dollars to help support the IDPs. H.R. 390, passed unanimously by the House, seeks to provide emergency relief to them. And most recently, Senators Marco Rubio (R-FL), Ben Sasse (R-NE), James Lankford (R-OK) and John Cornyn (R-TX) sent a letter to Secretary of State Rex Tillerson urging prioritization of financial support.
Without an increase in awareness, aid and continued anti-ISIS action, Christianity is in danger of dying out in the Middle East.
As has become routine on The View, the liberal hosts ganged up on libertarian host Jedediah Bila Wednesday after she pointed out the mainstream media’s liberal bias. After Playboy's White House Correspondent threw a temper tantrum in yesterday’s press briefing, the panel criticized Trump's treatment of the media. Host Sunny Hostin gushed that the reporter was only there to be a “watchdog” for the White House and to protect us against a “dictatorship.”
Hostin ranted that how the White House was acting with reporters was “scary,” suggesting Trump was trying to lead a “dictatorship:”
SUNNY HOSTIN: They have to stick together. What's scary is she's doing what she's being told to do. This is coming directly from the president. This is coming from the White House. And what they are trying to do, I think, is damage the freedom of the press which is protected by our Constitution, which is protected by the First Amendment. If you look at the recent polls, a majority 65% of voters believe there's a lot of fake news in the mainstream media and the majority say the mainstream media publishes fake news and 37% trust the White House versus 29% who favor the political media. We need to be very concerned about this because this is what happens in Russia, this is what happens in China, when you believe the government state sponsored news over the people, you're leading -- it's a dictatorship.
As a member of the ABC News legal team, Hostin had made this Chicken Little rallying cry before to her fellow journalists, urging them to “unite” against Trump.
But host Jedediah Bila defended Deputy Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders as doing what every press secretary does in pushing back against the media’s questions. She cited the Russia story and the recent revelations and resignations at CNN as a sign that the media isn’t always working in the public’s best interest.
BILA: Every press secretary does this. I think he [Trump] is echoing the sentiment of a lot of people across the country who are tired of the media...There's been a bombshell report out of people that went behind the scenes at CNN. A lot is for ratings but no new information and plenty to cover. You want to criticize Trump's policies, criticize other stuff and let that unfold. It looks like it's very crafted.
Whoopi disagreed, saying the media spends so much time on the Russia investigation because more and more of Trump’s people get linked to Russia. “Had this been any other president, I don't think they would have been able to get away with any of this,” she stated.
“They have all that and we have the press,” Joy Behar complained, referencing the Supreme Court and Congress. “So the press has to fight him!” she gushed.
Hostin jumped on the bandwagon. “The press is the watchdog of the government and has always been!” she reiterated. At that statement Bila scoffed:
“You think the press, the mainstream media at large was as tough on the Obama Administration as it is on the Trump Administration?” she asked.
It was Hostin’s turn to scoff. “Oh! Are you kidding me? Really?” she said in disbelief. The rest of the panel also expressed outrage that Bila would dare say such a thing.
Whoopi then scolded Bila that most of their audience didn’t agree with her, to applause. This time at least she didn’t add in a personal attack like she did on Monday’s show.
Whoopi also argued again that Obama received just as much media scrutiny as Trump has:
WHOOPI: Let me point something out to you. Actually, you know, there are a lot of folks in this audience that see it a little bit differently. But we see it from a different perspective. [ Applause ]
We see it from a different perspective. In that, you know, we watched the mainstream media sit back while he was called un-American, while he was called all kinds of stuff. He took a lot of hits. I know you don't see it from that perspective, but when I look, I've never seen any president except this one questioned the way he was questioned.
The unauthorized immigrant identity of the alleged murderer of a teenage Muslim girl in Virginia probably goes a long way towards explaining why the liberal media - and U.S. Spanish-language media in particular - have kept almost complete silence about the heinous crime.
If the perpetrator of the crime had been a run-of-the-mill generic American, could there be any reasonable doubt that the story would have received top billing, as it would have then played into the liberal media’s preferred narrative?
As it turns out, the 22-year-old alleged killer, who is accused of beating the girl to death with a baseball bat as she left evening prayers at one of America’s largest mosques and then dumping her body in a pond, is not only unlawfully present in the land (and was employed as a construction worker ‘building the country’) but was also a member of the MS-13 gang, which has infested and spread their brand of extremely violent crime in various major U.S. metropolitan areas.
While the principal national evening newscasts of Univision and Telemundo have kept entirely mum on this crime, rival Azteca América actually did report on it. But notice how Azteca, also, hid from their report any mention of the illegal status of the alleged murderer.
ROBERTO RUIZ, ANCHOR, HECHOS NACIONAL TARDE, AZTECA AMERICA: A 17-year-old Muslim female was murdered, a young woman, was murdered while leaving a mosque in the City of Fairfax. Nabra Hassan was found in a nearby pond. And the principal suspect is the man who appears on screen, Darwin Martínez Torres, a 22-year-old who allegedly beat her before she died. The young woman’s mother indicated that it could be a “hate crime,” but authorities have not validated that angle of the investigation.
It’s also worth noting that at the top of its evening news Azteca showed gross irresponsibility by directly promoting the story as a "hate crime." But, as the anchor explained when he got to the actual report, law enforcement authorities have not found any ‘hate crime’ motive and instead attribute the crime to ‘road rage’.
Additionally, it’s not like the networks have had too much other pressing news, and simply didn’t have time for the story. In the last few days, for example, Telemundo, has preferred to dedicate large chunks of its newscasts to soccer news, while Univision has found enough time for fluff news like the birth of a baby on a plane.
Below is the transcript of the above-referenced report on Azteca América’s Hechos Nacional Tarde, as broadcast on June 19, 2017.
ROBERTO RUIZ, ANCHOR, HECHOS NACIONAL TARDE, AZTECA AMERICA: A 17-year-old Muslim female was murdered, a young woman, was murdered while leaving a mosque in the City of Fairfax. Nabra Hassan was found in a nearby pond. And the principal suspect is the man who appears on screen, Darwin Martínez Torres, a 22-year-old who allegedly beat her before she died. The young woman’s mother indicated that it could be a “hate crime,” but authorities have not validated that angle of the investigation.
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CNN has become a self-serving propaganda mill for journalists the past few months, reaching a new level of shamelessness. Wednesday’s New Day ran the headline, “TRUMP WHITE HOUSE INTENSIFIES WAR WITH MEDIA,” with reporter Clarissa Ward (filling in for co-host Alisyn Camerota) worrying that by labeling the media as fake and such, that the White House is putting the lives of journalists in danger:
Chris, at what point does this become dangerous and I'm not just talking about dangerous as in tearing at the social fabric, I'm talking about dangerous in that a journalist gets hurt, because I can tell you working overseas in war zones, people are emboldened by the actions of this administration, emboldened by the all-out sort of declaration of war on the media, if I'm getting it in the neck, Chris I can only imagine what someone like you is dealing with. At what point does this become reckless or irresponsible, Chris?
The media’s new hero (Vox actually called his actions "heroic"), Brian Karem, who yelled at Deputy Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders during Tuesday's White House briefing, claimed: “We are past that point...We've had, we've had threats.” Karem claimed journalists are just doing their job. That job, of course, is to support the agenda of the left.
Unsurprisingly, co-host Chris Cuomo applauded Karem: “You’ve got a home here, Brian. We always like people who want to speak truth to power on the show...”
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Nobody is claiming that the on the scene, “war zone” reporting is fake news. Yesterday and today, Karem has been whining that journalists put their lives on the line to report the news and don’t deserve to be treated as fake news. Yeah, war correspondents and such put their lives at risk, not Washington Reporters, Brian. The truth is that the media is actually reporting inaccurate information and Newsbusters exposes this sad reality every single day.
Every public figure gets threats, Brian. I am old enough to remember way back, like a few weeks ago, when GOP congressmen were targeted and shot at (not just threatened) by a leftist nut job. The narrative is rich considering it is the media that is pushing false or misleading stories and at times hateful narratives. Yet I don’t recall the media being worried when journalists were prosecuted by the Obama administration. As Andrew McCarthy points out in National Review:
The administration’s targeting of journalists, including (a) attorney general Eric Holder’s approval of the seizure of personal and business phone records of Associated Press reporters en masse (i.e., not a particularized search targeting a specific journalist suspected of wrongdoing); and (b) Holder’s approval of a warrant targeting the e-mails of Fox News reporter James Rosen in a leak investigation — based on an application in which the government represented to a federal court that the journalist could be guilty of a felony violation of the Espionage Act in connection with a leak of classified information (in addition to purportedly being a “flight risk”).
Nor did the media cry when that administration sought to ostracize Fox News, claiming it was illegitimate.
Hennion & Walsh and the Laser Spine Institute ran ads following the segment.
See the more complete transcript of the June 28 conversation below:
8:10 AM ET
CLARISSA WARD: Chris, at what point does this become dangerous and I'm not just talking about dangerous --
CHRIS CILLIZZA: Oh, we're past that point.
WARD: -- As in tearing at the social fabric, I'm talking about dangerous in that a journalist gets hurt, because I can tell you working overseas in war zones, people are emboldened by the actions of this administration, emboldened by the all-out sort of declaration of war on the media, if I'm getting it in the neck, Chris I can only imagine what someone like you is dealing with. At what point does this become reckless or irresponsible, Chris?
CILLIZZA: I mean I don't want to say we're past that point.
BRIAN KAREM: We are past that point.
CILLIZZA: I think it is already dangerous what the Trump administration is doing, which is defiance points--
KAREM: We've had, we've had threats
CILLIZZA: they are trying to take an honest mistake or not even a mistake, and turn it into the norm as opposed -- the rule opposed to the exception, which is a very dangerous thing because that's wilfully misleading, frankly...
(...)
CUOMO: You’ve got a home here, Brian. We always like people who want to speak truth to power on the show...
Be careful how you get your hair cut. If it is a little too high and tight it could cause the obsessed members of the mainstream media to call you a "fascist" or "white nationalist." Such was the case with Eric Trump who recently got buzzed a a little too tight to pass political scrutiny by Esquire magazine.
When you look at his haircut, you will wonder what all the fuss is about. It is not that high nor even that tight. In fact, it is a haircut style favored by millions of men yet Esquire (and other liberal outlets) detect nascent fascism as you can see in a laughable June 26 hit piece by Chistine Flammia titled, Eric Trump's New Haircut Is a Little Too 'White Nationalist' for Comfort:
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This week in political style news, Eric Trump got a haircut. It's bad.
But it's not just bad because he styled it firmly away from his face, creating a severe forehead arc. And it's not just bad because he used a handful of motor oil to slick it back like some bad Elvis impersonator. It's bad because it looks eerily similar to the preferred cut of famed white nationalist Richard Spencer.
"Eerily similar" in they that they both have haircuts.
We've talked about this haircut before. It's called the high-and-tight. And, while popular in Hollywood and hipster circles lately, it has more of a connection to Nazism than many guys feel comfortable with in Donald Trump's America—one in which virulent white nationalism has far too much of a foothold in non-fringe circles.
In the 1930s and '40s, the Hitler Youth wore the 'do in propaganda posters. Richard Spencer loves it almost as much as he loves alt-right propaganda. Because nothing screams hair inspo like fascism! Did Baby Trump No. 3 miss this part of grooming culture? Who approved this haircut? They should've told him this cut doesn't work on his face shape. They should have warned him about the optics.
Or maybe nobody "warned him about the optics" because they thought nobody could be absurd enough to read something sinister into a very common hair style which, btw, is not high-and-tight as the author hallucinated herself into seeing.
Perhaps the hair obsessed Flammia should consult with Samantha Bee on this topic. Her hair obsession silliness ended up boomeranging on her bigtime when she found out that the haircut of one of her targets had nothing to do with imagined fascism.
Teen Vogue wants you to know that there is no shame in embracing who you really are. So they had “teen activists,” who identified as intersex, of course, do a video for their readers explaining what it means to be a non-traditional gender.
The video started with, “Hi, I’m Emily, and I found out I was intersex when I was 10 years old.” Emily, with two other teens, explained that doctors told her to keep her condition quiet. The aura of a medical conspiracy was kept at the forefront of the video, with Pidgeon, another teen, telling the audience that they may be intersex if they had “gone to the doctor. . .and it just seemed a little inappropriate or different than your peers,” then they may in fact be intersex.
The article and the video, subtitled “Not All Bodies are Binary,” gave an argument for the case that there are more than two genders. Because some people are born with different parts, hormones, or chromosomes.
One teen, Emily Quinn, explained to the audience, “We’re often taught that there are only male or female bodies. . .People think that biological sex is very binary, that it just has to do with your genitalia, but a lot has to go into your sex.”
The contributors to the article agreed. “This is totally true,” they said, citing an angry biology teacher’s facebook rant as proof. Wow, that’s a great source they cited. The teacher said people can be born female but turn male at the age of 12 by growing male genitalia. She also stated that being intersex could include having a different chromosome or a different hormone than the “gender assigned at birth.” Of course, she gave no sources for her information.
The article also quoted a statistic from Brown University, saying that intersex people form 1.7% of the population. This statistic allowed the magazine to infer that “it may be just as likely that you are born intersex as born a redhead.”
Really? So assuming that the world’s population is at 7.5 billion, this means that over 100,000,000 million people are intersex. Neither male nor female. That number seems a little extreme. Even Teen Vogue admitted it was “debated.” The study was released in the late 1990s and included different types of anomalies that doctors no longer count as intersex, according to a more recent study. In fact, some analysts have suggested that the actual population of people who can be classified as intersex is 100 times smaller, at .018% of the world’s population.
The teens told the audience that they used magazines and the internet to help them discover who they really were. Since being intersex seems like a condition that could be so obvious, why did they need the media to tell them their gender?
Following his increasingly infamous spat with Sarah Huckabee Sanders over the credibility of the media’s recent reporting, Brian Karem, writer for The Sentinel and Playboy, took to the airwaves to vent his concerns to other highly regarded news intellectuals. This eventually led him to the entirely credible, and not at all untrustworthy, person of Brian Williams. “They've never admitted a mistake,” Karem whined and huffed incessantly to Brian, “There is never any accountability, yet they want to flip the script and hold us accountable while not accepting any responsibility themselves and that's a very childish maneuver.”
Williams, who has been well-documented for having lied and fabricated stories under the guise of a humble, honest news reporter, seemed an interesting choice for Karem to consult. Despite his repeated fabrications, Williams was only briefly suspended before being welcomed back onto the air, albeit with a less prominent show on MSNBC. If one wishes to spread the good graces of the mainstream media you would think that one might seek out someone other than the poster boy for everything wrong with it:
BRIAN KAREM: So it's really kind of -- you know, as I told my wife this evening, it's like- it was like dealing with my children. After a while enough is enough. And I had had enough.
BRIAN WILLIAMS: And you can speak for yourself. But it seemed to me watching you that a big concern to you was this kind of negative affirmation for the audience that already is highly suspect of the information that comes out of the news media, believes we're all in the tank.
KAREM: Absolutely. They believe we're all ca-hooting together. We have a nefarious plan. The nefarious plan, the only agenda is to try and get facts. And every time that you paint us as such you're undermining the very First Amendment that you claim that you support. And time after time after time they've told news that room how they support the First Amendment. They just don't like the people practicing it. And that's very disheartening. It's very disingenuous. They've never admitted a mistake. We're led on a path of one way with Comey -- I've got tapes--No I don't have tapes. And then there is never any accountability, yet they want to flip the script and hold us accountable while not accepting any responsibility themselves and that's a very childish maneuver. It's what my kids used to do and I didn't like it then and I don't like it now.
Karem had already gone on a rant earlier in the evening with MSNBC’s own Chris Matthews, but it looks like he ultimately decided that he could do one better with Williams before the night was out. Whether or not he actually persuaded anyone new to his cause, however, remains in doubt.
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On Tuesday, in a segment which could easily have been mistaken for parody, MSNBC's Ali Veshi relayed Planned Parenthood's long-discredited and tortured statistic that abortions constitute only three percent of its "services."
As he did this, Veshi absurdly disclaimed association with this and other fundamentally dishonest claims by the group, saying "I don’t have enough knowledge" to evaluate them, and that he's "not advocating for Planned Parenthood."
After his Sergeant Schultz "I know nothing" routine, Veshi naturally brought on Planned Parenthood spokesperson Alencia Johnson, the group's director of constituency communications, without giving space to anyone with a pro-life viewpoint, or even one of the legion of fact-checkers who have criticized the group's claims.
The video snip which follows (HT Washington Free Beacon) contains Veshi's willfully ignorant pre-interview discussion of misleading information provided by the group which commits over 30 percent of all abortions in the U.S., accompanied by a great deal of talking down to viewers who were apparently expressing their displeasure with PP on Twitter:
Transcript (bolds are mine):
ALI VESHI, MSNBC: Let’s take a look at the medical service provider which assists millions of Americans every year. Boy I can feel the, the Twitter exploding before I even say the name of it; Planned Parenthood.
Go ahead, send your tweets in @ppfa, Planned Parenthood for America.
Boy, nobody's neutral on Planned Parenthood. We hear a lot of talk about funding for Planned Parenthood. What on Earth does Planned Parenthood actually do? OK. Yes, it provides abortions. Although it’s difficult to determine exactly what percentage of its services are abortion-related, the organization says it’s three percent. Some critics have taken issue with the methodology that led them to that number and say that it is possibly higher.
We couldn’t get — I don’t have enough knowledge of it to figure out what percentage of what Planned Parenthood does is abortions. But while we’re on the topic, no federal dollars can be used to pay for abortions at Planned Parenthood. There are very few in limited exceptions courtesy of the Hyde Amendment, which was passed in 1976.
But is there anything else that Planned Parenthood does?
Because some people just say it’s an abortion factory. In fact I can feel it right here on my phone, some of you are tweeting that to me right now. Just stop for a minute.
Put your Twitter down. Planned Parenthood provides health services to 2.4 million women and — are you sitting down for this? - Men, every year. One in five American women has visited a Planned Parenthood center at least once in her life.
For many low-income women, Planned Parenthood may be their only option to access reproductive care. There are 105 counties in the United States where Planned Parenthood is the only full-service birth control clinic. And finally, the organization is a critical tool for helping saving lives. It provides 295,000 pap tests and 320,000 breast exams every year along with 4.2 million STD tests and treatments.
Not advocating for Planned Parenthood, I’m just trying to tell you that it’s a complex organization.”
The three percent statistic Veshi would only concede might be "possibly higher" is so obviously misleading that even the left-leaners at the Washington Post's "fact-checking" operation gave it "Three Pinocchios" ("Significant factual error and/or obvious contradictions") nearly two years ago. Unfortunately, but also predictably, that same "fact check" gave the same evaluation to the claim by pro-life group Susan B. Anthony's List (SBAL) that abortion is 94 percent of Planned Parenthood's "pregnancy services."
A September 2016 video from the pro-life group Live Action based on 2015 data demonstrates that the true percentage, which the Post admitted could not be obtained because PP does not provide a "transparent breakdown of its clients, referrals and sources of revenues," is far closer to SBAL's 94 percent than it is to PP's absurd three percent:
Highlights:
Unfortunately, despite the Hyde Amendment, Planned Parenthood gets so much money from government sources — over 40 percent of its total receipts in fiscal 2013-2014 — that its virtually inconceivable that none of it ends up involved in subsidizing abortions.
Other recent Live Action videos have demonstrated that:
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Unfortunately for Veshi, MSNBC, and others who try to pretend that the group is not primarily about providing abortions, Planned Parenthood is primarily about providing abortions. It's irresponsible, as well as an insult to viewers' intelligence, to claim otherwise — or, in Veshi's case, to go on the air claiming ignorance while allowing the group an open mic to continue its nonstop campaign of deception.
Cross-posted at BizzyBlog.com.
Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch is “to the right,” the “far right.” CBS and The Washington Post on Wednesday conducted a collective freak out over the possibility that the new judge really is in the mold of the late Antonin Scalia. The two outlets collectively used the terms “right” or “far right” eight times.
On CBS This Morning, co-host Gayle King cited the Post and alerted viewers that Gorsuch “appears to be asserting himself as a force on the Supreme Court's right.” Repeating herself, she underlined, “Gorsuch fills the seat of the late Antonin Scalia and some say he's perhaps further to the right.”
In case anyone was unclear, King concluded, “He is also further to the right than almost all his colleagues on gun rights.” For those keeping score, that’s three descriptions of Gorsuch being on the “right” in just 24 seconds.
In a front page story for Wednesday’s Post, reporter Robert Barnes warned, “On Day 78 of his lifetime appointment, the Supreme Court’s newest justice, Neil M. Gorsuch, revealed himself Monday to be.... farther to the right than almost all of his colleagues on gun rights.”
The headline blared, “Gorsuch asserts himself early as force on Supreme Court’s right.” Barnes declared, “The bottom line, according to most accounts, is that Gorsuch is a Scalia 2.0, perhaps further to the right.”
Later, the journalist continued his labeling, this time describing the dreaded “far right.”
The views he expressed on the final day came in dissents or concurrences he wrote or joined with other justices. He has sided far more frequently with Justice Clarence Thomas on the court’s far right than with Roberts, closer to the center.
The Post used “right” or far right” five times. CBS and the newspaper have not repeatedly fretted about the“far left” Obama judges, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan.
On CNN, Tuesday, Chris Cuomo and Jeffrey Toobin fretted over the “very conservative” Gorsuch.
A transcript of the CBS segment is below:
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CBS This Morning
6/28/17
7:32:03 to 7:32:27
24 secondsGAYLE KING: The Washington Post reports that Justice Neil Gorsuch appears to be asserting himself as a force on the Supreme Court’s right. Gorsuch fills the seat of the late Antonin Scalia and some say he's perhaps further to the right. Decisions announced on Monday reveal that he was skeptical about the reach of the Court’s decision two years ago granting same sex couples the right to marry. He is also further to the right than almost all his colleagues on gun rights.
The committed Obama PR flacks at the broadcast news networks are experts at using biased terminology. When President Obama and the Democrats changed the health care system it was consistently presented as “reform,” but reporters rarely used the word when President Trump and the Republicans try to pass health care legislation.
From March 6 (the first introduction of this health care legislation in the House of Representatives) until June 27 when the vote was originally scheduled to be held, the evening news shows of ABC, CBS and NBC only referred to the GOP health care plan as “reform” 30 times. In a contrast that is nothing short of ridiculous, in the same time frame in 2009 (ending with the Senate passing that bill) these same networks referred to Obamacare as “reform” 344 times – more than 11 times as much. Long before it was announced that the Senate vote on the latest version of the GOP health care plan was postponed until after Independence Day, the networks began laying the groundwork for their coverage of that vote.
CBS Evening News had the most skewed coverage, with only 6 uses of that term for the GOP plan (the least of any network) and 132 uses for Obamacare (the most of any network): 22 times as much.
The health care reporting was optimistic back during the Obama years. “Health care reform is aimed at helping the millions of Americans with no insurance,” Brian Williams said on NBC Nightly News on October 23, 2009. On September 21, 2009, CBS Evening News correspondent Chip Reid called Obamacare “another issue of life and death.”
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In contrast, network journalists never missed an opportunity to slam the GOP health care bill in 2017. On June 22, NBC Nightly News blamed the failures in ObamaCare on Trump’s rhetoric “fueling market turmoil.” When ObamaCare passed the House of Representatives in 2009, the networks lauded it as “historic” and a “milestone.” But when the GOP bill passed the House in early May of 2017, it was a “big risk” and “extreme.”
This fits with the network trend of systematically ignoring ObamaCare’s failures. In 2016, ABC World News Tonight and NBC Nightly News failed to spend even a single second of coverage on ObamaCare’s failures the entire year, as premiums rose and insurance companies pulled out, until Bill Clinton’s gaffe on October 3 when he called the Affordable Care Act “this crazy system.”
After Republican Rep. Steve Scalise was shot by a Bernie Sanders supporter June 14, Democrats came out in droves to repeatedly blame Republicans and President Trump for the “rhetoric” that supposedly caused the attack. That’s right; a left-wing Bernie supporter tried to assassinate a Republican politician and the media’s reaction was to blame the victim. The New York Times took the same approach but also used the opportunity to smear Sarah Palin in an editorial that reminded readers of the Gabby Giffords shooting in 2011.
The original New York Times editorial that appeared online the day of the attack and the following morning in the paper’s print edition, had this troubling paragraph:
In 2011, when Jared Lee Loughner opened fire in a supermarket parking lot, grievously wounding Representative Gabby Giffords and killing six people, including a 9-year-old girl, the link to political incitement was clear. Before the shooting, Sarah Palin’s political action committee circulated a map of targeted electoral districts that put Ms. Giffords and 19 other Democrats under stylized cross hairs.
After duly earned backlash, the editorial board offered an apology and correction and retracted the portion from its online version. But the damage was already done. The leading newspaper in the country had resurrected a thoroughly debunked, six-year-old left-wing conspiracy theory that literally blamed Palin for “inciting” an attempted assassination. And apparently she’s not taking the smear lightly. Late Tuesday evening, news broke that Palin was taking on the media giant with a defamation lawsuit. As the Times’ Sydney Ember wrote Wednesday:
Sarah Palin, former vice-presidential candidate, filed a defamation lawsuit against The New York Times Company on Tuesday, saying the newspaper had published a statement about her in a recent editorial that it “knew to be false.”
In the lawsuit, which was filed in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, Ms. Palin contends that The Times “violated the law and its own policies” when it linked her in an editorial to a mass shooting in January 2011.
As Palin contended, this supposed “connection” was brought up long ago and long ago debunked. The Times had to know this, but attempted to make another dig at Palin with the Scalise shooting and thought they could get away with it. Clearly they were mistaken.
This lawsuit comes on the heels of years of blaming Republicans for shootings of any kind. When Giffords was shot by a mentally unstable man in 2011, who if anything had political leanings to the left, the media still blamed Republicans and the Tea Party. After Scalise was shot just two weeks ago, the media again rushed out to blame the right for supposedly “starting it.”
On this morning’s broadcasts two of the three networks ignored the lawsuit but CBS This Morning did give a brief to the news.
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Palin Photo credit: Gage Skidmore
Chicago Sun-Times theater and dance critic Hedy Weiss was roundly accused of racism when calling out police stereotypes and reminding readers of a sad fact: gun violence often occurs within the Chicago ‘community, itself.’
On June 13, Hedy Weiss reviewed Steppenwolf Theatre’s Pass Over, an adaptation of Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot. The Theatre lambasted her review, causing others to ban Weiss from freely reviewing their productions. These groups took issue with one, particular portion of Weiss’ review:
“To be sure, no one can argue with the fact that this city (and many others throughout the country) has a problem with the use of deadly police force against African-Americans. But, for all the many and varied causes we know so well, much of the lion’s share of the violence is perpetrated within the community itself.”
Why Steppenwolf, the Chicago Theater Accountability Coalition (formed just after the publication of Weiss’ controversial review), Steep Theatre, and Broken Nose Theatre, among others, thought these comments racist is still unclear. According to a study from the University of Chicago on the city’s homicide rates - published in the predominantly liberal Time - the city’s homicide “problem” is “one of gun crimes committed in public places, frequently by young people in our city's most distressed neighborhoods.”
Time actually cited a lack of police involvement in crime as key reason for the continued homicide crisis: “the report's authors believe the lack of arrests following violent crimes may have played a role in worsening a cycle of retaliatory violence.”
Weiss’ deconstruction of the play’s one-sided police stereotypes also received heavy criticism.
"Nwandu’s simplistic, wholly generic characterization of a racist White cop (clearly meant to indict all White cops) is wrong-headed and self-defeating. Just look at news reports about recent shootings (on the lakefront, on the new River Walk, in Woodlawn) and you will see the look of relief when the police arrive on the scene.”
Chicago and nation-wide media, including WGN Radio, Vanity Fair and the Chicago Reader have given ample coverage to what some are deeming a contrived issue.
According to a piece in the Chicago Tribune, some theaters “felt pressured” to join the Theater Accountability Coalition’s petitions after receiving repeated phone calls and emails from the coalition. And this is ironic. According to the Tribune, ChiTAC’s aim “has always been about love, respect, and protection,” but not for theater and media decisions surrounding Weiss’ review, not -- most apparently -- for Weiss, who Steppenwolf deemed a “bigot.”
History repeats itself. And, today, it’s playing out in the “parallels” between the Middle East and Armenian Genocides.
According to one former U.S. ambassador to Armenia, the ISIS genocide against Christians and Yazidis in the Middle East is strikingly similar to that which Armenians faced over a century ago.
Speaking at a Washington, D.C. panel celebrating 25 years of post-Soviet U.S.-Armenian relations, Ambassador John Evans (serving 2004 - 2006) joined several other Armenian and American diplomats at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace to weigh in on a variety of issues important to the two countries.
Following the talk, MRC Culture asked Ambassador Evans about the likeness between the 1915 Armenian Genocide and the modern-day atrocities facing religious minorities at the hand of ISIS.
“Unfortunately, I do see parallels,” Evans commented. “I mean, first of all, it’s ironically happening in almost the same areas of the Middle East.”
During the Armenian Genocide, the Muslim Ottoman government made a concerted effort to exterminate all Armenians. Roughly 1.5 million men, women and children were murdered, raped, deported in fatal marches or sent to death camps. Prior to this, Armenians were treated as second-class citizens to their Muslim Ottoman counterparts in the Turkish Empire -- a situation which many Iraqi Christians face now.
But the genocide perpetrators have more than killing in common.
A group of the persecuted Armenians fled to Aleppo, Syria to begin new lives, but, in a cruel twist of fate, a contingent of their descendents have now been forced to flee -- some of them, back to Armenia -- because of ISIS raids. Even worse, the Turkish army has colluded with ISIS to target Armenian sites, including the Genocide Memorial, which the terrorist group bombed in September 2014, and the Armenian town of Kessab, sacked by ISIS in March of the same year.
Even while they rebuke genocide, foreign governments face complications in holding perpetrators accountable.
“Genocidal actions tend to take place in times of war,” Ambassador Evans stressed. “So when there’s a war going on and passions are aroused, it’s very easy for unscrupulous people to cause these things to happen. And it’s very difficult for the outside world to stop them.”
Although the Obama Administration long deliberated over whether to use the "g-word" in describing the atrocities facing Christians and Yazidis in the Middle East, the State Department under John Kerry finally called it what it was. In the current administration, both President Trump and Vice President Mike Pence have condemned ISIS for genocide.
Even still, the lack of awareness of the atrocities facing this group is alarming, and mirrors the world’s broad ignorance of what happened to Armenians so many years ago.
Turkey continues to deny the Armenian Genocide and the United States has never officially recognized it. While former President Obama promised to call the massacre a “genocide,” he never did. Ambassador Evans, on the other hand, bucked State Department convention and called it by name.
“I felt that something had to be done to rock the boat,” he told LA Times reporter Matt Welch, “and to open up some space around this taboo subject, which in the State Department was routinely referred to as ‘the G-word.’”
As a result, Ambassador Evans was “eased out” of his position. “I was basically asked to go ahead and retire,” he added. “The problem for me was we couldn't talk about [the genocide].”
What may be worse is that many Americans have never even heard of it. That lack of knowledge is frightening, as it helps to pave the way for future disasters. In 1939, Adolf Hitler noted the world’s waning remembrance when he declared: "Who, after all, speaks today of the annihilation of the Armenians?"
The New York Times did not use the phrase “Armenian Genocide” until 2004 -- more than 85 years after it began. And since ISIS began to exterminate Christians and Yazidis, the big three broadcast news network shows have been similarly reticent to use the word “genocide.”
Although Ambassador Evans agreed that awareness was sorely lacking, he also believed the situation has improved thanks to actions taken by the Catholic Church.
“I think the awareness has grown to a some extent through the efforts of the Holy Father in Rome and others who have pointed out, including the Armenian organizations here in Washington, that Christians again, and Yazidis, are becoming the victims of what I would have to call are genocidal efforts,” he concluded.
According to Open Doors USA, on average per month 322 Christians are martyred for their faith, 214 “churches and Christian properties are destroyed” and 772 “forms of violence are committed against Christians (e.g., beatings, abductions, rapes, arrests and forced marriages).”
Network History of Terming Persecution by ISIS ‘Genocide’
If only the broadcast network news shows from ABC, CBS and NBC would call the persecution abroad for what it is: genocide.
Earlier this year, the networks covered the Egypt Palm Sunday bombings, for which ISIS claimed responsibility, nine times – without using the word “genocide” once. Similarly, last year, the networks refrained from using “genocide” following an Easter bombing in Pakistan targeting Christians – as well as in other reports of Christian persecution.
Last August, the MRC found that, in the past two-and-half years, the evening news shows reported on the persecution of Christians in the Middle East, Africa and South Asia only 60 times. And of those 60 reports, just six used the word “genocide.”
All this as even the U.S. government acknowledges a genocide by ISIS. Last year, Secretary of State John Kerry declared that, “in my judgment, Daesh is responsible for genocide against groups in areas under its control, including Yezidis, Christians, and Shia Muslims.”
According to a 1948 United Nations document, genocide “means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group” including killing, causing serious physical or mental harm, preventing births and kidnapping children.
Jazz Jennings of TLC’s I Am Jazz spoke to Glamour about the political climate. Unsurprisingly, the transgender reality TV star critiqued Trump for perceived oppression of the LGBTQ+ community. Yet Trump has been more outspokenly supportive of the LGBTQ+ community than any other GOP President in history.
Glamour recently featured an interview with Jazz Jennings, star of the TLC reality show I Am Jazz, which documents the transgender teen’s life. According to Glamour, “Jazz and her family slept a little more soundly at night [before the Trump Presidency]...knowing there was an advocate for them in the White House.”
“I felt like we didn’t have that security and confidence to move forward strongly,” Jennings commented during the interview. When asked for her take on the current political climate, Jennings told Glamour. “I think with this new administration, a lot of people feel more enabled to spread hate. There’s an abundance of new haters who feel more confident in stating their opinion because [of certain elected officials].”
Glamour also asked Jennings to comment on just “how difficult election night was for her.”
“It was definitely a tough day,” Jennings responded. “It’s almost like everyone was gloomy the next day. It felt like our country was completely thrown upside down and we didn’t know what we were in for at all. It was upsetting because I wasn’t sure what Trump was going to do.”
Jennings also discussed Trump’s statements ‘[allowing] Caitlyn Jenner to use the female restroom,’ stating they unreliable, “because you never know with him.”
Yet in spite of what Jennings calls Trump’s “unpredictability,” the President has been outspokenly supportive of the LGBTQ+ community. During a 60 Minutes interview, Trump declared same-sex marriage a “settled” issue. Trump also issued vocal outreach to the LGBTQ+ community after the tragic terror attack in Orlando. Furthermore, Trump has maintained gender neutral bathrooms in Trump Tower, as well as the White House. The LGBTQ+ community may remember that Hillary Clinton backed the Defense of Marriage Act and Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.
Jennings’ statements have only contributed to popular, echo-chamber style political commentary - the sort celebrities are mass-producing and quickly rendering cliche.
Before lambasting President Trump’s supposed anti-gay policy, it may behoove critics to note his long time commitment to the LGBTQ+ community.
The new documentary From the Ashes is Michael Bloomberg’s latest volley in his personal war on coal.
According to Variety in April 2017, Bloomberg’s environmental efforts included spending $100 million to move the U.S. away from coal — funding which included a new anti-coal feature length documentary: From the Ashes.
Earlier reports including InsideClimate News, indicated Bloomberg spent at least $80 million on the Sierra Club’s Beyond Coal project. The goal of Beyond Coal is to shut down all U.S. coal plants. That hardly positions Bloomberg for a neutral documentary on the issue.
Multimedia company RadicalMedia made the film with funding from Bloomberg Philanthropies. National Geographic bought it around the time it debuted at Tribeca 2017, according to Variety. The film aired on National Geographic’s channel on June 25.
From the Ashes attempted to undermine the idea that former President Barack Obama ever initiated a “war on coal,” and blame coal’s decline entirely on mechanization of mining, company shortcuts and the rise of natural gas — while at the very same time let the Sierra Club quietly take credit for shutting down hundreds of coal projects.
Quietly, because the first time a Sierra Club staffer appears in the film and admits “our work starting in 2002 was to stop 200 coal plants,” he was unidentified. It was not until later in the film, viewers saw him again identified as Bruce Nilles of the Sierra Club.
The left-wing film included many Sierra Club employees, Ethan Zindler of Bloomberg New Energy Finance, Jeremy Richardson of the liberal Union of Concerned Scientists, The UN’s Christiana Figueres, climate alarmist Michael Oppenheimer as well as various environmentalists, environmental reporters and angry individuals attacking coal power.
Only rarely did they include a viewpoint like Lori Shaw of Colstrip, Montana, who said when the company announced it would shut down two of the four coal power plants it caused “shock” and panic.”
“Suddenly everyone was trying to figure out: what are we going to do? Who’s going to have to leave? Because that’s what it boils down to. When you shut down half a power plant that sustains a city, that means half of those people are going to have to leave,” Shaw said.
The documentary hid one of the most obvious connections. The former executive director and chairman for the Sierra Club, Carl Pope appeared throughout the film but was only identified as an “environmentalist” and “author.”
The Sierra Club and former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg have been crusading together against coal for years. Bloomberg is so close to Pope they just co-wrote a book together calling for changes including regulation and adoption of renewable energy sources to combat catastrophic climate change. The book also admitted close ties to other liberal billionaires George Soros, Tom Steyer and the Rockefeller Foundation.
Bloomberg is making the rounds to promote the film, From the Ashes. On June 20, he appeared on Anderson Cooper 360 and Cooper failed to bring up the $80 million to $100 million Bloomberg has spent trying to shut down coal.
CNN Reliable Sources host Brian Stelter tore into critics of the liberal media in his email newsletter that came just after midnight on Wednesday. In response to a terrible week for CNN’s public relations, he claimed CNN’s critics were “anti-journalism.”
This makes about as much sense as saying that when CNN is critical of Trump, they are opposed to the presidency. When Stelter rips into Fox News on a regular basis, and his Media Unit tries to rip advertisers away from their shows, he doesn’t think that is “anti-journalism.” But that’s where Stelter was going in his midnight rant [emphasis his]:
Here's what I see: a divide between "pro-journalism" and "anti-journalism." People on the left, right and in-between who are pro-J recognize that most journalists try to be fair and right. Accuracy and credibility are our currencies. Checks and balances and layers of editing are guardrails. When screw-ups happen, corrections are made and lessons are learned. Newsrooms are imperfect but hopefully improving all the time. Media critics and persnickety readers and sharp-elbowed competitors all play an accountability role.
The consensus pro-J view, as far as I can tell, is that CNN made mistakes with this Russia-related story last week; that the company took serious action as a result; and that it hopefully will learn from this affair.
But there's an alternative view, popular on partisan web sites and social media, that is straight-up "anti-journalism." These activists and commenters don't promote accountability, they promote resentment and hatred. They claim that most, if not all, journalists have sinister agendas... that newsrooms are occupied by "enemies of the people..." and that the evil "MSM" is propaganda. These anti-J people claim that reporters routinely cover up good news and invent bad news. I've noticed a disturbing increase in terrorist lingo, like "CNN is ISIS," a phrase promoted by Alex Jones. This Tuesday night Breitbart story also invokes CNN and ISIS in the same sentence.
Some of this "anti-journalism" spin isn't about eradicating bias or improving news coverage, it's about trying to stamp out reporting altogether. It's nutty, but it's insidious, and that's why I'm bringing it up. Millions of Americans are exposed to these extreme views every single day through social media...
Comparing CNN to ISIS is just trolling. But Stelter and his crew are incredibly tolerant of leftists comparing President Trump to Stalin, Hitler, Hugo Chavez, Kim Jong Un, and terrorists. That’s another day at the office for the liberal media. The mellow liberals compare Trump to Richard Nixon.
Breitbart's James Delingpole offered a point Stelter won't consider, their laughable pretense that the liberal, partisan media isn't liberal or partisan. Delingpole recalled being on a panel discussion: "What amazed me that, while I was perfectly frank with the audience that Breitbart was a conservative media organization which catered for a largely conservative readership, both the guy from CNN and the guy from [the] New York Times were adamant that they were objective seekers-after-truth." The truth about their bias they just never admit.
Stelter insists that unless you honor and respect the intentions of liberal journalists – never questioning that their motives might be partisan – then you are “anti-journalism.” If you actually document that the media elites “cover up good news and invent bad news,” then you’re “anti-journalism.” If you document that journalists and Democratic operatives are operating hand in glove – like, for example, CNN analysts offering questions to Hillary Clinton in advance, or journalists sending e-mails offering Clinton officials the chance to edit their stories before publication – that’s somehow “anti-journalism.”
What we’re doing at NewsBusters isn’t “anti-journalism.” It’s journalism on journalism.