Fake News – Ratburger

Trump v. CNN

“In a demand letter sent to CNN on Wednesday, an attorney working for the president outlined his intention to sue CNN for its willful misrepresentation of itself. For years, CNN has told viewers, advertisers, and sources that it is an unbiased, straight news outfit. That’s a lie, and the president’s lawyers believe it actually violates the federal Lanham Act’s prohibitions on false and misleading advertising.”

That is from Daily Caller. Here is more from the Washington Examiner:... [Read More]

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A caper? A caper is a crime. In particular, a caper is a crime story that is so interesting that they made a movie or TV show about it. “Caper” in common parlance over the past four decades or so is only used to describe a crime that is somehow flamboyant.

So, here is a headline from Politico. It is currently featured at the default page on Google News:

“Giuliani and associate give conflicting accounts on origins of Ukrainian caper”

Continue reading “Caper”

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Mollie on the Warpath

Mollie described in detail the slimy attacks on Brett Kavanaugh during his Confirmation hearings. She wrote the book, along with coauthor Carrie Severino of the Judicial Crisis Network. She predicted that more slimy attacks should be expected.

Mollie learned of the upcoming book release of a book about Justice Kavanaugh, by two New York Times reporters. She anticipated more slime to be ginned up by the Talking Snake Media. She started monitoring their pre-launch media appearances. (She probably had to fight a little urge to jealousy, too, since they got the sort of media appearances that were never available to her and Ms. Severino.)... [Read More]

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Media v Evangelicals 2019 midyear update

Last year I wrote a dozen posts to report on the assaults by mass media on Evangelical Christians. I cited the many hatchet-job articles and a representative handful (out of many dozens) of editorials from mass media to document their collective attempt to suppress Trump voters and boost Democrat prospects in the 2018 midterm elections. Things quieted down after Christmas, but then heated up over abortion when a number of red states were working on bills to restrict abortion. The focus stayed on Culture of Death issues all spring, with a few occasional bursts of Catholic-bashing thrown in.

But now I see signs of a renewed energy in media attacks on Evangelicals. This looks like the ramp-up to 2020 campaigning. I am not alleging any conspiracy. All I am pointing out is that journalists as a group hate President Trump and hate the voters who put him in office. Since they are overwhelmingly irreligious, they neither understand nor wish to understand the concerns of Christians. ... [Read More]

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Terrorist van Spronsen

I suppose everyone saw that a terrorist had tried to bomb an ICE facility in Tacoma using Molotov cocktails and a propane tank bomb, and was killed in a shootout.

I doubt if any of you learned anything of the details, because journalists seemed really un-curious and unwilling to follow up. The details got left out; there was no reporting on several aspects of the attacker and his motives, which were vaguely reported as “unclear” by media outlets hostile to ICE.... [Read More]

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Ramadan Bombathon report 2019

Ramadan ended last week. Here is the tally.

No casualties in America this year. A pretty big number overall. 911 killed and 1006 wounded. Do you recall seeing any of this in the news? Didn’t think so.

Continue reading “Ramadan Bombathon report 2019”

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Enemy of the People –Antifa connections

RedState has an interesting post up about recent work by Dr. Eoin Lenihan to establish that a scattered collection of journalists have multiple ties to Antifa.

Antifa, yeah, those guys. The violent mask-wearing thugs who roughed up Trump fans and shut down some free speech rallies. Real terrorists.... [Read More]

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evil Google — curator of your information flow

I put up a couple of recent posts to observe on a surge of obituaries on the news business. But all y’all internet denizens are still reading news. You just don’t take daily newspapers anymore, and only a very tiny share of y’all subscribe to any kind of news provider. That is the way most of us operate any more. But information flow, especially the flow of recent events information, aka ‘news,’ is now screened for most receivers of news by evil Google.

Yeah, I know; some Ratburghers are boycotting Google by using DuckDuckGo and a couple of other search engine alternatives. But the problem remains. Over half of all news articles that are accessed on the internet were landed on through an evil-Google search, which means that evil Google gets a shot at screening the news for over half of all internet news consumption. This finding comes from a Northwestern University study that was recently presented at the “2019 Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems” that was held in Glasgow.

Continue reading “evil Google — curator of your information flow”

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Drag Queen Story Story

I posted a few months ago with a story that was broken by LifeSiteNews.com. That is a small Catholic pro-life news aggregator and blog based in Toronto. They are very well-known in pro-life activist circles, and were otherwise unknown until they published the famous letter from Archbishop Viganò. Archbishop Viganò said that the Vatican had known about Cardinal McCarrick for several years, but that Pope Francis had rehabilitated him anyhow. The reason the letter was published by LifeSiteNews is that they are the only English-language journalists that Archbishop Viganò trusted with his letter. I bring this up as an introduction to a new story from LifeSiteNews that you do not see in mass media journalism, this time from Houston:

Now, it turns out that a second Houston Public Library Drag Queen was convicted of multiple sexual assaults against young children, according to records uncovered by Houston MassResistance activists. The man has also written a lurid article describing his work as a transgender prostitute. And he was photographed at a Drag Queen Story Hour (DQSH) event carrying a rubber chicken — a symbol used by homosexuals to indicate a sexual preference for young boys. …... [Read More]

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Saving Journalism

Fake News, you say? Indeed, this is to discuss the turmoil in the field of journalism, which is both a cause and a consequence of the Leftist tilt of the entire field. Journalism is in crisis, you see, and Leftist media watchers are looking for scapegoats. President Trump figures high on their enemies list, with his “fake news!,” “Enemy of the People,” and Sarah Huckabee Sanders. See my previous post on this topic. In that post I reacted to a journalist who blamed the end of professionalism in journalism on President Trump. In this post I will discuss the reasons for the collapse of journalism as we knew it.

I am happy to see the recent obituaries for Big Journalism. But before we discuss the real problems with journalism, please consider what the crisis looks like to the journalists. There have been a rash of articles and editorials from journalists that have expressed fear and frustration. This is an excerpt from an article that appeared in the New Yorker back in January:... [Read More]

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Killing Journalism

“It’s almost as if the effort to undo Trump has had an unexpected effect — that Trump has somehow broken the news media.”

That is a quote from a long essay at Esquire last month by Peter Boyer. Boyer wrote about changes to news coverage of the President of the United States because of Donald J. Trump. He, of course, blames Trump. But he is clearly distressed at the current state of affairs. His essay concentrates on the New York Times, with a long section about the Washington Post and a couple of asides about CNN. I bookmarked the link to Boyer’s essay. It is an interesting read. I think it will make a helpful addition to the obituary for the national press.... [Read More]

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Changing their tune

The James W. Foley Legacy Foundation held their annual awards dinner. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo was not there. Instead, he was the interviewee at Fox and Friends, where he revealed that he had been notified that he would be the recipient of their signature award and had been invited to the Foundation’s annual banquet, but then he was notified that they were rescinding the award and he was dis-invited.

“The return of hostages isn’t partisan. It’s not political. This is an American activity,” he said.... [Read More]

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Journ-o-list redux

A new platform for journalists to strategize on the narrative of the day. This is based in Canada, I think, and is being pushed out to journalists in the UK and America as well.

Right. They already think alike anyway. No conspiracy needed.... [Read More]

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A Study in Fake News

A friend and former colleague sent me a link to the following brief article: A Strong Start to Sierra Snowpack. It purports to be a factual report of the water situation in California. Such stories are always interesting for the things they leave out: the dog that didn’t bark.

Start with the title. Since the snowpack is already above the normal peak, which is referenced to April (seasonal peak), it would be more accurate to say that the snowpack is already well above average for the whole season though it’s still only February. That’s more than a strong start. Furthermore, though the 2017-2018 year was below average, the prior year was well above average. Together, they were about average.It is in the nature of snowfall to fluctuate from year to year.... [Read More]

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USA Today cheerleading for impeachment

They have got nuthin’. This is a long feature, prominently highlighted at the default Google News aggregator, purporting to list a bill of particulars. None of this is concerning; it is all old news, with the case for corruption resting on a house of cards of innuendo, guilt by association, and denigrating land development business as somehow inherently evil.

Six years ago I was thinking of USA Today as one of the least unreliable of the major mass media news organizations. But in the Age of Trump they have energetically leapfrogged their competition in a rush to Leftist advocacy exclusively. They are Fake News. The Enemy of the People.... [Read More]

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