Better Than Neddie Seagoon and Eccles

You Could Not Make This Up

The Telegraph’s Tim Blair provides a list of “best quotations” heard or read in Australia over the past twelve months:

The Telegraph

Tim Blair

December 17, 2014

Presenting this year’s collection of notable quotables:

JANUARY
“Ah, well, ah, it, you know, it’s, ah, not, not for me, ah, to, ah, you know, determine how, ah, countries and individuals determine these issues.” – Having previously promised to “call out misogyny and sexism wherever I see it”, ex-PM Julia Gillard takes a different stance when asked about female representation in Middle Eastern politics.

“Do you believe Australian naval personnel or do you believe people who were attempting to break Australian law? I believe Australian naval personnel.” – PM Tony Abbott deals with claims that navy personnel deliberately burned asylum seekers.
 
FEBRUARY
“We regret if our reporting led anyone to mistakenly assume that the ABC supported the asylum seekers’ claims.” – ABC bosses Mark Scott and Kate Torney try to weasel out of their own network’s torture allegations.

“I love ABC.” – A letter from Melbourne girl Isabelle to Mark Scott after the six-year-old’s bake sale raised $40 for the billion-dollar broadcaster.

“I fully expect the ABC to be destroyed in all but name within a few years.” – A prediction from Fairfax’s Martin Flanagan.

“It’s not a betrayal of Islam. You don’t know what Islam is.” – Michael Adebowale, killer of British soldier Lee Rigby, after being told by a judge that he had betrayed his faith.
 
MARCH
“Here at The Drum website we are aware that, despite our best efforts, we have failed to achieve gender parity in our own editorial line-up.” – An editor’s note at the ABC’s Drum site.

“A gathering of the randomly but deeply aggrieved to give voice to the anger of people increasingly feeling themselves to be utterly powerless in the face of the social and political re-engineering of their country to serve the interests of powerful corporations and the true elites.” – Fairfax columnist John Birmingham supports the March in March movement.

“A suspect contacted an FGM helpline to request the procedure for his two daughters after misunderstanding the purpose of the service for victims.” – The BBC reports confusion over a female genital mutilation helpline.

“There’s a problem with my wife.” – Sydney man Yassir Ibrahim Mohamed Hassan’s emergency call after stabbing wife Mariam to death.
 
APRIL
“Did Nick give you a bottle of Grange when you became Premier?” – A question from the Daily Telegraph to Barry O’Farrell that led to the Premier’s resignation.

“This country is going to cook and people are going to die.” – Greens senator Scott Ludlam.

“World is fukt.” – A headline on the front page of the Australian Financial Review’s Anzac Day edition.
 
MAY
“The ABC gives life to those who care.” – Sign at a pro-ABC rally.

“The next time a woman dies at the hands of a violent partner and we read with trembling hearts that she could not get any legal help to stop that partner, we will be able to sheet the cause of death to Tony Abbott and Joe Hockey.” – Fairfax’s Jenna Price.

“When we do do those stories, there does tend to be a tremendous amount of lack of interest on the audience’s part.” – CNN president Jeff Zucker discovers that nobody cares about climate change.
 
JUNE
“China’s shift towards capitalism creates inequality and anger.” – The ABC’s unique analysis of the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre.

“There’s a feeling of joy.” – Wissam Haddad, head of Sydney’s al-Risalah Islamic Centre, following reports of mass murder carried out in Iraq by Islamic State extremists.

“Who is Australia’s craziest left-wing frightbat?” – An innocent poll question posted at your columnist’s website.
“Hi Tim. You will be excited to know that this survey has successfully moved you to the top of the list of people I’d like to see floating in a river, wrapped in plastic.” – One reader did not appreciate the poll.

“We can’t wait for governments to make this call. It’s time to act. A people’s revolution is required. Democracy is failing us.” – Fairfax columnist Elizabeth Farrelly.

“Honour killings are morally justified.” – Islamic extremist Uthman Badar’s planned speech for Sydney’s Festival of Dangerous Ideas, later cancelled because, as organisers put it, “the title has given the wrong impression of what Mr Badar intended to discuss.”
 
JULY
“So apparently the Australian Federal Police are looking for me – let’s see how well they can hunt. Have fun finding me.” – Australian jihadi fan Musa Cerantonio, shortly before he was arrested in the Philippines.

“We’re going to fight to raise the respect level for celebrities.” – Rapper Kanye West, better known as Mr Kim Kardashian.

“It will be remembered as one of the most ignoble moments in our history: On July 17, Australia became the first country to repeal a carbon tax.” – ABC host Julia Baird.
 
AUGUST
“I have become aware that Mike Carlton has corresponded with some Herald readers and letter writers using inappropriate and offensive language.” – Sydney Morning Herald editor-in-chief Darren Goodsir. Carlton later quit rather than be suspended.

 “Thats my boy!” – Australian jihadist Khaled Sharrouf rejoices over a photograph of his young son holding the head of a dead Syrian soldier.

“Keep them heads rolling.” – Sharrouf’s friend Mohamed Elomar joins in the fun.

“Our best defence is of course our cultured reason. Our tolerance. Our audacious confidence in the fundamental goodness of others.” – The ABC’s Jonathan Green solves terrorism.

“Beheadings occur routinely in Game of Thrones. And no complaint has been laid. Why then all the fuss?” – ABC favourite Bob Ellis following the taped slaughter of journalist James Foley.

“In NZ we are very worried about a potential influx of Australians, you know, escaping heat waves and lack of water and infectious diseases.” – University of Otago climate scientist Simon Hales.

“There was a culture of not wanting to rock the multicultural community boat, if I may put it like that. Perhaps, yes, as a true Guardian reader and liberal Leftie, I suppose I didn’t want to raise that too hard.” – Former Rotherham MP Denis MacShane following revelations of 1400 sexual torture cases in his electorate.
 
SEPTEMBER
“It demonises people.” – Greens senator Peter Whish-Wilson would prefer that we do not refer to terrorists as terrorists.

“Vale Mungo Macallum. Journalist and gentleman. His words and wit will outlive him.” – Feminist author Anne Summers sends Macallum to his grave, despite the author being very much alive.

“The police have come out very clearly and almost have said it’s all the young man’s fault.” – Islamic Council of Victoria secretary Graith Krayem after Numan Haider stabbed two policemen and was then shot.

“The beheadings, it’s an abhorrent act, don’t misunderstand me. But what about the British in Malaya in the 1950s?” – Ahlus Sunnah Wal Jama’ah Association of Australia spokesman Mustafa Abu Yusuf.

“A strong ABC is the centurion that guards this country.” – The ABC’s Peter Lloyd.
 
OCTOBER
“Clover Moore’s Sydney sits in Abbott’s Australia like an oasis of spring growth in a slag-heap.” – Fairfax columnist Elizabeth Farrelly.

“He transformed Australia and we are in his debt.” – Julia Gillard farewells ex-PM Gough Whitlam.

“As a woman coming into my eighteenth year, the fact that women were able to get the vote during Gough Whitlam’s reign …” – A North Sydney Girls High student on the ABC.
 
NOVEMBER
“Do you want death or do you want coal?” – Greens leader Christine Milne.

“My family has a poncho and it is really important to us.” – Sydney University’s Eden Caceda, whose opposition to a Mexican-themed staff party led to its cancellation.

“They planned their work day around their afternoon yoga class. They wore thongs and shorts to work, occasionally had a snooze on the couch after lunch.” – Louise Evans recalls her time at the ABC.

“People knew cuts were coming but we had no idea how bad it would be or that managers would be this sociopathic.” – An unnamed ABC staffer complains about cutbacks.
 
DECEMBER
“I’m fed up. My iPod doesn’t work any more here. I have to come back.” – War is hell for one French jihadist in Syria.

“There’s nothing planned or intended but we’re not ruling out industrial action.” – MEAA national secretary Christopher Warren warns of possible ABC strikes.

The Gullible and the Malicious

Media Fall for ‘Married Jesus’ Hoax, Again

by Thomas D. Williams, Ph.D.  

11 Nov 2014

BreitbartNews

There is a foolproof recipe for making it rich in modern pseudo-scholarship.

The recipe is:

1. Take one dusty old text in a language few people read.

2. Stirring frequently, spin the text until it makes some sensational claim “disproving” a basic tenet of Christianity.

3. Heat in gullible mainstream media oven for as long as it takes to be considered the newest “scholarly discovery.”

4. Serve warmed over.

Now, joining the ranks of the fictional works The Last Temptation of Christ and The DaVinci Code, The Lost Gospel has launched the “shocking” (if unoriginal) claim that Jesus was married to Mary Magdalene and had two children by her.

The UK newspaper, The Independent, stated that “Jesus married the prostitute Mary Magdalene and had children, according to a manuscript almost 1,500 years old unearthed at the British Library.”

“If true,” the Daily Mail breathlessly reported, “this would make it the greatest revelation into the life of Jesus in nearly 2,000 years.”

The Washington Post, the International Business Times, the Sunday Times, the Irish Independent, and a host of other media outlets have commented on the new book.  The only problem is the manuscript does not say anything like this. In fact, the names “Jesus” and “Mary Magdalene” do not even appear in the text.

The authors had to “decode” the manuscript—which speaks not of Jesus and Mary Magdalene, but of two completely different people named Joseph and Aseneth. But the authors claim to have unearthed a hidden secret that no other scholars could decipher: Joseph was actually Jesus, and Aseneth was actually Mary Magdalene.

The fact that none of their claims have historical or scholarly backing would usually mean that the book would be consigned immediately to the dustbin of literary history. Such would have been its fate, were it not for the collusion of the media who will entertain any theory—no matter how silly—that purports to undermine Christian belief.

“What the Vatican feared—and what Dan Brown only suspected—has come true,” begins the book. According to Fox News Analyst, Father Jonathan Morris, “The only thing the Vatican fears is that people today could be foolish enough to believe this schlock.”

One of the authors of The Lost Gospel is Simcha Jacobovici, a professional biblical debunker who has made a good career out of fabricating sensational stories and passing them off as scholarship.  He is especially famous for his documentary The Lost Tomb of Jesus, which describes the finding of the Talpiot Tomb during a housing construction project, claiming that it was the family tomb of Jesus.

Professor Amos Kloner actually oversaw the archeological work at the Talpiot Tomb when it was discovered in 1980, and wrote the excavation report for the finding. When confronted with Jacobovici’s hypothesis, Kloner said, “I think it is very unserious work. I do scholarly work.” This film “is all nonsense.” He added, “Give me scientific evidence, and I’ll grapple with it. But this is manufactured.”

Scholars have reacted with similar disdain for Jacobovici’s latest work, The Lost Gospel.  Diarmaid MacCulloch, Professor of the History of the Church at Oxford University, called the theory “the deepest bilge.”

John Wauck, professor of Literature at Rome’s Santa Croce University, told Breitbart News:

Why do the mainstream media give credence to ridiculous claims that are so easily proven false? Is it laziness or malice or some combination of the two?

Let me get this straight: the host of a Canadian TV show called “The Naked Archeologist” is claiming that a Syriac manuscript from the 6th century AD that never even mentions Jesus Christ or Mary Magdalene somehow proves that they were married … by the Pharaoh, no less … and had kids?

Wauck went on to note that in their approach to this manuscript, “the authors—neither of whom knows Syriac and one who has called the New Testament ‘bloated, biased and unrepresentative’— seem to have relied heavily on their imaginations and produced, not surprisingly, a work of fiction that is hostile to the Christian faith.”

Mark Goodacre, a professor of religious studies at Duke University, was similarly scornful. “I don’t think that there is any credibility in these claims at all,” Goodacre said. “There is simply no evidence in this text or anywhere else that Jesus was married to Mary Magdalene, much less that they had a couple of children.”

So the questions remain: Why do the mainstream media give credence to ridiculous claims that are so easily proven false? Is it laziness or malice or some combination of the two?

Life in the Beeb-Hive

Islamophobia: the Greatest of All Evils

We have been following the scandal of Rotherham in the UK.  Thousands of young girls were preyed upon by predatory Pakistani men.  They did it not only to feed and satiate their own lusts, but because their religion, Islam both condones and commends such acts.  Virtually any depravity is permissible in the conduct of jihad, or holy war.  And jihad against infidels is a perpetual state of Islam.  But the scandal has been exacerbated by the authorities having a very bad case of Nelson’s eye.  They saw no evil.  Why, one asks?  Were the police and welfare authorities in the pay of the Pakistani/Islamic gangs?  No.  Were they too busy elsewhere?  Only by their own design.  Were they understaffed?  Not at all.

Why did the authorities turn a blind eye?  And, why did the media hush the whole thing up by a “hear no evil, see no evil” editorial stance?  It turns out that the ideologies of multi-culturalism and political correctness saw a greater minatory evil threatening to consume all.  The evil of a right-wing fanatical reaction.  Therefore, it was better to ignore the plight of the young girls, the rape, and the murders, lest the right-wing hear of it and be provoked to the most horrible of all evils–Islamophobic discrimination and intolerance, which, it turns out, are cardinal, blasphemous violations of the cult of multi-culturalism.

James Delingpole, writing in Breitbart News, provides a case study of an actual evil stalking the land, an evil which matches that of predatory Islam, as manifested by the Beeb.

Memo to the BBC: The ‘Far Right’ Did Not Decapitate David Haines nor Rape 1400 Girls in Rotherham

By James Delingpole  

18 Sep 2014

Bretibart London

Here is the news: in Australia, a plot by Islamic State sympathisers to capture random members of the public and chop their heads off has been foiled by security services; in Syria, two Americans and a British hostage have been beheaded by an Islamist nicknamed Jihadi John – and another innocent Briton (a taxi driver captured while working for an aid convoy) has been told he is next on the list; across Britain, in the aftermath of the Rotherham enquiry, more and more evidence is emerging that in towns and cities all over the country mostly underage white girls have been systematically groomed, raped and trafficked by organised Muslim gangs, with the complicity of local government authorities, charity workers, police officers and the broader Muslim community.

Luckily, thanks to the BBC, we know what the real problem is here. It is, of course, our old friends, “Islamophobia” and “the spectre of a far right” backlash.

Both of these alleged threats featured prominently on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme this morning, including an interview with a former, self-confessed “far right” thug who revealed – presumably to no listener’s especial surprise – that the organisation to which he had belonged was racist, prone to violence, and likely to react strongly to issues like the Rotherham rape gangs.

Today also ran an interview with Tell Mama – the one-man activist organisation run by Fiyaz Mughal which has long since been exposed for its exaggerations and its threadbare methodology in cooking up an alleged spate of “anti-Muslim” hate crimes.   When, for example, last year Tell Mama reported that there had been 212 anti-Muslim incidents, it turned out that 57 per cent of these comprised disobliging comments on Twitter or Facebook, many of them emanating from outside Britain.

And the BBC Today show rounded off with a Muslim spokeswoman who was given space to assure listeners that mosques around Britain were already doing a great deal to combat extremism but hadn’t been given credit for it.

Phew. So that’s all right then.  Except, of course, it’s really not all right.

If the “Far Right” really is the pre-eminent menace in Britain today, though, it has a funny way of showing it. How many schoolgirls has it raped, recently? How many people has it killed or maimed? How many bombs has it exploded? The grand total for all the above, I believe, is as near as makes no difference to zero.

Perhaps it wouldn’t matter so much if this BBC feature were a rare aberration. But it’s not. It’s long-term house policy. Barely were the bodies of the 52 victims of the 7/7 London bus and tube suicide bombings cold than the BBC’s reporters were out pounding the streets looking for evidence of the real issue of concern – not Islamist extremism and its numerous fellow-travellers, of course, but yes, for the spectre of Islamophobia and an anti-Muslim backlash by “the far right.” It responded in the same way after the murder of Drummer Lee Rigby – complete, of course, with an interview about the “cycle of violence against Muslims” and the “underlying Islamophobia in our society” by our friend Fiyaz Mughal of Tell Mama.

It’s not just the BBC which plays this game. Earlier this week Sky News afforded a similar indulgence to convicted terrorist Shahid Butt, allowing him to justify the atrocities being committed by Islamic State by blaming them on the alleged culture of violence created by video games.  The left wing Daily Mirror meanwhile decided to hail the northern Muslim stronghold of Bradford the “second-most peaceful of Britain’s top ten cities” – in contradiction of a survey which suggested quite the opposite.  

A scandal like this on so epic a scale ought to be meat and drink to any half-way decent reporter, even in an organisation as ideologically-blinkered as the BBC. How can it not be a major story that over a period of 25 years communities across the country have been terrorised by gangs operating with near impunity, for all the world as if they were bandits on the lawless North West Frontier, not citizens of a liberal democracy?

But the BBC is the worst. For as long as I can remember, it has been talking up the “Far Right” threat, not just in its news bulletins but even in its dramas with neo-Nazis and their ilk often being invoked as the sinister bad guys in thriller series from The Professionals to Bonekickers and Spooks.

If the “Far Right” really is the pre-eminent menace in Britain today, though, it has a funny way of showing it. How many schoolgirls has it raped, recently? How many people has it killed or maimed? How many bombs has it exploded?  The grand total for all the above, I believe, is as near as makes no difference to zero.

Now this isn’t to say that the boot-boys who join these fascistic organisations are the loveliest of people nor that they don’t hold racist views. But it seems to me that if we are to use our limited resources to address the most pressing problems of our time, we ought to bend our attentions to those dangers which are most clear and present rather than to politically correct chimeras like “Islamophobia” and the “spectre of the Far Right”. (The clue for the latter is in the name: a spectre is, by nature, ghostly, insubstantial).

Otherwise what will happen is what is already happening now: you get the police turning a blind eye to antisocial behaviour by the Muslim “community”, the better to concentrate on arresting louts from the English Defence League or dads (both white and Sikh) who have had the temerity to try to take action against the gangs which have been raping their daughters. And you get a media culture which fails in its duty to expose, without fear or favour, corruption and wrongdoing wherever they are found.

As we have reported before, those 1400 victims of the Rotherham rape gangs are just the tip of the iceberg. The first case involved girls trafficked and raped by Muslim gangs dates as far back as 1989. We also know that this has been going on in towns and cities across Britain, from genteel Henley-on-Thames to Telford to parts of Norfolk.

A scandal like this on so epic a scale ought to be meat and drink to any half-way decent reporter, even in an organisation as ideologically-blinkered as the BBC. How can it not be a major story that over a period of 25 years communities across the country have been terrorised by gangs operating with near impunity, for all the world as if they were bandits on the lawless North West Frontier, not citizens of a liberal democracy? Why is not the BBC devoting its still fairly lavish resources to harrying all the bent councillors and police chiefs who have turned a blind eye to the problem and who have yet refused to resign?

And how, in all conscience, can it be so insensitive as to insult its licence-fee-paying listeners by preaching to them a gospel which most of them know not to be true: that a “far right backlash” that might happen is more worthy of our attention than a spate of rapes, bombings and murders that actually has happened, is continuing to happen, and will go on happening for as long as our politically correct establishment (of which the BBC is chief Cultural Commissar) goes on ducking the issue for fear of sounding “Islamophobic”?

 

 

Not Unexpected

Picking Through a Deceased Estate

The sanctimony and self-righteousness of the media never fail to surprise.  The media like to trumpet their standing as the Fourth Estate–a vital component in civil society to keep government and the powers honest.  What they often completely fail to comprehend is that standing as the Fourth Estate requires their behaving responsibly.

Sadly, the media is generally held in contempt by the wider population.  Their behaviour so often makes them complicit in unethical behaviour.  We have seen this on display in Murdoch’s News of the World in the UK.  In order to get “stories” phones were hacked.  Private conversations of important or newsworthy people were accessed.  Salacious and sensational headlines followed.  Revenue went up.  Media people have now gone to prison for this illegal behaviour.

The media in New Zealand have tut tutted.  How unprofessional.  How unethical.  How tawdry.  Now it appears that all of the head-shaking was little more than holier-than-thou, self-righteous, malodorous sanctimony.
  An unknown political or commercial opponent of blogger, Cameron Slater–owner and operator of the blog, Whaleoil–hacked not just the blog but an exhaustive archive of Slater’s e-mails.  There is no secret or doubt about this.  The anonymous hacker has publicly trumpeted it.

He has delivered his “trove” of stolen goods to a hackster-author, whose muck-racking conspiracy theories are well known.  Hager, our own equivalent of a one-member John Birch Society, has used the stolen property to attempt to bring down the right-of-centre government.  It is not yet apparent whether he has succeeded.  Time will tell.

Meanwhile, the hacker has set up an arrangement with the New Zealand Herald and has successively been dumping the stolen goods on the Herald‘s doorstep, which the Herald has dutifully printed.  The Herald thinks it is doing us all a public service, in precisely the same way the News of the World saw its hacking and eavesdropping and profiting from illegal phone hacking as being a “public service”.  Everyone wanted to know about what the Royal Family, and Princes Harry and Wills, and Kate were up to. Public interest required such illegal behaviour.  And being public figures, their claim to privacy was null-and-void–don’t you know.  The NZ Herald has entered the same unethical, illegal, and salacious world in its reception and use of stolen property.  The bottom line is that this once-proud newspaper has become a tawdry rag, profiting from a crime.  In the Herald‘s case, the Fourth Estate has come to resemble a deceased estate.

At the same time, and out of the other side of its mouth, the nauseatingly sanctimonious paper has tut-tutted about the decline in standards of political conduct in this country.  But because it is, or was, part of the Fourth Estate, it is complicit in that very decline.  It has become a willing participant in the tawdriness of politics and government it is self-righteously declaiming. It has no shame.

There is an apt phrase for that level of defalcation. Gross hypocrisy. 

Slater has warned the media, reporters, and the NZ Herald that he now considers all private correspondence and e-mails involving media people as being open season for disclosure.  He has sent thinly veiled warnings to all and sundry.  And that’s the problem in a nutshell.  The race to the bottom of the sewer has now started.  The NZ Herald ought to have known better.  It had a public duty and responsibility to do better.  It’s a sad day–and even more sadly, not unexpected.   

Explaining Isis

Deadly Miasma on the Volga, the Potomac, and the Tigris

When Slate published a carefully reasoned piece on Global Warming recently it was panned and lampooned by everyone in the US whose brain was in gear before their mouth engaged.  The vastly erudite thesis offered by the writer was that Isis and the civil wars in Iraq were caused by global warming. 

To prove the point that idiocy is itself global and not restricted to national borders, the piece was subsequently reproduced in New Zealand’s leading national daily, the NZ Herald.  The piece, by Eric Holthaus was entitled, Is Climate Change Destabilizing Iraq? and the answer was an in the affirmative.  On first reading, one is easily duped into thinking that the article was very clever satire.  But no, the author wants to be read without a scintilla of satire.  Here is the thesis:

This year’s major drought [in Iraq] has coincided with the rise of ISIS, which has already used dams as a weapon of war, threatening downstream agriculture and electricity production during its march to gain control of vast swaths of territory in Syria and northern Iraq.

It appears that Iraq is in the midst of a drought, which–if memory would serve–occurs on a reasonably regular basis in that part of the world.  Isis–a Sunni backed offshoot of Al Qaeda–has emerged to capture towns and ruthlessly execute the captured personnel.  Holthaus argues that this “instability” is caused by global warming.  Folk apparently do reckless and terrible things when it gets hot and dry.  

Unfortunately for Holthaus’s thesis, he apparently skipped his fourth form logic class.  Co-incidence, of course, does not indicate, let alone prove, causation.  Unless you happen to be superstitious.  If you are, then black cats crossing one’s path can cause all kinds of evils.  The sad thing is that the religion of global warming has descended into irrational realms now appealing only gullible superstitious mind.  An even sadder thing is that the idiot editors at the NZ Herald published this piece of nonsense without a shred of irony or satire in sight. 

Let’s just review the possible outcomes of the conflict in Iraq, and see how many could reasonably be ascribed to global warming:

1.  Isis triumphantly takes Baghdad (global warming would have made them fearsome and ferocious and invincible on the battlefield.  Global warming drove them to fury.)

2.  The Iraq army capitulates amidst an eructation of cowardice and incompetence.  (Global warming drove them to distraction, so they could not fight).

3. Isis falls apart in a cluster of inter-necine divisions and squabbles.  (The heat drove them mad.)

4. Russia sends fighter jets to Iraq, enabling the Iraqi forces to bomb Isis into retreat.  (The heat on the Volga made Putin reckless.)

5. President Obama makes the Baghdad sky black with armed drones. (Global warming derangement syndrome lies miasmally over the Potomac).

5. Isis proclaims a Caliphate, anoints a Caliph, and calls all Muslims to rise in support of a global Islamic state.  (Global warming made them insane). 

Woops.  They just did that.  So there.  It proves just how much of a clear and present danger global warming really is.  QED.

Years ago, children used to claim when caught out, “the Devil made me do it”.  Eric Holthaus, Slate and the NZ Herald have apparently never grown up.  

Silly, Febrile Journalists

Abbott Derangement Syndrome

In New Zealand, we are familiar with what has become known as the Key Derangement Syndrome.  The reference is to Prime Minister, John Key.  For a long time, the establishment media and opposition political parties appeared to lose their ability to think when it came to the Prime Minister.  They collectively went agog and aghast whenever Key featured, seeing all kinds of sinister plots, disasters, and repeated faux pas.

Now Australia has been caught in the same syndrome, only this time it is the Abbott Derangement Syndrome.  Miranda Divine documents the nonsense pouring forth from the minds, mouths and scribblings of the media:

Lefties living in a parallel world

Miranda Devine
The Sunday Telegraph

 if you rely for your news on the ABC, the Fairfax press, the Guardian, ­Crikey, the Saturday paper, Channel Ten, a good chunk of the Canberra press gallery, Twitter, or any of the plethora of Left-leaning media outlets in Australia, you are destined to be perpetually surprised by real-life events.

As Tony Abbott stumbles across the world stage like an antipodean George Bush, Canada (or Canadia in Tony talk) becomes the latest nation to be embarrassed on Australia’s behalf.
– Chris Roylance, Paddington Qld

This is the parallel world in which Prime Minister Tony Abbott is a “Nigel No Friends”, embarrassing Australia on the world stage while copping a frosty reception from the US President.

The Age’s front page thundered last week that Abbott was endangering Australia’s relationship with the US because of his “global plan to kill carbon pricing”.

ABC’s Radio National was breathless with anticipation at the looming rift between the The Prime Minister and President Obama on climate change.  “Tony Abbott is leading the world in going backwards” was the headline on the Sydney Morning Herald’s letters pages on one of the many days of self-flagellation.

“As Tony Abbott stumbles across the world stage like an antipodean George Bush, Canada (or Canadia in Tony talk) becomes the latest nation to be embarrassed on Australia’s behalf,” wrote Chris ­Roylance of the “other” Paddington, in Queensland.

“I am embarrassed by our Prime Minister,” wailed Elizabeth Frankel from Good Hope Landing (as good a parallel universe address as could be). “Watching him during his trip abroad makes me cringe to be Australian.”

Meanwhile, in the parallel world, Melbourne radio host Jon Faine, of Winkgate fame, claimed last week to have bombshell evidence of a conspiracy to destroy Julia Gillard that the Royal Commission into Union Corruption could not examine.

Images of President Obama warmly embracing the Prime Minister must have perplexed consumers of parallel media.  Twitter had a quick explanation: that Obama was a good actor, with the diplomatic skill, patience and tolerance required of a real leader … And Abbott should be taking notes.

Meanwhile, back in the real world, the White House dismissed any talk about disharmony over climate change policy as “all hat and no cattle”.

Similarly mystifying must have been the praise heaped on Abbott’s sure-footed diplomacy by Kim Beazley, the Labor leader turned US ambassador, and the positive reception the PM has received wherever he has travelled.

Interested Parties

Training Camps for Political Activists

The mass media has become a mixed bag of goods, but increasingly they appear rotten.  Previously given the sobriquet “Fourth Estate”, the press–the serious part of mass media–has been seen as an integral part of keeping government honest and ethical.  Sunshine is the best disinfectant they say, and the press–or more accurately, the mass news media–has a vital role in keeping graft and corruption out of government.

At times the media descend into farce as they strive to expose unethical double-dealing and corruption at every turn.  A politician kissing a baby is quickly scandalised and sensationalised as another case of paedophilia.  A political party which encourages gift and donations from estates, via testamentary wills is portrayed as a grave robber.  But these childish whiny petulances have been reasonably rare, and are best curtailed by the press and the news media being kept fiercely competitive. 

But the steady stream of news media employees resigning to take up jobs promoting politicians and even themselves becoming politicians is troubling.
In New Zealand it has become torrential in recent years.  It is a case of gamekeepers turning poachers–and the frequency with which it is occurring suggests that the current media mob are sharply bent ideologically.  Political and ideological neutrality is rapidly becoming a quaint-nineteen-fifties notion–so last century.  We also note that the torrent of reporters transforming into politicians most often bears the ideological colours of the left. 

But things took a new turn for the worse recently, when a cabal of folk within Television New Zealand (a state owned broadcaster) employed in the newsroom, organised themselves into a Labour Party cell.  Enter one Shane Taurima, the leader of the gang.  This from the NZ Herald:

The report found Taurima not only had a clear conflict of interest, but had used TVNZ facilities for Labour Party activities. These included a $343 credit card bill for an air fare and the use of TVNZ’s offices and email for Labour Party planning and campaigning. Clearly the problem is not confined to the former head of its Maori and Pacific programming unit. Three of his staff also participated in the party activity.

But if these misuses of company property had not occurred, Taurima’s position would still have been untenable. He not only joined the Labour Party while working in news and current affairs, he made an unsuccessful bid to be Labour’s candidate in the Ikaroa-Rawhiti byelection last year. Strangely, after missing the selection, he was able to return to his position at TVNZ. There, his continuing Labour activities reached a level that, the report says, “would plainly be deeply embarrassing to TVNZ if it came to light”.

The way to deal with this is through a strict discipline of disclosure.  It is not enough that disclosure must be made to one’s media bosses when it comes to political affiliations and beliefs.  That is the bare minimum.  The disclosure must also be to readers, listeners, and viewers.  The disclosure must involve all potential and actual conflicts of interest: are they political party members? So they vote in elections?  How have they voted?  Have they contemplated employment with a political party?  And so forth  This if the price of being a member of the Fourth Estate.  Without paying that price the Fourth Estate will diminish to an institution of venal influence peddling–which in many cases is where it rests right now.

The fact that it has failed to do this goes a long way to explain why the public has such disdain for the news media.  The financial press has provided a better example.  There are many examples of print reporters and commentators operating in the business and finance sectors who disclose in print whether they have any pecuniary interests in any stocks or bonds upon which they are opining.  This is a good beginning–but it needs to go much further.

Credibility will increase exponentially with systematic disclosure of bias and interests.  The malodorous mess presently attending the media would be purified and scrubbed very quickly by such disciplined integrity.  Without it, the quality and wholeness of governments will inevitably decline.  

Rarities

The Sport of David-Brenting

The instinctual sympathies of the media in New Zealand are statist–that is, generally the media, with few exceptions, favour more state intrusions, controls and beneficences than less.  Given that predilection, it is not surprising that the media and the Commentariat in general lean Left and are comfortable with giving left-wing parties and causes a supportive shove. 

Therefore, when the Left turn against left-wing parties, such as Labour, something significant is churning beneath the surface.  We have discerned in recent weeks the sport of David-Brenting the Labour leader, David Cunliffe in national media.  As our readers will know, the David Brent character in the hit show, The Office, is the past master of cringe comedy–the most cruel and cringe-causing lines, the only relief to which is embarrassed laughter.  The media appear to have cottoned on to this, and are goading Cunliffe to deliver David-Brent-like utterances which cause the entire nation to cringe. That Cunliffe appears serious only exacerbates the “cringe”.  It is the media’s version of a blood sport.
 

Labour leader Cunliffe has the tendency to be just a little bit pompous and self-respecting.  He is what the hoi-polloi would describe as self-righteous.  In other words he is already 80 percent of the way to being a real life lead character in The Office, in which the Brent character (played by Ricky Gervais) was such a tour de force. 

The latest example of the genre had the media flapping around David Cunliffe asking his opinions about the Royal visit of William, Kate, and baby George.  In particular, the media wanted to get Cunliffe’s reflections upon the fact that the Prime Minister, John Key was getting more “face time” with the royals than he was.  It has to have been a set up.  And Cunliffe delivered a performance of which Gervais himself would have been proud.

Here is the account as published in Stuff:

CUNLIFFE COMPLAINS

Earlier today, Labour leader David Cunliffe took a swipe at John Key over the royal visit, suggesting the prime minister was milking the extra “face time” with Prince William and his wife, compared with his own limited meetings.  He also described a possible visit to the White House as “pre-election PR from the prime minister ” who was “stage managing the calendar of the year as it suits him”.

But he conceded “it may not be the first time prime ministers have stage managed international visits”.

Cunliffe said it was very  important that the treatment of the royal visit was as even-handed as possible between the government and the opposition, and also that the visit was well-spaced from the election.  The split between the government and the opposition should be as even as possible – but it wasn’t, he said.  Labour was positive about the visit of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge and they were very welcome in New Zealand.

“We are not going to play politics with it,” Cunliffe said. He would “leave it for New Zealanders to decide” if there was sufficient gap between their visit and the election.  Apart from a one-on-one meeting with Prince William, Labour would be part of only one other event, a trip to Blenheim on Wednesday.  Cunliffe repeated he would let the people of New Zealand draw their own conclusion if that was fair or if he was getting enough “facetime”.

Asked why Key had so many events with the royals Cunliffe said, “I guess he likes the camera time.”

The “take-home”?  David Cunliffe is a self-righteous, cringe-inducing prig.  But the point is that this has all the hallmarks of a media set-up.  They led Cunliffe down this path and got him to say the things that would be self-mockery in an actual comedy, but in Cunliffe’s unfortunate case, he is the “real deal”.  Note the give-away lines in the text:
“The prime minister was milking the extra ‘facetime’ “
“He (Cunliffe) conceded . . . “
“Cunliffe repeated . . . “
” . . . he would let the people . . . draw their own conclusion”
“Asked why Key has so many events with the royals Cunliffe said, ‘I guess he likes the camera time.’ “

Note how that last question about Key having “so many” events with the royals is such a patsy set up, and Cunliffe walks right into it with a sarcastic bite that makes everyone uncomfortable.  The media are on to him and are baiting him to David-Brent the audience.  Sadly, yet predictably, Cunliffe cannot help obliging. Even more cringeworthy–he does not appear to be aware that he is being set up. 

Now, note that Cunliffe is one of “their guys”–he is more statist than Key.  He is in the general ideological camp of the media.  When the media hunt one of their own in a pack (the “interview” and Cunliffe cringe was carried in all the major dailies and on prime time TV news) there has been a sea change–rarely seen.  It implies that the media has concluded “their guy” just does not have it and that he is an embarrassment.  Their self-appointed role now is to magnify the “cringe” before the electorate. 

The wolves scent blood. 

The Acme of Christian Witness

In Search of a New Poster-Child

The Westboro Baptist Church has become villainous in the mind’s eye of many, if not most.  Here, apparently, must be a serious threat to the realm.  Westboro is a modern day megachurch albeit with the grand total of 40 members.  Yes, you read that right.  Forty members–most of which are related to one man, its recently deceased founder, Fred Phelps  It is what we Christians refer to as congregation standing firmly on the lunatic fringe.  

But for some reason it is front and centre–a major concern–for the chattering classes, the Commentariat and the media. Just Google Westboro to gain some appreciation of its notoriety.  It’s claim to ignominy is its public protests against homosexuals and homosexuality and any other public issue that can be remotely connected to homosexual promotion, even when drawn by a very, very long bow.  What an impact forty misguided febrile people have had. 

It is true that the Christian Church has always had its wacky outliers.
  Things like that happen in a fallen world.  After all, right from the very beginning there was a chap called Cain who sought to go into the presence of God with an offering and act of worship which God rejected and for which He had no regard.  This so incensed the hate filled heart of Cain that he murdered his brother out of spite, envy, and hatred.  We think of Simon Magus who sought to buy the power and presence of the Holy Spirit, forever after memorialised in the neologism, simony.  Time does not permit recounting the exploits of legions of charlatans, pretenders, hucksters of relics, snake handlers, leg-lengtheners, and other curiosities–suffice it to say that the Church has always had wacky outliers.  The Westboro Baptist Church is just one such. 

Yet the fascination and hunger for what this group is up to implies that it represents the heart and soul of the Christian faith.  Which leads to an hypothesis that its notoriety is actually a creation of the Commentariat and the media.  Westboro is notorious, but its scandalous brand has been forged and nurtured by the media in some pathetic attempt to slur Christians and to impute guilt by association to the Church of the Lord Jesus Christ. 

Which is to allege that the media and the Commentariat need Westboro for their narrative about Christians and the Christian faith.  The way the Commentariat would have us all understand Westboro is that it represents the vanguard of the Church and of Christians.  They are proclaiming what all Christians really believe and practice in their closets–hatred for mankind.  The ancient Roman interdictions against Christian were right on the money: these misanthropes have always been haters of the human race.  Thus, Westboro congregants have been made the poster boys for Christendom.  All forty of them.  The rest of the Christians skulk in their closets, but we, the cognoscenti, the erudite, and the media talking heads, we see them as they really are.  And Westboro is the peep hole into their dirty, hate-filled, dark, back room closets. 

How else can one understand the prurient fascination and lionising (in a negative sense) of these descendants of Cain?   Like Falstaff, they are useful to make a point. 

But now the founder has died, the group appears to be on the verge of splintering apart.  What then?  To whom will the media turn to portray the pop conception of Christianity?  They risk needing a new poster-child.  To whom and to what will they turn?  End timers?  Snake handlers?  No doubt they will find someone who would do the job creditably. 

A Liberated Fourth Estate

Breaking Down the Established Commentariat

Back in the day, political pamphlets were a big deal.  One only has to think of the Federalist Papers to evoke a reminder of how significant the happy convergence of the printing press with short, sharp, pithy political argumentation became.  One could go further back and argue that the German reformation owed a great deal to a controversial pamphleteer, one Martin Luther, whose mass produced pamphlets did much to carry the Reformation into villages, hamlets, and city back alleys, thereby capturing the popular imagination.

It seems that blogs have become a modern form of pamphleteering–now an influential media in their own right.  Some newspapers have presciently caught the wave and surfed it well.

Blogs changed everything – if not in the way we expected

Daniel Hannan  
The Telegraph 
March 7, 2014

It’s a bit of a shock to realise that this blog has now been going for seven years. In the dog-year world of blogging, that makes it almost geriatric. A few are more venerable yet, standing like oaks among the crocuses: Guido, Cranmer, ConHome. But this is a frantic and ephemeral business, and it’s an unusual blog that lasts more than twelve months.

Back in the pioneering days, blogs were seen as a challenge to the established media. And, in one sense, they were. When Guido scalped his first minister, Peter Hain, in 2008, something changed, though the newspapers were slow to notice. When, the following year, he aimed his tomahawk at Derek Draper and Damien McBride, old-style pundits were still laboriously explaining to their readers what these blog thinggies were. By the time Tim Yeo became Guido’s latest victim, no one needed to ask any more.

One of the perverse characteristics of the incumbent establishment media (whether electronic or print) has been its conspiracy of silence. The establishment media, representing a vast semi-official Commentariat elite, had developed an “establishment view” of what constituted news and what did not.  It had become an organ of Groupthink, if not Newspeak.

When a dozen dead tree newspapers determined the agenda, the media’s chief power lay in not reporting a story – not through conspiracy, but from shared assumptions about what constituted news. Take the leak of the “hide the decline” emails from climatologists at the University of East Anglia in late 2009. At first, the astonishing trove was reported only by bloggers. It wasn’t that environment correspondents were meeting behind drawn blinds and vowing to repress the discovery; it was that, being uncomplicated believers in the AGW orthodoxy, they couldn’t see why the emails were a story. Only when repeatedly needled by online commentators were they were eventually forced to report perhaps the biggest event in its field of the century.

The key moment came when the story was picked up by James Delingpole, whose post attracted 1.6 million hits. Tellingly, that post appeared here, on Telegraph Blogs. Blogs were now part of the established media. 

We have entered the age of the citizen journalist.  Well, actually, we have seen instances of the same thing in the past–think again of the Federalist Papers and Luther’s pamphlets.  But, said the Commentariat, this would open the door to hucksters, rabble rousers, demagogues, and liars.  Irresponsibility, uncurbed by establishment guilds, would burst forth to the detriment of all. 

But freedom has its own in-built corrective.  It’s called competition.  Propaganda in fact flourishes where liberty of expression is curtailed and controlled.

. . . . The separate categorisation of columnists, reporters, bloggers and interested readers is becoming meaningless. Every citizen is now a potential journalist. News and opinion are a conversation. We still hear occasional complaints from Leftie pundits that online media “lack quality control”. In fact, the dialectic element of blogging ensures a higher standard of accuracy than before. Mistakes are ruthlessly exposed and, because of the sheer number of outlets, a plausible new theory can spread with previously unimagined speed.

Blogs have improved veracity, quality and diversity. They have not led to the segregation by opinion that many predicted: Leftists and Rightists argue online in a way that never happened when people took just one newspaper. It’s true that bloggers, being human, are as prone to cruelty, stupidity and error as anyone else. But it has never been easier to go elsewhere: more people are reading more news and comment than at any time in history.

Instead of fomenting and facilitating wacko conspiracy theories, for example, the new pamphleteers have been subjecting such inanities to more critical scrutiny than ever before.  Blogging has facilitated bringing opinions and arguments out into public view along with a consequent critical scrutiny.  Freedom of expression along with media which enable public dissemination will produce better, more accurate, and more informed public discourse over time.  As in any free market, the competition of ideas has increased their quality over time.  The crucible of criticism is a refining fire.

By contrast, unchallenged establishment views deteriorate to become progressively dumb, parroted by pavlovian minds.  “Everybody agrees. . . ” rapidly becomes elevated to the faux-status of a winning argument. 

Letter From Australia (About Nothing to See Here)

A Word or Two About Truth

TIM BLAIR
The Daily Telegraph
January 06, 2014 12:00AM

BY now, we’re all familiar with the media ritual that follows your standard Islamic bombing, massacre, shooting or beheading. First there is the incident itself. Some mad-for-martyrdom devotee of Muhammad decides it’s time to hit the jihadi switch and kill a few infidels, frequently howling Islamic oaths or otherwise informing everybody about his holy motivation. 
 
And then the media pretends not to notice anything Islamic, or otherwise downplays any evidence suggesting that a devoted son of Allah might have been involved. It can be quite a spectacle, if you’re into ducking and dodging and general hot-footed evasion.

Forget the elephant in the room. When it comes to Islamic terrorism, some in the media could weave their way through a pantry packed with pachyderms.
  Fort Hood killer Nidal Malik Hasan, for example, actually began his 2009 shooting spree in Texas by screaming “Allahu Akbar”. That wasn’t solid enough evidence for the Guardian‘s Michael Tomasky, however, who offered this calm dismissal: “My understanding is that it’s something Arab people often shout before doing something or other. It’s used in many different situations.”  The Australian Broadcasting Corporation (“ABC”) managed to get through an entire eight-minute bulletin on the slaughter without mentioning any religious component.

After last year’s Woolwich murder in the UK, killer Michael Adebolajo held the weapons he’d used to virtually decapitate soldier Lee Rigby while telling a witness’s video phone: “We swear by almighty Allah we will never stop fighting you. You people will never be safe.”  The ABC’s London reporter didn’t hear him. “What happened was clear,” the correspondent said. “The motivation, less so.”  After I mentioned during a radio interview the ABC’s reluctance to identify the killer’s background, this email arrived from an ABC staffer: “Where is your primary and official source that these crimes were carried out in the name of Islam?”

Earlier in 2013, after I observed online that the then-unsolved Boston Marathon bombing employed the routine Islamic terror tactic of multiple blasts, the ABC’s Jonathan Green accused me of “islamophobing as usual. We have only circumstantial evidence. None of us have a clue why this happened”.  When it subsequently emerged that a pair of Islamic brothers were in fact responsible – a family member said one was “angry that the world pictures Islam as a violent religion” – Green tweeted: “I have nothing to apologise for.” Well, of course not. Apart from being completely wrong. Again.

Green and his ABC comrades are a bunch of no no cats (Google it). Talk about denialism. And now we see that climate change activism is another sacred subject, only ever to be mentioned by the ABC and others in a serious and affirming way.

Late last year, University of NSW professor of climate change Chris Turney left for Antarctica on a voyage that aimed to “investigate the impact of changing climate” and to “use the subantarctic islands as thermometers of climatic change”. As Daily Telegraph readers will be aware, the primary change observed by Turney and his team of climate activists was a massive increase in Antarctic ice that trapped the scientists on their ship for several days.

Elsewhere, a significant change took place in media coverage of the voyage. Prior to the MV Akademik Shokalskiy’s departure, the ABC reported that Professor Turney and his crew would “try to answer questions about how climate change in the frozen continent might be already shifting weather patterns in Australia.” Then the ice happened, at which point the ABC altered its tone. Now the Akademik Shokalskiy became merely “a Russian ship stuck in sea ice in Antarctica”.

Here’s a report from the ABC’s Tony Eastley, just a few days into the great ice debacle:

The Australian operation to rescue passengers from a Russian cruise ship stuck in thick Antarctic sea ice, is continuing this morning, but it’s slow going. The Aurora Australis ice-breaker is the third vessel to try to help the stricken expedition ship, which has been trapped since Christmas Eve. Authorities say the scientists and tourists on board the Russian vessel are packed and ready to go.

These “scientists” you speak of, Tony. Any idea of their particular field? And the “expedition” they were on. What was its purpose? Anything to do with climate change, perhaps?  The New York Times, among many other media outlets, decided to drop Chris Turney’s full title. Instead of “professor of climate change”, he became merely a generic “professor”, like the nerdy guy on Gilligan’s Island.

Annoyed by sacrilegious online mockery, the Guardian fumed about “climate sceptics who have taken to social media sites in recent days to attack the scientific consensus on climate change”. No! Not the great and holy consensus! Blasphemy!

The curious thing is, many of the same media types who fret about climate change killing people in few hundred years are also the least inclined to worry about extreme Islamism killing people right now.

Meanwhile, I’m looking forward to the day a Muslim terrorist hijacks an Antarctic climate research ship. You won’t read a word about it.
 

No Surprises Here

Extreme media bias in favour of same-sex “marriage”

Posted on | June 25, 2013 by J.C. von Krempach, J.D.

From Turtle Bay and Beyond

 

In a report released last week, the Pew research center exposes an overwhelming media bias in favour of same-sex “marriage”. The bias probably is even much stronger than indicated by the diagram reproduced above, given that reports where statements in favour outweighed statements against by a ratio of 2:1 were still considered a “neutral”.

Note the disproportion between the opinions expressed in the media and the public opinion as determined by opinion polls. Are we all being brainwashed?

Better Late Than Never

Media Acknowledge Blowing Gosnell Story, Pledge Extensive Coverage

by John Nolte 13 Apr 2013

Breitbart News

 

Something truly remarkable happened yesterday. After days and weeks of pushing by New Media and social media, the mainstream media have not only admitted that they should have covered the ongoing capital murder trial of abortion doctor Kermit Gosnell; they have promised to immediately remedy that mistake:

The Daily Beast’s Megan McArdle: “Why I didn’t write about Gosnell’s trial — and why I should have.”

Bloomberg columnist Jeffrey Goldberg writes: “It’s too late now, though, to suppress coverage. [Kirsten] Powers and others have shamed the media into paying attention, and the press is now on the case. It’s remarkable that it took this long.”

The Washington Post: “We believe the story is deserving of coverage by our own staff, and we intend to send a reporter for the resumption of the trial next week. In retrospect, we should have sent a reporter sooner.”

Politico’s Dylan Byers: “Gosnell should be front-page, top-of-the-hour news by primetime tonight. And if it’s not, we’ll write about it again.”

NBC’s Joe Scarborough: “A horrifying story out of Philadelphia that the media must cover. We will cover this on Monday.” 

This is not the usual-usual from our media. Normally, like a game, the media will only admit to this kind of oversight long after it is too late to do anything about it. Worse still, the admission of the mistake is generally just a convenient excuse for the media to talk about their favorite subject — themselves.

That doesn’t appear to be the case this time. Last night on CNN, Jake Tapper (one of the few who had already covered Gosnell), Erin Burnett, and Anderson Cooper devoted extensive time to the story. And as you can see above, the media are promising to do more next week than just navel gaze.

And I for one am very grateful for that, because even marginally bad coverage, like what we saw from CNN’s Erin Burnett last night, is a win. (Anderson Cooper’s segment was flat-out outstanding and a must-watch.)

Regardless, let the left-wing media spin the Gosnell horrors into a pro-choice argument for safer abortion clinics. As someone who considers abortion a moral abomination, as long as it is legal, I don’t want to see that abomination made worse with unsafe clinics and the horrific exploitation of desperate women.

But that is the worse-case scenario (which is still a plus). What is also likely to happen is an increased  public knowledge of the act of outright infanticide known as partial-birth abortion. For over a decade now, the media has tried to turn that horror into a “right-wing myth.” But now we not only have an example of a doctor eagerly engaged and made wealthy by the practice, but other doctors referring patients to him.

New Media has a responsibility now, as well. We need to use this opportunity to do our own reporting on Gosnell, not just to peck away at the mainstream media for not covering the story in the way we would like.

Letter From America (About Wilful Blindness)

Nothing to See Here . . . Move Along

We have written several pieces on Dr Kermit Gosnell, the late term abortionist from Philadelphia that is on trial for infanticide. It would seem that there is an informal (but effective) media blackout on the story of the “nothing to see here, move along” variety. 

This, from Patterico.com

4/12/2013

What Is Behind the Kermit Gosnell News Blackout?

Filed under: General — Patterico @ 6:55 am 

 

Twitchy.com reports that there is a concerted effort today on Twitter to spread the word about Kermit Gosnell and his trial for serial murder of newly born babies. The idea (which appears to have originated on Facebook) ignores Instapundit’s now age-old plea: “can we please stop scheduling PR stunts on Fridays?”

Nevertheless, it is still a good idea. The story has been pooh-poohed as a “local crime story” by national reporters. As Jim Geraghty points out, what was the O.J. Simpson trial? The Trayvon Martin case? The arrest of Henry Louis Gates? I would add to that stories about serial murderers of strangers, which often make national news — or indeed, the single murder of any abortion doctor.

The attempt by leftists to black out the story is so complete, they’re even considering deleting the Wikipedia article about Gosnell.

All this got me thinking about why the Gosnell story is being ignored. I do believe that if a random masked man were walking into numerous delivery rooms and snipping the spinal cords of babies the mothers were trying to have, it would be perhaps the biggest story in the nation. I think there are two things that, in the mind of the media, separate this story from such a situation.

First, unlike babies in a delivery room, the babies are not wanted by their mothers. Quite simply, the media is putting a lower value on the lives of babies that mothers don’t want — even after they are born. I think this is a fundamental difference between people outraged by abortion and people who support late-term abortions. The former consider all life precious, while the latter group, which often falsifies the facts about why people obtain such abortions (about which more in a second), simply does not care as much about lives that are not wanted by their mothers.

This was made clear to me when I saw an Erick Erickson tweet saying that this would be a huge story if Gosnell had killed puppies. I immediately thought: but dog pounds do kill puppies, all the time, if they are not wanted. With dogs, we look at an overpopulation and decide that we will attempt to place the creatures in homes, but only up to a point. With humans, it is different — at least for now. We put unwanted children in foster homes, and no matter how long they remain unwanted, we do not simply put them down.

But a society that takes no note of a Kermit Gosnell is a society that is on a slippery slope towards putting foster children to sleep. And if you want to mock me for saying that, tell me what national newspapers have been reporting on the Gosnell trial. I’ll wait right here.

You would think that a profession (journalism) that prides itself on “comforting the afflicted and afflicting the comfortable” would recognize this slippery slope and highlight it, but not so much.

The second factor at work here is, I believe, the lazy assumption that most mid- or late-term abortions are done because the fetus is horribly deformed and has a terminal disease, to the point where it will lead such a short and painful life that the parents killed it out of mercy. Such abortions happen, of course, but they are not the only such abortions. I have discussed this before in the context of partial-birth abortions:

Radical abortion rights supporters claim that we need to have partial-birth abortion, because (they claim) most late-term abortions are done for medical reasons such as terrible genetic abnormalities. This is not so. Don’t believe me; believe liberal journalists David Savage and Franklin Foer.
David Savage of the L.A. Times has written: “Doctors say only a small percentage of [partial-birth abortions] are done because of medical complications or fetal deformity.” Foer summarized research done by the Washington Post and Bergen Record and said: “After interviewing doctors who perform the procedure, both papers concluded that only in very few instances was the [partial-birth abortion] actually necessary to protect the woman’s health. Most of them were performed on poor women who could not muster the money to pay for abortions earlier in their pregnancies.”
In addition, the “health” exception for women is not limited to physical health. The exception is so broad that it can always be justified by a doctor willing to claim that a woman’s mental health would be affected by the denial of an abortion. As Jan Crawford Greenburg has explained:

Current Supreme Court jurisprudence is understood by lower courts to prohibit those flat-out bans unless the laws provide exceptions for a woman’s mental health. Lower courts repeatedly have struck down laws that only provide an exception for serious physical issues as being contrary to Supreme Court precedent.

I don’t know whether any of Gosnell’s victims were terminally ill anyway, but to assume that they were simply because a late-term abortion was done is lazy.

End the media blackout.

I am tweeting out this post on my Twitter feed. Go retweet it. And if you’re not following me on Twitter, why not?

P.S. There is a simpler potential reason for the blackout, and it may be the real reason: if people get outraged about this, they may start thinking to themselves: hey, how is this different from the guy killing the baby inside the womb instead of outside? Does that mean maybe I oppose abortion — or at least late-term abortion?

And we can’t have that!

Losing Face

Chinese Intimidation Brings Shame

In recent days the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal and other media companies claim to have been subject to cyber-attacks originating from China.  The theory is that the Chinese government takes an aggressive approach to Western media articles that are critical of the Chinese government. 

The hacking is directed to the e-mail accounts of journalists in an attempt to find their sources and those to whom they have been talking.  If so–the cyber-world is murky secretive, murky place–the attempt amounts to a deliberate attempt to silence critics of the regime in China and cut off negative news stories about the government. 

The Chinese government officially rejects such allegations as ridiculous, claiming that Chinas too has been subject to cyber-attacks.  However, the Washington Post, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and now Twitter have all reported coming under overt cyber-attacks.   This from the NZ Herald:

Earlier, the New York Times said it had faced repeated hacking attacks as it prepared a story tracing the hidden riches of the family of Wen Jiabao, the country’s Premier.  The revelations came just weeks after Chinese authorities forced a New York Times reporter to leave the country. Two months after the paper’s Shanghai bureau chief, David Barboza, authored the account of the billions amassed by Wen’s relatives, Beijing refused to renew a visa for his colleague Chris Buckley.

Ultimately, such behaviour by the Chinese government results in a significant loss of face.  It degrades the Chinese government in the eyes of other peoples.  Such actions only serve to offer proof of the graft, corruption and simony of Chinese leaders.

The attacks on the New York Times first came to light when the story on the Wen family’s finances, which used public records to estimate that the Premier’s relatives “have controlled assets worth at least US$2.7 billion [$3.2 billion]”, was published on October 25. Warned of “consequences” for its investigation, the paper asked AT&T, the telecoms firm which monitors its computer network, to keep an eye out for unusual activity. AT&T detected hacking activity the day the article went up on the New York Times website.

A nation built upon “fragrant grease” will always end up sliding back into the swamp.  

Media Controls

It’s OK When The Good Guys Want It

One would have thought that folk would be viscerally reactive to any proposal to extend state power and control.  After all New Zealand participated in two World Wars ostensibly to defend against state tyrannies of various kinds.  We have witnessed in our recent past the death of approximately one hundred million people throughout the twentieth century as a result of state power, oppression, and vicious persecution of citizens and people the State did not like.

Yet the West remains remarkably sanguine about the powers of the State.  The reasons for this myopia are probably facile.  “We won the wars, so states becoming bloody and tyrannical applies to those who were defeated, not our government.  We and our government are the good guys.”  Or, “our government would never become tyrannical: we are a democracy.”  Or, “Western governments are devoted to protecting the rights of the poor and underprivileged; they are antipathetic to those tyrants that killed millions.” 

Meanwhile whilst sleeping peacefully in our beds, the powers of Western government have grown exponentially: we respond by nodding peacefully in our slumbers.  But every now and again a litmus issue arises and we see just how tenuous our freedoms have become.
  At present, the issue of the day is press freedom: the country, Britain.  In that place clearly there has been a problem with the media: they have acted illegally and irresponsibly, deploying great powers and influence to harm others.  The working assumption is that the government will “sort it out”–because that’s what we have all come to expect and require of government.  That is what soft-despotism is all about.

So, Lord Leveson investigates and recommends that a statutory body be appointed to “oversee” the self-regulation of the press.  Most people yawn and say, “Of course.  Our benign government regulates us citzens,  why not the media?”  People have become very familiar with encroaching controls on free speech in Britain: laws against hate-speech, against giving offense, against wearing religious emblems in public (in the name of human rights and protecting minorities, of course).  So why not the media?  Why, indeed. 

A society which accepts the state’s encroaching restrictions upon the speech of its citizens will be ill-equipped to resist burgeoning state controls over the media.  The two are yoked together.  Demonise and outlaw one; the same will follow for the other. 

In the meantime, here are a couple of reflections on the matter.  The first from Liberty Scott who argues that there is more than enough “law on the books” to prosecute errant media in the UK.  The problem is that the state has failed to use the law available. 

What you need to know about Leveson

1. Phone hacking is already illegal in the UK.
2. Attempting to corrupt a public official is illegal.
3. Stalking was made a crime in the UK a week ago.
4. Breaking and entering private property in the UK is already illegal.
5. The UK has one of the world’s toughest defamation laws, which are already blamed for suppressing people speaking up about allegations of sexual abuse by public figures.
6. In short, the vile events presented in evidence were, in most instances, already illegal.

So consider, for a moment, why new laws and a new regulator is needed to enforce that which the Police have been lax to enforce now.

For the present, the British Prime Minister, David Cameron has rejected the recommendation that the government set up a Big Brother body to stand over media self-regulation.  But this has provoked outrage and splenetic expatiation.  This from Sean Plunkett, a New Zealand journalist:

British Prime Minister David Cameron is copping a mountain of flak for his refusal to implement the major recommendations of the Leveson inquiry into the phone hacking and skulduggery practised by many members of the British media. Justice Leveson wants a new statutory body to oversee a new independent press regulator which would supposedly be an independent check against the unethical and in many cases illegal activities undertaken by British hacks and sanctioned by their bosses.

A group called “Hacked Off” which represents many of the “victims” of phone hacking and journalistic malfeasance claims Mr Cameron’s refusal to implement the recommendations is a massive moral and political failure and has launched a petition to push for a cross party consensus to implement Lord Leveson’s ideas.

Turning to the media in New Zealand, Plunkett goes on to acknowledge most candidly that bias exists in the New Zealand media:

This isn’t to say there is no bias in New Zealand media. There most certainly is at an individual and institutional level. Most often, it is unconscious or unwitting, incredibly hard to positively identify and virtually impossible to eradicate. 

We have known about this for a long time.  But here is the rub: that bias in part represents a thorough going commitment to the modern soft-despotic role of the state and to the representation of secular materialism as the only smart way to go.  Christians are portrayed in the media as intolerant  maniacal cultists or as a gaggle of geriatric geese–unless, of course, they are advocating more state appropriation of citizens’ property to redistribute to others, whereupon they are portrayed as enlightened and compassionate.  It is precisely this bias which had led the media to be both complaisant and compliant when the Human Rights Commission has sought to extend state control over liberties of speech and expression of private citizens.  Hate speech is, well, hateful, non? 

But if you cheer lead for the one, the other will inevitably follow.  Restrict the freedom of speech of individuals and restrictions upon the media will inevitably come to pass.  It’s a connection the media, looking at the world through its cataract of creeping soft-despotism, all too often fail to see. 

Surprise

Progressive Groupthink

The New York Times has endorsed Barack Obama for president.  As a child might say, “No surprises there.”  But why?  Why was this endorsement entirely predictable?  We could have confidently pronounced four years ago, even eight or twelve years ago that in 2012 the Times would endorse the Democratic candidate for the presidency.  How come? 

Firstly, empirical historical evidence is overwhelming.  The Times has endorsed the Democratic candidate for over fifty years.  In fact, it has even provided an interactive graphic of its record so that there can be no doubt. 
You can peruse it here. So, let’s get this straight.  The Times believes that for sixty years in every presidential election the Republican candidate was inadequate and the Democratic candidate was better for the hour, the nation, the needs of the day, and so forth.  This tells an irrefutable story: the Times is a politically partisan newspaper. 

This would be fair enough.  There is no problem whatsoever with a newspaper or other public media being ideologically committed and in the tank for candidates that reflect its ideological grid.  What is utterly intolerable is that said news medium would also argue that it is objective, neutral, and even-handed, without pre-commitment and bias. 

Here is how group think works at the Times:  “the editorial board consists of superior people whose intelligence and perspicuity is beyond question.  As superior minds, better educated than the average bear, we arrive at a common view about the well-being and the best future for the nation.  We all agree that the state should grow in power and authority in every area of life as the essential tool for progress in every field of human endeavour.  We believe in redemption and salvation by law.  We believe in progressive shaping of society by government.  We believe in these things because all fair-minded, educated, and rational people agree that such principles reflect justice, human rights, and progress. Consequently, we will always endorse Democrats over Republicans because at any given time Democratic candidates will be more committed to an expanded role for government and government enforced egalitarianism than will Republican candidates.” 

In the ideologically blinkered world of the Times all reasonable and objective men think as they think.  So, the Times is neither biased nor prejudiced.  It is objective, rigorous and balanced.  It is not ideological or biased to believe the sky on a fine day will be blue.  That is just fact.  It is not ideology that calls for an expanded role of the state at all times and in all circumstances.  It is just brute fact that any and every expansion of the power and role of the state will bring progress. 

It is the same kind of mindset that led Soviet politicians, intellectuals, and scientists to proclaim they were merely acting according to the dictates of rational science and evidence as they herded millions to their deaths in mass starvation camps.  No ideological bias there. 

Media Defalcation

Not How the Press Works

The media in the US (and the West generally for that matter) is largely in the tank for Obama.  He appears to have an unlimited, never-ending supply of “free passes”.  Most recently he and his administration made a huge mistake over the assault upon the US consulate in Benghazi.  Obama and Hillary Clinton and the US ambassador to the UN, Susan Rice rushed to the microphones to declare that the violence was a reaction to an anti-Islamic video produced in America.  The sub-text was “the US is to blame; one of us caused the violence; mea culpa, mea maxima culpa”. 

Unfortunately for that particular spin, it is now abundantly clear that the attack upon the embassy was planned long in advance: it was a military operation, and had nothing to do with provocation from an amateur DVD.  More alarming is the administration’s ignoring of warnings which were delivered to the US about an imminent attack.
 

But the quiescent media remained loyal to their chief, ignoring the prima facie culpability and negligence of the administration which resulted in deaths of American officials and employees.  Instead, the media went into a febrile paroxysm of criticism of challenger Mitt Romney because he dared to suggest that the administration had been feckless and irresponsible over the matter.

With this background, The Onion has produced what we regard as one of the finest and most biting pieces of sarcasm  we have seen over the compliant, complaisant US media. 

Media Having Trouble Finding Right Angle On Obama’s Double-Homicide

April 14, 2009 | ISSUE 45•16 | More News

The press hasn’t figured out how best to display the gruesome crime-scene photos from the president’s bloody rampage.

WASHINGTON—More than a week after President Barack Obama’s cold-blooded killing of a local couple, members of the American news media admitted Tuesday that they were still trying to find the best angle for covering the gruesome crime.

“I know there’s a story in there somewhere,” said Newsweek editor Jon Meacham, referring to Obama’s home invasion and execution-style slaying of Jeff and Sue Finowicz on Apr. 8. “Right now though, it’s probably best to just sit back and wait for more information to come in. After all, the only thing we know for sure is that our president senselessly murdered two unsuspecting Americans without emotion or hesitation.”

Added Meacham, “It’s not so cut and dried.”

 

 

Associated Press reporters investigate any possible gym training regimens the president might have used to get into peak physical condition for the murders.  Since the killings took place, reporters across the country have struggled to come up with an appropriate take on the ruthless crime, with some wondering whether it warrants front-page coverage, and others questioning its relevance in a fast-changing media landscape.

 “What exactly is the news hook here?” asked Rick Kaplan, executive producer of the CBS Evening News. “Is this an upbeat human-interest story about a ‘day in the life’ of a bloodthirsty president who likes to kill people? Or is it more of an examination of how Obama’s unusual upbringing in Hawaii helped to shape the way he would one day viciously butcher two helpless citizens in their own home?”

“Or maybe the story is just that murder is cool now,” Kaplan continued. “I don’t know. There are a million different angles on this one.”

So far, the president’s double-homicide has not been covered by any major news outlets. The only two mentions of the heinous tragedy have been a 100-word blurb on the Associated Press wire and an obituary on page E7 of this week’s edition of the Lake County Examiner.

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While Obama has expressed no remorse for the grisly murders—point-blank shootings with an unregistered .38-caliber revolver—many journalists said it would be irresponsible for the press to sensationalize the story.
“There’s been some debate around the office about whether we should report on this at all,” Washington Post senior reporter Bill Tracy said while on assignment at a local dog show. “It’s enough of a tragedy without the press jumping in and pointing fingers or, worse, exploiting the violence. Plus, we need to be sensitive to the victims’ families at this time. Their loved ones were brutally, brutally murdered, after all.”

Nevertheless, a small contingent of independent journalists has begun to express its disapproval and growing shock over the president’s actions.  “I hate to rain on everyone’s parade, but we are in the midst of an economic crisis here,” political pundit Marcus Reid said. “Why was our president ritualistically dismembering the corpses of his prey when he should have been working on a new tax proposal for small businesses? I, for one, am outraged.”

The New York Times newsroom is reportedly still undecided on whether or not to print a recent letter received from Obama, in which the president threatens to kill another helpless citizen every Tuesday and “fill [his] heavenly palace with slaves for the afterlife” unless the police “stop the darkness from screaming.”
“President Obama’s letter presents us with a classic journalistic quandary,” executive editor Bill Keller said. “If we print it, then we’re giving him control over the kinds of stories we choose to run. It would be an acknowledgment that we somehow give the nation’s commander in chief special treatment.”

Added Keller, “And that’s just not how the press in this country works.”

Turning into a Twat

The Beatification of Julian Assange

Brendan O’Neill argues that poor Julian Assange never had a chance.  He was a creation of the media–the lefty media–who needed a saintly figure they could rally behind.  Assange was a creature of their own self-righteousness, earnestlyseeking a platform for their high moral dudgeon.  Beware the person who stupidly begins to believe a fawning press who want to use you for their ownagenda.  

Assange was ignorant and gullible enough to believe his own press.

Easy Dupes, Our Bad

Breaking Silence, Part Deux

Macsyna King has been in the news again.  This time the context has altered somewhat.  The coroner investigating the death of her premature twins has placed the blame firmly upon her then derelict “husband”, Chris Kahui. It was impossible for Macsyna King to murder the children, the coroner concluded. By process of elimination, Kahui was the only one left to blame.  This must have come as a shock to a more than a few people.

Here was a woman who was vilified throughout the country as the indisputable murderess, a child killer, a swine, a monster, the lowest of the low, etc.  In fact, when Chris Kahui was charged it took the jury only a minute to declare him not guilty.