Maverick Philosopher

Journalism is Dead!

When Bill O'Reilly said as much years ago I thought he was exaggerating. It is certainly no exaggeration now, if it is lamestream, 'woke'-captured,  Democrat shill outlets such as National Public Radio (NPR) and the Washington Post (WaPo) we are talking about.  Here:

But we can thank Uri Berliner, a senior business editor at NPR, for revealing the main reason for journalism’s dire situation: Americans these days just don’t trust the news.

Berliner’s first-person account of the past near-decade at NPR – from Donald Trump’s first presidential campaign through the present – reveals a litany of reasons for this loss of faith. Berliner argues that NPR’s increasingly leftward tilt, lack of transparency, ideological groupthink and prioritization of diversity of identity and physical appearance above other values have led the organization astray.

If you like NPR programming, as I like some of  it, write them a check!  Just don't demand that they receive taxpayer support.  We are in fiscal crisis, and budgetary cuts must be made.  If such inessentials as NPR, PBS, NEH and NEA cannot be defunded, where will the cuts be made?  

So one good reason to defund NPR is that we cannot afford it.

But even if we could afford it, NPR in its present configuration should not receive Federal support.  And this for the simple reason that it is plainly a propaganda arm of the Left.* If you deny the increasingly leftward tilt of NPR, even unto 'wokery,' then you are delusional and not worth talking to.  So I'll charitably assume that you are sane and admit the bias.  The next question I will put to you is whether you think it is morally right that tax dollars be used to push points of view that half if not most of us in this land find objectionable.  I say that it it is not morally right that you take my money by force and then use it for a purpose that is not only inessential and unconnected to the necessary functions of government, but also violates my beliefs.

So that is my second reason for defunding NPR. 

Perhaps, if NPR were balanced like C-SPAN, it could be tolerated in times of plenty.  But we are not in times of plenty and it is not balanced.

Note that a reasonable liberal could accept my two reasons.  I am not arguing that government must not engage in any projects other than those that are strictly essential such as those connected to the protection of life, liberty, and property (the Lockean triad).  I am arguing that present facts dictate that defunding NPR is something that ought to be done.

As for WAPO, see here for their egregious mis-reporting of the Dexter Reed shooting.  Had Dexter read my Substack entry, What to do if a cop stops you, he might be alive today.

But he is dead, having foolishly, illegally, and immorally brought about his own death, as is journalism!

_________________

*I stand not only for the separation of church and state, but also for the separation of leftism and state.

Race and Reportage

A trenchant addendum to a 14 March post.

A Reason Why We Need Philosophy

You have heard it said, "Take the bull by the horns." But I say unto you, "Take the bull by the shovel."  Enjoy this Substack entry wherein I take some journalistic bull by the shovel.

Is Trump a Racist?

This morning at The New Yorker:

At this point, we know everything there is to know about Donald Trump. His diehard admirers—not all seventy-four million people who voted for him in the 2020 election but his immovable base, maybe thirty per cent of Republicans—admire him still, now more than ever. Is he a racist? Sure, by many definitions.

At this point I stopped reading.  I cannot think of one reasonable definition of 'racist' according to which Trump would count as a racist. Can you?  At least the journo* gives some evidence of understanding that the question whether so-an-so is an X depends on the definition of 'X.' 

__________

*'Journo' is my term of disapprobation for hack journalists a crapload of whom can be found among the 'woke.' 

Race is Real; Report It!

A black girl viciously assaults a white girl, but no mention is made of the race of the assailant or the victim. The business of a journalist is to report the facts. Now we expect journalistic malfeasance at CNN, but Laura Ingraham last might, on Fox, also refrained from referring to assailant and victim by race.  Fear of Carlsonian defenestration? Ingraham replayed the video several times, but now I can't find one.

Get to work MavPhil cybernauts! Find me a video so that I can be quite sure that the assailant was, and presumably still is, black.

Two-Tiered System of Justice?

I know what conservatives such as Sean Hannity mean when they employ the above expression, but the expression is inept. There cannot be two tiers of justice, one for the rulers and the other for the ruled, or one for Democrats and the other for Republicans,  for the simple reason that justice in Anglo-American law is equal justice, one justice for all.  A guiding principle of our  republic, as the Pledge of Allegiance attests, is "liberty and justice for all." We are all (to be considered to be) equal before the law. Whether you are Joe Biden or Joe Blow, you are subject to the same laws. And the same goes for Joe Biden and Donald Trump.  It is a guiding ideal essential to our system of government. That it is being egregiously violated in the case of Trump does not make it any less of an ideal. 

Joe Sixpack will say, "This is all just semantics." That is the sort of response one expects from a barfly at Joe's Bar and Grill.  Someone who says that has not grasped the truth I have been hammering on for the last twenty years: Language Matters!

Julian Epstein, Democrat, on Crooked Joe. (HT: Tony Flood) There is hope for some Dems. 

'Post-Truth'

'Post-truth' is a silly buzz word, and therefore beloved by journalists who typically talk and write uncritically in trendy ways. There is no way to get beyond truth or to live after truth.  All of our intellectual operations are conducted under the aegis of truth.

Read the rest at Substack.

Journalistic Bias

A spectacularly clear example:

WASHINGTON (AP) — The downfall of Harvard’s president has elevated the threat of unearthing plagiarism, a cardinal sin in academia, as a possible new weapon in conservative attacks on higher education.

Exercise for the reader: explain the bias.

Requite Good with Evil?

Or with justice? And what is justice? 'Equity'?

Substack latest. The short piece ends thusly:

You absolutely must read old books to be in a position to assess justly the dreck and drivel pumped out by today's politically-correct quill drivers and so-called 'journalists' who wouldn't know a gerund from a participle if their colons depended on it.

Naomi Wolf on Tucker Carlson's J6 Revelations

A rich Substack article that ends thusly:

The gatekeepers who lie to the public about the most consequential events of our time — and who thus damage our nation, distort our history, and deprive half of our citizenry of their right to speak, champion and choose, without being tarred as would-be violent traitors - deserve our disgust.

I am sorry the nation was damaged by so much untruth issued by those with whom I identified at the time.

I am sorry my former “tribe” is angry at a journalist for engaging in — journalism.

I am sorry I believed so much nonsense.

Though it is no doubt too little, too late —

Conservatives, Republicans, MAGA:

I am so sorry.

Conscience, Brain, and Scientistic Pseudo-Understanding

Substack latest.

If nothing else, philosophy is prophylaxis against infection by scientistic pseudo-understanding.  Take the jab! Boosters to follow.

Cancel the New York Times!

Richard Samuelson, Claremont Review of Books

'Conservative' Andrew Sullivan Gets the Boot

The defenestration of Andrew Sullivan by New York Magazine shows once again that for the Left one cannot be too far left. This is rich:

The latest study of Harvard University faculty, for example, finds that only 1.46 percent call themselves conservative. But that’s probably higher than the proportion of journalists who call themselves conservative at the New York Times or CNN or New York Magazine. And maybe it’s worth pointing out that “conservative” in my case means that I have passionately opposed Donald J. Trump and pioneered marriage equality, that I support legalized drugs, criminal-justice reform, more redistribution of wealth, aggressive action against climate change, police reform, a realist foreign policy, and laws to protect transgender people from discrimination. I was one of the first journalists in established media to come out. I was a major and early supporter of Barack Obama. I intend to vote for Biden in November.

My best Sully post, which attracted some very good comments: The Left Eats its Own: Andrew Sullivan.

I stand with Sully despite his mindless anti-Trumpery which is so extreme that he will, horribile dictu, vote for Biden come November! Can a puppet be a weathervane? That's creepy, sleepy, lunchbox Joe, man of the people, coal miner, and good Catholic.

Free speech! Open inquiry! Down with the Left! Long live the Republic!

We conservatives are the new classical liberals. The times they are a'changin'.

The 2016 Election and the Demise of Journalistic Standards

Michael Goodwin

A Simple Point of Logic Journalists Ought to be Aware Of

One often encounters sentences like this one:

There are many arenas in which all ideas are not considered equal.

This example is from a recent piece in Vox. I could give further recent examples, but one is enough. To simplify, consider just the core thought:

All ideas are not considered equal.

Unfortunately it is not entirely clear what the core thought is. For the sentence is ambiguous as between 

1) No ideas are considered equal

and

2) Some ideas are not considered equal.

The thoughts (propositions) expressed are distinct since the first can be false while the second is true. Although it is fairly clear that the author intended (2), a good writer avoids ambiguous constructions unless for some reason he intends them. So don't write sentences of the form

3) All Fs are not Gs 

if you intend say something of the form

4) Some Fs are not Gs.

Write instead sentences of the form

5) Not all Fs are Gs

which, by simple quantifier negation, is equivalent to (4). 

Class dismissed.

You Shouldn't Trust Liberal Journalists

Here.

What is Fake News? Rachel's Overreach

A news item is a report of a recent event.  Must the report be true to count as a genuine news item?  I should think so. Must the report be current as well? Obviously.  It is true that Hillary Clinton lost the 2016 presidential election, but no longer news that she did.  So there are two ways for fake news to be fake: by being false and by being dated.

Now that 'fake news' is a buzz word, or a buzz phrase, we need to be alert to this ambiguity.

But there seems to be another way in which a report can be fake news. Suppose an obnoxious leftist is out to damn Trump by showing that he does not pay Federal income tax. So she gets hold of his 2005 Form 1040 which reveals that he paid millions in taxes and trumpets this information on her political TV show. This too has been called 'fake news.' Here:

Unlike Geraldo Rivera, who was pilloried after his Al Capone vault debacle, Maddow knew that what was in the Trump tax returns wasn’t damning, yet she still hyped it on Twitter and played her audience for fools, thereby becoming the epitome of fake news.

What Maddow reported is true. And we the people did not know until a few days ago what Mr Trump paid in taxes back in aught five; so there is a sense in which the item reported is current. So what makes Maddow's reportage 'fake news'? Apparently, the fact that she was out to damn Trump but somehow did not realize that revealing the contents of his 2005 Form 1040 would make him look good!  He paid more in taxes than Bernie and Barack!

I am inclined to conclude that the phrase 'fake news' does now mean much of anything, if it ever did.

Above I pointed to an ambiguity.  But it is worse than that. The phrase is vague and becoming vaguer and vaguer. Chalk it up to the vagaries of polemical discourse in this time of bitter political division.

An ambiguous word or phrase admits of two or more definite meanings; a vague word or phrase has no definite meaning.  'Fake news' is  a bit like 'buzz word' which has itself become a buzz word.

As for Rachel Maddow, she is becoming the poster girl of TDS. How else do you explain the fact that this intelligent woman did not understand that her 'scoop' would hurt her and her benighted cause while benefiting the president?  But I suppose lust for ratings comes into it too. Mindless hatred of Trump plus a lust for ratings.

Next stop: the Twilight Zone.

Related articles

Truth Decay

Hillary the Corrupt

Obama the Liar Update

Trump releases some 2005 tax info ahead of Rachel Maddow report

Rachel Maddow: People expected too much of my report on Trump's tax return

The Quality of The New York Times

Here is the first comment on  Ross Douthat's December 16th column.  The comment has been awarded 'verified' status, meaning that ". . . it is earned based on a history of quality [read: high quality] comments."  Ready?

The following means Douthat knows he is neing dishinest, but it is debatable by he and his buddies, so ok, and, he is not accountable. It is like a talisman to negate reaponsibility for dishinonest: pure phony conservative. "Of course one can dispute how much of this was actually Obama’s fault, and argue over what might have been done differently. "

But anything to say, phony conservative hack style, liberals suck. Douthat's god.

And why is Trump popular?Cathartic howl? Typical cute Douthat rhetoric with all the depth teo dimensions can bring, yeah sure, like the nazis were a cathartic howl. Trump is popular, six months in, because he is reaping what the republican Party has sown and real american republican trash, his countrymen who Douthat respects less than Star Wars dolls,(Haravrd baby!) like the guy and think he is better than the other chump clown .1% lackeys. This, requires daily lies from Douthat and lie he does. 

Yet another proof that the only good NYT combox is a closed NYT combox.  Or: the best arguments against an open NYT combox are the contents of one.

As for the quality of the Opinion Pages themselves, they are piss-poor with only two or three exceptions, Douthat being one of them.  He is worth reading.  The aptronymically-appellated Charles Blow comes across as an affirmative action hire.  I saw him on C-SPAN once.  A very nice man with a beautiful wife, and I'm sure he means well.

By the way, if you are a conservative you ought to do everything in your power to defund the Left, and that includes not subscribing to the Rag of Record.

 

Rachel Dolezal, the Black White Woman

Orwellian Mendacity and Blatant Distortion at The New York Times

ObamaCare Schadenfreude

Ross Douthat

The Central Axiom of Partisan Politics

The Shrinking of the Friend Zone in a Sex-Saturated Society

Keith Burgess-Jackson: From Today's New York Times