Category Archives: Media

The media caters for a dwindling stock of fellow simpletons

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If you need another reminder of just how dishonest the media is, and how ignorant the people who read what they write must be, let me take you to eleven things the press still doesn’t get about Trump. That Trump receives daily briefings from some of the most knowledgeable people in the American government is certainly a more reliable source for everything than reading it in the papers. And if you truly believe that Trump had been in cahoots with the Russians you are truly an ignorant moron. Here is the first:

Too often, the press forgets the very lessons Trump himself has taught us about how he operates and why it often works. For example, journalists often imply that Trump’s reliance on cable news is a liability because it leaves him ill-informed. And so it does—but it also leaves him highly attuned to that medium and able to respond to what he sees there with immediate, pitch-perfect tweets or other comments that come across as direct, authentic and trustworthy.

Another example: the power of repetition. Frequently, reporters assume that because they have already responded to a Trump assertion, the issue is settled. But then he repeats the same misinformation, as he did in defending the size of his inauguration crowds. In part, this is because he’s incapable of acknowledging loss or error. More important, it’s because one of his highest priorities is the construction of an alternate narrative and the delegitimization of the mainstream media, traditional authorities, and the primacy of facts.

Likewise, the press seems to have forgotten the power of distraction. Coverage of the Trump-ordered missile attack in Syria made little reference to how conveniently it deflected attention from Russia-gate, Trump’s conflicts of interest, his draconian budget cuts, etc. The media also understate Trump’s reliance on bullying, which works surprisingly well for him. With the recent exception of the House Freedom Caucus’ refusal to knuckle under and vote for the GOP’s health care act, most people (e.g., the other Republican presidential candidates and many TV commentators) back down.

Trump has also mastered the power of grievance and continues to use it. When an issue gets too sticky, he reverts to self-pity—fashioning himself as the victim of Barack Obama’s supposed wiretapping, for instance. The media might call such behavior weak or petty, but it also re-cements Trump’s bond with his followers as fellow victims of the Washington elite.

Finally, the press tends to forget how much Trump needs to keep experiencing the act of winning—and how much this drives his behavior. The likeliest reason for his charge that Obama wiretapped him is that Trump wants to feel as if he’s continuing to beat the biggest competitor he can find. And what bigger target than Obama?

From the front page to the last page the media will lie to you without batting an eye

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This is from Tim Blair. You cannot trust the American media from the front page to the sports page.
_____

Even the sports coverage in the New York Times is loaded with fake news.

Take a look:

NYT Sports

✔@NYTSports

Patriots’ turnout for President Obama in 2015 vs. Patriots’ turnout for President Trump today: http://nyti.ms/2o4Kwj7 

Bravo, NYT! That’s sure stickin’ it to the Prez. But then come two crushing counterplays from the New England Patriots:

✔@Patriots

These photos lack context. Facts: In 2015, over 40 football staff were on the stairs. In 2017, they were seated on the South Lawn. https://twitter.com/NYTSports/status/854793140125020160 …

View image on Twitter

New England Patriots

✔@Patriots

Comparable photos: The last time the won two Super Bowls in three years, 36 players visited the White House. Today, we had 34.

11:30 AM – 20 Apr 2017

Meanwhile:

Omri Ceren @omriceren

NYT: hey, sorry we forgot to mention that the anti-Israel propaganda we published on Sunday was authored by a mass-murdering terrorist

 

TO ALL THAT LET ME ADD THIS: Via Instapundit, this:

Michael Oren: …I talk about an incident that occurred in May of 2010 with the New York Times when Mahmoud Abbas published an op-ed in the New York Times in which he alleged that he insinuated that the Arabs accepted the U.N. partition resolution of 1947, and the Jews rejected it. And I called up the editor of the New York Times, and I said wait a minute, this is exactly the opposite. Don’t you check facts? We [Israel] accepted it. The Arabs rejected it, and went to war against it. That was the war of independence. And the Arabs rejected the first two-state solution. And he says well, that’s your interpretation. Now wait a minute, there are certain in-controversial historical facts, uncontestable facts. I mean, did the Allies land, or did they not land on Normandy Beach in June, 1944? And the editor’s response was [analogous to] well, some people think so.

Advising the president on North Korea

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On every issue both international and domestic I find myself on the same side as Donald Trump. He is, moreover, not a lone wolf, he is not the head of some “think tank” that pours out advice without responsibility, but the head of an administration of people who have had to deal with international relations for decades past, but in which every moment is something new. What to do about North Korea, led by a madman with ambitions to build nuclear weapons and a delivery system that will reach the United States (and therefore also Australia)? I have no idea what the right answer is, but of all people across the globe I am content to see it is Trump attempting to deal with a situation that has been allowed to fester and rot. So where among our local papers can one turn to for guidance?

This is from The Australian today, We should make the best of being region’s odd man in. From which:

Donald Trump’s inexperience, recklessness and incoherence in foreign policy adds another element to this already volatile mix of superpower politics, mad dictatorships and menacing brinkmanship. The Trump administration is not a reliable ally for Australia given its contradictory and confused approach to foreign policy.

The only thing confused here is the donkey who wrote this article. Meanwhile at The Age we have another piece of advice: Donald Trump is right to try something new on North Korea. There we find:

Donald Trump is therefore quite right when he asserts that US policy has failed. So it’s time to hold our breath while he tries out a new tactic: play the vicious little dictator at his own game. The Kims have always used belligerence to extract concessions, like loosened sanctions, because no one is ever sure just how far Pyongyang will go. . . .

China might not be able to stop North Korea’s weapons program. Perhaps nothing can except a war. It would be a terrible, brutal, bloody war and it would be unforgivable for Mr Trump to trigger it lightly or by accident. But US policy on North Korea has so far been a failure. The White House is right to try something new.

The Australian’s continuous and ignorant attacks on Donald Trump is making the paper almost unreadable. But here is how it is. The world now depends on the American president as its best chance of solving the problem of North Korean and its nuclear ambitions. These media leftists with their automatic opposition to anything Trump does are worse than tiresome, they are making it more difficult to find solutions to major problems that will take us all down if we do not do something about them.

“I stand with Mark Latham and I want him back”

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The words in the heading are Ross Cameron’s from yesterday’s Outsiders and let me say the same for myself, I stand with Mark Latham and I want him back. Sky News has to understand that they are responsible for what is wonton destruction of possibly the best political satire and commentary we have seen in years. The management team at Sky are to Outsiders what Yoko Ono was to the Beatles. Ross and Rowan dean were excellent but Mark makes it even better. If you are interested in listening to the audio that trapped Mark Latham, you can find it here at Andrew Bolt.

We were also reminded how the ranks of the non-left are continuously being depleted with the loss of Bill Leak, who was represented by his son; with the absence of Ayaan Hirsi Ali, whose visit to Australia has had to be postponed; and by the disappearance of Mark Latham himself. I am hardly alone in wanting him back.

The inside outsiders

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The sound track that got Mark Latham sacked. I may be the last to know, but I picked this up at Andrew Bolt where it is run under the heading MARK LATHAM VS ADAM GOODES: A STUDY IN HYPOCRISY. And if you go to the link, you can find the first of Mark Latham’s Outsiders which I will have to watch in full when I get home tonight.

And to this we can add Mark Latham’s own comment on my previous thread:

Thanks Steve,

Fascinating discussion. Let’s go to the background: on the Outsiders panel show on Sunday 12 March we ran through a series of zany things said on International Women’s Day the previous Wednesday. Five or six items. One of them was the Sydney Boys school prefect video, which had attracted significant media attention. The young men spoke the words of women in trying to help the feminist cause. The first speaker talked about having sex with a man. The video was designed to initially mislead, as only later did it become clear the speakers were quoting women.

I have spoken to scores of people who have said, upon first viewing of the video they thought the first speaker was speaking as a young gay man. That was my impression too. I made no value judgement about that, and never would. I simply thought it was a matter of fact. I don’t know why some people regard the word ‘gay’ as derogatory. I don’t. I was taught in the ALP in the 1980s to look through race, gender and sexuality as minor genetic/preference variations between people.

On the day before our show, the SMH ran a letter from the nearby Sydney Girls school students, attacking the ‘male video prefects’ as having no right to make a statement about feminism, saying they had a “toxic male culture” at their school.

On Outsiders we played the video to highlight that “men can’t win” – if you try to help with a well-intentioned (albeit strange and misleading) video, the feminists will bag you anyway.

Ross Cameron chipped in to say, words to the effect of, “These young fellas ought to be aware that the girls they are trying to impress will run off with a Western Sydney tradie in a ute.”

Very funny. In the laughter, I quipped, words to the effect of, “Well, I thought the first one was gay, so it won’t affect him”.

That’s all.

All I was saying was that the first speaker wouldn’t be impacted by Ross’s observation. There was no condemnation meant, nor should any have been taken. Indeed, that was the initial outcome.

The show would have had 30-40,000 viewers, including the ABC Media Watch, Buzzfeed, Fairfax etc gang who always watched, hoping to jump onto slip-ups. No one said a word about my comments until 17 days later, when other matters had arisen via ‘lawfare’. I still don’t know the reaction to all this from the first prefect speaker. Publicly, I have said if he’s upset at all by my words or by the controversy itself, then I apologise.

This is a feature of the Left’s confected outrage/PC industry: no problem at the time, but if they can delve back into history when a political target is vulnerable for other reasons, they will.

What happened to me was essentially a stitch up. None of the critics gave a crap about the school prefect. They had long been silent. It was all about closing down my (hopefully effective) critique of their ideology.

The mere mention of the word “gay” today is enough to have companies harassed and people sacked. The Left has turned it into a demon word, when I believe I have never used it that way.

True, I am a former Labor leader. I’m not a conservative, I’m a social democrat. And from that perspective, I oppose identity politics as a divisive, segregationist doctrine that weakens social trust and cohesiveness – the basic raw materials of community and the good society. You don’t have to be from the Right to oppose identity politics as an abomination. Peter Baldwin (ex senior minister and ALP Socialist left faction) has raised a critique similar to mine. You don’t have to be from the Right to oppose the extreme Left.

In summary, that’s what happened. If civility-conservatives think that’s fine, they might as well surrender the country and culture wars to the Identity Left right now. We should all go to the pub and have a Coopers instead.

They (and others) would be saying, in fact, no one can make an evidence-based quip about another person in the context of a very funny joke and very strange video.

In hindsight, I would have been better off joining the girls’ school in attacking the male prefects as toxic and calling for them to never speak about gender issues again.

Now ain’t that sad!!

Why should it be illegal to punch someone you disagree with in the head?

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These people could never see a single flaw in a President Obama but now they can write this, and perhaps they even believe it:

What is most worrisome about Trump is Trump himself. He is a man so unpredictable, so reckless, so petulant, so full of blind self-regard, so untethered to reality that it is impossible to know where his presidency will lead or how much damage he will do to our nation. His obsession with his own fame, wealth and success, his determination to vanquish enemies real and imagined, his craving for adulation — these traits were, of course, at the very heart of his scorched-earth outsider campaign; indeed, some of them helped get him elected. But in a real presidency in which he wields unimaginable power, they are nothing short of disastrous.

Although his policies are, for the most part, variations on classic Republican positions (many of which would have been undertaken by a President Ted Cruz or a President Marco Rubio), they become far more dangerous in the hands of this imprudent and erratic man. Many Republicans, for instance, support tighter border security and a tougher response to illegal immigration, but Trump’s cockamamie border wall, his impracticable campaign promise to deport all 11 million people living in the country illegally and his blithe disregard for the effect of such proposals on the U.S. relationship with Mexico turn a very bad policy into an appalling one.

OK borderline insane but this was the bit I found the most impressive:

Many Republicans, for instance, support tighter border security and a tougher response to illegal immigration.

Is the implication here that no Democrats do, or only a handful? Then the point should be made that this is ILLEGAL. These West Coast types must have fried their thought processes in grass and smack if they cannot understand that the moment an illegal migrant enters a country they are already outside the law. If the Democrats are a party supporting the breaking of the law, then why would anyone vote for them. There are plenty of laws I or anyone else might consider unfair, or at least in some way to their disadvantage. Border control is not some massive breach of ethics but standard practice everywhere. If they cannot even understand that, what hope is there for them to understand anything at all?

Moreover, these views are so deranged that it is impossible to understand where one might even begin to discuss any issue of importance. If building a wall as a form of border protection is so outside the range of their conception of the possible and the practical, they cannot even enter the conversation. If they cannot even think there might be a case for keeping illegal migrants out, and for removing illegals who have broken other laws, then what can you talk to them about? They are a lost cause because they are so politically blinded by their irrational hatreds that it becomes hard to understand how they could be constructive in dealing with these and other problems under a President Trump.

The Trump administration has arrested more than 3,000 pedophiles in the last two months

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I am beginning to think the Democrats are promoting this business about Susan Rice to distract from Trump’s increasing number of successes. Here’s a story you won’t find in the papers because it is about Trump doing something about ridding the US of paedophiles rather than restricting its mention in the news only to attack Christianity and the Catholic Church. The left are repellent for many different reasons, but their absolute refusal to say anything positive about others who are doing good works is their most primal of instincts. In their own minds only they are virtuous, when in fact many of the horrors in the world are their own either by commission or omission. Is it really the case that Trump never has and never will do anything good?

So this is the question: where is this in any news story you have come across: Trump’s Pedophile HUNTING RAIDS Just Busted 474 more Demons Putting ELITE IN ALL OUT PANIC … THEY’RE NEXT!.

Folks, did you hear that the Trump administration has arrested more than 3,000 pedophiles in the two months? No mainstream media is actually reporting this.

In comparison, the entire last year of Obama’s presidency only 400 low-level pedophiles were arrested.

Of course you wouldn’t hear about any of that. Not a long story but worth your time as well as the almost ten minutes you should spend watching the video. There is evil in the world, there is no doubt about that. In the meantime, does the name Rotherham mean anything to you?

“One of the most disturbing recent developments”

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Nikki Saava at her finest:

One of the most amusing, or disturbing, recent developments has been the embrace of former Labor leader Mark Latham by sections of the hard right as their new darling. Almost as amusing and disturbing as their embrace of Donald Trump.

As I recall, she also prefers Malcolm to Tony. Is there anyone on the editorial page of The Oz with worse judgement than her?