Instead of pressing New York Governor Andrew Cuomo for answers, the cable network had his younger sibling ask him questions.
A shining moment for the liberal network. //
I missed this MSNBC fail yesterday 😂
Katy Tur tells reporter, "It seems like you might be one of the only people wearing a mask"
Reporter: You can see here, nobody's wearing them. Katy.
Hero bystander: Including the cameraman.
Defeated reporter: Including the cameraman.
Of course the Trump administration is playing tough with the media — because the media has played tough with him before he was even elected. Nearly every question asked in the briefing room is usually in the loaded construction of, “As you know, things are terrible, and it’s your fault, care to comment?” McEnany has decided to hit back.
This isn’t about the First Amendment. The media in the United States can say whatever the hell it wants — and we, as the New York Post, thank heaven for that every day. But there’s nothing in the Constitution that says the press secretary has to be polite about it.
You know what word needs to be retired in the age of Trump? “Unprecedented.”
President John Adams signed a law making it a crime to criticize the government; 20 newspaper editors were imprisoned. Andrew Jackson not only had his own paper, edited by a member of his cabinet, but it got government subsidies. Kayleigh McEnany hurting your feelings is not a constitutional crisis.
You buy ink by the barrel, fill the airwaves 24 hours a day and get millions of clicks on your websites. Victims? Get over yourselves.
The questions press secretary Kayleigh McEnany raised demand answers — answers that journalists absolutely refuse to dig up.
CNN's senior media reporter condemned Fox News on Tuesday for giving airtime to one of the nation's preeminent experts on the Russia hoax. //
“In what right mind is any scandal, any political scandal, any Department of Justice story more important to ask the president about than the pandemic that’s raging?” Stelter demanded to know. “Ultimately it’s about news judgement, it’s about lack of judgement, but I find it befuddling.”
Clearly missing the irony here, Stelter might find his own work befuddling with a quick look into the past. Good judgement here.
Free Beacon
✔
@FreeBeacon
Projection: CNN’s @brianstelter Accuses Conservative Media of ‘Obsession’ With Russia Probe https://freebeacon.com/media/projection-cnns-stelter-accuses-conservative-media-of-obsession-with-russia-probe/ … //
If Darcy wants to evaluate “straight news,” he may want to look at his own network’s blindspots first. The following stories might have met Stelter’s high bar for quality journalism:
Sean Davis
✔
@seanmdav
CNN Producer Fesses Up: We're Just Doing The Russia Stuff For Ratings https://thefederalist.com/2017/06/27/cnn-producer-fesses-just-russia-stuff-ratings/#.XrtYhsbKY9Q.twitter …
CNN Producer Fesses Up: We're Just Doing The Russia Stuff For Ratings
In a new undercover video, a CNN producer is caught on tape admitting that CNN's obsessions with Donald Trump and Russia is because of ratings.
thefederalist.com
Perhaps the most cynical media iconoclasm centers around the seeming glee some pundits take in the tanking economy. //
But the media’s raison d’etre exists, not in the truth, but solely in opposition. When the president goes left, whether right or wrong, the media go right. It is as if they have abdicated their roles as fact-finders and investigators and turned into repudiators.
This is laziness at its worst. It lacks credibility and betrays an emotional bias that goes to the heart of truth and falsehood. If the media is so readily able to embrace falsehoods merely to combat the president, are they not just as guilty of the betrayal of truth they accuse the president of committing?
Perhaps the most cynical media iconoclasm centers around the seeming glee some pundits take in the tanking economy. It is almost as if they embrace forced closings and their devastating economic effects as the welcome price of ridding the country of Trump.
Forget about the folks who are suffering. Forget about working mothers with children out of school and nowhere to go. All these pundits have to do is show up at their laptops and type away from the cushy surroundings of their high-end condos. But they aren’t forced to make the hard choices of laying off workers or letting crops rot in the field. For them, reopening the economy is synonymous with losing the political battle.
Satire that flies too close to the sun of reality. //
When a bot can do your job just as well, with just as much originality (see: none), it’s just a matter of time before the bot cleans up its grammar and replaces you. Of course, forcing the bot to do this could qualify as abuse. I mean, making any entity read 1,000 Jennifer Rubin articles is basically an offense punishable by death.
In 1981, a Georgetown professor, Jeane Kirkpatrick, remaining a Democrat, became Ronald Reagan's Ambassador to the United Nations. Reagan brought Kirkpatrick, as he did with many Democratic hawks who were dismayed with the dovish position of mainstream Democrats.
Kirkpatrick had worked closely with Hubert Humphrey and Scoop Jackson. As an increasingly influential public intellectual in the 1970s, she criticized not only what she saw as President Jimmy Carter's soft and naive stance on communism, but also the Nixon-Ford-Kissinger "detente" policy of accommodating to the Soviet expansion.
And so for the first time since 1952, the 1984 Republican National Convention chose a keynote speaker who was not a Republican. Kirkpatrick delivered a blistering speech, dealing exclusively with foreign policy. She was appealing to large segment of Reagan Democrats who were terrified Progressive and Democratic Establishment did not understand the mortal danger of the Soviet threat.
Kirkpatrick ran through a litany of recent foreign policy controversies: Grenada, Lebanon, the Soviet walk-out from arms negotiations, and Central America. On every topic, said Kirkpatrick, the San Francisco Democrats "always blame America first." //
I heard Jeane Kirkpatrick give her famous speech. The UN Ambassador went on a tirade about the “blame America first” Democrats who had been meeting in San Francisco.
Kirkpatrick was a Democrat hawk who came into the Reagan Administration in reaction to a Democratic Party that had rapidly drifted left to the point Ted Kennedy would try to get the Soviet Leader Andropov to do an American media tour to defuse tensions in the run up to the 1984 election. Kennedy wanted to advise the Soviets on how to navigate the American media to show they meant peace as a way to undermine the strong “evil empire” stance Reagan had advanced.
In her speech, Kirkpatrick said of the Democrats who had convened to nominate Walter Mondale in San Francisco,
They said that saving Grenada from terror and totalitarianism was the wrong thing to do - they didn't blame Cuba or the communists for threatening American students and murdering Grenadians - they blamed the United States instead.
But then, somehow, they always blame America first.
When our Marines, sent to Lebanon on a multinational peacekeeping mission with the consent of the United States Congress, were murdered in their sleep, the "blame America first crowd" didn't blame the terrorists who murdered the Marines, they blamed the United States.
But then, they always blame America first.
When the Soviet Union walked out of arms control negotiations, and refused even to discuss the issues, the San Francisco Democrats didn't blame Soviet intransigence. They blamed the United States.
But then, they always blame America first.
When Marxist dictators shoot their way to power in Central America, the San Francisco Democrats don't blame the guerrillas and their Soviet allies, they blame United States policies of 100 years ago.
But then, they always blame America first.
What was different between then and now is that while the media leaned left, it was still mostly run by men who had fought on the battlefields of Germany and the islands of the Pacific. They may have leaned left, but they were not really haters of America even if they thought Reagan was too belligerent.
Now, however, the American media is too willing to spread Chinese communist propaganda to own the President. Because Trump is President, the media would rather believe a tyrannical regime that ruthlessly murders dissidents and runs concentration camps.
"Mistakes" that always go in one direction. //
the U.S. “took the lead” in infections and deaths only because we are actually honest about our numbers. This is especially true of infections, in which we lead the world in total testing by far. The more you test, the more positives you get. That does not mean we actually lead the world in infections. There’s a reason our death rate is so much lower than other countries. It’s not because we have a magic serum (although our care is better and more prevalent). It’s because we are more accurately reporting infections, which lowers the mortality numbers.
By framing the U.S. as uniquely failing, 60 Minutes is doing China’s bidding, something CBS and others have been more than willing to do over the course of this pandemic. Does anyone really think China, with no therapeutic, was suddenly able to cut their domestic cases to zero? //
The biggest lie told here wasn’t that, though. It was that Pompeo pushed a “debunked” theory that the virus was man-made. In fact, Pompeo did the opposite, proposing it was an accident, something there is plenty of evidence for. The bat in question was not proven to have been sold in any of the markets in Wuhan because the closest native habit was over 600 miles away. Meanwhile, the Wuhan lab was studying coronaviruses in bats at the time. Incompetence and bad lab practices seem far more likely than speculation about wet markets at this point. //
Morgan Ortagus
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@statedeptspox
.@CBSNews intentionally misled its viewers with a report Sunday evening that failed to accurately portray the clear intent of Secretary Pompeo's remarks to Martha Raddatz on ABC News regarding the origin of the virus in Wuhan, China.
Morgan Ortagus
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@statedeptspox
This reporting — intending to deceive — seeks to obfuscate the Secretary’s core point: the Chinese Communist Party continues to refuse calls for transparency, thereby compounding its cover-up, and further risking American lives. //
CBS lied here, and it wasn’t an accident. One of the chief pieces of Chinese propaganda going around is to claim the U.S. is falsely blaming the communists for the spread of the virus. By propagating the notion that Pompeo claimed the virus was man-made, something we haven’t seen evidence of yet, they might as well be taking orders directly from Chinese dictator Xi.
Our media are disgraceful, and these “mistakes” always go in one direction. That’s not a coincidence.
It seems a number of major US media outlets have financial ties to the Chinese Communist Party, and it shows in their coverage.
Despite the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) record of oppression, corporate media outlets are parroting the authoritarian government’s propaganda, even in the midst of an outbreak the CCP worsened through a cover-up. Many of those media outlets have financial ties to Chinese companies with intense oversight from the CCP.
“You often see representatives from American companies with financial ties to China naturally become defenders of the CCP’s policies and spreading the CCP’s propaganda,” said Helen Raleigh, an author and senior contributor at The Federalist who emigrated from China. “The financial tie means these Americans will be much less likely to challenge China’s human rights record or unacceptable demand such as technology transfer.”
We do not know the extent of editorial oversight from corporations and individuals with financial incentives to placate the CCP, if any. But we know the incentives exist, and that’s worth understanding. Below is a breakdown of financial ties between major U.S. media organizations and the CCP. //
According to a new Department of Homeland Security report obtained by the Associated Press, Beijing hid the severity of the coronavirus to hoard protective medical supplies in early January and February. Yet, corporate media are bending over backwards to avoid negative press coverage of China during the coronavirus pandemic.
Examining these financial ties may explain why China is receiving such glowing coverage during a pandemic of their own making.
CNN just gotta keep pushing nonsense... //
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), 28,158 people called U.S. poison control centers about possible exposure to household cleaners in March 2020, compared to 25,021 in March 2019. The number of calls about possible exposure to disinfectants went from 12,801 in March 2019 to 17,392 in March 2020. //
The Babylon Bee
@TheBabylonBee
Trump Says To Drink Lots Of Water, Media Reports He Told Everyone To Drown Themselves
https://buff.ly/3cIzfKc
She was even reminded of that the wife of her colleague Chris Cuomo was recommending adding bleach to your bath as well as a boatload of other questionable things that are actual “suggestions” for treatments for the virus. But I don’t recall seeing Cupp calling out Cuomo’s wife.
"Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect is as follows. You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray's case, physics. In mine, show business. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the article is so wrong it actually presents the story backward—reversing cause and effect. I call these the "wet streets cause rain" stories. Paper's full of them.
In any case, you read with exasperation or amusement the multiple errors in a story, and then turn the page to national or international affairs, and read as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate about Palestine than the baloney you just read. You turn the page, and forget what you know.”
– Michael Crichton (1942-2008)
We know a steady diet of bad news is bad for us, but we’ve rarely seen the deleterious effects on such a grand scale as with media’s handling of the Wuhan virus effects. //
From as far back as late January, when the president declared the coronavirus a public health emergency and began taking action, many in corporate media seem compelled to take the opposite view of just about anything he says, even when it’s so obviously wrong. A cynical person might think many in the media would rather politically injure the president with massive amounts of negative press than provide viewers urgently needed information about a deadly pandemic. //
The news media has an incredible amount of influence on what society thinks about, which means they have an incredible responsibility to society. In numerous instances, the networks have allowed their contempt for the president to influence commentary and produce absurdly partisan questions at White House press conferences, as opposed to just reporting the facts and asking about things people actually care about, and it has negatively affected masses of people.
The full story.
It’s unhelpful hyperbole—and insulting to some good reporters—to compare the mostly dry briefings to a wild, one-sided Trump rally. The president gives the press a big chunk of time at the briefings every day to grill him, and they do. That in and of itself makes the rally comparison recklessly off base. Trump’s team using video clips from the briefings to promote his handling of the crisis is hardly a cost that undercuts the benefit of having him answer to the press.
Expect to see more of this. //
on Wednesday evening following the publication of this report, the Defense Department provided a statement from Col. R. Shane Day, Director of the NCMI.” The statement read:
As a matter of practice the National Center for Medical Intelligence does not comment publicly on specific intelligence matters. However, in the interest of transparency during this current public health crisis, we can confirm that media reporting about the existence/release of a National Center for Medical Intelligence Coronavirus-related product/assessment in November of 2019 is not correct. No such NCMI product exists. //
I agree 100% that leaders must react quickly in the face of a threat. But I have a question for all of the:? What possible motive would President Trump or any other administration officials have to cover this up? They know that Trump is not afraid to confront China. He has done so numerous times. Why would he try to cover up something he had nothing to do with? There is no conceivable reason. Of course they would have acted if they had knowledge in November or even in December that a “cataclysmic event” was coming.
President Trump is not afraid to act. Go ask Qassem Soleimani if you need any proof. //
Streiff also provides a timeline of the crisis. It starts on December 10, when Wei Guixian, one of the earliest known coronavirus patients, starts feeling ill. Additionally, he includes a timeline of the Trump Administration’s response. I highly recommend it.
As a one-time thing, it’s fine. But the governor is in a serious position right now. The stakes are high. The media should be scrutinizing him with heightened intensity, not giving him airtime to be interviewed frequently by his own brother, whose biases are impossible to erase. (And for good reason. They love each other.)
The "paper of record" just intentionally misleading people. //
Trip Gabriel
@tripgabriel
There are at most 200k ventilators in the US. One million are expected to be needed. Experts say the Trump administration approach - let states fend for themselves in the market rather than a central authority step in - will doom people to die. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/25/health/ventilators-coronavirus.html?referringSource=articleShare … //
Alex Berenson
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@AlexBerenson
2/ The number comes from a March 19 SCCM paper:
"[One estimate is that 1/2 of] ICU admissions (960,000) would require ventilatory support. Such projections are gross estimates."
More importantly: this is everyone who may need ventilation OVER THE COURSE OF THE EPIDEMIC...
In fact, the paper states explicitly "that U.S. hospitals could absorb a maximum of 26,000 to 56,000 additional ventilators at the peak of a national pandemic, as safe use of ventilators requires trained personnel."
In other words, whatever happens with COVID, if we built a million new ventilators, 950,000 would be furniture.
Added bonus: the paper reports the US already has far more critical care beds per-capita than other nations: 35 per 100,000, compared to 12 in Italy, 7 in the UK...
Final point: the paper concludes the real bottleneck is in trained staff and "priority should focus not only on increasing [ventilators]... but on growing the number of trained professionals."
But I guess bashing the WH for not nationalizing ventilator production is more fun.
The answer is sadly disturbing. //
It’s a dark day in news media when once-giants in their field — who had remained giants as outlets around them folded to political bias — begin to bow to Chinese interests over the interests of the American people. But the good news, per Benson’s Twitter post above, is it looks like the American people are noticing.