“… After being disturbed by the pro-Black Lives Matter tilt of Reuters reporting and how it didn’t match the data on police shootings, Kriegman took a leave and then came back to the office with a 12,000-word essay on its internal website “The Hub” titled “BLM is Anti-Black Systemic Racism.” Uh oh! He called into question the entire sequence of claims by BLM and its backers on the Reuters “news” team.”
The Walt Disney owned Hulu film company premiered a new one hour documentary on December 21, 2021 entitled “No Good Deed—A crowdfunding Holiday Heist.” The film, produced in Philadelphia by two 6ABC news reporters, explored one of the greatest scams to hit the world of GoFundMe fundraising: How three people, Mark D’Amico, Kate McClure and a homeless veteran named Johnny Bobbitt concocted a heartwarming tale to get the public to donate to a GoFundMe in Bobbitt’s honor as a reward for Bobbitt’s giving up his last twenty dollars to help McClure when she ran out of gas in Philadelphia’s Port Richmond neighborhood.
The media made their fair share of nasty comments and skewed remarks in 2021, but there were also instances where reporters (or entire networks) deliberately misled their audiences.
To borrow from the late President Gerald Ford, the state of the media as 2022 opens is not good.
Recall that Ford was happily sailing along politically in 1973 as the House Republican Leader in the Nixon era. He was the Kevin McCarthy of his day.
Out of the blue, in October, the Department of Justice revealed it was investigating Vice President Spiro Agnew on corruption charges. After much heated back and forth, Agnew resigned. Nixon, blessed with the constitutional authority to appoint a replacement to be confirmed by the Congress, appointed the popular Ford as the new vice president.
CNN is betting big on its new digital streaming service CNN+ that will debut in early 2022, calling it the most important launch since Ted Turner introduced the cable network more than four decades ago. But a string of shocking internal scandals is threatening to steal the spotlight on the eve of the big reveal.
A lot of people began returning to work in 2021, though there are still many jobs waiting to be filled. That news might lead you to believe that business is booming, and that’s true in some sectors, but not all of them. One area where a slump worsened in 2021 as compared to the previous year was the news business. Traffic and revenue were down pretty much across the board for both newspapers and cable news outlets.
Nicholas Sandmann, a former Covington Catholic student smeared after a 2019 incident with a Native American activist, has reached a third settlement in a series of lawsuits against media companies.
Sandmann announced over Twitter Friday that he had reached a settlement with NBC News. Sandmann’s legal team has already reached settlements with CNN and The Washington Post.
Batya Ungar-Sargon on the ‘Great Awokening’ of American journalism.
The American mainstream media are losing touch with reality. Journalists are increasingly drawn from elite backgrounds, and newsrooms are coalescing around a woke worldview. The media’s interest in race, gender and sexuality has exploded, while class issues and economic concerns struggle to get a look in. And when stories arrive that disrupt the woke narrative – from the acquittal of Kyle Rittenhouse to Jussie Smollett’s hate-crime hoax – journalists often find themselves on the wrong side of the truth. How did the American media get into this state? And how can proper journalism recover?
MSNBC’s national affairs analyst John Heilemann shocked many Americans by claiming on a Sunday show that “20 to 30 million people” are ready to “take up arms” to remove President Joe Biden from office.
On Sunday’s Meet the Press, host Chuck Todd focused on a recent Atlantic article declaring that Donald Trump’s “coup has already begun” for a segment, finding Heilemann in total agreement with the piece’s premise.
“There is this research that shows something like 8% and maybe up to 12% who say that Joe Biden was illegitimate and that violence is a suitable tool to remove him and restore Donald Trump. This represents between 20 and 30 million people,” Heilemann said, claiming these supposed “20 to 30 million people” are ready to “take up arms.”
Off record… that 30 million estimate seems low.
On April 19, 2021, McDonald’s CEO Chris Kempczinski suggested in a text to Chicago’s mayor that the parents of two children recently killed in Chicago’s gang activity had “failed those kids.” Kempczinski’s text became public in November 2021, prompting widespread accusations of racism and calls for his resignation. Kempczinski confessed to his white privilege and apologized profusely for holding parents responsible for the fate of their children.
“I am thrilled to join CNN+. After decades in broadcast and cable news, I am excited to explore the world of streaming. I look forward to the new freedom and flexibility streaming affords in interviewing major figures across the news landscape—and finding new ways to tell stories,” Wallace said in the release. “As I embark on this adventure, I am honored and delighted to join Jeff Zucker and his great team. I can’t wait to get started.”
Not going to be missed.
The events in Wisconsin’s Kenosha and Waukesha offer useful perspectives on a recent clash between pundits Andrew Sullivan and Jonathan V. Last of The Bulwark over the accuracy of the news media. Sullivan argues that the press makes numerous errors, while Last suggests that they get almost all matters of fact correct.
Fake news isn’t new. It was probably invented two minutes after the printing press. The problem is, it won’t go away.
In 1835, a newspaper called the New York Sun ran a series of six articles claiming the moon was inhabited by unicorns and “batmen.” The stories caught on and were reprinted worldwide. The author of the bogus stories used the name of a famous astronomer and a bogus but fancy-sounding telescope to back up the lies. A telescope so powerful it allowed the astronomer to see topless bat-babes flying around a moon also inhabited by “highly intelligent beavers.”
CBS News, the Associated Press (AP), the Washington Post, and various other media outlets have been taking serious heat on social media for labeling the horrific attack in Waukesha, Wisconsin, a “parade crash.”
