Sgt. Schultz:Oh I know nothing, I was not here, I didn’t even get up this morning!
Hogan’s Heroes Hold That Tiger 1965
If you’ve followed the MSM at all for the last 40 years you know that if there is one thing they love it’s stories that promote the disarming of citizens.
What they particularly love are stories that suggest the disarming of citizens that take place in Red States because that why they can point the finger at the GOP rather than themselves, and if that story is about a mass shooting well that’s the trifecta when it comes to creating a national story.
However there is one thing that can get in the way of such a story and that’s DaTechGuy’s 3rd Law of Media Outrage which states:
The MSM’s elevation and continued classification of any story as Nationally Newsworthy rather than only of local interest is in direct correlation to said story’s current ability to affirm any current Democrat/Liberal/Media meme/talking point, particularly on the subject of race or sexuality.
Well you would think a mass shooting with over 300 shots fired which took place in Memphis this week would qualify, even it it was in a blue city oasis in the middle of a Red State, alas there is a catch. See if you can spot it from this video of the event:
Alas the shooters were of the wrong race, and thus this story hurts the Democrat message on race. Even 300 shots and video are not enough to get this story onto any national broadcast so like the Superbowl shootings this story will be confined to the local news until it dies away.
Dexter Reed Chicago Police mugshot. Source: Chicago City Wire.
By John Ruberry
On his Prime Time show last Thursday, Jesse Watters, nailed it when he excoriated the mainstream media over headlines used to describe the deadly shooting of Dexter Reed by a Chicago Police tactical squad last month. Reed was pulled over for not wearing a seatbelt, which in Illinois, is a legitimate reason for police to pull a driver over.
A Chicago police officer asked Reed to roll down his front windows, which initially he did, but then he rolled them up, he ignored demands to get out of his SUV, then he fired his gun eleven times, wounding one cop.
Headlines like these, Watters reported, were used about the Reed shooting:
“Black man dead on Chicago street after cops fired nearly 100 bullets.”
“Police fired 96 shots in 41 seconds killing Black man during traffic stop.”
“Deadly Chicago traffic stop where police fired 96 shots raises serious questions about use of force.”
Watters points out that deep in the story the “journalists” mention that Reed shot as the cops first.
But the media knows that often users only look at headlines of stories as they appear on their smartphones. They don’t bother to read the stores that accompany these headlines, or they are blocked by paywalls.
The mainstream media doesn’t want to report the news–it wants to advance a left-wing agenda. Foremost on their agenda is to re-elect Joe Biden so the man who sends mean Tweets, Donald Trump, doesn’t return to the White House. The uproar over the police killing of George Floyd pushed the frail Joe Biden past the finish line in 2020. The media is hoping, with Reed, that history repeats and a new backlash can drag an ever-frailer Biden to victory.
The media, both local and national, is borrowing a page from the Trayvon Martin shooting, by using old photographs of him, of when he was younger and well, cuter. The Chicago media, in their stories, used high school photos of Reed, who was 26 when he was killed.
Chicago’s most-read newspapers, the Tribune and the Sun-Times, have a general policy, instituted in 2021 against using mugshots in stories. Of course, they both made an exception in the case of Donald Trump. The Chicago City Wire, derided as a “fake” newspaper by Chicago’s self-appointed media elite, has no such rule, so it published Reed’s mug shot.
That’s not all. The City Wire reports that was Reed arrested twice in 2023. The first bust was for retail theft, the second was for aggravated unlawful use of a weapon.
The City Wire also revealed that Reed, who once worked as a security guard, received a Paycheck Protection Plan (PPP) loan of $20,832 for his business that consisted of “all other support activities for transportation.”
Thousands of very suspicious PPP loans were issued to Chicagoans during the COVID pandemic, particularly in impoverished areas not known as hubs for business activity, including West Garfield Park, where Reed lived.
Sam Charles of the Trib managed to do some insightful reporting today when he revealed that Reed was shot in 2021.
“I’m physically disabled and mentally unstable with PTSD, short-term memory loss, slurred speech, drop foot in one of my legs, blindness in one eye, shoulder/arm hard to move, weakness and/or sensitivity,” Reed, who was 26 when he was killed last month, wrote in an August 2023 court filing. “With all these medical conditions it has been hard for me to work and/or do certain things.”
Well, if Reed was truthful in that filing, then I have a question: Why did Reed–and as we know, he was arrested for aggravated unlawful use of a weapon last year–have a gun? And where did he get the firearm?
Chicago has among the toughest gun laws in America.
And of course, Reed, despite his troubles, should have known want what to do when police officers pulled him over.
On Thursday’s Chicago’s Morning Answer show with Dan Proft and Amy Jacobson on WIND-AM, John Garrido, a former CPD lieutenant, told the hosts, “This incident, like so many other ones, could have easily been avoided,” Garrido explained, “all [Reed] had to do was comply. All he had to do was roll the window down, open the door, get out of the car, and he would live another day to tell stories about how the police somehow violated his rights.”
Garrido had more to say about Reed. “He was in court–or supposed to be in court–two weeks prior to this incident.” The former cop theorized that Reed possibly was afraid if he was caught by the CPD tactical squad with a weapon, one that he was not supposed to have, that he could have been sent to jail.
Clearly, there is more to learn–and report–about the Reed death. But it appears that the mainstream media cares more about one thing–advancing their left-wing narrative.
As for the Tribune and the Sun-Times–as well as national outlets–why not reach out to someone like Garrido when reporting on Reed and similar police stories?
Note: Proft says he is a principal of Local Government Information Services, which publishes the Chicago City Wire and other local publications.
Saw the article about AOC out with her guy and protesters bugging her about Gaza.
It’s rather ironic as she’s generally on their side but what really struck me is the photo of her out with her guy seemed so …. normal.
I’m partial to the sight of a young lady out with her man and frankly I’d like folks to leave her alone to enjoy those moment which are some of the most important in life.
I don’t watch a lot of the MSM but I made it a point of watching the reactions to the SCOTUS ruling on the attempts to kick Trump off the ballots in various blue states.
I found it hilarious that all of the stressed that the court didn’t acquit him of being an insurrectionist.
They didn’t have to, nobody has filed a charge of insurrection against him in federal court, in fact none of the J6 prisoners or defendants have in fact been charged with insurrection.
Their desperation to keep this narrative intact is very interesting and shows how far they’ve fallen, but it’s amazing how far a person will willingly let themselves fall if their paycheck is attached to it.
Have you noticed that in the minds of the media nothing delegitimizes an institution more than no longer following the narrative of the left.
Elon Musk, Ben Carson, The Supreme Court, Donald Trump, Naomi Wolf and yes J. K. Rowling were all feted and celebrated by the left for a very long time right up until the moment that they were perceived as a threat to the power of the left and the narrative they were selling.
Once they did as far as all those folks who loved and celebrated them were concerned they were now unpersons that needed to be destroyed.
Hey commies gotta commie.
There is an excellent substack by Naomi Wolf about visiting CPAC titled “Letter from CPAC” that you should read. There is one bit that jumped out at me:
We entered the Gaylord at the peak of CPAC, to an atrium thronged with happy visitors. My first, ignominious reaction to the scene, for which Brian rightly chided me, was: “This is not my culture.”
There was a buzz, from the moment we entered: a joyful vibe. After we checked in, changed, and ran down to join the festivities, we were struck by how pleasant and positive almost everyone was to us, and to each other. As someone reported to me the desk clerk had said, “I know they won’t approve of me saying this back in Southeast DC, where I come from, but you all are nice.”
Nice is a good and accurate word, a better description is “normal”
She goes though a list of folks she met and spoke to, many that she might disagree with on some issues and notes how different they are from how the media paints them.
It’s been six years years since I’ve been to CPAC the last time I went was with my sons and them seeing the MSM in action as they actually are taught them plenty.
Finally there are two reasons why you don’t see me at CPAC anymore. The first is as a full time employees where I work I only get so much vacation time and it won’t be till 2028 that I have the additional week that attending CPAC would require.
But the other is frankly that DaTipJar has dwindled to almost nothing, my last fundraiser only managed 25% of my goal and last month between subscriptions and tip jar hits I had exactly $2 left over after paying my writers.
I suspect the blog as a business will not survive long after the election and with money tight it will be an effort to survive to the election. It’s nothing about $5000 wouldn’t solve but that money simply isn’t there and in the end I don’t have a divine right to a single person’s dollar, I can only earn it by producing content that people think is worth it.
It’s disappointing to fail in business I’ve done so many times I’m just sorry I couldn’t provide better for my wife who deserves better. If I had followed my brothers into the civil service I might even now be retired or close to it with a pension, but I’m not ashamed of trying to make it as a writer/pundit and this blog has done good work, sometimes even important work. I’ve showed things and told things as they are which is why both Youtube now and pre-Musk twitter censored me. Best of all I’m proud to say I never sold out to push any narrative I didn’t believe in.
With massive layoffs not only at the Post, which is owned by Jeff Bezos, but also the Los Angeles Times–and with Sports Illustrated being probably as dead as the Detroit Lions’ Super Bowl dreams–the answer may be a loud “Yes.”
Meanwhile, in Democrat-controlled Illinois, the Illinois Local Journalism Task Force, created by legislation in 2021, is betting on the dinosaurs, that is, traditional media. Last week, the task force issued its recommendations for journalism in the Prairie State.
“Its proposals are mostly about getting taxpayers to pony up and putting government in control,” Mark Glennon says in Wirepoints, “[with] no mention of journalism’s own failures.”
Indeed, there are many failures. The glaringly obvious one–unless you work in mainstream media–is that journalists are pushing a narrative to score love from the 20 percent of the population who are far-leftists. Even in Illinois, a blue state, there are not many ultra lefties–they might make up 25 percent of the populace here.
Among the recommendations from the tax force include a whole slew of tax credits for local news sources, including for subscriptions, businesses who advertise with them, as well as for local news providers hiring reporters.
Every one of the recommendations from the task force are wretched ideas that I could eviscerate easily one by one, but to save time, I’ll move on. But not yet. Besides these tax credits, the task force recommends exempting local news sources from Illinois’ corporate income tax.
Some states have no corporate income tax.
News should be a mass market product, not a niche offering, but the liberals in charge have turned it into that. Again, I’ll be brief. Most Americans–and yes, most Illinoisans–believe there are only two genders, and most had doubts about the COVID propaganda of 2020-21. And most of them are fed up with the lamestream media minimizing the ongoing crisis with rampant crime.
Yeah, I get it, the internet has hurt local news providers. But they didn’t adapt. The same with Big News.
Let’s talk about extinction events. Real ones. Extinction is usually portrayed as mass death, yet it’s also a mass life event.
Following the Permian-Triassic mass extinction, the lystrosaurus, a runt buck-toothed freak reptile, thrived, along with many other emergent species. Soon, geologically speaking that is, came the dinosaurs. After the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event, different small animals, mammals and birds among them–as well as fungus–prospered.
There’s never been more media–or more information–than there is now. Print newspapers are sometimes called dinosaur media. I believe they should always be named as such. Among the new media are of course blogs such as this one, YouTube and Rumble video channels, streaming services, podcasts, and so much more. A consumer of information is now faced with a daunting challenge. Because finding enough time to sift through all of the choices–let alone absorb all of them–is impossible.
Last Thursday, Chicago Tribune reporters held a one-day strike against its owner, Alden Capital, a hedge fund firm. “We often say, ‘Newspapers are not dying, they’re being killed,'” Gregory Pratt, a committed left-wing Trib journalist, told WGN-TV.
Wrong, Pratt. Newspapers are being killed because journalists are emitting an unpopular product and looking down on their customers.
Let’s return to the Illinois Local Journalism Task Force.
In its rancid report there is a map of Illinois. Counties with few media choices are marked in that map in different shades of red. One of those is McHenry, which is northwest of Chicago. I know of two great news sites reporting about McHenry County: Cal Skinner’s McHenry County Blog and the Lake and McHenry County Scanner–a suburban answer to the phenomenally successful CWB Chicago. I’m certain that the task force didn’t include these sites in their elitist media tally.
Another fabulous Illinois news source is the aforementioned Wirepoints.
Big creatures usually don’t survive natural mass extinction events. Small ones, nimble animals, find opportunities in an altered world.
Remember, lystrosaurus made way for larger and grander beasts, such as the Tyrannosaurus rex. Today’s blog may become tomorrow’s News Corp–the parent company of Fox News, Dow Jones, HarperCollins, and so many more.
Humans will always crave information–it’s in our DNA–it is just a matter of how it’s delivered to us. We’ve come a very long away from when the evening news was a caveman squatting in front of a bonfire telling whoever was sitting in front of him how that day’s hunt went. If that prehistoric anchorman delivered fake news–“I killed six mammoths today with my bare hands!”–his audience simply walked away. Kind of like what consumers of Big News are doing now.
The dinosaur media–and the Illinois Journalism Task Force–doesn’t get it.
John Ruberry blogs regularly from the Chicago area atMarathon Pundit.
