Archive for the ‘media’ Category

Democrats’ attacks on what they call “disinformation” have their roots in Barack Obama’s Truth Squad

Posted: May 1, 2022 by John Ruberry in culture, media, News/opinion, opinion/news, politics
Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,

By John Ruberry

While calling public figures “Orwellian” goes back decades, usually it’s an exaggeration. 

Not so with the new Misinformation and Disinformation Governance Board, whose existence was revealed by the soulless hack Alejandro Mayorkas, Joe Biden’s secretary of Homeland Security. The board’s executive director is Nina Jankowicz, a misinformationist. 

Among other things, Jankowicz in 2020 called into question the veracity of the Hunter Biden laptop revelations.

George Orwell’s “Ministry of Truth” in 1984 of course propagandized lies. 

The Democrats’ Orwellian attacks on their opponents began during Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign, when he created groups such as “The Truth Squad.” 

This morning on Twitter, former Democratic member of Congress and 2020 presidential candidate, Tulsi Gabbard, pointed her finger at the instigator on the Dems’ obsession with “disinformation,” Joe Biden’s former ticket-mate.

“Biden is just a front man,” Gabbard Tweeted. “Obama, April 21: social media censors ‘don’t go far enough,’ so the government needs to step in to do the job. Six days later, Homeland Security rolls out the ‘Ministry of Truth’ (aka Disinformation Governance Board).”

Obama’s “Truth Squad” made its first appearance in during the 2008 Democratic primaries. It was ramped up for the general election. A KMOV-TV St. Louis anchor reported that fall, “Senator Barack Obama’s presidential campaign is asking Missouri law enforcement to target anyone who lies or runs a misleading TV ad during the presidential campaign.”

“Prosecutors and sheriffs from across Missouri are joining ‘The Barack Obama Truth Squad,'” reporter John Mills added, he then named Jennifer Joyce, St. Louis circuit attorney, and Bob McCulloch, the prosecutor for St. Louis County, as members.

Mills continued, “They will be reminding voters that Barack Obama is a Christian who wants to cut taxes for anyone making less than $250,000 a year.” 

What about those prosecutors?

“If they’re not going to tell the truth,” McCulloch told KMOV, “somebody’s got to step up and say, ‘That’s not true. This is the truth.'”

Jim Geraghty of National Review summed up the Missouri threat concisely at the time, “While the report never quite comes out and says that anyone running an ad saying those things would be subject to prosecution, that certainly is the message implied.” 

Truth, like knowledge, is nearly never a settled construct, especially in the political arena. 

Leftists, like Barack Obama, undoubtedly disagree with me. Rather, under the cloak of “truth,” they now label criticism of their policies, as well as reports that harm their side, such as the revelations from the Hunter Biden laptop, as “misinformation” and “disinformation.” The Obama quote referenced earlier comes from a Stanford University conference about “misinformation” held in April. Earlier that month, longtime top Obama campaign aide, David Axelrod, was a co-host of the “Disinformation and the Erosion of Democracy” conference at the University of Chicago.

Obama, ironically, was the recipient of PolitiFact’s “Lie of the Year” award in 2013. That’s the truth.

Informers are an integral part of any un-free society. In 2009, an Obama administration media flack, Macon Phillips, under the guise of–wait for it–fighting “disinformation,” asked Americans to rat out any who disparaged ObamaCare. “If you get an email or see something on the web about health insurance reform that seems fishy,” he said, “send it to flag@whitehouse.gov.”

In 2012, the Obama-Biden campaign launched “the Truth Team.”

Never forget, the Democrats war on what they call “disinformation” began with Obama.

John Ruberry, and this is certainly the truth, regularly blogs at Marathon Pundit.

The Single Best Argument for Abortion and Birth Control I Have Heard in Years…

Posted: April 19, 2022 by datechguy in culture, media
Tags:

…is Taylor Lorentz claiming to have PTSD from being a Washington Post Journalist during a visit to MSNBC:

I mean yeah, police, firemen, soldiers, nurses and the people of Ukraine might have to deal with death, destruction and life and death on a daily basis, but that’s NOTHING compared to the nasty feedback she gets from doing things like Doxing the “libs of tic tock” account person who has the audacity to take videos that people deliberately put on a public worldwide forum and post them on a public worldwide forum.

I mean can you imagine how the children of such a woman would be prepared for life? Can you imagine them being able to cope with anything with such a person as their primary role model?

Granted abortion is murder and Birth Control is a sin and every person is made in the image of God (including Ms Lorenz) and with God all things are possible but if I was the left and wanted to try to persuade people that Abortion should be an option I’d put her on the posters saying: “Do you really want people like this raising children?”

All kidding aside Ms. Lorenz reminds me of something else.

Could you imagine the reaction if a male reporter claimed PTSD over online feedback?

Our “betters” keep telling us that women are men are equal yet we keep hearing stories about how hard women have it or their inability to cope.

So which is it elites? Are woman just as strong, tough and competent as men or are in need of special protection? Choose one.

(In fairness to our elites as they can’t define “woman” or “man” this question might be too much for them.

Closing thought: Totally unrelated headline via Citizen’s free press & NPR

It’s time to screen all kids for anxiety, physicians’ task force recommends

“Disinformation” conference proves Trump is right, the media is the enemy of the people

Posted: April 10, 2022 by John Ruberry in Always look at the bright side of Trump, culture, media, News/opinion, opinion/news
Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,

By John Ruberry

Last year, in his farewell column, longtime Chicago journalist Phil Kadner spoke of his praises, and he indeed deserved his own pats on the back. Kadner mostly covered the generally overlooked, but corrupt, south suburbs of Chicago. I grew up there, they are a rat-hole of graft.

A creature of the left, who called for President Trump’s impeachment in 2019, Kadner discussed in that final column, his anger after Trump said the media was “the enemy of the people.”

Is Kadner an enemy of the people? No.

But with a few exceptions, most of the media is. 

The latest example of why that is true took place at the University of Chicago, which hosted along with the Atlantic, the Disinformation and the Erosion of Democracy conference. A quick look at the speakers at the event betrays what kind of conference it was, there were no conservative panelists. Only the self-appointed “cool kids” are allowed in the tree house.

Ah, but there were at least a couple of conservatives there, including freshman U of C student Daniel Schmidt, who challenged one of the speakers, the Atlantic’s Anne Applebaum. Schmidt blew the whistle on her for dismissing the importance of the Hunter Biden laptop revelations in 2020, which at the time Applebaum wrote that it “barely registers” with her.

Her response? “My problem with Hunter Biden’s laptop I think is totally irrelevant.” Applebaum continued, “I mean it’s not whether it’s disinformation or, I mean, I didn’t think the Hunter Biden’s business relationships have anything to do with who should be president of the United States, so I don’t find it to be interesting, that would be my problem with that as a main news story.”

Ah, now here is an enemy of the people to be sure, Anna Applebaum.

Hunter Biden, if not Joe Biden, because of what has been discovered on that laptop, can rightly be called as I’ve remarked before, the head of a Chicago-style influence peddling ring. 

It’s arguable that the Biden family has sold out America to our enemies, particularly China. 

The Clown Prince of Disinformation is CNN’s Brian Stelter, the host of the laughably misnamed Reliable Sources. He spoke on the next day at the conference. And it was the turn of another University of Chicago freshman, Christopher Phillips, who said of Stelter’s network, “They push the Russian collusion hoax, they push the Jussie Smollett hoax, they smear Justice [Brett] Kavanaugh as a rapist, and they also smeared Nick Sandmann as a white supremacist,” Phillips told Stelter. “And yes, they dismissed the Hunter Biden laptop affair as pure Russian disinformation.” 

Phillips continued, “With mainstream corporate journalists becoming little more than apologists and cheerleaders for the [Biden] regime, is it time to finally declare that the canon of journalistic ethics is dead or no longer operative?”

Stelter quipped, “Too bad, it’s time for lunch,” but then gave a meandering reply that didn’t address any of Phillips’ points.

The Disinformation and the Erosion of Democracy conference was reminiscent of a bad Hollywood thriller, where the protagonist is finally able to report his findings of an anti-government conspiracy after escaping captivity, only to learn that those he trusts in the government are part of that nefarious plot too. 

I believe there are two possibilities in regard to what has gone wrong with the mainstream media, and neither are good. The first is that the most members of the fake-news media are indeed propagandists for the left and the Democrat Party. The second is that they’ve deluded themselves into believing that they are indeed truthful providers of information, reminiscent of when legendary New York Yankees slugger Mickey Mantle, while downing booze during breakfast, remarked to a reporter with a straight face that he’s not an alcoholic. 

Mantle died of liver cancer, despite receiving a liver transplant, and alcoholism very likely contributed to his death.

Where will the mainstream media end up?

Right now, the media, most of it, is indeed the enemy of the people.

John Ruberry regularly blogs at Marathon Pundit.

White House press secretaries should be banned from taking media jobs for two years after leaving post

Posted: April 3, 2022 by John Ruberry in media, News/opinion, politics
Tags: , , , , , , ,

By John Ruberry

One lesson from the 2020 presidential campaign, one of many, is that more than ever information is power. More importantly, the flow of information is power.

The journalistic malpractice by the mainstream media, in regard to suppressing and censoring the Hunter Biden laptop scandal, is a subject I covered here at DTG last month. Glenn Greenwald, in a Substack post, deemed it, “One of the most successful disinformation campaigns in modern American electoral history.” As for myself I can’t think of one that was worse. 

Joe Biden’s press secretary, Jen Psaki, has generally brushed off questions about Hunter’s laptop, unless she blamed “Russian disinformation” for its existence. Hunter’s MacBook Pro offers damning proof that the president’s son was the head of a Chicago-style influence peddling ring.

Last week Axios broke the news that Psaki will resign and next month join MSNBC and its Peacock streaming service in an on-air role. Axios touched on the obvious ethical concerns in its report. Psaki refuses to confirm the Axios story.

Going back to at least the Obama administration, there have been executive orders that prevent, for a period, senior officials in the executive branch of the federal government accepting a lobbying job. On his first full day in office, Biden signed an executive order that bans his political appointees from taking a lobbying job for two years after leaving their posts. Donald J. Trump signed an even stronger executive order on lobbying bans for his top staffers, one for five years, but in what I see as a bad decision, he rescinded it on his last day as president. 

Biden, as well as his eventual successor, needs to sign an executive order that blocks future press secretaries, as well as White House communications directors, from media jobs for two years. From 2015-2017 Psaki served in that latter post, before leaving for an on-air job with CNN. As for that network, Psaki reportedly has also recently explored a return to CNN, as well as seeking jobs with CBS and ABC, according to Puck. 

Perhaps it’s just a coincidence, but last week, vice president Kamala Harris was interviewed, exclusively, by MSNBC’s Joy Reid.

In a rare moment of toughness since Biden because president, Psaki was confronted about those ethical concerns of her possible move to MSNBC by the White House press corps, including an NBC reporter.

As I mentioned at the top of this entry, information, as well as the censorship and suppression of it, is power. So is the granting of access to the media of senior White House officials. 

It’s time to rein in, at least a little bit, the White House gatekeepers of that information. 

And oh yes, Republican press secretaries have benefitted from the “revolving door” from the White House to a media gig too. Psaki’s predecessor, Kayleigh McEnany, who served under Trump, is an on-air contributor on Fox News. She negotiated the landing of that job while still working at the White House.

John Ruberry regularly blogs at Marathon Pundit.

Older Entries
Newer Entries