Posts Tagged ‘media bias’

Journalism’s “extinction event” will lead to new and better choices for news

Posted: February 4, 2024 by John Ruberry in blogs, business, culture, internet/free speech, media, News/opinion, opinion/news
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By John Ruberry

Big News is having a bad time of it. Paul Farhi, who accepted a buyout from the Washington Post, asked in the Atlantic–a magazine that is propped up by billionaire Laurene Powell Jobs–“Is American Journalism Headed Toward an ‘Extinction-Level Event?'”

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 at Marathon Pundit.

Could you imagine the media outrage if Trump supporters behaved this badly?

Posted: January 4, 2024 by Jon Fournier in Uncategorized
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For the past several decades there has only been one true privilege in the United States, that is progressive privilege.  Leftist mobs, whether they be Black Lives Matter or ANTIFA, riot with impunity.  They are media darlings.  The Media, including Fox News, incorrectly labels them protesters.  Little mention is made of the carnage they have caused.

Crowds of peaceful MAGA supporters, numbering tens of thousands, gather regularly.  No violence takes place.  There was not a single violent incident reported at a Tea Party rally, yet the media harps on right wing extremism, and labels our side of the political spectrum domestic terrorists.

Blocking roads and highways is one of the favorite tactics used by the true domestic terrorists, BLM and ANTIFA.  They engage in that behavior regularly.  Pro Palestinian mobs have embraced that disruptive tactic with gusto since the Hamas massacre in Israel.  Just the other day the pro Palestine mob upped the ante with a truly dangerous new tactic:  Pro-Palestinian Car Caravan, Balloons Create ‘Nightmare’ at JFK Airport (breitbart.com)

A caravan of pro-Palestinian demonstrators driving around John F. Kennedy (JFK) International Airport in New York City on New Year’s Day and releasing balloons, caused 60 flights to be delayed and created chaos on one of the busiest travel days of the year.

Vehicles festooned with radical slogans such as “One solution: revolution,” “Long live the resistance,” and “F*ck Israel,” circled the roadways leading to the airport, preventing passengers as well as airline crews from reaching their terminals on time.

Sending up large balloons in the path of passenger planes in the process of landing and taking off is exceedingly dangerous.  Did the corporate media cover this outrageous incident?  Hell no.  Could you imagine the media outrage if Trump supporters had behaved this badly?

The media insists on labeling these progressive darlings as protestors or demonstrators. Sending up balloons in the path of airplanes is not a valid form of protesting. Blocking roads is not a valid form of protesting either, because it interferes with the rights of everyone trying to use those roads.

I believe that Thomas Jefferson would agree that blocking roads is not a valid form of protesting.

No man has a natural right to commit aggression on the equal rights of another; and this is all from which the laws ought to restrain him: every man is under the natural duty of contributing to the necessities of the society; and this is all the laws should enforce on him: and, no man having a natural right to be the judge between himself and another, it is his natural duty to submit to the umpirage of an impartial third. when the laws have declared and enforced all this, they have fulfilled their functions, and the idea is quite unfounded that on entering into society we give up any natural right. the trial of every law by one of these texts would lessen much the labors of our legislators, & lighten equally our municipal codes

This additional quote by Jefferson reinforces my conclusion: Thomas Jefferson to Isaac H. Tiffany, 4 April 1819 (archives.gov)

rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will, within the limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others. I do not add ‘within the limits of the law’; because law is often but the tyrant’s will, and always so when it violates the right of an individual.

The media often overlooks the word peaceably in the text of the First Amendment.

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

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National media ignores big Chicago anti-migrant march

Posted: November 12, 2023 by John Ruberry in immigration, News/opinion, opinion/news, politics
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By John Ruberry

Sure, there’s a lot of another news to sift through–the Israel-Hamas War is the biggest story right now–but on Friday, there was another protest march against the building of a large tent city migrant camp at 38th and California in the Brighton Park neighborhood on Chicago’s Soutwest Side.

The city has signed a lease on the tent city site, but it’s not a done deal, official say, as the final decision is pending an environmental survey.

It will happen, I am sure.

And as far as I can tell, the national mainstream media ignored Friday’s protest. That’s because the march, in a predominately Hispanic neighborhood with a large Asian presence, contradicts at least a couple of leftist narratives. Because they are “oppressed,” people of color are always on the same side against the majority. 

Of course, that majority is white people. While whites are the largest racial group in Chicago, America’s third largest city–for now–hasn’t a majority racial group for decades.

The other leftist narrative that the Brighton Parch marches and protests exposes as a lie is that the cities are havens from the xenophobia, unlike the exurbs and rural America, where those deplorable MAGA people live.

The Chicago Sun-Times and the Chicago Tribune, both woke outlets, reported that “hundreds” participated in the Brighton Park anti-migrant march. 

ABC Chicago says that “residents have been protesting against the migrant base camp for weeks” and overall, “the pushback has been relentless.”

Oh sure, some goof from the New York Times, Mitch Smith, says Brighton Park is “divided” over the tent city, which is expected to house 2,000 migrants, most of the will probably be from Venezuela. But it sure seems hard to find Brighton Park denizens who support the Bidenville.

As I explained in my post last month about the opposition of the migrant camp in Brighton Park, residents learned from the rumor mill that the tent city was coming, not even the local alderman, a left-wing Hispanic woman was told about it. 

Chicago’s new mayor, Brandon Johnson, a full-blown leftist who, according to the rumor mill, has recently suffered from panic attacks, in his mind is always right.  Why is that?

Have you ever met a leftist who admitted to being wrong about something? 

Like Robespierre, Marx, and Lenin, contemporary leftists like Johnson believe they have the inevitability of history on their side.

But Robespierre ended up on the guillotine and the Soviet Union collapsed.

The decision to build the Brighton Park tent city, if it didn’t come directly from Johnson, who by the way is African American, surely it was the brainchild of a top aide of his.

So, another leftist narrative is collapsing. Nothing to see here, the media collectively says to itself. But let’s push out another dozen stories about MAGA insurrectionists.

Oh, let’s say that instead of building the migrant camp in Brighton Park, the Johnson administration chose instead a site inside the city’s 41st Ward, a predominately white area where many Chicago police officers and firefighters live. In 2020, Donald Trump came close to beating Joe Biden in that ward. 

And let’s say anti-migrant protests and marches were held in the 41st Ward. 

Such events would be the lead story for days on CNN and MSNBC. And the New York Times would have sent more than one reporter there.

John Ruberry, who is married to an immigrant, regularly blogs from his home five miles north of Chicago at Marathon Pundit.

Why do so many sit back while so few dismantle the United States?

Posted: March 9, 2023 by Jon Fournier in Uncategorized
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As conditions here in this nation steadily deteriorate I find it most disheartening that so few seem to care.  Far fewer seem inclined to do anything to stop and roll back the progressive onslaught on the freedom and prosperity of the American people.  This is most shocking considering the fact that hardcore progressives make up only a small percentage of the population of this nation.  There are many reasons for this.

Only a small minority of American people actually know what is going on because the left has such a stranglehold on the lines of communication most of us rely on.  With the exception of Fox News, all of the major news networks spout leftist propaganda.  Newsmax and One America News are small potatoes compared to the others and Fox News is far from the Conservative powerhouse it was back in 2010, having been corrupted with progressive influence.  Here in Massachusetts the local news is pure leftist tripe.  Every time I watch I get nauseated.  So few have access to the truth. 

The progressive news media is so adept at casting everything from that side of the political spectrum in a purely positive light, while denigrating all things conservative and libertarian as pure evil.  Because of this most of the more moderate leftists consider themselves to be on the right side of every issue.

Thanks to the widespread censorship of those on the right side of the political spectrum by the social media giants, most are unaware just how bad conditions are.  Most are unaware that progressive policies have caused the carnage.

After several decades of progressive indoctrination at the college level, and a decade at the high and grade school levels, about half of all Americans do not value freedom and liberty.  They mistakenly believe socialism is superior to capitalism.

Progressives have learned that fear is overwhelmingly powerful weapon when it comes to subjugating a populace.  The Wuhan Flu pandemic was the perfect weapon to accomplish this.  It was extremely disturbing to see most of the population meekly accept the trampling of their most important rights.

The deck is so unfairly stacked against us, yet we must wake up our friends and neighbors.  Violence is not the answer.  Communication amd peaceful resistance are our most crucial tools. 

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