patrick.net

JournoList (sometimes referred to as the J-List)[1] was a private Google Groups forum for discussing politics and the news media with 400 left-leaning[2] journalists, academics and others. Ezra Klein created the online forum in February 2007 while blogging at The American Prospect and shut it down on June 25, 2010 amid wider public exposure. Journalists later pointed out various off-color statements made by members of the list denigrating conservatives. Others defended such statements as being taken out of context or simply a matter of private candor. ...

Responding to the Jeremiah Wright controversy surrounding Obama's campaign, one JournoList contributor, Spencer Ackerman of The Washington Independent, stated "If the right forces us all to either defend Wright or tear him down, no matter what we choose, we lose the game they've put upon us. Instead, take one of them – Fred Barnes, Karl Rove, who cares – and call them racists".[7][8] Chris Hayes of The Nation was requesting ideas from other journalists for best ways to criticize Sarah Palin in an email thread.[9]

Ackerman was also quoted as saying, "find a right winger's [sic] and smash it through a plate-glass window. Take a snapshot of the bleeding mess and send it out in a Christmas card to let the right know that it needs to live in a state of constant fear. Obviously, I mean this rhetorically."[10] According to media scholar Jim A. Kuypers, the hatred of conservatives was strong on the list. Sarah Spitz, an NPR affiliate producer, had written that she would "laugh loudly like a maniac and watch his eyes bug out", if she would witness Rush Limbaugh having a heart attack.[8] ...

Tucker Carlson, who edited several of Strong's articles about JournoList, wrote in a July 22 article: "Again and again, we discovered members of Journolist working to coordinate talking points on behalf of Democratic politicians, principally Barack Obama. That is not journalism, and those who engage in it are not journalists. They should stop pretending to be. The news organizations they work for should stop pretending, too. ... I've been in journalism my entire adult life, and have often defended it against fellow conservatives who claim the news business is fundamentally corrupt. It's harder to make that defense now. It will be easier when honest (and, yes, liberal) journalists denounce what happened on Journolist as wrong."[8] Fred Barnes, executive editor of The Weekly Standard, discussed JournoList saying, "... hundreds of journalists have gotten together, on an online listserv called JournoList, to promote liberalism and liberal politicians at the expense of traditional journalism."[11]

Weinstein proposed that captured corporate media’s only job is to publish orthodoxy. In other words, stories like “Republican Liz Cheney endorses Harris” aren’t actually meant to convince anybody that there is some rising groundswell of Republican opposition to Trump. Rather, corporate media is signaling to the orthodox establishment’s members what is permissible for them to think and say.

People whose careers depend on established institutional structures implicitly understand this. If, like Weinstein, someone decides to challenge or break with the approved narrative, they risk losing their careers and reputations. Questioning the narrative means losing invitations, opportunities, promotions, and killing your career.

In this way, the corporate media serves as the day-to-day mechanism for rapidly disseminating ‘safe’ groupthink. The participants —especially those in government, academia, and international corporations— know that straying from media-established boundaries means risking scapegoat status and excommunication.

After all, Weinstein should know. That’s what happened to him.

Over time, corporate media has evolved from being a source of investigative journalism and watchdog reporting into a mechanical device for reinforcing consensus among elites.

Weinstein’s theory helps us understand how in 2023, Time could rail against ultraprocessed foods, but one year later in 2024, after the Trump-Kennedy alliance, can turn on a dime and publish silly headlines like “What if Ultra-Processed Foods Aren’t as Bad as You Think?”

It also explains why corporate media seems blithely unconcerned about its historically low levels of trust. There is a simple explanation. It doesn’t care about public trust, because its mission is to maintain cohesion among the elite class, not to provide honest, transparent information to the masses. Thus, publishing false or exaggerated stories that serve a particular political or corporate interest are useful for keeping the right people in alignment.

In other words, the general population’s trust is secondary or even irrelevant because the real power brokers —decision-makers in government, business, and academia— are still receiving and aligning with the messages the media sends. As long as the right people (those with influence and authority) continue to trust and engage with corporate media, the public can be safely ignored.

Even more dystopian, the erosion of media trust doesn’t even hurt its mission at all. If anything, it might even help maintain the status quo, by keeping the unwashed general public out of the conversation.

When we see media’s narrative spin machine working, like when it tells us ultraprocessed foods aren’t really that bad, or that Republican Liz Cheney is breaking with the party, or that America is systemically racist, we must not frame those narratives in terms of how horrible the media is, but rather understand that media is telling Democrats and captured elites how to think.

The best vaccine for these virus-like mind-control narratives is mockery. Every narrative has a simple anti-narrative waiting to be discovered. That’s why memes are effective, and it’s why the deep state coalition cannot tolerate free speech.

As everyone knows, the Associated Press is 100% trustworthy in every single quote they have ever covered. It truly seems like they are the only ones, apart from us at the Bee, who don't add any bias or spin to their stories.

To commemorate the AP's long and distinguished record of quoting people accurately, we at the Babylon Bee have put together 10 famous historical quotes as reported by the Associated Press:

"The only thing we have… is fear itself." — Franklin D. Roosevelt: What a downer!

"That's one small... man." — Neil Armstrong: Everyone looks small from the moon, Neil.

"You miss one hundred percent of the shots you... take." — Wayne Gretzky: Sometimes, the truth hurts.

"I am literally....... Hitler." — Donald Trump: Can't believe he just came out and said it.

"Ask not." — John F. Kennedy: Words the Kamala campaign lives by.

"I have a dream that one day... little boys will be... little girls." — Martin Luther King Jr.: Oh dear.

"We hold these truths to be self-evident: that men are... endowed... well." — Declaration of Independence: A strange beginning to the American Revolution.

"Give me death!" — Patrick Henry: Not a smart request.

"December... will live in infamy" — Franklin D. Roosevelt: Gee, someone hates Christmas.

"I did... that woman." — Bill Clinton: Okay, the AP might have gotten this one right.

Thanks for all your great work, AP!

During a segment criticising Trump supporting journalist Laura Loomer, CNN hit a new low by using a completely fake image of the former president that had been photoshopped to make him look grossly obese.

The ridiculous image was displayed by host Anderson Cooper on Friday during the segment. ...

There’s no way this is a ‘mistake’.

CNN knew the image was doctored and used it regardless.

Former CNN anchor Chris Cuomo has spoken out about how ashamed he feels at the media for pushing the narrative that Donald Trump only has himself to blame for deranged lunatics trying to assassinate him.

Cuomo, now with News Nation, stated that he called Trump personally after the second assassination attempt to say he’s “really sorry that this is going on and it’s being dealt with this way.”

“I called him today because I am ashamed of how we are responding and not responding to the threats on him,” Cuomo said.

He continued, “And I feel for his family, and I know you can roll your eyes and say, ‘Oh yeah, he asked for it.’ Listen, that’s your choice, and I think it’s a wrong choice. Okay? We got to get out of the judgment business, unless it’s judging ourselves, and you’ve got to start rewarding things that are better.”

“And I got to tell you, I don’t know how he stays in the race,” Cuomo further noted, adding “I don’t know how he got up after being shot in the head. And you people who try to mitigate that, you need to check yourself. He gets up, pumping his fist, stays in the race, barely even talks about it.”

While qualifying that he is not a Trump supporter, Cuomo urged “I am worried about us. I am ashamed of what’s happening around us right now, and the relative lack of concern about it. I just don’t see how we get anywhere better than where we are right now.”

Trump “doesn’t deserve this. A guy pointing an AK-47 at him while he’s playing golf?” Cuomo asserted, adding “And we take solace in the fact that the guy didn’t get any rounds off? That does not work for me.”

He continued, “If I had been through what that guy’s been through in the last two months, you would not know where I am. You would never see me on TV again. No way I would do that. I don’t know how he does it.”

“He’s got kids, they’re adults, but he’s got grandkids. He’s got a wife. People giving crap to Melania Trump, worrying about whether or not there was a plot around her husband. How could she not?” Cuomo further proclaimed in a clear reference to his former colleague at CNN Don Lemon, who created and later deleted a ‘reaction video’ in which he rolled his eyes and acted exasperated at Melania Trump for sharing concerns about her husband being targeted.

“I don’t think she’s right, but I totally get why she feels that way,” Cuomo stated, adding “People mock her? And then her husband has a guy pointed with an AK-47 where are those people apologizing?”

“That’s what it’s time for. ‘I should not have come at you, Melania Trump, for suggesting that maybe there was something more afoot I get your, paranoia, I get your feelings, you have a right to that,'” Cuomo added.

“There’s nothing wrong with saying that,” Cuomo further proclaimed, “with being a basic, decent human being, it has gotten too out of control, too far from where we need to be and how we need to be, and I don’t know what to do about it. I don’t know.”

Cuomo’s got a way to go to make up for the establishment hackery he engaged in for years at CNN, particularly as regards Trump, but this is a start at least.

Lets see if he sticks to it.

@MikeBenzCyber

I would rather have cranial implant surgery & replace my brain with a dozen live spiders than believe at first blush a Blob Ooze news headline

💉💉 Yesterday, I reported on Steven Crowder’s hidden-camera exposé about the sick pervert who ran New York City’s covid response. The story made the New York Times. Here’s the ridiculously watered-down headline:

Former N.Y.C. Covid Czar Partied While Preaching Social Distancing
In a hidden-camera video posted by a conservative podcaster, Dr.
Jay K. Varma boasts about flouting the public health guidelines
he insisted others follow.

Partied? It sounds like he just went to a disco. Social Distancing? What about getting people fired for not taking the experimental jabs? Preaching? How about bragging how unbearable he made people’s lives for public health purposes?

It was the driest article I’ve ever seen from the Grey Lady, who is no stranger to controversy and scandal. The author’s tone was relentlessly neutral, verging on clinical, seething with barely restrained resentment at being forced to report it at all. While the article did refer, several times, to Varma’s orgies and his deviant, drug-addled sexcapades, it was only unemotionally and remotely, consistently applying the dry, uncreative label, “sex parties.”

This time, the Times’ journalistic thesaurus was not in evidence.

Although the Times rounded up several people to quote for the story, none directly criticized Dr. Vermin, I mean Dr. Varma, except for his hypocrisy in imposing mandates and lockdowns while breaking his own rules...

Nor did the Times report Varma’s gloating about how unbearable he made New Yorkers’ livers, to force them to get the shots.

The Times never mentioned vile Dr. Varma’s illegal drug use, not one single time. In a sane world, police would be investigating him right now. Astonishingly, the Times even edited out Varma’s own self-criticism, which would have made the story much more interesting, the admission his own behavior was “all this deviant sexual stuff.”

Again, in a sane world, verminous Varma would be permanently driven from polite society. The Times found nothing to condemn in Varma except his private inconsistency with his public policies. But the readers aren’t insane. You should see the article’s comments. Here’s one very telling example:

I thought the MAGA folks were fools for their skepticism regarding
science and medicine. Now I wonder if I was wrong.

Yep, that commenter was wrong.

NPR joined reporting on Trump shooter Ryan Routh’s bizarre backstory this morning in an article headlined, “In his hometown, Trump's alleged would-be assassin acted like he was 'above the law’.” It was a strange story for a several reasons.




I’ve been holding off calling this out, since everybody makes mistakes, especially me, but I can’t just stand it anymore. Since early summer, I’ve been seeing a disquieting trend of basic grammar and spelling mistakes creeping into top-tier corporate media stories. For example, in NPR’s caption above, NPR reported that police “managed to diffuse” an armed standoff with Routh (that never resulted in jail time, for some unexplained reason. You try that.).

Anyway. The point is, it’s not “managed to diffuse.” That’s just wrong. “Diffuse” means spread over a wide area. They meant defuse. “Defuse” means to neutralize or resolve a tense situation. Police defused the standoff.

Hopefully, this unsettling trend is merely a DEI phenomenon and not an artifact of declining cognitive ability due to some unidentified environmental factor. An environmental factor like the covid jabs. Just saying.

NPR’s article was equally remarkable. Routh’s crimes were well-known, well-documented, and never went anywhere, rightfully convincing the failed construction worker he was ‘above the law.’ An inquisitive reporter would have tripped over Routh’s extensive civil and criminal history in public records. Which raises the question of how, when corporate media was constantly quoting Routh in 2022, they somehow managed not to discover his extensive history?

Were reporters simply uncurious? Or did someone vouch for Routh?

I’ve been holding off calling this out, since everybody makes mistakes, especially me, but I can’t just stand it anymore. Since early summer, I’ve been seeing a disquieting trend of basic grammar and spelling mistakes creeping into top-tier corporate media stories. For example, in NPR’s caption above, NPR reported that police “managed to diffuse” an armed standoff with Routh (that never resulted in jail time, for some unexplained reason. You try that.).

Anyway. The point is, it’s not “managed to diffuse.” That’s just wrong. “Diffuse” means spread over a wide area. They meant defuse. “Defuse” means to neutralize or resolve a tense situation. Police defused the standoff.

Hopefully, this unsettling trend is merely a DEI phenomenon and not an artifact of declining cognitive ability due to some unidentified environmental factor. An environmental factor like the covid jabs. Just saying.

this is how they might keep track of which journo-whores are producing what, how wide is the distribution of said doctored articles, and then how much they should be paid.

This podcast episode is a bit of an experiment: I explore Substack’s home page as it appears to someone new to the platform. What kinds of posts and notes are at the top of the page? What kinds of ideas and perspectives appear to be promoted? If you said “all the latest clownworld craziness,” you are correct.

Basically, it’s like there’s a factory where regime narratives are mass produced and then shipped out to the various media platforms, including Substack, where they can be mindlessly consumed by Yass Kweens and Commie Karens.

There’s the obligatory “Trump is literally Hitler” pieces, like this gem:

MAGA = NAZI
Orange Hitler 2.0: A 2015 German movie, about Hitler suddenly showing up in the present, predicted Trump’s rise to power
Americans underestimate just how dangerous Trump really is…

Then there are puff pieces for Tim Walz, who is apparently campaigning to be America’s Dad, and who demonstrates his commitment to family values by making sure school libraries include books about anal sex and transgenderism:

Aaron Rupar
Walz in Pennsylvania: "They keep talking about how pro-family they are. You know what? Spend a little less time trying to ban books in our schools and try and ban assault weapons in our schools."

Steven Crowder’s exposé on verminous Dr. Jay Varma is still expanding. In the latest drop of clips from Varma’s rambling admissions, the disgraced doctor both describes helping his pharma company fluff an ineffective monkeypox vaccine using the media. Then he rambled about all his cozy relationships with health reporters.




https://x.com/BreannaMShow/status/1839100825861492909

The new clips suggested systemic corruption between big pharma and big media. I know you’re shocked.

Yesterday, the New York Times ran an insidious and troubling straight news story headlined, “Trump’s Consistent Message Online and Onstage: Be Afraid.” The deeply deceptive sub-headline added, “Donald Trump has long used fear as a tool to stir up his conservative base. He’s taking his doomsday approach to a new extreme, predicting World War III and other catastrophes.”

Using fear as a tool? Trump? Please. You must be kidding me. After four years of steady pandemic fearmongering, this article —ostensibly about the politics of fear— was deliriously ironic and hyper-hypocritical. Still, at least superficially, the paper held true to brand. But the article’s real purpose was much more sinister and subversive. So let’s rip off the elegant mask of journalistic trickery and reveal the gruesome demon of deception underneath.

You won’t believe how low the Times sunk this time. (Well, you’ll probably believe it, but it’s still shocking.) Here was the narrative you were meant to understand:

Trump has taken his doomsday prophesying to a new extreme,
increasing both its frequency and scope.
He regularly predicts that if he loses to Vice President Kamala
Harris in November, America will be ruined. World War III will
break out, most likely prompting a global nuclear catastrophe.

Pause for a moment and consider how profoundly ironic that the Times spent two full years on daily doomsday prophesying —over a moderate flu season!— just to suddenly reverse fifty years of its anti-nuclear activism and wave away the clear and present dangers as though looming nuclear disaster was more made up than covid.

I needn’t offer any evidence of this self-evident fact, but I will anyway. (Lawyer’s habit.) As recently as January —before Russia’s expanded nuclear policy and before Iran attacked Israel twice— the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists set its iconic “Doomsday Clock” at 90 seconds to midnight. In the Atomic Scientists’ scheme, midnight is no bueno. It’s game over, finito, plug pulled. In their own words: “the deteriorating state of the world … is ... the closest to global catastrophe it has ever been.”

To take the Times’ story at face value, we must assume that mendacious reporter Michael Gold is blissfully unaware of the Doomsday Clock, and that Gold honestly thinks Trump is stitching together the threat of nuclear annihilation out of whole cloth, as a political prop, rather than Trump reiterating what some of the smartest people alive believe to be an established fact.

Reporter Gold didn’t even bother asking any experts to agree that Trump’s World War III claims were exaggerated. What do nuclear strategists and international relations scholars say about the current risks of global conflict? The Times just expected us to take their word for it.

The lack of experts quoted for the article, and the omission of context like the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, reveals this disturbing article isn’t journalism at all. It’s a psychological operation.

The Times sought to paint the prospect of global thermonuclear war as merely a hyperbolic political cartoon. But don't be deceived; this article was not actually intended to chide Trump for fearmongering. Or at least, that wasn’t its main objective. The article was a psyop, intended to teach the Times’ liberal readers what to think about the Biden Administration’s nuclear brinksmanship. The writer wants readers to conclude that nuclear red-lining is not, in fact, an altogether new and disastrous development, but that our leaders' pugilistic dancing across Russian red lines is sound policy.

In other words, this article was not meant to associate Trump with fissile fearmongering. It was the other was around. It was meant to associate concerns about nuclear war with deplorable former President Trump. The Times knows its readers hate Trump and reflexively hate and doubt whatever Trump thinks. So if they mock Trump for his WWIII concern, most liberal Times readers will line up and clap like trained seals. Haha! World War III! Like that could ever happen! What a moron!

In other words, the Times is trying to close the Overton Window on criticism of U.S. military policy. Anyone who questions whether the Administration’s military policy is sane will be just like Trump.

Why do they do this kind of psychological manipulation? There are several reasons. It desensitizes people to real escalations in military policy. It discredits any opposition to new military escalation in advance. It makes Biden warmongering look reasonable when contrasted with Trump fearmongering. And it controls the narrative by masking legitimate concerns over Biden foreign policy decisions.

You might ask, what kind of foreign policy decisions does an article like this help to sell? How about a decision to help Ukraine launch U.S. missiles at Russian cities? Or what about a decision to escalate the Middle East conflict? There’s no telling. It’s less clear than ever who is calling the shots. From Newsweek, two days ago:

Biden Said He Wouldn't Send Troops to Middle
East Day Before Deployment
Published Sep 30, 2024

In other words, Biden told reporters that “no” more troops would be sent to the Middle East one day before the Pentagon sent thousands more US troops there. It’s like they’re not even trying that hard to pretend Biden is still running the show.

@MSNBC Producer Admits MSNBC Is 'Doing All They Can to Help’ the Harris Campaign

During an undercover date with an OMG journalist, Basel Hamdan (@BaselYHamdan), a writer and producer for MSNBC’s show “Ayman,” (@AymanMSNBC) was asked what the network has done to assist the Kamala Harris campaign. Hamdan revealed on hidden camera that “what her [Harris’s] message of the day is, is their message of the day,” as MSNBC actively pushes Harris’s narrative to help her win. He admitted that MSNBC is doing “all they can to help,” Harris get elected, with the network operating as an extension of the campaign. He went on to say, "MSNBC is indistinguishable from the party," further highlighting their partisan agenda.

In discussing the relationships between the MSNBC hosts and Democratic politicians, Hamdan reveals, ”The anchor and the politician are just in total agreement about everything.” He adds, “If you watch an interview with a Democratic politician, they just finish each other's sentences.”

Hamdan also didn’t shy away from criticizing the network’s audience, stating, “They’ve made their viewers dumber over the years,” and explaining that MSNBC is “too cozy with Democratic politicians.”

Regardless, we have a new hero to thank today for doing the media’s job and shaming the federal government into begrudging action. Yesterday, Elon Musk tweeted an update from one of his engineers deployed to the North Carolina disaster zone. The engineer, part of a team using private helicopters to deliver free satellite communications gear to stranded citizens, complained how FEMA and the FAA were shutting them down, part of “regulating the airspace.”

After Elon tweeted out the report from his own engineer, a known first-hand source, media accused the space billionaire of spreading misinformation and denied the feds were hampering aid delivery in any way. ...

Elon, an entrepreneur’s entrepreneur, is experienced in solving this kind of bureaucratic whackamole. He called Mayor Pete. About five hours later, Elon posted a thank-you:

Elon Musk 4 X @elonmusk • 11h
Thanks for helping simplify the FAA NOTAM. Support flights are now
underway. Much appreciated.

This happened because Elon has a giant public megaphone. Do you know who else has a giant public megaphone? The media. Except, for political reasons, since we are a month out of the election, the media has buried its megaphone under a toxic solar-panel graveyard. And people are literally dying because the media refuses to report anything that might embarrass the Biden Administration.

You can sort of understand how the far-left corporate media refuses to cover certain important stories due to politics, like the Hunter Biden laptop. It isn’t healthy. It erodes our democratic republic. But at least that kind of media malfeasance isn’t a direct threat to anyone’s well-being. But the hurricane coverage is completely different. In this case, the media’s malfeasance means many Americans in this country who might have been rescued will die instead.

Compare the media’s hyper-critical 2005 Hurricane Katrina coverage to its endless praise and knee-jerk defense of government during this hurricane. Media was all over the government’s response to the 2005 disaster. Local interviews with countless abandoned citizens pilloried slow-motion aid efforts, to the point President Bush was forced to deliver daily press briefings.

But yesterday, in an insectile frenzy, the media frantically fact-checked President Trump, accusing him of lying when he claimed FEMA gave nearly a billion dollars of disaster money to illegal immigrants — because that was a totally different Federal Emergency Management Agency budget category.

What FEMA could possibly have to do with relocating illegal aliens remains anybody’s guess. Here’s a link to the program on FEMA’s website. But yesterday, the media painted the emergency disaster agency’s money funnel to illegals as natural a phenomenon as breathing political air.