Today's Beau

Justin King - Beau Of The Fifth Column

An excellent brief on Commercial Journalism and the kind of manufactured tension that keeps people frozen in place, thinking they're being righteously civic-minded while buying your dick pills and panty liners.

Do what you can

with what you've got

where you are

Following Up

Some days ago, reporter/producer Marina Ovsyannikova broke the rules and went all anti-war on live Russian TV.

She's been fined ₽30,000, which is about $283, which amounts to a little less than ⅓ her monthly salary.

That doesn't sound all that bad, but there's also the little matter of an impending criminal investigation that could put her in prison for 15 years.

That is Mr Putin's Russia.

She's a shero. Especially as she (inadvertently) points out the near-perfectly parallel tracks between Russians who support Putin's war because they swallow the propaganda on Channel 1, and the Americans who can't quite decide whether or not to rationalize an excuse for Putin's war because they can't get shed of the bullshit being shoveled into their heads by Qult45 and DumFux News every day.

Here's some rubes

There's some rubes

Everywhere there's fuckin' rubes

Chistiane Amanpour - CNN:

Call It What It Is

There's hope when the Press Poodles start to get a little consistent in their 💯-ness, committing deliberate acts of journalism.

WaPo: (Margaret Sullivan - pay wall)

You hear the word “radical” a lot these days. It’s usually aimed like a lethal weapon at Democratic office-seekers, especially those who want to unseat a Republican incumbent. Sen. Kelly Loeffler, the Georgia Republican, rarely utters her challenger’s name without branding him as “radical liberal Raphael Warnock.”

Such is the upside-down world we’ve come to inhabit. These days, the true radicals are the enablers of President Trump’s ongoing attempted coup: the media bloviators on Fox News, One America and Newsmax who parrot his lies about election fraud; and the members of Congress who plan to object on Wednesday to what should be a pro forma step of approving the electoral college results, so that President-elect Joe Biden can take office peacefully on Jan. 20.

But instead of being called what they are, these media and political figures get a mild label: conservative.

News outlets that traffic in conspiracy theories? They’re branded as “conservative.” Politicians who are willing to bring down democracy to appease a cult leader? (“Acting on the basis either of fear of the president or sheer political opportunism,” as The Post’s Dan Balz explained.) Just a bloc of “conservatives.”

As the Hill put it in a typical headline Monday: “Cotton breaks with conservative colleagues who will oppose electoral vote.”

In applying this innocuous-sounding description, the reality-based media does the public a terrible disservice. Instead of calling out the truth, it normalizes; it softens the dangerous edges.

It makes it seem, well, not so bad. Conservative, after all, describes politics devoted to free enterprise and traditional ideas.

But that’s simply false. Sean Hannity is not conservative. Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri and Sen. Tommy Tuberville of Alabama are not conservative. Nor are the other 10 (at last count) senators who plan to object.

“There is nothing conservative about subverting democracy,” wrote Tim Alberta, the author and Politico correspondent. He suggests “far right” as an alternative descriptor.

Not bad. But I’d take it a step further, because it’s important to be precise. I’d call them members of the radical right.

My high school Latin comes in handy here: “Radical” derives from the concept of pulling something up by the roots, which seems to be exactly what these political and media types seem bent on doing to democratic norms.

The dictionary definition says radical means “advocating extreme measures to retain or restore a political state of affairs.”

Bingo.

Members of the radical right won’t like this, of course. They soak in the word “conservative” like a warm bath. Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan — extreme even among the extremists — leans heavily on the word in his official bio. (“Jordan served as Chairman of the House Republican Study Committee, the largest caucus of conservatives, advancing conservative ideas and solutions on Capitol Hill.”)

To its credit, Jordan’s home-state Cleveland.com avoids the word as it detailed his recent activities in a news story: “A vocal backer of President Donald Trump’s re-election, Jordan also attended rallies in Pennsylvania to claim the election was being ‘stolen’ from Trump, and … signed onto a Supreme Court brief to back a lawsuit that Texas filed to throw out election results from Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin and Georgia.”

The language problem here points to a larger, more troubling issue: The radicalism of the right has been normalized. It’s been going on, and building, for decades. Don’t worry, this mind-set reassures, it’s all fine. There are different ways of looking at the world, liberal and conservative, and they are about equal.

That, of course, is misleading hooey.

Heather Cox Richardson, a history professor at Boston College, used a more precise phrase as she recently assessed what has transpired over many decades to culminate in today’s election denialism: This is “the final, logical step of Movement Conservatism: denying the legitimacy of anyone who does not share their ideology. This is unprecedented.” She called it “a profound attack on our democracy” and predicted that it wouldn’t succeed.

“This tent that used to be sort of ‘far-right extremists’ has gotten a lot broader,” Georgetown law professor Mary McCord, a former federal prosecutor who oversaw terrorism cases, told NPR. Now, the line between fringe extremists and mainstream Republican politics and right-leaning media is so blurred as to be almost meaningless.

Too much of the reality-based media has gone along for the ride, worried about accusations of leftist bias, wanting desperately to be seen as neutral, unwilling to be clear about how lopsided these sides are.

On Jan. 20, we can still presume, Trump will be gone from the White House. But his enablers and the movement that fostered him, and that he built up, will remain. That’s troubling.

We should take one small but symbolic step toward repairing the damage by using the right words to describe it. It would be a start.

I give you shit when you earn shit

I pay off in cookies when you earn cookies

Call It What It Is

The poodliest of Press Poodles get it right once in a while, and I try to lift 'em up when they do.

Here's MSNBC indulging their fantasy of being a bulldog. 

MSNBC:

Trump's GSA tells Biden the transition can begin

But let's not sugarcoat this failed coup

Establishing a line here is a critical function of journalism. Which is why it's important for the media to call what Trump's campaign tried to set in motion an attempted coup.

Richard Grenell, the former acting director of national intelligence, former ambassador to Germany and current Trumpist agitator, offered some sage advice to reporters Thursday: "The journalism industry will improve when there is Truth in labeling its reporting."

I think that's true. Which is why, Ric, I also think it's important for the media to call what President Donald Trump's campaign has tried to set in motion these past few weeks an attempted coup. Trump tried to instigate an "autogolpe" (also known as a self-coup). This particular label is terrifying and hard to fathom, but it is also the more accurate way to describe what has happened. As of this writing, the Trump campaign's putative putsch failed, with almost comical ineptness. But it also marked a predictably dangerous turn for an autocratic president who can't admit to losing, fair and square.

Here's how Reuters described the situation on Thursday: "A senior Trump campaign official told Reuters the plan was to cast enough doubt on the results in crucial states to persuade Republican legislators to step in and appoint their own slates of electors."

This reporting is backed up by a series of events in states like Michigan, where Trump tried to cajole and pressure state officials into investigating and hopefully overturning the results. Monday, after Michigan did finally certify its result, the administrator of the General Services Administration informed President-elect Joe Biden's campaign in a defensive letter that the agency would order federal agencies to cooperate with a presidential transition.

Reporting is an involved process that aggregates dozens of voices and sorts through motives and intent. Giving the president the benefit of the doubt here would be more biased than just reporting the facts as we know them.

Even so, I know that "coup" is a big word that carries a lot of historical baggage. It shouldn't be used without deliberation. Can there be a coup that doesn't involve a news blackout or tanks in the streets or people cowering in their homes? Perhaps movie coups aren't the best archetypes. Instead, let's evaluate some of the clearer objections.

Provocatively, Indi Samarajiva argues that even when a coup is doomed to fail — and especially when everyone knows that the coup will fail in advance — it can still do damage. Samarajiva lived through what she calls a "student coup" in Sri Lanka, and she writes that America is strong enough to withstand Trump, this time.

But Samarajiva also notes that our democracy encourages bad-faith actors to maximize their power. She is right. We need to establish precedents and laws stronger and deeper than the polite norms we ask presidents to abide by today. We must also re-evaluate our language and narrative; the word here is "coup," and the narrative here is "a coup that did not succeed." Because if the election were closer — if, say, the election came down to only one state — we might have a totally different situation on our hands. And that's scary.

Elsewhere, Trump sympathizer Jay Whig argues that it's unfair to call this a coup because Trump may not even understand what he's doing — he may genuinely believe he won the election. But whether Trump is or isn't knowingly committing sedition doesn't matter. Motive matters far less than intention and consequence. The election was fair; to even try to subvert it while fomenting a demonstrably false conspiracy is a consequence that demands an explanation.

Others, like political scientist Erica de Bruin, argued early on that Trump hadn't actually violated any laws. I concede that this continues to be more or less true. It's true that Trump's lawyers have seemed unwilling to lie in court in the same way that they have in the media. But it is a felony to tamper with the results of a certified election. (Georgia's Republican secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, certainly seemed to feel he was being pressured by Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., to tamper with the certification.) It is also a felony to offer state legislators or presidential electors a thing of value to influence an official decision. Several election law experts wrote Monday that the conduct of Trump's attorneys is grounds for disbarment. Taken in aggregate, this is a political crime — the type that should trigger an impeachment — and an offense against the system itself.

The journalism professor within me, who came of age during a time when accusations of media bias carried more weight, thinks the press should be careful with the word "coup" because it could seem overly partisan. Won't the press lose credibility with Republicans if it gangs up on Trump's post-election machinations? But my wizened self disagrees with my former self.

The press already finds it hard to communicate with people who have personalized politics, who, in the words of Republican never-Trumper Tim Miller, "have been trained to believe that the left is evil incarnate." The conspiracy "sounds so preposterous to everyone else that Republican elected officials can avoid engaging on the merits while they accuse The Media of being mean to them for asking about it and mock liberals for panicking over this subversion of our democracy."

Biden understands that the press's new moral grammar — the president lies; the president cheats on his taxes; the president stokes racial animosity — is a healthy development for journalism in its role as an institutional guardrail against authoritarianism.

He also understands that the media's good instincts can amplify Trump's bad ones. With Trump, a hunch can turn into a tweet, which can turn into a strategy, which can turn into a fait accompli in the space of several minutes. To win, which for Trump means to be the center of attention, is to have an enemy that is suggesting something horrible about you.

Biden wants to draw Trump away from the center of attention. He wants Americans who voted for Trump to focus on his message, mien and mindful transition. The more amped up the rhetoric, the harder Biden's job will become. It will also complicate his informal efforts to reach out to Republican lawmakers.

And yet, the press must not apply a coat of sugar in service of a politician's agenda. Establishing a line here is a critical function of the media. This is how we build those guardrails we like to talk about; we point out what is, and what is not, acceptable in a democracy. In American elections, there is an implicit trust that people in power will cede their positions when they lose, but a lot of that trust is based on actors' proceeding in good faith and being responsive to political cues. Calling out bad-faith politicians who do bad things using executive power is an essential journalistic mission.

Into The Mix

Another reminder who we're dealing with:

BBC World News:

A Russian journalist who campaigned against government corruption and suffered brain damage from an attack in 2008, has died aged 55. 

Mikhail Beketov, founder and editor of the Khimki newspaper, campaigned heavily against the construction of a highway through the Khimki forest near Moscow.

Mr Beketov died on Monday from cardiac arrest, said his lawyer Stalina Gurevich.

His attackers were never identified.

Mr Beketov wrote several articles criticising the planned destruction of the Khimki forest to make way for the Moscow-Saint Petersburg motorway.

He also raised suspicions that local officials were profiting from the project.

Mr Beketov continued campaigning, even after his dog was left dead on his doorstep and his car was set on fire.

Soon after, on November 13th 2008, Mr Beketov was attacked outside his home by two men using an iron bar. They smashed his hands and legs, and fractured his skull.

Mr Beketov's right leg had to be amputated, he lost most of the fingers on his left hand and he was left severely brain-damaged. The attack also left him unable to speak.

Ms Gurevich said Mr Beketov never fully recovered.

"The culprits have not been found and now we can honestly say these people were murderers," said Yevgenia Chirikova, an activist who campaigned alongside Mr Beketov.

Several other journalists and environmentalists who campaigned against the project were also attacked.

In 2010, Mr Beketov was found guilty of libelling the local mayor but was subsequently acquitted.

Some 54 journalists have been killed in Russia since 1992, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). The CPJ states that Russia has the ninth worst record for solving murders against journalists.

Mr Beketov, who said he had received threats to stop writing, was given a government print media award in 2011.

Another Sweep

Here's the list of recipients for this year's Pulitzer Prizes.

And of course, DumFux News - continuing its time honored tradition - remains Pulitzerless, Polkless, Peabodyless and Emmyless. 

In its 24th year (launched in 1996), 0 awards

JOURNALISM

Public service

Staff of the South Florida Sun Sentinel

Breaking-news reporting

Staff of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Investigative reporting

Matt Hamilton, Harriet Ryan and Paul Pringle of the Los Angeles Times

Explanatory reporting

David Barstow, Susanne Craig and Russ Buettner of the New York Times

Local reporting

Staff of the Advocate (Baton Rouge, La.)

National reporting

Staff of the Wall Street Journal

International reporting

Maggie Michael, Maad al-Zikry and Nariman El-Mofty of the Associated Press, and the staff of Reuters, with notable contributions from Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo

Feature writing

Hannah Dreier of ProPublica

Commentary

Tony Messenger of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch

Criticism

Carlos Lozada of The Washington Post

Editorial writing

Brent Staples of the New York Times

Editorial cartooning

Darrin Bell, a freelance cartoonist

Breaking-news photography

Photography staff of Reuters

Feature photography

Lorenzo Tugnoli of The Washington Post

Special citation

Staff of the Capital Gazette

BOOKS, DRAMA AND MUSIC

Fiction

“The Overstory” by Richard Powers

Drama

“Fairview” by Jackie Sibblies Drury

History

“Frederick Douglass” by David W. Blight

Biography or autobiography

“The New Negro” by Jeffrey C. Stewart

Poetry

“Be With” by Forrest Gander

General nonfiction

“Amity and Prosperity” by Eliza Griswold

Music

“p r i s m” by Ellen Reid

Special citation

Aretha Franklin

Last Week Tonight

John Oliver.

The part with Susan Collins is fucking stellar.

And the payoff at the end is classic - exactly what we need journalism to do.

George Polk

Every year, Long Island University hands out awards to reporters and news organizations they deem to have achieved excellence in print or broadcast journalism.

Cision PR Newswire:

"The Polk Awards recognize the changing landscape of news," said John Darnton, curator of the awards. "The story of a person who in all likelihood is wrongly convicted is tried and true. But the podcast, as a delivery vehicle spread over multiple episodes that makes listeners feel it is unfolding in real time right before their ears, is a new and exciting reincarnation."

Darnton noted that the judges had reviewed 554 submissions, a record number since the Polk Awards began. "Few years have been as fruitful as this one," he added. "These winners tell us that the best of our journalists remain resilient, courageous, dedicated and undeterred by attacks on their ability and integrity."


It's awards season again, and for the 23rd year in a row - since its inception - DumFux News came up short. Again. 

0 for 23 Lifetime

(let's just say you're not goin' to the Hall Of Fame on those numbers)

Today's Chart

As expected - and for the 20th year in a row - a coupla things come into pretty sharp focus.

The first is re-affirmation that the reason DumFux News and "conservatives" bitch about liberal bias is almost solely because they're way off to the right.

click to embiggen

The second item is that DumFux news has extended its losing streak to 22 years.

No Pulitzer
No Peabody
No Polk
No Hillman

Zero Zip Zilch Nada

Faking It

What are the tools we use to detect lies?

a) the absence of confirming evidence

-or-

b) the presence of conflicting evidence

What are the tools for finding the truth?

a) the presence of confirming evidence

-and-

b) the absence of conflicting evidence

It's a problem. It's a big fucking problem. And we are woefully ill-prepared.

From a piece last month at NPR:

A lot of fake and misleading news stories were shared across social media during the election. One that got a lot of traffic had this headline: "FBI Agent Suspected In Hillary Email Leaks Found Dead In Apparent Murder-Suicide." The story is completely false, but it was shared on Facebook over half a million times.

We wondered who was behind that story and why it was written. It appeared on a site that had the look and feel of a local newspaper. Denverguardian.com even had the local weather. But it had only one news story — the fake one.

--and--

He was amazed at how quickly fake news could spread and how easily people believe it. He wrote one fake story for NationalReport.net about how customers in Colorado marijuana shops were using food stamps to buy pot.

"What that turned into was a state representative in the House in Colorado proposing actual legislation to prevent people from using their food stamps to buy marijuana based on something that had just never happened," Coler says.

--and--

At any given time, Coler says, he has between 20 and 25 writers. And it was one of them who wrote the story in the "Denver Guardian" that an FBI agent who leaked Clinton emails was killed. Coler says that over 10 days the site got 1.6 million views. He says stories like this work because they fit into existing right-wing conspiracy theories.

"The people wanted to hear this," he says. "So all it took was to write that story. Everything about it was fictional: the town, the people, the sheriff, the FBI guy. And then ... our social media guys kind of go out and do a little dropping it throughout Trump groups and Trump forums and boy it spread like wildfire."

As with all disruptive innovations regarding social media (all media is social media, btw), The Intertoobz has become just another vast wasteland.

Paraphrasing The Maestro, as he purportedly quipped to the lady cellist, "Madam, you have  between your legs a magnificent instrument capable of bringing great joy and fulfillment to all of humankind - must you sit there and merely scratch at it?"

A New Era Dawns

BBC News

Oxford Dictionaries has declared "post-truth" as its 2016 international word of the year, reflecting what it called a "highly-charged" political 12 months.

It is defined as an adjective relating to circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than emotional appeals.

Its selection follows June's Brexit vote and the US presidential election.

Oxford Dictionaries' Casper Grathwohl said post-truth could become "one of the defining words of our time".

Post-truth, which has become associated with the phrase "post-truth politics", was chosen ahead of other political terms, including "Brexiteer" and "alt-right" from a shortlist selected to reflect the social, cultural, political, economic and technological trends and events of the year.

Spotting the false thingie

Remember all the stuff we learned in US History way back in high school? Stuff like Yellow Journalism?

Some of y'all are too young to have had that chance because we stopped teaching the good "liberal" stuff quite a while ago, and of course, some of us are too old, and I guess we forgot too much and now here we are again.

Nov 1888

Today's Tweet

Guests on Diane Rehm show talking about “enormity” of support for Trump. Hope they’re using the word on purpose.

— James Fallows (@JamesFallows) February 12, 2016

It takes a writer like Fallows to see the "enormity" of the problem and then express it in fewer words rather than more.

Told Ya

A coupla days ago, I posted a bit about the Great Gathering of Grifters aka: Kaptain Kornball Klub, aka: The Iowa Freedom Freakout Summit.  And in that post I opinionized about how certain of the "candidates" were there for reasons other than Public Service.  Well - imagine my surprise when I find out that there are people out here in the Blogoshpere who do more than just opinionize - they actually look into this shit.

Last week, Mother Jones reported that Mike Huckabee used his PAC to funnel more than $400,000 to his family. This week, Politico’s Ken Vogel gives us a story about scammy conservative PACs that make thousands of dollars from home with just one weird trick. These “scam PACs” play fast and loose with federal election rules by claiming-but-not-quite-claiming to represent Tea Party favorites like Ben Carson, Allen West, or Donald Trump’s hair plugs. The catch is that almost none of the money these scam PACs raise goes to those candidates. It’s the political equivalent of selling beachfront property in North Dakota, and because it’s politics, it’s somehow not fraud. ‘Tis truly a blessed time to be a conservative grifter!

Aha!  I posted mine 2 days ago, and then all of a sudden, there it is all over the place.  Post hoc ergo propter hoc, muthuhfuckuh.  Well, Ok, except for that 'last week' thing.  shit

You're welcome, Wonkette - glad I could help. Please keep doing that part of my job for me.

That's What I'm Talkin' About

I complain a lot about Press Poodles, and how way too many "journalists" are doing a crappy job of reporting.

Well, from FAIR's excellent website, here's the primary-number-one-whole-wheat-no-artificial-ingredients-99-and-44-one-hundredths-percent-pure-and-unadulterated example of not just doing a crappy job, but the straight-up refusal even to know what the fucking job actually is:

NBC White House correspondent Chuck Todd's declaration that it's not his job to inform viewers when politicians spread misinformation was noted by several progressive blogs today, including Talking Points Memo.

Appearing on MSNBC's Morning Joe today (9/18/13), Todd responded to Ed Rendell's claim that Obamacare opponents are full of misinformation about the program by explaining that this was because Republicans "have successfully messaged against it." But wasn't journalism's job to expose misinformation? No, Todd insisted; if the public was misinformed about the Affordable Care Act, it was the president's fault for not pushing back:

Chuck Todd: "What I always love is people say, 'Well, it's you folks' fault in the media.' No, it's the president of the United States' fault for not selling it."

(If the embedding has been disabled, the TPM version of the YouTube video was still up as of about 11:30AM EDT

There is no longer any reason for anybody to pay any attention to anything Lil' Chuckie has to say.  Ever.

(And finally, if you're as sick of this shit as I am, you can drop 'em a line via email: viewerservices@msnbc.com)

Mind Your Mother

"The problem with modern contrarianism is that it's lazy. Too often, it's the sole focus of a piece, and it's the focus for reasons purely of entertainment or ideology. Which is too bad, because the kind of journalism that's most useful is the kind that explains both first order things and counterreactions and doesn't pander to readers' desires to pretend that the world is simpler than it really is. After all, counterreactions may usually be less important than first-order effects, but they're still worth investigating. Some tax cuts really don't raise as much revenue as you'd think. Raising the minimum wage really can have perverse effects in specific slices of the economy. If you're genuinely interested in knowing how the world works, you want to know this."

Kevin Drum explains at Mother Jones.