RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.commonsense.news/p/the-great-canadian-mass-graves-hoax?utm_source=email

Last year, The New York Times dropped a bombshell headline: ‘Horrible History’: Mass Grave of Indigenous Children Reported in Canada. As other outlets picked up the shocking story, marches, protests and riots erupted across Canada. One former Canadian minister called it “Canada’s George Floyd moment.”

But according to veteran journalist Terry Glavin, the shocking story about a mass graves wasn’t true.

And saying that—reporting that—came at a very high cost.

Terry Glavin has been a reporter for over 20 years. In that time, he’s had a particular focus on persecuted minorities. Both in faraway places like China, Afghanistan, Russia and Iraq, but also in his own backyard, where he has reported extensively on the First Nations of Canada and the abuses they have suffered at the hands of the state. So how is it that someone who has spent his career giving voice to the most vulnerable, found himself accused of genocide denial?

That’s what today’s fascinating and provocative conversation on Honestly is about. In the end, it’s about what happens when the truth no longer matters.

https://jessesingal.substack.com/p/how-a-small-conservative-campus-paper?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

Last month, Rachel Richardson—the only black starter on the women’s volleyball team at Duke University—leveled a shocking accusation. She said that during her team’s August 26 match against Brigham Young University, fans inside the BYU arena in Provo, Utah inundated her with racist abuse and threats.

After the match, 19-year-old Richardson told her godmother, Lesa Pamplin, about the incident. Pamplin is a criminal defense attorney running for a county judgeship in Texas, and was not at the game—but the next day, she published a tweet that rocketed the story to national attention: “My Goddaughter is the only black starter for Dukes [sic] volleyball team. While playing yesterday, she was called a [n-word] every time she served. She was threatened by a white male that told her to watch her back going to the team bus. A police officer had to be put by their bench.”

The tweet is no longer available, but it racked up 185,000 likes before it was archived. LeBron James himself responded: “you tell your Goddaughter to stand tall, be proud and continue to be BLACK!!! We are a brotherhood and sisterhood!  We have her back. This is not sports.”

Richardson’s story also spread via her father, Marvin Richardson, who is Deputy Director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and who spoke with multiple outlets on behalf of his daughter. In an August 27 story about the incident in the New York Times that named him but not his daughter, he described an alarming, potentially violent scene. Despite an onslaught of slurs, he told the Times, his daughter thought the safest choice was “to keep her head down and continue playing.” He said that “as the crowd got more hyped and the epithets kept coming, she wanted to respond back but she told me she was afraid that, if she did, the raucous crowd could very well turn into a mob mentality.”

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/the-medias-pathological-commitment-to-dividing-americans-along-racial-lines/

Signs of Rot and Hope in BYU Volleyball Story

When an opportunity arises to publish a story that might make Americans feel as though they’re living in a country just barely more racially harmonious than South Africa under apartheid, much of the mainstream press have long adhered to a compact: Never investigate, and, once the story is proven to be mistaken, never apologize.

Late last month, Rachel Richardson, a member of the Duke University women’s volleyball team, accused fans of the Brigham Young University squad of hurling racial epithets at her during a match at BYU. She further charged BYU officials with having “failed to take the necessary steps to stop the unacceptable behavior and create a safe environment.”

Everyone — including the administration at BYU, who quickly identified and banned a suspect from campus — was rightly horrified by the prospect of such harassment of a black athlete.

Yet at so many outlets, Richardson’s allegations were treated not as a subject of inquiry, but as gospel truth to immediately be atoned for.

“What does it say about the BYU community and culture that this happened?” CNN’S Alisyn Camerota asked BYU’s athletic director. “A Division I volleyball match at Brigham Young University turned really ugly when black players from Duke University endured racial slurs from at least one fan in the crowd,” explained Brianna Keilar, also of CNN.

The New York Times reported that “Marvin Richardson, the father of the Duke volleyball player, said in an interview late Saturday that a slur was repeatedly yelled from the stands as his daughter was serving, making her fear ‘the raucous crowd’ could grow violent.” The Times tacked on that BYU’s “student population is less than 1 percent Black” and “has struggled with creating an inclusive environment for its students of color,” so that readers could understand that BYU is the type of place where racial harassment takes place.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2022/08/the_new_york_times_and_its_devouring_obsession_with_president_trump.html

The first time The New York Times demanded a special prosecutor to investigate President Trump, was less than a month after his inauguration.

From the opening paragraph of its February 17, 2017 editorial, the call for a special prosecutor was based on the fabrication conceived by the Hillary Clinton-based resistance that the president was a Putin agent — and the Times colluded, seeking to overthrow a legitimately-elected president.

Then, on May 11, 2017, a contributor for the publication urged Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein to name a special prosecutor to investigate President Trump. Less than a week later, following the firing of FBI director James Comey, Rosenstein tapped Robert Mueller to be special counsel.

Six days after that, the paper published an op-ed calling for an investigation of President Trump’s dismissal of FBI director James Comey, arguing that the firing may have constituted a criminal act by the president.

And just two days ago, the Times took the rhetoric to a new level, and called for the former president to be indicted — apparently in hopes that its editorial lightning will strike again. Having succeeded in pressing Mr. Rosenstein to appoint Mueller to investigate a sitting president after just four months, it appears that the Times is now confident they can replicate the situation and pressure Attorney General Merrick Garland to indict former President Trump. Garland will be as obsequious to the Times diktat as was the craven Mr. Rosenstein. (And with nary a Republican voice in Congress heard in protest!)

Here is the title of the August 28, 2022 New York Times editorial, in boldface letters:

Donald Trump Is Not Above the Law

The Times editorial is predictable in that from February 2017 to the present, the paper has demanded the investigation, the impeachment, the ouster of Mr. Trump. It’s also pathetic, wallowing for six years and counting, in its obsession with the former president. To what end? Banishment to St. Helena, if not imprisonment?

https://www.spiked-online.com/2022/08/27/the-new-york-times-is-eating-itself/

Gather round, children, it is time for another instalment in our fun-filled series of Watch the Woke Newsroom Eat Itself Alive.

This week a new report by the New York Times Guild – the New York Times chapter of the national journalists’ union, NewsGuild – contained a great bombshell: ‘The New York Times’s performance-review system has for years given significantly lower ratings to employees of colour, an analysis by Times journalists in the NewsGuild shows.’ And in 2020, not a single black employee was given the ‘highest rating’ in employee evaluations, while ‘white employees accounted for more than 90 per cent of the roughly 50 people who received the top score’.

This has been widely interpreted as as a sign of ‘racial bias’ and even ‘racial discrimination’ at the Times.

I haven’t set foot in the Times newsroom for a long time, and obviously I have no knowledge of the individuals whose evaluations are being questioned by the union. So I am neither defending the report nor denying its veracity.

I can confirm, however, that when I worked there – back in the olden days, before woke millennials made skin colour a major topic of conversation among the journalistic elite – I did not meet a single racist. The vast majority of the people I worked with were the most open, liberal, high-minded, Upper West Side-dwelling, well-meaning people I have ever had the pleasure of knowing. There were a few grumpy old-timers tucked away in their messy cubicles. But even within the ultra-focused, deadline-driven environment, the vibe on the whole was more 1970s Sesame Street than 1950s Alabama.

https://townhall.com/tipsheet/saraharnold/2022/08/24/only-32-percent-trust-the-political-media-n2612197

It’s not news that American’s trust in mainstream media has dissolved over the past few years. Former president Trump hailed political news networks as “fake news” when it became apparent that the networks no longer delivered unbiased information, and instead pushed for a certain narrative. 

According to a new Rasmussen Reports poll, 62 percent of voters believe media bias is getting worse; and 82 percent say “fake news” is only going to become a bigger problem than it is now. 

52 percent of voters just don’t trust political media overall. 

This may be because viewers are left to sort fact from fiction, bombarded with information that may or may not be true. So long are the days where news was simply just news as it happened with no spin or propaganda seeped in. 

When pollsters were asked whether they trust the political news they are getting, just a mere 32 percent said no. 

However, trust in the media varied between parties. 67 percent of Republicans and conservatives were quick to say they are weary of what to believe on the news, while 55 percent of Democrats say they do trust news about President Joe Biden, Washington and Congress. 

It will take a long time for news networks to rebuild the trust, as well as commitment and re-branding to gain viewers back. 

CNN took a nosedive in ratings when the Left decided to become the radical progressives they are today. 

https://issuesinsights.com/2022/08/16/twitter-fritters-away-its-credibility/

I participate relatively little on social media. I am on Twitter, mainly to boost exposure of my articles, which focus primarily on scientific or medical subjects.  Recently, I tweeted about an exciting new approach to creating coronavirus vaccines to protect against, among other viruses, new variants of SARS-CoV-2 (which cause COVID-19).  As explained below, that’s when my bizarre clash with Twitter began.

The experimental vaccine, created in the Caltech lab of professor Pamela Bjorkman, works by presenting the immune system with pieces of the spike proteins from SARS-CoV-2 and seven other SARS-like coronaviruses, all attached to a protein nanoparticle structure. When injected into mice or monkeys, they induce the production of a broad spectrum of antibodies – immune system proteins that recognize and fight off specific pathogens – as well as cellular immune responses involving various white blood cells.

Notably, when vaccinated with this so-called “mosaic nanoparticle,” mice and nonhuman primates were protected from an additional coronavirus, SARS-CoV, that was not one of the eight represented in the nanoparticle vaccine. This extended protection is important because of the ability of SARS-CoV-2 to mutate and evade immune protection from vaccines or previous infection – which, of course, is what we’re seeing with Omicron subvariant BA.5. Professor Bjorkman and her colleagues plan soon to evaluate their vaccine in humans in a Phase 1 clinical trial.

This work is important because with the numbers of COVID-19 infections continuing at a high level in the U.S. and elsewhere, epidemiologists and virologists expect that it’s only a matter of time until new subvariants proliferate and predominate. The Caltech research offers hope that its vaccine will be effective against them.