RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/05/under-pressure-hamas-links-ap-fires-pro-jihad-robert-spencer/

The oddest thing happened after it came to light that the Hamas-linked Associated Press had hired a serial liar and pro-jihad activist, a young woman named Emily Wilder: AP fired her. As you might expect, because this isn’t the way things are supposed to work, as far as the establishment media is concerned, “journalists” are outraged, and circling the wagons. One of their own has taken the fall for a sinister and corrupt organization, and the other cogs in the machine aren’t going to stand for it.

Emily Wilder herself claimed that the firing was due to her activities as a pro-jihad activist at Stanford University, from which she graduated last year, and asserted that she had fallen victim to “cancel culture”: “There’s no question I was just canceled,” she said in a fawning SF Gate interview that was trending on Twitter for a couple of days. The day after it was published, even AP itself got into the act, writing about the controversy as if it concerned some other organization altogether, and defending Wilder.

Meanwhile, Leftists on Twitter crowed about the supposed inconsistency of foes of Left-fascism opposing “cancel culture” and then being happy that a Left-fascist was canceled. One put it crisply: “Coulda sworn you creeps were against cancel culture.”

There are numerous useful lessons that can be drawn from this ugly little episode. Here are a few of them:

1. AP fired Wilder to save face after being exposed sharing an office building with Hamas in Gaza, which meant either that they were aware of Hamas’ activities and covered for the terror group, or didn’t know Hamas was there and are therefore the worst reporters in the world.

2. AP did not fire Wilder because she is pro-jihad. It is unlikely that there are any AP reporters who are not pro-jihad. AP fired Wilder because her views came out in a way that showed up their claims to be a news organization.

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/robert-spencer/2021/05/22/cnn-runs-free-advertising-for-protests-in-support-of-palestinian-jihad-n1448976

First the Associated Press was exposed sharing an office building with Hamas in Gaza, which meant either that they were aware of Hamas’ activities and covered for the terror group, or didn’t know Hamas was there and are therefore the worst reporters in the world. And now comes more confirmation that what we are told are news organizations are actually propaganda arms not only for the Left’s agenda, but for the Palestinian Arab jihad against Israel. CNN on Saturday published an article entitled “Protests in support of Palestinians expected across the United States,” which was not so much a piece of reporting on those protests, but a free advertisement for them, complete with a case for why you should participate in your local orgy of Jew-hatred.

It doesn’t start out too badly: “Protesters are expected to rally in cities across the United States this weekend in support of Palestinians, as Israel and Hamas agreed to a ceasefire ending days of destruction and bloodshed.” But immediately after that comes the staple of establishment media reporting on Israel and the Palestinians: the casualty count. “Since May 10,” CNN claims, “Israeli airstrikes have killed at least 243 people in Gaza, including 66 children, according to the Hamas-run Ministry of Health. Twelve people in Israel, including two children, died as a result of militant fire from Gaza, according to the Israel Defense Forces and Israel’s emergency service.”

Oh, hey, that’s bad: 243 Palestinians, including 66 children, were killed versus only twelve Israelis. The clear implication of CNN’s framing of the story here is that Israel responded in a disproportionate manner to the rockets Hamas fired into Israel, and indiscriminately bombed Gaza without regard for the lives of civilians. Reality is quite different. In the latest conflict, Hamas followed its longstanding practice of launching attacks from civilian areas so as to draw retaliatory fire that would harm civilians and be usable for propaganda purposes. This launching of attacks from civilian areas has been abundantly documented, even by the unflaggingly anti-Israel United Nations. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) tweeted Thursday: “It’s not easy fighting a terrorist organization that embeds its military infrastructure in civilian areas. We use the latest military technology to precisely strike Hamas targets, while minimizing damage to the surrounding areas.”

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2021/05/joe_scarboroughs_insane_rant_proves_hes_just_a_histrionic_blowhard.html

Joe Scarborough is one of those pathetic persons who inhabit the periphery of cable news.  The morning show he hosts with his adoring but insipid wife Mika is apparently a favorite of Kim Jong Un and perhaps a mere one million equally mentally challenged Americans.  Beyond those relative few, no one pays a bit of attention to his vicious anti-Trump rants or the vitriol he spews daily upon Trump and his supporters.  

The man, like the rest of MSNBC’s denizens, is not very bright but he is very impressed with his own self-perceived brilliance.  In short, he’s something of a joke to all but a few blinkered souls.  He makes no difference on any issue on which he expounds; he changes no minds.  Those who watch his early morning program are not critical thinkers.  They are unthinking acolytes of a shameless shyster. 

On Friday morning however, Scarborough lost it, went full mental.  

He melted down, screaming like a banshee about his loathing of anyone who supports the audit currently underway in Arizona. 

Like his colleague Rachel Maddow, he knows what the Arizona audit portends and the truth of it has filled him with horror.  Like the rest of the left, he knows only too well that the 2020 election was rigged in numerous ways (see Molly Ball’s article) and that Biden is not a legitimate President.  He accused all the patriots supporting the audit of everything up to and including treason.  He shouted that they should just leave, that immigrants would be better citizens.  He is hoping that hysteria will trump evidence.  But as the great Anthony Daniels (pen name Theodore Dalrymple) said “The nearer emotional life approaches to hysteria, to continual outward show, the less genuine it becomes.  Feeling becomes equated with vehemence of expression, so that insincerity becomes permanent.”  Poor Joe Scarborough’s morning hysteria is clearly an act, a bad act.  His hatred for all things Trump has rendered him thoroughly irrelevant.   

https://spectator.us/topic/decline-fall-associated-press-gaza/

Once, long ago, in a land far away, the best journalists tried to stand aloof from the stories they reported. The idea was simple and powerful. If journalists tried to be neutral and kept their reporting separate from their opinions, analysis, and speculation, then the public would believe them.

Those days are long gone — and the media’s credibility is gone with them. Journalists and media organizations are now smack in the middle of many stories they cover, in part because they want to be. They want to spin them, to set ‘the Narrative’.

Imbued with this new mission, many journalists have become partisan protagonists. They have deliberately blurred the lines between facts, analysis and opinion — and downplayed the traditional role of presenting the facts neutrally and letting readers decide. That’s a dramatic change in journalistic norms and a disturbing one for both the media and the public.

In a few cases, the media cannot avoid becoming directly involved. That happens when reporters are arrested, as they are at some demonstrations. Or when they are prevented from covering stories, as they have been at overcrowded migrant facilities on the US border.

When media organizations are drawn into stories like these, they need to do two hard things simultaneously. First, they need to publicize the harmful restrictions and identify those responsible for them. Second, they need to set aside their justifiable anger and try to cover the news story itself as fairly as possible. In the case of migrant children and families, for instance, we still need to know what is happening on the southern border, as well as who is trying to prevent the story from being covered fully.

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2021/05/ny_emtimesem_limited_hangout_on_steele_dossier_spares_obama.html

Former CIA agent Howard Hunt introduced a useful phrase into the political lexicon during the Watergate brouhaha — “limited hangout.” Those two words well describe the recent New York Times article, “Secret Sharers: The Hidden Ties Between Private Spies and Journalists.”

Better late than never, one supposes, Barry Meier of the Times concedes that his newspaper and many others in the media fell for the trap set by former British intelligence operative, Christopher Steele, and his employers at Fusion GPS.

Only readers of the Times could be shocked to learn in May 2021 that “many of the [Steele] dossier’s most explosive claims — like a salacious “pee” tape featuring Mr. Trump or a supposed meeting in Prague between Michael Cohen, Mr. Trump’s former attorney, and Russian operatives — have never materialized or have been proved false.” OMG!

Meier takes particular aim at his fellow journalists. He argues that “the dossier took them down a very different path” from the more traditional ones they had followed in the past –“court records, corporate documents and other tangible pieces of evidence.”

After BuzzFeed published the entire Steele dossier in January 2017, Meier notes that “countless articles, television shows, books, tweets and blog posts about it appeared.” What Meier seems to overlook, at least in this article, is that the dossier began influencing the media well before the 2016 election, not just afterwards. That, in fact, was the point of the dossier’s creation.

In September 2016, for instance, Michael Isikoff wrote a lengthy breakout article for Yahoo News based on a briefing by “multiple sources,” the most notable of whom, unnamed in the article, was Steele. As Isikoff reported, intelligence officials were investigating Trump adviser Carter Page’s “private communications with senior Russian officials.”

Isikoff reported too that Senate majority leader Harry Reid had briefed FBI director James Comey on the “significant and disturbing ties” between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin, information Reid could only have gotten from the dossier. The word was spreading.

In Meier’s retelling, Isikoff is something of a hero for having “backed away” from the dossier before his peers. Meier also cites Erik Wemple of the Washington Post for writing a series of columns about “the media infatuation with the dossier.” Although Isikoff’s comment is undated, Wemple’s columns appeared in 2020. No misprint, 2020.

https://www.foxnews.com/media/cnn-adeel-raja-says-world-today-needs-a-hitler

CNN is under fire for having hired a writer who posted several times on social media that he believes the world needs another “Hitler.”

Social media users demanded that the network respond after discovering the tweets from one of its freelance contributors, Adeel Raja, who has written dozens of pieces for the outlet. 

After some digging, it turned out to be one of several messages Raja has posted praising the Nazi leader.

“The only reason I am supporting Germany in the finals – Hitler was a German and he did good with those Jews!” Raja wrote during the 2014 FIFA World Cup. Raja last had a CNN byline on Sept. 16, 2020. He still lists his affiliation with the network on LinkedIn.

“Hail Hitler!” he wrote the following day. Twitter users shared screenshots of the messages.

“The only reason I am supporting Germany in the finals – Hitler was a German and he did good with those Jews!” Raja wrote during the 2014 FIFA World Cup. Raja last had a CNN byline on Sept. 16, 2020. He still lists his affiliation with the network on LinkedIn.

“Hail Hitler!” he wrote the following day. Twitter users shared screenshots of the messages.