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Legal Votes Have WaPo Fearing for Democracy and the Miami Herald Debunks Its Own Reporters

Brad Slager
Brad Slager  |  Oct 06, 2023
The opinions expressed by columnists are their own and do not necessarily represent the views of Townhall.com.

10.05.23

Blue-anon – WASHINGTON POST

The vote to remove Kevin McCarthy has certainly led to its share of imbalanced reactions in the press this week. Adding to the stunted thinking is Sarah Ellison of WaPo, who takes a very dire approach to this development.

See, the way Ellison sees it, our democracy is now teetering on the brink because of this result, and she has an expert to prove it!

“If you want to know what it looks like when democracy is in trouble, this is what it looks like,” said Daniel Ziblatt, professor of government at Harvard University. “It should set off alarm bells that something is not right.” The vote reflected the enormous power that a small group of representatives camped on their party’s ideological fringe can wield over an entire institution, said Ziblatt.

Now, this would be when we step in and alert these political experts that while eight Republicans did, in fact, vote to remove McCarthy, over 200 Democrats also voted to do so. This led to a plurality in the chamber, in a vote that was not contested by anyone. So, they are concluding that our democracy is threatened by the use of a legal and verified democratic vote?

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Both Kinds of Standards – CBS NEWS 2 New York

  • This feels like very biased activism.

The stabbing murder of activist Ryan Carson in New York has been a focus for days, and police made an arrest of Brian Dowling. When bringing him into custody, the affiliate blurred the face of Dowling as he was loaded into police cruisers.

This seems to follow a directive seen at the media institute Poynter, which has suggested not detailing the race of criminals or suspects who are black or brown to diffuse racial stereotypes. This raises quite a few questions. For one, where was this policy when Daniel Penny was arrested, the white man charged after being confronted by a black assailant on the subway? Also, how does this black-on-white crime not get the treatment of racial tensions and violence? (I believe we know why.)

But the biggest problem is this is the same press complex that always proclaims the importance of the truth and the facts and how they wrap themselves in that cloak of verifiable facts. So how do they justify the shielding – or, in this case, blurring – the facts of a story?

Pre-written Field Reports – MIAMI HERALD

  • "If you could direct us to the archives department at the paper, that would help."

The press in Florida always manages to display a particularly imbalanced level of partisanship; Ron DeSantis really has them unmoored from common sense. One of the pleasures, however, is that the governor's communications team is more than willing to share instances of media distemper they encounter on a frequent basis.

For the latest, DeSantis Press Secretary Jeremy Redfern shows how the Miami Herald is approaching a story and almost refusing to engage in actual journalism. In a lengthy and amusing thread, he shows his engagement with two Herald reporters looking to get a comment on why a newly invigorated immigration law has "only" resulted in three arrests since this July. (Why this is considered a negative is not ever explained.)

The reporters were relying on arrest reports from the Florida Highway Patrol, and Redfern repeatedly tried to explain they should contact far more agencies in the state, as many have the ability to arrest on illegal immigration charges. As they became more contentious, one comment from a reporter was: "If you have any additional data from other sources that you would like us to include, please provide it."

Moving past their request for the press secretary to essentially do their job, Redfern manages to give them one source that displayed other arrests of this nature taking place. It was their own newspaper, reporting on significantly more arrests taking place, in just one jurisdiction.

Presentation Paradox – MSNBC

  • She refuses to amplify his hateful rhetoric…well, you know, except for right now…

We are not sure you can get more clownish than this from "Deadline: White House." Hostess Nicolle Wallace was practically beside herself with having to report on Donald Trump, and she made a very urgent and emotional plea to the audience that on her show, the very last thing she would ever want to do is give Trump's dangerous comments a platform and broaden the reach of that rhetoric.

Then, in her very next comment, Wallace announced she would do – that – exact – thing. The woman who just declared she fights ardently to keep Trump's hateful words from getting exposure used this exact same segment to declare that what he was recently seen saying was the exact same words Hitler had used.

Presentation Paradox – 404 MEDIA

  • Another one with dangerous content – that just has to be shared.

There have been a lot of side ventures this week of people having fun trying out the new Bing AI image generator. However, all that artificial tomfoolery has a dark side, according to one video game journalist who found some things that have him deeply concerned (with trying to generate clicks for his site).

At the gaming site 404 Media, Emanuel Maiberg reports how people have been conjuring up images of famous characters piloting an airplane – with the Twin Towers seen in the nearby distance!

Maiberg was on the case, and when he also spotted the video game character Kirby behind a jet's yoke, he reached out to Nintendo for comment. Maiberg was so concerned with what this all means, and how concerned he was with the dangerous ramifications that…he also went on the site and created his own images.

And then had no qualms about sharing these dangerous pictures on social media for anyone to see. Uh…yeah…

"Riffed from the Headlines" is Townhall's daily VIP feature with coverage of the deeply flawed aspects of journalism in the nation, where Brad Slager looks to bring accountability to the mishaps, malaprops, misdeeds, manipulations, malpractice, and manufactured narratives in mainstream media.