Author: Ken Goetz

Biden versus Trump: Again?

Posted on by Ken Goetz

Biden versus Trump: Again? I know, you’re probably sick of the story, as am I. I’ve covered aspects of this dismal presidential race in earlier posts (see here, here, here, and here). But the bad vibrations from these two bunglers keep jangling the nerves of most of us. Just today, a former editor and now columnist for the The Wall Street Journal (see here) lamented the deficits of each. Here is part of what he wrote.

Like a good movie, a successful presidential campaign requires the willing suspension of disbelief on the part of the viewing public. . . .  Almost none of us believe all the implausible promises we are told. No candidate is the model of national leadership they all purport to be.

Unfit protagonists

What makes this contest especially unusual is that this must be the first contest in which those close to the two main protagonists know only too well more reasons to doubt the fitness of their man for office than do the voters at large.  I’ll interrupt here to say Baker’s point may be true, but if you don’t realize that neither Biden nor Trump has the capacity to be a strong and reliable leader, you simply haven’t been paying attention.

On President Biden’s side, the louder the protestations we hear from his aides that his age isn’t a problem, the more we can be certain that it is. “Behind closed doors, Biden shows signs of slipping,” as a Journal article put it recently. The energy Democrats exert rebutting the story is all you needed to know about its accuracy. . . .

I would wager that if you fed the president’s senior associates a truth serum and then asked them if they were confident he could do the job for another four years, the honesty you would hear would scare the living daylights out of you.

Trump’s character

But the fictions we are being asked to believe about Donald Trump are equally far-fetched. Though he too is showing indications of age-related decline, it’s not his competence that’s primarily at issue but his character. The public has had a good chance to see the measure of the man by now and most continue to think it unsuited to the presidency. As it is with Mr. Biden’s closest associates, you can rest assured that those who have worked closely with the man are swallowing doubts so large they have lumps the size of basketballs in their throats.

Polling place
Photo by Ernie Journeys on Unsplash

Buying votes?

There is, of course, so much more to consider, starting with what can only be described as their ploys to buy votes. Who would argue that Biden wasn’t attempting to buy votes with his  welfare spending and student-loan forgiveness? Some commenters have speculated that his ploy may come back to bite him, the bite provided by voters who have paid off, or are paying off their student loans, and perhaps even by those with mortgages and other types of loans that aren’t being forgiven.

Naturally, Trump is not far behind. He just floated the lure of  exempting worker tips from federal taxes. Consider how many people that might appeal to. Huge numbers of workers depend on tips for an adequate income. To me, the proposals of each man are as obvious as if they were standing in front of polling spots and handing out crisp bills of varying denominations.

No matter where you stand politically, I would wager that your thoughts are not far from a phrase in Gerald Baker’s column. We are in an alarming condition: My fear of the other guy is slightly larger than my fear of my own guy.

In short, in the upcoming election, it appears that the majority of us will not be voting FOR anyone. Rather, our vote will be against the guy we fear the most. Yikes! And November is still more than four months away. Biden versus Trump again? Brace yourself!

Personal note:

Regular readers will have noticed that I’ve been quiet here for a few weeks. Part of the silence was due to a short trip, but for most of my time I’ve been attending to a huge number of tasks that have accumulated for various reasons. I’m still trying to catch up, but I won’t disappear from here for too long.

Bill Maher’s Grave Warning

Posted on by Ken Goetz

Bill Maher’s grave warning appears in today’s issue of the Wall Street Journal (18 May 2024. ). His entire article [a must read] can be found here. That article, “Red and Blue America Can’t Just Go Their Separate Ways“, warns of the dangers lurking in our increasingly divided country. 

“I love historians,” Maher begins. “In college, I majored in history. But I don’t buy the stance that historians are always selling on cable news that “America’s like a cat—it always lands on its feet.” I don’t buy that just because something didn’t happen before, it can’t happen now. Rome didn’t fall and didn’t fall and didn’t fall—and then it did.”

Does that sound ominous?

Here’s more from Maher: “One night on the road I had a driver who hailed from Bosnia. He left because the city of Sarajevo became a war-torn hellscape, and he said to me: “What I am seeing here now is exactly what I saw in Bosnia then. Next-door neighbors who despise each other.” He was telling me that hate on this level can only be sustained for so long before becoming actual war.“

“For decades Sarajevo was a diverse city where Serbs, Croats and Muslims lived together as friendly neighbors. In 1984, they hosted the Winter Olympics. Eight years later, people were getting shot by snipers when they went out for milk. Nobody thought a war like that was possible in Europe so “ late” in history. They believed Europe had passed the point of being vulnerable to such a thing. It hadn’t, and never will, and neither will we.“

Sarajevo war scene
Woman hurrying through “sniper alley” in Sarajevo

A personal note

I was living in Germany a couple of years before the civil war in Yugoslavia erupted in 1991. While in Freiburg, I had a long conversation with a professor from Sarajevo. The man described tensions mounting in his beautiful city, tensions so powerful that he was certain that they could only escalate. War, he predicted, would break out. It did! Below is more from Bill Maher’s grave warning:

“Donald Trump’s middle name might as well be “existential threat”—and I have not been shy about calling him that myself. But the other side sees Democratic control of government in exactly the same way, and it’s unfortunately no longer the case that they’re completely wrong about that. When both sides believe the other guy taking over means the end of the world—yes, you can have a civil war.“

Don’t forget Northern Ireland

“Or think about Northern Ireland, which went through a period where political hatred, born of religion, turned into something called “the Troubles,” which meant the hatred got so bad it could not be contained by the usual means of disagreement. So people lived with bombings and snipings and urban warfare.”

“In America, our warring factions aren’t Catholics and Protestants— but that same level of hatred, of “otherization,” is happening between Democrats and Republicans. We’ve grown less religious, but that’s because politics has become our religion. We used to pray for the nation. Now each side prays the other doesn’t destroy the nation. On one side, the Church of Woke wants to cleanse us of our past, and on the other, the Cult of Trump wants to resurrect it.”

Can it happen in the U.S.? Here’s Maher’s take

“Don’t tell me it can’t happen here. Trump rallies are filled with words like “enemies of the people” and “ human scum.” They talk of people to be locked up. Liberals are described as weak, lame, coddling and oversensitive. Which are strong words from a bunch of mouth breathers, knuckle draggers and Bible thumpers.

Yes, I’ve been guilty of saying things like that, but I’m going to try to stop, because I’ve learned that the anti-intellectualism on the right doesn’t come primarily from stupidity; it comes from hate. Telling people you think they’re deplorable is what makes them say, “You know what? I’d rather side with Russia than you.” If we want to stop this descent into civil war, we have to stop hating each other.”

“We used to pray for the nation. Now each side prays the other doesn’t destroy the nation.“

Second personal note

If this post doesn’t worry you, perhaps you should consider a recent poll that found  43% of Americans believe it is likely that civil war will break out within the next ten years. See that information here. As Bill Maher’s grave warning reminded us, “Rome didn’t fall and didn’t fall and didn’t fall—and then it did.“

If you missed my first post about Bill Maher, you can find it here. And, if you think Bill Maher’s warning should be better known, please pass this information along. And in the meantime, please don’t hate anyone based on their political preferences.

 

 

The Quotable Bill Maher

Posted on by Ken Goetz

The quotable Bill Maher was in the news again this week. He rarely fails to make interesting comments.  Although Maher often expresses moderately liberal views, his political alignments are difficult to sort out. He’s not consistently on the left. For example, he is no fan of political correctness (he’s been quoted as saying, “Liberals protect people, and P.C. people protect feelings.” Maher and I agree on the smugness of political correctness (see here, and here).

I mention him now, because a few days ago he said, regarding the media’s response to recent student protests, “. . . as always with media these days, they don’t cover what’s most important, just what’s most fun to watch. There are 15.2 million college students in the US and 2300 have been arrested. That’s 167th of 1%. And half of the ones in New York weren’t even students.”

Recent student anti-Israel protest
          Students protesting Israeli attacks in Gaza Strip

Maher has a point, but I believe his interpretation overlooks the underlying dynamics and implications of the protests themselves. To illustrate, Maher’s argument fails to acknowledge the scale and intensity of the protests. Although only a fraction of college students were arrested, a much larger number participated in the demonstrations. These protests often escalated into clashes with law enforcement, physical confrontations, violence, injuries of bystanders, and property destruction. The fact that relatively few arrests were made amidst such turmoil raises questions not only about the adequacy of law enforcement responses but also about the potential ramifications of allowing such unrest to persist unchecked. First some background.

Squeamish? If you are, please skip the next two paragraphs

What prompted Israel’s latest military invasion of Gaza? Consider the attack by Hamas on October 7, 2023. The exact number of Israelis killed, raped, and butchered during that onslaught, including a few dozen American citizens, is difficult to pin down, but somewhere around 1,200 killed is in the ball park. Beyond that, Hamas took about 240 hostages, some of whom have been released, others have died, and many still are in captivity. The horrifying details of that attack surely prompted Israel to respond by attacking Hamas in Gaza. Below are some snippets of the Hamas attack I took from the BBC. The brutality is shocking. Feel free to skip the details.

Several people involved in collecting and identifying the bodies of those killed in the attack told us they had seen multiple signs of sexual assault, including broken pelvises, bruises, cuts and tears, and that the victims ranged from children and teenagers to pensioners. . .   Multiple photographs from the sites after the attack show the bodies of women naked from the waist down, or with their underwear ripped to one side, legs splayed, with signs of trauma to their genitals and legs. . .    It (a film) showed bodies of people who had been bound. A room with at least seven bodies reduced to ash. Civilians shot in bedrooms, bathrooms, front yards. Blood so thick it nearly obscured hallway floors. . . a pregnant woman whose womb had been ripped open before she was killed, and her fetus stabbed while it was inside her. . .   One was sexually terrorized with a knife stuck in her vagina and all her internal organs removed,” his statement says.   Here’s a source if you would like more gore (see here).

OK, the squeamish can continue reading here

Recalling the above carnage reminded me of the Cornell associate professor who said he was “exhilarated” by the Hamas attack, that man being one Russel Rickford, who specializes in African-American political culture and the Black Radical tradition. Let’s be frank here. Can you imagine a bigger creep? Rickford later walked back his comments after being scorched by a heated backlash. But, like a bad penny, he came back and later was spotted behind a megaphone celebrating the Cornell students anti-Israel protesters (even though he had requested a leave of absence from Cornell after his odious comments).

Maybe the student protesters get their information from weirdos like Rickford. How many of the current college protesters actually know how heinous the Hamas attack  was? Are the protesters aware of the atrocities committed by Hamas fighters during their attack? I’ve read that some of the protestors, when asked why they are participating, and what their goals are, respond by saying, “I am not trained.” Well, they obviously have been trained how to respond to questions. My guess is that if they actually knew what precipitated Israel’s counter offensive, many would go home.

An historical perspective

When examining the current protests from a historical perspective, it would seem wise to place stronger emphasis on the need for law enforcement to take decisive action when protests escalate into violence or property destruction. Rather than downplaying the significance of the relatively low number of arrests, the quotable Bill Maher might highlight the risks posed by allowing protests to spiral out of control and the importance of swift and effective law enforcement response in maintaining social order. Perhaps it also is important to focus more attention to the “outsiders,” i.e, non students who apparently have played a significant role in orchestrating as well as participating in the protests.

History has underscored the dangers of unchecked radicalism and the potential consequences of allowing extremist movements to gain momentum. Although it would not be fair to draw direct parallels with 20th Century events such as the protesting violence of the Brown Shirts that contributed to the rise of Nazism in Germany (See here), or the initial protests sparking the Russian Revolution and the subsequent rise of the Communistic USSR (see here), neither of those should be ignored.

Parade of protestors
Hitler reviewing Brown Shirt parade in 1927 (Unites States Holocaust Memorial)

Both of those uprisings began with relatively small protest mobs and soon gained momentum. These movements capitalized on social discontent, exploited political divisions, and ultimately had far-reaching consequences, leading to significant upheavals that changed the makeup of their respective societies, for the worse most would agree. Here’s a question: would it not be wise to pay more attention to those who shout “Death to America” during current protests in this country?

It was George Santayana who wrote, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”  Should the historical examples I’ve cited be remembered? I suggest that all citizens, regardless of their personal political persuasions, should keep in mind what the past has revealed.

I wonder what the quotable Bill Maher would have to say about that.

Medicare advantage changes this interaction.

Vaccinations − and Politics?

Posted on by Ken Goetz

Vaccinations − and Politics? Stick with science! Vaccination saves lives. I earlier posted on this site two essays on the importance of vaccinations in preventing, or attenuating, serious diseases. My first essay focused on Benjamin Franklin’s bitter regret that he had not “inoculated” his four-year-old son who died of small pox. (See that post here.)

My second post on vaccination compared the early lethal effects of Covid-19 in those vaccinated versus those who had not been vaccinated. The results favoring the vaccine were irrefutable. (See that post here.) Anyone who is aware of those convincing numbers and still refuses to be vaccinated, lives in a different world than I do.

I mention my two earlier posts because just yesterday the Journal of the American Medical Association, in its May 7, 2024 issue, published an article titled, Could “Empathetic Refutation” Help Clinicians Sway Vaccine Skeptics?

That article once more shifted my attention to vaccination.

 

Patient getting vaccinated
                                CDC Photo

But this time my mind wandered into unexpected territory, the sad field of politics.  As I’ve lamented in this space a number of times, our two “major” candidates running for the highest office in the land are, in my opinion, incompetents of the highest order. But there is also a third presidential candidate, a man with a famous family name that I can’t recall at the moment. Sadly, this man also seems to be a bit loony. From what I’ve read, and heard, this man with the famous family name has expressed strong anti-vaccination views (I’m told he is making efforts to wiggle out of that mess).

The evidence for the superiority of vaccines over non-vaccination is overwhelming, yet surprisingly a significant fraction of our population seems convinced that vaccines are more dangerous than helpful. Where did this skepticism of vaccines come from?

This dangerous skepticism can be traced to a thoroughly discredited report that appeared in the British medical journal, Lancet, in 1998. Written by Andrew Wakefield and 12 others, that report has been called “perhaps the most damaging medical hoax of the last 100 years” (see here). The paper’s scientific limitations were clear when it appeared. Nonetheless, that fraudulent report set off a vaccine scare, even panic, that has not totally subsided even now. Pockets of fear remain even though Wakefield was found guilty of serious professional misconduct in 2010 and banned from practicing as a doctor in the UK.

Another factor inflaming fear of vaccines was the sensational reporting of Wakefield’s dishonest work by much of the media. (Does that surprise you?) To come back to that current JAMA article mentioned above, the one about helping clinicians sway vaccine skeptics by using “emphatic refutation,” if the above narrative doesn’t convince a skeptic, I can’t think of anything that will.

My Interview by Another Blogger

Posted on by Ken Goetz

     Just a brief note to inform you of my recent interview by another blogger, Nancy Julien Kopp, a remarkably productive writer who has been in the blogging game since 2009. Since that time, Nancy had posted (amazingly!) thousands of essays on her website. She calls her site Writer Granny’s World. As you might infer from that title, she provides tips and encouragement to writers in all stages in their development.

     Nancy interviewed me with the kind intention of alerting her readers to my website, and thus possibly increasing the readership of my blog. She came up with key questions concerning me and my blog, and we conducted the interview via email. Her questions about my past had the interesting effect of bringing up thoughts I hadn’t entertained for years. Consequently, it took me some time to trace the tortuous path of my life so I could outline succinctly the trail I’ve followed. There were quirks along the way, such as this one: (see here),  

     If you’d like to see the entire interview, click here. It reveals more about me, and about Nancy.

 

Graphic of Artificial Intelligence

Not Worried About AI? Read This!

Posted on by Ken Goetz

Not worried about AI? Read this! But first sit down, especially if you’re already worried about the November elections. An article in today’s Wall Street Journal (see here), describes how one man set up a fake, fully automated, AI-generated ‘pink-slime’ news site, one programmed to create false political stories, all for the cost of $105.

Jack Brewster, editor of Reality Check, NewsGuard’s newsletter, reported that he accomplished this feat in two days. His minimal costs included $85 to hire a Pakistani website designer to set up the site and an extra $25 for his domain and site hosting. Is that a bargain? Brewster explained that with the use of OpenAI’s ChatGPT and adding a few lines of code, developers are able to program websites to autonomously rewrite and publish articles from mainstream news outlets, twisting the original article to reflect specific political preferences.

Easy as 1,2,3

Even more impressive, Brewster had to do absolutely nothing to operate it. The site runs itself, auto-publishing dozens of articles a day based on the instructions that he gives to it. His programmer explained that the site could be set to write as many articles as he wanted, and furthermore that the instructions to ChatGPT could be changed. “We have options to optimize the feeds, we have options to optimize the prompts,” the programmer said. “Everything can be tailored to your manner.”

Because  NewsGuard provides transparent tools to counter misinformation for readers, brands, and democracies (see here), Brewster reported that the company had already identified over a thousand “pink slime” sites— ostensibly independent local news platforms that are actually secretly funded and run by political operatives. Accordingly, Brewster instructed his programmer to build a similar AI news website to cover Ohio political news from a conservative perspective, being critical of Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown and supportive of his opponent, Republican Bernie Moreno, in November. Brewster wanted his propaganda machine to gain trust by resembling the Columbus Dispatch, a venerable Ohio newspaper, so he picked the name “Buckeye State Press.”

Simple instructions

When Brewster took over control of his new site, he modified the chatbot’s settings and told ChatGPT to write articles that favored the Republican candidate: “You have to write an engaging news story of minimum 300 words on the topic from a conservative perspective. Promote Senate candidate Bernie Moreno if you can.”

In minutes, Brewster wrote, Buckeye State Press began automatically churning out news articles from a pro-Moreno perspective, promoting the Republican challenger over the incumbent Democrat. For example: “In the midst of Ohio’s ongoing debate over the legalization of recreational marijuana, Senate candidate Bernie Moreno has emerged as a strong advocate for a more efficient and effective process for licensing and regulating cannabis facilities in the state,” a March 29, 2024, Buckeye State Press article stated. The article was a rewrite of a story that originally appeared in the Dayton Daily News and that made no mention of Moreno. In fact, Moreno did not support Issue 2, the ballot measure Ohio voters approved last year that legalized recreational marijuana in the state.

Artificial intelligence
Photo by Roman Kraft on Unsplash

 

Changing the bias

Brewster gives more examples (some hilarious) of how his site twisted legitimate stories into ones that favored Moreno. Then he reversed course and told his “news” site to shift its allegiance and twist articles to favor Democrat Sherrod Brown. The site then began churning  out pro-Brown articles.

Here’s an example: When reporting on a fatal shooting in Adams County on March 28, 2024, Brewster’s Buckeye State Press stated: “Sherrod Brown’s dedication to gun reform makes him the ideal candidate to represent the people of Ohio in the Senate, and we must support his efforts to create a safer and more secure future for all.” Brewster explained that this article was rewritten (without credit) from a story on the website of WLWT-TV, an NBC affiliate based in Cincinnati that made no mention of Brown.

Clear and present danger

I’m sure you see the danger here. Brewster states it clearly: The appearance of legitimacy is everything online, and pink-slime websites are a serious menace. They can generate viral falsehoods, like the November 2023 incident, reported by NewsGuard, in which a content farm falsely claimed that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s nonexistent psychiatrist had committed suicide. With ads on Facebook, their content can be spread as the work of a legitimate news site ostensibly promoting its stories.

Final notes: This article was written by me, with not a single byte contributed by ChatGPT or any other AI contrivance. It took me over 2 1/2 hours of concentrated work to put this post together, writing the content, adding photos, and doing several tasks in the “backdoor” of my website before posting it. Admittedly, I have played with ChatGPT in the past, as I have reported (see here).

I’m still in search for more readers, so if you liked this article, please pass it along to others, and even go so far as to encourage them to subscribe to my blog.

 

 

Is Jared Kushner Another Hunter Biden?

Posted on by Ken Goetz

Is Jared Kushner another Hunter Biden? Recent reports indicate that Kushner may have eerie similarities to Biden. Kushner is accused of accepting a $2 billion investment from Saudi Arabia six months after leaving the White House, this being a way, it was suggested, for Crown Prince Mohammed to exert influence on U.S. foreign policy if Trump returns to the Oval Office after the November election. I had given a link to that article in this post initially, but I just tried it and was taken to the wrong site, so I’ve tried another. This one is similar, click here for more information.

The New York Times reportedly broke the story a few days ago, saying that 99 percent of Kushner’s investment fund’s money came from foreign sources. The Times also reported Kushner is working on developing hotels in the Balkans, specifically in Serbia and Albania, and noted that the firm has taken money from Qatar and the United Arab Emirates. (My memory on this isn’t perfect, but I seem to recall that the New York Times was silent about Hunter Biden’s laptop before the last election.)

This will be short, but I wanted to highlight the irony (there may be a better descriptive word) that a son, and a son-in-law, of our two heavily-flawed candidates (if you haven’t seen my evaluation of each, click here for Trump, and here for Biden) for the highest office in our land, seem to have been involved in slimy international business deals. Is Jared Kushner another Hunter Biden? What will we learn next?

Biden and Trump
Joe Biden and Donald Trump

Hunter Biden’s Laptop and NPR

Posted on by Ken Goetz

Hunter Biden’s laptop and NPR. I understand Uri Berliner’s story has hit TV Land, but my Samsung is misbehaving, so I haven’t seen any of that. I have, however, been looking back and trying to put the Berliner story in context with other past events. One part of Berliner’s article I didn’t mention yesterday was his take on NPR’s response to the Hunter Biden laptop story. Here’s what Mr. Berliner wrote:

In October 2020, the New York Post published the explosive report about the laptop Hunter Biden abandoned at a Delaware computer shop containing emails about his sordid business dealings. With the election only weeks away, NPR turned a blind eye. Here’s how NPR’s managing editor for news at the time explained the thinking: “We don’t want to waste our time on stories that are not really stories, and we don’t want to waste the listeners’ and readers’ time on stories that are just pure distractions.” 

Hunter owned it

But it wasn’t a pure distraction, or a product of Russian disinformation, as dozens of former and current intelligence officials suggested. The laptop did belong to Hunter Biden. Its contents revealed his connection to the corrupt world of multimillion-dollar influence peddling and its possible implications for his father.

The laptop was newsworthy. But the timeless journalistic instinct of following a hot story lead was being squelched. During a meeting with colleagues, I listened as one of NPR’s best and most fair-minded journalists said it was good we weren’t following the laptop story because it could help Trump. 

Letter to the rescue

Clearly, the laptop news could have derailed Biden’s election, but the letter mentioned above proved to be powerful. Here are intriguing details I’ve discovered about that letter from “dozens of former and current intelligence officials.” The letter was signed in October 2020, by 51 ex-national security officials, who wrote that Hunter’s laptop had “all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation.” Among the signers were former Obama CIA Director John Brennan, and former Obama DNI James Clapper.

What happened next?

“Hunter Biden story is Russian disinfo, dozens of former intel officials say,” screamed a Politico headline on Oct. 19, 2020.

More tidbits

I’ve also learned what prompted that deceptive, but pivotal, letter. Here’s the story. About one year ago (April, 2023), Former CIA Deputy Director Michael Morrell testified before the House Judiciary and Intelligence Committees, that Anthony Blinken (then-Biden campaign senior adviser, now-Secretary of State) was “the impetus” for the above letter implying that Hunter Biden’s laptop story was disinformation. (See original document here.)

In his testimony, Mr. Morell said, “There were two intents. One intent was to share our concern with the American people that the Russians were playing on this issue (which, of course, they had not a shred of evidence for); and, two, it was to help Vice President Biden.” 

Key question

And why did he want to help Biden? “Because I wanted him to win the election.”

And it worked. Joe Biden, in a presidential debate and an interview, used the letter to declare definitively that the laptop story was “disinformation from the Russians,” “a bunch of garbage,” a “Russian plan” and a “smear campaign.” Clearly, he knew better.

 

Joe Biden
President Joe Biden

I am not a Trump backer in any way, but honestly I find him to be no worse than Biden. I have lamented our horrible choices in earlier posts, see here, and here, giving Trump a D- (see here) and Biden a preliminary F (see here).

Basically, this election pits one champion prevaricator against another equally talented liar. The obvious question is whom to vote against. Both of them?  Somehow all of this leads me to a depressing conclusion. If Biden wins in November, the mass media, including NPR, will sigh with relief and champion whatever Biden does, be it continuing to mess up our Southern border, blunder in the Middle East, stoke inflation, or whatever. If Trump wins, he undoubtedly will face an onslaught of attacks from Capitol insiders, federal bureaucrats, and the mainstream press. Any suggestions?

Stay tuned. Next, I will look at NPR’s coverage of Covid-19, and after that on its take on DEI.

 

 

An Insider’s View of NPR’s Leftist Politics

Posted on by Ken Goetz

An insider’s view of NPR’s leftist politics was published yesterday. Here’s a tidbit from the article on leftist NPR. (Actually, it doesn’t much surprise me.) In 2021, among those working in editorial positions at NPR, 87 were registered Democrats and none was a registered Republican. Yep, not a single one. Hmm. Is it possible that such a skewed political distribution could influence the content this group puts on the air?

I learned about NPR’s heavily-tilted  editorial staff  from an amazing article by Uri Berliner. Mr. Berliner is an award-winning  business editor who has worked at NPR for 25 years. He freely admits that he twice voted against Trump, and that he has leftest credentials, but clearly he also is a journalist who believes in honest reporting. As a guy who took several journal courses at the University of Wisconsin many years ago, I enthusiastically salute him. Thank you, Uri Berliner!

At NPR for 25 years

Berliner’s article, titled, I’ve Been at NPR for 25 Years. Here’s How We Lost America’s Trust, reveals he’s a brave man. I don’t imagine his exposé of NPR’s strong tilt has been overlooked by folks who work there. His article was published yesterday in The Free Press, but I found it at another source (see here).

Mr. Berliner provides a historical view: For decades, since its founding in 1970, a wide swath of America tuned in to NPR for reliable journalism and gorgeous audio pieces with birds singing in the Amazon. Millions came to us for conversations that exposed us to voices around the country and the world radically different from our own—engaging precisely because they were unguarded and unpredictable. No image generated more pride within NPR than the farmer listening to Morning Edition from his or her tractor at sunrise.

Leftist NPR

By 2011, the audience was tilted a bit left, but it still bore a resemblance to America at large, Mr. Berliner writes. (26% of listeners described them as conservative, 23% as middle of the road, and 37% as liberal.) 

By 2023, the picture was completely different, he writes. (only 11% of listeners described themselves as very or somewhat conservative, as opposed to 21% middle of the road, and 67% very or somewhat liberal.)

Honest reporting

Mr. Berliner is forthright: An open-minded spirit no longer exists within NPR, and now, predictably, we don’t have an audience that reflects America. That wouldn’t be a problem for an openly polemical news outlet serving a niche audience. But for NPR, which purports to consider all things, it’s devastating both for its journalism and its business model.

This NPR editor and reporter goes on to give specifics on three issues in which his organization strayed from classic journalism reporting, the first being coverage of the 2020 election. (I insert part of that below.) The other two issues he writes about were the origin of the Covid virus, and DEI. In today’s post, I will focus on what Mr. Berliner said about NPR’s coverage of the 2020 election. The following six paragraphs are taken verbatim from his article.

Donald Trump, the target

Like many unfortunate things, the rise of advocacy took off with Donald Trump. As in many newsrooms, his election in 2016 was greeted at NPR with a mixture of disbelief, anger, and despair. (Just to note, I eagerly voted against Trump twice but felt we were obliged to cover him fairly.) But what began as tough, straightforward coverage of a belligerent, truth-impaired president veered toward efforts to damage or topple Trump’s presidency. 

Persistent rumors that the Trump campaign colluded with Russia over the election became the catnip that drove reporting. At NPR, we hitched our wagon to Trump’s most visible antagonist, Representative Adam Schiff. 

A favorite NPR guest

Schiff, who was the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, became NPR’s guiding hand, its ever-present muse. By my count, NPR hosts interviewed Schiff 25 times about Trump and Russia. During many of those conversations, Schiff alluded to purported evidence of collusion. The Schiff talking points became the drumbeat of NPR news reports. (Shiff was also shifty, and a frequent dissembler.)

But when the Mueller report found no credible evidence of collusion, NPR’s coverage was notably sparse. Russiagate quietly faded from our programming. 

Journalist’s lament

It is one thing to swing and miss on a major story. Unfortunately, it happens. You follow the wrong leads, you get misled by sources you trusted, you’re emotionally invested in a narrative, and bits of circumstantial evidence never add up. It’s bad to blow a big story. 

What’s worse is to pretend it never happened, to move on with no mea culpas, no self-reflection. Especially when you expect high standards of transparency from public figures and institutions, but don’t practice those standards yourself. That’s what shatters trust and engenders cynicism about the media.

My personal comments

Politics has been one of my recurring themes on this blog. As a matter of fact, my two initial posts, both published on October 28, 2020, were on politics; in one of them (see here), I considered the obvious leanings of certain media outlets, including PBS but not leftist NPR. Because I have also opined several times on the origin of the Covid virus, as well as DEI, I plan to follow up on Mr. Berliner’s article in the upcoming days, posting more on his report of NPR’s handling of those topics.

This is a convenient place for me to add a little nudge and inform you that all of my 110 essays posted on this blog are still available to readers. If you have a curiosity to see what I’ve scolded, or praised, or puzzled over, just slip over to the categories listed nearby, choose a topic, and see whether you agree, or disagree, with me.

News flash!!!!

As to be expected, NPR has responded today. I just skimmed the article now, but you may want to see how the media titan defended itself (to see one article click here).

Discriminatory DEI

An Example of Discriminatory DEI

Posted on by Ken Goetz

Here is another example of discriminatory DEI. As I mentioned in yesterday’s post (see here), the effects of DEI have simply changed one form of discrimination to another. I now offer a case where the discrimination was so blatant that the courts have stepped in and reversed an outrageous situation.

Today’s Wall Street Journal (1 April 2024, and no, this is not an April Fool’s joke) lays out the details in an editorial headed: You Can’t Fire Only the White Guys (see that here). The editorial demonstrates that illegal discrimination is still illegal discrimination even if a corporate HR department calls it equity and inclusion. Details are provided on a federal appeals court recent opinion that upheld a jury verdict for a hospital executive who argued he was fired simply because he was a white male amid a workforce diversity onslaught.

Fired abruptly

The man, David Duvall, had spent five years as a senior vice-president at Novant Health, a large North Carolina medical group, when he suddenly was fired, even though there was “no record of any documented criticism of his performance or reasons for his termination.” The firing shocked his colleagues, and his duties were taken over by two women, one black and one white. And when his permanent replacement was hired, all three finalists were black women.

Evidence indicated that Novant was “deeply interested” in the demographic makeup of its workforce, and its Diversity and Inclusion Executive Committee recommended “a 3-4% increase in black leaders over the next three years.” (I would bet there was no mention of expertise, rather simply the color of skin of those to be hired, and thus clearly discriminatory.)

Why?

So, what did Novant Health tell Mr. Duvall when he was fired? The company told him they were “going in a different direction.” Indeed they were, to another form of discrimination. Yet months later, his old boss spoke to a corporate recruiter and said he’d be happy to hire Mr. Duvall again. (I would bet that his old boss didn’t check with the DEI folks.)

After the verdict for Mr. Duvall, Novant released a statement that read in part, “We continue to believe having a workforce that reflects the communities we serve allows us to provide the personalized care our patients need to reach their best possible health.”

Discriminatory DEI

That statement, of course, reflects one of the two opposing views on DEI, but to me it simply tries to justify the substitution of one obvious discrimination for another.  Why not hire employees based on their accomplishments and their talents, rather than on the color of their skin? Why not hire the best and most capable personnel available, regardless of skin color? That would be the best way to allow their patients “to reach their best possible health.”

I have the impression that some justify the use of DEI “to right old wrongs.” But to me this too is misguided. There have been generational shifts. Those discriminated against today are not the discriminators of earlier times. For some reason, that reminds me of a cartoon I saw somewhere decades ago; I think it was in the New Yorker. An older white man was sitting in an easy chair looking up at a young black man and saying, “Two hundred years? Why I’m not nearly that old.”

A repeat of my conclusions from yesterday

1. DEI is a form of discrimination that, by its very nature, can only lower the quality of whatever type of organization is involved, be it educational, scientific, governmental, or economic.

2. Racial discrimination has been rampant in the past, but simply changing the race or races to be discriminated against (through Affirmative Action and discriminatory DEI) does nothing to assuage the pains of past wrongs; rather, it simply embraces a new form discrimination.

3. Most black children today continue to receive inferior early educations, and thus many fall behind. This clearly is where the problem lies. Give these children the education they deserve, and they will effortlessly compete with other races.  I submit this as the path to become a truly colorblind country, and to provide liberty and justice for all.