Category: Narrative For Sale!
-
Since The Subject Is “Integrity”
To: Bob Garfield and Brooke Gladstone, Hosts, NPR’s On The Media From: Mitch Berg, Uppity Peasant Re: Your Concern For Journalistic Integrity Ms. Gladstone / Mr. Garfield I caught your story in this week’s edition of On The Media criticizing NBC for paying, not only for footage (of this spectacular skydiving accident) but for exclusive…
-
Narrative, Narrative, Narrative, Narrative, Narrative, Narrative, Narrative, Narrative, Narrative…
…sorry. It’s getting so thick, I’m getting just a tad punchy. There’s an election coming up. And the Democrats are going to need to need all the racial tension they can generate. And their wholly-owned subsidiary at NPR is there to help them – in this case, in a story about Senate hearings on “Stand Your…
-
Because Racism
Earlier this week, the Joyce Foundation collected another installment on its payment for the MinnPost’s PR services in pursuit of disarming the American people – in this case, a “Community Voices” column by by Rebecca Lowen and Doug Rossinow, who are listed as “history professors at Metro State”. Those who fail to learn from history,…
-
Rant And Slant
A few weeks ago, I pointed out that not only does the MinnPost appear to be selling news to the highest bidder (or, more accurately, biggest contributor), but that MPR News appears to have done the same. The Usual Bona Fides: Let me give you my usual disclaimer; I’ve always – or at least for the last ten…
-
He’ll Never Do Lunch In This Town Again
Remember the spring of 2009? Obama and his hope’nchange had just been inaugurated – so everyone was still blaming Bush for everything. And at the Humphrey Center, a conclave of journalist fanboys attended a shinding with Village Voice journo Seymour Hersh, hosted by Walter Mondale at the Humphrey Center, to pimp Hersh’s upcoming book claiming…
-
Distrust But Verify
Last week, when the first news of the Washington Navy Yard shooting broke out, I thought to myself “let’s sit out these first reports – because whatever the mainstream media reports for the first 4-6 hours will be not just wrong, but hysterical and the result of templates being filled in from the MSM/Democrat narrative”.…
-
An Open Letter To MPR News
To: MPR News From: Mitch Berg,Uppity Peasant Re: Re-Joyce And Be Glad MPR, Last week, in a similar open letter to the management at the news-blog MinnPost, I asked how they squared the fact that they were accepting sponsorship for their “news” coverage – let alone sponsorship from non-profit issue advocacy groups and the government…
-
Open Letter To The MinnPost Editorial Team
To: Joel Kramer (CEO/Editor), Roger Buoen and Susan Albright (Co-Managing Editors) Don Effenberger (News Editor) From: Mitch Berg, Uppity Peasant Re: They Get What They Pay For Esteemed Editors: I was never much of a reporter. I could always do the “who, what, when, where, why and how” of a story just fine, and earned a living…
-
Junk Science, Junk Journalism, Platinum Funding
The MinnPost – a non-profit-run institutional blog established the the intention to get a jump on the next wave of institutional journalism – gets a whole bunch of money from the Joyce Foundation. Joyce also bankrolls Minnesota’s “largest” gun grabber group, “Protect Minnesota”, and Michael Bloomberg’s “Mayors Against Illegal Guns”, as well as paying academics…
-
Watching The Defectives
I feel like smacking an MSNBC host like a piñata. A Piñata full of crap. In this case, it’s MSNBC contrib Joy Reid, who said on the air: “There’s this sort of neo-Confederate thread that runs through this pro-gun movement and NRA movement,” she said this afternoon while discussing the recall elections for Democratic state…
-
The Strib: Keeping The Boogeyman Alive
The Strib ran an editorial from the Saint Louis Post-Dispatch over the weekend, entitled “A senator, scrutinizing ALEC? How dare he.”. The headline sounds like it was written by Eric Pusey. The rest of the editorial isn’t much better. And the fact that the Strib runs it – ergo folds it under their own editorial…
-
Rise Up, Peasants, And Defend The Plutocrats!
I got this letter from “Protect Minnesota” recently. “Protect Minnesota” was what Rep. Heather Martens (DFLiar – HD66A) had to rename “Citizens for a “Safer” Supine Minnesota” when it turned out her constant lying had damaged whatever credibility the old brand had. For those who’ve missed earlier installments of my coverage of Ms. Martens, here’s…
-
Nick Coleman: Same As It Ever Was
Anyone remember this classic? So, how is it that nakedly partisan bloggers who make things up left and right are gaining street cred while the mainstream media, which spend a lot of time criticizing themselves, are under attack? Or this one? “Bloggers don’t know about anything that happened before they sat down to share their…
-
MinnPost: Heather Martens’ PR Firm
The MInnPost is an organization I’d very much like to respect. It includes a raft of people I’ve considered good reporters. But over the course of Minnesota’s gun debate over this past session – brought on by Minnesota DFL legislators launching a raft of authoritarian gun bills, including at least one that called for confiscation…
-
A Confederacy Of (Those Who Want You To Be) Dunces
One of the worst aspects of our current hyper-polarized political climate is that many institutions that the American people used to rely upon for something close to objectivity and reliable, politically-untinted information have turned into partisan propaganda. Journalism is long gone, of course; the notion of the “objective” media died among anyone who pays attention…
-
The Trojan Gun
Barack was against guns, before he was for them: …before he became a national political figure, he sat on the board of a Chicago-based foundation that doled out at least nine grants totaling nearly $2.7 million to groups that advocated the opposite positions. The foundation funded legal scholarship advancing the theory that the Second Amendment…