Category Archives: Media

Everything about the mainstream media.

The Last You’ll Hear Of This Story

Posted on by
8

SCENE:  Mitch BERG is waiting to speak to a manager at O’Gara’s about some entertainment business.  

Avery LIBRELLE walks into the bar, holding a tin cup, seeking donations for Carlton students with “Triggering Fatigue”.  LIBRELLE notices BERG.

LIBRELLE:  MERG!

BERG:  Oh, hey, Avery. How ya doing?

LIBRELLE:  Fascists are launching that wave of violence.

BERG:  Actually, it’s “Anti”-Fa’s blackshirts that are actually doing the violence.

LIBRELLE:  Har di har!

BERG:  Remember that episode last March, where a permitted group of Trump supporters were…

LIBRELLE:  …where they encountered a group of anti-Fascists who were just minding their own business, and the blame was on both sides.

BERG:  That’s your story, and you’re sticking with it?

LIBRELLE:  Of course.  It’s settled science.  Neil DeGrasse Tyson says so.

BERG:   Yeah, not so much.  One of the snowflakes involved in the attack took the deal.    And as part of the deal, he had to admit on the record what happened.  Here, let me read fro this bit from Alphanews:

Sagermerek, who initially pled not guilty during his first court appearance, told the court he “maced someone” and had intentions of disturbing the peace when affirming he would plead not guilty.

However, when Taheri and Sagermerek went over the events of the March 4 Trump rally, Sagermerek contradicted himself by stating that he intended to counter-protest peacefully, though he later admitted to carrying mace in his pockets.

Describing Trump supporters as protesters and the alt-right, Sagermereck told the court he was covered head-to-toe in black, wearing a studded jacket and bandana over his face, that he arrived with several other people.

Acknowledging Trump supporters had built a wall to keep counter-protesters away from their event, Sagermereck told the court that is when he grabbed the canister of mace and “sprayed it at one of the Trump supporters.” He announced the attack to be one that was “unprovoked and not in defense.”

Seven other counter-protesters have been charged and are currently awaiting trial.

LIBRELLE:  Ah.  So the Trump supporters tried to keep the counter-protesters…

BERG:  …in their bandanas and blackshirt-wear…

LIBRELLE:  …away from their demonstration?   Well, there you go.  Hate crime.

BERG:  Of course it is.

But LIBRELLE has already walked to the other bar to try to order a gluten-free diet Pepsi. 

And SCENE.

 

Punch Back

Posted on by
6

The builders of the Dakota Access Pipeline are suing the racket of “environmental” groups that spent half a year obstructing their work:

From last summer through the first couple of months of 2017 there was an all-out assault on the construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline. Protesters, summoned to rural south central North Dakota by the Standing Rock Sioux tribe and a myriad of environmental groups, blocked roads and set fires and harassed pipeline workers all in an attempt derail the project.

It didn’t work. Oil flows through the Dakota Access Pipeline today, but the State of North Dakota did run up a $38 million bill for the law enforcement response.

Anyway, today Energy Transfer Partners (the company behind DAPL) filed a lawsuit in federal court accusing some of the environmental groups involved in the protests of racketeering.

For all the fawning coverage MInnesota Public Radio gave the protests and protesters, I’m almost amazed they weren’t named as co-respondents.

Otherwise Occupied

Posted on by
3

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

The lead article in the August issue of the Midway Monitor is about Frogtown Radio WFNU 94.1 being on the air.  It’s low-power community radio, covers a 5-mile diameter reaching from Har-Mar to the river, from the U of M to the Capital.  They want to give the diversity of talent in the Frogtown area the chance to be heard.

Sounds like an opportunity for a member of a historically under-represented minority to get on the air.  I’m talking, of course, about Conservatives, who have been systematically excluded from the halls of power in St. Paul since the Great Depression. With your experience in radio, you’d be a shoo-in.

And your very first program could be an investigative piece.  The article quotes the Station Director explaining the need for community radio was driven by people who are not cis-gendered white men having limited access to higher education.  I, for one, would love to hear why Brown Institute refuses to accept women, LGBTQIA and persons of color as students.

There’s an open slot in the programming schedule on Sunday afternoons.  The community needs you.

Joe Doakes

I’m flattered, but I don’t think Salem would cotton to it.

However – I’d be more than happy to help any Saint Paul conservative who wants to make a go at it; application help, coaching, production…whatever.

Have yoiur people call my people.

The Man Without A Party

Posted on by
5

Saint Paul representative and attorney general candidate John Lesch has been given a $25,000 fine for irregularities in handling his campaign finances.  One little smidgen of emphasis is added:

After working with Lesch, his treasurers — one of whom is the representative’s wife — and investigating the situation for more than three years, the campaign finance board fined the lawmaker $25,000 for the violations.

Incumbent Legislator John Lesch, DFL, has been 66B’s rep. at the capitol for ten years. Lesch is challenged this election season by Republican candidate Ben Blomgren.
The board found that Lesch generally transferred money from his campaign account to his personal account at times when there otherwise would have been “insufficient funds” without the campaign cash.

“Rep. Lesch’s immediate need for resources in per personal accounts at or close to the time of the unexplained transfers further supports the Board’s conclusion hat the transfers were for personal use,” the campaign finance board’s report says.

The emphasized “DFL” reference?  It wasn’t in the original story.

Imagine that.

 

 

Backwards Schadenfreud

Posted on by
Reply

I’m not sure what I like most about the proposed plan to save KFAI Radio – the long- running ‘Publicly-Supported” Pacifica affiliate in the west bank (where, I note in full disclosure, I was a volunteer news guy 25 years ago, trying to find a way to infiltrate the MPR Borg).

Is it the idea that a plucky underdog might survive against the MPR juggernaut (MPR’s former generalissimo, Bill Kling, spent decades trying to extinguish small community stations, the better to snarf up their funding sources)?

Could be.

But I think it’s the fact that the plan involves actual radio people bringing some actual radio programming common sense to the station, which endlessly cheeses off the sort of people who’ve been killing off these sorts of “community” stations.

 

Balance, Public Radio Style

Posted on by
7

When a Democrat makes an allegation against a Republican

BROADCASTER:  “Democrat Don Key has accused Republican Allie Funt of wearing army boots.  In other news..,”

When a Republican makes an allegation against a Democrat

BROADCASTER:  “Republican Gia Piey alleges that Democrat Dawn Quie wears army boots.   A spokesperson for the Quie campaign denies this, noting that  there is no evidence supporting the allegations”.

Narrative Check

Posted on by
32

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

Trump claims John Podesta barred the FBI from looking at the DNC computer.

You remember that computer – not the one in Hillary’s bathroom that she wiped with a cloth, this is the DNC server that supposedly got “hacked” by the Russians to steal the Democrats’ emails, which the Russians then released to the public through their shill, Wikileaks, in an effort to make Hillary look bad so voters wouldn’t like her, all the while colluding with the Trump campaign to steal the election from Hillary.   Trump claims the FBI never saw it.

Naturally, the Liberal media is covering for the Democrats.  Politifact rated Trump’s claim a LIE:  John Podesta did NOT bar the FBI from looking at the DNC computer.  Somebody else did that.

Missing the point, people!  The essence of the claim remains true: the feds never saw the computer.

The only evidence the Russians had anything to do with the massive leak of embarrassing emails comes from the private IT firm hired by the Democrats.  The leak could just as easily have come from a disgruntled DNC employee, perhaps an IT specialist who downloaded the emails and offered them to Wikileaks right before he was murdered in a ‘robbery gone bad’ in which nothing was stolen, that the D.C. cops refuse to investigate.

Since when does the FBI out-source criminal investigations or national security breaches?  But the Democrats assured James Comey the Russians did it, and that’s good enough for old Jimbo. And the rest of the nation blindly follows the false trail down the rabbit hole.

Joe Doakes

If Democrats defended this nation like they defend their narrative, ISIS would be hiding under a rock in the Hejdaz.

Telegraphing

Posted on by
7

To:  Minnesota Public Radio News
From:  Mitch Berg, irascible peasant
Re:  Your Teaser This Morning

Heard on MPR’s morning edition:  Cathy Wurzer blurbs to tease an upcoming story:  “Will an Embridge pipeline in Northern Minnesota become the next Standing Rock?”

Given MPR’s connections to the Twin Cities’ Big Environmentalist Left, you’ll pardon me if it sounds like:

  1. Big Environmentalism and Big Protest have been planning to make this pipeline “the next Standing Rock” for some time.
  2. MPR, being tied into the same Twin Cities “progressive” non-profit circles as Big Environment and Big Protest, knows this fully well.
  3. Standing Rock was good business for MPR.  Their reporters had constant access to the Standing Rock site, and responded with what sounded to this listener like an awful lot of sympathetic puff-piece coverage.   MPR News and APM would no doubt love to have another story like it to fill this long slow, election-free summer.

Of course it’s going to be “like Standing Rock”.  And I’m pretty sure everyone that matters at MPR already knows it, is planning for it, and started booking hotel rooms up amid the jackpines long before Wurzer’s teaser was written.

I mean, am I wrong?

That is all.

Layers And Layers Of Gatekeepers

Posted on by
Reply

If it bleeds – or coughs, stings, goes “boom” or rots your insides out as you hack lungs out – it leads.

This? It’s a picture. Go to the link and see the actual animated graphic.

Animated infographic showing how media hysteria compares to actual deaths caused by the stories they were about.

I’m not saying I don’t trust the American mainstream media.

Because why stop with America?

Todays’ Business Model, Fifteen Years Ago

Posted on by
9

Media companies switching to unpaid student labor.

As head editor for the local chapter of an online food-culture publication, Brogan Dearinger spent most mornings last fall coming up with story ideas, editing submissions and checking the performance of articles.

But there was no money in it—at least not for her.

Ms. Dearinger, then a senior at Indiana University Bloomington, was among about 8,000 unpaid college students working for local chapters of Spoon University Inc., a for-profit media company.

“They are always pushing us to publish more,” Ms. Dearinger said. “Since writers don’t get paid for their articles, sometimes it’s hard to motivate them to write more articles.”

That’s one way around those $15/hour minimum wage laws!

This is, of course, the model that Shot In The Dark and the NARN have used from Day 1.

Omission

Posted on by
4

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

There was a special election in Georgia to fill the seat in Congress left vacant when Rep. Tom Price took the job of Secretary of Health and Human Services in the Trump administration.

News media is reporting it’s the most expensive congressional race ever, which proves we need campaign finance reform to prevent politicians from buying their way into office.

What they fail to mention is that Democrat Jon Ossoff spent five times as much asRepublican Karen Handel.  The Democrat was the one trying to buy the election.  Nobody in the media called on him to stop raising money before the election – they wanted a Democrat to win so they’d be able to claim the country was turning against Trump.  Now that he’s lost after out-spending his opponent 5-to-1, suddenly the media is aghast at how much money is spent on politics.

Money, I might note, that is spent to buy advertising in newspapers and on television, which is the revenue stream that pays journalists’ salaries.  Talk about hypocrites.  No wonder nobody believes anything the media says.

Joe Doakes

Well – the smart people, anyway.

Slain

Posted on by
28

Yesterday:  “John Ossoff, the Trump Slayer, in the most important Congressional race in history – a race that is a sure-fire referendum on Trump!.”

NPR’s wishful, romanticized coverage, before the news really sank in that the “Trump Slayer” was yet another empty Democrat suit.

Today:  “Just another special election.  Hard red distsrict!   Ossoff never had a chance! Nothing to see here.  Move along, citizen.”

Remember – John “Trump Slayer” Ossoff raised and spent nearly five times as much as Karan Handel, in a district that Trump barely carried six months ago.

And they were so hopeful.  From NPR’s extended tongue-bath of Ossoff:

“Ossoff’s campaign has long held that it has the edge in voter enthusiasm — a more committed base of voters who will flock to the polls regardless to support him. Handel’s supporters points to a core of backers who have followed her through thick-and-thin as well.

Image may contain: 4 people

CNN’s panel of hairdos, watching the fat lady go for that high E flat.  Bias?  Perish the thought!

“Still, for Handel’s campaign, this could be a problem. She’s expected to trail Ossoff in the early voting numbers, and hopes for a solid election day turnout to notch a win. But the downpours could dampen voter participation in GOP bastions as well.”

Wasn’t even close.

Fake Minneapolis

Posted on by
4

Yesterday, we reported on the fishy use of camera angles in presenting Saturday’s Dreamsicle rally in Minneapolis.   While the media narrative was that the events were well-attended, the photographic evidence from the even couldn’t be shot from angles tight enough to show that attendance was sparsse at best…

…and, from the looks of it, mostly not people from North Minneapolis.

We caught the Strib fluffing for Betsy Hodges yesterday.

Today, it’s the Minnpost.  Read their photo caption (before it gets disappeared):

“We’re the MinnPost. We’re funded by the Joyce Foundation, which also funds “Protect” Minnesota, not to mention contributions from Minnesoto’s gun-phobic self-appointed elite. So when we say there were hundreds at a gun grabber rally, but only a couple dozen are ever visible, nearly all of them painfully obviously the saime white, ELCA-hair-coiffed Subaru-driving Whole-Foods-shopping Southside liberals that turn up for every gun-grabber rally, well, who are you going to believe?  Us, or your lying eyes?”

Oh, yeah;  it’s not just photographic history being fluffed:

North Minneapolis resident Nikki McComb said she’d like to see more creative solutions in addressing gun violence. For instance, she said, she helped run a north Minneapolis gun buy-back project last year called Art Is My Weapon, which bought back weapons, no questions asked, and redistributed the disassembled pieces to north side artists for use in their works.

What made the project so effective, McComb said, was that it rid the streets of 250 guns while giving something positive back to the community. “We’re just really trying to use art as a catalyst for change,” she said.

Remember that “Gun Buyback” fiasco?   Read the story.   It got some guns – out of gun owners’ closets and attics, not “the streets”.

Or…workshops:

legal shotgun

Read the writing on the “stock”.

Observers say it was more like single digits; not even a quarter of “250”

The MinnPost:  doing Fake News (at least about guns) before it was called that!

 

Fake Reality

Posted on by
23

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

Hollywood is where they make movies, fictional stories presented for entertainment.  They are carefully scripted, staged and shot to show the best angles and most effective presentation.

Pallywood is the term given to movies made by Palestinians, fictional stories presented to gin up outrage against Israel.  They are carefully scripted, staged and shot to show the best angles and most effective presentation.

And now we have CNN-wood, a fictional story presented by CNN to pretend that ordinary Muslims are against ISIS and Islamic terrorism.  The story was carefully scripted, staged and shot to show the best angles and most effective presentation.

Movies that we know show fake scenes is one thing.  We willingly suspend disbelief to enjoy the story.  Propaganda that we suspect may be fake is something else, but we are suspicious enough not to be taken in.

The news media creating a news story that it knows to be fake, but which it presents as the truth, is a deliberate lie told with intent to deceive.  If we cannot rely on the news to report honestly, how can we distinguish it from propaganda?  And if we can’t distinguish it, why should we give journalists any respect?

(MItch:  we can’t, good question, and as a group we should not; there are honest journos, but the institutions are rotten to the core).

Stories like this validate Trump’s assertion that the major media is fake news.

They make Trump credible.

Joe Doakes

And I think about half of this country knows that.

(And a quarter thinks the media is in the bag for the right.  Yep.  They’re out there somewhere).

Lie First, Lie Always: What Doesn’t Happen At Dreamsicle Day, Stays At Dreamsicle Day

Posted on by
6

The other, I noted the hilarious-yet-grim irony of Betsy Hodges, mayor (for now) of Minneapolis, whiich is by far the most violent city in Minnesota, lecturing the state on “gun safety” and “violence”.

Betsy Hodges, at Dreamsicle Day last weekend.

In recent years, as crime in the state at large has plummetted (and the number of law-abiding citizens with carry permits has skyrocketed), crime in Minneapolis is getting worse.

Nonetheless, the gun control movement (once thier serial lies are revealed) carries on trying to convince the undecided that

  1. there’s a yuge problem with violence outside the urban core, and
  2. there’s a groundswell of popular support for addressing it by stripping the constitutional rights of law-abiding citizens.

We address the former quite frequently on this blog.  The latter point takes a little more patience, but it’s out there.

Last year, I pointed out the laughably sparse turnout at “Protect” MN and Moms Want Action events in Eagan and on the mean streets by the Stone Arch Bridge by the Guthrie.

And this year?

Look at the photo of Mayor Hodges, above, standing in front of the banner wearing a dress made from a tablecloth salvaged from an old “Chi-Chis” restaurant.  Interesting angle, no?

Here’s the view from behind Her Honor, toward the, ahem, crowd.

25 people, not counting the cop.  And four of them are affiliated with “Protect” MN and Moms Want Action.  And the “rally” is in North Minneapolis, sort of – but the crowd, almost to a person, has that “south Minneapolis” look about them; the ELCA hair,

 

Nature Or Nurture?

Posted on by
20

Is Colleen Campbell – reporter former reporter at Channel 17 in Philly – merely a nasty drunk?

Or a boundlessly-entitled “elite” Millennial?  Or a symptom of the most toxic neo-Victorian strain of feminism (being as obnoxious as any drunk man, but then pleading “you’re arresting a giiiiiirl for no f***ng reason” at 2:29)?

Whatever she is, she’s an ex reporter.

Is she an ex-reporter, because whatever our current media’s many, Many, Many, Many faults, there is at least one standard that most reputable news organizations enforce; you don’t try to invoke your position as a “journalist” in an argument with a business or, worse, the Law.

When I was at Hubbard in the eighties, a Channel 5 guy tried to bullly a restaurant owner with a furtive “I’m with Channel Five; do you know what I can do to you?” to try to impress the girlfriend.  His desk was cleaned out before he got to the station the next day.

So – was she fired because she was a toxic drunk, a horrible entitled person, or someone whose “power” had gone to her head?

Why choose?

I love the smell of career napalm in the morning.

The Religion Of Environmentalism And Health Insurance (UPDATE: Ooops)

Posted on by
7

The fact that Ben Carson got mocked in the media, while Maxine Waters isn’t considered a national laughinstock, will be prime evidence when we finally have Nuremberg-style tribunals about media bias:

Image may contain: 1 person, text

And yet she’s taken seriously.

UPDATE:  Ooops.  Parody account.

I plead “long day at Grand Old Day”.

To be fair, the measure of great satire is that it could be the real thing…

Narrative Slide

Posted on by
7

Jeremy Joseph Christian kills two in an anti-Muslim rampage on a train in Portland, Oregon.

Word gets out that Christian was a “white supremacist”.  Media assume that means “Right Wing Pro-Trump Hate Criminal” – and brows are furrowed as our  high priests of knowledge obsess over What It All Means.

Then, it turns out Christian is actually a Sanders guy.

Writing for Willamette Week, Corey Pein said he interviewed Christian during [a “Free Speech” march in Portland], and the alleged killer chanted the n-word and threw Nazi salutes. Pein writes that amid Christian’s rants about Jews on Facebook, he expressed support for Bernie Sanders and Jill Stein for president. The Willamette Week writer describes that as a “distraction” others will seize upon as they contradict the narrative of Christian as a real white supremacist.

Simple fact – and Berg’s 19th Law has controlling legal authority, here – is that Christian was a nihilist, if you want to credit it as an actual train of thought, and apparently deeply mentally ill if you don’t.

Either way?  The mainstream media promptly lost interest.

But Don’t You Dare Say The Media Has A Narrative

Posted on by
2

Does this look scary?

I’m pretty sure it was supposed to look scary.  It’s from Channel 5, last Friday.

The Associated Press ran pretty much the same headline on their story.  If I’m feeling charitable, I’d assume the web producer at Channel 5 was too busy and under informed to change the AP’s hed.  If I”m not feeling charitable – and let’s be honest, I’m not – we can assume Channel 5’s producer shares the same myopic narrative that the AP’s writer does, and shares the same desire to inflict fear upon the audience at the thought that some Minnesota buyers might be able to buy guns without background checks.

Shiver!

Now For The Truth:  The truth is a little less scary; the BATFE has decided that Minnesota carry permits are sufficient substitute for the NICS background check; when a carry permittee – who, by definition, is over 21, has no criminal record, has passed a background check and a training course on skills and legal knowledge – buys a gun, they don’t need to get the online or phone-in background check in addition to their carry permit check.

That’s carry permittees  – of whom there are a quarter million in this state, and whose rate of criminal offense is nearly two orders of magnitude lower than the general population.

Not quite as scary-sounding when you put it that way, is it?