Journalism’s unstoppable ‘Leftward Ho!’

George Rebane

[Apologies for the late posting of this commentary.  My writing workflow always has several pieces in concurrent development, and sometimes one of them with time-dependent content gets overlooked for too long, but one that I still want to have archived as part of RR’s record.]

California’s passing of a racial diversity law that prescribes the composition of boards of corporations headquartered in the state.  This new legislation, now signed into law, is one the most blatant racist mandates by government that the morals-bleating Left have imposed on residents.  (more here)  This law joins the gender-biased legislation that requires female representation on boards and takes another step away from merit-based make-ups of publicly traded corporate boards.

There is no question that such laws continue to hobble the engines of wealth creation in California, but wealth creation has never been the objective of socialist governments.  The state has assumed the mantle of leadership in the Union for destructive collectivist initiatives designed to fundamentally transform America from a capitalist economy and society to one of comprehensive government planning and control.

Along this road to autocracy, we encounter questions raised for years on RR.  Now others are beginning understand the societal benefits of more culturally coherent societies, as we witness the daily destruction of every aspect of America’s traditions, cultural values, and institutions (more here).  Our Fourth Estate has long abandoned their traditional role in bringing reliable and timely news to their audiences.  They all are invested in one or the other side of a terminally polarized citizenry, and there is less and less of the ‘other side’ remaining in the cadre of media outlets.  No conservative broadcast outlets remain.  There is only Fox News which used to be a solidly “fair and balanced” outlet that also gave conservative voices a podium.  That stance is now fading as FN succumbs to the fear of being left behind in the virtue signaling competition, as it includes ever more liberal talking heads and left-tainted news copy.  When Rupert made his liberal son Lachlan CEO of Fox Corporation that owns FN, he started revamping both the Fox News and Fox Business cable outlets.

According to its CEO Suzanne Scott, FN now attempts to serve the desires of its expanded audience which, for obvious reasons, has attracted liberals to its traditional conservative and mid-road audiences.  Her “focus is on business” (i.e. no longer selling but giving them the rope) and with the new liberal cohort making up FN’s audience, this means that programming now has to reflect their jaundiced worldview.  Nevertheless, Scott claims that she will not deflect the main thrust of programming and news presentation to satisfy the recently arrived audience segment from the Left. (more here)  However, as a dedicated FN viewer of many years, I will beg to differ with the lady – the network, with liberal commentators like Chris Wallace and the compliantly weak-kneed Bret Baier, is definitely drifting to the left as it creates unneeded stress in its news presentations and interviews with conservative guests.  In short, FN now stands on the boundary of manufacturing fake news to satisfy its legions of liberal critics and timid, virtue signaling sponsors.

An example of this occurred recently when FN, joined by the WSJ, was busy putting out the story that the ‘White House Gives Mixed Signals on Trump’s Health’.  The WH was putting out no such signals.  All that happened was that hours before, some anonymous staffer had opined to a reporter that President Trump was probably more ill than was put out to the public.  But after that, a phalanx of Walter Reed physicians treating Trump assembled en masse and pronounced the president to be doing extremely well while not being on a ventilator as had been surmised by the anonymous source.  This welcome report was the latest and up-to-date on the condition of our chief executive. (more here)  Yet FN, with the help of Chris Wallace, insisted on repeating the ‘mixed signals’ version of what was then old news (rumor), and strongly implying that we really didn’t know what the true medical condition of the president was, and also that his attending medicos could not be trusted.  Now that is manufactured fake news pure and simple.

To put a technical bow on my interpretation, in the modern study of causality and Bayesian inference when you get reliable new information that overwrites what might have been in the past, your job is to take that as the updated ‘state of the system’, and start treating it as the previous understanding (i.e. the prior) to which you now will appropriately append new inputs and calculate the updated understanding.  If you don’t abandon the dated priors (like yesterday’s anonymous report), then you must give specific reason why you retain and reincorporate that old information, and allow it to influence your present beliefs.  FN and Wallace did none of this.  They just continued to spin their ‘mixed signals’ story to artificially maintain audience interest and stress levels.  In short, ignoring the latest reliable report and rehashing possible conflicting past reports to maintain viewer interest is one popular way to fabricate fake news.

This has long been among the MO of the lamestream media, has already been adopted by the politically flipped Drudge Report, and is now being busily incorporated into the Fox empire.  We still have some balance left in the op-ed pages of the WSJ, and the stalwart Epoch Times, which remains as a reliable print and online news source and purveyor of conservative opinions and interpretations.

Comments

[scenes]

(from GeorgeR's link) "Underrepresented communities are defined in the law as people who identify as Black, Latino, Native American, Asian American, Pacific Islander, native Hawaiian, or native Alaskan. "

'identify as'...well, that's extra-special legalistic language.

Serious question for Paul 'n D, since they are the only people posting here who might consider this reasonable. How on earth do you determine this?

Can Talcum-X be a board member, or at least fill the affirmative action seat for black members of a board? Can I (having about as much sub-Saharan admixture as your typical Viking)? I could promise to be whatever identification that you like, as long as I don't have to wear too much makeup.

I can imagine the results from a few court cases. Pantone colors for skin tones? Provable lineage to the slave trade? Does ancestral slave ownership kick you out of the cool kids (like Ms. Harris)?

My choice for a change in business law. Board membership is a non-paid position.

-scenes who identifies as them/what/who?

[Scott O]

Here's a great (and hilarious) example -
"Trump intensifies fracking assault on Biden in Pennsylvania"
So your fav politician is caught lying through his teeth and the opposition is pointing it out. What to do?
Saying that pointing out the lie is now an "assault".
And he's 'intensifying' it.
Poor Joe - he's the victim!
"C'mon, man - stop assaulting me with the truth!" cries out poor Joe!
Won't you help?
Call 1 800 I believe Poor Joe.

[Scott O]

Oh wait - I forgot the link and the money quote:
"In a late gambit to win the battleground state of Pennsylvania, President Trump and his GOP allies have intensified attacks on Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden over fracking."

https://news.yahoo.com/video/trump-intensifies-fracking-assault-biden-181041844.html

[Rob't Cross]

You're absolutely correct about journalism's lurch to the left. What you leave out is the massive lurch to the right that preceded it. CNN, for example was started by Ted Turner as a "balance" to the so-called left leaning of CBS and Walter Cronkite and NBC's Huntley-Brinkley. With the consolidation of media outlets during the 80's and 90s, news became a commodity to be sold rather than a public service. The 'news' people got/get is billionaire corporate news. Do you think for a minute they would attack themselves or. their owners. Media scholars call it the '50 yard line' theory. The 50 yard line has moved right to the 30. American politics has moved with it. What is now considered middle of the road is actually 20 yards to the right. It was Nixon who put forth the EPA, title IX, the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, the Endangered Species Act, and numerous other pieces of legislation that Republicans are now trying to eliminate. Your 'lame stream' media is nothing more than billionaire owned corporations responding, as much as they can to maintain some modicum of credibility, to the tens of thousands of Trump lies and distortions.

[George Rebane]

Rob't 1122am - Another interesting perspective demonstrating the total absence of common ground.