Correcting the record after a desperate slam job on the Twitter Files, published just before oral arguments in a historic First Amendment case in the Supreme Court
I remember having beers with a fellow reporter during the Jayson Blair fiasco and saying, in a less than sober way, that fakers like Blair should get the death penalty.
I thought that throwing him in front of a train had a nice, dramatic quality to it.
People appalled by such sentiments don't understand how much integrity meant to reporters. We joked all the time about the clowns we covered (and worked for) but deep down our attitude was as serious as you could get.
Although Jayson at least had a crack problem. It’s the sober editors I don’t get… You hit a chord when you reminiscence about the seriousness that was there once. I remember listening to my father talk about a colleague who got something wrong. It was like someone died in the office.
Journalism was serious business before 9/11. For years, my brother wrote for a respected guitar magazine. In the 90s, they had a roster of great writers and errors, even typos were a badge of shame. They'd get nose to nose arguing about what type of guitar strings Jeff Beck used, they were that serious. It was inspiring to see young guys taking their craft seriously. And they weren't
even writing about life and death matters.
Today the mainstream is all "Advocacy Journalism" to use a George Soros term.
The ethical standards have been tossed away, for pure greed. Look at what Letitia James is doing. Look at what Fani Willis is doing. Look at Judge Engeron. Same church, different pew.
I’m a fan of professional golf. Literally, every pro golfer learns, and it’s unquestioned, that one has to call penalties on oneself. So, many of our political representatives and in the media have lower standards than golfers. Good grief!
Jayson's crack problem is new to me. Possibly regarded as an asset by the DEI Times management. As for the "seriousness that once was," you've reminded me of my meeting with a Times executive on a Maine beach circa 1970, the father of a friend met that summer. He was intelligent, fair and respected. I only met him once. He gave me good advice merely by being who he was. An unforgettable event. Alas, he and his wife lost their lives when their plane crashed on the coast of Canada about 1998.
Objectivity I was shocked to learn is now a dirty word in the new journalism. The logic of which is Orwellian , self-righteous, self-important and crusading.
Too busy writing "their truth" to write the the truth. "After finishing college in 1991, Rutenberg began working for the New York Daily News as a gossip stringer." Word on the street is that gossip writers warp their minds around who might be fing whom.
This was around the same time cable channels took reruns of "The Apprentice" off the air because it "humanized Donald Trump". The pettiness of it is nauseating.
Wow ! Its a full court, all hands on deck effort to prevent Trump from being re- elected.. Nothing that counters the dehumanizing efforts against him can be allowed.
What's encouraging, though, is the more they attack Trump, the more popular he becomes. Seems to indicate public trust in MSM is dwindling. For the record, I'm no Trump fan, but I knew from day 1 of "Russiagate" that it was all BS, and I've since so enjoyed being vindicated.
Watching that train wreck a time or two put me ahead of the pack in predicting a Trump win. The con, the threats, the marketing, intimidations, anything goes, the “I’m the boss” attitude.which to many American workers means he alone can get things done. Many can identify with a fuck up who breaks all the rules.
I'm just a working class yahoo so I used to rely on you people to point out when the bastards in power were lying to me & manipulating me.
Now I approach the news as if it were written on opposite day. If a major news organization tells me I need to look right these days I just automatically look left.
I know it's not much of a strategy but my options seem limited these days.
I do that, too! You'd have to be a brain-dead zombie not to! Just look at all the fake news since 2015 or so: Trump is a Russian asset, Trump is a racist, all cops are racist pigs, "mostly peaceful protests," "summer of love" (as cities were burning), Covid came from a wet market, the shots will stop transmission & protect against the virus; well, at least the shots will keep you out of the hospital, the shots are totally safe! Then there was January 6th, in which a bunch of boomers & Gen X folks armed with nothing but cell phones and Trump banners attempted to "stage a coup," followed by the Afghanistan debacle, the CIA mucking around in Ukraine to start a proxy war, etc. . .
Did you ever see any old Oprah shows where Oprah says some sort of cliched platitude & the whole damn audience nods in unison? That used to creep me out no end.
Now that the entire Democratic Party has seemingly mutated into an Oprah audience, gleefully nodding away at absurdities, I have come to realize that I didn't know the meaning of "creeped out."
I had a similar epiphany some years ago, but it took Glenn Greewald to hit me over the head.
Greenwald said during the Obama regime: "If you want to know what Obama's going to do, just listen to what he says and turn it around 180 degrees. If he says he's seeking peace, war's coming".
I've actually been using the phrase "in the before times" to describe life before 2015 or so, when I first started noticing something was seriously off.
right but the problem really is the supine who chide you for looking to the left. "They told you not to do that!" those are the ones stifling speech and are the most dangerous as they are our friends and family. the best example of the women who refuse to say anything as transgender men invade their most private spaces.
03/17/24: John, it will hearten you to know that the evening of November 5, 2024, Rutenberg (why are all these spoiled brats reared in suburban Philadelphia?!) will be thunderstruck with fear and self-loathing. Guaranteed. Now, for a trip back to the past with a journalist with integrity, order "Looking For Trouble," by Virginia Cowles.
That's exactly what I though when I saw "suburban PA". The Main Line is Old Money in a way a wild colonial boy from California like me barely understands, but I've read about it and seen Gilligan's Island. I imagine Thurston Howell III would fit in nicely there.
Good point. Of course, given Rutenberg's craven character, his point of origin could be anywhere (my guess is the Martha Stewart-endowed Convict's Maternity Ward in the Federal Alderson prison camp in West Virginia).
When my family moved there in 1964, when I was in 8th grade, it was rock ribbed conservative Republican, and the Suburban and Wayne Times was as conservative a paper as you could find.
I think the fix is in. I have no idea what form that takes, but I'm sure they're working on it. We'll have another season where Trump is leading at the end of the night, but then they'll keep counting votes and counting votes until the moment Biden is ahead and, at that instant, the counting will stop. And those who complain - or even question - will be prosecuted.
I live in Phoenix, & I fully expect the Dems to steal the 2024 election, just like they stole the 2020 and 2022 elections. Our legislature has not been able to pass meaningful election reform measures, so I know they'll just keep counting ballots until Biden is ahead. He'll probably get 90 million votes this time around.
French President Macron made a declarative public statement "as far as I'm informed, I don't think Donald Trump will be the next president". Huh? I wonder who told him that? And I think you're right. The 2020 election was fishy as hell. Rock-ribbed republican Kari Lake lost the governor's race in Arizona to a woke, upspeaking, vocal-fry-effecting twit. The chance of that happening is lower than the chance of Trump winning the vote in San Francisco.
Well, when the DOJ attorneys defending PFIZER (a private company) cites an editorial article in JAMA as a defense for dismissing a very big FRAUD case re the fake, botched "vaccine" clinical trials (Brook Jackson vs Ventavia Research Group), something has gone very wrong with our legal system.
"The United States should not be required to expend resources on a case that is inconsistent with its public health policy." -because a couple of doctors claimed the covid vaccines saved millions of lives?? They show no data, it's an editorial (opinion) article!!
Sharyl Attkisson does a 10 min TED Talk about how the media/govt plants misinformation articles, especially using Wikipedia, then they use those articles as "proof" of their stance.
Astroturf and manipulation of media messages-Sharyl Attkisson
So glad Matt moved on and organized Racket News. It's been a blessing for me.
The NYT story is appalling and a pitiful attempt to discredit the work that Matt & colleagues have done to defend our First Amendment rights, which the NYT seems to be taking for granted.
I think the Times sees a huge chasm between their own First Amendment rights which are sacred, and our First Amendment rights which are an abomination.
Perhaps most puzzling is that, having tried "advocacy journalism" for eight years, and having experienced massive losses of public trust, subscribers, and newsroom jobs, they seem to draw no connection whatsoever between the two.
Only when the subsidized pay ends and it negatively affects them personally, will they change. I thoroughly believe these TV "news" anchors like Savanah Guthrie, Lester Holt, et al, have been promised some prestigious position once the "big takeover" is complete.
"It reminds me of the queen in Snow White who gave up her own beauty and became an old lady just to give Snow a poisoned apple in a failed attempt to bring her down. And so the media relinquished its respected reputation just to bring The Donald down" --- Don Surber (March 14, 2024).
Mr. Surber continues:
NYT’s fair-haired boy Jim Rutenberg whose research seemed to consist of talking to Carolyn Ryan, The New York Times’s senior editor for politics, wrote the media manifesto. He made excuse after excuse after excuse for turning the news media into a propaganda machine.
Rutenberg ended his piece, “As Ms. Ryan put it to me, Mr. Trump’s candidacy is ‘extraordinary and precedent-shattering’ and ‘to pretend otherwise is to be disingenuous with readers.’
“It would also be an abdication of political journalism’s most solemn duty: to ferret out what the candidates will be like in the most powerful office in the world.
“It may not always seem fair to Mr. Trump or his supporters. But journalism shouldn’t measure itself against any one campaign’s definition of fairness. It is journalism’s job to be true to the readers and viewers, and true to the facts, in a way that will stand up to history’s judgment. To do anything less would be untenable.”
Rutenberg is wrong. The solemn duty of those in the news trade is to tell the truth. They ain’t and we no longer care about their little stories and their melodramatic problems. The failure of the press to maintain its credibility makes reporters the Kakapos of the birdbrain world.
[End Don Surber. The Kakapos is an endangered bird species.]
The solemn duty of the news is not to give us the Truth. It is to report the details of what is occurring so that readers can determine what is likely true. Truth is always elusive, but a firm grasp of who, what, when and how yields a pretty good grasp on why. The Times has largely abandoned this type of reporting. Perhaps because they can’t trust the public to reach the “correct” conclusions.
Strange. I don't remember Mr. Rutenberg soliciting my views on the wisdom of what was supposedly done on this reader's behalf. How many other readers had input into the decision, I wonder. Did he conduct a survey?
Nice how he manages to turn journalistic integrity into a "campaign's definition of fairnes" ... some petty, squabbly detail. The loftier ideal is to be "true... in a way that will stand up to history's judgment." History's judgment? We already know what that will be?
It gets harder and harder for me to believe these people take themselves seriously.
"For days, I was haunted by ... those frozen, twisted bodies of the [Russian] 44th Division [annihilated in Finland in early 1940]...
'[T]he story ... was typical of the whole blundering strategy for which the dictatorship of the proletariat now paid freely with the lives of the proletariat."
--- Virginia Cowles, "Looking for Trouble," Faber & Faber 2021 reprint of the Harper 1941 edition (03-18-24).
03/18/24: Trust me, they take themselves very, very seriously. "Humorless c*nts," as the Brits say. This enables the Rutenbergs to be able to justify / glorify their fascist attacks on the 1st Amendment (the protections of which only apply to THEM and whatever THEY say and print).
[My definition of American fascism is simple: This ideology justifies attacking/destroying the First Amendment to the American constitution. Period.]
Update (03/18/24): Carolyn Ryan's Wikipedia profile (03/18/24), and her role in the sordid nest of vipers on Eighth Avenue opposite the Port Authority building:
"Ryan is the managing editor of The New York Times...having worked there since 2007... She previously worked as the deputy managing editor of The Boston Globe ... In 2018, she won NLGJA: The Association of LGBTQ Journalists leadership award."
And to confirm that she's a Clone of Political / Social Intolerance:
Hey Matt, a favor, please. Press Jim to explain how his own infamous call for an end to objectivity in journalism is, in all substantive and identifiable ways, different from a demand that "journalists" constantly misinform the public?
Follow-up question: given that the NYT has a reach several thousand times your own, and that of almost any other outlet, hasn't JR's proposed approach to abandoning objectivity, made the NYT provably the single largest private source of misinformation on the planet since 2016, outside of social media, - and made Jim Rutenberg the Typhoid Mary of the recent collapse of trust in modern media. I'd love to hear him try to explain his way out of this fact pattern.
Jim's not alone, of course, plenty of outlets including lots on the right long ago abandoned any pretense to objectivity. Can't express really my own gratitude for your efforts. Many thanks.
Update: Trump is likely already preparing to deploy "the NYT is the Wuhan lab of the fake news epidemic killing journalism in America today" meme.
Jim Gutenberg, the Typhoid Mary of the misinformation epidemic works. As does: JT the NYT newsman who managed to destroy an entire industry almost single handed. JT editorial gave every dishonest hack and editor the green light to go full Morning Joe, all day every day.
If Rutenberg's 2016 article prompted Matt to change jobs, then at least it produced one positive result. Unfortunately the larger effect was that most reporters and publications voluntarily converted themselves into unreadable (and ultimately redundant) political tools.
"As a former journalist I found the article to be one of the most offensive things I'd ever read."
True, but at some level I appreciate that he was willing to make it clear what the new reporting standard at the New York Times was. Same with Leonard Downie Jr. at the Washington Post:
"Newsrooms that move beyond ‘objectivity’ can build trust
Same. It was unbelievable. The article made everything clear to me. It turned me from a disappointed Bernie supporter into full-on Trump supporter. Fuck those assholes.
the strangest thing about all of that is that Trump was primarily a threat to obscure standards that few outside of Washington even knew existed. How many times did they freak out because he broke some "precedent" that was established in the 1980's and was never any sort of law, much less important?
Really, for everything, Trump's cardinal sin for these people is that they feel he has poor decorum. That is a fair criticism of Trump, it just isn't nearly as important as they think it is. But they are Pharisees through and through, they care far more about the liturgy and rules of government than its meaning or function.
I suspect the Borg hates Trump for a number of reasons.
One has to be his habit of mocking them publicly, of saying the emperor has no clothes.
That unnerves them because they know it's true -- they are frauds, transparently so.
Another reason is that, rhetorically at least, he seems to back a more nationalist approach in contrast to their globalist, America Last, philosophy.
The most important reason is related to the first: sometimes Trump tells the truth. The Borg cannot withstand a steady barrage of facts because it's based on lies.
he tells his version of the truth sometimes, but it is indeed things they feel can't be said.
I think a lot about Taibbi talking about how he was in the press pool at an early even and none on of the other journos understood why riffing on them was working with the crowd .
The big thing though, is also as Taibbi has said, Trump's description of a ruling class that wins every time while your job gets shipped to China was broadly correct, even if his solutions were less so.
The Deep State is in MIAMI FLORIDA AND NASHVILLE. Tennessee and Colorado Springs Colorado. IT is centered in Kansas ask Ambrose Bierce or Lyman Frank Baum or Thomas Frank.
why don’t you think there is no such thing….when the world is fillred with such idiotic ideas…being contrarian is being conservative…not swallowing the codswallop is contrarian
I live in Hockeytown Canada/USA and Daniel Webster represented New Hampshire and Massachusetts and you bastards are destroying my town. I wish I could believe in Hell but I am afraid there is no pie in the sky when you die.
I love baseball apple pie and motherhood not FASCISM, racism, sexism, religious hypocrisy and xenophobia. I don't watch hockey I haven't watched hockey since I left Calgary in 1987. Itb is my 76th birthday and I pray for America every day and every night to my Creator.
Having followed your reporting on this story since the beginning, I found the NYT story a disgraceful hit job, even by their low standards. It is an obvious attempt to influence the Supremes, who I predict will uphold the Circuit (mostly). Not once do they say, for example, that the Biden laptop story was true. Not once do they look at what the district judge and the Circuit actually said, and say one word about the First Amendment. No, it's just disinfo all the way down, sez the NYT, and we are all too fucking stupid to sort it out for ourselves, so just let us tell you what to believe.
I once had a defamation case with Floyd Abrams against me. And I told him that I would always consider him a First Amendment hero for defending the NYT's right to publish what the government did not want us to know. How times have changed......
A friend said to me when I brought up the question of the mRNA shot’s long term side effects — “if it were true it would be in the NYT.” He still believes it’s a beacon of fearless, honest reporting and his trust in writers like Friedman and Brooks is unshakeable.
Biden’s cheap shot at the Supreme Court during his State of the Union address was telling. Everyone is to be on the same page, cringing and compliant, or prepare to be attacked.
Your friend, like many in my own circle, is basically incurious - these folks claim to want "news" but when pressed admit their real need is to have their biases and prejudices affirmed in the press.
Visiting family in Canada, had an establishment academic tee off on me when he discovered I preferred Trump's policies to those of Obama, Clinton, Bush, Biden. He railed about Trump's awful personality. I then asked which of Trump's policies he disagreed with. He couldn't name one - not even on economics.
Trump is an existential threat to those who rely for their sense of identity and income, in some cases, on a fully disfunctional society, endless wars, and a society at war with itself. That means most households making 250 k per. We've got them on the run, but these folks are not without power - case we hadn't noticed. We're far from out of the woods.
Have you read Amucus Republica? There is a 3 part explanation of “the Regime” that you might enjoy. Although it is frustrating too - it gives one the feeling, we can see it - why can’t everyone?
Cheers, I'll give it a look. I'm not enjoying any of this, btw, despite laughing at the absurdity of it all. I consider supporting Matt and the community here both a civic duty and an act of self-preservation. Every generation has a fight, this is ours.
I stopped arguing/discussing facts with the emotionally driven a long, long time ago, thank the lord. I belong to the "I'd rather be happy than right" community. Want to jab mRNA into your system? Be my guest. Rinse and repeat. Our time together is short and precious; I try to make the most of mine.
Once you understand that the PMC is the hegemonic class and that Team D is the political will of the PMC made manifest (as opposed to Team D, which basically plays a similar role with respect to local gentry), everything makes sense.
Take peace in the fact that our fellow countrymen are dumb with a capital D. The worm is turning hard. With warriors like Matt picking them off one by one, I am ready to call my friends out. Many of them are smart people who can bring in more. What is going on is a hot mess. Win people to our side day by day….it isnt hard….their entire effort is ridiculous on every level. Keep pressing the gas pedal and everything they stand for will blow up. Keep going. If what you see doesnt comport with your many years of life, it is probably devious. Act from that mindset.
I read this and for some reason my head went straight to HST "when the going gets weird, the weird turn pro"... Yeah, grapes and watermelons, but still.
I’ve signed up the NYT headlines and breaking news to keep track of Democratic Party messaging. The headline for this piece was what the NYT lead with today. It was actually a little more cryptic than their normal messaging and I now realize it was because they were talking about the Twitter files where they don’t have a legitimate viewpoint to defend. I truly don’t understand how the NYT can convince themselves that they on the right side of history on government censorship. It’s disgusting.
In my experience the NYT seems not to care about being on the right side of anything, unless by “right” you mean “progressive” in the political sense. The “Grey Lady” is a political animal masquerading as an organ of truth.
Also bewildering is that they have done a complete 180 from their own stance on their own Pentagon Papers story. And they have done so without appearing to realize it.
If the Pentagon Papers took place today, and Democrats controlled the White House and Congress as they did at the time, the NYT would ignore the hearings and instead write hit pieces about the legislators and journalists driving the investigation, while branding Daniel Ellsburg as a conspiracy theorist and dismissing court opinions as misguided and illigimate.
They're casting as a balance between "free speech" and "democratic values". That's not a balancing test that has ever existed regarding speech but seems to sound good enough to become an assumed starting point.
My bet is the ones still living are on her side. to them the law was just a cudgel to be used to get what you want. I hope I am wrong but it is very clear that to many liberalism ws simply a device to get power. Once obtained it is easy and perhaps necessary tp abandon.
The dirty secret is that nobody is more committed to seeing Trump in the WH than those who earn a buck pumping out END OF THE WORLD NOW!!!! Trump scare stories.
And the bath, BIG, really big, biggest in history, think the Atlantic Ocean, and the Pacific, so much blood, blood everywhere. Wanna buy some sneakers - just 4 k.
Kind of always seen that. Trump is the left’s golden goose, their reason for living and breathing , their permission to go full on evil. Paychecks, power and fascism. The people around me fancy themselves on the “side of the angels”. He is the subject of every metaphor. A friend just the other day when relating that someone else didn’t pay a bill said it was “just like Trump”. Then they laugh. My sister is totally obsessed and listens if I say anything or don’t hate who and what CNN is teaching her to hate. She hoped I get Covid bad while she had Covid bad herself for the second time after her 7th jab. (I’m unvaxxed). She is lost. I’m not comfortable around her anymore and I won’t visit while this election crazy is happening. I’m old—I’ve never seen or experienced anything like this.
Agreed. It's been horrifying, frankly. The COVID data was clear from the start - Tom Hanks and Trump both got it and shook it early - both have higher BMIs than I. So, only the elderly, the obese and the unhealthy were high risk profiles. Kids had little to fear and yet paid the most while the adults behaved like children. The risk profile by age data was buried to deter "vax avoidance" and the results were horrific. Those of us who follow the science, as in always, not just when an event like this occurs, were vilified for not participating in the panic. Fortunately less than half of my family members went totally nuts, but the ones who did definitely more than made up for the crazy deficit. Some of them are pretty smart, normally data driven decision makers. Like I mentioned above - they're not dumb - they just don't want to know. I'm waiting for Matt to get around to Canada's plans to punish people for pre-crime. Again, we owe Musk and Matt & cie. an enormous debt for getting the truth out. Ditto Trump, had HRC been slotted in to pursue the policies of the elites, we'd have had no information at all about security state excesses. Hang in there!
By the end of the first summer suspicious data was being revealed by my alternative health sources. Data right in the open with a bit of looking. I was primed to not comply by February 2021 after I had a very mild Covid. If that’s what it even was. I don’t even have adequate words anymore to describe this crime against humanity. Thank God for substack. It has kept me sane. 🤡🌎
This whole "bloodbath" fake news story is Trump trolling the MSM... he knows they will bite, and by doing so, further diminish their own credibility... works every time.
Just read it. I'm used to ignoring Trump and all of the folks in the vids that you posted. Shame about Bernie though. He shoulda been a contender.
Pelosi has completely lost it though. She has a long time ago, but it's really becoming obvious she's getting into Reagan / Biden territory. Spouting conspiracy therories out the wazoo all over cable. I do love that since she stepped down from leader, no one pays attention to her anymore.
I think Trump should come out with his own set of Ginzu knives… Make America Sharp Again…. Maybe some of these idiots would finally favor us and run for the exits!
The Times hasn't been 'standing' for years. They've been on their collective knees since 2008, sucking up to the D's in DC & elsewhere. Nothing but state-backed propaganda in those pages.
"Let’s hope the Supreme Court doesn’t get distracted by these hysterics. Is there any doubt that’s what this story is designed to accomplish?"
In part, certainly true. Also need to look at the bigger project. The ongoing effort by progressives/left to delegitimize SCOTUS. They no longer control it, so therefore it must be destroyed. Enough "bad" decisions, and the pressure to "unpack" the court may come to fruition.
They’ve decided that because they lack ideological control over the Court, it must be delegitimized, and so they indulge in hysterical, hyperbolic ululations about the institution being on the brink of destruction because of a critical mass of Justices who try to hew to the Constitution.
There are plenty of perfectly good reasons to be repulsed by this Supreme Court. The 9-0 wipeout of the efforts to keep Trump off the ballot, and the (expected) decision to leave standing the lower court decisions in Missouri v. Biden, do not qualify as good reasons. Even a broken clock is right twice a day.
We've said it before in this forum and others, but it bears repeating:
The great story of our time is the Dem Party and its Left clerisy's existential nervous breakdown and psychotic break upon the election of Trump, their predictions of all the social destruction his election would cause, and then their desperate blind Ahab quest to fulfill all their most dire predictions, that is: to transform into all the things they most claim to hate.
In this case their hysterical fantasy was about Trump destroying freedom of the press, freedom of expression, attacking specific reporters while shitting on the First Amendment—but I don't think even their worst fever dreams of the Orange Monster have come close to equalling how they've attacked and attempted to destroy all these things.
The New York Times and WaPo have reached the point where if someone passed them the Pentagon Papers now they would call the FBI and CIA, campaign to give that person a life sentence, then campaign to allow the government even stronger power to curtail speech!
Our journalistic and intellectual classes have destroyed their own credibility and brought great shame upon themselves all because of the enormous social, career and financial pressure put on them to oppose the enemy and support their tribe and its party. They are craven apparatchiks and completely unprincipled liars and hacks.
Our thinking classes have become the enemies of free thought and expression. Welcome to Soviet America!
Maybe they just said that stuff about freedom and liberty because it was a path to power? Maybe they felt this way all of the time and liberalism was just a good tool for them?
CNN ex-potato tells a different story. He thinks we're all just stupid for not listening to "the eXpErTs" at CNN! 🤣🤣 The comments on this CNN channel are fantastic!
Stelter: Right-wing media repeats news instead of reporting it
NYT will give you space on the Op-Ed page to set the record straight, won't it? I'm being facetious but hold a 1% hope that they do.
Anyways, Who tf ARE THESE PEOPLE??????? I subscribed for 20 years to the NYT. I started going days without reading it because I found it increasingly bizarre, starting circa 2017, that the news was editorial/opinion-laden writings, and the opinion page was no different in content from the news. 2019/2020, I finally started fact-checking the "news" they "reported" and had surprise after shock after surprise after shock. WTF. wtf. Took me a week of calling to finally cancel the subscription.
Massive respect and appreciation to you, and all your Twitter Files colleagues!
You can't really argue with a mainstream publication that can edit your piece and publish the result with your name under it. I tried for years. It's a stacked deck with the house holding all the aces.
What in the world does it mean to "balance free speech with democratc rights"?? Free speech IS a democratic right! There are no other democratic rights to which it is somehow opposed. On the contrary, it enables all of the other rights. NYT believes you can have a democracy without free speech?!
I'm glad Taibbi mentioned the NYT article where Rutenberg said reporters had to abandon professional standards to cover Trump.
As a former journalist I found the article to be one of the most offensive things I'd ever read.
The day I read that - I was still at Rolling Sftone - was the first time I thought I might have to change jobs.
I remember having beers with a fellow reporter during the Jayson Blair fiasco and saying, in a less than sober way, that fakers like Blair should get the death penalty.
I thought that throwing him in front of a train had a nice, dramatic quality to it.
People appalled by such sentiments don't understand how much integrity meant to reporters. We joked all the time about the clowns we covered (and worked for) but deep down our attitude was as serious as you could get.
Lol I can imagine that! “Man, Train Collide.”
Although Jayson at least had a crack problem. It’s the sober editors I don’t get… You hit a chord when you reminiscence about the seriousness that was there once. I remember listening to my father talk about a colleague who got something wrong. It was like someone died in the office.
My first job was at my hometown newspaper in Fort Dodge, Iowa.
One afternoon the editor, an old-school "just the facts, ma'am" type, got a complaint about an error in an obit.
He went from person to person in the tiny newsroom quizzing each individual about whether he or she had written the erroneous obituary.
Finally he found the one who'd made the mistake. The flustered scribe said meekly that he'd "assumed" that the mistaken information had been true.
Walt, the editor, bellowed "You assumed!" to make sure everyone witnessed the humiliation of their fellow journo.
The message was clear: This is serious business. Don't fuck around.
We didn't make much money but that didn't matter because we were hooked.
Years ago I read a short story about academics worried about cost-cutting
measures. One of the characters says the administrators "must never know how much we love our work and how easy it is for us."
Journalism was serious business before 9/11. For years, my brother wrote for a respected guitar magazine. In the 90s, they had a roster of great writers and errors, even typos were a badge of shame. They'd get nose to nose arguing about what type of guitar strings Jeff Beck used, they were that serious. It was inspiring to see young guys taking their craft seriously. And they weren't
even writing about life and death matters.
Today the mainstream is all "Advocacy Journalism" to use a George Soros term.
The ethical standards have been tossed away, for pure greed. Look at what Letitia James is doing. Look at what Fani Willis is doing. Look at Judge Engeron. Same church, different pew.
I’m a fan of professional golf. Literally, every pro golfer learns, and it’s unquestioned, that one has to call penalties on oneself. So, many of our political representatives and in the media have lower standards than golfers. Good grief!
Jayson's crack problem is new to me. Possibly regarded as an asset by the DEI Times management. As for the "seriousness that once was," you've reminded me of my meeting with a Times executive on a Maine beach circa 1970, the father of a friend met that summer. He was intelligent, fair and respected. I only met him once. He gave me good advice merely by being who he was. An unforgettable event. Alas, he and his wife lost their lives when their plane crashed on the coast of Canada about 1998.
Objectivity I was shocked to learn is now a dirty word in the new journalism. The logic of which is Orwellian , self-righteous, self-important and crusading.
Sadly, yes.
Once-great news organizations like the NYT, WaPo and CNN are now propaganda mills.
All by design in Mao's America. If you haven't heard of it, check out the book by Xi Van Fleet. A warning to American's.
Too busy writing "their truth" to write the the truth. "After finishing college in 1991, Rutenberg began working for the New York Daily News as a gossip stringer." Word on the street is that gossip writers warp their minds around who might be fing whom.
This was around the same time cable channels took reruns of "The Apprentice" off the air because it "humanized Donald Trump". The pettiness of it is nauseating.
Wow ! Its a full court, all hands on deck effort to prevent Trump from being re- elected.. Nothing that counters the dehumanizing efforts against him can be allowed.
What's encouraging, though, is the more they attack Trump, the more popular he becomes. Seems to indicate public trust in MSM is dwindling. For the record, I'm no Trump fan, but I knew from day 1 of "Russiagate" that it was all BS, and I've since so enjoyed being vindicated.
Watching that train wreck a time or two put me ahead of the pack in predicting a Trump win. The con, the threats, the marketing, intimidations, anything goes, the “I’m the boss” attitude.which to many American workers means he alone can get things done. Many can identify with a fuck up who breaks all the rules.
1984 Should be required reading .
I'm just a working class yahoo so I used to rely on you people to point out when the bastards in power were lying to me & manipulating me.
Now I approach the news as if it were written on opposite day. If a major news organization tells me I need to look right these days I just automatically look left.
I know it's not much of a strategy but my options seem limited these days.
I do that, too! You'd have to be a brain-dead zombie not to! Just look at all the fake news since 2015 or so: Trump is a Russian asset, Trump is a racist, all cops are racist pigs, "mostly peaceful protests," "summer of love" (as cities were burning), Covid came from a wet market, the shots will stop transmission & protect against the virus; well, at least the shots will keep you out of the hospital, the shots are totally safe! Then there was January 6th, in which a bunch of boomers & Gen X folks armed with nothing but cell phones and Trump banners attempted to "stage a coup," followed by the Afghanistan debacle, the CIA mucking around in Ukraine to start a proxy war, etc. . .
Did you ever see any old Oprah shows where Oprah says some sort of cliched platitude & the whole damn audience nods in unison? That used to creep me out no end.
Now that the entire Democratic Party has seemingly mutated into an Oprah audience, gleefully nodding away at absurdities, I have come to realize that I didn't know the meaning of "creeped out."
I had a similar epiphany some years ago, but it took Glenn Greewald to hit me over the head.
Greenwald said during the Obama regime: "If you want to know what Obama's going to do, just listen to what he says and turn it around 180 degrees. If he says he's seeking peace, war's coming".
Good ole Barack Bush, as I used to call him.
Here let me use the phrase "these days" one more time just for good measure.
Sheesh!
I've actually been using the phrase "in the before times" to describe life before 2015 or so, when I first started noticing something was seriously off.
1984 Is arriving , just 40 years late
A lot of people saying it these days.
right but the problem really is the supine who chide you for looking to the left. "They told you not to do that!" those are the ones stifling speech and are the most dangerous as they are our friends and family. the best example of the women who refuse to say anything as transgender men invade their most private spaces.
Exactly - "DO NOT do your own research" said the CNN Potato, Brian Stelter. "That's DANGEROUS! Listen to the eXpErts!"
What's now called "misinformation" used to be called "opposing viewpoints".
CNN Indoctrination Kids
https://youtu.be/Mn-EQg9bODI?si=DgBQjDK43CseoJ3F
Exactly. The more someone is vilified by MSM, the more I love them.
Your approach to "news" consumption is not irrational given the near total structural rot throughout our media system.
One could say the good ship Integrity has sailed, but in truth it sank when the crew began punching holes in the hull to drain the bilge water.
03/17/24: John, it will hearten you to know that the evening of November 5, 2024, Rutenberg (why are all these spoiled brats reared in suburban Philadelphia?!) will be thunderstruck with fear and self-loathing. Guaranteed. Now, for a trip back to the past with a journalist with integrity, order "Looking For Trouble," by Virginia Cowles.
I think suburban PA means MAIN LINE but they say "suburban" to sound like everyday people and they are not.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philadelphia_Main_Line
That's exactly what I though when I saw "suburban PA". The Main Line is Old Money in a way a wild colonial boy from California like me barely understands, but I've read about it and seen Gilligan's Island. I imagine Thurston Howell III would fit in nicely there.
Good point. Of course, given Rutenberg's craven character, his point of origin could be anywhere (my guess is the Martha Stewart-endowed Convict's Maternity Ward in the Federal Alderson prison camp in West Virginia).
"Kelly for Brickwork"
When my family moved there in 1964, when I was in 8th grade, it was rock ribbed conservative Republican, and the Suburban and Wayne Times was as conservative a paper as you could find.
Biden's defeat is not inevitable.
I think the fix is in. I have no idea what form that takes, but I'm sure they're working on it. We'll have another season where Trump is leading at the end of the night, but then they'll keep counting votes and counting votes until the moment Biden is ahead and, at that instant, the counting will stop. And those who complain - or even question - will be prosecuted.
I live in Phoenix, & I fully expect the Dems to steal the 2024 election, just like they stole the 2020 and 2022 elections. Our legislature has not been able to pass meaningful election reform measures, so I know they'll just keep counting ballots until Biden is ahead. He'll probably get 90 million votes this time around.
Living in Illinois, it is given.
French President Macron made a declarative public statement "as far as I'm informed, I don't think Donald Trump will be the next president". Huh? I wonder who told him that? And I think you're right. The 2020 election was fishy as hell. Rock-ribbed republican Kari Lake lost the governor's race in Arizona to a woke, upspeaking, vocal-fry-effecting twit. The chance of that happening is lower than the chance of Trump winning the vote in San Francisco.
Yep.
After the TikTok, ban has basically given Biden the censorship power, oddsmakers now lay even odds on a Biden victory.
I wonder who read the whole Bill. Another Government grab.
Correct. Pray tell, what happens on November 3rd? (I don't know, but I definitely do not like what I see).
His victory is not inevitable, either. Vote!
Addendum (03/19/24 3 am): Square that with the data telling me that November 5, 2024 will be the worst day of Jack Smith's miserable little life.
Good to know that integrity is still a prized quality amongst other journalists. Thanks.
Jayson Blair! A haha joke-boy-fool NPC from wayback. DEI anyone?
I'm amazed that he didn't get a post-scandal Pulitzer Prize.
Well, when the DOJ attorneys defending PFIZER (a private company) cites an editorial article in JAMA as a defense for dismissing a very big FRAUD case re the fake, botched "vaccine" clinical trials (Brook Jackson vs Ventavia Research Group), something has gone very wrong with our legal system.
"The United States should not be required to expend resources on a case that is inconsistent with its public health policy." -because a couple of doctors claimed the covid vaccines saved millions of lives?? They show no data, it's an editorial (opinion) article!!
https://open.substack.com/pub/sashalatypova/p/department-of-justice-admits-pharmaceutical?r=r7n8z&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
Sharyl Attkisson does a 10 min TED Talk about how the media/govt plants misinformation articles, especially using Wikipedia, then they use those articles as "proof" of their stance.
Astroturf and manipulation of media messages-Sharyl Attkisson
https://youtu.be/-bYAQ-ZZtEU?si=XAYOCbaHANb-gPf5
So glad Matt moved on and organized Racket News. It's been a blessing for me.
The NYT story is appalling and a pitiful attempt to discredit the work that Matt & colleagues have done to defend our First Amendment rights, which the NYT seems to be taking for granted.
Free speech for me, but not for thee. Nor thee, thee, thee...
I think the Times sees a huge chasm between their own First Amendment rights which are sacred, and our First Amendment rights which are an abomination.
Right. That goes to their moral vanity.
Same a-holes elites who covered up the Holocaust because us ordinary Americans weren't ready to hear about it.
Apparently we’re not smart enough to have them? Might be too dangerous to ourselves?
I'd substitute "seems to be taking for granted" with "appears all too willing to sacrifice for seemingly political and personal ends."
Nailed it, cheers. Ask not for...
Perhaps most puzzling is that, having tried "advocacy journalism" for eight years, and having experienced massive losses of public trust, subscribers, and newsroom jobs, they seem to draw no connection whatsoever between the two.
They also tend to neglect the business of journalism.
Only when the subsidized pay ends and it negatively affects them personally, will they change. I thoroughly believe these TV "news" anchors like Savanah Guthrie, Lester Holt, et al, have been promised some prestigious position once the "big takeover" is complete.
Lester got his dream job, co-hosting the true crime show Dateline.
"It reminds me of the queen in Snow White who gave up her own beauty and became an old lady just to give Snow a poisoned apple in a failed attempt to bring her down. And so the media relinquished its respected reputation just to bring The Donald down" --- Don Surber (March 14, 2024).
Mr. Surber continues:
NYT’s fair-haired boy Jim Rutenberg whose research seemed to consist of talking to Carolyn Ryan, The New York Times’s senior editor for politics, wrote the media manifesto. He made excuse after excuse after excuse for turning the news media into a propaganda machine.
Rutenberg ended his piece, “As Ms. Ryan put it to me, Mr. Trump’s candidacy is ‘extraordinary and precedent-shattering’ and ‘to pretend otherwise is to be disingenuous with readers.’
“It would also be an abdication of political journalism’s most solemn duty: to ferret out what the candidates will be like in the most powerful office in the world.
“It may not always seem fair to Mr. Trump or his supporters. But journalism shouldn’t measure itself against any one campaign’s definition of fairness. It is journalism’s job to be true to the readers and viewers, and true to the facts, in a way that will stand up to history’s judgment. To do anything less would be untenable.”
Rutenberg is wrong. The solemn duty of those in the news trade is to tell the truth. They ain’t and we no longer care about their little stories and their melodramatic problems. The failure of the press to maintain its credibility makes reporters the Kakapos of the birdbrain world.
[End Don Surber. The Kakapos is an endangered bird species.]
The solemn duty of the news is not to give us the Truth. It is to report the details of what is occurring so that readers can determine what is likely true. Truth is always elusive, but a firm grasp of who, what, when and how yields a pretty good grasp on why. The Times has largely abandoned this type of reporting. Perhaps because they can’t trust the public to reach the “correct” conclusions.
Strange. I don't remember Mr. Rutenberg soliciting my views on the wisdom of what was supposedly done on this reader's behalf. How many other readers had input into the decision, I wonder. Did he conduct a survey?
One must not challenge the omnipotence of The Almighty New York Times. Even when it's apparent that the King Has No Clothes.
Nice how he manages to turn journalistic integrity into a "campaign's definition of fairnes" ... some petty, squabbly detail. The loftier ideal is to be "true... in a way that will stand up to history's judgment." History's judgment? We already know what that will be?
It gets harder and harder for me to believe these people take themselves seriously.
He's saying all things must serve the revolution- the means justify the ends.
"History is the judge — its executioner, the proletarian."
Marx, Speech at Anniversary of The People’s Paper (1856)
"For days, I was haunted by ... those frozen, twisted bodies of the [Russian] 44th Division [annihilated in Finland in early 1940]...
'[T]he story ... was typical of the whole blundering strategy for which the dictatorship of the proletariat now paid freely with the lives of the proletariat."
--- Virginia Cowles, "Looking for Trouble," Faber & Faber 2021 reprint of the Harper 1941 edition (03-18-24).
03/18/24: Trust me, they take themselves very, very seriously. "Humorless c*nts," as the Brits say. This enables the Rutenbergs to be able to justify / glorify their fascist attacks on the 1st Amendment (the protections of which only apply to THEM and whatever THEY say and print).
[My definition of American fascism is simple: This ideology justifies attacking/destroying the First Amendment to the American constitution. Period.]
This is a fantastic comment on a nauseating trend.
Let me do a quick translation for those who like me, are bewildered by Rutenberg's doublespeak.
"It's MSM journalism's job to pre-write history in a way that supports the centralized, dystopic future our globalist paymasters want us to write."
You aced it!
“ disingenuous to their readers”….. LOL!! a that is all they are!!!!!
Update (03/18/24): Carolyn Ryan's Wikipedia profile (03/18/24), and her role in the sordid nest of vipers on Eighth Avenue opposite the Port Authority building:
"Ryan is the managing editor of The New York Times...having worked there since 2007... She previously worked as the deputy managing editor of The Boston Globe ... In 2018, she won NLGJA: The Association of LGBTQ Journalists leadership award."
And to confirm that she's a Clone of Political / Social Intolerance:
https://www.google.com/search?q=carolyn+ryan+new+york+times&sca_esv=cd43192195f14f59&sca_upv=1&hl=en&tbm=isch&sxsrf=ACQVn0_CbC-3p28Ps2T5IA-E69gMGqp0yg%3A1710790938728&source=hp&biw=1024&bih=499&ei=Gpn4ZdLZKdDR0PEPv_CwmA8&iflsig=ANes7DEAAAAAZfinKpScXribI6xa8c3Md7g6iUQGBJoU&oq=carolyn+ryan+&gs_lp=EgNpbWciDWNhcm9seW4gcnlhbiAqAggAMgUQABiABDIEEAAYHjIGEAAYCBgeMgcQABiABBgYMgcQABiABBgYMgcQABiABBgYMgcQABiABBgYMgcQABiABBgYMgcQABiABBgYMgcQABiABBgYSOk-UABYjCZwAHgAkAEAmAHNAaABlQeqAQYxNC4wLjG4AQHIAQD4AQGKAgtnd3Mtd2l6LWltZ5gCDaAC8gbCAggQABiABBixA5gDAJIHBjEyLjAuMaAH6D0&sclient=img
Thank the gods that you did, Matt! You have been a candle in the darkness. Your gift of expression is their way of sending Truth as elixir!
Hey Matt, a favor, please. Press Jim to explain how his own infamous call for an end to objectivity in journalism is, in all substantive and identifiable ways, different from a demand that "journalists" constantly misinform the public?
Follow-up question: given that the NYT has a reach several thousand times your own, and that of almost any other outlet, hasn't JR's proposed approach to abandoning objectivity, made the NYT provably the single largest private source of misinformation on the planet since 2016, outside of social media, - and made Jim Rutenberg the Typhoid Mary of the recent collapse of trust in modern media. I'd love to hear him try to explain his way out of this fact pattern.
Jim's not alone, of course, plenty of outlets including lots on the right long ago abandoned any pretense to objectivity. Can't express really my own gratitude for your efforts. Many thanks.
Update: Trump is likely already preparing to deploy "the NYT is the Wuhan lab of the fake news epidemic killing journalism in America today" meme.
Jim Gutenberg, the Typhoid Mary of the misinformation epidemic works. As does: JT the NYT newsman who managed to destroy an entire industry almost single handed. JT editorial gave every dishonest hack and editor the green light to go full Morning Joe, all day every day.
(Edited lightly for clarity and color.)
I’m so glad you did!
If Rutenberg's 2016 article prompted Matt to change jobs, then at least it produced one positive result. Unfortunately the larger effect was that most reporters and publications voluntarily converted themselves into unreadable (and ultimately redundant) political tools.
"As a former journalist I found the article to be one of the most offensive things I'd ever read."
True, but at some level I appreciate that he was willing to make it clear what the new reporting standard at the New York Times was. Same with Leonard Downie Jr. at the Washington Post:
"Newsrooms that move beyond ‘objectivity’ can build trust
By Leonard Downie Jr.
January 30, 2023 at 7:15 a.m. EST"
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/01/30/newsrooms-news-reporting-objectivity-diversity/
At least now it's clear to all what the situation is.
If someone tells me he's a sellout and a weasel who doesn't deserve to be taken seriously I suppose there's a certain value in that.
Marty Baron's response was also worth reading, but I believe his is the minority opinion in newsrooms these days.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/03/24/journalism-objectivity-trump-misinformation-marty-baron/
WTAF?!
Same. It was unbelievable. The article made everything clear to me. It turned me from a disappointed Bernie supporter into full-on Trump supporter. Fuck those assholes.
the strangest thing about all of that is that Trump was primarily a threat to obscure standards that few outside of Washington even knew existed. How many times did they freak out because he broke some "precedent" that was established in the 1980's and was never any sort of law, much less important?
Really, for everything, Trump's cardinal sin for these people is that they feel he has poor decorum. That is a fair criticism of Trump, it just isn't nearly as important as they think it is. But they are Pharisees through and through, they care far more about the liturgy and rules of government than its meaning or function.
I suspect the Borg hates Trump for a number of reasons.
One has to be his habit of mocking them publicly, of saying the emperor has no clothes.
That unnerves them because they know it's true -- they are frauds, transparently so.
Another reason is that, rhetorically at least, he seems to back a more nationalist approach in contrast to their globalist, America Last, philosophy.
The most important reason is related to the first: sometimes Trump tells the truth. The Borg cannot withstand a steady barrage of facts because it's based on lies.
he tells his version of the truth sometimes, but it is indeed things they feel can't be said.
I think a lot about Taibbi talking about how he was in the press pool at an early even and none on of the other journos understood why riffing on them was working with the crowd .
The big thing though, is also as Taibbi has said, Trump's description of a ruling class that wins every time while your job gets shipped to China was broadly correct, even if his solutions were less so.
The glorious passion of Donald Trump....
Yep! That comment says all we need to know.
The NYT, New York Toilet, is where Deep State takes its dumps.
“ The Rubbish they Choose to Publish”……
The Deep State is in MIAMI FLORIDA AND NASHVILLE. Tennessee and Colorado Springs Colorado. IT is centered in Kansas ask Ambrose Bierce or Lyman Frank Baum or Thomas Frank.
So?
https://johnsonsdictionaryonline.com/views/search.php?term=Conservative
There is no such thing as a Conservative Contraian it is an OXYMORON.
It is Abracadabra and Hocus Pocus and totally out of focus.
Why do you care?
why don’t you think there is no such thing….when the world is fillred with such idiotic ideas…being contrarian is being conservative…not swallowing the codswallop is contrarian
I am just me. I am no lawyer. I know what the constitution means I have the dictionary.
https://johnsonsdictionaryonline.com/views/search.php?term=Conservative
https://johnsonsdictionaryonline.com/views/search.php?term=religion
https://johnsonsdictionaryonline.com/views/search.php?term=liberal
I live in Hockeytown Canada/USA and Daniel Webster represented New Hampshire and Massachusetts and you bastards are destroying my town. I wish I could believe in Hell but I am afraid there is no pie in the sky when you die.
I love baseball apple pie and motherhood not FASCISM, racism, sexism, religious hypocrisy and xenophobia. I don't watch hockey I haven't watched hockey since I left Calgary in 1987. Itb is my 76th birthday and I pray for America every day and every night to my Creator.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Devil_and_Daniel_Webster
Of course there is such a thing.
Always and never are seldom true.
Having followed your reporting on this story since the beginning, I found the NYT story a disgraceful hit job, even by their low standards. It is an obvious attempt to influence the Supremes, who I predict will uphold the Circuit (mostly). Not once do they say, for example, that the Biden laptop story was true. Not once do they look at what the district judge and the Circuit actually said, and say one word about the First Amendment. No, it's just disinfo all the way down, sez the NYT, and we are all too fucking stupid to sort it out for ourselves, so just let us tell you what to believe.
I once had a defamation case with Floyd Abrams against me. And I told him that I would always consider him a First Amendment hero for defending the NYT's right to publish what the government did not want us to know. How times have changed......
Best to you Matt, for your courage.
A friend said to me when I brought up the question of the mRNA shot’s long term side effects — “if it were true it would be in the NYT.” He still believes it’s a beacon of fearless, honest reporting and his trust in writers like Friedman and Brooks is unshakeable.
Biden’s cheap shot at the Supreme Court during his State of the Union address was telling. Everyone is to be on the same page, cringing and compliant, or prepare to be attacked.
Your friend, like many in my own circle, is basically incurious - these folks claim to want "news" but when pressed admit their real need is to have their biases and prejudices affirmed in the press.
Visiting family in Canada, had an establishment academic tee off on me when he discovered I preferred Trump's policies to those of Obama, Clinton, Bush, Biden. He railed about Trump's awful personality. I then asked which of Trump's policies he disagreed with. He couldn't name one - not even on economics.
Trump is an existential threat to those who rely for their sense of identity and income, in some cases, on a fully disfunctional society, endless wars, and a society at war with itself. That means most households making 250 k per. We've got them on the run, but these folks are not without power - case we hadn't noticed. We're far from out of the woods.
Have you read Amucus Republica? There is a 3 part explanation of “the Regime” that you might enjoy. Although it is frustrating too - it gives one the feeling, we can see it - why can’t everyone?
Cheers, I'll give it a look. I'm not enjoying any of this, btw, despite laughing at the absurdity of it all. I consider supporting Matt and the community here both a civic duty and an act of self-preservation. Every generation has a fight, this is ours.
AR give some good ammunition for arguments.
I stopped arguing/discussing facts with the emotionally driven a long, long time ago, thank the lord. I belong to the "I'd rather be happy than right" community. Want to jab mRNA into your system? Be my guest. Rinse and repeat. Our time together is short and precious; I try to make the most of mine.
It's Amicus Republicae, a Substack.
Yes, sorry for the misspell, I was battling autocorrect 😒
God do I hate mine. I have to read every individual sentence when replying or commenting. If this is our AI future, I want something MUCH better.
Link?
Thanks for the reference. Just read their "Regime v. America" piece. Very good!
Yep. Those who benefit by the current system will defend it.
Once you understand that the PMC is the hegemonic class and that Team D is the political will of the PMC made manifest (as opposed to Team D, which basically plays a similar role with respect to local gentry), everything makes sense.
PMC? thanks in advance!
Professional Managerial Class.
aka "email jobs"
thanks. Yes.
"Best to you Matt, for your courage."
+ 1 on that, yeah.
And for the clarity of your expression.
Take peace in the fact that our fellow countrymen are dumb with a capital D. The worm is turning hard. With warriors like Matt picking them off one by one, I am ready to call my friends out. Many of them are smart people who can bring in more. What is going on is a hot mess. Win people to our side day by day….it isnt hard….their entire effort is ridiculous on every level. Keep pressing the gas pedal and everything they stand for will blow up. Keep going. If what you see doesnt comport with your many years of life, it is probably devious. Act from that mindset.
You deserve a Pulitzer. The Times deserves to become toilet paper
I totally understand what you mean… but Matt’s waaaaay better than a Pulitzer nowdays - that standard has completely fallen off.
Spot on.
My TP is at a much higher standard
At this point the Pulitzer is known as an award for the most effective and outrageous propaganda. They never returned Walter Duranty's.
Rutenberg is the Walter Duranty (1920s NYT correspondent) of our era.
TP takes its "roll" much more seriously.
And it takes a lot of shit for it too..
Not for me.
For whom?
That's unfair to toilet paper.
Stay strong Matt. Stay strong. You’re hitting the nail so they’re getting even more nervous with the state sponsored NYT
Be extra careful ☮️❤️
Whoo yeah, watch your back!
What else is new? Matt is taking flak from the house organ of the Democrat Party. He's always over the target.
Matt:
“If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:”
Time to reread Kipling’s “If”
Dennis Hopper reciting "IF" on the Johnny Cash show.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xlfnm9gV52w
Thanks for this Kathleen! Really impacted me the first time I saw it.
I read this and for some reason my head went straight to HST "when the going gets weird, the weird turn pro"... Yeah, grapes and watermelons, but still.
So appropriate, Sharon. Thanks.
Exactly!
I’ve signed up the NYT headlines and breaking news to keep track of Democratic Party messaging. The headline for this piece was what the NYT lead with today. It was actually a little more cryptic than their normal messaging and I now realize it was because they were talking about the Twitter files where they don’t have a legitimate viewpoint to defend. I truly don’t understand how the NYT can convince themselves that they on the right side of history on government censorship. It’s disgusting.
Hey, they loved Hitler and Stalin back in the day. Being on the right side of history is not NYT's thing.
In my experience the NYT seems not to care about being on the right side of anything, unless by “right” you mean “progressive” in the political sense. The “Grey Lady” is a political animal masquerading as an organ of truth.
They possess the blind faith of an acolyte. They truly believe that they will write that history.
So they believe that journalism is (don't have exact quote) 'writing the first draft of history"?
Also bewildering is that they have done a complete 180 from their own stance on their own Pentagon Papers story. And they have done so without appearing to realize it.
If the Pentagon Papers took place today, and Democrats controlled the White House and Congress as they did at the time, the NYT would ignore the hearings and instead write hit pieces about the legislators and journalists driving the investigation, while branding Daniel Ellsburg as a conspiracy theorist and dismissing court opinions as misguided and illigimate.
It's appalling.
"could curtail the government’s latitude in monitoring content online."
Which is consistent with the First Amendment... how? Exactly?
I can only imagine the NYT lawyers who argued the Pentagon Papers, and Sullivan must be spinning in their graves.
They're casting as a balance between "free speech" and "democratic values". That's not a balancing test that has ever existed regarding speech but seems to sound good enough to become an assumed starting point.
My bet is the ones still living are on her side. to them the law was just a cudgel to be used to get what you want. I hope I am wrong but it is very clear that to many liberalism ws simply a device to get power. Once obtained it is easy and perhaps necessary tp abandon.
They are evil. You know it’s been a real bloodbath lately in journalism, too bad the times look to be the last man standing
lololololol I hope you're making a snide comment about the recent media hullabaloo....
https://simulationcommander.substack.com/p/trumps-bloodbath-is-the-bloodbath
Trump's Bloodbath is the Bloodbath to End All Bloodbaths
There's going to be so much blood, you'll be able to take a bath in it
100 percent, brought to you by the people who fight misinformation.
The dirty secret is that nobody is more committed to seeing Trump in the WH than those who earn a buck pumping out END OF THE WORLD NOW!!!! Trump scare stories.
And the bath, BIG, really big, biggest in history, think the Atlantic Ocean, and the Pacific, so much blood, blood everywhere. Wanna buy some sneakers - just 4 k.
Kind of always seen that. Trump is the left’s golden goose, their reason for living and breathing , their permission to go full on evil. Paychecks, power and fascism. The people around me fancy themselves on the “side of the angels”. He is the subject of every metaphor. A friend just the other day when relating that someone else didn’t pay a bill said it was “just like Trump”. Then they laugh. My sister is totally obsessed and listens if I say anything or don’t hate who and what CNN is teaching her to hate. She hoped I get Covid bad while she had Covid bad herself for the second time after her 7th jab. (I’m unvaxxed). She is lost. I’m not comfortable around her anymore and I won’t visit while this election crazy is happening. I’m old—I’ve never seen or experienced anything like this.
Agreed. It's been horrifying, frankly. The COVID data was clear from the start - Tom Hanks and Trump both got it and shook it early - both have higher BMIs than I. So, only the elderly, the obese and the unhealthy were high risk profiles. Kids had little to fear and yet paid the most while the adults behaved like children. The risk profile by age data was buried to deter "vax avoidance" and the results were horrific. Those of us who follow the science, as in always, not just when an event like this occurs, were vilified for not participating in the panic. Fortunately less than half of my family members went totally nuts, but the ones who did definitely more than made up for the crazy deficit. Some of them are pretty smart, normally data driven decision makers. Like I mentioned above - they're not dumb - they just don't want to know. I'm waiting for Matt to get around to Canada's plans to punish people for pre-crime. Again, we owe Musk and Matt & cie. an enormous debt for getting the truth out. Ditto Trump, had HRC been slotted in to pursue the policies of the elites, we'd have had no information at all about security state excesses. Hang in there!
By the end of the first summer suspicious data was being revealed by my alternative health sources. Data right in the open with a bit of looking. I was primed to not comply by February 2021 after I had a very mild Covid. If that’s what it even was. I don’t even have adequate words anymore to describe this crime against humanity. Thank God for substack. It has kept me sane. 🤡🌎
it’s all very sad, the untold emotional damage … especially as it has all been pre meditated…..
I hadn't paid attention to that story, until quite a few commenters on this NYT piece brought it up.
Take a few minutes to look through my article, then -- it's amazing. If it wasn't the media and Trump, I wouldn't even believe it.
This whole "bloodbath" fake news story is Trump trolling the MSM... he knows they will bite, and by doing so, further diminish their own credibility... works every time.
It's like they've learned nothing from 2016-2020 -- they just think ORANGE MAN BAD = ratings.
Just read it. I'm used to ignoring Trump and all of the folks in the vids that you posted. Shame about Bernie though. He shoulda been a contender.
Pelosi has completely lost it though. She has a long time ago, but it's really becoming obvious she's getting into Reagan / Biden territory. Spouting conspiracy therories out the wazoo all over cable. I do love that since she stepped down from leader, no one pays attention to her anymore.
Pelosi still gets plenty of TV time with Raggedy Ann on MSNBC.
I think Trump should come out with his own set of Ginzu knives… Make America Sharp Again…. Maybe some of these idiots would finally favor us and run for the exits!
That's hilarious, commander. Sad but hilarious.
The Times hasn't been 'standing' for years. They've been on their collective knees since 2008, sucking up to the D's in DC & elsewhere. Nothing but state-backed propaganda in those pages.
They've been a tool of the CIA since their inception.
Bloodbath?? Bloodbath?? Have you been colluding with Trump?😜
"Let’s hope the Supreme Court doesn’t get distracted by these hysterics. Is there any doubt that’s what this story is designed to accomplish?"
In part, certainly true. Also need to look at the bigger project. The ongoing effort by progressives/left to delegitimize SCOTUS. They no longer control it, so therefore it must be destroyed. Enough "bad" decisions, and the pressure to "unpack" the court may come to fruition.
They’ve decided that because they lack ideological control over the Court, it must be delegitimized, and so they indulge in hysterical, hyperbolic ululations about the institution being on the brink of destruction because of a critical mass of Justices who try to hew to the Constitution.
https://www.euphoricrecall.net/p/the-lefts-war-on-the-supreme-court
Unless we kick the crap out of them this time around. They need a good butt kicking and now is the time.
get angry and fight for what is right…you are being controlled by child minded peope…can’t we break through?
There are plenty of perfectly good reasons to be repulsed by this Supreme Court. The 9-0 wipeout of the efforts to keep Trump off the ballot, and the (expected) decision to leave standing the lower court decisions in Missouri v. Biden, do not qualify as good reasons. Even a broken clock is right twice a day.
See?
We've said it before in this forum and others, but it bears repeating:
The great story of our time is the Dem Party and its Left clerisy's existential nervous breakdown and psychotic break upon the election of Trump, their predictions of all the social destruction his election would cause, and then their desperate blind Ahab quest to fulfill all their most dire predictions, that is: to transform into all the things they most claim to hate.
In this case their hysterical fantasy was about Trump destroying freedom of the press, freedom of expression, attacking specific reporters while shitting on the First Amendment—but I don't think even their worst fever dreams of the Orange Monster have come close to equalling how they've attacked and attempted to destroy all these things.
The New York Times and WaPo have reached the point where if someone passed them the Pentagon Papers now they would call the FBI and CIA, campaign to give that person a life sentence, then campaign to allow the government even stronger power to curtail speech!
Our journalistic and intellectual classes have destroyed their own credibility and brought great shame upon themselves all because of the enormous social, career and financial pressure put on them to oppose the enemy and support their tribe and its party. They are craven apparatchiks and completely unprincipled liars and hacks.
Our thinking classes have become the enemies of free thought and expression. Welcome to Soviet America!
The USSA. The United Security State of America.
Well said, sir or madam!
thanks!
Maybe they just said that stuff about freedom and liberty because it was a path to power? Maybe they felt this way all of the time and liberalism was just a good tool for them?
Amen
CNN ex-potato tells a different story. He thinks we're all just stupid for not listening to "the eXpErTs" at CNN! 🤣🤣 The comments on this CNN channel are fantastic!
Stelter: Right-wing media repeats news instead of reporting it
https://youtu.be/e8Gf8iDay2E?si=YTmxmSaW6DbA_mtk
"During times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act." George Orwell
We the People are the Heirs of the American Experiment and We are Squandering Our American Inheritance!
https://lizlasorte.substack.com/
Goddamn right Liz. If the citizens actually read the constitution and bill of rights there would be many as angry as I am.
NYT will give you space on the Op-Ed page to set the record straight, won't it? I'm being facetious but hold a 1% hope that they do.
Anyways, Who tf ARE THESE PEOPLE??????? I subscribed for 20 years to the NYT. I started going days without reading it because I found it increasingly bizarre, starting circa 2017, that the news was editorial/opinion-laden writings, and the opinion page was no different in content from the news. 2019/2020, I finally started fact-checking the "news" they "reported" and had surprise after shock after surprise after shock. WTF. wtf. Took me a week of calling to finally cancel the subscription.
Massive respect and appreciation to you, and all your Twitter Files colleagues!
You can't really argue with a mainstream publication that can edit your piece and publish the result with your name under it. I tried for years. It's a stacked deck with the house holding all the aces.
If the NYT did that, just that, I'd renew my subscription - for maybe a month.
Projection. It’s what they do. It’s all they have.
What in the world does it mean to "balance free speech with democratc rights"?? Free speech IS a democratic right! There are no other democratic rights to which it is somehow opposed. On the contrary, it enables all of the other rights. NYT believes you can have a democracy without free speech?!
Word salad hand waving does a lot of work for the regime point of view
Clarity. Thank you
Well said! With a logical brain like that, I'd read your Substack! I learn nearly as much from the comments as I do from Matt's articles.
Excellent observation!