Lifted from the comments, a reminder, were one needed, that you don’t despise the media anywhere near enough.
In this case, it’s Flemish public television – not unlike our own BBC – and one guest’s realisation that any discussion of rising intolerance and a growing enthusiasm for violence against women must arrive at certain predetermined conclusions, regardless of the facts:
Eventually, a young editor sent me a brief PowerPoint presentation that had been circulating internally. To my surprise, every chart contained a bar for respondents of “foreign origin,” alongside the categories for age and education. Less surprisingly, that bar was often the highest of all. The internal presentation even drew attention to the elevated levels of intolerance among respondents of foreign origin—several times.
Then I noticed a marginal comment from a VRT editor that was clearly not intended for outside eyes.
It instructed the news desk not to report the breakdown by foreign origin, even though the data had been collected.
The seemingly routine attempt to deceive does rather invalidate the ostensible core function of this publicly funded organisation. It throws everything they do into question. How could one possibly trust them? It quite literally wipes out their credibility as a broadcaster. And by extension, any claim to public funding or favoured status.
In a saner world, it would be the end of them.
I say ostensible function because it’s not altogether obvious – to say the least – how one could reconcile some supposed broadcaster’s mission to convey the facts, and to bring into being an informed citizenry, with doing everything possible to prevent precisely that.
And doing so in a manner one might regard as practised.
Update, via the comments:
Should anyone assume that our own BBC is any more trustworthy in this regard, by all means think again. Do note the willingness of senior BBC employees to lie, repeatedly. Brazenly. Supposedly in the name of some fluffy and fragrant tomorrow. As if we should be grateful for their efforts to deceive us.
Update 2:
In light of the above, it may be worth revisiting this gathering of Canadian media luminaries, at Carleton University’s School of Journalism and Communication, where much bewilderment is expressed regarding the public’s supposedly inexplicable dislike of journalists:
Indeed, almost any kind of demurral is framed as an attempt to “silence” the journalists’ self-declared heroism, to deny them their cosmic destiny. And hence, it seems, the imperative to shut down reader-comment sections on national newspaper websites, on grounds that readers are no longer content to confine their feedback to the polite correction of typos.
Throughout, the air is heavy with self-elevation, and claims of being scrupulously unbiased and “speaking truth to power” are deployed entirely without irony.
However, the more plausible explanations for why journalists may not be held in the highest possible regard remain oddly untouched. Even when Hill Times columnist and “anti-racism expert” Erica Ifill boasts that she doesn’t bother to interview white men.
And the implications of a room full of statusful media professionals being fixated with the supposed pathologies of “whiteness,” and being pretentious and neurotic, and mentally uniform – and both distant from and disdainful of the concerns of the public that they claim to serve – are, needless to say, not vigorously explored.
Readers amused by eye-widening self-flattery will find much to entertain.
Update 3:
In the comments, Martin D notes the BBC link, above, and adds,
What’s surprising, I suppose, even to the cynical, is the realisation that the omissions and bias aren’t just a result of carelessness or some subconscious preference, but are actively engaged in. Knowingly. By people – broadcasters – who are terribly progressive and therefore happy to lie.
Again, with the implication that it’s being done for our own good. As if we, the public, should be grateful for their efforts to deceive us.
I should add that the BBC has very recently admitted a correlation of migrant status and crime, albeit belatedly – very belatedly – and while trying to downplay the full extent of the phenomenon, again in ways that are deceptive.
And all it took was other people doing the job the BBC wouldn’t – while being badmouthed for it by the BBC and other mainstream media – and years of stabbings, assaults, child grooming, murders and rapes. Oh, and an attempted beheading or two.
170,000 offences in one year alone. That’s 473 arrests per day. Or if you prefer, one every three minutes.
Our betters, you know.
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I wonder if this will be the beginning of a journey to full realization of just how extensively European news, education, and government lie about America.
Let’s go to city hall – whoa – nah, it is Sunday, maybe church.
In the rain?
I remember when drag was sad and tiresome in the Eighties.
So, pickleball.
David covered that 15 years ago.
Unfortunately, Anna’s link in the third comment is no longer functional.
A “Palestinian” in Canada who apparently does not own a mirror is upset about something.
A dubious plan based on a dubious operation has a dubious future.
Social media “misinformation” is, inevitably, denounced – and the story about the amplified call to prayer at some ungodly hour does seem to be false.
But it’s curious – once you spot it – how no actual natives are asked why it is they object to the rapidly growing Muhammadan population. As if that aspect of the story were of no importance and beneath enquiry.
Apparently, we’re supposed to assume that there could be no legitimate basis for disaffection. No actual friction or incompatibility, just inexplicable “hate speech” on the part of the indigenous.
Now just wait a goddamn min…
[ Looks out of window at grey sky. ]
Never mind.
Motte and Bailey yet again?
Relevant.
I wonder to what extent the owners are attempting to deceive potential investors about their financial situation.
The first page of internet search results for “Claas Relotius” are nearly all about journalistic fraud:
Lügenpresse.
“The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel.”
I don’t like director Spike Lee as a person but he is a talented filmmaker and I can’t blame him for this.
The reactions of foreigners visiting the USA for the first time is delightful and most are coming to the realization that a reason why many Americans do not travel abroad is because we have such a variety of landscapes and cultures in our own country. And, for the most part, safety.
The real punchline is about 48 paragraphs in:
Dread, I tells ya, and sadness, but not horror, so they have that going for them.
Of course. Gotta make sure he gets the story right about the Good Citizens.The rest of Fergus Fall is unwashed and untutored hicks, though,
Magically. The magnanimity and tolerance ooze from every pore.
Why seemingly false? It is an issue elsewhere, here are just two:
Dearborn, MI,
NYC.
Any reported protestations to the contrary, I doubt there is any particular real concern for Japanese sensibilities that would prohibit the practice.
Oh, absolutely. The imposition is what one would expect, given all of history and ongoing experience. And the larger the Muhammadan population, the more likely the inconvenience – the flex, as it were. ‘Tis the nature of the beast. And the appearance in one’s neighbourhood of a mosque, or another mosque, isn’t generally a basis for a soaring heart.
But the Osaka incident specifically was, according to Grok and its sources, false. Apparently, people were circulating footage of an incident from overseas in which Muhammadans were imposing on the infidels with early morning noise.
Of course, the fact that the mislabelled footage was of real anti-social behaviour, albeit happening elsewhere, and very much part of a pattern, is unexplored in the original news item.
About that imam in Bolton whose home was firebombed the other day:
Could it have been a false flag operation? Or muslim-on-muslim violence?
Regardless, the words of London mayor Sadiq Khan come to mind:
Never thought a crowbar would be needed to separate church and state.
Heh. OK, boomer.
Don’t know who planned Freddy’s trip but they managed to route him away from some of the more dramatic scenery.
Is every institution determined to demolish their credibility?
Yes. Which is why the ruling class must be stripped of its power.
Meh. The Lancet, like pretty much* every other medical or natural sciences publication or organization lost credibility during Covid. And if not then, even before that regarding the trans stuff. No idea where they were regarding diets and other medical trends in the decades before that but I have my suspicions.
*If anyone knows of such an institution that maintained credibility through the last decade or so of insanity, please let me know.
The smug arrogance of the European elites. Ignorant, too. (via Cdr Salamander.)
Future dropship pilot
The Lancet lost its credibility long before Covid was even a gleam in Fauci’s eye. In the early 2000s they were peddling a “study” that in the Second Gulf War the US killed over 100,000 civilians. To quote someone’s old comment on the subject, “the methodology was so flawed that a proper analysis of the results indicated that there was about a 10% chance that the bombing was resurrecting dead people.”
Heh. Well, you know…gotta be nice and stay within the boundaries but…yes. I forgot about that BS. To my broader point, all these institutions have been F’d up for decades. They were still respected and are still referenced and their “science” still sets the standards. Even with the whole cacophonous claptrap finally being exposed by the Covidiocy such that people like ourselves could (publicly) throw up our hands and say, “SEE? DO YOU IDIOTS FINALLY SEE?” Only to still be told by many “conservatives” that this was still nothing to be concerned about. These things have ways of taking care of themselves.
And so it persists. Fauci is still revered by enough people that he will likely go to his grave living out a comfortable life surrounded by his bobble head dolls and the paintings of himself. You still see people wearing masks in blue zones and even red areas near them. No one is going to prison. Maybe, eventually, a few will lose their medical licenses over the transing of children but even that will be because that’s one medical mistake they couldn’t bury. Not that they won’t try. Looking at you, Canada.
See also: False Positive: A Year of Error, Omission, and Political Correctness in the New England Journal of Medicine, by Theodore Dalrymple
Michael is, and I quote, a “professor of political science” at Stanford University.
Like many others, he doesn’t seem to know how things actually work.
Bureaucrats.
European bureaucrats.
Ours aren’t much better.
On my bookshelf.
I thought better of the Hoover Institution.
Dubious future for the Sports Bra…
They are doing a Rule 506C general public solicitation for their current round of funding. They are therefore required to file audited financials with SEC even though they are a private company. Running at a loss is not a deal-breaker for a startup, but there has to be a plausible path to profit. Planning to franchise when they haven’t done that is not a plausible path.
At least they don’t sneer at us in French.
And because you can’t have too much irony.
Again, professor of political science.
You have to admit it’s not a field much engaged with facts, truth, or any of the usual currencies of social interaction.
Off topic, but has anyone else noticed mangled Twitter/X text? Not having an account I can’t tell if it’s xAI revenge or something else.
Aelf: same here, with X in the browser (I don’t have the app). Xcancel seems to not have the issue.
I think the “in f” is just Juanita Broaddrick typing too fast and not reviewing before clicking “post”.
@Alex, thanks for suggesting that.
[ Peers over spectacles, says nothing. ]
Twitter/x shows
Xcancel shows:
@Alex caught that.
The ‘in f’ is likely a typo, but the garbling is another matter.
city hall or church: it strikes me that these drag performances are very very unlike the way actual women dance. Very unlike any other human movement. Fake and detached from reality, as it were.
Europeans: my wife had an aunt who lived in Germany and came to visit. First to DC, then Minneapolis, then our town. One of the first things she said to us was “you americans really do need a car”. Heh.
Heat: when I lived in South Carolina, one year we had 40 days over 100F and 20 of those days were in a row. Ouch. And of course, I moved to a new dwelling during that.
How stupid can you get? Well on the positive side, won’t get any stupider. Third World Shithole News.
Puzzling. I see “should have control in f American policy” both in X and Xcancel.
Admit it, David. You enjoy my occasional errors.
Goddamn racist Americakkka, won’t let an underage black kid stab a clerk to death for refusing to sell tobacco to him.