Sleepless in Midland

Scrutinizing fake news

I ran across a newspaper article that referenced this study, and it might be useful to use some of the suggestions.

The researchers experimented with subjects who were exposed to news items to study how readily accepted fake news might be. Here's an excerpt from the abstract which describes their conclusion and recommendation:

We found that, while users were generally more likely to believe articles that agreed with their point of view, asking users to rate pushed them to think more critically about the truthfulness of the articles. Moreover, once users had been asked to rate some articles, they remained critical of other articles as well, even without the rating prompt.

Article link: Do You Really Know If It’s True? How Asking Users to Rate Stories Affects Belief in Fake News on Social Media.

So first we need to be aware of confirmation bias. Then if we give a piece of news a rating it causes us to be more skeptical. Seems like good advice in this day and age of fake news.

------
1:02 PM 9/2/2019

Local media caught off guard when active shooter struck Odessa

So I clicked on the TV Saturday mid-afternoon in Midland, Texas, and heard on a cable station about an active shooter in "Midland/Odessa." (Actually, the two cities are roughly 20 miles apart. But that's not important.)

My thought was that a local channel would be right on top of it. Nope. CBS7 was the only one trying to cover it, but they were woefully lacking in information. They were getting their information from CNN and New York Times.

Their studio was in an Odessa mall, and at a couple of points they reported that armed law enforcement officers were walking through the mall. That prompted the news readers to go hide. So they went somewhere off screen leaving the audience staring at the empty space they just left. They kept on talking through their wireless microphones, so we knew they were there, somewhere. They were never in danger, but they didn't know that at the time.

But that seemingly forced abandonment of the broadcast desk became news for the cable outlets. The local broadcasters made themselves part of the story without actually doing anything but hiding.

The killing was tragic, but the local media were disappointing.  Their reliance on the major news outlets demonstrated that local news outlets may be able to add drama, but not much else.

Update: This article at OAOA.com was an Associated Press update as of 4:46 am, Sun Sep 1, 2019: 5 dead after man stopped by Texas troopers goes on rampage.

And here's something interesting: "Active shooter incidents were also reported at Music City Mall, Midland Park Mall and Midland Memorial Hospital, but all were false, according to local police departments." Found at Odessa mass shooting leaves 5 dead, 21 injured. How do false reports like that originate?

Meanwhile, local news says the Odessa Police Chief will hold a press conference at noon today.

------
9:20 AM 9/1/2019

Poynter withdraws list of unreliable news websites because list was unreliable

This looks like satire, but it most likely isn't. Poynter institute -- self proclaimed thought leader -- published a list of 515 “unreliable” news websites, presumably to help journalists maintain some semblance of accuracy. Oops. It turned out their list was unreliable.

Letter from the Editor
May 2, 2019 Barbara Allen
Category: Letter from the Editor

Dear readers:

On Tuesday, April 30, Poynter posted a list of 515 “unreliable” news websites, built from pre-existing databases compiled by journalists, fact-checkers and researchers around the country. Our aim was to provide a useful tool for readers to gauge the legitimacy of the information they were consuming.

Soon after we published, we received complaints from those on the list and readers who objected to the inclusion of certain sites, and the exclusion of others. We began an audit to test the accuracy and veracity of the list, and while we feel that many of the sites did have a track record of publishing unreliable information, our review found weaknesses in the methodology. We detected inconsistencies between the findings of the original databases that were the sources for the list and our own rendering of the final report.

Therefore, we are removing this unreliable sites list until we are able to provide our audience a more consistent and rigorous set of criteria. The list was intended to be a starting place for readers and journalists to learn more about the veracity of websites that purported to offer news; it was not intended to be definitive or all encompassing. We regret that we failed to ensure that the data was rigorous before publication, and apologize for the  confusion and agitation caused by its publication. We pledge to continue to hold ourselves to the highest standards.

— Barbara Allen, managing editor, Poynter.org

Read it here and decide for yourself whether it's satire.

------
1:34 PM 5/20/2019

Truth Decay -- cute name, dangerous condition

Jennifer Kavanagh was a guest on C-Span the other day and provided an educational view of the condition in which we live today regarding influential but misleading information to which we are exposed. Click this video link to watch it.

Ms. Kavanagh is a co-author of Rand Corporation's study titled Truth Decay. Here's the study's definition of the title phrase:

Truth Decay is defined as a set of four related trends: increasing disagreement about facts and analytical interpretations of facts and data; a blurring of the line between opinion and fact; an increase in the relative volume, and resulting influence, of opinion and personal experience over fact; and declining trust in formerly respected sources of factual information.

The causes are the old and new information systems in existence today, the educational system, the polarization that seems to have divided us into our own tribes, and our own biases.

There's no easy cure -- the authors recommend more research, and maybe that will reveal a solution. But for those of out here in the audience, we would do well to remain skeptical yet be willing to take in new ideas while we endeavor to use critical thinking skills to the fullest.

------
1:57 PM 5/19/2019

Conservatives are tuning out Fox News

Seems to happen weekly -- some prominent conservative blogger declares that he/she will no longer watch Fox News Channel.

The network does seem to have changed somewhat. With Old Man Murdoch having left the boys in charge, it's easy to suspect they've been doing some back stage manipulating. Not too long ago the network was being charged with being a megaphone for Donald Trump. While there were some commentators on the network who would have had a hard time refuting that, for the most part, the news people were pretty even handed, Bret Baier, for example. After all, many of them are Democrats, Chris Wallace, for example.

Anyway, the other day Donald Trump criticized the late John McCain following the disclosure McCain was instrumental in the delivery of that fake dossier to the FBI. That evening on Special Report with Bret Baier the very first report came from Fox's White House reporter, John Roberts. He started out by saying that Trump had a win that day, but then Roberts added the unnecessary editorial that Trump stepped all over his win by criticizing McCain.

It would have been better if Roberts had simply reported the facts and left the editorializing to the commentators. But all the news shows editorialize now and call it news. Maybe Fox is trying to broaden its appeal, but this sort of thing drives away some of Fox's previously loyal viewers.

Instant update: POTUS Trump Gives Fox News The Cold Shoulder – Calls On OANN Instead.

------

2:24 PM 3/23/2019

The Republican electorate transformed, according to WaPo

Henry Olsen at WaPo tells us all about what he thinks Republicans want in The GOP is the party of Trump. Here's an excerpt:

Trump has earned this high level of support because he has delivered on the items of supreme importance to almost every Republican faction. University of New Hampshire professor Dante Scala and I examined these groupings in our book “The Four Faces of the Republican Party.” Pre-Trump, the party had four factions: fiscal conservatives, social conservatives, “somewhat” conservatives (also labeled business conservatives) and moderates. Trump brought new voters into the primary process and created a fifth faction: nationalist conservatives, who want to lower immigration and redo foreign trade deals. Four of these five have received the things they care most about under the Trump administration.

Democrats like to use that word, "nationalist." But he's probably wrong on his description of the fifth group wanting lower immigration. Mr. Olsen does what so many Democrats do, and that's lumping legal immigrants with illegal immigrants together under one name.

But he's right to say that Trump delivered what a lot of conservatives wanted, and that's a better economy than we had. However, there's also the appointment of Constitutional judges -- something almost all conservatives wanted, not just religious conservatives. But one of the most important elements of Trump's appeal to voters is that he doesn't roll over and play dead whenever the msm rips into him. He fights back. Many conservative voters love that contrast between Trump and so, so many of the previous Republican presidential aspirants.

------

2:32 PM 2/27/2019

Quote of the day

In an opinion piece published in LATimes.com, Virginia Heffernan wrote this in Who cares who wrote the anonymous op-ed? America has to deal with a soft coup d’etat in the White House:

There’s nothing comforting about a soft coup d’etat in the White House — made up of unnamed vigilantes who are accountable to no one — serving as a thin, self-appointed line between the life and death of the republic. In a democracy, a coup is no response to a despot. It’s a recipe for more despotism.

Well said. The objective of the piece was to exhort readers to focus less on who wrote the anonymous NYT deep state editorial but more on how to stop Trump. But that part really hit a bullseye.

Aside: One has to wonder if an editorial from an anonymous insider that gets so much national attention causes a little jealousy among those who try to make a living writing editorials.

Associated Press death row watcher, Michael Graczyk, goes independent

Late last month our local morning paper contained an Associate Press article telling us that Michael Graczyk was going to retire from AP and free lance doing what he did before.

Many professionals focus on something no one else wants to do. And they are successful if they do a good job.

Mr. Graczyk had an unlikely news business niche. He watched death row inmates get executed. Most of us might find that a little bit weird, but a reporter is supposed to look at subjects dispassionately. And Mr. Graczyk certainly made a claim to that narrow spot he filled.

Anyway, apparently he isn't going away, he's just going independent.

Here's a link to the AP article: AP reporter who observed 400+ executions in Texas retires.

Meanwhile, he was mentioned in 2010 at this blog in Henry Skinner's date with the executioner extended.

------

2:20 PM 8/6/2018

Thomas Frank talks tough about the main stream media -- a club of which he is a card carrying member

I'm a link hoarder. My browser bookmarks number in the thousands. I pity any NSA underling or some other entity employee in or out of the government that should ever be tasked with looking at each one. From time to time I scroll through one of the several "Read Later" folders for something that might still be of interest. And this one jumped out.

Thomas Frank's animus toward conservatives was painfully obvious when he wrote a column for the Wall Street Journal. Frank was hired on as a columnist as a way to placate progressive reporters for that newspaper when Rupert Murdoch's family enterprise bought it. Frank was very hostile toward conservatives in those columns, and it prompted some readers to speculate that his addition to the line-up was intended to showcase the hostility progressives held for conservatives more so than to convince anyone that just maybe progressive ideology had some good points after all.

Anyway, Frank eventually moved on, and the buried treasure unearthed from the bookmark archives is his article from July, 21, 2017, from the Guardian in which he tries to explain the disconnect so many people had with the main stream media. See The media's war on Trump is destined to fail. Why can't it see that?.

He saw two reasons. One was the social media websites like Facebook that feed their readers what they want to see. Then there's this:

But there’s also a second reason, one that is even more fundamental. The truth is that the unanimous anti-Trumpness of the respectable press is just one facet of a larger homogeneity. As it happens, the surviving press in this country is unanimous about all sorts of things. ...

Everything they do, they do as a herd – even when it’s running headlong over a cliff. ...

These things don’t happen because the journalists that remain are liberals. It happens because so many of them are part of the same class – an exalted and privileged class. They are professionals and they believe in the things that so many other professional groups believe in: consensus, “realism”, credentialing, the wisdom of their fellow professionals and (of course) the stupidity of the laity.

This is the key to understanding many of their biases – and also for understanding why they are so utterly oblivious to how they appear to the rest of America.

His observations seem accurate. But people who remember his column in the Wall Street Journal might wonder if he's aware of how oblivious he appeared there.

------

12:25 PM 4/28/2018

MSM, please stop giving killers the fame they seek

Those who study mass murderers tell us that one of the reasons the killers did what they did was to become famous. Just as a vandal who can't produce anything might have a sense of accomplishment by destroying someone else's work, an easy way to achieve fame is to commit some horrific crime. A loser will probably not be able to make a mark by doing something productive.

The media seems obsessed with events like the killing in Florida recently. There was non-stop coverage along with what must be obligatory -- full background, identity, and photo of the killer. Fame.

We can blame the main stream media for encouraging such behavior.

But here's one that falls on the Cook County, Illinois, jailer who released the video showing the scene described in Cook Co. jail inmates clap for suspect in cop’s fatal shooting. Way to go, jailer. Now any loser who wants to be a jailhouse hero knows how.

------

2:11 PM 2/17/2018

media misuse by enemies -- DNI warning

The recent gushing from the Democrat media complex about the North Korean charm offensive at the Olympics was an eye opener. If only those reporters hadn't fallen so easily for it.

Maybe they are still obsessed with the Russia collusion narrative. If so, they should read the Worldwide Threat Assessment of the US Intelligence Community. See excerpt below:

Russia and Influence Campaigns

Influence operations, especially through cyber means, will remain a significant threat to US interests as they are low-cost, relatively low-risk, and deniable ways to retaliate against adversaries, to shape foreign perceptions, and to influence populations. Russia probably will be the most capable and aggressive source of this threat in 2018, although many countries and some no nonstate actors are exploring ways to use influence operations, both domestically and abroad.

We assess that the Russian intelligence services will continue their efforts to disseminate false information via Russian state-controlled media and covert online personas about US activities to encourage anti-US political views. Moscow seeks to create wedges that reduce trust and confidence in democratic processes, degrade democratization efforts, weaken US partnerships with European allies, undermine Western sanctions, encourage anti-US political views, and counter efforts to bring Ukraine and other former Soviet states into European institutions.

- Foreign elections are critical inflection points that offer opportunities for Russia to advance its interests both overtly and covertly. The 2018 US mid-term elections are a potential target for Russian influence operations.

- At a minimum, we expect Russia to continue using propaganda, social media, false-flag personas, sympathetic spokes people, and other means of influence to try to exacerbate social and political fissures in the United States.

Democrats and their media friends are trying hard to "exacerbate social and political fissures in the United States," too. Sometimes it's hard to distinguish them from our enemies.

Meanwhile, when it comes to influencing elections, AmericanThinker.com asks this: Who will influence the 2018 elections more: Russia or Mexico? The made there is that the Russians had minimal influence on our election in 2016, but illegal immigrants from South of the border who voted had a sizable presence in the election.

------

9:49 AM 2/14/2018

The obstacle for conservatives -- getting the msm to cover news that's not favorable to Dems -- Hezbollah edition

The story that Obama blocked law enforcement action against Hezbollah dope running so as to protect the dream of a nuclear deal with Iran was pretty big. And it came from Politico, too.

One would think this might get some coverage. But no.

Do a DuckDuckGo search for "Hezbollah" coverage for the past week and almost all the sites brought up, except NPR, are oriented toward conservatives. Here are some links:

This is the can opener, the ice breaker, the Politico story: The secret backstory of how Obama let Hezbollah off the hook.

The Daily Caller: Former Gov’t Officials Warned About Hezbollah Story Months Ago.

Fox news: Republicans demand answers over claims Obama gave Hezbollah a pass.

And here's the one from NPR, presented as an interview with the Politico reporter to help distance NPR from the story: Politico Reporter Says Obama Administration 'Derailed' Hezbollah Investigation.

The msm are still covering for Obama.  We could likely assume that will not end anytime soon.

------

2:38 PM 12/22/2017

Correcting AP -- giving people right to opt out of Obamacare doesn't make them lose

Sunday morning's paper contained an AP article purporting to list winners and losers in the Republican tax plan. (The article, not on the morning paper's website, can be found at fox23.com -- Ultra-wealthy win in Senate tax bill, other face hikes.)

And it highlights a point made at this blog before: Lefties are masters of word manipulation.

Among the losers the article identifies were people they said would lose insurance coverage because the individual mandate would be repealed. All that means is that they have a choice. Democrats are proud to say they are "pro choice," and it's a darn shame that only applies to abortions.

Here's that particular offending paragraph in the part listing "Losers":

- An estimated 13 million Americans could lose health insurance coverage under the Senate bill, which would repeal the "Obamacare" requirement that everyone in the U.S. have health insurance. The projection comes from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office. Eliminating the fines is expected to mean fewer people would obtain federally subsidized health policies.

If people opt out of Obamacare coverage, they are not losers. They've merely opted not to use Obamacare and are freed from being punished with a tax for that decision.

P.S. There are other problems with the article. Read the whole thing if you can stand it.

------

12:41 PM 11/19/2017

Disney is kicking the tires at 21st Century Fox

There are several articles out there about this. Here's one: 21st Century Fox has been holding talks to sell most of the company to Disney: Sources. That would be a big move and would definitely bring about changes. 

However, I suppose this part should be good news for fans of Fox News:

The company could not own two broadcast networks and would therefore not buy the Fox broadcast network. It would not buy Fox's sports programming assets in the belief that combining them with ESPN could be seen as anti-competitive from an antitrust standpoint and it would not buy the Fox News or Business channel. Disney would also not purchase Fox's local broadcasting affiliates, according to people familiar with the negotiations.

But the handwriting is on the wall -- the Fox assets are for sale. And eventually someone will buy Fox News and give it a big makeover. In the meantime, conservatives should enjoy it while we can. There really should be some competition for conservative viewers among broadcasters instead of efforts to extinguish conservative viewpoints from TV.

------

2:55 PM 11/17/2017

The big three info websites might come under close scrutiny

Conservatives have known for a long time that at least two of the big three -- Google and Facebook -- have slanted their search results in favor of Democrats. The third company listed in the articles is Amazon, and while that one is a biggie, it isn't clear that it was as politically influential as the other two.

But here's a surprise. Al Franken has championed the cause of the customers against these three. Here's an excerpt from Al Franken Just Gave the Speech Big Tech Has Been Dreading:

Franken has not shied away from voicing concerns about tech’s encroachments on privacy and competition in the past, but Wednesday’s criticism was unusually sweeping, tying together a revised narrative about Silicon Valley that only emerged in glimpses during the Russia hearings. Franken argued that the same control over consumers that facilitated the spread of Russian propaganda on social media also helps Facebook and Google siphon advertising revenue from other publishers and helps Amazon dictate terms to content creators and smaller sellers. Tech giants are incentivized to disregard consumer privacy, Franken noted. “Accumulating massive troves of information isn’t just a side project for them. It’s their whole business model,” he said. “We are not their customers, we are their product.”

We would have to speculate why Franken would be concerned about Amazon influencing content creators, and it's not entirely clear if any remedy he proposed would change Google's or Facebook's efforts to influence voters. But if Democrats are now critics of the very companies that helped them so much that's a big deal.

See also, Tech companies pushed for net neutrality. Now Sen. Al Franken wants to turn it on them.

------

2:26 PM 11/14/2017

English language is evolving before our very eyes -- word "media" is now singular

The language we use is a growing animal. New words are added to our lexicon all the time. And old words change meaning -- "sex" for example, as an identifier, is now "gender."

Here's another word usage that has changed. The word "media" used to be the plural form of "medium." However, the word has been used so much to refer to a class that it has been transformed into a singular form.

We have none other than Kimberly Strassel in the Wall Street Journal using it as singular in her 9/29/2017 column, as in, "the media has...". With all the proof readers they must have at the WSJ, the usage had to be acceptable to them. So now it's practically official. "Media" is now singular.

P.S. It's a good column and certainly worth reading for the content.

------

2:36 PM 10/1/2017

Do the hurricane reporters remind you of the sales people on the TV shopping networks?

The cable news networks are all hurricane, all the time. It's non stop, 24-7. The network producers probably love hurricanes because they don't have to produce any original content. They just let the on-air personalities talk and talk.

Mike Rowe on a podcast described his gig on a TV shopping channel. In the hiring process he was handed a pencil and told to talk about it for several minutes. He got the job. That has to be similar to the application process for the cable news channels' on-air jobs, because they seem to be able to produce endless babble.

We can't forget Dan Rather's contribution to the genre -- a reporter standing outside describing the wind and rain. Now that particular cliche is a staple of TV news.

Hurricane Irma must have seemed like a golden opportunity for them. But viewers not in hurricane range tuned them out. And those in range were probably trying to evacuate. So the only people who really appreciated all that coverage were those reporters who were standing out in the rain.

Fox News no longer fair and balanced -- actually they only ditched the slogan, but they do seem headed in a different direction

Roger Ailes did conservatives a huge favor when he helped develop Fox News. No longer would news be infused with Democrat talking positions. And we could actually hear both sides of a political issue.

"Fair and balanced" was a catchy slogan, and it was appropriate. The MSM tried to ridicule it, regular viewers appreciated it. Now comes Nymag.com with this: Fox News Is Dropping Its ‘Fair & Balanced’ Slogan:

It is hard to overstate the significance of what shedding “Fair & Balanced” means for Fox News. (It would be like the New York Times giving up “All the News That’s Fit to Print.”) Ailes invented the slogan when he launched the network in 1996, and over the years it became a quasi-religious doctrine among Fox’s anchors and viewers. The effectiveness of Fox News as a vehicle for conservative ideology depended on it. “If you come out and you try to do right-wing news, you’re gonna die. You can’t get away with it,” Ailes once told a reporter.

Fox News is undergoing a makeover after several key departures -- Roger Ailes believed in making stars out of the presenters. However, some of those stars turned on him alleging that he expected a bit more out of them. And many of the familiar faces exited -- some on their own volition, some had help out the door.

And Rupert Murdoch seems to be easing himself out the door, too, with his two sons set to take over. At least one media observer makes a convincing case that the Murdoch sons want to make the network less conservative and more progressive. We'll have to see where they take the network. And if they make it simply another MSM voice then they'll lose the audience Rupert and Roger cultivated over the past several years. And that audience will be yearning for a conservative competitor should one come along.

------

2:19 PM 6/18/2017

James Durbin's flying pedestrian

James Durbin, photographer for the local paper (Midland Reporter-Telegram) has an amazing ability to capture people in the air. His sports photos of the airborne athletes look easy compared with this one.

Take a look at this flying pedestrian. What a shot!

Will Bret Stephens survive the ire of New York Times readers?

Perhaps the New York Times was trying to show some balance. They're generally so unabashedly Democrat that conservatives have written them off as the masthead of the liberal media. However, for some reason they hired Bret Stephens away from the Wall Street Journal. But it seems to have backfired on them.

Stephens wrote a column questioning the global warming mantra typically trumpeted by Democrats, and the excrement hit the fan. See People are furiously canceling their New York Times subscriptions after an op-ed disputing climate change was published:

In his column, Stephens compared the "certitude" with which Hillary Clinton's advisers believed she would win the 2016 election to climate scientists' repeated warnings about climate change risks. As evidence, Stephens said that inaccurate polling data during the 2016 campaign proves that science can miss the mark in other fields as well.

"There’s a lesson here. We live in a world in which data convey authority. But authority has a way of descending to certitude, and certitude begets hubris," Stephens wrote.

Stephens' column evoked a swift and angry response from many of the paper's subscribers, who promptly canceled their subscriptions and bashed the Times' decision to hire Stephens as a writer.

I believe there is such a thing as the religion gene which predisposes people to believe in some power that can't be proved. Furthermore, it seems that many Democrats have redirected that predisposition of religious fervor toward politics, the progressive agenda, global warming, and things such as that. If he didn't know it already, Mr. Stephens is learning that to enter a church and disparage the beliefs that brought the congregation together will get a reaction.

------

1:49 PM 4/30/2017

What exactly did Bill O'Reilly do, anyway?

Sometimes it seems like there's a new sport called, "pin the tail on the celebrity male."

There was Bill Cosby. Women came out of the woodwork to blame him for sexual misdeeds. Surely not all of them were non-consenting in their relationships with him. But social mores changed over the years, and they were transformed into victims.

Also Roger Ailes. Gretchen Carlson, according to her petition, was a Stanford University graduate, a former Miss America, an accomplished concert violinist, a best selling author, an award-winning journalist and a Trustee of the March of Dimes. But apparently, she didn't have the wherewithal to tell the boss to back off. Here's a quote from said petition:

22. During that meeting in Ailes' office on September 16, 2015, Ailes stated to Carlson: "I think you and I should have had a sexual relationship a long time ago and then you'd be good and better and I'd be good and better," adding that "sometimes problems are easier to solve" that way.

Boy, if only Ailes had known that what would have been laughed off a few years ago would cost him his job and his boss millions of dollars. Read the whole petition and one comes away thinking that with all of Ms. Carlson's accomplishments she could have handled Mr. Ailes with her verbal skills. Nope.

Aside: Years ago my girlfriend at the time worked at a small corporation owned by the boss. One day he hugged her and tried to feel her ass. She pushed him away and said, "You dirty old man!" It never happened again. God, I loved that woman!

So now O'Reilly is the target. His attackers will walk away with millions, and he will be left looking for another job. If he is as popular as the media claim, he'll land on his feet -- after spending time with the family, of course. But what exactly did he say or do? We need to know so we can decide who is the real villain.

There's a current trend telling us we are supposed to believe the woman in a he-said-she-said dispute, even if she's set to win money in seven figures.

But this brings to mind another recent news headline -- Mike Pence's habit of not dining alone with woman other than his wife. One has to wonder how many of those people chortling about Bill O'Reilly's fate also snickered at Mike Pence's approach to avoiding false claims. Careful men could learn something from Mr. Pence.

------

4:16 PM 4/20/2017

I like Juan Williams even when he goes off the deep end

Juan Williams had his share of problems with the leftist media -- recall that NPR sacked him because of his job with Fox News.

He's a regular on one or more of the Fox news shows, and he's popular because he's friendly, smart, and respectful. Many Democrats we see on TV are strident Republican haters. And that makes Williams' presence very refreshing.

But when we see thing like this: Juan Williams: Trump's risk of impeachment rises, it makes some of us want to say, "Get real!"

In his article, he contends that polls favor Trump's resignation or impeachment. Well, polls come and go. But hopefully Trump stays. And even more hopefully, there will be some thorough investigations into all the crap that went on before and after the election. Democrats will try to play up any chance encounter by a Republican with a Russian, no matter how innocent. But it looks like the real crimes to manipulate the elections were committed by the Obama administration. Let justice prevail.

FBI says Russian op involved bots spreading news through Twitter and Facebook

This is the sort of thing that is best remedied by exposure, if it's true.

The claim is that bad news about Hillary may have been disseminated to a broader extent by this method than if news customers were totally reliant on the main stream media. See FBI’s Russian-influence probe includes a look at Breitbart, InfoWars news sites:

Operatives for Russia appear to have strategically timed the computer commands, known as “bots,” to blitz social media with links to the pro-Trump stories at times when the billionaire businessman was on the defensive in his race against Democrat Hillary Clinton, these sources said.

The bots’ end products were largely millions of Twitter and Facebook posts carrying links to stories on conservative internet sites such as Breitbart News and InfoWars, as well as on the Kremlin-backed RT News and Sputnik News, the sources said.

Couple of observations: Anyone watching the msm blitz downplaying Rep. Devin Nunes' disclosures about surveillance on Trump team members has to wonder why the MSM hasn't tried to pommel trump over this one. Secondly, if the Russian objective was to cast doubt on our political system, the msm probably does more to achieve that particular goal than the Russians could.

1:06 PM 3/24/2017

Theory of Belief Echoes explains why anti-Trump forces are so quick to spread fake news

The most recent publication of "fake news" was debunked so quickly it was all over before many of us had heard the first account. This particular fake news involved alleged sleazy behavior on behalf of Donald Trump. See Hours Before Trump's Press Conference CNN And BuzzFeed Hit 'Fake News' Bottom and Buzzfeed’s Trump report takes ‘fake news’ to a new level for rebuttals.

If Buzzfeed editors knew it was fake, or at least questionable, why did they publish it?

Here's a possible explanation -- they knew and took advantage of the theory of "Belief Echoes." The theory is described in Belief echoes: The persistent effects of corrected misinformation. Here's an excerpt from the abstract:

However, through a series of experiments, I find that exposure to a piece of negative political information persists in shaping attitudes even after the information has been successfully discredited. A correction—even when it is fully believed—does not eliminate the effects of misinformation on attitudes. These lingering attitudinal effects, which I call "belief echoes," are created even when the misinformation is corrected immediately, arguably the gold standard of journalistic fact-checking.

In other words, fake news can shape attitudes even after it's been proven fake. No wonder some partisans are so eager to publish it.

Obama to work in media after leaving office, as if we will still need his opinion

If this is true, Barack Obama hopes to establish an online media entity after he leaves office. That's good. Many of us feared he would be one of those pundits the cable channels go to when they need a guest to fill time. And we imagined a constant, tiresome, presence. His writers would give him a pithy statement which would saturate all the channels.

Here's one source for news of his plan: Obama considering post-presidential digital media career, sources say. Via Of course: Obama reportedly considering launching his own media company.

With his own company he can live in his own bubble. And his audience will be like minded people. He won't change any minds, and in fact, few outside that bubble will bother looking at his web channel, Youtube channel, or whatever it is he puts together.

So do it, President Obama. We would prefer that he leave the public sphere like other former presidents have done. But he has no skills -- he can't paint, he can't build a house, he can't even organize a community. But if he must be in a spotlight, then his own private channel is the best route for him and us.

Don't get mad at Dallas Morning News for endorsing Hillary, thank them for their honesty

Dailycaller.com is telling us that The Dallas Morning News Is Paying Dearly For Endorsing Hillary Clinton. Readers left angry comments and threatened to cancel their subscriptions.

The thing DMN did that is different than most other newspapers is actually coming out and saying it. Most newspapers try to pretend that they are neutral in politics. However, researchers have shown that a high percentage of the people in the msm are Democrats.

They try to hide it, but it's obvious to most conservatives, because it comes out in the news coverage. More specifically, it comes out in what the outlet elects to exclude from coverage. As the oft quoted Iowahawk says, "Journalism is about covering important stories. With a pillow, until they stop moving."

With so many online sources available these days, the typical conservative is very well informed. So when their local daily omits a topic, that's a dead giveaway. It's nice that DMN actually came clean. Their readers should appreciate the honesty.

Aside: For those of us who are one-issue-voters -- concerned about the future Supreme Court appointees -- Hillary is the wrong choice. She has not tried to hide her ambition to try to limit the freedoms guaranteed in the 1st and 2nd amendments. DMN needn't worry, though. They don't care much for the 2nd amendment anyway, and as to the 1st, Clinton will surely make an exception in her executive order protecting her favorite news outlets. But DMN should remember that last line from Martin Niemoeller's famous quote, "... And when they came for me, there was no one left to speak out for me.”

Public trust in media drops during presidential election years -- wonder why?

Americans' trust in the media "to report the news fully, accurately and fairly" has been dropping fairly steadily for quite some time. See Public trust in media falls to historic low. Those days when viewers trusted Walter Cronkite to be unbiased are long gone, thanks in some part to Cronkite's own eventual outing as a hard core Democrat.

That people have lost trust in the institution isn't news. What's noteworthy is the presidential election years, 2000, 2004, 2008, 2012, and 2016. The trust takes a decided dip in each of those years. Check it out in interactive chart at the aforementioned article. The image below is a JPG snipping tool capture.

It should be no mystery why trust drops in those years. As the msm piles on to support one candidate against the other, their bias is more obvious than they probably realize.

Shepherd Smith as Fox News gap filler is doing a lousy job

Mike Rowe once described the test he had to take for a job as a host on a TV shopping show. He was handed a pencil and asked to talk about it, indefinitely. That's what the job entailed, and that's what an applicant had to be able to do.

Apparently, TV news channel hosts have to do the same thing, and it must not be that easy as Fox News Channel always assigns the job to Shepherd Smith when there's day long coverage of a single event. Problem is, since he doesn't have a script and isn't required to promote any product, he makes it a Shepherd Smith opinion piece.

We probably remember how bad his reporting was during the hurricane Katrina coverage. Now we have him trying to cover the murders of the police officers in Baton Rouge. Turns out he felt entitled to criticize Bobby Jindal for saying "All lives matter." Not everyone was thrilled. See ‘Shepard Smith is a damn idiot!’ Unforgivable fight with Jindal after ambush has people calling Fox News!.

John Ziegler provided a clue for why the networks do that in By the Way, I Am Right About the News Media Being Afraid to Offend Blacks With the Truth.

If only those talking heads could stick to reporting the news and quit trying to shape the news.

Maybe the MSM shouldn't be let off the hook for its part in the racial mayhem

Colin Flaherty is no stranger to the issue. He has been writing about race issues for years.

His latest is Media Ignore the Tsunami of Black Violence against Cops in which he catalogs examples of how the media present the violence between police and black men as racism by police against black men. Unfortunately for anyone wanting a balanced look, they ignore violence perpetrated by black people against police.

Here's one anecdote:

In Syracuse on Father’s Day in the ghetto, 500 black people were blowing some weed and shooting some guns when a female cop showed up.

The videos show the crowds fleeing the gunfire as the officer runs towards it. When her backup arrived, they found the cop on the ground, surrounded by a large group of black people beating and kicking her and trying to steal her gun.

One black man was running around, pleading for a gun to shoot the police.

The next night, the cops returned and received similar scorn, hostility and violence.

The local papers pretended they had never heard of anything like that before, when, truth is: That is a regular part of life in Syracuse.

Maybe the media ignore it, not because it goes against what they are convinced is the narrative, but because to do otherwise would not portray them in the politically virtuous light they seek.

It's no help when the President of the United States encourages a false narrative. One wonders what, if anything, the next president will do.

MSM love 1st amendment, 2nd amendment not so much

I couldn't help but notice the juxtaposition. On one side of the morning paper's opinion page is a piece advocating more gun control. To be fair, the piece advocated a tough standard on suspected terrorists. But that would be just a starting point. Many of us suspect that the msm, and Bloomberg in particular, would like nothing better than to claim they were responsible for laws that would ultimately require law abiding citizens to relinquish their firearms to the federal government. If luck in on their side, a Democrat in the White House next year might nominate some Supreme Court Justices who would be complicit in abolishing some of the hard won rights under the 2nd amendment.

As for the tough stance against gun buying terrorists, the bureaucrat who decides who is or isn't a terrorist may subscribe to the lists supplied by the leftist groups who think the biggest threat to the U.S. is from political conservatives.

On the other side of the page is a piece decrying Donald Trump's withdrawal of press credentials from WaPo for his rallies. (Read it at the WaPo site.) Of course there's the obligatory reference to the 1st amendment. There's some irony there. What a shame they can't respect both the 1st and 2nd amendments equally.

By the way, whether or not the Washington Post has a legitimate complaint, it really isn't a 1st amendment issue. Trump isn't the government -- are they simply looking ahead?

Aside: Washington Post's complaint about Trump is reminiscent of the media complaints about Sarah Palin when she stopped interviews with newspaper editorial boards even when everyone knew the boards were going to trash her no matter what she said. Trump is showing that it takes a tough skin to run against the main stream media.