Tag Archives: newspapers

What Does It Take for the Press to Call a Lie a Lie?

Mother Jones

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Watching the inauguration yesterday, I saw the smallish crowds just like everyone else. My immediate thought was: Oh God, this means tomorrow will be a 24/7 offensive from the White House about how this was the biggest inaugural crowd ever in history. The boy king will demand no less.

Sure enough, that’s what we got. Trump went out to visit the CIA today and informed everyone that the inauguration crowd was at least a million, maybe a million and a half. Then he sent out his press secretary, Sean Spicer, to deliver an unprecedented screed, yelling at the assembled reporters about how dishonest they were and then spewing out a whole array of fabricated numbers to back up his boss’s lies. When he was done, he turned on his heels and left without taking any questions.

I’m not interested in pointless discussions of whether Trump does this stuff to distract us (in this case, from the massive number of people at the women’s marches around the country). I suppose that’s part of it. But it’s obvious from decades of watching Trump that he simply can’t abide any criticism, either express or implied. Everything he does has to be the biggest and best. He’s incapable of not lashing out when anyone suggests otherwise.

That’s obvious enough to be banal at this point. What I’m more interested in is when the media is going to get over its faintheartedness and start calling this stuff what it is: lies. On MSNBC, Jim Sciutto reminded us that Trump frequently says things that “defy the facts.” CNN wrote about Spicer’s “misstatements of fact.” The New York Times said Trump’s crowd numbers were “false.” Other newspapers said the same thing in different ways.

But even by the strictest definition, Trump and Spicer were lying. Trump made up his numbers out of thin air, knowing perfectly well they were based on nothing. Spicer delivered a whole bunch of numbers that were obviously either invented or just plain fake—and did it in an angry tone that was clearly meant to intimidate everyone in the room.

All of this stuff was not just “false,” it was knowingly false. Everyone knows this. So let’s cut out the delicate language and the earnest panel discussions about whether Spicer might have a point about one thing or another. He was lying. Trump was lying. Can’t we be adults and just say so?

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What Does It Take for the Press to Call a Lie a Lie?

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Report: Yes, a GOP Megadonor Did Secretly Buy Nevada’s Biggest Newspaper

Mother Jones

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The mystery surrounding the secretive purchase of Nevada’s biggest newspaper has finally come to a close. Fortune reports that multiple sources familiar with the deal have confirmed that Las Vegas casino owner and GOP megadonor Sheldon Adelson bought the Las Vegas Review-Journal last week, but attempted to keep the purchase hidden.

Speculation has been rampant since the newspaper’s management told staff last Friday that the paper had been sold for $140 million to a newly incorporated Delaware-based shell corporation. The paper had only just been sold by its longtime owner for $105 million in February to Gatehouse Media, a national chain that is publicly traded. The premium price paid by the new owner—at a time when print newspapers are seen as disastrous investments—raised red flags, as did the comments made to newsroom staff by a man named Michael Schroeder, who was introduced as a “manager” for the shell corporation.

Schroeder told the staff that the new owners were “undisclosed financial backers with expertise in the media industry,” but declined to specify. In the newspaper’s first story on the sale, an initial draft included a quote from Schroeder in which he appeared to dismiss concerns of the employees by saying, “They want you to focus on your jobs…don’t worry about who they are.” But the newspaper presses were literally stopped to edit the article and the quote was pulled, as were other critical comments, before a new version of the article was printed.

Today, the Review-Journal published its own front-page article highlighting the outrage in journalism circles over the mysterious sale—there are no other newspapers of any significance in the United States whose owners are not known—as well as clues that Schroeder has links to Adelson. The paper reported that Schroeder had worked with another man who now runs a news service that distributes content from one of the newspapers that Adelson owns in Israel.

Fortune’s report relies on “multiple sources familiar with the situation” who said the buyer was Adelson. One informed source told Mother Jones earlier this week that Adelson had privately mused about buying the newspaper in the past, and the Review-Journal‘s report today includes details that Adelson attempted to purchase the newspaper in February when it was last sold, but was unable to.

Adelson’s representative did not respond to requests for comment earlier this week on whether he was the purchaser.

Adelson, who has donated more than $100 million to almost exclusively conservative political causes, including more than $92 million alone in the 2012 presidential election to try to defeat President Barack Obama in his reelection, has not been shy about using his Isreali newspapers as a political cudgel. Adelson founded Israel Hayom, a free daily newspaper that supports Isreali Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, of whom Adelson is a fervent supporter. The paper is now the largest-circulation newspaper in Israel. Earlier this year, it published numerous enthusiastic articles about Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida, rumored to be Adelson’s favorite GOP candidate for the 2016 election.

While no official confirmation of Adelson’s role has been made, questions are already swirling about why the secrecy was necessary. Ultimately, only Adelson knows, but the Las Vegas paper might be of particular use to Adelson, politically speaking, for several reasons. The Review-Journal is the largest-circulation paper in the state, making it a powerful tool in the run-up to the Nevada caucus, which will be in mid-February and is one of the first on the primary schedule (third for Democrats and fourth for Republicans). Additionally, Adelson is deeply embroiled in a battle over whether the federal government should ban internet gambling: He supports a ban, but stands nearly alone in the casino industry in that position. Sympathetic management of the Las Vegas paper could give him a needed boost in the fight.

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Report: Yes, a GOP Megadonor Did Secretly Buy Nevada’s Biggest Newspaper

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Did a Republican Megadonor Just Secretly Buy Nevada’s Biggest Newspaper?

Mother Jones

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Conventional wisdom holds that you do not want to buy a newspaper because newspapers are terrible investments. Yet late last week, someone did buy the largest newspaper in Nevada, the Las Vegas Review-Journal, and paid a premium for it. Even stranger, nobody knows who it was, and the new owners seem to be actively working to keep it that way.

The sale has created a controversy because, while there is no rule requiring a newspaper to disclose its owners, the Journal-Review will be, by far, the largest newspaper in America whose owners are secret. The intrigue is not just journalistic: For a well-heeled person interested in influencing an election, owning the largest paper in the state that in a few short months will hold one of the first nominating events of the primary season (third for Democrats and fourth for Republicans) is a good place to start.

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Did a Republican Megadonor Just Secretly Buy Nevada’s Biggest Newspaper?

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Elizabeth Warren Tells Stephen Colbert "the Game Is Rigged"

Mother Jones

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On Wednesday night, Stephen Colbert hosted yet another political star on his new CBS show, this time chatting with Sen. Elizabeth Warren. Colbert used the opportunity to push Warren about why she isn’t running for president, as seemingly every other politician with even the slightest bit of name recognition is giving it a go for 2016. “Are you sure you’re not running for president of the United States?” Colbert asked. “Have you checked the newspapers lately, because a lot of people have jumped in, you might have done it in your sleep.” Warren confirmed, yet again, that she’s happy in the Senate, fighting for the middle class because the “game is rigged.”

As usual, Warren wanted to talk less about electoral politics and instead squeeze in a bit of policy wonkery. The Massachusetts senator spent the bulk of the interview focused on one of her favorite topics: attacking trickle-down economics as conservative hocus-pocus that’s robbed the country of the resources needed to invest in the future. “One hundred percent of income growth in this country since the 1980s,” Warren said, “has gone to the top 10 percent, and that’s not only wrong, that is going to destroy our country unless we take our government back.”

Watch a brief clip of Warren’s interview below, or see the full episode here.

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Elizabeth Warren Tells Stephen Colbert "the Game Is Rigged"

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This Major Newspaper Just Declared War on Fossil Fuels

Inside the Guardian’s decision to embrace climate activism. Jonathan Nicholson/ZUMA After 20 years at the helm of one of the United Kingdom’s most influential newspapers, Alan Rusbridger is about to step down as editor of the Guardian. He’s not going quietly: In an op-ed a couple weeks ago, Rusbridger pledged to use his waning weeks to launch a full-out war on climate change: So, in the time left to me as editor, I thought I would try to harness the Guardian’s best resources to describe what is happening…For the purposes of our coming coverage, we will assume that the scientific consensus about man-made climate change and its likely effects is overwhelming. We will leave the sceptics and deniers to waste their time challenging the science. The mainstream argument has moved on to the politics and economics… We will look at who is getting the subsidies and who is doing the lobbying. We will name the worst polluters and find out who still funds them. We will urge enlightened trusts, investment specialists, universities, pension funds and businesses to take their money away from the companies posing the biggest risk to us. And, because people are rightly bound to ask, we will report on how the Guardian Media Group itself is getting to grips with the issues. The Guardian, a Climate Desk partner, is no stranger to global warming reporting. It was the first daily paper in the UK to institute a dedicated section for environment coverage. The paper has extensively covered international climate negotiations, fracking on both sides of the Atlantic, and the latest climate science, while also pouring resources into lush interactive web features. But its new initiative promises to go even further. The series kicked off with a pair of excerpts from Harvard science historian Naomi Klein’s recent book on the tension between capitalism and the climate crisis. Over the next few months it will include investigative features, daily news stories, videos and podcasts, and even original artwork and poetry. The pieces will appear not just on the paper’s environment pages, but across all sections, from business and tech to lifestyle and the arts. The overarching idea is that from now until Rusbridger’s departure in June, any climate story that any reporter has had kicking around but has never had time to tackle will get priority treatment. But the centerpiece is all about the penultimate sentence in the excerpt above: “We will urge…” This week the Guardian kicked off a petition calling on the world’s two largest charitable organizations, the Gates Foundation and the Wellcome Trust, to divest their financial holdings from the world’s 200 top fossil fuel companies. As of Thursday afternoon, the petition had gathered over 94,000 signatures and earned the support of the country’s energy minister. If that sounds a lot like straight-up activism, that’s because it is. Rusbridger proposed the petition a few months ago at a meeting that included a who’s-who of the paper’s top editors, designers, and website coders, said James Randerson, an assistant national news editor who handles climate reporting. “There were some voices who questioned whether a campaign was the best use of the Guardian‘s voice,” Randerson said, “because the Guardian is about reporting and uncovering things that people can use in advancing an agenda.” But Rusbridger’s argument, Randerson said, was: “We’ve tried to do that for quite a while, and we needed to do something that had a bit more cut-through. We felt that it was time to take that step.” The idea of a newspaper undertaking an openly activist campaign straight from the playbook of Greenpeace or the Sierra Club might seem strange to American audiences, who are accustomed to news outlets at least purporting to adhere to some degree of journalistic objectivity. But in the UK, newspapers taking a step across the line between news and activism is, well, less newsworthy. In 2014 the Guardian waged a similar campaign against female genital mutilation. Prior to the 2009 UN climate summit in Copenhagen, the Guardian convinced 56 newspapers from around the globe to publish a front-page editorial calling for climate action. Randerson also characterized the paper’s extensive reporting on Edward Snowden and the National Security Agency as a kind of unofficial campaign against state surveillance. And the Times of London has an ongoing campaign to promote safety for urban cyclists, inspired by an accident that nearly killed one of its reporters. Randerson said the campaign won’t dampen the editorial rigor applied to reporting, editing, and fact-checking news stories. Is it time for the Washington Post and the New York Times to launch climate petitions of their own? Randerson wouldn’t say, but he did argue that especially in the United States, “the media have not done a service to their readers in explaining what’s really at stake here.” Now we get a chance to see if a more direct approach does the trick. View the original here: This Major Newspaper Just Declared War on Fossil Fuels

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This Major Newspaper Just Declared War on Fossil Fuels

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Surprise! Lots of People Are Saving Money Thanks to Obamacare.

Mother Jones

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Today brings ever more stories of rate shock from people signing up for Obamacare:

Sue Spanke of Missoula, Mont., was highly displeased this fall when she learned her health insurance had been canceled….After angrily calling her state auditor’s office, Spanke, a self-employed artist in her 50s, found she was eligible for a federal subsidy. Her new insurance will cover her for a mere $30 to $40 a month with a deductible of only $500. She had been paying $350 a month for a Blue Cross policy with a $5,000 deductible. “I went from a horrible policy that didn’t cover anything, that was breaking me, to the best policy at the best price I’ve had since I was in my 20s,” she said.

….In Lancaster, Pa., Lori Lapman, 58, learned her health plan was being canceled in September—by October things were looking up. Per The Sunday News: “Sitting at a laptop with a certified health law helper, Lapman went to HealthCare.gov, found it running smoothly, and bought a subsidized Highmark plan that allows her to keep her doctors while saving her money. Her canceled plan cost her $520 a month. Her new coverage? Only $111.73.”

….In a letter to the editor in The Santa Maria Times, Allan Pacela told the story of how after his wife lost her insurance this fall, she found much better coverage under Obamacare. The couple is now saving $8,000 per year for a “much better plan.”

There’s more at the link, and all from doing a quick Nexis search of newspapers across the country. Just imagine what we might find out with a little bit of old-school shoe-leather reporting.

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Surprise! Lots of People Are Saving Money Thanks to Obamacare.

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#DrownYourTown: What Happens When Twitter Users Get On-Demand Apocalyptic Sea Level Rise Maps

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Index Astartes: Volume I – Games Workshop

Index Astartes explores the units, heroes and vehicles of the Space Marine Chapters. This eBook collects together a selection of these great articles in one place. About this Series: The Adeptus Astartes are genetically engineered warriors, created by the Emperor of Mankind and tempered by centuries of bloody warfare. The Index Astartes series explores the o […]

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Codex: Adepta Sororitas – Games Workshop

The Adepta Sororitas, also known as the Sisters of Battle, are an elite sisterhood of warriors raised from infancy to adore the Emperor of Mankind. Their fanatical devotion and unwavering purity is a bulwark against corruption, heresy and alien attack, and once battle has been joined they will stop at nothing until their enemies are utterly crushed In this b […]

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Sentinels of Terra – A Codex: Space Marines Supplement – Games Workshop

The Imperial Fists have defended the Imperium since the days of the Great Crusade. They stood with the Emperor at the Siege of Terra, and have continued his life’s work in the centuries since. They are indefatigable defenders of Mankind, and the foremost guardians of Terra itself. About this book: Sentinels of Terra is a supplement to Codex: Space Marines Th […]

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Trident K9 Warriors – Michael Ritland & Gary Brozek

As Seen on “60 Minutes”! As a Navy SEAL during a combat deployment in Iraq, Mike Ritland saw a military working dog in action and instantly knew he’d found his true calling. Ritland started his own company training and supplying dogs for the SEAL teams, U.S. Government, and Department of Defense. He knew that fewer than 1 percent of […]

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Codex: Space Marines (Enhanced Edition) – Games Workshop

The Space Marines are the chosen warriors of the Emperor, and the greatest fighting force of the Imperium. Each Space Marine is a genetically enhanced super soldier, easily a match for a dozen lesser men, armed with some of the deadliest weapons in the galaxy and encased in formidable power armour. This codex explores the formations and Chapters of the Space […]

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Inside of a Dog – Alexandra Horowitz

The bestselling book that asks what dogs know and how they think, now in paperback. The answers will surprise and delight you as Alexandra Horowitz, a cognitive scientist, explains how dogs perceive their daily worlds, each other, and that other quirky animal, the human. Horowitz introduces the reader to dogs’ perceptual and cognitive abilities and then draw […]

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Codex: Adepta Sororitas (eBook Edition) – Games Workshop

The Adepta Sororitas, also known as the Sisters of Battle, are an elite sisterhood of warriors raised from infancy to adore the Emperor of Mankind. Their fanatical devotion and unwavering purity is a bulwark against corruption, heresy and alien attack, and once battle has been joined they will stop at nothing until their enemies are utterly crushed In this b […]

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The Art of Raising a Puppy (Revised Edition) – Monks of New Skete

For more than thirty years the Monks of New Skete have been among America’s most trusted authorities on dog training, canine behavior, and the animal/human bond. In their two now-classic bestsellers, How to be Your Dog’s Best Friend and The Art of Raising a Puppy, the Monks draw on their experience as long-time breeders of German shepherds and as t […]

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How to Raise the Perfect Dog – Cesar Millan & Melissa Jo Peltier

From the bestselling author and star of National Geographic Channel’s Dog Whisperer , the only resource you’ll need for raising a happy, healthy dog. For the millions of people every year who consider bringing a puppy into their lives–as well as those who have already brought a dog home–Cesar Millan, the preeminent dog behavior expert, says, “Yes, […]

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Tom Dokken’s Retriever Training – Tom Dokken

Hunting Success Begins Here! In Tom Dokken’s Retriever Training , America’s leading trainer helps you channel your hunting dog’s huge ambition so he works for you, the way you want, and does so happily. After using the time-tested methods in Tom Dokken’s Retriever Training , you’ll have a reliable retriever that: Obeys commands on- a […]

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#DrownYourTown: What Happens When Twitter Users Get On-Demand Apocalyptic Sea Level Rise Maps

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BP Challenges Settlements in Gulf Oil Spill

The oil company asserted that thousands of claims were either inflated or nonexistent in ads that are to appear in three major newspapers Wednesday. Link:  BP Challenges Settlements in Gulf Oil Spill ; ;Related ArticlesAlgae-Engineering Joint Venture DisbandsScientists Find Canadian Oil Safe for Pipelines, but Critics Say Questions RemainMarijuana Crops in California Threaten Forests and Wildlife ;

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BP Challenges Settlements in Gulf Oil Spill

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