Category: Media

Your Moral And Intellectual Superiors

The BBC used an anti-Israel journalist bankrolled by Iran as a key source in its reporting on the Gaza conflict, it has emerged.

In a report over the weekend, the BBC analysed video and eyewitness accounts of a rush on an aid convoy in Gaza that led to the deaths of more than 100 Palestinians.

The report cited an eyewitness account from Mahmoud Awadeyah, who was described as a journalist on the scene.

But it has emerged that Mr Awadeyah works for Tansim News Agency, an Iranian outlet with links to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, which has vowed to destroy the Israeli state.

In social media posts, the activist praised violence against Israelis and posted photos of himself dining with militant leaders.

Danny Cohen, the former director of BBC Television, accused the corporation of “failing in the most basic of journalistic practices” by not checking one of its key sources.

Writing in The Telegraph, he said: “The BBC has a habit of accepting at face value what they are told by people who present as Palestinian civilians or officials from civic authorities and either don’t understand or don’t care that they are representatives of terrorist organisations.

Crumbling Narratives

When I saw Peter Zeihan speak over a year ago, he openly derided the Russian war effort and confidently claimed that they were critically short of transport vehicles to even get troops to the front. A year later, it appears that the Ukrainians are the ones who seem to be running out of all sorts of stuff.

The Russian advances come in the face of a deep crisis in munitions for the Ukrainian military, creating a near-existential debate for frontline troops who must ration ammunition and are questioning how long they can withstand Russian pressure.

In another sign of the mounting sense of unease, the new commander of the Ukrainian military, Col. Gen. Oleksandr Syrskyi, twice in the past week scolded his subordinate officers for poor performance on this key front line.

On Thursday, Syrskyi criticised “certain shortcomings” and “miscalculations” by commanders on the Avdiivka front lines “which directly affected the sustainability of defence in certain areas.”

Your Moral And Intellectual Superiors

Ken LaCorte stirs the ashes;

It was a company built on the sizzle and BS of founder Shane Smith, who dressed like one of the Blues Brothers and sold a great story to “traditional” news executives. Its pitch: Vice understood the secret sauce of capturing the next generation of news consumers, the ones fleeing mainstream media. […]

An early, important investor was my ex-boss, Rupert Murdoch, whom Smith reportedly told, “I have Gen Y, I have social, I have online video. You have none of that. I have the future; you have the past.”

It worked. Murdoch invested $70 million in 2013, pushing Vice’s valuation to $1.4 billion.

A few months later, I noticed a problem. At the time, I ran FoxNews.com and was looking to boost our social media presence. Analyzing other media outlets, it became apparent to me that Vice’s Facebook numbers were inflated to the point of nonsense. The company had millions of supposed followers, but its posts generated a tiny number of comments and interactions. It was a clear sign of either bot accounts or, more likely, overseas “users” who would follow a Facebook page for pennies.

Since the boss had just dropped $70 million, I thought I should give him a heads-up. After a meeting, I mentioned what I had found to Rupert, summarizing it as “they’re full of s**t.”

I expected him to be perhaps a tad bit worried, but that wasn’t in Rupert’s DNA. He just chuckled and said, “Of course they’re full of s**t.”

The next year, a venture-capital firm and A&E invested $500 million, raising Vice’s valuation to $2.5 billion. By 2017, another $450 million investment pushed its worth to nearly $6 billion.

Money like that buys a lot of video production, articles, and audience. With it, Vice spawned two feature film studios, a publishing arm, a cable TV channel, and more.

All gone.

More via Ed Driscoll.

Down The Memory Hole

Irreversible climate change catastrophe along with mass death will be upon us within twenty years, apparently.

Oh, wait,… that prediction was made twenty years ago.

A secret report, suppressed by US defence chiefs and obtained by The Observer, warns that major European cities will be sunk beneath rising seas as Britain is plunged into a ‘Siberian’ climate by 2020. Nuclear conflict, mega-droughts, famine and widespread rioting will erupt across the world.

The document predicts that abrupt climate change could bring the planet to the edge of anarchy as countries develop a nuclear threat to defend and secure dwindling food, water and energy supplies. The threat to global stability vastly eclipses that of terrorism, say the few experts privy to its contents.

Your Moral And Intellectual Superiors

On one of my first days at The New York Times, I went to an orientation with more than a dozen other new hires. We had to do an icebreaker: Pick a Starburst out of a jar and then answer a question. My Starburst was pink, I believe, and so I had to answer the pink prompt, which had me respond with my favorite sandwich. Russ & Daughters’ Super Heebster came to mind, but I figured mentioning a $19 sandwich wasn’t a great way to win new friends. So I blurted out, “The spicy chicken sandwich from Chick-fil-A,” and considered the ice broken.

The HR representative leading the orientation chided me: “We don’t do that here. They hate gay people.” People started snapping their fingers in acclamation. I hadn’t been thinking about the fact that Chick-fil-A was transgressive in liberal circles for its chairman’s opposition to gay marriage. “Not the politics, the chicken,” I quickly said, but it was too late. I sat down, ashamed.

Read it all.

Lift Up Thine Blessings To The Sky God

And the asteroids which he has gifted us.

After nearly three decades, Vice will stop publishing stories to its website. Vice Media CEO Bruce Dixon said today that the company is going to lay off hundreds of employees as it plans a shift toward social platforms, according to a memo to employees obtained by Washington Post reporter Will Sommer.

“It is no longer cost-effective for us to distribute our digital content the way we have done previously,” Dixon writes. “Moving forward we will look to partner with established media companies to distribute our digital content, including news, on their global platforms, as we fully transition to a studio model.”

Vice has been struggling with many of the same challenges affecting other companies across the media industry. Advertising has become a less lucrative way to monetize content, and audiences are becoming more difficult to reach directly. That’s why Vice is moving toward new revenue streams, such as licensing out its content and focusing on social platforms with bigger scale.

Amen.

Your Moral And Intellectual Superiors

Jonathan Turley;

There is trouble brewing at Black Rock, the headquarters of CBS, after the firing of Catherine Herridge, an acclaimed investigative reporter. Many of us were shocked after Herridge was included in layoffs this month, but those concerns have increased after CBS officials took the unusual step of seizing her files, computers and records, including information on privileged sources.

The position of CBS has alarmed many, including the union, as an attack on free press principles by one of the nation’s most esteemed press organizations.

I have spoken confidentially with current and former CBS employees who have stated that they could not recall the company ever taking such a step before. One former CBS journalist said that many employees “are confused why [Herridge] was laid off, as one of the correspondents who broke news regularly and did a lot of original reporting.”

That has led to concerns about the source of the pressure. He added that he had never seen a seizure of records from a departing journalist, and that the move had sent a “chilling signal” in the ranks of CBS. […]

The timing of Herridge’s termination immediately raised suspicions in Washington. She was pursuing stories that were unwelcomed by the Biden White House and many Democratic powerhouses, including the Hur report on Joe Biden’s diminished mental capacity, the Biden corruption scandal and the Hunter Biden laptop. She continued to pursue these stories despite reports of pushback from CBS executives, including CBS News President Ingrid Ciprian-Matthews.

And now, for the rest of the story: CBS was unquestionably the CIA’s most valuable broadcasting asset.

The Sound Of Deplorable Science

It was known for decades that the Appalachian culture was inbreeding because of all the birth defects that were in the culture that turned out to be… bad nutrition. (Which was why, BTW, the DOD introduced the School Lunch Program back in the late 1940s. To cut down the rate of 4F from childhood nutrition deficiencies.)

Now, with DNA, we can peer into the past of the Appalachian culture and show that those toothless (from poor nutrition) rednecks were…

Not actually sleeping with their daughters. The DNA shows no higher rate of actual incest in traditional Appalachian culture than in the general background of the US.

h/t

Making It All Make Sense

In the Reader Tips before the last one, SDA regular ‘richfisher’ pointed out that Tucker Carlson’s interview with Mike Benz was a much watch. This partially emanated from a recent Scott Adams podcast episode, in which he asked a whole lot of questions about various happenings in the world the past 10 years that just don’t make any sense. So why are they happening? Adams extrapolated some of the key points of what Benz said in the interview, did some of his own research, and added his own insight. The start of this portion of his much longer podcast can be watched here. Think of it as “The Unifying Theory Of Modern Insanity” (TUTOMA).

Update: Some have suggested that this law change, in 2016, is what has permitted the CIA and U.S. Military Complex to turn its extensive forces on the American people.

A Master Class in Dealing with Adversarial Media “Journalists”

Kaitlan Collins is employed by CNN but is nothing more than a Deep State UniParty apparatchik. In this interview with Elise Stefanik, carefully watch the pro-Democrat stance that Collins frames every single question. If she were interviewing Biden, the hardest question she’d ask is “What’s your favorite flavor of ice cream?” Kudos to Stefanik for not backing down to this corrupt hack.

It’s Not Hypocrisy, It’s Hierarchy

National Post- CBC lawsuit against Conservatives cost $400K, but cost was shielded from Parliament for years

“The Trudeau government has just given up on its promise of openness and accountability,” Plett told the National Post. “In this specific situation, we had to go around roadblocks that were set by the government to get an answer to my questions three years ago.”

“Somebody needs to be held accountable for this because we have the right to have these answers,” he added.

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