Journalists used to aspire to objectivity. Now they barely even bother to pretend.

[Legion]

Media watchdog Gerard Baker documented several recent examples of journalistic malfeasance, including Jeffrey Toobin’s re-emergence on CNN and new Pulitzer prizes awarded for “advocacy of approved causes.”

Two more instances grabbed attention.

One is the June 7 Washington Post story by Yeganeh Torbati on Republican governors who ended the $300-a-week unemployment bonus originally set to run through Sept. 6.

They acted after local businesses reported difficulty finding workers. More evidence came in April, when job vacancies hit 9.3 million while only 6.6 million Americans were looking for work.

Ms. Torbati’s piece was titled “GOP governors are cutting unemployment aid. Some have ties to businesses that may benefit.” She unsubtly accused four governors of ending the benefits to enrich themselves, since they or their families own businesses that are looking for workers. These include resorts, an agricultural enterprise and an air-conditioning wholesaler, the last with 19 employees.

Ms. Torbati lists two other Republican governors who ended the additional unemployment-insurance benefits and lack what she called “any apparent relevant business interests.” Presumably so did the 19 other unnamed GOP governors who have discontinued the bonus.

Applying the Torbati standard, can Republican governors show they’re not basing decisions on “personal connections to businesses that are trying to find workers” only if they pursue policies that harm the economy and discourage people from working?

Would Post editors assign a reporter to identify which congressional Democrats who voted for the $7,500 federal subsidy for buying an electric car (or the attempt to raise it to $12,500) have family or friends who received this largess? Would Post editors assign Ms. Torbati to uncover which parents or friends of lawmakers own clean-energy stocks that might benefit even indirectly from Green New Deal bills?

These are rhetorical questions.

What’s different is how open, persistent and routine this double standard is today—and how dangerous that is.

Another case is the decision by CNN’s Jake Tapper not to interview any Republicans who challenged the 2020 certification of electoral votes, because, he says, they continue “to erode confidence in our democracy by supporting the Big Lie” that the 2020 election was stolen.

Mr. Tapper gets to choose his guests, but is he outraged only at Republican election challengers? Thirty-two DEMOCRATS voted against accepting Electoral College results after President George W. Bush’s 2004 re-election, claiming voting machines were manipulated to create his victory.

Yet since the fall of 2014, Mr. Tapper has conducted at least 17 interviews of DEMOCRATS who voted to reject the 2004 certification. One leader of that effort, House Majority Whip James Clyburn, has been Mr. Tapper’s guest three times this year alone. The host interviewed another, Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, this month. Other DEMOCRAT election skeptics interviewed by Mr. Tapper since 2014 include Rep. Barbara Lee, Sen. Ed Markey, the now-deceased Rep. John Lewis, and former Reps. Lacy Clay and Jesse Jackson Jr.

That's media partisanship in plain view.


https://www.wsj.com/articles/media-partisanship-in-plain-view-11623881726?mod=hp_opin_pos_1

 

[Legion]

“Yellow journalism” means a sensationalized press.

Perhaps it is time to introduce “blue journalism”—the new media practice of abandoning standards to work seamlessly with the progressive left against any opposition.

A case study is the attempted political assassination of Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson. The press has never liked most Republicans. Yet for most of Mr. Johnson’s decade in the Senate, it’s generally described him as what he is: an outsider businessman and fiscal conservative with a focus on deficits and spending. “Wisconsin’s senior senator is a numbers guy, a believer in the power of facts and figures,” wrote Milwaukee Magazine in his first term. In recent years, serving on the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, he’s developed a reputation for oversight.

Compare that with the recent onslaught. “Assaulting the Truth, Ron Johnson Helps Erode Confidence In Government,” read a failing New York Times news headline, over a story that called him the “Republican Party’s foremost amplifier of conspiracy theories and disinformation.”

“Ron Johnson’s Crazy Train Is Somehow Getting Even Weirder,” snarked Vanity Fair.

“Ron Johnson Is a Racist,” opined the Washington Post’s Kathleen Parker. Mr. Johnson is “inciting fear” the Post’s Michael Gerson added. The paper’s “fact checkers” assailed his “misleading data” and “unscientific take.”

What’s this all about? From the Times story, it amounts to this: Mr. Johnson has refused to brand everyone present in Washington on Jan. 6 as “insurrectionists”; he’s continued to note that last year’s Black Lives Matter protests led to rioting, looting, arson and death; he held hearings on treatments for Covid and 2020 election integrity; and he’s declined, for now, a Covid vaccine, given he had the disease last year and decided to let others go before him.

None of this is remotely conspiratorial or even controversial. Mr. Johnson’s real offense is refusing to roll over to the progressive and public-health police and continuing to ask tough questions.

The DEMOCRAT-media complex hates those questions. The Beltway press has a special grudge against Mr. Johnson, since his fact-finding efforts exposed its bias and ineptitude last fall.

Mr. Johnson and Sen. Chuck Grassley in September issued a report on Hunter Biden’s sleazy foreign business dealings. DEMOCRATS and the media tried mightily to brand it “Russian disinformation,” only to be roundly refuted when the younger Mr. Biden’s business partner and documents later backed up the report, and when news leaked that Hunter Biden was under federal investigation for the sort of transactions Mr. Johnson had brought to light.

Mr. Johnson isn’t doing anything differently now.

The only thing that has changed is a press corps that is now brazenly fabricating story lines to the left’s advantage. The recent anti-Johnson pieces are stunning in their willingness to twist the senator’s words or take his positions out of context.



https://www.wsj.com/articles/yellow-journalism-turns-blue-11616711532