An Outright Lie
The Associated Press has taken a side in the endless debate over Netflix’s release of a comedy special that includes jokes about the transgender community, coming down squarely in favor of transgender activists.
And by “coming down squarely in favor of transgender activists,” I mean the Associated Press is now publishing baldfaced lies.
A handful of Netflix employees staged a walkout on Oct. 20 to protest the company’s release of a comedy special featuring comedian Dave Chappelle, who has both praise and criticism for the transgender community.
“Your jokes are promoting hateful and discriminatory behavior and conversation, and that is what hurts us,” activist Eureka O’Hara said at the protest.
Another speaker declared, “Trans people are in the middle of a holocaust.”
Counterdemonstrators also made an appearance at the walkout, carrying signs and chanting tongue-in-cheek slogans. Rather than engaging the transgender activists on their terms, conceding Chappelle may be, in fact, hateful or that transgender persons are experiencing their own holocaust, the counterprotesters chose instead to stick with plain, playful rhetoric. They chanted, “Jokes are funny. Jokes. Are. Funny,” and some carried signs that read, “I like Dave.”
This clearly got under the skin of the transgender activists.
They swarmed one man, comedian and YouTuber Vito Gesualdi, who carried a “We like Dave” sign, tearing the poster board clean from the signpost.
The pro-transgender crowd then accused Gesualdi of brandishing a “weapon” as he stood holding the remains of his sign. Gesualdi, who laughed the entire time at the absurdity of the situation, continued to chant “Jokes are funny” and “Dave Chapelle is a funny guy.” Meanwhile, transgender activists circled him, getting in his face and holding out their arms to block him from — well, it’s unclear what they were attempting to block. One activist even waved a tambourine inches from Gesualdi’s face, repeatedly screaming, “Repent, motherf***er!”
It’s all on video, clear as day. Yet this is not what the Associated Press reported.
In the caption to a wire photo of the confrontation between Gesualdi and the activists, the Associated Press reported: “Comedian and videographer Vito Gesualdi screams profanities as he engages with peaceful protesters begging him to leave outside the Netflix building in the Hollywood section of Los Angeles, Wednesday, Oct. 20, 2021.”
This is not even close to being true. There’s not even a tiny kernel of truth to it. It’s a pure, unadulterated lie. The video of the incident clearly shows what happened. At no point was Gesualdi the aggressor. It was the exact opposite. The protesters were anything but peaceful. Gesualdi didn’t even use profanities.
What the Associated Press “reported” this week is a lie — and a blatant, intentional one at that. And because the lie appears as a caption in a wire photo, the global news wire’s false characterization of the encounter now appears on hundreds of news sites that host licensed Associated Press photos.
Another outright lie
This year, the Biden administration proposed a tax collection scheme in which the IRS would be authorized to gather data on all bank accounts that see more than $600 in annual transactions.
On Oct. 19, the White House amended the proposal slightly, upping the amount to $10,000 in annual transactions rather than the previously recommended $600.
Though it’s a greater amount, the end product is still the same: It’s still a highly invasive surveillance system in which state actors are granted the power to pore over the personal financial and banking data of citizens who spend modest amounts of money.
But don’t call it “spying” or the Washington Post’s fact-checker will award you three Pinocchios, which is exactly what it did this week in response to remarks made by Republican Sens. Mike Crapo of Idaho and John Kennedy of Louisiana.
“No, Biden isn’t proposing that the IRS spy on bank records,” the fact-checker declared in an Oct. 19 headline.
“Republican senators including Crapo and Kennedy claimed that under the Democrats’ tax enforcement plan, the IRS would be snooping on the sensitive financial details contained in Americans’ bank records,” the fact check said. “The burden of proof is on the speaker, as we like to remind our readers, but in this case, no proof was supplied.”
It added, “In reality, the proposal is to monitor the total amount of money going in and out of any bank account with more than $10,000 of transactions in a given year, not the blow-by-blow of where and when people spend their money.”
The article ended by awarding Crapo and Kennedy a flunking grade.
However, here is what the Washington Post fact-check itself explained regarding the IRS proposal [emphasis added]: “The initial version of the Democrats’ proposal would have required financial institutions to provide the IRS with two new figures every year: the total inflows and outflows for any bank account with more than $600 in annual deposits or withdrawals, ‘with a breakdown for physical cash, transactions with a foreign account, and transfers to and from another account with the same owner.’ The requirement would apply to all business and personal accounts at financial institutions.”
To say the proposal doesn’t empower spying by the state is laughable. To say Crapo and Kennedy made false statements is a lie.
Katie Couric just doesn’t get it (or does she?)
Katie Couric appears hellbent on convincing everyone she should be kept at least 100 feet from all newsrooms.
She claimed this week she did nothing wildly unethical when she edited a 2016 interview with Ruth Bader Ginsburg to bury the late Supreme Court justice’s harsh critique of athletes who kneel during the national anthem.
Reporters do this sort of thing all the time, Couric explained in an interview with NBC host Savannah Guthrie.
“Well, I think what people don’t realize is we make editorial decisions like that all the time,” she said.
First, this is not true. Quietly editing a public figure’s remarks to protect said public figure is antithetical to journalism’s core principles. Most reporters understand this. Second, even if others in the news business are as unethical as Couric, this is not a defense. It’s simply an admission of widespread wrongdoing.
Lastly, as Couric herself explained in her forthcoming memoir, her edits weren’t merely editorial choices. They were personal. Couric wrote she amended Ginsburg’s remarks to “protect” the late justice because she believed the then-83-year-old Democratic icon was too feeble to understand what she was saying. Couric also wrote that the head of public affairs for the Supreme Court personally asked for the remarks to be stricken from the record.
Couric is not fooling anyone. She is a bad journalist who operates out of political and personal considerations. It’s a cute trick, though, claiming her misconduct is actually the norm for the news industry, but people are smart enough to see through it, which is likely why Couric’s star has faded to just a dim twinkle at this point.
