Author Topic: Media, Ministry of Truth Issues; foreign manipulation of US media/social media  (Read 1413528 times)

Body-by-Guinness

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3600 Seconds Brought to You by Covid Carpetbaggers
« Reply #4450 on: May 12, 2025, 02:28:21 PM »
The once vaunted 60 Minutes has been on my feces roster for quite some time. They are all in where the anti-second amendment crowd is concerned and have done all sorts of atrocious reporting on that front. And then there’s that vehicle they claimed would suddenly accelerate without driver input … if, it turned out, you drilled a hole in the carb just so or something similar IIRC. Still, given the topic matter here you’d think a wee bit more, I don’t know, maybe “journalism” would occur:

The Perfidy of 60 Minutes

BY Brownstone InstituteBROWNSTONE INSTITUTE   MAY 4, 2025   MEDIA, PHARMA 

It is a truism, a trope, a meme, common knowledge, a cliché, as obvious as a nose on a face, an actual fact and something so apparent that it is impossible in any way, shape, or form to deny unless utterly delusional.

But, somehow, time and time again, the major media players defy actual reality and try and try to substitute their own absurd version and – even more incredibly, like a lunatic accusing the clouds in the sky of conspiring against him – demand everyone within earshot to believe that it is true.

Typically, pointing out media propaganda is the same as pointing out that air exists – it is an atmosphere that we all must breathe and is typically specifically unremarkable due to its omnipresence.

But sometimes, when it is so egregious, so absurd, so literally dangerous, it must be challenged.

Which brings us to Sunday’s episode of the once-vaunted, now vile 60 Minutes.

The show that once intentionally made bad actors deeply uncomfortable by asking difficult questions is a shadow of its former self, with its story on the National Institutes of Health (NIH) a perfect example of the depths to which it has fallen.

The NIH has a new director, Dr. Jay Bhattacharya. Even before he officially took over a few weeks ago, the Trump administration had already announced a few changes: dropping 1,200 probationary employees, putting new purchasing standards in place, and cutting the amount of “overhead” its research and academic “partners” can charge to conduct studies.

This, of course, led to much wailing and gnashing of teeth – not of course from the public, but from the staff, current, past, and future.

Breaking down the segment into its constituent parts, one finds three main points.

First, a grad student is worried she may not get a job because of the looming budget cuts.

Second, a woman in an Alzheimer’s research study worries she will be negatively impacted by the cuts.

These two bits are rather silly but very heartstring tuggy. In the case of the grad student, she’s complaining about what may or may not be, as if she were entitled to a position somewhere.

In the case of the Alzheimer’s patient, it is rather telling – and may even be terrifyingly true – that she is worried that the study she is part of may face an overhead cut.

As the show notes – moments after her worried statement – the NIH has cut the amount it pays for overhead – administrators, paper clips, etc. – to institutions from an overhead of about 28% to 15%.

Note – the cut is not for the research project itself, but just to the administrative overhead. Second note – the much-vaunted Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (like almost every other funder of medical research) has always capped its overhead costs at 15%.

So, ironically, what the patient is – even if she does not know it – really worried about is whether or not the folks that run the study (being done by Duke University and UNC jointly) could actually prioritize paying administrators over caring for patients.

Come to think of it, she may have a point. The growth of the number of administrators in academia has been eye-popping. Take Harvard, for example:

At Harvard, administrative staff grew from 1,222 in 1969 to 6,543 in 2021, a 435% increase over five decades. The deep hilarity of this figure is that their undergraduate student population was 6,700 in 1969 and 7,153 in 2021. The ratio of admin to students rose from 1 per 5.5 (already absurd) to 1 per 1.1. We’re basically at the point of each student having their own administrator despite having moved from paper records to the internet age.

By the way, in that same time period the number of faculty members stayed the same as well.

And it is not just Harvard, obviously. Various “higher education news outlets” are lamenting the proposed cuts…which, again, are not cuts but simply bringing the NIH in line with industry standards. To be blunt, if you can make a grant from the Gates Foundation work on 15% overhead, why can’t you do the same with an NIH grant?

It is true that the NIH cuts would land hard for many…many administrators. That is:

For example, a 15% cap for indirect funding would mean a loss of $121 million at University of California, San Francisco, $136 million at Johns Hopkins University, $129 million at University of Pennsylvania and $119 million at University of Michigan. According to a New York Times analysis.

That, by the way, is about 2.600 administrative jobs. Heaven forfend.

But it is the third chunk of the piece de la subsistence involving former NIH head Dr. Frances Collins – you know, the guy who was technically in charge during the pandemic (technically because though he was Tiny Fauci’s boss, he would be better described as his pet) that is the most chilling.

Collins says (and 60 Minutes) “confirms” by talking to sad NIH bureaucrats who have never ever had to deal with concepts like justifying their work, that morale has plummeted, and the staff has actually been crying.

Collins talks about the good work the NIH has done – unquestionably true – but seems to imply quite strongly that it is the administrators of the actual scientists and researchers who deserve much of the credit for maintaining the world’s largest funder of medical research grants.

Beyond the pablum absurdities and the obvious bitterness of a man who jumped before he was pushed, Collins seems wistful for his time at the NIH, wistful for a time when experts like him were bowed down before.

And then we come to the invisible elephant in the room. At no time during the interview is Collins asked about the NIH response to Covid.

Not a peep, not a question – it’s as if it didn’t happen, even though Collins laments that even after Covid the public is unsure about what the NIH does.

Thought experiment:

Imagine if you will being a reporter and getting an interview with Mussolini in 1944.

At this point, his fascist regime has collapsed and he is holed up in the northern Italian city of Salo, “leading” the Nazi Germany puppet regime called the Italian Social Republic.

You go and do the interview, but the result seems off – purposefully off.

You don’t ask about fascism itself, you don’t ask about what’s going on now in Salo, and you do not discuss World War II.

And you allow Il Duce to wax poetic about how wonderful things used to be and even let him talk about how the Allies are doing a terrible job in the rest of the country because they just don’t “get” the culture of Italy.

And, again, unlike Basil Fawlty, you do not mention the war.

Collins’ exchange is even the odder because of previous statements he has made on the subject of the pandemic, essentially trying to say maybe kinda sorta that there were a few problems with communications and maybe just maybe his team should have possibly considered other factors when imposing lockdowns and such (though that admission was done in a rather humble-brag way as he tried to say the equivalent of how dare people try to put a price on a human life).

By the way, that is about as far as he got, though certain news stories offered him faint praise at the time for at least – unlike Fauci – seeming to be able to question his own actions.

Beyond his “limited hangout” regarding Covid, Collins offered at least one accidental moment of truth – no, not in the 60 Minutes bit but at the “Braver Angels” (see above) chat he had in late 2023.

When asked about the Great Barrington Declaration, which posited that Covid protections should be focused on the most vulnerable to avoid grinding society to a halt – Collins said he “regretted” using certain words like “fringe” to describe the position and the authors – Dr. Martin Kulldorff of Harvard, Dr. Sunetra Gupta of Oxford, and Bhattacharya himself (Stanford).

Collins also referenced an email he sent to his NIH, etc. colleagues when the Declaration was released, demanding a “quick and devastating public take down” of the proposal.

He implied that that may not have been the most sciency of ideas, but then – very tellingly – happily noted that within “14 days” of his call for a response a dozen or so major public health agencies did in fact release an actual “take down” – his words – of the Declaration.

That little admission is extremely telling as to where Collins actually stands to this day on the pandemic response.

The other little admission as to where the media actually stands on the pandemic response?

The 60 Minutes website clips of the Collins interview, etc., are all:

“Brought to you by Pfizer.”

https://brownstone.org/articles/the-perfidy-of-60-minutes/

Body-by-Guinness

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The Two Faces of Jake Tapper
« Reply #4451 on: May 13, 2025, 06:20:46 PM »
Jake Tapper authors a book on Biden’s physical and mental decline. And Jake Tapper taking people to task for suggesting Biden is experiencing a physical and mental decline:

https://x.com/mazemoore/status/1922281794415497282


Crafty_Dog

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Somewhere in all of this is that Biden did not remember who his National Security Advisor was.  :-o :-o :-o

Body-by-Guinness

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The Fake News is Coming from Inside the House of Cards!
« Reply #4454 on: May 14, 2025, 02:41:36 PM »
Another piece re Tapper discovering there is gambling in Rick’s Cafe American:

Sunrise Show Prep! May 14
Jake Tapper’s Biden Book Fallout Exposes a Broken System
LARRY O'CONNOR
MAY 14, 2025


The Media’s Dirty Little Secret: Jake Tapper’s Biden Book Fallout Exposes a Broken System

Yesterday, X lit up like a Christmas tree, and for good reason. Jake Tapper’s new book, Original Sin, co-written with Axios’ Alex Thompson, has the audacity to admit what we’ve all known for years: the White House lied about Joe Biden’s deteriorating health, and the media—Tapper included—covered for them. The fallout is a firestorm, and it’s about time we had this reckoning. If reporters won’t challenge the White House, why do we even have them?

LARRY VIP is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Let’s start with Tapper’s bombshell. He writes that White House physician Kevin O’Connor (no relation, thank God) warned Biden’s aides that the president’s spinal degeneration was so severe, one more fall could land him in a wheelchair for a second term. Yet, the Biden team pushed off any talk of a wheelchair until after the 2024 election. Tapper frames this as some grand revelation, saying, “The White House lied, so that’s all there is to it.” Really, Jake? That’s your takeaway? You’re a reporter! Your job isn’t to shrug and move on—it’s to dig, to challenge, to hold power to account. If the White House lied, why didn’t you call them out in real time? Why wait until it’s safe to spill the beans in a book you’re hawking for profit?

X users weren’t having it, and neither am I. @RealKiraDavis shared a post yesterday pointing out how Biden’s team used an auto-pen to sign 8,064 pardons—more than Obama and Trump combined, according to @DanWiger63’s screenshot of a Google search. Who was running that pen? Who was making decisions while Biden’s health crumbled? The media knew something was up, but they stayed silent. @teresalirette chimed in, questioning who was really calling the shots behind closed doors. These aren’t conspiracy theories—these are the questions journalists like Tapper should’ve been asking all along.

The Washington Examiner dropped another nugget last week, revealing how Biden’s team put tape on the floor to keep him from wandering off course. They called videos of Biden’s decline “cheapfakes,” and the media lapped it up, attacking anyone who dared point out the obvious. Newsweek reported on Alex Thompson’s speech at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, where he admitted the media’s failure to cover Biden’s decline eroded public trust. Gallup backs this up—only 31% of Americans trust the media as of last year. And yet, here’s Tapper, acting like he’s breaking news when he’s just cashing in on the mess he helped create.

This isn’t just about Biden. It’s about a media that’s forgotten its purpose. If reporters won’t challenge the White House when it lies—whether it’s about a president’s health or anything else—what’s the point? Tapper’s “revelation” isn’t journalism; it’s a confession of complicity. X users see through it, and so do I. Want the real story? Skip Tapper’s book and grab mine, Shameless Liars. We’ve got a media to fix, and it starts with telling the unfiltered truth—something Tapper clearly forgot how to do.

https://larryvip.substack.com/p/sunrise-show-prep-may-14?r=2k0c5&triedRedirect=true

Body-by-Guinness

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Trump Official Demolishes Politico Journalist
« Reply #4455 on: May 15, 2025, 10:31:16 PM »
I suspect he won’t be invited back anytime soon:

https://x.com/townhallcom/status/1923109751509942635