Media
January 20, 2024 — Scott Johnson
The Star Tribune represents the mainstream media at work in Minnesota. It relentlessly peddles the left-wing line on its news pages and its editorial positions. It is, moreover, a profitable business owned by a billionaire. Glen Taylor bought it in 2014 for $100 million. He may have assumed some of the paper’s debt in the process. It reportedly makes a substantial amount of money churning out its product. According to
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January 18, 2024 — Scott Johnson
When I read via Josh Kraushaar on X that Tom Friedman had interviewed Antony Blinken at Davos, my reaction was that what we had here was dumb and dumber without the comedy. (Josh is the editor of Jewish Insider, which reported on the interview here.) Now Matt Continetti takes up the Friedman/Blinken Davos routine in the Free Beacon column “Delusional in Davos.” Matt concludes: Maybe the thin mountain air made
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January 18, 2024 — Scott Johnson
Mainstream media sources repeatedly cite the number of those killed in Gaza by the IDF according to “Palestinian health authorities” or the like. Most recently the number has been set at some 23,000. The Wall Street Journal, for example, takes up the issue this morning in “Israel, Under Pressure to Scale Back Intensity of War, Pulls Thousands of Troops From Gaza” (“More than 24,000 Palestinians have been killed since the
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January 14, 2024 — Scott Johnson
Norman Podhoretz observed in one of his Commentary essays that the name of the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) appeared to be “the invaluable MEMRI,” because that is how he and other consumers of its information unfailingly referred to it. In a footnote to one of those essays, Podhoretz explained: I am indebted to the invaluable work of the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI). Under the leadership of
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January 8, 2024 — Scott Johnson
The Star Tribune represents the mainstream media at work in Minnesota. It is the dominant voice of conventional wisdom that relentlessly peddles the left-wing line on its news pages and its editorial positions. It is, moreover, a profitable business owned by a billionaire. Glen Taylor bought it in 2014 for $100 million. He may have assumed some of the paper’s debt in the process. It reportedly makes a substantial amount
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January 4, 2024 — Scott Johnson
Yesterday the Washington Free Beacon posted Thaleigha Rampersad’s video compilation of the chorus of hosannas that greeted the announcement Claudine Gay’s appointment to the presidency of Harvard in December 2022 (see “Raving gaily”). Today the Beacon follows up with another Rampersad compilation, this one of the chorus of media talking heads explaining Gay’s resignation from the presidency this week. Once again we see the herd of independent minds at work.
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January 3, 2024 — Scott Johnson
Senator Tom Cotton was the guest of honor at Commentary’s annual roast this past November 12. That means he was the roastee. In the January issue editor John Podhoretz turns over the space reserved for his monthly editorial on the issue’s first page (and in this case a few more) to Senator Cotton’s Guest Commentary (“Now More Than Ever”) — his remarkable speech paying tribute to Commentary at the roast.
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January 3, 2024 — Scott Johnson
In the video compilation below, the Washington Free Beacon draws on the chorus of hosannas that greeted the announcement Claudine Gay’s appointment to the presidency of Harvard in December 2022 after a five-month search. The Wall Street Journal reminds us: “That was the shortest search in about 70 years, according to the Harvard Crimson, the student newspaper.” Gay’s appointment set off a stampede among the media’s herd of independent minds.
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December 30, 2023 — Scott Johnson
I read a lot of columns and columnists to populate the Picks that rotate through the top of our home page. I thought I might take a look back over some of my favorites of the past year. Having thought about it over the past few days, I am afraid the list necessarily reflects a recency bias. Please take these Picks as representative of the columnists’ work and conservative publications
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December 28, 2023 — Scott Johnson
Commenting on the “apology” tendered by the rapper formerly known as Kanye West for causing “unintended outbursts,” I quoted the text verbatim. I also drew on Christopher Kuo’s New York Times story reporting on the denial of anti-Semitism reflected in the title track of his forthcoming compact disc Vultures. On the album’s title track, the Times reports, “Ye raps that he cannot be antisemitic because he had sex with a
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December 27, 2023 — Scott Johnson
I first tuned in to the anti-Semitic ravings of Kanye West or Ye in his October 2022 interview with Tucker Carlson. In the part of the interview Tucker chose to air, Jared Kushner’s promotion of peace between Israel and Arabs in the Abraham Accords was disparaged as self-interested in an evocative fashion. “I just think it was to make money,” Ye said. “Is that too heavy-handed to put on this
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December 26, 2023 — Scott Johnson
The New York Times opened its opinion pages to Gaza City Mayor Yahya R. Sarraj. Sarraj’s op-ed column runs as “I Am Gaza City’s Mayor. Our Lives and Culture Are in Rubble.” Not to disappoint Times readers, Sarraj gave them what they came for on Christmas Eve — a blast of pure Hamas propaganda. In this respect it bears some resemblance to the news pages of the Times, but this
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December 24, 2023 — Scott Johnson
Tom Elliot has compiled a supercuts video of the 10 most mortifying media moments of 2023. He has posted the video at Grabien News with comments here. One could reverse the order of the top 10 mortifying media moments and still have it right. The competition for number 1 is intense. It’s a good thing these talking heads are incapable of shame or embarrassment. It’s hard to do justice to
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December 23, 2023 — Scott Johnson
Students of ancient history may recall that Harvard President Claudine Gay’s plagiarism scandal began with a late October inquiry by the New York Post to Gay and Harvard specifying incidents of what we have come to know as “inadequate citation” in Gay’s work. The Post submitted its inquiry and awaited their response. Harvard deceitfully asked the Post for more time to respond. The response was a 15-page letter from the
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December 19, 2023 — Scott Johnson
NRO’s Ari Blaff reports on the video released by the IDF via its Twitter feed (below). Blaff’s headline tells the story: “Gaza Hospital Boss Admits He’s a Hamas Commander, Used Medical Facility as Terror Base.” Hamas in their own words: Ahmad Kahalot—Senior Hamas Member since 2010 and director of the Kamal Adwan Hospital in Jabalya in northern Gaza admits that Hamas has used hospitals as military facilities under their control.
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December 19, 2023 — Scott Johnson
This past weekend Washington Post reporter Michael Kranish worked up a detailed Sunday morning special on the Biden family business: “James Biden’s dealmaking caught on FBI tapes in unrelated bribery probe.” Subhead: “While Joe Biden campaigned in Mississippi, his brother planned to build a powerful consulting business — a deal that brought him to the periphery of a federal case.” Kranish’s story on the Biden family business goes back to
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December 19, 2023 — Scott Johnson
There is so much news out of Israel’s current war that one has to work hard to keep up. You don’t hear about the Israelis displaced from their homes because of the attacks by Hamas in the south and Hezbollah in the north. For some reason or other, the world isn’t crying for them. You don’t hear about the IDF’s revelations of the Hamas way of war in contravention of
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