Donald Trump Named Top Global Oppressor of the Press

U.S. News Media No Longer Allowed to Lick Their Own Balls

The Committee to Protect Journalists has named Donald Trump winner of its “Overall Achievement in Undermining Global Press Freedom” in its “Press Oppressors” awards. The CPJ named Trump as the leader who most undermined press freedoms in 2017, despite the fact numerous other world leaders actually work to block the free press in their countries.

"While previous U.S. presidents have each criticized the press to some degree, they have also made public commitments to uphold its essential role in democracy, at home and abroad. Trump, by contrast, has consistently undermined domestic news outlets and declined to publicly raise freedom of the press with repressive leaders such as [Chinese President] Xi, [Turkish President] Erdoğan, and [Egyptian President] Sisi."

He gets a lot done with those tiny hands, doesn't he. Just goes to show a little determination goes along way. I mean China has the great firewall that censors speech in real time and requires news outlets to have licenses. Turkey, well they just kills journalists Erdogan doesn’t like, all the while Trump hasn’t even proposed legislation against the fifth estate, he just tweets.

Meanwhile, journalists in countries hostile to a free press are facing persecution every day around the world. According to Reporters Without Borders, all Middle Eastern, Asian, eastern European and most South American, Central American, African and Caribbean countries have a less free press than in America, yet their leaders aren’t as oppressive to journalists as Trump?

The committee actually maintains a list of countries where journalists are most likely to be killed by the government. I suppose the fact America isn’t on the list was why committee felt comfortable presenting their award here despite having the worlds worst oppressor of journalists. Either that or these people being professional journalists are acquainted with uses of words the ordinary person might not be.

Thank You MJA for the Linkage!

Who Knew You Could Buy a Journalist for the Price of a Hooker?

A contributor to the scuzzy feminist website 'Jezebel', and purportedly a self described comedian (?) Sara Benincasa, tweeted out Saturday that she would offer $300 to any journalist who asks Trump his opinion on our nation’s relations with the country of Wakanda and gets him answering on video. If you're like me, you too have no idea where Wakanda is. Just so happens Wakanda is the name of the fictional place where the Marvel's cartoon superhero Black Panther comes from. Um-Kay....

Granted, a story of this caliber would, in fact, be a step up from Benincasa’s usual fare know for pieces like “I am So Not Sorry About My Vagina, and Other Apologies We Should Retract.” (sorry but I don't link to this website). In her lengthy thread on the tweeter, Benincasa encouraged others to offer monetary incentive saying she would start up a crowdfunding or Venmo thingy whereby any others who wish to thank the intrepid reporters bravery can add to the purse. Benincasa recommended that journalists who wanted to score the $300 prize could “casually drop the name of Wakanda in among a list of other things he’s never heard of, like Estonia and Ethics.”

"I am offering $300 to the journalist who very seriously asks Trump his opinion on our nation’s relations with Wakanda and gets the question and answer recorded live on video. I know $300 doesn’t sound like a lot to some people but I also know what most reporters make so...$300. @SaraJBenincasa 

According to The Media Research Center, the Huffington Post’s Jason Linkins tweeted, “I will match Sara’s $300.” Best known for his articles in the HuffPo headlined, “Trump Era Ignorance Triumphs Over Shakespeare,” “James Comey Calls Donald Trump A Liar (Because He Is),” and “The Seth Rich Conspiracy Theory is Emblematic of the Trump Era,” the offer seems to fall in line with the rest of Linkins’ political narrative. TV Guide editor Alex Zalben threw in his two cents, tweeting:

 “If you follow this up with a question (that he answers) about whether Wakandan/American relations are complicated by them granting asylum to the terrorist fugitive James Buchanan Barnes, I will double the offer.” 

She also encouraged successful journalists to “donate the money" somewhere like the Committee to Protect Journalists. The CPJ recently placed President Trump on a list of authoritarian leaders with the label, “world’s worst press oppressors.” He was the winner of the “Overall Achievement in Undermining Global Press Freedom,“ and runner up for “Most Thin-skinned.” Trump was listed along with world leaders who use actual terrorism to influence the press. But that doesn’t matter. It’s all anti-Trump, which means it must be worthwhile, right?

Thank You MJA for the Linkage!

About Richard Nixon...

Matthew - 6/16

"Woodward and Bernstein, themselves, have created a cottage industry of their own -- the political scandal “insider” book, the myth that because they once had fortune dump the half-story of a lifetime into their laps that they're some kind of exalted defender of the universe -- that has made them filthy rich men. Don’t buy this “fighting to tell the truth” crap either has spouted since the ‘70’s:  they’re in it for the money and the accolades they get from their even-lazier compatriots. They always were. And they got lucky...."

Matthew's Week End Commentary

The Lunatic's Asylum 

I read this today, a defense of Richard Milhous Nixon, a.k.a. Tricky Dick of Watergate Fame.

It was written by Conrad Black, who himself knows a thing or two about being railroaded by his enemies, especially the political kind.

I found this article interesting because Black uses the phrase "criminalization of policy and partisan differences", and means that to say that both ends of the political spectrum routinely accuse the other of being the absolute worst people born since Hitler and Genghis Khan had identical triplets. According to this sort of mindset, anything the other side has to say on any subject is reflexively responded to by it's counterpart as the grossest crime, or the most egregious abuse of human rights, and probably an indication that one side or the other would like to run a conveyor belt full of kittens through industrial wood chippers and sell the resulting mess as luncheon meat in your kid's school cafeteria.

No one gets the benefit of the doubt, anymore, no serious question ever gets the fair hearing it deserves.

 Undoubtedly Black is correct in his assertion that most political exchange since the days of Watergate has been tinged with this hyper-partisanship, and one side does, indeed, engage in this sort of constipated thinking more often than the other, but then again, they're at the vanguard of a political philosophy which, on the one hand, believes there is no such thing as human nature, and then on the other, regulates the hell out of human nature just as soon as it rears it's ugly head, but then never admits it made an incorrect assumption in the first place.

 But, let's put the truism that most Leftists are petty little dictators with really poor potty training in their backgrounds, who could never be elected to anything if they ever told the truth aside for a second because there's another issue that Black brings up in his column, which intrigues me more, and that is the supposed heroes of Watergate, the so-called intrepid reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, the reporters who broke the story and began the process of destroying a president.

Now, I'm too young to remember Watergate as little more than a word heard coming out of the television, so don't expect me to wax poetic with fond memories of the Nixon Administration, I was all of five or six years old at the time. However, I have studied the scandal in my adult years, and have come to a conclusion that didn't really require a shitload of historical research:

“No One Is Above The Law"........ Well Except Us.

Just when you thought the media couldn’t get anymore ridiculous, they rip their shirts off, and say “hold my beer.” As you've heard, last night a former Senate staffer named James A. Wolfe was arrested for lying to the FBI (a crime we’ve been assured is most serious when it involves Robert Mueller’s team).

"A federal grand jury indicted the staffer, James A. Wolfe, 58, on three counts of making false statements in December about contacts with reporters, including providing sensitive information related to the work of the Senate Intelligence Committee, which he served as security director for 29 years."

The indication here is that Wolfe was leaking classified info from Senate investigations to a reporterette from the New York Times he was boinking name Ali Watkins. Now if you were wondering where so many of the 2017 leaks about the Senate investigation were coming from, well we may have just got the answer. Watkins was essentially caught red-handed because it is shown that her revealing of Carter Page’s name in early 2017 was a direct result of information given to her by Mr. Wolfe.

As part of the leak investigation that ultimately snagged Wolfe, federal prosecutors seized the text messages of Ms. Watkins in order to show he was lying when interviewed by the FBI in December of 2017. This has got the media losing their minds over the use of her phone records, but before we get to that let’s flashback to earlier this week.

It all started with Rudy Guiliani suggesting in an interview that he probably shouldn't have given in the first place that the (not a) President may have the power to pardon himself (a stupid thing to say given it’s an irrelevant point). Despite there being no reason for the President to do so, the media at large started tearing at their clothes and went insane suggesting the President is placing himself “above the law,” a charge that falls on it’s face given the realities of impeachment, but hey, it’s the media.

Of course, the usual subjects went nuts and the tweeter machine lit up:

A more official statement was given by the Freedom of the Press Foundation, who speak at large for the media.

"All leak investigations — whether they directly target reporters or not — are a grave threat to press freedom. Whistleblowers are the lifeblood of reporting, and the Trump administration is directly attacking journalists’ rights by bringing these cases....."

To start, this guy was not a whistleblower. He was leaking testimony and details about an ongoing federal investigation to a reporter he was bumping nasties with. He wasn’t exposing that investigation’s corruption or any such nonsense. You also don’t receive whistleblower protections unless you actually go through the system setup to protect whistleblowers. That’s a non starter.

Secondly, the fact that the media can righteously lecture the country that no one is above the law on Monday but by the end of the week be vehemently saying that reporters should be above the law (to the point of saying law shouldn’t be enforced at all no less) is an incredible exercise in hypocrisy. 

The same media who cheered non-stop for the over the top raid on the office of the personal lawyer to President of the United States, Michael Cohen, thinks its records should not be subject to criminal investigations. What exactly is all this based on? The U.S. Constitution guarantees freedom of the press but it does not guarantee a reporter’s right to assist in breaking the law.

As of now, this reporter is not being pursued for any wrongdoing herself. That rule of tradition (not law) is being honored in this situation by the Trump administration despite the protestations of media members. This is not the same thing as the Obama administration actually going after journalists under the Espionage Act, as it did with James Rosen. Of course, most in the media couldn’t muster up more than a weak rebuke when that happened because a Democrat was in power.

(Freedom of the Press Foundation)
(NYT)
(Red State)