Love your articles Ken. I thought you might like this one. Try this with two different search engines. Google and Duckduckgo. Type in this sentence and see what happens.
Just for fun, I entered just that exact same phrase into Bing's AI search bar. It gives me a bit of hope that properly tuned AI could help us find some balance ...
"According to the web search results, the press treatment of Fetterman versus McConnell has been quite different. The media covered Fetterman’s stroke during his election debate last year as a powerful moment for disability rights, and dismissed concerns about his mental health as ableism. On the other hand, the media scrutinized McConnell’s freeze during a press conference this week as an alarming sign of cognitive decline, and questioned his fitness for public service. Some examples of the media headlines are:
• Gerth: Is it time for Sen. Mitch McConnell to step aside?2
The web search results also include a video that compares how the media handled Fetterman’s stroke versus McConnell’s freeze3. You can watch it here: Here’s How the Media Handled Fetterman’s Stroke Vs. McConnell’s ‘Freeze’.
Interesting. I just did. (I usually use DDG, which I believe uses Microsoft Bing as its back end)
Google clearly downgraded the Free Beacon piece to position #20, despite the search being their exact headline. They definitely have big bias to MSM sources. They also completely ignored a spot-on National Review piece that should have been a top
I preferred the DDG search, but it had flaws as well. It lead with the Free Beacon piece/video, which was great ... but then it gave me a bunch of scraping sites publishing the exact same thing, so that the first 6 results were the exact same content, but posted by Indian/algo content farms like usanews.com or politicomix.com.
I know you're out this week, Ken, but when you get back maybe you could address the Fox News website unpublishing a story involving the remains of a fallen soldier.
I don't bring it up to beat up on Fox, but it's a good, constructive opportunity to consider protocols for fact-checking, updating and unpublishing/retracting false reports in the digital age. In the old days of print you'd just run a correction the next day, but digital news stories have had to adopt new standards.
My own paper has policies on this, and you might have some insights to share based on your experience at Fox.
I'm not sure it rises to the level of a separate writeup, but there were errors all over the place on this.
First blame goes to the family. They clearly misunderstood payment/reimbursement issues on this and made charges to their Congressman that were apparently completely wrong. They're not professionals, but their false charges started the whole fiasco.
The Congressman -- a vet himself -- also had some blame here. Instead of having a staffer call the Pentagon to figure it out, he went public with the complaint. Maybe he'd been ignored or maybe he just jumped the gun.
Then Fox wrote a story based on the Congressman's wrong info, citing him as the source. They certainly could have dug deeper and demanded receipts, etc., but they had a both a family and a member of Congress making allegations and I can easily argue that had they asked the military for their side, that's reasonable due diligence.
And Fox DID ask the Pentagon for info ... and got ignored. Fox even has a few journalists literally working inside of the Pentagon, so they know how to ask questions. It's bizarre to me that with a dead soldier's family and a former military Congressman making charges that they'd ignore one of the largest news organizations in America. Dumb on them.
(Just spitballing here, but having dealt with the government too many times in life, I'd be willing to bet $5 that the cost/reimbursement procedures were indeed confusing, since this was an atypical case of a delayed moving of the soldier's body.)
Then Fox updated the article without an editorial note. That's both against their policy and trivially easy to do. They later pulled the article completely -- appropriate since none of it was then true -- but again should have put a note up instead of the 404 error you get going to their page. Weird that they didn't, since we did that as a routine matter of course.
Minor mistakes all around were made, but I do believe that like Jackie Robinson, Fox News is held to higher level of criticism, since 90% of the critics hate them out of the gate. Not an excuse for wrong behavior, of course, but worth an observation.
Thanks. My company has the same policy about corrections. If you change something, say what changed. And if you unpublish something, keep the link alive and say why it was unpublished.
I could even go a bit further, depending on the issue. To splash a big story across Fox, for instance, could see it get 10s to 100s of thousands of views. If there was a major mistake, it's good to correct/note what was wrong, but in reality that will only be seen by handfuls. It helps in Googleworld, but that's really about it.
In an ideal world, possible if distributed through an app, there'd be a way to let readers of a particular story know if there was a major correction.
Thanks for the live links showing graphic detail of child mutilation. I agree with Alex Lekas that woke parents “affirming their identities” of trans children are as much to blame for this tragedy as the medical establishment, just without the financial incentive. And blame also falls on media for glorifying trans people and state legislatures for lacking the conviction and courage to pass protective laws for minors. Thinking of all the changes in attitudes as well as the loss of sanity so apparent in our country is very depressing for this octogenarian. Thank you, Ken, for sensible exposure. I always enjoy reading you.
Amid the lawsuits against doctors - and it's a shame that all the lawmakers supported this barbarism cannot be held accountable - what happens with the parents? They were right there, going along with their child's delusion, feeding into it and presumably agreeing on this course of "treatment" even though their Spidey sense had to be screaming at them to stop. After Covid and the introduction of incoherence at med schools (people get pregnant), I lost any illusion of the medical industry as being immune from ideological capture. But I cannot wrap my head around the parents who buy into this.
Interesting re: censorship of books. Just had a contentious book club meeting this week because we discussed “The Bluest Eye” which has graphic scenes of a father raping his daughter, among other things (our theme this month was banned books). Half our group had a hard time getting through the book because of the way it was written, but what was shocking was the number of people that gave 5 stars and said they thought it should be taught in school, one woman suggested even for 5th or 6th graders with the argument “They all see this stuff anyway on their phones.” It’s 3 days later and m still bothered by the conversation.
The best argument for why kids/teens should read The Bluest Eye is that it's a classic novel that shows the effects of racism not just on society but on one innocent child. Kids are more thoughtful than adults give them credit for, and they have a powerful sense of right and wrong. Books like The Bluest Eye, The Diary of Anne Frank and To Kill a Mockingbird help them situate evils like racism and rape into their developing moral worldview.
It's one thing to just tell kids "Racism and rape are wrong." Literature can teach kids WHY those things are wrong by showing how they hurt the characters in the story.
Love your articles Ken. I thought you might like this one. Try this with two different search engines. Google and Duckduckgo. Type in this sentence and see what happens.
press treatment of fetterman versus mcconnell
Great video on freebeacon (duckduckgo)
Just for fun, I entered just that exact same phrase into Bing's AI search bar. It gives me a bit of hope that properly tuned AI could help us find some balance ...
"According to the web search results, the press treatment of Fetterman versus McConnell has been quite different. The media covered Fetterman’s stroke during his election debate last year as a powerful moment for disability rights, and dismissed concerns about his mental health as ableism. On the other hand, the media scrutinized McConnell’s freeze during a press conference this week as an alarming sign of cognitive decline, and questioned his fitness for public service. Some examples of the media headlines are:
• Fetterman debate reaction reveals stigma disabled candidates face1
• Gerth: Is it time for Sen. Mitch McConnell to step aside?2
The web search results also include a video that compares how the media handled Fetterman’s stroke versus McConnell’s freeze3. You can watch it here: Here’s How the Media Handled Fetterman’s Stroke Vs. McConnell’s ‘Freeze’.
Interesting. I just did. (I usually use DDG, which I believe uses Microsoft Bing as its back end)
Google clearly downgraded the Free Beacon piece to position #20, despite the search being their exact headline. They definitely have big bias to MSM sources. They also completely ignored a spot-on National Review piece that should have been a top
I preferred the DDG search, but it had flaws as well. It lead with the Free Beacon piece/video, which was great ... but then it gave me a bunch of scraping sites publishing the exact same thing, so that the first 6 results were the exact same content, but posted by Indian/algo content farms like usanews.com or politicomix.com.
I know you're out this week, Ken, but when you get back maybe you could address the Fox News website unpublishing a story involving the remains of a fallen soldier.
I don't bring it up to beat up on Fox, but it's a good, constructive opportunity to consider protocols for fact-checking, updating and unpublishing/retracting false reports in the digital age. In the old days of print you'd just run a correction the next day, but digital news stories have had to adopt new standards.
My own paper has policies on this, and you might have some insights to share based on your experience at Fox.
Thanks for telling me about this.
I'm not sure it rises to the level of a separate writeup, but there were errors all over the place on this.
First blame goes to the family. They clearly misunderstood payment/reimbursement issues on this and made charges to their Congressman that were apparently completely wrong. They're not professionals, but their false charges started the whole fiasco.
The Congressman -- a vet himself -- also had some blame here. Instead of having a staffer call the Pentagon to figure it out, he went public with the complaint. Maybe he'd been ignored or maybe he just jumped the gun.
Then Fox wrote a story based on the Congressman's wrong info, citing him as the source. They certainly could have dug deeper and demanded receipts, etc., but they had a both a family and a member of Congress making allegations and I can easily argue that had they asked the military for their side, that's reasonable due diligence.
And Fox DID ask the Pentagon for info ... and got ignored. Fox even has a few journalists literally working inside of the Pentagon, so they know how to ask questions. It's bizarre to me that with a dead soldier's family and a former military Congressman making charges that they'd ignore one of the largest news organizations in America. Dumb on them.
(Just spitballing here, but having dealt with the government too many times in life, I'd be willing to bet $5 that the cost/reimbursement procedures were indeed confusing, since this was an atypical case of a delayed moving of the soldier's body.)
Then Fox updated the article without an editorial note. That's both against their policy and trivially easy to do. They later pulled the article completely -- appropriate since none of it was then true -- but again should have put a note up instead of the 404 error you get going to their page. Weird that they didn't, since we did that as a routine matter of course.
Minor mistakes all around were made, but I do believe that like Jackie Robinson, Fox News is held to higher level of criticism, since 90% of the critics hate them out of the gate. Not an excuse for wrong behavior, of course, but worth an observation.
Thanks again for the heads up.
Thanks. My company has the same policy about corrections. If you change something, say what changed. And if you unpublish something, keep the link alive and say why it was unpublished.
I agree.
I could even go a bit further, depending on the issue. To splash a big story across Fox, for instance, could see it get 10s to 100s of thousands of views. If there was a major mistake, it's good to correct/note what was wrong, but in reality that will only be seen by handfuls. It helps in Googleworld, but that's really about it.
In an ideal world, possible if distributed through an app, there'd be a way to let readers of a particular story know if there was a major correction.
Thanks for the live links showing graphic detail of child mutilation. I agree with Alex Lekas that woke parents “affirming their identities” of trans children are as much to blame for this tragedy as the medical establishment, just without the financial incentive. And blame also falls on media for glorifying trans people and state legislatures for lacking the conviction and courage to pass protective laws for minors. Thinking of all the changes in attitudes as well as the loss of sanity so apparent in our country is very depressing for this octogenarian. Thank you, Ken, for sensible exposure. I always enjoy reading you.
Amid the lawsuits against doctors - and it's a shame that all the lawmakers supported this barbarism cannot be held accountable - what happens with the parents? They were right there, going along with their child's delusion, feeding into it and presumably agreeing on this course of "treatment" even though their Spidey sense had to be screaming at them to stop. After Covid and the introduction of incoherence at med schools (people get pregnant), I lost any illusion of the medical industry as being immune from ideological capture. But I cannot wrap my head around the parents who buy into this.
Interesting re: censorship of books. Just had a contentious book club meeting this week because we discussed “The Bluest Eye” which has graphic scenes of a father raping his daughter, among other things (our theme this month was banned books). Half our group had a hard time getting through the book because of the way it was written, but what was shocking was the number of people that gave 5 stars and said they thought it should be taught in school, one woman suggested even for 5th or 6th graders with the argument “They all see this stuff anyway on their phones.” It’s 3 days later and m still bothered by the conversation.
The best argument for why kids/teens should read The Bluest Eye is that it's a classic novel that shows the effects of racism not just on society but on one innocent child. Kids are more thoughtful than adults give them credit for, and they have a powerful sense of right and wrong. Books like The Bluest Eye, The Diary of Anne Frank and To Kill a Mockingbird help them situate evils like racism and rape into their developing moral worldview.
It's one thing to just tell kids "Racism and rape are wrong." Literature can teach kids WHY those things are wrong by showing how they hurt the characters in the story.
Agree common sense IE porn & kids is NOT censorship
But say I block Ken since I dont like his stance on issue X IS Censorship
I agree. Screw that guy!