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10/13/24: Still here, tomorrow gets a new post, one that I didn't want to write. Many things going on, not enough time in the day. I have a dozen articles that I need to finish. I am working on them. I promise.

Greenwald, Taibbi & Weiss

No, this isn't a law firm, they are three Liberal journalists with some very rare commodities: integrity and journalistic standards.

Up until recently, journalists were supposed to be (but not always) neutral observers of events, who would journal their observations, then report them to an audience who was educated about government and the affairs of the world. The journalists presented their observations and let the reader/viewer make up their own minds about the subject. When I was growing up, we had three TV networks. I don't remember who was on ABC (Dad never watched ABC), but NBC had Huntley and Brinkley, while CBS had Walter Cronkite. These were men of integrity and had journalistic standards, which included never letting their own political views shade or distort the news they reported on.

Today, "journalists" have the mindset of "we have the responsibility to shape the public to our opinions, not tell them the facts." Sadly, they are very effective in that task. Trump's achievements include (but are not limited to) setting governmental policies that resulted in a 50+-year-low minority unemployment, negotiates multiple deals bringing peace to the Middle East that 70 years of "diplomats" have failed to do, helped the United States become a net exporter of energy instead of the biggest importer, and got fellow NATO allies to share the cost of defense instead of letting the US spend the vast majority of resources to do so. If the press has reported on any of these at all, it's in the vein of "No Social Distancing During Signing of Peace Accord Between Israel, Bahrain."

I am glad to report that there are Liberal journalists out there who have upheld that foregone thought of "journalistic integrity," namely Glenn Greenwald, Bari Weiss and Matt Taibbi. Glenn recently resigned from The Intercept, a news source that he co-founded. As part of his contract, he had a "no editorial oversight" and an "absolute right to publish." The "no editorial oversight" means that no editor (the gatekeepers who decide what gets and doesn't get published) could "spike" Matt's articles and keep them from being published. The "right to publish" means that the news outlet the reporter works for owns everything the reporter writes on their time. So, the reporter can't write an article written on News Corp A's time that was spiked and sell it to News Corp B and have B publish it.

Glenn had written a story on the recent Biden scandal, and his own company, The Intercept, refused to publish it despite the stipulations in his contract. In response, Glenn did the only thing open to a man with integrity, he quit and started his own news site (again).

Bari Weiss was brought on to The New York Times in 2016 to help diversify the points of view and reporting at the paper due to they got the 2016 election so wrong. She quit last year, citing in part:

But the lessons that ought to have followed the election—lessons about the importance of understanding other Americans, the necessity of resisting tribalism, and the centrality of the free exchange of ideas to a democratic society—have not been learned. Instead, a new consensus has emerged in the press, but perhaps especially at this paper: that truth isn’t a process of collective discovery, but an orthodoxy already known to an enlightened few whose job is to inform everyone else. [emphasis mine]

She was harassed, browbeaten, ostracized and ignored. Like Glenn, Bari kept her integrity and resigned with her self-respect and journalistic standards intact.

Matt Taibbi is a honey badger, he just don't give a shit. When I used to listen to my local morning DJ's Drake and Zeke on my way to work in the morning, they often interviewed Taibbi on various articles or books he wrote. While he hasn't quit in a blaze of glory like Greenwald or Weiss, he has integrity. His politics does not limit the direction he points his pen, a real journalistic flamethrower.

So, a sincere kudos to all of them, you have my respect and admiration. We need journalists who put their ethics and integrity ahead of their politics, not the other way around. Check them out, I added Greenwald and Taibbi's sites to by link roll, Bari is only writing books now.

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