The Weakest Link
We’ve all heard a chain is only as strong as its weakest link. The entire chain’s maximum strength is limited to the breaking point of that single weakest component. The surrounding strong links cannot compensate for the flaw, and the entire system fails when the weak link fails. Our Republic has a weak link that is threatening our freedom. That link is the American media.
The evidence is inescapable. Principles of journalistic integrity are nowhere to be found in most of what passes for “reporting.” Objective facts; identified, credible sources; and information presented without an agenda have fallen by the wayside in favor of political propaganda.
Last Sunday, Martha Raddatz, hosting ABC’s This Week, provided her version of an update on the hantavirus outbreak that started on a cruise ship carrying about 150 people from 28 countries. Three had died and the rest of the passengers were returning to their homes. The 18 Americans on board were transported for observation to one of two medical centers prepared for this type of situation in Nebraska and Georgia.
Raddatz opened with an update from Dr. Michael Osterholm, Director of the University of Minnesota Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy, who is regarded as an expert who stays away from politics when asked to contribute to the public understanding of an infectious disease matter.
Osterholm emphasized that hantavirus is not at all like COVID-19. Unlike COVID-19, the virus has been around a long time, and medical experts have a lot of experience with it. He described the virus as coming from deer mouse droppings with “very limited ability to be transferred person to person.” Dr. Osterholm expressed a high level of confidence that there is “no question hantavirus is on the end of its run” and “within days this will no longer be a story.”
Raddatz thanked Osterholm for his insights ending with “You put us at ease.” Being put at ease by one of the experts in the field of infectious disease did not prevent Martha Raddatz from pursuing her planned agenda with her next guest, Mike Waltz, United States Ambassador to the United Nations.
Her first question was about coordination with other countries to get the American passengers back home, since “Trump has exited the World Health Organization (WHO).” Waltz reported the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is in the lead as it always is, and the United States had teams on the ground taking care of the Americans who were on the ship. Waltz reiterated what Raddatz had just heard from Dr Osterholm, “It’s very rare to see it (the virus) transmitted between humans” and he added, “I’m confident again, that our experts at CDC and NIH (National Institutes of Health) are on top of it.”
Raddatz was ready to pounce with her next question: “And President Trump, of course, said of the virus ‘it’s very much, we hope, under control’ but you know people are scared because of what happened with COVID, and President Trump said in a CNBC interview at the beginning of COVID he had no worries, not at all, and that we had it under control and it was going to be just fine. That was at the beginning of COVID. So you can understand why people have concerns. What would you say to them?”
If you were under the misperception that the media would serve the public with particular attention to accurate reporting during an infectious outbreak, let Martha Raddatz stand as evidence to the contrary. She confirmed last Sunday she would much rather stoke fear by suggesting this could be the start of another COVID-like pandemic than stick to the factual reassurances from the expert she chose to feature in the segment. Martha Raddatz’s performance last Sunday was no exception to the rule. It is representative of the shameful abdication of journalistic ethics the American people are subjected to every day.
Another far more important story about Government deception and betrayal during the COVID pandemic was literally handed to the media at the end of April and most chose to ignore it.
Wisconsin Senator Ron Johnson is the Chair of the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. On April 29, he held a hearing and released a report titled “Unmasked. How Biden Health Officials Purposely Turned a Blind Eye Toward COVID-19 Vaccine Safety Signals”. The report details how Biden health officials knew that safety signals for COVID-19 injection injuries were being hidden by the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) due to a flaw in how the “analytic algorithm” worked.
When Dr Ana Szarfman, “a senior medical officer and safety data mining developer at the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) used an updated data analysis technique, she identified dozens of statistically significant safety signals for adverse events associated with COVID-19 vaccines.” The system being used to analyze the data at FDA was “masking” important safety signals related to deaths and permanent disabilities suffered by those who received the vaccine.
Despite Dr. Szarfman’s urgent efforts to get the FDA authorities to implement the more accurate system of data analysis, they were not interested. It would have forced them to alter their entire pandemic response.
The report is available for public review:
https://www.ronjohnson.senate.gov/services/files/4DF802C8-DE9B-46C7-B470-37DD85569A76
Here at home, we would not have expected the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel (MJS), the largest newspaper in Wisconsin, to cover the important findings of Senator Johnson’s committee. The MJS has a long history of covering Senator Johnson and his work in a manner obviously meant to discredit him. It would be hard for them to contort the committee’s heavily annotated, damning factual report.
Last week Molly Beck and Mary Spicuzza, reporting for the MJS, gave us not one, but three opportunities to experience why the MJS has lost 80% of combined digital and print daily and Sunday circulation over the past 2 decades.
Publication of essentially the same article three times within the span of a week can only be interpreted to mean the paper is trying to exert undue influence on its topic or is desperate to fill space. Beck and Spicuzza worked together on a piece first titled “State at center of baseless claim Trump won in 2020” then renamed “FBI is investigating Wisconsin’s 2020 election, sources confirm” and renamed once again “FBI investigating Wisconsin’s 2020 election.” Versions two and three were attributed only to Spicuzza though the content was barely tweaked from publication to publication. The writing was noteworthy for its heavy use of editorial comment, unnamed sources, and use of sources, when named, who could never be considered objective content experts.
Anyone who is paying attention knows that Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon of the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice has requested Wisconsin’s Voter Registration List for inspection as authorized by the Civil Rights Act of 1960 to ensure the integrity of federal elections. Wisconsin has refused to cooperate leaving the DOJ no option but to sue for the information.
The article written by Beck and Spicuzza recounted an interview that unnamed sources said took place recently between an FBI agent and Wisconsin Elections Commission Deputy Administrator Robert Kehoe. There was very little information about the specifics of the interview other than “various election theories” and “Kehoe debunked false claims.” Neither the FBI nor the WEC offered substantive comment.
The content of the article(s) focused on anticipated potential action from Federal authorities over the administration of the 2020 election which “Donald Trump falsely claims he won.” The authors claim “How nearly 180,000 Milwaukee residents voted in the 2020 presidential election could be at risk of becoming public if the FBI compels election officials to hand over voting data here in its pursuit to relitigate Trump’s election loss in the key battleground states”.
All three of the articles read like an editorial, the primary style of “reporting” by the MJS and, in my opinion, a significant contributor to the publication’s drastic descent. They are riddled with subjective terms including “baseless”, “falsely”, “without evidence”, “debunked”, and “fruitless.” The reader is left with no uncertainty about what the authors want them to believe.
The increasingly common practice of using anonymous sources deprives the public of the opportunity to evaluate for themselves the motives of those who feed information to reporters. The named sources, Milwaukee attorney Michael Maistelman and Wisconsin Democratic Congresswoman Gwen Moore, added in versions two and three of the MJS article, tell us all we need to know about the authors’ disregard for objectivity.
Michael Maistelman is recognized for advising high profile Wisconsin Democrats and Federal officials on campaign compliance and legal matters. He represented Jim Doye in his 2006 gubernatorial reelection campaign against Republican Mark Green on a campaign finance matter that became the subject of a Wall Street Journal article. He has advised or represented former Senator Russ Feingold, Governor Tony Evers, Congressman Ron Kind and Congresswoman Gwen Moore.
Maistelman is quoted in the article as saying, “There is no factual or legal basis to relitigate Wisconsin’s 2020 election”, a ridiculous and unverifiable claim. With more than 4 million ineligible voter names on the Wisconsin Registered Voter List and one million cyberattacks attempted throughout the world every day, Maistelman is either blinded by his partisan leanings or lying.
Gwen Moore is a rabid partisan who has never attempted to hide her vitriol for Trump. In April she wrote, “Unfit – unhinged – whatever term you choose for this corrupt president, we are on a dangerous path that jeopardizes the safety of Americans and all innocent civilians around the world.” “He must be removed from office through any possible avenues.”
In the context of who she is and the fact of our unverifiable election system, her quote in the MJS article is meaningless: “Donald Trump, the loser of the 2020 presidential election, continues to whine and use intimidation tactics against election officials. Trump believes any election he loses is illegitimate. Our elections are safe and fair and will remain that way.”
Yesterday, as I prepared to publish this Blast, I learned Molly Beck and Mary Spicuzza had a fourth iteration of the same article on the front page of Saturday’s MJS, this time titled “FBI probes 2 more ’20 election staffers. Trump repeatedly, falsely claims he won in state.” Their three anonymous sources would not name the Milwaukee election staffers they claim are being investigated and their named source was Milwaukee Mayor Cavalier Johnson, who “slammed Trump in the wake of news the FBI is investigating Wisconsin’s 2020 election.” Last year, while Milwaukee schools were closed to deal with a decades old lead paint problem, Johnson went on CNN and told a very receptive Jake Tapper that the Trump administration was responsible for Milwaukee’s problem because of changes being made at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to address efficiency. Cavalier Johnson is a sleazy politician who will look you in the eye and tell you black is white.
The American media is the weakest link threatening our freedom. It operates in a liberal echo chamber and must be replaced by the “free press” intended by our Founders to serve the people as watchdogs of truth to keep our Republic from breaking.