Media
Sexual harassment at HuffPo, Vice… and everywhere else?
Ever since Harvey Weinstein’s accusers opened the floodgates for other victims to tell their stories, the news has been dominated by claims. The last couple of days, it’s been the news itself (as in news organizations) that have had their share of sexual misconduct claims. Is this as rampant in the media as it seems to be in Hollywood?
First, let’s look at the two biggest reports which have come out in the last day or two: Huffington Post and Vice…
Arianna Huffington Ignored Sexual Misconduct at The Huffington Post
When Susan Fowler rocked Uber’s world with a meticulous account of the company’s sexual harassment and gender discrimination issues, the ride-sharing service turned to its only female board member to help clean up its culture (and its image). Arianna Huffington was perfectly poised to position herself as the feminist savior who would advocate for Uber’s women—she oversaw the subsequent Eric Holder investigation, and promised that “no brilliant jerks will be allowed, and no one will be protected because they are top performers.” But being a powerful woman with a stake in a company, and its profits, doesn’t mean Huffington was actually the best choice to champion women struggling to make their voices heard.
‘Unsafe and Just Plain Dirty’: Women Accuse Vice of ‘Toxic’ Sexual-Harassment Culture
In the summer of 2015, Phoebe Barghouty was 23 years old and had a new master’s degree in journalism from Stanford—but little other experience—when she landed what most of her peers would consider a dream job: associate producer at Vice’s Los Angeles bureau.
Though her job hadn’t technically started yet, her boss, then-Editor in Chief Jason Mojica, invited her to join the team at the L.A. Press Club Awards. After accepting an award for public service in journalism, the team from Vice—including Mojica and Kaj Larsen, the bureau chief who had hired Barghouty—celebrated with drinks. By the end of the night, Barghouty says a very drunk Larsen had brought up sex (musing about his chances with a group of “black girls” at the bar), asked her for a ride home, then passed out in her car.
These won’t be the last two claims. In fact, there are rumors of another major blog-style news site about to face similar claims, but those rumors haven’t been verified so we’ll hold on them for now.
In larger news organizations such as television networks and major newspapers, these types of activities are bound to take place. Smaller publications, even the “biggest of the little guys” like Huffington Post and Vice, are supposed to be safer. Many journalists have been flocking to these sites for their lower journalistic standards (what some call “increased flexibility”) and the general trend away from big New York or DC newsrooms. Bloggers are more spread out; heck, I’ve never even met any other writers here at NOQ Report.
The problem is that these sites are no longer relegated to the bloggers’ basement. They ARE full-blown news organizations even if they’ve only been around for a few years. That’s the trend in journalism. It also seems to be very likely these cases are not isolated.
A “boys will be boys” attitude
Here’s the biggest problem facing organizations like these that don’t have decades of experience dealing with this sort of internal challenges. They think they’re above the law, or to be more accurate, above the risk of breaking the law. I spent a short time working for one and while I never experienced anything myself, I heard from women who had. Just because a site is part of new media doesn’t mean it won’t succumb to old problems.
They pretend like they don’t. They feel like it’s such a privilege to be part of a growing new media company they fall into the same trap as major news organizations:
“It’s no big deal.”
“This is part of the business.”
“Boys will be boys.”
I contend that sexual misconduct in various degrees are rampant throughout the media, even in smaller organizations. Those who are trying to build up a major news force (such as NOQ Report) must always be cognizant of this potential problem. Stop it before it starts. Neither HuffPo nor Vice is likely to suffer major setbacks as the result of their current scandals, but wouldn’t it be better to avoid the scandals in the first place?
A few weeks ago, I wrote an article about how faux conservative Trumpists were a direct result of the faux conservative media.
Choosing the wide gate of compromise over the narrow gate of conviction, clickservatives in the faux conservative media have succeeded in spreading the lie that Trumpservatism equals conservatism while using conservative values as a commodity to be bartered for a seat at Trump’s table.
In the piece I mentioned above, I showed how the formerly conservative voices of Mark Levin and Glenn Beck were using their new BlazeTV partnership as a pro-Trump echo chamber and how they were using this fact as a marketing tool to find new subscribers.
Proof of the depths BlazeTV is apparently willing to go with its sycophancy was evident in a recent episode of the Glenn Beck Show when he participated in a discussion with Pat and Stu on the decline of manhood and declared that Donald Trump is the last male role model left in America.
While many so-called conservatives dismissed Beck’s statement as an isolated incident and called me out for “taking him out of context,” a recent interview with Trump’s defacto press secretary, Sean Hannity, showed Beck’s heart in the matter.
“If the Republicans don’t win this next election, I think we are officially at the end of the country as we know it. We may not survive even if we win, but we definitely don’t if the Republicans lose with Donald Trump.”
Fun fact: Beck once criticized Hannity for supporting “unprincipled” Trump.
While #notDemocrat fearmongering is nothing new for the GOP establishment — they play that card every two years — Beck’s fearmongering was solely for the purpose of supporting Trump and the GOP. Using Beck’s rationale, America might cease to exist under Trump, but it definitely ceases to exist under a Democrat — as if there’s a difference between the two.
It looks like Levin’s and Beck’s Trumpism is official company policy at BlazeTV, at least that’s the impression I came away with after yesterday’s episode of the Steve Deace Show.
In the opening portion of his show, Deace and his crew (Aaron and Todd) were making the case that Democrats were the party of abortion and used their position to endorse Trump’s and the GOP’s use of the late-term abortion issue in the upcoming election. But they went further.
They argued that Trump is a “long-term advocate” of ending late-term abortion — Deace gave his personal guarantee that this is true — and said pro-life conservatives should support Trump because #notDemocrat despite his doublemindedness on abortion and his continued funding of Planned Parenthood. And they stated that anyone who refused to “cheer” Trump’s use of the abortion issue in the upcoming election as they were going to do were most likely members of a “Never Trump cult” and/or a hypocrite.
I shared this on my Facebook account:
If BlazeTV chooses to sell its soul to Trump for a seat at his table, that’s up to them. But I’m saying “adios” to their faux conservatism.
Originally posted on StridentConservative.com.
David Leach is the owner of The Strident Conservative. His daily radio commentary is distributed by the Salem Radio Network and is heard on stations across America.
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Mainstream media will do as mainstream media has always done. The creep to the left that started in the 70s has been inching the narratives to a progressive lean with notable lurches during the Reagan and Bush 43 years. But it was with the last two presidents that any facade of neutrality was wiped away. They loved President Obama and hate President Trump.
Fox News has been the only major network to not embrace leftist tenets, but here’s the thing. They’re not conservative. Sure, they have some conservatives as commentators and a few conservative show hosts, but generally they’ve been moderate for years. We saw this in the early days of the 2016 GOP nomination race when first Jeb Bush, then Marco Rubio were their anointed picks. Sean Hannity was the only one who jumped on the Trump Train early. Eventually, the channel eased itself on board, but not without keeping an anchor firmly attached to neoconservatism and barely right-of-center moderation.
Most viewers don’t realize this. They watch Fox & Friends, The Five, and other shows and they get the feeling that this is what conservative media looks like. But it’s not. This is what pro-Trump moderates look like (again, with a handful of exceptions).
They made an odd move yesterday by bringing on former DNC Chair Donna Brazile. In an effort to stay “fair and balanced,” it’s a good move for the network to want to expand their repertoire of leftists, but picking someone who lied on behalf of the DNC and Hillary Clinton to somehow be appropriate in delivering “truth” is the part that should make conservatives and leftists scratch their heads. Wasn’t she supposed to promote her book and then fade off into obscurity in a lobbyist role or something?
Today brought us another indicator of the left-of-center mentality Fox holds. They brought former Speaker of the House Paul Ryan, the person arguably most responsible for holding back the President from demanding the border wall while Republicans held control of the House, Senate, and White House, onto the board of their new Fox News parent company.
If you still think Fox News is #conservative, you're not paying enough attention. They're moderate and neoconservative with a few hosts who spout out conservative talk tracks. https://t.co/KOICNjvt7e
— JD Rucker (@JDRucker) March 19, 2019
But it’s not necessarily the people they hire that reveals their ideology. It’s the absence of topics. One of the biggest reasons we push so hard to raise money for this site is because we know the need for conservatism and Christianity as being necessary driving forces in American life. We do not bow down to party, popularity, or ideological notions that seem conservative or Christian but are not.
Fox News, on the other hand, plays for Republicans rather than conservatives. We can see this in the topics they promote but also in the topics they avoid. Like all the other news channels, they are quick to talk about any types of terrorism or murder as long as the victims aren’t Judeo-Christian. They push the buzzing stories based on what’s trending on Twitter but they don’t dig deeper to the core of the matter. There are occasional moments of lucidity, especially with some of the conservative hosts, but for the most part they’re just a pro-Trump version of the other networks.
What America needs from the media is an inflexible dedication to what works. Some will argue that it’s not media’s job to guide the process, but commentary is specifically designed to do just that. President Trump has been guided in this way. We saw him considering is immigration stance “softening” in 2016 with Sean Hannity right there beside him. But it was the conservatives in his base who were telling him to stop the nonsense, and thankfully it worked. He didn’t soften and as a result he won the election.
Fox News is only conservative in relations to their competitors. They’re unwillingness to be bold in their philosophies prevents them from being the real counter to CNN, MSNBC, and others who have no qualms being hardcore leftists. Fox News isn’t the answer.
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Democrats
After AP fact checks Beto O’Rourke, AOC, and the Green New Deal, leftist publications lose their minds
A minor news story posted by the Associated Press this weekend enraged a few far-left publications. Their point of contention: A fact-check on Beto O’Rourke (and by extension anyone promoting the Green New Deal) revealed the United Nations didn’t claim we’re on the verge of death and destruction in 12 years of we don’t reverse climate change immediately.
O’Rourke was campaigning last Thursday in Iowa when he said, “This is our final chance. The scientists are absolutely unanimous on this. That we have no more than 12 years to take incredibly bold action on this crisis.”
But, as the Associated Press concluded, this isn’t even close to being true:
There is no scientific consensus, much less unanimity, that the planet only has 12 years to fix the problem.
A report by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, drawn from the work of hundreds of scientists, uses 2030 as a prominent benchmark because signatories to the Paris agreement have pledged emission cuts by then. But it’s not a last chance, hard deadline for action, as it has been interpreted in some quarters.
“Glad to clear this up,” James Skea, co-chairman of the report and professor of sustainable energy at Imperial College London, told The Associated Press. The panel “did not say we have 12 years left to save the world.”
He added: “The hotter it gets, the worse it gets, but there is no cliff edge.”
“This has been a persistent source of confusion,” agreed Kristie L. Ebi, director of the Center for Health and the Global Environment at the University of Washington in Seattle. “The report never said we only have 12 years left.”
The report forecasts that global warming is likely to increase by 0.5 degrees Celsius or 0.9 degrees Fahrenheit between 2030 and 2052 “if it continues to increase at the current rate.” The climate has already warmed by 1 degree C or 1.8 degrees F since the pre-Industrial Age.
Even holding warming to that level brings harmful effects to the environment, the report said, but the impact increases greatly if the increase in the global average temperature approaches 2 degrees C or 3.6 degrees F.
“The earth does not reach a cliff at 2030 or 2052,” Ebi told AP. But “keep adding greenhouse gases to the atmosphere and temperatures will continue to rise.”
As much as climate scientists see the necessity for broad and immediate action to address global warming, they do not agree on an imminent point of no return.
Cornell University climate scientist Natalie M. Mahowald told the AP that a 12-year time frame is a “robust number for trying to cut emissions” and to keep the increase in warming under current levels.
But she said sketching out unduly dire consequences is not “helpful to solving the problem.”
The story was widely distributed but didn’t cause much of a ruckus because it was part of a weekly recap story that included fact-checking on President Trump. But it’s starting to get much more attention now thanks to several progressive publications who are emphatic in their belief that the Associated Press is wrong.
Here are a couple of headlines we found from two of the most prominent progressive publications, DailyKos and ThinkProgress:
Unfortunately for the leftists, neither these articles nor any of the others I read calling out the Associated Press were able to give better examples than the United Nations’ climate change people in rebunking the debunked science. They definitely didn’t counter the fact-checking done on the claims by O’Rourke, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, or any of the Democratic contenders for President, all of whom are saying that the consensus is there and practically unanimous.
It’s not unanimous. Not even close.
The narrative has been built by the hyper-leftists that we’re all going to die in a dozen years if we don’t elect radical progressives immediately. They get annoyed when conservatives counter their claims, but they get full-blown unhinged from reality when leftists at the U.N. and A.P. do it.
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Dallas H
November 15, 2017 at 2:00 pm
OK, I guess I’m just a Neanderthal ol country boy, but how is the Vice example considered sexual harassment to the woman relating the story? Honestly, who was harassed? Or does the mere mention of a wish of a tryst count now?