The New York Times devoted nearly 3,000 words by writer-at-large Jim Rutenberg and media reporter Michael Grynbaum to a topic rarely acknowledged: Media bias from the left, in “How MSNBC’s Leftward Tilt Delivers Ratings, and Complications.” (Right-leaning Fox News, by contrast, is a constant target of the paper’s hostility.) But what does it say about the paper’s own tilt when its reporters constantly appear on the left-wing airwaves of MSNBC? The story began: MSNBC placed a big bet on becoming comfort TV for liberals. Then it doubled down. Time slots on the cable network once devoted to news programming are now occupied by Trump-bashing opinion hosts. The channel has become a landing spot for high-profile alumni of President Biden’s administration like Jen Psaki, who went from hosting White House press briefings to hosting her own show. On Super Tuesday, when producers aired a portion of a live speech by former President Donald J. Trump, Rachel Maddow chastised her bosses on the air. The moves have been a hit with viewers. MSNBC has leapfrogged past its erstwhile rival CNN in the ratings and has seen viewership rise over the past year, securing second place in cable news behind the perennial leader, Fox News. The unintentionally funny part is when NBC News suggested MSNBC was ruining it branding as "straight news." Who believes that any more?  But MSNBC’s success has had unintended consequences for its parent company, NBC, an original Big Three broadcaster that still strives to appeal to a mass American audience. NBC’s traditional political journalists have cycled between rancor and resignation that the cable network’s partisanship — a regular target of Mr. Trump — will color perceptions of their straight news reporting.  NBC faced "tensions" in an election year, on "how to maintain trust and present neutral, fact-based reporting in a fractionalized era when partisanship carries vast financial and cultural rewards." The report talked about how they tried to take some of the hyperpartisan tone out in the last decade by moving Al Sharpton to weekends, bringing Greta Van Susteren over from Fox, and creating a daily version of Meet the Press. But then Donald Trump showed up, and even those cosmetic shifts were scuttled: Then, Mr. Trump’s ascent shocked the Democratic base and spiked viewership of Ms. Maddow and other left-leaning hosts, whose programs became a kind of televised safe space. MSNBC’s ratings surged. The story centered on NBC News boss Cesar Conde and how he's tried to bring Republican voices on NBC, including the brief Ronna McDaniel Debacle, and Kristen Welker's incredibly combative interview with Donald Trump on her debut at Meet the Press host. The Left has a fit any time NBC interviews Republicans, and so the interviewers end up sounding fiercely oppositional.  At least, Rutenberg and Grynbaum acknowledged that MSNBC was “tightly embracing its partisan direction” by hiring Biden press secretary Jen Psaki and another Biden aide, Symone Sanders: “It was the kind of revolving-door hiring that liberal pundits used to criticize when it happened with Fox News and the Trump administration.” Left out of the long story were any mentions of the myriad Times reporters (including authors Rutenberg and Grynbaum themselves) that have appeared as guest talent on the "comfort food for liberals" channel during the Trump era and beyond, presumably contributing to what the Times itself calls the network’s “leftward tilt.” some with contributor contracts. A partial list of Times journalists who’ve appeared on MSNBC in recent years would include Susan Craig, Nicholas Kristof, Nicholas Confessore, Katie Benner, Jeremy Peters, Annie Karni, Carl Hulse, Michael Schmidt, Nicholas Confessore, Jeremy Peters, Mike Isaac, Megan Twohey, as well as the story’s authors Jim Rutenberg and Michael Grynbaum (the article contained no disclosure of their previous MSNBC appearances). Appearances by Times scribes are much thinner on right-leaning Fox News, though ex-NYT staffer Nellie Bowles did appear on America’s Newsroom on Wednesday to promote her eyebrow-raising criticism of wokeness, including some bizarre anecdotes from her days at the Times.

Joe Biden is not a person of principle or character. He is a lifelong politician who has spent decades shifting his positions on nearly every major issue. If one had to define Biden's political worldview, it would be simply this: Follow the Democratic herd, and desperately attempt to place yourself dead center in the middle of it. Joe Biden is, in short, a political pinwheel, taking note of the prevailing winds in his own party and seeking to channel them in his favor. This strategy made Biden a career also-ran. After all, who wants to follow a follower? Biden never achieved any level of national popularity on his own: His presidential runs imploded in embarrassing fashion in 1988 and 2008. His saving grace was, in fact, his blandness and inoffensiveness: Thanks to those peculiarly counterintuitive qualities, Barack Obama made him his vice president. There, Biden thrived as a vice president who presided over little actual policy but happily floated trial balloons for the administration and acted as a rah-rah cheerleader for his more popular boss. Obama himself had so little faith in his vice president that he passed him over in 2016 in favor of the widely reviled Hillary Clinton. After Clinton lost, Biden threw his hat in the ring -- and thanks to the extraordinary incompetence of some of his opponents (Kamala Harris and Amy Klobuchar), the extraordinary dilettantism of others (Pete Buttigieg and Michael Bloomberg), and the befuddled racialism of still others (Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren) -- he prevailed by simply fulfilling two conditions: First, he was alive (barely); second, he wasn't any of the other clods. So Joe Biden became president. He posed as a political moderate. But there is a difference between principled moderation and simply bobbing, corklike, about the eddies of internal Democratic politics. Moderation sometimes requires a Sister Souljah moment -- a moment when you push away the radicals and embrace the mainstream. Acting as a political pinwheel encourages no such strength. In fact, it encourages the opposite: caving to every interest, at all times. And thus, Joe Biden has tried to be everything to everyone -- and has ended up as no one to anyone. Biden has zero passionate fans, because his positions are all ersatz; he barely even has passionate enemies, since so few of his opponents believe that he believes anything he says in the moment. His constant waffling has earned him little loyalty and no victories of note (and no, spending trillions of dollars on wasteful boondoggles isn't a victory; it's just the way government is now done). Biden's waffling has cost Americans dearly. Stuck between a Modern Monetary Theory left and more fiscally moderate liberals, Biden has halved the baby, opting for big spending and interest rate increases. Trapped between a post-American left and traditionally interventionist Wilsonian liberals, Biden has hedged between militaristic support for Ukraine and slow-walking aid. Caught between an Israel-hating left and Israel-supportive liberals, Biden has declared his support for Israel in its goals of extirpating Hamas and then pressured Israel to leave Hamas in place by promoting Hamas propaganda and embargoing critical weaponry. It turns out that the presidency is a bad place for pinwheels. The closest thing to a pinwheel president we've had over the past few decades was Bill Clinton -- but even Clinton knew to pursue a course once the course had been charted. Biden flips radically between positions -- even from day to day -- leaving the rest of the world confused and discombobulated. Americans don't like it. In fact, they don't like it so much that polls show that Joe Biden would be a one-term president if the election were held today -- and that he would lose to the man he declares a threat to democracy. Why? Because there is one character aspect on which Donald Trump outpolls Biden by leaps and bounds: leadership. As it turns out, there's no substitute for leadership. And Joe Biden has never been a leader.

CNN host and self-appointed guardian of truth Jim Acosta welcomed sports reporter Rachel Nichols to Friday’s CNN Newsroom for a factually-challenged segment about Kansas City Chiefs kicker Harrison Butker’s commencement address to Benedictine College, where he declared that female graduates may get more satisfaction from their family lives than their careers. For Acosta, it was obvious Butker is benefiting from a double standard that the ostracized Colin Kaepernick is not. Acosta rambled, “Well, and is there a double standard here? I mean Colin Kaepernick. I mean, he takes a knee to protest police brutality and gets banned from the NFL, can't get a job in the NFL. Harrison Butker gives this speech, goes wide right so to speak and the NFL says, 'well, you know he was on his day off when he gave this speech, no big deal.' I'm sorry, what?”     Like Butker’s field goals, there are three points worth mentioning. First, Kaepernick didn’t just “protest police brutality.” He went to Miami, of all places, and praised Fidel Castro and compared getting paid millions of dollars for a voluntary job to slavery. Second, the NFL went out of its way to appease him. You can’t watch an NFL game today without seeing something like “It takes all of us” or “end racism” on the back of the end zones. Finally, Kaepernick began his refusal to stand for the national anthem in August 2016, but he was benched for poor play the previous season and later that same season. As for Nichols, she was not much better, “The NFL will tell you that they didn't ban Colin Kaepernick and there's been no official ban on Colin Kaepernick. Of course, anyone paying attention would tell you that unofficially teams sort of feel that he cannot be touched and it is a double standard. There's no question about it.” Nichols lamented, “Many times in professional sports and frankly, particularly in the NFL, if you deliver results, a lot is excused and in this case, Butker was a key part of winning that Super Bowl for them. He's got the longest kick in Super Bowl history. He's very good at his job and he does have some support.” She also tried to undercut Butker’s message, “Of course, there's also voices on the other side who are pro-family, pro-religion, pro-God, who are making the point, you can still be all of those things and support women's rights. There are certainly plenty of men in this country who are equal partners in raising their children, some as single dads who would argue with his comments, even if they are dedicated church members.” At this point, it should be noted what Butker actually said: For the ladies present today, congratulations on an amazing accomplishment. You should be proud of all that you have achieved to this point in your young lives. I want to speak directly to you briefly because I think it is you, the women, who have had the most diabolical lies told to you. How many of you are sitting here now about to cross this stage and are thinking about all the promotions and titles you are going to get in your career? Some of you may go on to lead successful careers in the world, but I would venture to guess that the majority of you are most excited about your marriage and the children you will bring into this world. Butker never said men should be absent from their children’s lives, as Nichols suggested. He never told the women in the audience that they should stay in the kitchen. He affirmed their achievements, acknowledged that some of them will get fancy titles and promotions, but declared that they will feel “most excited” about their families. What’s so radical about that? Here is a transcript for the May 17 show: CNN Newsroom with Jim Acosta 5/17/2024 10:31 AM ET JIM ACOSTA: Well, and is there a double standard here? I mean Colin Kaepernick. I mean, he takes a knee to protest police brutality and gets banned from the NFL, can't get a job in the NFL. Harrison Butker gives this speech, goes wide right so to speak and the NFL says, “well, you know he was on his day off when he gave this speech, no big deal.” I'm sorry, what? Yeah. RACHEL NICHOLS: The NFL will tell you that they didn't ban Colin Kaepernick and there's been no official ban on Colin Kaepernick. Of course-- ACOSTA: Yeah. NICHOLS: -- anyone paying attention would tell you that unofficially teams sort of feel that he cannot be touched and it is a double standard. There's no question about it. Many times in professional sports and frankly, particularly in the NFL, if you deliver results, a lot is excused and in this case, Butker was a key part of winning that Super Bowl for them. He's got the longest kick in Super Bowl history. He's very good at his job and he does have some support. Of course, there's also voices on the other side who are pro-family, pro-religion, pro-God, who are making the point, you can still be all of those things and support women's rights. There are certainly plenty of men in this country who are equal partners in raising their children, some as single dads who would argue with his comments, even if they are dedicated church members.

AI is going too far, and most people have no idea. “We’ve really advanced this stuff quickly, and this week came a lot of stuff that I don’t think people are even noticing anymore,” Stu Burguiere says. One of the latest advancements was announced this past week, for OpenAI’s ChatGPT. The company has created a feminine AI voice that you can have conversations with over your devices — and it sounds like a real woman. The AI voice is capable of switching her tone on demand, going from joking around with her OpenAI creators to reading them a bedtime story like a mother would a child. But that’s not all. The new AI is also capable of teaching students like a teacher would, coaching them through problems without revealing the answers. “You got to think about the cheating ramifications of this,” Stu says, adding, “I mean it’s beyond insane, but also like the job implication of this.” “When it comes to AI, it’s going to be very difficult to keep this one out of your kid’s life. It’s going to probably permeate at some level whether you like it or not, to almost every single school,” he explains. “How long until we’re walking down the street, and we’re seeing our kids have full-on relationships with their phones? They’re already looking at them all the time, now they’re going to be talking to them all the time.” Not only is this terrifying, but diversity, equity, and inclusion and critical race theory are already programmed into ChatGPT. “All the things you’re against are built into these programs,” Stu says. The Effects of Rapid AI Expansion on Our Kids EXPOSED | Ep 897Stu Burguiere looks at the newest version of ChatGPT and speculates on what it and other advancements in artificial intelligence could mean for our children ...Want more from Stu?To enjoy more of Stu's lethal wit, wisdom, and mockery, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.

PT, the self-styled 'Playable Teaser,' remains a standout moment in horror games. The corridor-crawling nightmare factory made by Hideo Kojima, Guillermo del Toro, and Konami was actually a promotional product for a Silent Hill game that ultimately never arrived. Now, upcoming psychological thriller Still Wakes the Deep, from Dear Esther and Amnesia developer The Chinese Room, has released its own teaser as a free Steam game - but almost no-one seems to have spotted it. Continue reading Promising 2024 horror game got a free spinoff and everyone missed it MORE FROM PCGAMESN: Best horror games, Best survival games, Best RPG games

Between Starfield, Manor Lords, and Palworld, the Game Pass library is seemingly going from strength to strength. Now, according to fresh reports, the new Call of Duty could be heading to Microsoft’s subscription service on launch day. Reportedly set in the Gulf War, the next CoD is supposedly a new entry in the Black Ops sub series, and comes after the release of Call of Duty Modern Warfare 3 in 2023. After completing its purchase of CoD, World of Warcraft, and Overwatch owner Activision Blizzard, Microsoft has already brought Diablo 4 over to Game Pass. Now it’s being claimed that Call of Duty could follow. Continue reading The new Call of Duty game will be on Game Pass day one, apparently MORE FROM PCGAMESN: Call of Duty 2023, Modern Warfare 2 system requirements, Best FPS games

A render diagram of a new AMD Ryzen CPU has purportedly leaked online, showing a radically different CPU structure to the company’s current CPUs. The diagram reportedly shows one of AMD’s new Strix Halo CPUs, and it’s divided into three chiplets. So far, so usual for AMD, you might think, until you see the size of one of the chips. Continue reading AMD’s new Ryzen CPU should really worry Intel, if this leak is right MORE FROM PCGAMESN: Ryzen 7 7800X3D review, Best gaming CPU, Radeon RX 7800 XT review

I'm welcomed into a sprawling, colorful forest by Mike Atamas, co-founder and CEO of OCP. He pulls out an axe and begins to chop down some trees, explaining that I'll need resources if I want to survive and thrive in the team's upcoming RPG, Project Frontier. At first, I get hints of Valheim and other survival games like Palworld, but there's one feature of OCP's adventure that blows that assumption out of the water - there's some Helldivers 2 lurking in the shadows. Continue reading Helldivers 2 and Valheim collide in stunning new co-op RPG MORE FROM PCGAMESN: Best survival games, Best fantasy games, Best RPGs

Does Dead by Daylight have cross progression? There are two main questions players ask when a game is available on multiple platforms: “Can I play with friends on other platforms?” and “Can I access my save data on multiple platforms?” Known as crossplay and cross progression, these are two of the most important online features, especially in multiplayer games. Dead by Daylight is one such game, and if you have ever seen a single post or livestream from the devs, you’ll surely know that the many of the comments, even with no relation to the original post, are about the availability of these features in the horror game. So, we take a look right here at the availability of both DBD cross progression and crossplay. Continue reading DBD cross progression and crossplay explained MORE FROM PCGAMESN: DBD killer tier list, Best horror games, DBD codes

Kamala Harris Explains the Inflation Reduction Act ('Has There Ever Been a More Ironic Sentence?')