Recent polling shows Americans’ mistrust of establishment media at an all-time high. The only surprise is that it isn’t higher. America’s establishment media bias is so consistent that they clearly no longer just cover the news from one side, but for one side. Gallup recently released a poll (10/14) showing that “trust in the fourth estate — the mass media — is at a new low.” Less than one-third of Americans (31%) expressed “‘a great deal’ or ‘fair amount’ of confidence in the media to report the news ‘fully, accurately and fairly.’” In contrast, almost seven in ten Americans have “no trust at all in the media” (36%) or “not very much” confidence (33%) in the media. Gallup’s question was not a new one. Back in the 1970s, America’s confidence in the media was 68%-72%.  Even in the late 1990s and early 2000s, trust ranged between 51-55%. Today, Gallup finds “the news media is the least trusted group among 10 U.S. civic political institutions.” Far from being merely a perception problem, the establishment media’s faults run far deeper. The Media Research Center has long cited numerous polls finding “journalists are much more liberal than rest of America” and that this liberal advantage is growing. These journalists report the way they lean with “most of the journalistic elite offering reflexively liberal answers to practically every question a pollster can imagine.” A 2022 Syracuse University survey showed that only 3.4 percent of American journalists say they are Republicans. And this summer, the Media Research Center found media coverage of Kamala Harris had been 84 percent positive, while Trump’s had been 89 percent negative. Certainly, Americans don’t need polls to tell them about establishment media bias; case after case exists.  There was the Russian dossier that was breathlessly reported on and used for extensive investigations by Congress. It turned out the FBI should never have undertaken a Trump-Russia probe.  Then there was case of Hunter Biden’s laptop that was treated as a hoax; only to turn out to be true and a key piece of evidence in his trial — in which he was convicted on all three charges. There was the ignoring of the border crisis. It stopped only when the illegal immigrant crisis came to the blue cities from which the establishment media reported.  Even now, the establishment media refuse to acknowledge any connection between illegal immigrants and the crimes they commit — despite data showing hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants who have committed crimes being released into the U.S. The establishment media also ignore crime in general, insisting crime in America has gone down. Then the FBI released updated crime statistics running counter to what the establishment media want the facts to be — and despite Trump being fact-checked during his debate with Harris. Then there are recent cases where the establishment media has taken an active role in shaping the “news” it covers. 60 Minutes’ recent editing to toss out yet another Harris word salad is an example. On a whole other scale is the establishment media’s complicity in concealing Biden’s decline for three and a half years: this despite receiving preferential access to this administration throughout the period. Only once the June debate made concealment no longer possible did the media come forward. Then, led by the New York Times, it did so in conjunction with the Democrat elite to force Biden from the ticket. Ever since, it has been no less active in inflating the image of Kamala Harris as the Democrats’ unelected nominee. Look no further than the hagiographic Time front cover picture of Harris. For evidence how effective and relentless the establishment media has been in promoting Harris’ candidacy, simply compare her high “unfavorables” as vice president to their rebound in just a few months’ time: According to Real Clear Politics’ national average, on July 20 (the day before Biden withdrew), Harris was -16.8 percentage points; on October 19, she was -0.3 percentage points. And all this has occurred as Harris has utterly avoided serious interaction with the press — something it entirely ignores. The list of establishment media bias is endless and grows daily. To understand its depth, simply ask when the tide has run the other way. Earlier this year, NPR senior editor Uri Berliner created a sensation when he wrote: “It’s true NPR has always had a liberal bent, but during most of my tenure here, an open-minded, curious culture prevailed… In recent years, however, that has changed. Today, those who listen to NPR or read its coverage online find something different: the distilled worldview of a very small segment of the U.S. population.” Berliner’s only error was not making a blanket confession for the entire establishment media. With the vanity of Narcissus, America’s establishment media has become mesmerized with itself, believing its viewpoint is the only one worthy to be seen. The media class reports solely for itself and to itself.  If you doubt, look back to Gallup’s poll which found that 54 percent of Democrats had confidence in the establishment media, while only 27 percent of Independents and 12 percent of Republicans did. America’s establishment media loves to hide behind the First Amendment. However, there can be no freedom of the press if there is no freedom in the press.  No greater blow is being struck for such a freedom than Americans’ tuning out of the establishment media. J.T. Young is the author of the new book, Unprecedented Assault: How Big Government Unleashed America’s Socialist Left, from RealClear Publishing and has over three decades’ experience working in Congress, Department of Treasury, and OMB, and representing a Fortune 20 company. The post Americans’ Justified Media Mistrust appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

I am fond of recalling this anecdote from the life of Horatio Storer, a man who would graduate from Harvard and become the father of American gynecology and one of the most influential doctors in the nation. His family lived in the Boston area, but they sent him to a school for boys, run by Quakers, on the shores of Cape Cod. We have his letters back to his parents at home — they are a small treasure of Americana, and they bear witness to what boys once did, if given liberty and encouragement for their natural boldness and ingenuity. They also bear witness to much that is out of order in America now. It was July 4, 1840. Storer was ten years old. Because it was a holiday, all the boys expected a grand time, but when morning broke it was raining hard, so they trooped on down to the schoolroom for their lessons.  Then the rain stopped and the day was bright and clear, so the schoolmaster told them that since they hadn’t prepared any lessons that day, they might go enjoy themselves. And that they did. “Who’s for building a log cabin?” suggested one of the boys, and they all thought it was a grand idea, so they asked the schoolmaster if they could, and he gave them permission.  That meant chopping the wood and hewing the logs to fit; it meant that they needed a plan, a vision of the finished cabin, and that they knew how to use the tools, such as axes, adzes, and saws. When Horatio wrote home on July 16, he said, with a boy’s matter-of-factness, “It is now about done. The top is clapboarded over. It has 2 United States flags with a portrait of General Harrison and a picture of his log cabin on them.” That would be W. H. Harrison, the hero of Tippecanoe, who in a few months would be elected President of the United States. That Monday, the boys had another free day, which they spent by trooping on over to Barnstable, several miles off.  Here is Horatio’s description: “At the village several accidents happened a boy broke his leg but I believe there was none beside that of a very serious nature.  On Monday we dressed in our best and got into 2 stages and a carry all to go on our intended visit to Barnstable. We stopped at Eldridge’s hotel and then went to the bowling alley and staid some time. A good many of the boys then went about some one way and some another. I spent 3 quarters of a dollar while there. At noon we were called together to partake of a din[n]er. There were 2 large flags which the man said were hoisted to give notice of our presence. A few days ago I saw a paper containing an account of us while there. I went all over the court house then I went up to the cupola where I had a fine view of all around me.” They returned home at 6 PM, the boy says, cheering. The sheer neighborliness is astonishing. So is the liberty that accompanies it. A group of happy and noisy lads comes to your village all of a sudden, and you raise the flag to greet them. They are welcome at the hotel. They go to the bowling green. No adult is there to oversee what they do. They spend some money, which is fine for the villagers, and it appears that Horatio gets to tour the county courthouse and even to walk up to the cupola to look at the view from up there. No one appears to have been worried that he would pitch himself from it to his death. There is, I think, a common bond between the boys who built their log cabin and the craftsmen who built the courthouse and its cupola. Obviously, the boys knew how to do things, and certainly they were not all of them ten years old. Some were younger, some were older. Knowledge passed along from man to boy, and from the boys to each other, naturally as it were, without special training, though you might get that special training by apprenticeship, if you chose. The building Horatio toured still stands, a handsome structure in the American neoclassical or “federal” style. It is a rather gloomy thing to turn from that courthouse to those that have been built in Barnstable since. The old courthouse is built mostly of granite, with both dressed and undressed blocks, and fluted columns; the plasterwork and the woodwork in the interior are exceptional, yet tastefully austere, as are the vaulted hallways. Then you look at the modern district courthouse and the probate courthouse, the former a squat and flat building of brick and cement, the latter a tall and hulking building of brick and glass unrelieved by a single hint of whimsy or a single gesture toward any meaning beyond its dreary function, and you wonder how a whole nation could seem to have lost the delight in craftsmanship altogether. But we can, I believe, go farther. It is not only difficult, now, to find anybody who can fashion plaster moldings in the old styles, with the knowledge in his hands. It is difficult to find workers to build up the brick eyesores. Why is it so? The foundation is missing. The log cabin, if you will, is that foundation.  If I may use the specific to stand for the general case, there are no boys building log cabins. Why not? We can point to several apparently unrelated causes that unite in their stifling and smothering effects. The boys are not outdoors (no one is outdoors). They are not working with their hands. Safety smothers: they are not allowed the liberty of using axes, adzes, saws, and all other tools, whether or not they are powered by electricity or gasoline. They are not in one another’s company to experience that synergy that is at the heart of all crazy male enterprises. They often do not have fathers.  They usually do not have older brothers or older male cousins nearby. Perhaps they have no such at all. Their schools are like black mold, spreading everywhere, taking up more and more hours of the day with less and less to show for it in learning and accomplishment, and shortening that last blessed outpost of liberty, the summer, by parceling out vacation time by little and little through the rest of the year.  And then there are the screens: and make no doubt about it, dear readers. Those screens are like the walls of prison cells that shut your child away from reality and life. Imagination is built up from encounters with real things, with grass, briars, trees, sand, washed-up sharks on the beach, stone, iron, wood, tools, other people with their own eyes and their minds, their voices and their hands.  Then it is built up into great towers of thought and feeling by encounters with the thoughts and feelings and the artistic mastery of other people far and near in place and time, through the most sophisticated software ever invented, and perhaps that can ever be invented: the book. What if we took a small portion of welfare payments with their perverse disincentive against marriage, and diverted it to schools for boys who might grow up to build things again, the “log cabins” of our time?  I am not here speaking about the education of girls, or of boys and girls together, which seem to me to be somewhat separate issues. Certainly no one can defend our current miserable record in raising boys and channeling their natural energies.  Anything at all would be better than what we have now.  For many boys, doing nothing would be better: they would at least have their young lives handed back to them. In any case, what has been done can be done again, with vision and will. So then, “Who’s for building a log cabin?” This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license. The post Welfare? How About a Log Cabin? appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

from “Coffee and a Mike” Show: TRUTH LIVES on at https://sgtreport.tv/

by Cristina Laila, The Gateway Pundit: A new photo of Joe Biden’s improperly store Vice Presidential records was obtained by America First Legal. There are boxes upon boxes of records improperly stored yet Joe Biden was never charged by Special Counsel Robert Hur. TRUTH LIVES on at https://sgtreport.tv/ ?BREAKING — NEW IMAGE OF BIDEN’S IMPROPERLY REMOVED […]

Iran faces a moment of historic weakness following Israel’s airstrikes on military facilities throughout the Islamic country on Saturday morning. As the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism considers whether it will respond to the strikes, a new report suggests that the country’s leader has become gravely ill. Buried in a report from The New York Times on Saturday was the revelation that intelligence officials believe that 85-year-old Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is “seriously ill.” The report noted that Khamenei’s health was a factor the regime was having to contend with as it weighs the risks of responding to a vastly superior Israeli military. The country’s economy continues to struggle and a war with Israel would likely result in its oil infrastructure being wiped out, which would crash its economy again. Israel has also decimated Iran’s top two terrorist proxy groups — Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza — that it has propped up to attack the Jewish State. MATT WALSH’S ‘AM I RACIST?’ COMING TO DAILYWIRE+ OCT. 28 The Israel Air Force (IAF) destroyed key air defense systems in Syria, Iraq, and Iran early on Saturday morning as part of its strike on Iran so that it could operate with impunity over Iranian airspace. Knowing that it cannot defend itself against a technologically superior foe, Iran “is also dealing with serious domestic dissent over rising prices and its harsh rule, which play into any calculation for retaliation,” the report said. The report said that it’s because the regime is losing popularity among its citizens that Khamenei “allowed the election of a more moderate president, Masoud Pezeshkian, after the harder-line Ebrahim Raisi died in a helicopter crash.” “Complicating matters, a quiet battle has emerged over succession,” the report later added as it highlighted the reports of Khamenei’s illness. “With Mr. Raisi gone, there is internal disquiet over the possibility that Ayatollah Khamenei’s second son, Mojtaba, 55, might succeed him,” the report said. “The powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps will have an important say and is considered more willing to confront Israel.”

Major Blue City Mayor Undermines Harris's 'Fascist' Accusation Against Trump, Makes Call To 'Dial Down The Temperature'

You can tell Donald Trump is winning and Kamala Harris is losing when Washington Post columnists like Eugene Robinson are lashing out at the liberal media, like they have failed to cover Donald Trump viciously enough, that they somehow haven't played up former Trump aides calling him a fascist enough. This seems to ignore what the networks and newspapers did this week!  But they celebrated his angry anti-media column on Morning Joe on Friday. Mika Brzezinski read it with a thrill up her leg:  Somehow, it is apparently baked into this campaign that Trump is allowed to talk and act like a complete lunatic while Harris has to be perfect in every way. I don’t know the answer to the chicken-or-egg question — whether media coverage is leading public perception or vice versa — but the disparate treatment is glaring. He's actually claiming Kamala Harris gets rougher treatment than Trump. Does he need a Breathalyzer test?  There is disparate treatment -- Trump's covered like a fascist menace, and Kamala's coverage is overwhelmingly positive. But lefties look at the neck-and-neck polls and decide the media must be failing. Robinson complained about the media's maltreatment of Harris like he's a family friend:  Let’s review: First, Harris was criticized for not doing enough interviews — so she did multiple interviews, including with nontraditional media. She was criticized for not doing hostile interviews — so she went toe to toe with Bret Baier of Fox News. She was criticized as being comfortable only at scripted rallies — so she did unscripted events, such as the town hall on Wednesday. Along the way, she wiped the floor with Trump during their one televised debate. Trump, meanwhile, stands before his MAGA crowds and spews nonstop lies, ominous threats, impossible promises and utter gibberish. His rhetoric is dismissed, or looked past, without first being interrogated. There is NO proof that his rhetoric is being "looked past." The leftist press pounces on his remarks. Robinson came unglued when Dana Bash came out of the mostly soft CNN town hall and dared to say she wasn't sure she "made the sale."  .@eugene_robinson on why he says Harris and Trump are not 'remotely' being covered in the same way. pic.twitter.com/KZlrnC7JTI — Morning Joe (@Morning_Joe) October 25, 2024 Joe Scarborough argued that nine years later, the media "still don't know how to cover this guy," claiming the papers didn't cover all his comments about using the military against the "enemy within." That's not true, either. No one should listen to Joe "Biden's The Best He's Ever Been" Scarborough as a guy with a grip on reality.  Nine years later, pundits like Scarborough are still furious that their harsh opinions of Trump aren't universally shared. Worse yet, the media have a serious credibility problem. They can see all these feverish fascist stories for the campaign advertising that they are. 

Michelle Obama Stays Up at Night Trying to Understand Why This Race Is So Close