Category Archives: Media

The Washington Post Reviews Progressive In-Fighting at the New York Times – A Cultural Cliff?

Posted on February 24, 2023 by | 2 comments

Eric Wemple Washington Post

by James C. Sherlock

Eric Wemple, the media critic of Northern Virginia’s morning newspaper, The Washington Post, has just published an article “The New York Times newsroom is splintering over a trans coverage debate.”

I subscribe to both papers.

The review is unintentionally hilarious. The comments more so.

It provides context from the left for our debates here on hormone and surgery treatments of minors.

The New York Times is racked with internal dissent over internal dissent — a development stemming from multiple open letters sent last week to newspaper management taking issue with the paper’s recent coverage of transgender youth.

Seems there is a war among the woke over who is the most woke, and who is insufficiently so. Continue reading →

2 Comments

Posted in Culture wars, Media

Tagged

The Bert Ellis Feeding Frenzy

Posted on February 24, 2023 by | 50 comments

Piranhas

by James A. Bacon

Virginia has now entered the feeding frenzy stage of the assault on Bert Ellis’ character. Abandoning all journalistic standards of impartiality and fair play, mainstream media outlets compete with one another to publish anything they can find to compromise Ellis, a member of the University of Virginia Board of Visitors appointed by Governor Glenn Youngkin and narrowly confirmed by the General Assembly.

Following a Washington Post piece yesterday that highlighted such transgressions as referring in private correspondence to a UVa employee as a “numnut,” Virginia Public Media has joined the fray. Among the new affrights uncovered through the Freedom of Information Act is the scoop that Ellis also referred to UVa administrators as “schmucks”!

It is laughable that anyone would deem such language used in personal communications to be worth publishing — as if no one else in public service speaks this way in private. Ironically, the only thing remarkable about Ellis’ use of language is how restrained it is. It is less vitriolic, for example, than the language used by Jeff Thomas, the leftist author who filed the FOIA request and peddled his findings to the media. VPM reporter Ben Paviour quotes Thomas as accusing “these people” of “lashing out with these venomous personal attacks at innocent people.”

Venomous? Really? Ellis didn’t “lash out” or “attack” anyone — these were private communications. The victims never knew about them…until Thomas uncovered them and persuaded Paviour to publicize them!

Such are the New Rules of woke journalism.

But there’s more. Paviour included one exchange in his piece that had no business appearing in any article. The fact that he chose to include it exposes the shoddiness of his journalism. Here is what he wrote: Continue reading →

50 Comments

Posted in Culture wars, Education (higher ed), Media

Tagged ,

Break out the Smelling Salts. Bert Ellis Called Someone a “Numnut”

Posted on February 23, 2023 by | 105 comments

Image credit: Washington Post

by James A. Bacon

And the hit jobs just keep on coming!

After maligning Virginia Military Institute alumni dissident Matt Daniel two days ago, The Washington Post aims its guns today on Bert Ellis, a conservative alumnus and member of the University of Virginia Board of Visitors, with the publication of text messages obtained through the Freedom of Information Act. They were private communications. Like everyone else in the universe, Ellis expressed himself with candid language he would not have used in the public domain.

Make sure you’re sitting down. You might want to take a dose of anti-anxiety pills. Ellis actually called people “numnuts.”

He also had the temerity to express dissatisfaction with the Ryan administration’s obsessive focus on race, including its Diversity, Equity & Inclusion initiatives.

In truth, there is remarkably little that is worthy of note in Ellis’ text messages. Yet the Post quotes Jeff Thomas, the leftist chronicler of Virginia politics who obtained the FOIA documents, as asserting that the documents “demonstrate Governor Youngkin’s Board appointees are ignorant reactionaries consumed by hatred and neo-Confederate fantasies.”

The text messages demonstrate no such thing. Ellis has never been consumed by the destruction of Civil War statues or the assault on Southern heritage. Rather, he has lamented the trashing of Thomas Jefferson and other founding fathers. There is nothing in the text messages to suggest the existence of “neo-Confederate fantasies” — nor, for that matter, the notion that he is “consumed by hatred”… unless you consider calling someone a “numnut” an indicator of unquenchable animus. Continue reading →

105 Comments

Posted in Culture wars, Education (higher ed), Media, Uncategorized

Tagged ,

Aside from Insinuating Matt Daniel is Anti-Semitic, Shapira’s Latest Piece Wasn’t So Bad

Posted on February 21, 2023 by | 34 comments

by James A. Bacon

The Washington Post’s Ian Shapira has finally published his piece about Matt Daniel, head of the Spirit of VMI PAC and one of the more vocal critics of the current VMI leadership. It may be the most balanced piece Shapira has ever written in his coverage of VMI — admittedly, an extremely low bar to clear. Even though Daniel declined to answer his questions, Shapira made a decent effort to present his point of view by quoting from the public record. 

I cannot say what accounts for this departure in Shapira’s journalistic practice, but it cannot entirely be coincidence that Daniel had pre-empted a feared hit job by publicly releasing a list of questions that the WaPo reporter had emailed him shortly before publication. (Bacon’s Rebellion reported on those questions here.)

Still, Shapira can’t help being Shapira, and he described two incidents that grotesquely insinuated that Daniel has Nazi and/or anti-Semitic proclivities. Continue reading →

34 Comments

Posted in Culture wars, Media

Tagged ,

The Amazing Shrinking Times-Dispatch

Posted on February 21, 2023 by | 36 comments


by Jon Baliles

You might recall a story from last summer in Style Weekly entitled The Incredibly Shrinking Times-Dispatch about the decline of our local newspaper and the print news business in general. It has been a precipitous and rapid descent.

Now, according to Axios, it seems that shrinking is not only ongoing but might be accelerating: Lee Enterprises is telling some employees that they will need to take a two-week, unpaid furlough or accept a salary reduction, according to an internal memo obtained by Axios.

The larger drama is that Lee was looked at for a takeover by Alden Global Capital last year and Lee laid off numerous employees company-wide and has continued to struggle (along with most legacy print media). The details of the saga can be read about here and are basically portrayed as two sides of the same bad coin. Continue reading →

36 Comments

Posted in Media

Tagged ,

Times-Dispatch Omits Facts Instead of Including Them

Posted on February 20, 2023 by | 7 comments

by Jon Baliles

Public safety is one of every locality’s largest and most important responsibilities. If the sidewalks, streets, and neighborhoods are not safe, people go to places where they are. Walkers, joggers, businesses, customers, and everyone else won’t go to places where they feel their safety in in jeopardy.

At the same time, that responsibility of providing that level of safety of the people enforcing the law comes with the burden of being better than the people that are breaking the law and/or causing trouble. It is a two-way street. If you don’t have people enforcing the law, you will always have people breaking it, and then society and streets and neighborhoods break down, and chaos and despair follow. That’s a fact, even though some choose not to acknowledge it.

What is disturbing is what happened on a downtown street last summer when a 911 call led to an encounter with two Richmond Police officers responding to the call and ended up in a takedown and arrest of a gentleman named Mr. Holley at the Maggie Walker Plaza on Adams Street.

You can read the article about this by Luca Powell in the Richmond Times-Dispatch that ran on January 31, but it turns out that was a less-than-complete (to be generous) accounting of the facts. After the article ran, the Commonwealth’s Attorney felt compelled to write a lengthy and detailed email to the newspaper “to correct the inaccuracies and incomplete information. Had you taken the time to contact me directly, I would have provided you with the following information that would have resulted in a more informed and balanced article.”

What should trouble residents of the City is that the story that was reported seems to have omitted more facts of the case than it included. Maybe that was on purpose, maybe it was just sloppy reporting and a lack of proper editing. But the fact that it drew rebukes from both the Commonwealth Attorney’s Office and then a lengthy statement from the Interim Police Chief, Rick Edwards, suggests to me that important parts of the story that were omitted in the newspaper can be relayed in a forum like this newsletter where accuracy and counterpoint do not give way to space for ads and revenue. Continue reading →

7 Comments

Posted in Law enforcement, Leadership, Media

Tagged , , ,

Spirit of VMI Preempts WaPo Hit Job

Posted on February 17, 2023 by | 100 comments

by James A. Bacon

Looks like Washington Post reporter  Ian Shapira is loading up the big guns to fire another salvo in his unrelenting war on Virginia Military Institute alumni who are critical of the new leadership’s Diversity, Equity & Inclusion policies. This time, instead of attacking traditionalist alumni as a group, he appears to be focusing on Matt Daniel, head of The Spirit of VMI PAC, as an individual.

Shapira obviously has done a lot of digging. Since his Nov. 21 article insinuating that dissident alumni are racist for criticizing VMI’s African-American Superintendent Cedric Wins, he has published only one other article (on a topic unrelated to VMI). Three months after his last hit, the WaPo hatchet man emailed a lengthy list of questions to Daniel that hint at specific allegations the article will make.

One question, for example, sets up the VMI grad and former fighter pilot on charges of anti-Semitism for a blog post in which he criticized leftist mega-donor George Soros — not for Soros’ ethnic identity but his role bankrolling leftist causes. 

Anticipating a hatchet job, The Spirit of VMI has published Shapira’s email, and you can read it here. And you can read The Spirit of VMI’s response here.

“What is obvious from the tone, type, and number of questions is that Mr. Shapira … will try to doxx and cancel another VMI Alumnus who has attempted to freely speak and react to to the corrosive actions of the Northam Administration,” said the Spirit of VMI statement. The statement continued: Continue reading →

100 Comments

Posted in Culture wars, Education (higher ed), Media

Tagged ,

Is There Something about Restrictive Speech Environments that Attracts Journalism Majors?

Posted on December 28, 2022 by | 39 comments

An economics major

by James C. Sherlock

Most of the best journalists in American history had only a high school diploma.

Charles Dickens, a voracious reader with a very limited and interrupted formal education, was a journalist and one of the most honored writers ever.

The Columbia School of Journalism offers, if that is the right word, a masters degree in journalism.

In 2018 the price tag of the Columbia Journalism School, admitted the Columbia Journalism Review, was $105,820 for a 10-month program, $147,418 for a 12-month program, or $108,464 per year for a two-year program. That was a $216,928 graduate degree, on top of all the costs associated with gaining the undergraduate prerequisites.

In 2022, in a demonstration of “shrinkflation” worthy of the business school, the cost of the now-9-month graduate journalism degree program at Columbia is $120,000.

Virginia Tech is a player in the same market.

But then I guess that depends upon how you define player. Continue reading →

39 Comments

Posted in Education (higher ed), Media

Tagged

A Primatologist at The Washington Post

Posted on December 23, 2022 by | 38 comments

Snowflake, the only known albino western lowland gorilla, as seen in the Barcelona Zoo. Died in 2003.

by James C. Sherlock

And they wonder why they are hated by people outside the bubble.

A story by Stephanie McCrummen in The Washington Post, “In rural Georgia, an unlikely rebel against Trumpism,” comes across as an attempt at Hillbilly Elegy as written by a primatologist.

Primatologists study primates in order to understand their evolution and behavior.

The Post, having returned Ms. McCrummen from assignment covering East and Central Africa, sends her this time to the wilds of the South to examine the animals.

To northwest Georgia. Marjorie Taylor-Greene’s district.

She found, in his native habitat!, a 33-year-old white! veteran electrician (he has a beard! And a brutal father! Left home at 15!) who voted against! Donald Trump, Ms. Greene and Herschel Walker.

She examines him as if he has three arms and describes the local landscape with as much amazement as if it was the dark side of Mars. Green Hills of Africa without Hemingway’s talent.

It is “long form” for your reading pleasure. Condescension drips from every paragraph.

The natives are presumed too ignorant to understand.

Probably don’t even read the Post.

38 Comments

Posted in Media

Tagged

FOIA Council Responds on Request to UVa for Threat Assessment Team Records on Shooter

Posted on December 22, 2022 by | 30 comments

by James C. Sherlock

On Sunday I asked the FOIA Council to provide an advisory opinion on the University of Virginia’s decision that information about that school’s threat assessment team deliberations in the case of the November shooter, Christopher Jones, will not be released as I requested.

I received the answer this afternoon, which is far quicker than I anticipated. The Council suggests a more binding route. I quote:

Dear Mr. Sherlock:

In this instance, it appears that there may be some miscommunication or misunderstanding given that it appears that you have asked for threat assessment team information and certain other information pertaining to Mr. Jones, but in reply the University has cited the scholastic information exemption rather than the threat assessment team information exemption.

You also mentioned that the University indicated that redaction of these records would be so extensive as to effectively render them meaningless. You are correct that the threat assessment team information exemption requires that certain information be made available after certain types of incidents, and it would appear to apply to such threat assessment team records after an incident such as this one that resulted in student deaths.

However, the University is also correct that scholastic records are exempt from mandatory disclosure (and although the University did not appear to cite other provisions of law, note that certain student contact information is actually prohibited from release pursuant to subsection B of § 2.2-3705.4, and there are also various provisions of law outside of FOIA that may also affect access to student records).

It is possible that either or both of these exemptions could apply in different scenarios depending on the actual contents of the records, but without knowing those contents, it is not possible to render an informed opinion regarding whether these records are exempt from disclosure or must be produced.

To that end, you asked that this office review the 65 records withheld by the University in this matter and render an opinion based on that review. The Virginia Freedom of Information Advisory Council is a state legislative branch council that was created to issue opinions on the operation and application of the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), to publish educational materials, and to provide training about FOIA. Continue reading →

30 Comments

Posted in Courts and law, Education (higher ed), General Assembly, Individual liberties, Media, Open Government, Threat Assessment, Virginia Freedom of Information Act

Tagged

Dead Students, UVa, and the Virginia Freedom of Information Act – Part One – Only One Client

Posted on December 18, 2022 by | 28 comments

Clifton M. Iler
University Counsel and Senior Assistant Attorney General at the University of Virginia

by James C. Sherlock

Updated Dec. 18 at 16:30

The deck is stacked against the press, at least in the first step.

The University of Virginia, unsurprisingly, considers it not in its interests to release information to the press about the work of its threat assessment team in the case of Christopher Darnell Jones.

Mr. Jones, after that team failed to act, shot five people, killing three.

UVa’s Virginia Freedom of Information Act (FOIA, the Act) Officer works in the University Counsel’s office. The University Counsel’s job under Virginia law in civil matters is to defend the University. Protect it from things inimical to its interests.

The fact that this office also fields FOIA requests is and must be informed by that primary responsibility. That office will never knowingly break the law, but it will search it for provisions favorable to its client’s interest.

The office has only one client: the University.

Virginia’s FOIA law is dense. Most of its 48 pages are occupied with exceptions to the general duty to release information requested.

Agency attorneys are thus positioned to find an exception to repulse attempts at getting information that government agencies don’t want made public. Even if there is another part of that same law that arguably supports the request. The key modifier is “arguably.”

Such as information responsive to my FOIA request, which has been denied by the University Counsel’s office. I don’t blame them, I just disagree. They may prove right in the end. But the end is not yet here.

I will appeal to the FOIA Council, which contains Members of and works for the General Assembly. Different client.

If the information is ultimately to be released, we then will fight the next battle. Agencies get another bite of the apple. They get to make redactions they deem appropriate under the law.  

The University’s FOIA office has done nothing wrong.

Rather, I find a structural problem with a FOIA system that requires the press to ask an agency’s defense attorneys for information inimical to the interests of their clients.  And then lets those same attorneys redact prior to release.

It cannot work in favor of the freedom of information, so it doesn’t.

I am going to publish a series about my takeaways from this experience.

That at least you can read about. Continue reading →

28 Comments

Posted in Education (higher ed), General Assembly, Governance, Media, Open Government, Threat Assessment, Virginia Freedom of Information Act

Tagged

The Progressive Left Has Only One Story. It is on Endless Loop in the Press

Posted on November 29, 2022 by | 158 comments

Norway lemming. Courtesy Wikipedia

by James C. Sherlock

It is called defining the terms of the debate.

Sort of like naming a climate bill the “Inflation Reduction Act.”

The war to define the ground in a headline debate in Virginia is between supporters of either:

  • Virginia DOE’s draft “2022 Model Policies on the Privacy, Dignity and Respect for All Students and Parents in Virginia’s Public Schools;”  or
  • the last administration’s “Model Policies for the Treatment of Transgender Students in Virginia’s Public Schools” that has been cancelled.

The draft VDOE document commits four secular sins at once:

  • It acknowledges the rights of parents;
  • It acknowledges that children are the responsibilities of their parents first and then the schools;
  • It provides measures to protect all students; and, most egregiously
  • It does not single out a victim class.  

Mortal sins against progressivism. Every one. The horror on the left is palpable.

Only one narrative is permitted in WokeWorld — Victims and Oppressors Sorted by Identity Group.

It is projected onto everything. Continue reading →

158 Comments

Posted in Culture wars, Media

Tagged

Trump, Missiles, COVID, and Youngkin

Posted on November 16, 2022 by | 42 comments

by Kerry Dougherty

Yes, I heard. The whole country heard.

Donald Trump announced last night that he was running for president in 2024. The worst-kept secret in American history.

If I were a Democrat I’d be delighted.

While Trump always sucks the air out of the room and dominates the news cycle, other events were more important.

For instance, Poland reported yesterday that a Russian-made missile fell inside its border killing two, bringing the world ever closer to all-out war. Almost immediately #Article5 began trending on Twitter.

Russia denied that it fired one of its missiles into NATO territory, but the incident is a reminder that Europe is a very volatile place.

Oh, and apparently Joe Biden is feeling under the weather. Lucky us to have a feeble 80-year-old leading the Free World.

In an overlooked moment, the U.S. Senate voted 62-36 yesterday to terminate Biden’s COVID National Emergency declaration. Continue reading →

42 Comments

Posted in Media, Politics

Tagged ,

Not Gilly Sullivan’s Alumni Association Anymore

Posted on October 19, 2022 by | 23 comments

Gilly Sullivan

by James A. Bacon

Aiming to address the lamentable decline in state/local news coverage, States Newsroom supports local news operations in 29 states, including Virginia.

As Jim Sherlock detailed here, the nonprofit organization was launched in 2017 by the left-of-center Hopewell Fund, which itself is managed by the left-of-center Arabella Advisors.

Its Virginia Mercury digital publication has made a valuable contribution to Virginia journalism by breaking many important stories. While the Mercury can credibly profess to be politically “nonpartisan,” its news coverage leans hard to the port side on environmental and social-justice issues.

In a nod to transparency, States Newsroom publishes the names of all individuals and groups that have contributed $500 or more since November 2019. One of the names listed is the “University of Virginia Alumni Association.”

Conservative UVa alumni might ask themselves the question: why is their alumni association contributing funds to a left-of-center news organization?

I posed that question to Richard Gard, vice president of communications for the association. It turns out that the alumni association did not make the contribution. Rather, it acted as a pass-through for another UVa-affiliated entity.

And therein lies a story illustrating the opaque organizational structure of the University of Virginia and its Oort Cloud of satellite foundations and affiliated groups. Continue reading →

23 Comments

Posted in Charity and philanthropy, Education (higher ed), Media

Tagged ,

Virginia Not Ready to Criminalize Parents Who Reject Child’s Transgender Identity. Not Yet.

Posted on October 17, 2022 by | 12 comments

Delegate Elizabeth Guzman. Social workers know best!

by James A. Bacon

Delegate Elizabeth Guzman, D-Prince William, stirred the hornet’s nest when she told WJLA last week that she would reintroduce a bill to expand the definition of child abuse to include inflicting “physical or mental injury” on children due to their gender identity or sexual orientation. Republicans criticized the criminalization of parental rights. The story went viral nationally before other local media had a chance to touch it.

The bill is so crazy (see Kerry Dougherty’s post below) that many Democrats have made a point of distancing themselves as well. But not all.

It’s worth noting that the original bill introduced in 2020 had two co-patrons: Del. Ibraheem Samirah, D-Herndon, and Senator Joe Morrissey, D-Richmond.

Also, while House Minority Leader Don L. Scott Jr., D-Portsmouth, declared that Guzman had assured him that she would not reintroduce a bill, he proceeded to defend her, according to The Washington Post. “She said her comments were taken out of context and that she does not want to criminalize any parents.” Continue reading →

12 Comments

Posted in LGBQT, Media

Tagged