By Daniel Bobinski
Anymore, when I watch or read the legacy media, I see the Public Relations arm of the Democratic Party. It’s an amazing scam. These “journalists” fill the airways with Leftist propaganda, while the Democrats – who, for the most part, are no longer trying to hide the fact that they are Marxists / Socialists – sit back and enjoy the free labor.
The JINOs – the Journalists in Name Only – have a distinct style:
Republicans, Libertarians, and Christians get attacked.
Democrats, Socialists, and Muslims get softballs.
Democratic lies and doublespeak gets ignored or excused.
If you don’t see this, then you’re suffering from confirmation bias. If you’re unfamiliar with the phrase, confirmation bias is the tendency for people to believe only what they want to believe.
According to Shahram Heshmat, writing at Psychology Today,
When people would like a certain idea or concept to be true, they end up believing it to be true. They are motivated by wishful thinking. This error leads the individual to stop gathering information when the evidence gathered so far confirms the views or prejudices one would like to be true.
You can read my take on how confirmation bias forms and affects us here.
Everyone on both sides of the aisle has confirmation bias. It starts impacting us soon after birth and continues until the day we die. But when it’s amplified to the level of blatant propaganda and broadcast into our homes, airports, schools, and businesses, it’s more than just a little unethical.
Take JINO Chris Cuomo over at CNN. He insists that President Trump does nothing but lie every day. I’ve watched Mr. Cuomo. He’s desperately auditioning to be press secretary for the Democrat / Socialist / Marxist platform. Trump certainly speaks with hyperbole, but, “do nothing but lie every day?” Hardly. Chris, you could benefit from switching to decaf and being more level-headed. You’re a lawyer, you know how to be objective. Stop trying to emotionally manipulate your audience.
JINO George Stephanopoulos sits at the anchor desk over at ABC news and regularly downplays or flat-out ignores facts presented to him by his conservative guests. George, we remember you were on the Clinton White House staff. It’s public knowledge you gave at least $75,000 to the Clinton’s Foundation while you were a “journalist” reporting on them – and that you didn’t disclose that donation at the time. You are far from unbiased. Intellectual honesty is a trait Americans appreciate, so why not just tell people you support the Marxists and Socialists?
Then there’s the main JINO at MSNBC, Rachel Maddow. If JINO Cuomo is going to accuse someone of lying every day, he needs to redirect his focus to Maddow. She even went so far as to claim the conservative One America News network (OANN) “literally is paid Russian propaganda.” Really, Rachel? For that particularly blatant lie, you are being sued by OANN to the tune of $10 million for defamation. The lies are strong with this one.
There’s also that JINO guy over at CNN, Don Lemon. A few years ago, Lemon’s work was rated among the nation’s “Worst Journalism” by the Columbia Journalism Review. Remember when Lemon so boldly proclaimed Trump to be racist? You can see my previous column on what I think about people making that accusation. Personally, I find Lemon to be the JINOs comic relief. When Trump uses hyperbole, Lemon boldly announces it as, “lies!” Yet when JINO Lemon got called out for thinking a semi-automatic weapon was an automatic one, he brushed it off as semantics and then dismissively tried to redefine the terms.
Mr. JINO Lemon = Mr. JINO hypocrite.
JINO work continues
This past week the JINOs are covering for Presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren for deceptively insinuating she was fired for being pregnant.
In case you’re not familiar, Warren implies she was the victim of sexual discrimination after her pregnancy became obvious while working as a teacher at age 22. On the campaign trail, Warren tells people the school principal “showed [her] the door” after he found out she was pregnant. “The principal did what principles did in those days – wished me luck and hired someone else for the job.”
Her obvious implication? She was fired. Only that didn’t happen. Warren resigned. Nobody who worked at the school recalls her being fired, and school board records show the board accepted her resignation “with regret.”
If Elizabeth Warren was a conservative, the JINO media would have made this frontpage news, saying Warren’s deceptive nature and her inability to be truthful calls into question her ability to govern. You can see it now: “Warren is unstable and unfit for the Presidency.”
If you think Cuomo, Stephanopoulos Maddow, or Lemon would have treated a conservative Elizabeth Warren differently, you’ve added a healthy dose of confirmation bias to your Kool-Aid.
However, because Warren is a Leftist, her deception and doublespeak are getting excused. Brandon Tensley at CNN writes a story titled, “Warren pregnancy debate another example of sexism in the guise of scrutiny.” First of all, notice how he frames this story as a “debate.” Slick, Brandon. Then he says, “Warren's story, however, fits into a much larger pattern, one that will indeed be familiar to many women.” Tinsley proceeds to twists facts to make it look like conservatives are ignorant about discrimination, and then he launches into a bunch of “woe is me” stories from other women.
JINO methodology: Ignore Warren being deceptive. Tug at the hearts of female voters.
JINO Tensley, nobody is saying sexism doesn’t exist. What you seem incapable of saying is that Warren has been deceptive. These tendencies should be of grave concern to the electorate because this woman is campaigning for President, and as a responsible journalist, that should be your story. Instead, you’re a JINO; a shill for the Democrat / Marxist / Socialist platform.
Another example comes from Margaret Sullivan over at the Washington Post. Her piece is titled, “The Elizabeth Warren pregnancy smear shows how poisoned the media world is,” First, she inserts the word, “smear.” Again, slick. Then, in her story, JINO Sullivan uses a common Marxist / Socialist / Democratic technique: accuse the other side of that which you are doing. She writes, “If there is a scandal here, it’s how — in the bad-faith media world — narrowly presented facts without sufficient context can do unfair harm. They can and will be weaponized, falsely regurgitated and twisted beyond recognition.”
Wow, Margaret. Thank you for validating my points here! You are accusing conservatives of doing what JINOs do daily, but at least you’re aware of how it works. However, you, yourself, are twisting the facts. And instead of being ethical, you exonerate Warren.
What Warren should be saying
To wrap up, let’s take an intellectually honest look at the Warren story, with the facts known thus far:
- She was pregnant while working as a teacher in 1971.
- In 1971, school district policy stated that if you were pregnant, you couldn’t serve as a teacher.
- When Warren got was pregnant, she hid it for as long as she could.
- When Warren could no longer hide the fact she was pregnant, she resigned.
- In 1978, Congress approved the Pregnancy Discrimination Act, an amendment to the 1964 Civil Rights Act. The Act prohibited discrimination due to pregnancy.
Translated: The legal district policies in place in 1971 were that Warren shouldn’t have been teaching while pregnant. When Warren could no longer hide the fact she was pregnant, she resigned. Seven years later the country’s laws changed, and now women can teach while pregnant.
If Warren was intellectually honest, she could be saying something like this:
“Women today are so fortunate. When I was 22, I had to resign from a job because I was pregnant. Thank God our system of government allows us to recognize wrongs in our society and amend our laws to make things right for people. If you are 22 and pregnant today, you don’t have to lose your job! As your President, I will continue to fix laws that hinder people’s livelihoods.
Unfortunately, Warren won’t say that, because in her heart, she’s chosen to be a Marxist / Socialist. That platform seeks to divide people into groups, and then get those groups fighting among themselves. It’s from the playbook Marx advocated for implementing Communism: get the economic classes fighting. The problem? Americans don’t bite that hook. Therefore, Democrats created new plays for the book. They divide people into whatever groups they can and stir the pot to get them to fight.
Elizabeth Warren is using that playbook.
And the PR arm of the Marxists / Socialists / Democrats, the Journalists in Name Only, work from that same book.
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Daniel Bobinski, M.Ed. is a certified behavioral analyst, best-selling author, columnist, corporate trainer, and a popular speaker at conferences and retreats. In addition to working with teams and individuals to help them achieve workplace excellence through improving their emotional intelligence and improving the way they do training, he’s also a veteran and a Christian Libertarian who believes in the principles of free market capitalism while standing firmly against crony capitalism. Daniel writes on both workplace issues and political issues for multiple publications. Reach Daniel through his website, MyWorkplaceExcellence.com.
