UNACCOUNTABILITY AND THE NEW YORK TIMES: Richard Pollock digs into the corporate structure underlying the Old Grey Lady and finds a complex setup that permanently empowers and insulates Sulzberger descendants to maintain a death grip on every aspect of the newspaper, including what is and isn’t reported, and how. Interestingly, the Sulzberger and Ford families use the same technique to maintain iron-clad control.
Nicholas Kristof’s column in The New York Times continues to reverberate a week after publication, and has created an internal rift between the newspaper’s newsroom and its opinion section.
The column, titled “The Silence That Meets the Rape of Palestinians,” includes allegations of systematic sexual abuse by Israeli prison guards and soldiers against Palestinian detainees. It cites testimony from 14 Palestinians alleging the use of batons and carrots, threats to rape family members and dogs used for sexual assault while prison staff laughed and filmed the incident.
The article drew widespread reactions around the world, including protests and calls to cancel subscriptions. On Thursday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar threatened to file a defamation lawsuit against the newspaper for libel against the State of Israel. Israeli officials and the Israel Prison Service have completely denied the claims, and Netanyahu called them baseless.
Think about that: the journalists who would run with allegations from the Steele Dossier and make a two-year crusade out of proving it are too ashamed to touch Kristof’s accusations.
That’s how absurd this story is.
Thus the kerfuffle between the Gray Lady’s “news” and opinion departments:
BREAKING: A massive civil war has reportedly emerged within the New York Times, with many journalists questioning the credibility of Kristof’s piece.
One NYT journalist stated: “I am sick of being embarrassed by the Opinion section.”
Brilliant demolition of the NYT's BS dog rape story – by veteran Australian editor Alan Howe: What NYT should’ve asked before publishing its Palestinian rape story https://t.co/Jkee8Y6XMWpic.twitter.com/Ff4Jle1KXi
Controversy-tarred congressional candidate Maureen Galindo this week pledged to transform a site south of San Antonio now used by the Trump administration to detain migrants into an internment camp for “American Zionists.”
“She’ll turn Karnes ICE Detention Center into a prison for American Zionists and former ICE officers for human trafficking,” Galindo wrote in an Instagram post over the weekend, referring to herself in the third person. “It will also be a castration processing center for pedophiles, which will probably be most of the Zionists.”
Galindo’s latest set of inflammatory remarks comes as the Democratic hopeful for Texas’ newly redrawn 35th Congressional District continues to draw national attention for remarks critics have called antisemitic and untethered from reality. The controversy is snowballing as she heads into the May 26 Democratic primary runoff.
Over the past week, Galindo has accused her runoff opponent — former Bexar County Public Information Officer Johnny Garcia — of participating in a human trafficking conspiracy orchestrated by billionaire zionist Jews. She also pledged during a Texas Public Radio interview to put Garcia on trial for treason.
Beyond her attacks on Garcia, Galindo has continued to promote the narrative that a cabal of Jewish zionists controls Hollywood, the media and even local politicians.
Will she be appearing on Candace, Tucker, or Megyn’s next show?
Above, host Stephen Colbert with dancers dressed as COVID vaccine needles in September 2021. (CBS, via YouTube)
Other guests whom Colbert lifted on his show since the 2015 election of President Donald Trump were antisemites such as Rashida Tlaib and Jamaal Bowman, and socialists such as former Democratic Missouri Rep. Cori Bush and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY). An interview with Democratic Texas Senate candidate James Talarico (he/him), who maintains that God is “nonbinary” and white skin spreads the “virus” of racism, was put online after concerns about violating the Federal Communications Commission’s “equal time” rule.
During the recent NYC mayoral race, Colbert had on Hamas apologist New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, along with City Comptroller Brad Lander.
Yes, the Brad Lander. What a tremendous thrill it must have been for the late-night audience to hear from a city accountant.
Though it’s not fair to say that Colbert never had on a Republican. Trump-haters, former Reps. Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger were also on. By one measure, the host had 176 left-leaning or Democratic guests, or 99% of his visitors.
Carson, despite perceptions, did have political guests such as Robert F. Kennedy, Hubert Humphrey, George McGovern, Jerry Brown, Ted Kennedy, Tip O’Neill, Henry Kissinger, Richard Nixon, and Ronald Reagan. The point, judging from old clips, was to show the human side of these political celebrities, not to use the show as a campaign stop.
Colbert, whose legacy Eric Deggans at NPR says was that he “distinguished truth from truthiness,” is free to feature anyone he likes on the show. He can also be out of business. The monotonous, one-sided, cringy disparagement would become painful for anyone who wasn’t obsessed with politics to watch. One of the problems is that leftists simply can’t ridicule themselves. Not really.
CHLOE MELAS: CBS was recently acquired by Skydance Media, whose owner David Ellison is a prominent Trump supporter. CBS called the cancellation a purely financial decision and not related in any way to the show’s performance. But that statement doesn’t ring true to everyone. Brian Lowry is a media veteran reporter.
BRIAN LOWRY: There was a sense the studio was eager to curry favor with the Trump administration.
The Ellison MAGA rebrand is an important element in the ongoing canonization of late-night comics to Resistance™ sainthood. In Colbert’s particular case this narrative is useful inasmuch as it helps brush off the financial reality of the show as a key element of its cancellation.
Another road is if Colbert decides to launch his own talk or interview show — whether a podcast or on YouTube. The average age of a Colbert viewer is 68, which perhaps says more about CBS’ audience than it does Colbert’s, but it also makes it a bit tougher to imagine Colbert hustling viewers to “smash that like and subscribe button” on YouTube alongside MrBeast.
But there’s almost three million of them. So, perhaps the next stop for Colbert is Substack?
Stephen Colbert was losing $40 million a year but this is the signal that Substack wants him and it will be the death of the platform. https://t.co/qqnTqRaiQs
HMM: Pakistan deploys jet squadron, thousands of troops to Saudi Arabia. “Pakistan has deployed 8,000 troops, a squadron of fighter jets and an air defence system to Saudi Arabia under a mutual defence pact, ramping up military cooperation with Riyadh even as Islamabad serves as the main mediator in the Iran war. The deployment, the full scale of which is reported here for the first time, was confirmed by three security officials and two government sources, all of whom described it as a substantial, combat-capable force intended to support Saudi Arabia’s military if the kingdom comes under further attack.”
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