Newsbusters

The corporate media, seemingly bent on not offending Hamas terrorists, their campus sympathizers, and Washington allies, willfully chose to downplay Hamas’s horrific swap of Shiri Bibas’s body with that of another person ahead of its scheduled handover to Israel. Rather than expose depravity, the media made the choice to downplay it with the hope that no one will notice.

Watch NBC’s treatment of the story: 

DISGUSTING: NBC News can’t even bring themselves to utter Shri Bibas’s name as they downplay Hamas’s horrific switching out of her body prior to transfer to Israel. pic.twitter.com/LAxUgLifMz
— Jorge Bonilla (@BonillaJL) February 21, 2025

LESTER HOLT: Overseas, a solemn day in Israel as the country received the remains of four bodies including the two youngest hostages. But according to the Israeli military, their mother was not among them. Hala Gorani reports the Bibas brothers have become emblematic of the hostage crisis and the devastating war.

HALA GORANI: Tonight, their faces became the symbols of Israel’s hostage crisis. Ariel and Kfir Bibas, abducted on October 7th, 2023, alive. The boys, 4 years old and just shy of 9 months at the time. Today, returning home in coffins to their father, Yarden Bibas, released earlier this month in a hostage exchange.

That’s it from NBC on the undignified transfer. NBC didn’t even have the decency to mention Shiri Bibas’s name, even as a stranger lies in her coffin because Hamas continue to be medieval savages. The story quickly moved to related matters, but there was no focus on the “ceremony”, wherein the Red Cross signed for the bodies, which were placed in front of a mural of Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu as a vampire. Neither was there mention of the parade that preceded the “ceremony”. All we get from correspondent Hala Gorani is: “The day started inside the devastated enclave, where masked Hamas fighters handed four black-clad coffins over to the Red Cross.” 

CBS’s Debora Patta, of all people, won the moral high ground with her coverage of the transfer. But the bar she had to overcome was very low:

DEBORA PATTA: Under a grim Gaza sky, four coffins were paraded in a Hamas propaganda spectacle. The fighters handed over the bodies of 4-year-old Ariel Bibas and his 9-month-old brother Kfir. Israel says their mother Shiri was not among them. The family has become an indelible symbol of the October 7 terror attack.

Patta’s succinct but accurate “propaganda spectacle” is more than we got from NBC with regard to Hamas’s grotesque display. Her reporting that “Shiri was not among…” the bodies handed over to Israel eclipses NBC’s by first mentioning her name. Like I said, low moral bar here.

ABC’s response to the moral question of Bibas coverage was simply to ignore it, choosing instead to devote a full report to the Tel Aviv bus bombings. There was ZERO mention of the ghoulish handover ceremony, 

Viewed as a whole, the networks failed the morality test that Hamas lay at their feet. Their self-censorship was shocking to behold, and is shocking to write about. And the question remains: why did they self-censor? Who are they trying to appease?

The media’s collective downplay of the horrors of what happened in Gaza today betray a depravity not very far removed from that of Hamas themselves.

Click “expand” to view full transcripts of the aforementioned reports as aired on their respective networks on Thursday, February 20th, 2025:

NBC NIGHTLY NEWS

2/20/25

6:35 PM

LESTER HOLT: Overseas, a solemn day in Israel as the country received the remains of four bodies including the two youngest hostages. But according to the Israeli military, their mother was not among them. Hala Gorani reports the Bibas brothers have become emblematic of the hostage crisis and the devastating war.

HALA GORANI: Tonight, their faces became the symbols of Israel’s hostage crisis. Ariel and Kfir Bibas, abducted on October 7th, 2023, alive. The boys, 4 years old and just shy of 9 months at the time. Today, returning home in coffins to their father, Yarden Bibas, released earlier this month in a hostage exchange. At Hostage Square in Tel Aviv, it was not a day for celebration. Gil Dickman’s cousin Carmel Gat was also taken hostage and killed in Gaza last August.

GIL DICKMAN: For the families, it’s a devastating moment. And it’s a reminder for them that we have to fight for the others.

GORANI: The atmosphere is certainly more solemn than on Saturday since the signing of the latest deal, when live hostages are returned. This time, the country is witnessing the return of deceased captives. The day started inside the devastated enclave, where masked Hamas fighters handed four black-clad coffins over to the Red Cross. 84-year-old activist Oded Lifschitz was among those sent back. He volunteered with a group that would drive Palestinians in need of care to Israeli hospitals. The Israeli military transported the coffins to a forensic facility. The remains of Lifschitz formally identified there. Tests are ongoing for the others. Back at Hostage Square, many tell us death and devastation in Gaza need to end for everyone.

DICKMAN: We don’t want to live in a constant war. It’s not good for anyone. We want this war to end.

HOLT: And Hala, we’re hearing tonight there were explosions on some buses near Tel Aviv. What are officials saying?

GORANI: Yes, Lester. The police are saying that they are investigating these explosions as a potential terrorist attack. Three devices went off in an empty parking lot, two were defused elsewhere, and authorities are scanning other areas for potential objects. Lester.

HOLT: Hala Gorani, thank you.

CBS EVENING NEWS

2/20/25

6:42 PM

MAURICE DUBOIS: Hamas today returned four Israeli hostages, returned them in coffins.

JOHN DICKERSON: It was the first release of hostage remains under the ceasefire deal. Among them were two young children. Debora Patta is in East Jerusalem.

DEBORA PATTA: Under a grim Gaza sky, four coffins were paraded in a Hamas propaganda spectacle. The fighters handed over the bodies of 4-year-old Ariel Bibas and his 9-month-old brother Kfir. Israel says their mother Shiri was not among them. The family has become an indelible symbol of the October 7 terror attack. And as the convoy made its way into Israel, mourners lined the streets to pay their respects. The fragile cease-fire in Gaza is approaching the end of its first phase. On Saturday, six more living hostages are expected to be freed. Yael Alexander’s son Ydan will not be among them.

YAEL ALEXANDER: Every release, of course, I’m crying and I’m feeling- it’s very, very emotional. I also cry because it’s not Ydan. It’s not my boy. Originally from New Jersey, Ydan is thought to be the last living American hostage. He volunteered for the Israeli army after finishing school and is only due to be released in the second stage of the deal. Negotiations for that have not yet begun.

PATTA: Do you feel the Israeli government owes you something?

ALEXANDER Of course. He came to protect Israel. Where is Israel? They need to protect him. They need to bring him home.

PATTA: Her message for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu: you cannot stop negotiating now.

ALEXANDER: Imagine it was you, imagine you were the father, your son is held in Gaza tunnels alive and still waiting to be released. Why to postpone it? Do it.

DUBOIS: And Debora Patta joins us now from East Jerusalem. Debora, you’ve reported from the region many times and with this news today, what are you noticing if anything about the mood of the Israeli people?

PATTA: Well, Maurice, for the last five weeks the images of those Red Cross vehicles in Gaza waiting for another hostage exchange have been a symbol of hope here. Hostages released alive after more than 15 months in captivity. But today really marked the first time that Hamas has released the bodies of dead hostages. And it signifies the very sobering reality that there will be more hostages coming home in coffins. That for some families, there will be no longed-for reunion with loved ones.

DICKERSON: Debora, what’s the prospect for that fragile cease-fire as it moves into its next phases?

PATTA: Well John, the next round is going to be a lot harder. Israel and Hamas want very different things. We’ve heard one Hamas commander say that they are prepared to release all the remaining hostages in one go, in exchange for a permanent truce and a full withdrawal of Israeli troops from Gaza. That’s a nonstarter for Israel, who has said it will accept nothing less than the complete demilitarization of Gaza with no Hamas presence at all. So we are right back to that thorny question of who is going to control postwar Gaza. 

DICERSON: Debora Patta in East Jerusalem. Debora, thank you.

 

Having been laid off in December 2022 from CNN, Chris Cillizza has been free to appear elsewhere, join Substack, and…come to his senses? That seems to have been the case more recently with one example having come Wednesday night on NewsNation as he admitted he was exasperated at Democrats being willing to die on the hill of saving the federal bureaucracy from Elon Musk.

On Balance host Leland Vittert set the table in his Why It Matters Memo with the admission that “Democrats are fighting – literally dying on the hill of saving three-letter agencies that everybody in America hates” even though “[n]obody outside of Washington once business as usual in Congress” and certainly not that “saving federal jobs is the civil rights movement.”

Noting the left is “staking out such objectively unpopular opinions,” Vittert presented as a foil a Health and Human Services researcher who spoke at an anti-Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) rally to decry her work collecting “better data to create better clinical guidelines for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and intersex people” with cancer.

“[H]alf of the country right now is living paycheck to paycheck. Read the room. Gender identity studies in cancer care doesn’t play well in Green Bay, Wisconsin, Clark County, Nevada, Cobb County, Georgia, Erie, Pennsylvania,” he added.

Cillizza excused members of Congress who represent the greater D.C. area like Jamie Raskin (D-MD), but those few members aside, “the average person who doesn’t live in and around Washington has no idea what these things are and why you wouldn’t want to cut some of the waste from them.”

 

 

He continued to dish out the truth (something we saw little of at CNN):

I think it’s a fundamental fact of how Democrats are positioning themselves whether intentionally or unintentionally. They just have a blind spot with Trump. No idea he proposes can be even a good idea. It – again, if it was proposed by James P. Public, Republican president, they’d like, okay, well, maybe. But because it is him and because the loathing is so – and it is – I don’t use that word wisely, but they hate him. Every idea is – is a bad idea and I just think it leads some poor strategic conclusions if your goal is, as Democrat’s goal should be, getting some power back because they’re out of power at every single level at the state and federal government.

He noted the Democrats not only lost the White House, but both houses of Congress and, aside from hating Trump, they “don’t have a message” and “obvious leadership.”

This cued Vittert up to note journalists should find government waste the most basic function of their jobs, but that seems to have dried up. To illustrate it, he had Cillizza react to his former longtime colleague Brianna Keilar berate White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller in one clip about government layoffs while commiserating in another with a laid-off HHS worker.

Surprisingly, Cillizza didn’t back down from scoffing at this double standard. He went onto cite the Pennsylvania limestone mine for paper copies of government personnel files as something a former colleague at The Washington Post exposed over a decade ago (click “expand”):

 

 

CILLIZZA: I mean, it’s aimed at a certain kind of viewer. I mean, you know, like – I don’t think it’s a – I don’t think I need to go to det – detailed media critic to know that. Like –

VITTERT: The New York – no, like, journ – journalists are not good media critics, but The New York Times Daily did this whole episode today. That’s your morning podcast about how, you know, purge is hurting all of these federal workers in there’s not been one critical question of asking any Democrats, like, do we really need all of these programs that you’re now championing?

CILLIZZA: – I – again, I think that if it was even Chris Cillizza or Leland Vitter, president, God forbid that be terrified, especially me. You, I could live with.

VITTERT: Oh!

CILLIZZA: If – we if we had that and they said, you know what? The federal bureaucracy is too big. It doesn’t work. Well, everybody knows this. It’s outdated. It’s – it’s not technologically brought. I think you would get 90 percent approve – people like yeah! Like, the whole limestone mine where they store the records – Elon Musk talked about this – my friend and colleague David Fahrenthold wrote – wrote about this in 2015 or 2016 when he was at The Washington Post. He’s at The New York Times now. Like, yes, anyone who reads that is like, wait. We’re keeping these paper files in a limestone mine underground in Pennsylvania? Like, that doesn’t feel 2025. So, like, that to me is the issue.

VITTERT: It’s all about Trump.

Instead, Cillizza, argued, even things like the limestone mine aren’t points of agreement because of “[t]he Democratic blind spot for Trump” that’s “cost them significantly” to the point they’re refusing to “say we screwed up” or truly “examine” why they lost.

As for the study on the sexual orientation of cancer patients, he said while he’s not exactly “ridiculing that,” if you consider “the priority set of the average person, that’s not top five” and instead “am I putting food on the table” and hoping your car doesn’t break down.

Vittert closed with an astounding look at there being little difference in student test scores and skyrocketing levels of Department of Education spending (click “expand”):

VITTERT: I’ll get you one more and this is, I think, people are underestimating it. What’s my kids education like? And you think about the Department of Education because this is where this is going, right? This is what Trump wants to ax next.

CILLIZZA: Yep.

VITTERT: This is what’s coming. The Department of Education is responsible for a 1,200% increase in spending since it was created in 1980. But over that time, test scores have risen roughly two percent. The only constituency the Department of education has his teacher unions.

CILLIZZA: Yep.

VITTERT: And you know what? I will predict the Democrats are going to die on this hill as well.

CILLIZZA: I just – at some point, I say this about my own work. The numbers are the numbers. You can say like much better than this person or that person. But if that person has 180,000 subscribers and you have eight subscribers, the numbers are numbers at some point, right? You are what your record says you are. And I think when you say 1,200-point increase in spending, it’s just like the health thing we talked about with RFK Jr. I think RFK Jr., candidly, has got a lot of beliefs where I’m like ehhhhhhh! But when he says things like we spend the most per capita on health in this country and health is our – our overall health is drastically decreasing, as a reasonable human, I am like, yes, that does not make sense. We got to stop throwing bad money – good money after bad, figure out what can we do better and again, I say this all time. Donald Trump was not – he did not say elect me and I will – I will do basically the same stuff. No, he said elect me and I’m going to shake it up. Now –

VITTERT: Well, I was going to say – no, he didn’t say I’m going to shake it up. I am going to take a sledgehammer –

CILLIZZA: Yes.

VITTERT: – and then I’m gonna burn whatever is left –

CILLIZZA: So, he’s taking a sledgehammer –

VITTERT: – and that’s what he’s doing.

CILLIZZA: – to it and people are like, huhhh? And I’m always like you can be unhappy with it. That’s your right. You disagree with some of the things do. And, frankly, I disagree with some of the things he’s doing, but you can’t be surprised because he’s saying what he’s doing.

To see the relevant NewsNation transcript from February 19, click here.

Congress shouldn’t be forcing taxpayers to spend a half-billion dollars a year subsidizing news outlets that produce biased, fake news that offends more than half the nation, Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) said Tuesday.

In Senate remarks, Kennedy called for the government to stop funding the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB):

“President Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency is looking for fat to trim, Mr. President.

“As far as I’m concerned, this gravy train – this gravy train with biscuit wheels called the Corporation for Public Broadcasting – is the perfect example of a project the American people no longer need and should not fund.”

After providing examples of blatantly biased headlines and slanted content published by National Public Radio, Sen. Kennedy said he wasn’t trying to censor the news outlets, but it’s “immoral” to force taxpayers to fund them:

“I’m all for this, if that’s what these outlets want to do. But, I’m not for taking $500 million every single year and giving it to these stations (CPB) to the exclusion of everybody else. That’s immoral.”

….

“We are running $36 trillion in debt. This is disgraceful in 2025. It is disgraceful whether it is left-of-center opinion journalism or right-of-center opinion journalism. It is disgraceful to the American people to have to fund this rot. It doesn’t mean the rot doesn’t have a right to exist, but they don’t have a right to taxpayer money.”

Kennedy went on to highlight some of the ways NPR has spent the billions of dollars taxpayers have been forced to give it:

“Since 1970, the United States Congress has given NPR more than $14.5 billion. With all those taxpayer dollars, NPR bought a $201 million office space just up the road from the Capitol. It’s swell office space, two hundred million bucks’ worth…

“NPR pays its hosts as much as $532,000 a year. It pays its Chief Diversity Officer $320,000 a year. It’s pretty good work, if you can get it.”

During Donald Trump’s first term, CNN made a big deal about how an apple is an apple, and even if you call it a banana, it is still an apple. However, on Thursday, the cast of CNN News Central echoed the Washington Post and claimed there are more than two sexes, with health reporter Jacqueline Howard going so far as to say an HHS order affirming the sexual binary could lead to “discrimination.”

Co-host Brianna Keilar came out of a commercial warning, “In one of Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s first moves as Secretary of Health and Human Services, the agency has released new guidance that gives a narrower definition of sex than the ones used by most scientists.”

 

 

If you want people to believe that RFK Jr. is a threat to Americans’ health, playing with the definition of sex is the worst way to go about that. Nevertheless, fellow co-host Boris Sanchez then introduced Howard, “And this language aligns with an executive order that President Trump signed last month and includes new definitions for words like sex, female, woman, male, man, and more. CNN’s Jacqueline Howard joins us now. Jacqueline, walk us through this new guidance.”

Howard began by recapping, “Yeah. What I can tell you, this new guidance defines sex as, quote, ‘a person’s immutable biological classification as either male or female.’ So, this means this definition cannot change, and a woman is defined as an adult human female and a man as an adult human male. So, that’s what the guidance states. That was just recently released.”

Rather than being “facts first,” Howard then moved onto the “critics say” genre of journalism, “Now in response, Boris and Brianna, we are hearing from some critics who say the new definitions fail to account for people like those who are intersex. Up to two percent of the U.S. population is born intersex, meaning that their reproductive anatomy does not really fit the male-female binary, and then there’s other criticism saying that this perpetuates discrimination against the trans community, and this could lead to discriminatory policies and practices. So we are seeing these responses in the wake of this new guidance being issued.”

The first part about intersex people and reproductive anatomy is not quite accurate. Intersex people do not have a third kind of sex organ that violates the male-female dichotomy; rather, their genitals would not match their chromosomes.

As Howard was lamenting the supposed effects “against the trans community,” CNN’s chyron put up the banana, “Furthers White House efforts to deny existence of transgender people,” but what do transgender people have to do with anything? Advocates are constantly telling us sex and gender are different things, so if that is true, what is the problem with defining sex as HHS does?

Here is a transcript for the February 20 show:

CNN News Central

2/20/2025

2:53 PM ET

BRIANNA KEILAR: In one of Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s first moves as Secretary of Health and Human Services, the agency has released new guidance that gives a narrower definition of sex than the ones used by most scientists.

BORIS SANCHEZ: And this language aligns with an executive order that President Trump signed last month and includes new definitions for words like sex, female, woman, male, man, and more. CNN’s Jacqueline Howard joins us now. Jacqueline, walk us through this new guidance.

JACQUELINE HOWARD: Yeah. What I can tell you, this new guidance defines sex as, quote, “a person’s immutable biological classification as either male or female.”

So, this means this definition cannot change and a woman is defined as an adult human female and a man as an adult human male. So, that’s what the guidance states. That was just recently released.

Now in response, Boris and Brianna, we are hearing from some critics who say the new definitions fail to account for people like those who are intersex. Up to two percent of the U.S. population is born intersex, meaning that their reproductive anatomy does not really fit the male-female binary and then there’s other criticism saying that this perpetuates discrimination against the trans community, and this could lead to discriminatory policies and practices. So we are seeing these responses in the wake of this new guidance being issued.

As of the Thursday edition of ABC’s The View, purported “comedian” Joy Behar was still having issues coming to terms with the result of the 2024 presidential election. So much so, that she resorted to retreating to their happy place: imaging President Trump in prison. And the fact that he wasn’t resulted in Behar suggesting it was “unfair” and un-American.

Meanwhile, fake Republican Ana Navarro was blaming Trump for an 11-year-old girl in Taxes committing suicide.

“I ask you, Sunny, did winning the election save him from going to prison?” Behar asked co-host Sunny Hostin, a former federal prosecutor. “Oh yes, absolutely,” she proclaimed despite the fact that other experts were predicting that he would be either be under house arrest or wouldn’t serve time at all.

Behar began to suggest Trump would have just pardoned himself from the New York convictions, but Hostin reassured her he couldn’t pardon himself from state crimes. Hostin then proceeded to lament Special Counsel Jack Smith dropping his cases:

BEHAR: Well, he could have pardoned himself.

HOSTIN: He could have tried to pardon – not for state. Not for state. Even the president can’t do that. But I will say, I mean, his sentencing was coming up and then he won and it all went away and he had three other cases that were pending. Jack Smith had to drop them because he was going to fire jack Smith anyway. So, jack Smith dropped them, who was the federal prosecutor responsible for really the election interference case on January 6th. Those were, I thought, very meaty and robust cases and he avoided it all.

 

 

“But that doesn’t sound fair to me,” Behar whined as she turned to faux conservative Alyssa Farah Griffin. “That doesn’t sound American to me, Alyssa. If the person gets all the charges dropped just because he win election, is that American?”

Farah Griffin noted that he likely wouldn’t have gone to prison because of all the logistical problems of having Secret Service protection. “I could argue that the precedent of imprisoning a president of the United States and sentencing them when they’re a sitting president would be dangerous and complicated to do or even have Secret Service with him in jail,” she explained.

Behar also seemed to suggest that Trump being a Republican had something to do with him not being in prison, despite the Biden administration’s best attempts:

HOSTIN: It’s DOJ policy not to indict or imprison a sitting president.

BEHAR: What if it was a Democrat?

FARAH GRIFFIN: I would feel the same way.

HOSTIN: It’s still DOJ policy. It is still DOJ policy.

Later in the segment, Navarro blamed Trump for the suicide death of a little girl and suggested – without evidence – that he was trying to distract America from it.

“So that we don’t talk about Jocelyn Carranza, the 11-year-old girl in Texas who died by suicide because she was being bullied at her school, 11 years old,” she shouted. “She was being bullied by being told that her parents were going to be taken away by ICE. She was being terrorized by others. We need to create safe spaces for the children of immigrants, for the immigrant children so that they can go to school without being the victims of this kind of terror.”

The transcript is below. Click “expand” to read:

ABC’s The View
February 20, 2025
11:03:35 a.m. Eastern

(…)

JOY BEHAR: I ask you, Sunny, did winning the election save him from going to prison?

SUNNY HOSTIN: Oh yes, absolutely.

BEHAR: Oh, yeah?

HOSTIN: He was convicted of 34 counts here in New York. There is no power – a pardon power for a state conviction, and there is for a federal conviction.

BEHAR: Well, he could have pardoned himself.

HOSTIN: He could have tried to pardon – not for state. Not for state. Even the president can’t do that.

But I will say, I mean, his sentencing was coming up and then he won and it all went away and he had three other cases that were pending. Jack Smith had to drop them because he was going to fire jack Smith anyway. So, jack Smith dropped them, who was the federal prosecutor responsible for really the election interference case on January 6th. Those were, I thought, very meaty and robust cases and he avoided it all. And now he is –

BEHAR: But that doesn’t sound fair to me. That doesn’t sound American to me, Alyssa. If the person gets all the charges dropped just because he win election, is that American?

ALYSSA FARAH GRIFFIN: I could argue that the precedent of imprisoning a president of the United States and sentencing them when they’re a sitting president would be dangerous and complicated to do or even have Secret Service with him in jail. I mean, there’s a lot of things — it would be completely unprecedented.

HOSTIN: It’s DOJ policy not to indict or imprison a sitting president.

BEHAR: What if it was a Democrat?

FARAH GRIFFIN: I would feel the same way.

HOSTIN: It’s still DOJ policy. It is still DOJ policy.

(…)

11:06:40 a.m. Eastern

ANA NAVARRO: So that we don’t talk about the price of eggs that is through the roof, that he 4 promised to slash on day one! So that we don’t talk about Jocelyn Carranza, the 11-year-old girl in Texas who died by suicide because she was being bullied at her school, 11 years old. She was being bullied by being told that her parents were going to be taken away by ICE. She was being terrorized by others. We need to create safe spaces for the children of immigrants, for the immigrant children so that they can go to school without being the victims of this kind of terror. And I am going to continue talking about Jocelyn. That’s what this is about Jocelyn Carranza. That’s what this is about.

(…)

CBS News must have decided they haven’t suffered enough self-inflicted wounds of partisan quackery as Thursday’s CBS Mornings Plus defended diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) as not only necessary, but widely popular and doesn’t at all conflict with concerns about “merit,” and actually exists to benefit white women and military veterans.

Most egregiously, they made their case with a softball interview of National Urban League President Marc Morial, a semi-regular guest on CBS (like here) because his wife is CBS Saturday Morning co-host Michelle Miller. In true liberal media fashion, they showed zero ethics as they never disclosed that major link.

Featured co-host Vladimir Duthiers teased the segment as a discussion about “controversial cuts to DEI programs,” later providing this bonkers lead-in that defended DEI programs and framed it on the basis of far-left groups suing to keep then in place. He even claimed polling has shown Americans love DEI (click “expand”):

 

 

Today, we’re taking a deeper look at diversity, equity and inclusion programs in America. Civil rights organizations are now suing the Trump administration alleging that three executive orders to end DEI programs are unconstitutional. They quote, “falsely assert” the diversity programs are “illegal and inconsistent with merit” and “hard work.” They say this puts them at the “risk of losing federal fund[ing],” which is used to help their communities. By the way, the Trump administration has called DEI programs dangerous, demeaning, immoral. They say they violate civil rights laws. But a survey from 2024 found more than half of people think focusing on DEI in the workplace is a good thing and nearly 60% say it’s somewhat or extremely important to them to work in a place that is diverse. So, what is at stake and, frankly, where do we go from here?

Duthiers and fill-in co-host Jericka Duncan then turned to Morial, inviting him to simply “talk about this decision to file the lawsuit against the Trump administration.” Hard-hitting!

Morial touted his organization’s stated goals before citing the Civil Rights Act of 1964 as “the American magna carta” that’s now at stake with the strong implication that the Trump administration is threatening “meaningful access to the American dream,” a “fundamental American value.”

“What concerns me is the twisting of logic, to suggest initiatives to end discrimination are discriminatory in effect, that’s not only wrong, it is lying. It’s – it’s trying to trick the American people into believing it something that is good and something we need is not good,” he added.

Duncan seemed almost burdened having to give (cartoonish) lip service to the administration (and millions of Americans), asking him to “help people understand how” merit and DEI “can co-exist” when so many want “to go back to…your grades or outcome or your ability to do the job[.]”

 

 

Morial delivered another bonkers reply, starting with the bald-faced lie that “what DE&I does is it gives everybody who has merit a chance” while, whenever someone who disagrees with him uses the word “merit,” it’s “a code word that has been used to support excluding people.”

Try and not to laugh or scream at this take from Morial:

DE&I and merit go together hand-in-hand like a mustard on hotdog, like red beans and rice. The fundamental idea is give everyone with merit a chance. What some of these folks is they don’t want to give everyone a chance. They want an America of the 1950s when most Americans were excluded, the suggestion that only a certain American has merit. So, we’ve got to challenge the logic head-on. We all believe in merit.

It got even zanier with Duthiers and Morial telling viewers that DEI was for more than simply African-Americans, but white women, in-vitro fertilization recipients, “LGBTQ+ people,” and veterans (click “expand”):

 

 

DUTHIERS: Marc, let me ask you. One of the things that gets lost in translation is people associate DEI with black and brown communities without realizing that this also covers disabled people, this covers veterans, this covers white women, LGBTQ+ people, families who need IVF, so the question is what does the United States look like in five or 10 years if the President’s policies and actions are implemented?

MORIAL: I’m so glad you mentioned that, Vlad, because some of the biggest beneficiaries of “equal economic opportunities” and DE&I programs have been white women. More than 30 now CEOs of major corporations. 25 years ago, it was two or three. The disabled community, LGBTQ community. If you talk about all the communities who are “considered” DE&I, that’s a majority of the American people. That is what is so crucial about this. It’s that the loud voices against this are not representing the majority thinking of the American people[.]

Duncan closed things out by lobbing Morial another sympathetic softball about the future of the National Urban League if DEI were to die off.

Of course, Morial argued such stoppages would be “affecting our very mission and essence and I think our right and ability and mission to do our work.”

To see the relevant CBS transcript from February 20, click here.

There are only three things certain in life: death, taxes, and the BBC having to issue a correction after publishing a bit of Hamas propaganda.

The latest example was on Wednesday after it produced a documentary called Gaza: How To Survive a Warzone narrated by 13-year old Abdullah, but keen viewers noticed a problem with Abdullah and sent a letter to the BBC, leading to the following correction:

Since the transmission of our documentary on Gaza, the BBC has become aware of the family connections of the film’s narrator, a child called Abdullah.

We’ve promised our audiences the highest standards of transparency, so it is only right that as a result of this new information, we add some more detail to the film before its retransmission. We apologise for the omission of that detail from the original film. The new text reads:

‘The narrator of this film is 13 year old Abdullah. His father has worked as a deputy agriculture minister for the Hamas-run government in Gaza. The production team had full editorial control of filming with Abdullah.’

We followed all of our usual compliance procedures in the making of this film, but we had not been informed of this information by the independent producers when we complied and then broadcast the finished film.

The film remains a powerful child’s eye view of the devastating consequences of the war in Gaza which we believe is an invaluable testament to their experiences, and we must meet our commitment to transparency.

Yup, the BBC let the son of a literal Hamas minister narrate their film and didn’t bother to do basic journalism about it. It is not the first time the BBC has had issue such a correction since October 7. Back in October 2023, it had to correct reporter Jon Donnison for claiming that a hospital must have logically been hit by an Israeli airstrike, “It’s hard to see what else this could be really, given the size of the explosion, other than an Israeli airstrike or several airstrikes.” In 2012, Donnison claimed a picture of an injured Syrian child was from Gaza.

A month later, BBC anchor Monica Miller had to issue another apology for claiming the IDF was targeting Arabic speakers, including medics, in another hospital. In January 2024, after a BBC radio report, it was forced to admit they did not sufficiently vet a Hamas claim that Israel was summarily executing people in Gaza.

Before October 7, in July 2023, anchor Anjana Gadgil temporarily deleted her Twitter account after asking former Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett why the IDF was “happy to kill children.” The BBC later admitted, “This line of questioning was not phrased well and was inappropriate.”

Concurrently, there has been lots of talk in the U.S. about USAID and what it spends money on. It is one thing for USAID to give money to foreign media outlets that are voices of pro-Americanism in a swampy sea of anti-Americanism. It is quite another when the media outlet in question has a reputation of running interference for Hamas and demonizing Israel, which is what the BBC is, just because it is famous.

Scaremonger much, Jim Sciutto?

On today’s CNN This Morning, subbing for Kasie Hunt, Sciutto suggested that if Americans don’t pay sufficient attention to Trump’s handling of Ukraine, it could lead to another 9/11.

Before making that baleful prophecy, Sciutto began by comparing Trump unfavorably to Neville Chamberlain and his failed attempt to appease Hitler. Sciutto approvingly quoted a post by David Frum noting that at least Chamberlain never parroted Nazi propaganda. Sciutto then observed: “Trump is amplifying the Kremlin propaganda here.”

Sciutto pulled the 9/11 redux alarm in response to a statement by panelist Edward-Isaac Dovere, a CNN reporter, that “foreign policy is not usually the kind of thing that voters, or Americans, pay deep, deep attention to.”

Responded Sciutto:

“Listen: they don’t pay attention until it affects their lives, right? You know, I mean, look at 9/11 as an example, right? We don’t have to worry about what’s happening in that part of the world. Of course, it came to touch, touch Americans’ lives, sadly.”

Ask yourself: What was CNN doing to warn us of 9/11 before it happened? Or the Clinton administration? But by all means, CNN, suggesting your audience are a bunch of rubes. 

Molly Ball of the Wall Street Journal, without necessarily subscribing to the notion, reported that some Republicans have explained Trump’s statements on Russia and Ukraine as a means of demonstrating that he can be an honest broker in the negotiations, thereby making a successful outcome more likely.

Meanwhile, for the second time during his current run as fill-in host on the show, Sciutto had on Joe Walsh as his supposed “Republican” on the panel. Sciutto kicked off the panel’s discussion of Ukraine by asking Walsh what Trump’s comments on Ukraine mean “for your party.”

Walsh is the kind of Republican who attended the 2024 Democrat National Convention as a “Republican for Kamala Harris.” In this interview at the convention, a reporter described Walsh’s political history:

“You went from Tea Party congressman to being a firebrand conservative radio host, not unlike the Sean Hannitys or Tucker Carlsons of the world. What happened when you decided to take a stand against Trump? Because you are about as anti-Trump as any Republican–anybody, Republican or not.”

Responded Walsh: “It’s absolutely crazy. Ten twelve years ago, I’m saying the worst things in the world about Barack Obama. Last night, I’m agreeing with ever single word he said.”

Walsh also portrayed himself to the reporter as a brave, death-defying hero:

“When you are an anti-Trump Republican, you put your life in danger.”

Walsh never served in the military. Even so, perhaps Biden should have awarded him the Medal of Honor.

Walsh is the kind of guy who got thrown out of the Chameleons Club for being too much of a . . . chameleon. For being too much of a disgrace to fellow lizards, the GEICO gecko wouldn’t sell Walsh an insurance policy!

Here’s the transcript.

CNN This Morning
2/20/25
6:04 am ET

JIM SCIUTTO: David Frum tweeted a comment about Neville Chamberlain, of course infamous, right, for attempting to make a deal with Hitler, saying that even: “Neville Chamberlain, to do him justice, never amplified under his own byline Hitler’s propaganda against the Czechs.”

Trump is amplifying the Kremlin propaganda here.

. . . 

EDWARD-ISAAC DOVERE: This is a bigger question about what kind of world we’re going to be coming into, perhaps. And look, there may be withdrawals. Let’s see what it looks like if we do have Donald Trump try to withdraw troops from Europe or change what the situation is with the war in Ukraine. So it may be that logistically, and it may just be people confronting the idea that what does it mean when America doesn’t stand with its allies anymore? What does it mean when America is saying, okay, if a powerful country invades another country, then the other country is the one that needs to give in, and how people process that. 

Foreign policy is not usually the kind of thing that voters, or Americans, pay deep, deep attention to. But these are fundamental questions about what America is.

SCIUTTO: Listen: they don’t pay attention until it affects their lives, right? You know, I mean, look at 9-11 as an example, right? We don’t have to worry about what’s happening in that part of the world. Of course, it came to touch, touch Americans’ lives, sadly. 

In an appearance on Wednesday’s CNN Newsroom and in his so-called “Reliable Sources” Newsletter, liberal media janitor Brian Stelter kvetched about President Trump “embracing the role of word police” for barring the Associated Press from official White House events over their refusal to call it the Gulf of America. Meanwhile, Stelter had backed the Biden administration’s attempt to create a literal word police via the Department Homeland Security and the so-called Disinformation Governance Board.

“In a statement, an AP spokesperson says, quote, ‘This is about the government telling the public and press that what words to use and retaliating if they do not follow government orders,’” host Pamela Brown teed up Stelter.

To which Stelter whined: “Yeah, Trump is embracing the role of word police. You know, he is trying to enforce the idea that the Gulf of America is the only acceptable name.”

Stelter went on to argue that, “The AP has clients and customers around the world, many of whom recognize it as the Gulf of Mexico.” And touted how the AP was “not going to back down here. And as a result, this is a stalemate that’s now going into a second week.”

He went on to bellyache about the lack of overt support the AP was getting from other outlets and shared the AP’s frustration with it:

The AP, I’m told by editors and others, is kind of frustrating, feeling kind of alone on this matter because the Trump administration has targeted the AP and not other news outlets. But there is a behind the scenes effort to try to get the AP off the banned list and back into the Oval Office, back into Air Force One, for example. The White House Correspondents Association has been working behind the scenes, galvanizing support from dozens of other news outlets basically to express a solidarity with the AP, and it’s all happening in secret, behind the scenes. There’s been no public display of that kind of solidarity.

 

 

“There is a big push happening. The White House Correspondents’ Association, which represents the press corps, has been trying to work out a solution…WHCA president Eugene Daniels has privately described it as a very delicate matter – so delicate, in fact, that leaks have been strongly discouraged,” Stelter wrote in his newsletter.

But despite his apparent outrage at Trump acting as the “word police,” Stelter has shown that he supports the idea quite literally. In July of 2022, before his ouster from the network, Stelter lamented the demise of former-President Biden’s attempt at creating word police under the Department of Homeland Security via the Disinformation Governance Board.

In an interview with the would-be board’s lead censor, Nina Jankowicz, the two commiserated and lamented how the public decried the creation of a Ministry of Truth from George Orwell’s 1984:

STELTER: So the sympathetic view, to you, is that the disinformation board was the victim of disinformation. Is that how you feel?

JANKOWICZ: Oh, it absolutely was the victim of disinformation. All of these narratives, that the disinformation governance board was going to be this Orwellian ministry of truth and all of the harassment and disinformation that was directed against me, was based on that falsehood. Based on that falsehood that was knowingly peddled by many people in the conservative media ecosystem and on Capitol Hill.

 

 

The evidence quite obviously points to the fact that Stelter and CNN were for the existence of “word police,” they just wanted to wield the Billy club. They wanted to be the ones to tell you not talk about Hunter Biden’s laptop, President Biden’s failing mental facilities, and not to speak of a weaponized DOJ.

CNN couldn’t be trusted to police words either. As became apparent during their defamation trial, no one at CNN knows the correct definition of “black market” and they don’t have a preferred dictionary.

The transcript is below. Click “expand” to read:

CNN Newsroom
February 19, 2025
10:45:55 a.m. Eastern

(…)

PAMELA BROWN: In a statement, an AP spokesperson says, quote, “This is about the government telling the public and press that what words to use and retaliating if they do not follow government orders.”

So, you have some new reporting, Brian, on how this is resonating.

BRIAN STELTER: Yeah, Trump is embracing the role of word police. You know, he is trying to enforce the idea that the Gulf of America is the only acceptable name. The AP views it differently. The AP has clients and customers around the world, many of whom recognize it as the Gulf of Mexico. So, the AP is not going to back down here. And as a result, this is a stalemate that’s now going into a second week.

The AP, I’m told by editors and others, is kind of frustrating, feeling kind of alone on this matter because the Trump administration has targeted the AP and not other news outlets. But there is a behind the scenes effort to try to get the AP off the banned list and back into the Oval Office, back into Air Force One, for example. The White House Correspondents Association has been working behind the scenes, galvanizing support from dozens of other news outlets basically to express a solidarity with the AP, and it’s all happening in secret, behind the scenes. There’s been no public display of that kind of solidarity.

So, basically the AP is trying to get the Trump White House to come to the table, have some sort of conversation, try to get back, things back to normal. But let’s be clear, right, the Trump White House wants this fight. Trump wants this. You could hear it in his voice yesterday. He is embracing this battle.

And it’s not just going to end with what the name of the Gulf of Mexico is, it’s not going to end at the Gulf. This is a broader battle by Trump to define the terms of the relationship with the press. And I suspect, Pamela, we’re going to be talking about this for some time to come because it’s not going to end with the Gulf of Mexico.

BROWN: No. Well, and his base loves it, right? Brian Stelter, thank you.

If Jeff Bezos really wants to make the Washington Post a non-partisan paper, he still has a lot of work to do because on Wednesday, the Post tried to rebut President Donald Trump and say it is inaccurate to say that there are only two sexes.

Reporters Kelsey Ables and Mark Johnson didn’t just speak for themselves; they tried to roll out some impressive-sounding professors to boost their case. First, “Maurine Neiman, a University of Iowa professor who has studied the biology of reproduction for 25 years, said: ‘While there are some areas of active debate, scientists are in wide agreement that biological sex in humans as well as the rest of life on earth is much more complicated than a simple binary.’”

Then there was “Eve Feinberg, a professor of obstetrics and gynecology at Northwestern University, echoed the sentiment. ‘It’s scientifically incorrect,’ she said of the order. ‘And I think it’s a disservice to people who don’t fall into one of those two sexes.’”

Less scientific was “Michael Ulrich, a professor of health law at Boston University, said Trump’s executive order is in all likelihood targeting transgender people. ‘It’s trying to explain away people,’ he said. ‘They want to try to present it as this extremely simple issue — as if it’s really just one or the other, you’re male or you’re female.’”

If you are not male or female, what are you? Well, “The Gender Equity Unit at Johns Hopkins University defines sex as ‘the biological and physiological reality of being male or female or intersex based on external genitalia, hormones, and chromosomes,’ and gender identity as reflecting ‘one’s innermost concept of self as male, female, a blend of both or neither.’”

Ables and Johnson then returned to Neiman, who is a self-professed DEI adherent, ‘“While these cases are a minority, sex is legitimately difficult to assign for close to 2 percent of the U.S. population,’ she said. ‘We can find real exceptions in real people to whatever rule we might apply to define sex, whether it be sex chromosomes, the size of reproductive cells, hormone levels, internal organs or genitals.’”

There are two major problems with the idea that intersex is a third sex. First, is that, by definition, intersex means “between sexes.” An interstate highway is real, but it is not a 51st state. Second, Leonard Sax wrote back in 2002:

Anne Fausto-Sterling’s suggestion that the prevalence of intersex might be as high as 1.7% has attracted wide attention in both the scholarly press and the popular media. Many reviewers are not aware that this figure includes conditions which most clinicians do not recognize as intersex, such as Klinefelter syndrome, Turner syndrome, and late-onset adrenal hyperplasia. If the term intersex is to retain any meaning, the term should be restricted to those conditions in which chromosomal sex is inconsistent with phenotypic sex, or in which the phenotype is not classifiable as either male or female. Applying this more precise definition, the true prevalence of intersex is seen to be about 0.018%, almost 100 times lower than Fausto-Sterling’s estimate of 1.7%.

In other words, intersex people have female chromosomes but male body parts or vice versa; there is no Z chromosome or third type of sex organ.