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TagDouglas Murray

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press and media camera ,video photographer on duty in public new

Veteran News Hound: Why Not To Trust Mainstream Media Anymore

Matt Taibbi and Douglas Murray’s resounding triumph in the Munk debates sheds light on why mainstream media are dying

On November 30, at the prestigious Munk Debates in Toronto, 20-year news veteran Matt Taibbi and author and columnist Douglas Murray faced off against New Yorker writer Malcolm Gladwell and New York Times columnist Michelle Goldberg on the question: “Be it resolved, don’t trust mainstream media. The outcome was remarkable: As Taibbi tells it: A pre-event vote of attendees and listeners showed 48% support for our “side,” versus 52% for theirs. 82% of thousands of audience members claimed to be willing to change their minds. They were telling the truth, as it turned out. In a bitter slugfest that featured tense confrontations, impassioned oratory (especially from Douglas), and several almost unbelievably petty exchanges, Douglas and I swung the vote 39% Read More ›

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Cancel culture

Fighting Back Against Cancel Culture With Douglas Murray

We may need to start asking ourselves some hard questions

Journalist and author Douglas Murray’s piece is over a year old but it has aged well. He focuses on the silence from the institutions that we might reasonably expect to speak up: All ages have their orthodoxies. And if writers, artists, thinkers and comedians do not occasionally tread on them, then they are not doing their jobs. Meanwhile human nature remains what it is. And just as some children will always pull the wings off flies and fry small ants with their toy magnifying glasses, so a certain number of adult inadequates will find meaning in their lives by sniffing around the seats in the public square until they find an aroma they can claim offends them. Which brings us Read More ›

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Warning, cancel culture spreading fast

Black American Conservatives Lead Fight Against Cancel Culture

They “trigger” bullies when they say what they think needs to be said, not what the Cancel mob insists on hearing

British writer Douglas Murray dissects social media’s Cancel Culture, in a typically unsparing fashion: All ages have their orthodoxies. And if writers, artists, thinkers and comedians do not occasionally tread on them, then they are not doing their jobs. Meanwhile human nature remains what it is. And just as some children will always pull the wings off flies and fry small ants with their toy magnifying glasses, so a certain number of adult inadequates will find meaning in their lives by sniffing around the seats in the public square until they find an aroma they can claim offends them. Douglas Murray, “How to fight back against ‘cancel culture’” at Spectator (January 24, 2020) Black American conservatives “trigger” Cancel Culture when Read More ›

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Like facebook 3d box with white background. 3d rendering

Who’s Afraid of Facebook? Maybe We Should All Be More Wary

A whistleblower showed that rules are enforced very unevenly. Facebook allows extremist language to flourish in some venues and censors mainstream speech in others

Facebook is, according to Fortune Magazine, the “dominant social media app,” with $84.2 billion in revenue in 2019, especially after acquiring Instagram. So dominant that government hearings into questionable activities offer mere slaps on the wrist. There is a reason for that, as we shall soon see. Facebook is, of course, a censor but at best a clumsy one. It removed a page by international disease experts critical of the COVID lockdowns, as if they were mere health cranks. Recently, Facebook announced that it plans to continue to take down posts whose claims its fact checkers “deem false” (February 8, 2021). To get some sense of what that means, Facebook censored an article at UnHerd that was critical of the Read More ›

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Educational kids math toy wooden board stick game counting set in kids math class kindergarten. Math toy kids concept.

Yes, There Really Is a War on Math in Our Schools

Pundits differ as to the causes but here are some facts parents should know

The Oregon Department of Education (ODE) recently encouraged teachers to register for training that encourages “ethnomathematics,” an education trend that argues, “among other things, that White supremacy manifests itself in the focus on finding the right answer”: “The concept of mathematics being purely objective is unequivocally false, and teaching it is even much less so,” the document for the “Equitable Math” toolkit reads. “Upholding the idea that there are always right and wrong answers perpetuate objectivity as well as fear of open conflict.” … An associated “Dismantling Racism” workbook, linked within the toolkit, similarly identifies “objectivity” — described as “the belief that there is such a thing as being objective or ‘neutral’” — as a characteristic of White supremacy. Instead Read More ›

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Female reporter or TV journalist at press event. Journalism concept.

In Big Tech world: The Journalist as Censor, Hit Man, and Snitch

Glenn Greenwald looks at a disturbing trend in media toward misrepresentation as well as censorship

At Substack, one of an increasing number of independent news and opinion sites, lawyer and civil rights activist Glenn Greenwald looks at a disturbing trend in journalism today. The rise of the journalist as tattletale and censor, rather than investigative reporter: A new and rapidly growing journalistic “beat” has arisen over the last several years that can best be described as an unholy mix of junior high hall-monitor tattling and Stasi-like citizen surveillance. It is half adolescent and half malevolent. Its primary objectives are control, censorship, and the destruction of reputations for fun and power. Though its epicenter is the largest corporate media outlets, it is the very antithesis of journalism. Glenn Greenwald, “The Journalistic Tattletale and Censorship Industry Suffers Read More ›