Category: Media
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Why Are Nursing Home Workers Refusing to Get Vaccinated?
by James A. Bacon A large percentage of nursing home workers in Northern Virginia and the Washington metropolitan area have declined to take the COVID-19 vaccine. Their wariness, reports The Washington Post, arises from “online misinformation about the vaccine” and “historical mistrust of the medical system of which they are a part.” Forty-eight percent of…
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The Washington Post’s Latest Hit Job on VMI
by James A. Bacon I don’t know what the Virginia Military Institute racism investigation ordered by Governor Ralph Northam will reveal. Perhaps it will turn up evidence that racism is as “relentless” as The Washington Post says it is. In the meantime, though, I can’t quite decide if it is hilarious or vomit-inducing to watch…
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Facebook, MailChimp Suspend Virginia Gun Rights Group’s Access
by James A. Bacon Are the social media giants moving beyond de-platforming groups and individuals who participated in the mob assault on the U.S. Capitol building to de-platforming conservative groups indiscriminately? Philip Van Cleave, president of the Virginia Citizens Defense League (VCDL), says his personal Facebook account was suspended last week. That action followed Mailchimp’s…
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Hark! A COVID Miracle!
by Kerry Dougherty I tend to be cynical, but still I dismissed the folks who predicted that once Joe Biden was elected, the lockdowns and shutdowns that had crushed the American economy would start to fall away. “Just wait till after the election,” they warned. You’re insane, I thought. I believed — still do —…
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More Loss of Press Coverage
by Dick Hall-Sizemore In the past two years that I have been posting on BR, I have relied heavily on the coverage of the General Assembly by the Daily Press of Newport News, particularly the reporting by David Ress. It seems that he is now off the Virginia state government beat and now mostly covers…
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Can “Medium” Save Local Journalism?
By DJ Rippert The medium is the message. Medium is an online publishing website founded by Evan Williams — who also co-founded Blogger and Twitter. The genre of Medium is sometimes called social journalism. As described in Wikipedia, social journalism “relies on community involvement, audience engagement, social newsgathering and verification, data and analytics, and relationship-building.”…
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Mark Zuckerberg, Call Your Lawyer
by James C. Sherlock “You don’t need a Weatherman To know which way the wind blows.” — Bob Dylan, Subterranean Homesick Blues. Consider this: “Facebook was hit with twin lawsuits by the Federal Trade Commission and attorneys general from dozens of states on Wednesday, in one of the most serious challenges ever to the Silicon Valley…
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Hedge Fund Moves on Virginian-Pilot Parent Company
by Kerry Dougherty If you think The Virginian-Pilot is just a shadow of what it once was, just wait. It may get worse. A lot worse. Perhaps you heard, Alden Global Capital – a hedge fund that Vanity Fair once described as “the grim reaper of American newspapers” – is poised to buy The Tribune…
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Media Bashing at Bacon’s Rebellion
by Peter Galuszka Two recent blog posts critical of The Washington Post and The New York Times are way out of line. They assume that two leading newspapers have a definite agenda on race. Jim Bacon goes after the Post for reporting about the bad experiences a Black student, Rafael Jenkins, endured during ‘”Rat Week”…
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Mitigating COVID-Related Learning Losses – Conflicted Advice Gets an Airing in the Richmond Times-Dispatch
by James C. Sherlock Any attention given to learning losses is welcome, but some are more welcome than others. Data published in an op-ed by Kristen Amundson in the Richmond Times-Dispatch give preliminary evidence of the destruction of K-12 learning that has been going on since last March. “A new poll from Christopher Newport University found…
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When I Was “Canceled” at UVa
by Matthew Cameron Cancel culture has been a hot topic in 2020. Most recently, it’s become a discussion point among those concerned about the state of academic freedom and intellectual diversity at my own alma mater, the University of Virginia. The strongest critique of cancel culture at UVA emerged in October when alumnus Joel Gardner…
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Richmond’s Infamous Icon
By Peter Galuszka Since 1890, the Robert E. Lee Monument has dominated Richmond’s grand Monument Avenue and has stood as a striking protector of the state’s long history of systemic racism. True, other Confederate heroes such as Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson and J.E.B. Stuart also found a memorial spot on the Avenue but Lee has always…
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Bacon Bits: A Shout Out to Virginia’s Indy News Outlets
Here is a shout-out to three small publications that are covering important Virginia news stories while the commercial media continues to shrink into impotence, irrelevance, or in the case of the Washington Post, malevolence. — JAB Give credit where credit is due. The Virginia Mercury is a left-of-center publication, but it is hammering the Northam…
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VMI Wins with Wins as Interim Superintendent
by James A. Bacon The Virginia Military Institute has appointed retired Army Maj. Gen. Cedric T. Wins, an African-American, as interim superintendent. He will serve while the Board of Visitors searches for a permanent replacement for retired Gen. J.H. Binford Peay III, who resigned after Governor Ralph Northam announced an investigation into charges of “relentless…
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WaPo’s Journalistic Jihad Against VMI Continues…
by James A. Bacon President-elect Biden may be calling for national unity after a contentious presidential election, but the Washington Post hasn’t gotten the message. Post reporter Ian Shapira continues his campaign against the Virginia Military Institute, which he has charged is guilty of “relentless racism,” by slanting coverage of the pending state investigation of…