Category: Media
-
News or Commentary? You Decide
by James A. Bacon The Washington Post leads its story about Governor Glenn Younkin’s comments on the indictment of former president Donald Trump this way: RICHMOND — Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R) is famous for being just Trumpy enough to woo MAGA Republicans without alienating more moderate voters, but the former president’s indictment this week by a…
-
Move Over Covid: Sharks Are Back
by Kerry Dougherty Great news! Sharks are swarming off the coast of the Outer Banks. Nine great whites so far. One, named Breton, is a 13-foot adult male weighing over 1,400 pounds according to a story in Saturday’s Virginian-Pilot. Why is this good news? Because it’s a sign that Covid is truly over. The general…
-
Virginia is the Future
by Arthur Bloom I want to tell you why I like The 1619 Project. It has nothing to do with the history, all of which is known to any well-educated Virginian. Of course, these things are fundamentally propagandistic exercises, any leftist worth his salt would tell you that too. But it was symbolically very important.…
-
Return to Chickahominy Swamp
by Jon Baliles Peter McElhinney at Style Weekly takes us on a retroactive visit through the Chickahominy Swamp and the voice and mind and sounds of the late Richmond music legend Page Wilson. The new online radio station, The Breeze, has begun airing old episodes of Wilson’s weekly visit to his porch in the swamp…
-
Virginia Emergency Management During COVID – A Well-Documented Scandal
By James C. Sherlock We could see it wasn’t right as it unfolded. Virginia’s flawed response to COVID was slow for all Virginians. Fatal for some. But the public just saw the broad stroke external effects. We saw executive orders that seemed sudden, sweeping, and disconnected from the information we had. It turns out that…
-
Virginia Law Enables School Violence – School Board Policies Can Correct It
by James C. Sherlock In 2019, the National Education Association (NEA) published Threatened and Attacked By Students: When Work Hurts, urging lawmakers to address the crisis of unsafe behaviors in schools. Read about Chesterfield schools in that article. Unfazed, progressives in 2020 in full control of the General Assembly, led by now-Congresswoman-elect Jennifer McClellan, looked…
-
The Washington Post Reviews Progressive In-Fighting at the New York Times – A Cultural Cliff?
by James C. Sherlock Eric Wemple, the media critic of Northern Virginia’s morning newspaper, The Washington Post, has just published an article “The New York Times newsroom is splintering over a trans coverage debate.” I subscribe to both papers. The review is unintentionally hilarious. The comments more so. It provides context from the left for…
-
The Bert Ellis Feeding Frenzy
by James A. Bacon Virginia has now entered the feeding frenzy stage of the assault on Bert Ellis’ character. Abandoning all journalistic standards of impartiality and fair play, mainstream media outlets compete with one another to publish anything they can find to compromise Ellis, a member of the University of Virginia Board of Visitors appointed…
-
Break out the Smelling Salts. Bert Ellis Called Someone a “Numnut”
by James A. Bacon And the hit jobs just keep on coming! After maligning Virginia Military Institute alumni dissident Matt Daniel two days ago, The Washington Post aims its guns today on Bert Ellis, a conservative alumnus and member of the University of Virginia Board of Visitors, with the publication of text messages obtained through…
-
Aside from Insinuating Matt Daniel is Anti-Semitic, Shapira’s Latest Piece Wasn’t So Bad
by James A. Bacon The Washington Post’s Ian Shapira has finally published his piece about Matt Daniel, head of the Spirit of VMI PAC and one of the more vocal critics of the current VMI leadership. It may be the most balanced piece Shapira has ever written in his coverage of VMI — admittedly, an…
-
The Amazing Shrinking Times-Dispatch
by Jon Baliles You might recall a story from last summer in Style Weekly entitled The Incredibly Shrinking Times-Dispatch about the decline of our local newspaper and the print news business in general. It has been a precipitous and rapid descent. Now, according to Axios, it seems that shrinking is not only ongoing but might…
-
Times-Dispatch Omits Facts Instead of Including Them
by Jon Baliles Public safety is one of every locality’s largest and most important responsibilities. If the sidewalks, streets, and neighborhoods are not safe, people go to places where they are. Walkers, joggers, businesses, customers, and everyone else won’t go to places where they feel their safety in in jeopardy. At the same time, that…
-
Spirit of VMI Preempts WaPo Hit Job
by James A. Bacon Looks like Washington Post reporter Ian Shapira is loading up the big guns to fire another salvo in his unrelenting war on Virginia Military Institute alumni who are critical of the new leadership’s Diversity, Equity & Inclusion policies. This time, instead of attacking traditionalist alumni as a group, he appears to…
-
Is There Something about Restrictive Speech Environments that Attracts Journalism Majors?
by James C. Sherlock Most of the best journalists in American history had only a high school diploma. Charles Dickens, a voracious reader with a very limited and interrupted formal education, was a journalist and one of the most honored writers ever. The Columbia School of Journalism offers, if that is the right word, a…
-
A Primatologist at The Washington Post
by James C. Sherlock And they wonder why they are hated by people outside the bubble. A story by Stephanie McCrummen in The Washington Post, “In rural Georgia, an unlikely rebel against Trumpism,” comes across as an attempt at Hillbilly Elegy as written by a primatologist. Primatologists study primates in order to understand their evolution…