ALLIGATOR TEARS: France24 reviews French attitudes on free speech three years after the Islamic terror attack on Charlie Hebdo’s journalists in which 12 people — including a policewoman — were murdered. One resident parrots the new liberal fascism, anti-free speech line that turns the very concept of free expression on its head:

“I’m not fond of Charlie Hebdo, neither its form nor its function (…) They are targeting the Muslims and, if we talk about freedom, I feel they are criticizing the Muslims’ freedom to believe,” Brunacci told FRANCE 24.

This logic is so very strange. How does mocking or challenging something reduce another’s ability to “believe” something, let alone raise their own voice? What’s even stranger yet is that French President Emmanuel Macron, a strong proponent of censorship, (See, liberal fascism, supra) is planning to attend a ceremony honoring the fallen. This is either cluelessness, hypocrisy, or a bizarre display of a lack of self-consciousness. Perhaps it’s that “intersectionalism” I keep hearing about, where core human rights principles are subjugated by political correctness. In either case, he’ll be weeping alligator’s tears.

STEPHEN COLBERT TAKES OUT A ‘FOR YOUR CONSIDERATION’ AD FOR TRUMP’S FAKE NEWS AWARDS: On a billboard in Times Square, no less. Mind you, any free market person would say, “hey, it’s his money to do with as he pleases” but you have to wonder if the caring, humanistic, more-virtuous-than-you crowd who make up his demographic have asked how many children that money would feed, or how many homeless could have been fed hot meals in a city where the wind chill is currently 14 below zero.

The intertubes says that an ad like that costs about $250,000 a month. A lot of money to just scream “ME! ME! ME!”

THANK GOD ERDOGAN DIDN’T TWEET ABOUT THEM! THAT WOULD BE CRUEL AND INHUMAN! “On Christmas Day, 17 journalists and executives from Turkey’s oldest newspaper, Cumhuriyet, went on trial, accused of supporting terrorist organizations.”

Note Newsweek’s um, interesting, photo selection. Nothing proves Trump Derangement Syndrome like adding his picture to a story in which his name is never mentioned once.

“GOT STUDENT DEBT? You’re not alone, but maybe it means you really didn’t graduate from college.” Harvard’s Kennedy School is telling a graduate (and the world) that he really isn’t a graduate until he pays off his tuition. Appealing to “fundamental principles of equity” (a legal phrase even more vague than Due Process) the graduate in question, entertainment industry veteran Stephen Powell, alleges in a defamation claim that:

“Harvard conferred an MPA degree on him in 1994, and is now suing Harvard seeking an order that Harvard be stopped from denying that he is a graduate of the Kennedy School,” states a December 22 court filing by Harvard. “However, Powell never paid Harvard for any of the costs of obtaining an MPA degree, and indeed deliberately avoided paying Harvard for the costs of that degree. Fundamental principles of equity dictate that Powell cannot claim entitlement to a degree without paying for it.”

This just doesn’t sound right, unless Harvard is admitting that they do not provide, you know, an education, but merely a piece of paper.

THANK YOU: I wanted to abuse a little privilege of indulgence and publicly thank Glenn Reynolds and the Instateam for letting me contribute to the dialogue here from time to time. I’d also like to thank all the people commenting on my posts, which I submit to spur intelligent discussion on media and free speech issues, and the occasional chuckle. Some of you have me down as the reincarnation of Leon Trotsky while others place me somewhere to the right of Genghis Khan…so I figure I’m doing it correctly. So please, hit the tip jar at right so Instapundit can prosper. Happy New Year, all!

ISN’T THIS KIND OF “MEDDLING IN AN ELECTION?” Both the New York Times and IBT report that a  long-time friend and financial supporter of Hillary Clinton is reported to have paid $500,000 in an effort to assist the women who were ready to come forward with their allegations of sexual misconduct against President Donald Trump before the 2016 presidential election:

According to a report by the New York Times, Susie Tompkins Buell, founder of the clothing brand Esprit, handed over the money to celebrity lawyer Lisa Bloom, who was handling the cases of women accusing Trump of sexual harassment.

Tounge-in-cheek “meddling” question aside, it’s interesting to compare the reaction (or lack thereof) with Peter Thiel’s funding Hulk Hogan’s privacy suit against Gawker. Wags insisted that Thiel was engaging in champerty or maintenance, but there was never an allegation that Thiel directly paid a litigant, and smarter people explained what Thiel did was perfectly legal:

Funding someone else’s lawsuit for ideological reasons, long perceived as a dangerous stirring up of social conflict that might otherwise have remained at rest, is now applauded as a means of holding powerful institutions accountable, ensuring wronged parties their day in court, and so forth.

After all, few could complain that the sponsorship of the litigation in Brown v. Board of Education was unethical. It would just be nice to see an even-handed approach.

IT”S TRUE: You always hurt the one you love. There’s also one of those insane Taiwanese video animations, if you are so inclined, but definitely NSFW.

“Polls show Americans distrust the media. But talk to them, and it’s a very different story”: Former New York Times public editor and WaPo columnist Margaret Sullivan goes to the trouble of actually doing the legwork that so many pundits promised but failed to do post-election. The takeaway is crisply honest, and isn’t going to make many friends in newsrooms still in denial:

“We need to heed complaints about the blending of news and opinion, and to make it clear which is which. We need to focus more intently — and more engagingly — on subjects that matter most to ordinary people’s lives, and to calm down about White House intrigue and Trump’s every tweet. And we need to stamp out the snarky attitude that seems to brag, “I’m smarter than my audience.” Perhaps most important, we need to be much more transparent — willing to explain our work, and own up to our inevitable mistakes.”

Fortunately, Sullivan is an old school journalist who doesn’t put popularity ahead of honest analysis.

WTF IS A “LIFESTYLE DIRECTOR” ANYWAY? When I saw that Gallup issued a poll showing Mrs. Clinton’s lowest-ever favorability ratings, I thought to myself “who cares, she’s not really going to run for anything.”

But when I heard this editor (oh, excuse me, “Lifestyle Director”) from Time Magazine dismiss the poll by telling Tucker Carlson that Clinton is not a public figure, I actually burst out laughing.

There must be some DSM vernacular for people who are so desperate that they invert reality, no?

Behind the Political Curtain at Facebook: Bloomberg’s Vernon Silver and Ben Elgin take readers on a tour of the mess that is Facebook, who tries to have it both ways.  On the one hand, FB has tried to portray itself as a unknowing victim of any alleged Russian election-meddling (“hey, we only cashed the checks”) but Silver exposes Facebook’s coziness with various governments:

“In some of the world’s biggest democracies—from India and Brazil to Germany and the U.K.—the [Facebook] unit’s employees have become de facto campaign workers. And once a candidate is elected, the company in some instances goes on to train government employees or provide technical assistance for live streams at official state events.”

And some of those governments have a bad record of using social media to less than enlightening ends. Facebook’s relationship with India is a good example. As Indian Prime Minister Modi’s social media reach grew, his followers increasingly turned to Facebook and WhatsApp to target harassment campaigns against his political rivals. India has become a hotbed for fake news, with one hoax story this year that circulated on WhatsApp leading to two separate mob beatings resulting in seven deaths. The nation has also become an increasingly dangerous place for opposition parties and reporters. In the past year, several journalists critical of the ruling party have been killed. Hindu extremists who back Modi’s party have used social media to issue death threats against Muslims or critics of the government.

Silver and Elgin have a terrific track record of exposing the use by Arab regimes of telecom apps to suppress — and even make disappear — political dissents, and broke the story on FinFisher, a malware used  to hunt down political opponents.

CRIME AND PUNISHMENT: Showing an advance copy of your story to a subject for approval is a cardinal sin of journalism. But it paid off handsomely for Glenn Thrush, who used his obsequious charms on the Clinton Machine to land himself a plum gig as a White House reporter for The New York Times. But the rules of journalism pale in comparison to exposing your employer to a potential sexual harassment lawsuit: “New York Times reporter Glenn Thrush to be dismissed from White House beat after suspension” reports Business Insider.

“The sexual misconduct allegations against Thrush come amid a wave of similar reports from women spanning a multitude of industries in recent months, many of which included bombshell original reporting from The Times’ own staff.”

An abuse victims’ lawyer could really go to town on the company in a civil suit if it could be shown they knew about it and ignored complaints. Editor Dean Baquet said in a statement that “While we believe that Glenn has acted offensively, we have decided that he does not deserve to be fired […] Each case has to be evaluated based on individual circumstances. We believe this is an appropriate response to Glenn’s situation.”

To my mind, that’s laudable, because the instantaneous reaction to such allegations seems to have veered off the Due Process rails, and people are being fired without so much as an opportunity to address the allegations.

The Heritage Foundation has found a new President: Kay Coles James. She served in a wide range of public service capacities under Presidents Reagan and Bush, including stints as associate director of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy and as assistant secretary for public affairs at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

The best part is that the Heritage Foundation’s press release does not lead with or exaggerate the fact that she is an African-American woman and lets her accomplishments speak for themselves. Meritocracies thrive. Here’s wishing her the best of luck.
*Disclosure: I represent and advise The Daily Signal, Heritage’s independent news organization on media law and intellectual property matters.

“Which office do I go to to get my reputation back?” Tavis Smiley refuses to go quietly into that good night after being sacked by PBS, reports ABC:

“If having a consensual relationship with a colleague years ago is the stuff that leads to this kind of public humiliation and personal destruction, heaven help us,” he said. “This has gone too far. And I, for one, intend to fight back.”

Smiley claims that PBS wouldn’t allow him to present any evidence or challenge the allegations. I’m not an employment law specialist, and there are quite possibly contract law issues in play here. To be sure, without facts it’s hard to make up one’s mind about PBS’ treatment of Smiley.

Nonetheless, it raises two important questions: First, has the combination of assumed guilt and trial-by-media in harassment allegations indeed gone “too far?” And second, even if PBS did not make a “statement” defaming Smiley, can an action (like publicly suspending or firing someone) be interpreted as a defamatory statement?
*Classical reference in headline.

“FBI appears to have investigated – and considered prosecuting – FOIA requesters“: Investigative reporting blog and FOIA tool provider Muckrock shows that as far back as 2016, the FBI refused to produce documents that had the names of deceased FBI staff (nullifying any privacy concerns), but consistently failed to redact personal information about the requesters — a clear violation of privacy:

“Despite redacting the names and email addresses of the public servants handling the case, the FBI released not only the author’s name and address in the file (technically improper since there was no waiver, albeit understandable) but the name, email address and home address of another requester who also used the script to file requests. Their name along with their email and physical addresses were left unredacted not once, not twice, not thrice – but seven times, not including the email headers, several of which also showed their name and email address.”

Other emails show that the FBI’s Obama-era FOIA office consulted a number of people from the Criminal Justice Information Services division for the purpose of singling out “suspicious” FOIA requests for possible prosecution targeting.

I’d love to know what they considered a “suspicious” FOIA request.

WELL THIS IS THE 21ST CENTURY, YOU KNOW (Part Deux): Voice of America reports that “Virtual Reality Allows Patients to Preview Their Own Surgery.”

The night before Luna’s surgery, Collins gives her a headset to wear and lets her travel through her own brain. Luna admits being “a nervous wreck” before seeing the path Steinberg would take to locate the aneurysm. She sees where he will clip off its growth so the clot can be resorbed, eliminating her pain. “Now I understand exactly what’s going to happen,” Luna says. Her husband also took a turn at the virtual reality flight. “This makes me understand it 100 percent,” Rene Luna says. “That extra understanding gives me a lot more confidence.”

Good pilots file a flight plan, so why not brain surgeons? Also sounds like a good way to ward off frivolous malpractice suits by developing a record before surgery.

MSNBC ANALYST: “It’s ‘Unfortunate’ Voters Shape Public Policy.” I think what MSNBC’s Elise Jordan *really* means is that it’s unfortunate that those knuckle-dragging, gun-and-bible-clinging, fly-over proles who work with their hands have a vote at all:

“I think it’s unfortunate that we are designing — that we are designing public policy in a way that, you know, comes down to how you voted in an election.”

FLASHBACK: Elections have consequences.

Understatement of the Year: “It’s probably long overdue.” — Peter Baker, chief White House correspondent for The New York Times.

“State Drops Case Against Lucian Wintrich, White House Correspondent For Gateway Pundit, In UConn Tussle“: A moment of clarity in Connecticut, where reporter and public speaker Lucian Wintrich was attacked by Catherine Gregory, a local community college employee who stole his speaking material. Incredibly, when Wintrich tried to take his notes back, UConn police charged *him* with disorderly conduct. Says Wintrich’s lawyer:

“Free speech matters, it’s OK to be white, black, brown or anything in between,” he said. “My client came to Connecticut and was treated like a criminal for no reason. He sought to obtain his notes back when they were stolen by reasonable means, the prosecution saw that.”

Several days later, police contacted Wintrich and asked him to press larceny charges against her, and he did. Good for him. Punch back twice as hard.

**DISCLOSURE** I have represented Gateway Pundit in unrelated media law matters.

QUIS CUSTODIET IPSOS CUSTODES: Granted, Fox is the pot calling the kettle black, but I’ve been harping on the failure of news organizations to conduct and publish serious and genuinely independent autopsies for quite a while. And I must be right, because Prof. Jacobson and I are in are agreement:

Cornell University law professor and Legal Insurrection founder William Jacobson said [NBC President] Lack had no business overseeing the investigation. “It’s hard to see how an internal investigation that reports to senior executives would be viewed as complete and transparent when the conduct or lack of conduct of senior executives, such as Andrew Lack, necessarily should an issue,” Jacobson told Fox News.

Jacobson continues:

“Anything other than an independent outside investigation that reports to the NBC Universal Board of Directors would raise questions as to whether responsibility is being pushed down to lower corporate levels.”

And going a step further, not only is a secret investigation in-house insufficient, it seems to me that media organizations — who live and die on readership trust — should not allow their usual outside law firms to do this, because they have a vested interest in client relations.

FLASHBACK: “Ted Kennedy Made Secret Overtures to Russia to Prevent Ronald Reagan’s Re-Election.” From The Daily Signal in 2016:

Kennedy then offered up the possibility of having top media personalities such as Walter Cronkite, Barbara Walters, and Elton Raul, president of the board of the ABC television network, travel to Moscow to do television interviews with Andropov.

Everything old is new again. Except it’s a pretty safe bet that Trump does not have the social currency with today’s media elites to arrange favorable coverage of anything, with the possible exception of Fox News.

VARIETY: Harvey Weinstein vs Michael Moore: Who do you cheer for? It’s really tough to pick a side here.

BuzzFeed missed its earnings by 20% and YOU WON’T BELIEVE WHAT HAPPENED NEXT!

PRESIDENT TWEETS, ROME BURNS: While The President’s gratuitous snark about Elizabeth Warren dominates the news cycle, major media seems to be missing the real news that will seriously affect them as journalists and the public at large. Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) is a provision of law that allows the government to conduct mass surveillance of innocent people, including Americans. The Hill reminds readers that Congress is poised to jam through reauthorization of this mass surveillance:

The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence has marked up the FISA Amendments Reauthorization Act, S. 2010. The bill, sponsored by Chairman Richard Burr (R-N.C.) is actually worse than existing law. It explicitly allows the attorney general to use [electronic communications] information collected under Section 702 for domestic crimes that have nothing to do with national security and forbids judicial review of that decision.

The idea of walling off such action from judicial review ought to put a scare into anyone. Moreover:

The House version of the USA Liberty Act, for instance, has a weak warrant requirement, which would allow the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) to conduct backdoor searches of electronic communications collected by the NSA for domestic, non-terrorism investigations.

The potential for abuse is endless.

THIS IS WHY WE CAN’T HAVE NICE THINGS: It appears the next wave of problems for social media is “comment poisoning.” I can see a group (The Russians!!! The Russians!!!) sabotaging opponents and forcing removal of YouTube channels by simply adding offensive comments. Sez The Wall Street Journal:

“The Times of London reported that YouTube videos featuring young girls—in many cases apparently filming themselves, sometimes in underwear—drew hundreds of pedophiliac comments, including encouragement to do lewd acts and links to child-abuse content. The Times reported that the site displayed recommendations for similar videos, such as a view of naked toddlers taking a bath […] Videos, if posted innocently, might not in and of themselves violate YouTube’s terms of service; however, many comments posted by viewers clearly do.”

This is the same reason that many blogs, like AboveTheLaw have simply dropped their comment sections. The cost of policing trolls, ‘bots and spam is simply not worth the return on investment.

DO YOUR PART AND FRY MORE FOODS: The Telegraph (UK) is good at finding “scientists” who will say anything. Here, finally, they find some scientists who have useful information:

“In large cities like London, cooking fat is known to be responsible for 10 per cent of small particles in the air, so researchers believe frying food could have a noticeable impact on cloud formation and rainy weather. In fact, the effect is so large it could even have a cooling effect on the planet, and potentially slow down global warming.”

I, for one, am waiting for the government to offer tax incentives on deep fryers, because, you know, global warming. I’m willing to make that sacrifice if it helps Mother Gaia.