Commentary

When baseball and football fans got embarrassed with their underperforming teams, some of them avoided the embarrassment of being seen at the game or on television by wearing paper bags over their heads.

You know that the members of losing teams, like the Detroit Lions and New York Mets, were also embarrassed, but what about those newspaper reporters and columnists and TV anchors who become the news.

When members of the media embarrass themselves with their weak reporting, a few of them may be too ignorant to realize it, while the others simply go back to their computers and search Google for their next column. 

Yes, they have bylines, but unlike the football player, they enjoy the rather anonymous nature of their jobs. Their colleagues in the newsroom won’t rag on them, because they’ve screwed up in the past, or may tomorrow.

But that’s changing, as the media becomes the news. They may get a stinging letter from a reader, or they may be the subject by a media reporter.  Someone like Howard Kurtz, who hosts Media Buzz or media commentator Joe Concha on Fox, who comment on how something was reported.

I chose this topic for commentary because of the recent flurry of media-related stories that made the news.

New York Times’ Pulitzer Prize-winning national security reporter Matthew Rosenburg was caught on tape by Project Veritas, not only contradicting his own reporting, but insulting his colleagues.

He wrote of the January 6 riot at our nation’s Capitol as “a violent interruption on the transition of power in American history,” and pooh poohed the idea that there were FBI informants among the group of protestors, referring to it as “re-imagining January 6,” but play the videotape.

Rosenburg was caught referring to his co-workers in unsavory terms.  Criticizing them for overreacting to the “trauma” of January 6, saying “Oh, my God it was so scary.”

There’s More

The blog, Legal Insurrection, pointed out how the left, including ABC News, got the White House talking points to refer to the high gas prices as “Putin’s Price Hike.”

Fox News Channel’s Peter Doocy took advantage of White House mouthpiece Jen Psaki’s ignorance on the Keystone XL pipeline and her misleading information on drilling permits.

NBC’s Today Show aired a segment on how to save fuel, but when the camera focused on NBC’s Senior Consumer Investigative Correspondent Vicky Nguyen it was obvious that she was sitting in an electric car, a Ford Mustang Mach-E.

“If you’re safely parked somewhere for more than ten seconds,” she suggested, “consider turning your engine off.  She then presses the stop/start button on the Mach-E, which doesn’t have an engine.  “Idling can cost you up to a half gallon of gas per hour,” she cautioned.

It was refreshing to see Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis take on a local TV reporter, Evan Donovan, at a press conference when the reporter referred to the governor’s Parental Rights in Education Bill as the “Don’t Say Gay Bill,”  

DeSantis shot back asking, “Does it say that in the bill?” during a back-and-forth dialogue won by DeSantis, who shot down critics of the bill who are pushing a “false narrative.”

Basically, the bill calls for children to be allowed to have a childhood and for parents to be in charge of their own children’s moral upbringing at very young ages.  It prevents schools from teaching gender bizarreness and exotic sexuality to children in kindergarten through third grade.

Finally, the White House wanted to let you know they were serious about our responses to requests from Ukraine by sending Vice President Harris to Poland, site of an influx of more than a million refugees from Ukraine.

Roger Kimball couldn’t resist, writing in the Spectator, “They have unleashed their ultimate weapon, cackle diplomacy.”

You just knew her joint press conference with Poland’s President Andrzej Duda was going to produce a cringe-worthy moment.  Her statement began with her looking down at her notes while saying, “I am here … standing … here.”

“The moment” came when she was again faced with a question she couldn’t answer, triggering her defensive cackle.  She turned to Duda, who couldn’t help her out.  It wouldn’t have been so bad if it wasn’t about the plight of the refugees.

God help us if something were to happen to Joe.

Now, more than ever … may God continue to bless the United States of America.