Tag: Bias

WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)—Reacting to the journalist April Ryan’s call for her to be fired, the White House press secretary, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, said, on Friday, that she has been the victim of the media’s “widespread anti-liar bias.” “From their obsession with fact-checking to their relentless attacks on falsehoods, the media have made no secret of their bias,” Sanders said. “It’s open season on liars in America.” “This is media hypocrisy at its very worst,” she added. “The same journalists who advocate freedom of speech want to take that freedom away from anyone whose speech consists entirely of lies.” “This is nothing more or less than a direct attack on the lying life style,” she said. “You take away my right to lie and you take away my ability to earn a living.” Kellyanne Conway, the White House senior counsellor, spoke out in support of Sanders, telling reporters, “An attack on one liar is an attack on all liars.” “Our country has seen some dark days, from the Bowling Green Massacre to the bugging of the White House microwave,” she said. “But this might be the darkest.”

JEWEL SAMAD/AFP/Getty Images The number of bias incidents reported in New Jersey has been climbing in recent years, and now the state is updating its guidelines for reporting and investigating such crimes. The measures bring the guidelines more in line with state bias laws, which were updated in 2008, the report said. The new guidelines require bias incidents be reported through the State Police’s new Electronic Uniform Crime Reporting system and county prosecutors to notify the attorney general’s office when pursuing bias charges, according to the report. Quote of the Day: “Where are the advocates as members of the riding public? It’s a shame rail advocates aren’t on the list,” — Len Resto, president of the New Jersey Association of Railroad Passengers, on Gov. Phil Murphy’s nominees to the NJ Transit Board of Directors. NJ Towns Are Increasingly Becoming ‘Rich’ or ‘Poor.’ Is the Middle Class Disappearing? A well-functioning economy needs to have a range of workers with different skill levels and different incomes. Asbury Park Press Read more Health Officials Urge More Teens to Have HPV Shots as NJ Lags Behind National Rate More than half of New Jersey’s 13- to 15-year-olds aren’t completing vaccinations for HPV, leaving them vulnerable to the very common sexually transmitted infection (STI) that can cause cancer, according to data from state health officials. NJSpotlight Read more

Republicans have quietly and unceremoniously ended their congressional investigation of whether the FBI and Justice Department were biased in their handling of inquiries into Hillary Clinton’s emails and Donald Trump’s ties to Russia. House judiciary chairman Robert Goodlatte and oversight chairman Trey Gowdy, who are retiring next week, sent a letter rather than a full report to the Justice Department and the Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell. It wraps up an inquiry that was conducted mostly behind closed doors but also in public as Republican lawmakers often criticised interview subjects later and suggested they were conspiring against Trump. Democrats have blasted the GOP-led congressional inquiry, saying it was merely meant as a distraction from special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation. Its termination comes less than a week before Republicans cede the House majority to Democrats. Read more Goodlatte and Gowdy say in their letter that they reviewed thousands of documents and conducted interviews that “revealed troubling facts which exacerbated our initial questions and concerns”. They call on the Justice Department to appoint a special counsel to investigate further. Jerry Nadler, the top Democrat on the judiciary committee, and Elijah Cummings, top Democrat on the oversight panel, are expected to formally end the investigation when they take power in January. California’s Adam Schiff, the top Democrat on the House intelligence committee, said on Friday evening that the Republican investigation was ending “not with a bang, but with a Friday, buried-in-the-holidays whimper, and one foot out the door”. With Associated Press

Embattled Google CEO Sundar Pichai, amid allegations of anti-conservative bias and privacy violations on the platform, plans to tell the House Judiciary Committee on Tuesday that his company is no haven for political bias. The CEO met privately with GOP lawmakers on Capitol Hill in September to discuss the allegations and concerns about the firm’s re-entry into China and privacy issues. In his prepared testimony before the House Judiciary Committee Pichai also noted that Google supports federal privacy legislation. As such, the Google chief's appearance on Capitol Hill will be closely followed. “Of course he’s not going to have a network in Washington,” he added. A number of employees have reportedly resigned over the project, which has also drawn bipartisan howls on Capitol Hill at a sensitive time for America's relationship with China, and Google has reportedly clamped down on internal leaks this year. "It is a coup for the Chinese government and Communist Party to force Google—the biggest search engine in the world—to comply with their onerous censorship requirements, and sets a worrying precedent for other companies seeking to do business in China without compromising their core values," a bipartisan group of senators said in an August letter to Pichai. At the same time, in the wake of Facebook's known security issues like Cambridge Analytica, Google will be questioned about why it took months for the company to publicly disclose the privacy flaw in its Google+ social network. To conservative critics, the video feeds the perception that Google is biased against them. Google has consistently denied any political bias.

Twitter is taking heat for 'shadow banning' conservatives. On 'Fox & Friends,' RNC chairwoman is calling for social media platforms to be transparent. FOX News Channel (FNC) is a 24-hour all-encompassing news service dedicated to delivering breaking news as well…

Peter Strzok, who played a leading role in the FBI investigations into Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server and potential collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia, testified publicly for the first time on Thursday before a joint hearing of the House judiciary and oversight and government reform committees. We’ll stop it.” Strzok said he regretted the text messages – which were exchanged on work phones – and acknowledged they created the perception of bias. Bob Goodlatte, the Republican chairman of the House judiciary committee threatened to hold Strzok in contempt of Congress if he did not answer the question. The exchange concluded with Strzok delivering a forceful defense of himself and the integrity of the FBI. “At every step, at every investigative decision, there were multiple layers of people above me, the assistant director, executive assistant director, deputy director and director of the FBI, and multiple layers of people below me, section chiefs, supervisors, unit chiefs, case agents and analysts, all of whom were involved in all of these decisions,” he said. “They would not tolerate any improper behavior in me any more than I would tolerate it in them. One Democrat said the Republican lawmaker “should take his medication”. When the room calmed down, Strzok replied: ”I have always told the truth.” He added that Gohmert’s question about someone he acknowledges hurting revealed “more about your character and what you stand for”. Democrats have called the hearing a “politically motivated charade” and an attempt by Republicans to undermine Mueller’s Russia investigation. The hearing comes one month after the release of a 500-page inspector general’s report, which concluded the pair’s text messages “cast a cloud” over the investigation into Clinton’s email server.

Washington (CNN)US Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley announced the United States is withdrawing from the UN Human Rights Council Tuesday, accusing the body of bias against US ally Israel and a failure to hold human rights abusers accountable. The move, which the Trump administration has threatened for months, came down one day after the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights slammed the separation of children from their parents at the US-Mexico border as "unconscionable." "Human rights abusers continue to serve on, and be elected to, the council," said Haley, listing US grievances with the body. "The world's most inhumane regimes continue to escape its scrutiny, and the council continues politicizing scapegoating of countries with positive human rights records in an attempt to distract from the abusers in its ranks." Membership on the council gives countries like the United States a voice in important debates over human rights atrocities, but the council's critics, including Haley, say abusers use their membership to guarantee their own impunity. The move was immediately condemned by a dozen charitable groups, who wrote to Pompeo to say they were "deeply disappointed with the Administration's decision to withdraw the United States from the United Nations Human Rights Council, the premier intergovernmental human rights body at the global level." "This decision is counterproductive to American national security and foreign policy interests and will make it more difficult to advance human rights priorities and aid victims of abuse around the world," they added. US withdrawal from the council follows efforts by Haley and the US delegation to implement reforms, including more stringent membership criteria and the ability to remove members with egregious human rights records. "When a so-called Human Rights Council cannot bring itself to address the massive abuses in Venezuela and Iran, and it welcomes the Democratic Republic of Congo as a new member, the council ceases to be worthy of its name," said Haley. Haley said the United States will continue to promote human rights outside of the council and would consider rejoining it in the future if reforms are made.

Vijay Jojo Chokal-Ingam, an Indian-American who pretended to be black to gain admission into medical school, discusses with CNN's Michael Smerconish a group's claim that Harvard puts quotas on Asian-American applicants and shows preference for black and Hispanic applicants.

NEW YORK (The Borowitz Report)—Millions of Americans were stunned and incredulous on Monday after learning of a possible incident of bias at Fox News Channel. At a time when so many American institutions have been under attack, the possibility that Fox, one of the nation’s most respected news organizations, might be susceptible to hidden agendas was too much for many to take. In interviews across the country, Fox viewers expressed disappointment, confusion, and shock that a news network known for its exacting standards had imperilled its hard-earned reputation for fairness. “I’m devastated by this,” Carol Foyler, a viewer from Scottsdale, Arizona, said. “If we can’t trust Fox News, who can we trust?” Tracy Klugian, a viewer from Akron, Ohio, said that he had been “walking around in a state of disbelief” since he learned of possible bias at the network. “I’m trying to be strong, but it’s tough,” he said. “I know I speak for a lot of people when I say that today was the day that America lost its innocence.” But some Fox viewers, like Harland Dorrinson, of Topeka, Kansas, warned of a “rush to judgment” against Fox, urging people to remember the network’s stellar record of journalistic accomplishments. “Whenever there was a national emergency, whether it was Benghazi, Hillary’s e-mails, or Obama’s birth certificate, Fox News was there,” he said. “One little mistake doesn’t wash all that away.”