The other day, I was going about my business in the gym when I heard something on the TV that stuck in my ears like a sharp knife: I heard a journalist ask an intelligent question to Donald Trump. I paused for a moment to hear his answer, as it was something I was actually curious about. I quickly discovered the source of my confusion. This reporter was a foreign journalist, not the White House press corps.
I made it a rule years ago to get my domestic news from foreign sources. While it does not rule out bias, and there is the ever-present problem of unreported news, or lies of omission and distortion, the foreign press has little skin in the game, and far less of a reason to lie than the local press does. Of course, globalism is changing all that, but for the time being it remains true.
The converse is also true. I hold CNN International in high regard, and if I am outside America, would turn to them to find out what is going on around the world. CNN still has the most news bureau stations worldwide, and the international edition is a completely separate network from its domestic propaganda arm.
Case in point: I was abroad when US General Stanley McChrystal was fired for speaking his mind and making critical comments about his bosses, including President Obama. The foreign CNN International reported this as a “sacking,” but when I returned home, domestic media including CNN all said the general had resigned. You know, to spend more time with his family.
Foreign publications such as The Guardian have published exposes on fraud and political malfeasance by Greg Palast (American investigative journalist living in the UK) as well as being instrumental in the Edward Snowden revelations. Russia Today has revealed important facts about Syria and the Ukraine that the domestic press does not want to discuss. And Justin D Martin, a journalist currently working in Qatar, regularly publishes interesting stories not covered by the domestic press.
The White House Press Corps: Fools In Action
For years, I have been unable to watch a White House Press briefing without becoming angered at the level of stupidity and wasted opportunities to question the powerful. The journalists typically ask questions whose answers are self-evident and only serve as softball setups for the propagandist press secretary to answer with a mouth full of blabbery nothingness.
A cab driver could both ask and answer questions more honestly and genuinely than either party at a press briefing. One need only look at the presidential town hall debates, where the audience members asked relevant questions, as compared to the formal debates where journalists had crafted questions for the candidates. This begs the question: If you can’t ask a better question than Ken Bone, why are you a professional journalist?
The domestic press’s main tool of distortion is not outright lying, but distortion and omission. And they do so not just in their reporting, failing to cover stories entirely, as detailed in the 2004 book Into The Buzzsaw, which documents spiked stories and censorship, but by reporting only pieces without the crucial context or explanation.
A great example is how the media NEVER asks WHY are there so many refugees in the wake of the Syrian war (Lauren Southern investigates and has trouble finding any actual Syrians in a refugee camp). Instead, time after time, as violent crimes are committed by outsiders, the answer is a vague “Islam is responsible” instead of tracing the problem back to the ongoing Syrian war and the West’s complicity in supporting the violent extremist rebels, a common theme of US foreign policy which results in mayhem and destruction on all sides.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lIKn9p3ytOs
Journalists regularly squander the opportunity to ask important questions to powerful figures. I have theorized that the American public would be better served by replacing the entire press corps with a random array of men off the street. The quality of questions would be higher, and the off-topic rambling answers would not be tolerated by your typical plain spoken, working unemployed American.
Testing The Theory: Roosh’s 2016 Press Conference
When the unwashed masses ask more intelligent questions than trained professional journalists, there is a serious problem. To test this theory, I reviewed Roosh’s press conference from one year ago, where journalists who had chosen to come to the Washington D.C. press conference to cover the story of the meetups that were labeled by the mainstream media as “rape clubs” had the opportunity to ask questions of Roosh directly. Let’s look at the 35 choice questions they wasted everyone’s time with.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CD6ajfna7tE
Before we begin, think of ONE question you would ask Roosh, off the top of your head, and see how it compares to the quality of questions asked.
“Why do you think people think of you as a rapist?”
Really? We’re here at a press conference about the media calling the meetups “rape events,” and you JUST sat through Roosh’s speech dressing down the media for lying and slandering. And THIS is the question you still have?
Obviously, people believe this only because YOU in the media TOLD them so! Could anyone still be unclear about this? Kudos for Roosh maintaining frame after this idiotic question.
“Do you acknowledge that some of your writing is offensive?”
Almost any intelligent piece of writing can be found offensive by someone. The obvious answer is yes, some people probably are offended at something. What a stupid question.
“Do you consider yourself a victim?”
Who really cares what word is used to label the target of a media assassination? This is the typical media gotcha question. It sounds important, but ultimately it’s utterly meaningless as one can draw no important conclusions from any possible answer. If Roosh thought he was a victim, or didn’t, what implication at all does that have on the story?
“Do you have any regrets about your publishing?”
Semi-interesting question. Hindsight is always 20/20, and so one can wonder if, knowing what we know now, one would take a different action. But of course it’s an utterly meaningless question because no one is omnipotent. What’s done is done—you live and learn.
Even if one made a mistake and later regretted it, or didn’t, how does that matter to anyone, outside the self-improvement for that person himself? Roosh does address this later, stating simply “You have taken me from here [and raised me higher], based on a lie. I’d rather you not have done that, but it happened, and that is life.”
There are no takebacks. Life 101.
“Why did you write it originally?”
That’s fairly obvious if one read the article in question. Stupid question.
“If a woman got raped, did she do something wrong?”
Well, that would depend entirely on the woman and the circumstances, wouldn’t it? In some circumstances, this would be true, and in others false. Stupid question.
And one can do right or wrong things, without justifying extreme consequences happening to them. If I forget to turn off the gas on my stove, I did something wrong. That doesn’t mean I deserve for my apartment to explode in flames. But it’s a potential result of my negligence.
“What was the thought experiment specifically?”
Again, obvious if one took five minutes to read the article. These journalists took hours out of their day to cover this story, and physically traveled to the press conference in a hotel, but apparently failed to read the subject they were writing about.
“Can you break down the crux of your argument?”
Ha ha ha. Can you read?
“You made a suggestion in this article that was what?”
It’s obvious in the title alone, if the article is too difficult to read. How can you be a journalist if you can’t report on things without having them explained to you?
“Is this like a multi-year point though? What about Return of Kings?”
What about it? There are many ideas presented here. They are presented by different authors and in different contexts to provide arguments and ideas. What the hell are you asking? This is the kind of pseudo-psychological thinking the press likes to practice. Let’s assume all the writers here agreed we were cooperating like the Borg to make a larger hive-mind point about society. What is the implication of that? It’s an open-ended question without a conclusion.
Is the mainstream press making a multi-year point? Why do so many of your articles talk about (((feminism)))?
“The outrage isn’t only about that one article. A lot of people find it offensive that you write about women being submissive. Is that something you believe?”
Compound questions are a linguistic tool used to distort the other party’s answer. This one gets bonus points for at least displaying nominal skill. Are you asking if people are making an opportunistic attack based on preconceived hatred of Roosh, and that this “rape” story is only a ruse to attack him?
Or are you asking if Roosh believes women are submissive?
Or are you asking if women should be submissive?
The journalist can spin the answer in whichever way is most condemning. And all three of those questions are pointless. What Roosh thinks about the motivations of a mass group of journalists is his subjective reaction to a bunch of individuals with different motivations, all spreading the same lie.
You are the media, why don’t you tell us where the outrage originated, or why you personally felt outraged enough to copy and paste a hateful article, instead of asking Roosh to speculate on your motivations?
“What’s your justification for why you believe women should be submissive?”
Here we have a second halfway decent question, but a wild tangent from the topic at hand, and not a question that can be adequately addressed in this forum (that’s what this site and this one are for).
“People reading your works would say that you raped a woman if you had sex with her when she was drunk. You literally say they were too intoxicated to consent.”
Not a question. I know no one who believes that having sex with a drunk woman is akin to raping her. There are people who believe that. They are crazy. What is the question?
“Some absurd unintelligible question about a golf course.”
Roosh has no idea what he is talking about, and no one has any idea how this is an insightful question.
“What are your personal politics?”
Mildly interesting, but I generally don’t care about the politics of non-politicians. ROK is including more political content so this could be justified. Of course, many prefer to keep their politics to themselves, and I wouldn’t tell any journalist what my politics are. In a two party system, there are only imperfect answers, anyway.
“Do you regret threatening to dox protestors?”
Typical framing of falsehoods in question form. Do you regret beating your wife? It’s also a ridiculous question, even if the premise were true. Can anyone imagine an answer other than yes? It’s absurd.
Do you regret distorting the facts about our meetup groups as pro-rape events? That’s an answer I’d actually like to hear! Are you sorry you got it wrong and labeled thousands of men rapists?
“Some stupid questions about whether Roosh lives with his mom and who owns the house he was doxxed at.”
How any of this is relevant is beyond me. Here you have the opportunity to talk about a man with interesting and different ideas and you want to talk about where he is sleeping.
“What else has happened lately? Did you receive dozens of pizzas? Are your parents home? Where do you office out of?”
Office is not a verb. And seriously. What is the journalistic content of any of this? You people should be interviewing the Kardashians for the Hollywood Reporter. This is not a gossip column or a discussion of what Roosh’s favorite coffee is.
“Can you confirm that you had to upgrade your website security?”
Boring. As. Fuck. No one cares about this. Can you imagine pitching a story based on this to your editor? Hey this guy we accused of starting a pro-rape group had to improve his internet servers to handle increased traffic lately. Isn’t that fascinating? Maybe we can bring in a technical writer to talk about how many web pages per second the average server can deliver, and have an artist sketch up a rendering of the path internet traffic takes to a viewer’s PC.
I hope you’re now convinced that the quality of journalism can easily be measured from the quality of questioning that takes place. Without asking the right questions, how can you begin to uncover the facts, which is supposed to be what journalism is about? Whether you want to attribute the cause to hiring retards or a deliberate plan of obfuscation, it’s clear that the American media is no longer fulfilling its duty of informing the public.
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