By: Mark Glennon*
Why is everybody so fed up with much of the establishment press? It’s worse at the national level but Illinois, too, has big problems. Sit back a few minutes and consider some recent examples.
First, let’s look at the fabricated fabrication last week by Rich Miller and Jordan Abudayyeh. Miller is a major columnist published across the state and posts weekdays at Capitol Fax. Abudayyeh is Gov. JB Pritzker’s press secretary.
It started Wednesday when many criticized what later turned out to be a misquote – a supposed statement that “masks are as effective as vaccines are” against COVID by Illinois Department of Health Director Ngoze Ezike.**
That was how she was initially quoted in a Chalkbeat Chicago article, so criticism understandably followed because masks are not thought to be as effective as vaccines. Fox News published a national column on that quote, specifically attributing it to Chalkbeat. Many on social media joined the criticism, as did we at Wirepoints.
But what did Miller and Abudayyeh say about it? “Fox news peddles fabricated Ezike quote,” was Miller’s headline. And from Abudayyeh on Twitter: “She was misquoted, mistakes happen. Now the outrage machine is fired up and spreading misinformation. These outlets will never correct the record. All Fox News and the gang accomplished with this headline was sowing doubt in experts. And they knew it.”
What really happened? It’s Miller and Abudayyeh who haven’t corrected the record.
Fox and the other critics quoted Chalkbeat accurately. Chalkbeat later updated it’s story to correct the misquote, and it is noted on their update. And Fox had checked with IDPH, their initial story said, to verify what Ezike said, but IDPH didn’t respond initially. When IDPH did respond, Fox updated their story appropriately, as you can see here. (Wirepoints, too, deleted its criticism of the misquote.)
But Miller’s story is still up, including his initial claim fox had run “a totally fabricated quote.” He has added at the bottom that Fox updated his story, but he has not corrected or retracted his claims that Fox had fabricated something.
And Abudayyeh’s tweet is still up with her claim that news outlets she doesn’t like “will never correct the record.” She hasn’t corrected the record.
Miller and Abudayyeh surely know all this. I tried to post a comment on Miller’s post, which I wrote politely, about what had happened, and I also directed it to him on Twitter. He blocked my comment, as he usually does to comments that don’t fit his rigged narrative. And Abbudayyeh knows that the source of the problem was a misquote from somebody else, not Fox and other critics.
In short, Miller and Abudayyeh have done what they accuse Fox of. Fox criticized a published quote but corrected it when they saw it was wrong. Miller and Abudayyeh haven’t done that.
That wasn’t the first time that Miller and Abudayyeh have tried sloppy smears, as Wirepoints can attest firsthand.
Two weeks ago Miller wrote that, “We found out last year that ICU beds can be created fairly quickly.”
But he ripped us when we wrote just that in April 2020. When we wrote that, Miller said it was “another effort by elements of the far right to sow doubt.” And Abudayyeh chimed on his post, saying, “Wirepoints gets the privilege of being able to sleep at night without having to wonder if you did enough to save the people whose deaths you had to announce that day. And he gets to go to sleep without worrying what tomorrow’s body count will be and if in few weeks we will have enough space to treat everyone who depends on us. That must be very peaceful.”
We were right and they were wrong, but Miller apparently forgot about his earlier smear when he belatedly agreed with us a couple weeks ago. However, Miller is probably wrong again. It remains true that ICU beds can usually be increased in significant numbers with relative ease, according to medical professionals we have talked to, but today the shortage of staff capable of manning them has become the overriding issue. So, today, I would not be comfortable saying as Miller does that ICU beds can be created fairly quickly.
Here’s another gem from Miller worth remembering. Back in March 2020 we made the point that the state should be collecting daily hospitalization numbers because case numbers don’t mean much. For that, Miller called us “Covidiots” who were peddling “a thing for certain elements of the far right,” and he wrote,
The overall numbers track everywhere. So even without hospitalization numbers, we have a pretty good idea from looking at other countries and other states what they likely are here. In other words, despite what “Dr.” Glennon and his ilk say, we don’t actually need hospitalization numbers to see how bad things are. What they instead appear to be doing is sowing doubt among the populace. There’s more than enough misinformation and panic out there already without trying to manufacture something out of thin air.
Miller, of course, was spectacularly wrong on that, and has never made a correction. What we said became widely accepted everywhere. Hospitalization numbers came to be seen as a key measure of the spread of the pandemic, and more significant than daily case numbers, which Illinois expressly said after it started collecting the numbers. Details are here.
Moving on, Pritzker and his staff seem to have settled on how they will deal with a hostile reporter: Just say “right wing” and “misinformation.” Watch here how Abudayyeh and Pritzker dealt with Amy Jacobson.
Pritzker’s $278,000 per year Deputy Governor Andy Manar apparently would go further and just have such reporters cancelled. Abudayyeh “shut down the spread of misinformation, he wrote on Twitter, regarding the Jacobson encounter. “The right-wing lives by spreading lies and the main stream media should stop repeating those lies simply to check the box on ‘balance.’” What’s the “misinformation” Manar, Pritzker and Abudayyeh were referring to? No information or misinformation of any kind is apparent from the video clip and they have given no response to many requests on Twitter for an answer.
Finally, guess who is the very first appointee to Gov. JB Pritzker’s new “Local Journalism Task Force”?
Abudayyeh, naturally — Pritzker’s press secretary!
They might as well just thumb their noses at anybody expecting Illinois government to be serious.
The whole concept of the government setting up a journalism task force should go into the file for “Are you serious?” It’s not that there isn’t a crisis in local journalism. There is. It’s caused primarily by lack of a viable business model and it’s no exaggeration to say that democracy doesn’t work without a robust press. But government doesn’t exactly have an interest in transparency, and the most important role of the press is watching over the government.
Here’s who will be on that task force:
• one member of each chamber appointed by the caucus leader,
• one member appointed by the Governor,
• one representative of the Medill School of Journalism, Media, Integrated Marketing Communications at Northwestern University,
• one representative of the Public Affairs Reporting Program at the University of Illinois at Springfield,
• one representative of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign,
• one representative of the School of Journalism at SIU-C,
• one representative of the Illinois Press Association,
• one representative of the Illinois Broadcasters Association,
• one representative of the Illinois Legislative Correspondents Association,
• one representative of the Illinois News Broadcasters Association,
• one representative of the Illinois Public Broadcasting Council, and
• one representative of the Illinois Municipal League.
Sorry, that doesn’t cut it. That’s basically Illinois’ government and media establishment. The government people have a blatant conflict of interest and the media people have been unable to find solutions so far.
And now the governor’s press secretary is its first appointee. Pravda, eat your heart out.
*Mark Glennon is founder of Wirepoints.
**Ezike actually said, “The bottom line is that masks are effective. Vaccines are effective.”
Audio and summary 
If this bill passes, say goodbye to local control over all Illinois parks and expect to see open drug and alcohol use, needles, no sanitation and fire hazards, but no ordinary park users.
Talk about fabrication. Remember a few days ago a story and video went viral about hospital in Oklahoma overrun with ivermectin over doses? Totally fake story by Rolling Stone. Here is the original
https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/gunshot-victims-horse-dewormer-ivermectin-oklahoma-hospitals-covid-1220608/
Now as Paul Harvey says. Here is the rest of the story.
https://meaww.com/dr-jason-mc-elyea-fake-viral-story-rolling-stone-slammed-article-on-patients-overdosing-on-ivermectin
Hard to believe anything on mass media today. You can search more articles on this story if you want.
Yup. The one I find most troubling is an AP story widely syndicated here and around the country dismissing Regeneron, a monoclonal antibody treatment. The AP smeared it as being inappropriately promoted by DeSantis and others they don’t like. In fact, there is now much research confirming its value and even Faucci agrees. The AP’s distortion may well have cost lives.
Nuremberg would not be enough for what Fauci and his corrupt minions have done to the American people.
How this guy can even still be on TV disgusts me.
He funded Gain of Function research at the Wuhan Lab (fact); Christ this guy put taxpayer (my money!) behind this.
For what? enhancing his own wealth through ownership of stock in Moderna and Pfizer?
Sick, sick man. Evil.
Throw in the AP, CNN and the corrupted Media. They are cheerleaders.
Lock them all up. Off to the Hague we must go, eventually.
Miller is a hack truly doubt he would be such a tough guy face to face
But Tilt-a-Whirl and Dipped Cones are quite the pair of regressive goons. Wow.
Thanks for the strong insights here Mark.
From the photos I thought this was a story about carnival workers.
Political hacks – all of them. Scum of the earth.
He who pays the piper plays the tune. All of them corrupt.
CrapFax is still around? Talk about a pathetic group. Does the one fool still post a third of the comments and laugh at his own jokes. Someone let that guy out of his mom’s basement.
My opinion, and just my opinion, is that the tone Rich Miller’s c a p f a x Blog is becoming increasingly radicalized, hate-filled and scary. It’s no longer state sponsored ‘access journalism’ but has now turned into a full on hate blog not unlike the Der Stürmer. They are pushing seriously scary, hateful filled and frightening misinformation and disinformation with an increasingly authoritarian bent. They used to just gripe about Republicans and Illinoians south of I-80 but that frustration has turned into full blown hatred and disdain. There are suggestions coming from commenters that they are all but second… Read more »
Debtsor, all that is well underway across most of the nation, particularly in the federal government. Miller and Illinois are small parts of that story. Authoritarian repression is now in power in the form of the radical left, assisted by the new Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse: the education establishment, MSM, tech platforms and the national security establishment. The crisis is now. Democracy is hanging by a thread.
What last remnant of Democracy left pre-COVID is now dead and buried.
The people need to wake up. Educate friends and family. Find the lions out there they can make a difference. And get loud.
Thank you for an excellent summary of what is going on in this country. It is hard for many of us to believe that our country is showing every sign of a fascist takeover by the left. It seems too crazy to be real. That could never happen here, or so we think. We need more people to see the reality of what we are facing, and be willing to fight it without fear of being labeled “conspiracy theorists”. And they are not just socialists. The racial elements point to a specific variety of socialism, which produced the biggest evil… Read more »
Heyjude, you identified one of the key problems. The radical left’s takeover has been so quick and so complete that the reality of it has not yet fully sunk in, and many of those who do see it still hesitate to speak up out of fear that they will be seen as extreme or conspiracy theorists. In truth, this is not a matter of stopping the radical left, it’s about removing them from power and restoring a democratic republic. We write here about Illinois, but it is not really about Illinois alone. We are one battlefront in a historic struggle.
That comments section has degraded to Lucky Pierre vs. the CapFax drones and a few random, dunkable conservative hot takes to feed to said drones. Not much critical thought there anymore. There was some post recently about the district maps and pretty much every comment boiled down to them being proud that the maps were gerrymandered butchery and unethical. Joyful, celebratory whataboutism that it was somehow Illinois’ obligation to be as unethical as any other gerrymandering state, as if this action represented Illinois protecting America. I mean, straight out of BlueAnon territory. And it’s the overwhelming sentiment communicated on that… Read more »
The visual of that lucky Pierre was totally accurate but disturbing.
Should be debtsor not debtor, fat fingers!
Take screenshots.
Public interest litigation is the only self defense against incitement to violence or criminal activity.
Hate speech websites have been bankrupted in past civil litigation for similar provocation.
They’re not advocating violence or criminal activity. Just heavy-handed authoritarian and dare I say, fascist, ideas, while using awful terminology for anyone who lives south of I-80 and disagrees with them, and spreading fake news, misinformation, and like Mark points out, outright lies. And that’s the point of authoritarianism, is that many terrible things happened with the authority and sanction of the power of the state. Not too long ago, one state rep. suggested budget cuts during coronavirus. one commenter ( you all know who he/she is too) suggested that every government position, is essential, including librarian, even when libraries… Read more »
What is it you fail to understand?
When one race/political party/self-interest group incites skirting/ignoring/overriding the rule of law (criminal OR civil law)
in order to avantage themselves/disadvantage “others” by non-legal factors…
That is hate speech.
That is incitement to “violence “, when their followers take this tribal dog whistle to its logical extremes.
Self-defense against these violent-or-potentially-violent extremists?
CIVIL LITIGATION.
Take screen shots of their unsubstantiated defamatory rantings, doxxing, handbook rationales excusing their own illegal acts…
And litigate against them. Take away their funding, you take away their power.
The most frightening prospect for new journalism taskforce is that instead of trying to increase local journalism to supposed undeserved communities it could be used to identify who the machine considers threats (wp, ipi, etc) and have google, fb, etc shut off/ sensor on internet. Same as what’s playing out in dc..look out!!
LOL, JB’s spin doctor made the committee?! Finally, all those years of tough investigate reporting at Naperville Community TV paid off. I knew the journalism bar was pretty low these day, but not this low. The simple fact is much of the true journalism and reporting comes from bloggers, which pains the journalism establishment to no end. Not only do these professionals think you need formal journalism training, but they will no doubt want to implement some form of occupational licensing so only “true journalists” do the reporting to ensure you only hear what the “experts” want you to hear.… Read more »
The purpose of journalism school is to teach activism, and support the leaders who agree with a narrow set of progressive values, and ‘truth to power’ for everyone else.
These people who slander and block anything they call “right wing” seem to have no clue that they are the ones acting like fascists. It’s like they are doing all they can to destroy America.
We might have needed the qualifier “like” several years ago…no more…it’s full ON
is it a task force or an echo chamber?
Diversity and inclusion is for the little people