As deftly reported by Ashley Rindsberg in the online magazine Tablet, the media played an integral role creating the myth of Sam Bankman-Fried, the disgraced CEO of crypto exchange FTX.
Bankman-Fried donated to various publications, including the Intercept, an online publication that possibly contributed to the election of President Biden.
This will come as a shock to the media, but most Americans, particularly those with families to feed, couldn’t care one iota about what Elon Musk charges for his blue Twitter checkmarks. A story of greater importance is Kroger’s acquisition of Albertsons, which will likely increase already soaring food prices.
The takeover has a private equity wrinkle that even by that industry’s immoral and unscrupulous practices is obscene. Fortunately, a half dozen attorneys general are fighting the good fight to prevent a $4 billion smash and grab.
“Just look around and you’ll see an amazing story. … Companies are choosing to build new factories here, when just a few years ago, they would have built them overseas,” President Biden crowed in his State of the Union address earlier this year.
This morning I looked around and was greeted with this Reuters headline: “U.S. automaker Ford opens $260 million campus in Mexico.”
The opening, coming just one week before the election, makes clear that Ford CEO Jim Farley has the same low regard for Biden as he does for Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, who Ford has previously played for a fool, among other Michigan leaders. The announcement also underscores how Ford is singing a very different tune with Biden running than country than when Donald Trump was in charge.
Many Americans are under the mistaken belief that the transition to electric vehicles is being overseen by intelligent leaders who have applied considerable thought on how best to blow up a century-old technology.
Here’s some insight on one of the politicos leading the charge.
I’ve long opposed ESG, or so-called socially responsible investing, because it legitimizes the activities of some companies that do very bad things. So when I retrieved the November issue of Kiplinger’s Personal Finance this past weekend and found the publication touting ESG on its cover, my instinct was to toss it in the garbage and cancel my subscription. Reading editor Mark Solheim’s justification for the cover story decision didn’t change my views on ESG, but he made me feel good about subscribing to Kiplinger’s.
Solheim is the rare journalist who knows how to win friends and influence people. His column is a masterful example of engagement. Corporate governance commentator Nell Minow and Toronto Globe and Mail reporter Rita Trichur would be wise to read it.
In 1964, the New York Times published what still ranks among the most damaging false stories in U.S. media history: 37 witnesses heard the screams of a bartender named Kitty Genovese being stabbed and not one of them intervened or call the police. The story sparked what became known as the “bystander effect,” a theory that held that when multiple people witness a crime or acts of wrongdoing, they are less likely to intervene than when a single witness observes a crime.
Here’s a modern-day twist on the bystander effect: When someone is accused of racism and dozens of persons know that the allegations are false, they are less likely to intervene than if only one person knows for certain.
The American Hospital Association last week began priming the PR pump for another taxpayer bailout. This time the AHA faces some formidable opponents to the business practices of the association’s leaders and members.
Said one industry critic: Hospital prices are “indefensible” and “unsustainable.”
A professional politician who can’t properly secure her guns in a crime-ridden city and accepted a lucrative scholarship that figured prominently in a corruption investigation is unfit to lead the City of Angels.
How disappointing. I thought Rep. Katie Porter was the rare California politician I could believe in. Turns out, Porter isn’t as ethically pure and upstanding as she would have the public believe.
The termination of Canadian television anchor Lisa LaFlamme’s contract has generated outrage in Canada and the U.S. because of speculation she was fired for allowing her hair to go gray. More likely, the network decision to terminate LaFlamme was driven by budgetary considerations.
Despite the uproar, LaFlamme has refused to comment, which is despicable for a journalist.