There are only three things certain in life: death, taxes, and the BBC having to issue a correction after publishing a bit of Hamas propaganda. The latest example was on Wednesday after it produced a documentary called Gaza: How To Survive a Warzone narrated by 13-year old Abdullah, but keen viewers noticed a problem with Abdullah and sent a letter to the BBC, leading to the following correction: Since the transmission of our documentary on Gaza, the BBC has become aware of the family connections of the film’s narrator, a child called Abdullah. We’ve promised our audiences the highest standards of transparency, so it is only right that as a result of this new information, we add some more detail to the film before its retransmission. We apologise for the omission of that detail from the original film. The new text reads: ‘The narrator of this film is 13 year old Abdullah. His father has worked as a deputy agriculture minister for the Hamas-run government in Gaza. The production team had full editorial control of filming with Abdullah.’ We followed all of our usual compliance procedures in the making of this film, but we had not been informed of this information by the independent producers when we complied and then broadcast the finished film. The film remains a powerful child’s eye view of the devastating consequences of the war in Gaza which we believe is an invaluable testament to their experiences, and we must meet our commitment to transparency. Yup, the BBC let the son of a literal Hamas minister narrate their film and didn’t bother to do basic journalism about it. It is not the first time the BBC has had issue such a correction since October 7. Back in October 2023, it had to correct reporter Jon Donnison for claiming that a hospital must have logically been hit by an Israeli airstrike, “It’s hard to see what else this could be really, given the size of the explosion, other than an Israeli airstrike or several airstrikes.” In 2012, Donnison claimed a picture of an injured Syrian child was from Gaza. A month later, BBC anchor Monica Miller had to issue another apology for claiming the IDF was targeting Arabic speakers, including medics, in another hospital. In January 2024, after a BBC radio report, it was forced to admit they did not sufficiently vet a Hamas claim that Israel was summarily executing people in Gaza. Before October 7, in July 2023, anchor Anjana Gadgil temporarily deleted her Twitter account after asking former Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett why the IDF was “happy to kill children.” The BBC later admitted, “This line of questioning was not phrased well and was inappropriate.” Concurrently, there has been lots of talk in the U.S. about USAID and what it spends money on. It is one thing for USAID to give money to foreign media outlets that are voices of pro-Americanism in a swampy sea of anti-Americanism. It is quite another when the media outlet in question has a reputation of running interference for Hamas and demonizing Israel, which is what the BBC is, just because it is famous.

Scaremonger much, Jim Sciutto? On today's CNN This Morning, subbing for Kasie Hunt, Sciutto suggested that if Americans don't pay sufficient attention to Trump's handling of Ukraine, it could lead to another 9/11. Before making that baleful prophecy, Sciutto began by comparing Trump unfavorably to Neville Chamberlain and his failed attempt to appease Hitler. Sciutto approvingly quoted a post by David Frum noting that at least Chamberlain never parroted Nazi propaganda. Sciutto then observed: "Trump is amplifying the Kremlin propaganda here." Sciutto pulled the 9/11 redux alarm in response to a statement by panelist Edward-Isaac Dovere, a CNN reporter, that "foreign policy is not usually the kind of thing that voters, or Americans, pay deep, deep attention to." Responded Sciutto: "Listen: they don't pay attention until it affects their lives, right? You know, I mean, look at 9/11 as an example, right? We don't have to worry about what's happening in that part of the world. Of course, it came to touch, touch Americans' lives, sadly." Ask yourself: What was CNN doing to warn us of 9/11 before it happened? Or the Clinton administration? But by all means, CNN, suggesting your audience are a bunch of rubes.  Molly Ball of the Wall Street Journal, without necessarily subscribing to the notion, reported that some Republicans have explained Trump's statements on Russia and Ukraine as a means of demonstrating that he can be an honest broker in the negotiations, thereby making a successful outcome more likely. Meanwhile, for the second time during his current run as fill-in host on the show, Sciutto had on Joe Walsh as his supposed "Republican" on the panel. Sciutto kicked off the panel's discussion of Ukraine by asking Walsh what Trump's comments on Ukraine mean "for your party." Walsh is the kind of Republican who attended the 2024 Democrat National Convention as a "Republican for Kamala Harris." In this interview at the convention, a reporter described Walsh's political history: "You went from Tea Party congressman to being a firebrand conservative radio host, not unlike the Sean Hannitys or Tucker Carlsons of the world. What happened when you decided to take a stand against Trump? Because you are about as anti-Trump as any Republican--anybody, Republican or not." Responded Walsh: "It's absolutely crazy. Ten twelve years ago, I'm saying the worst things in the world about Barack Obama. Last night, I'm agreeing with ever single word he said." Walsh also portrayed himself to the reporter as a brave, death-defying hero: "When you are an anti-Trump Republican, you put your life in danger." Walsh never served in the military. Even so, perhaps Biden should have awarded him the Medal of Honor. Walsh is the kind of guy who got thrown out of the Chameleons Club for being too much of a . . . chameleon. For being too much of a disgrace to fellow lizards, the GEICO gecko wouldn't sell Walsh an insurance policy! Here's the transcript. CNN This Morning 2/20/25 6:04 am ET JIM SCIUTTO: David Frum tweeted a comment about Neville Chamberlain, of course infamous, right, for attempting to make a deal with Hitler, saying that even: "Neville Chamberlain, to do him justice, never amplified under his own byline Hitler's propaganda against the Czechs." Trump is amplifying the Kremlin propaganda here. . . .  EDWARD-ISAAC DOVERE: This is a bigger question about what kind of world we're going to be coming into, perhaps. And look, there may be withdrawals. Let's see what it looks like if we do have Donald Trump try to withdraw troops from Europe or change what the situation is with the war in Ukraine. So it may be that logistically, and it may just be people confronting the idea that what does it mean when America doesn't stand with its allies anymore? What does it mean when America is saying, okay, if a powerful country invades another country, then the other country is the one that needs to give in, and how people process that.  Foreign policy is not usually the kind of thing that voters, or Americans, pay deep, deep attention to. But these are fundamental questions about what America is. SCIUTTO: Listen: they don't pay attention until it affects their lives, right? You know, I mean, look at 9-11 as an example, right? We don't have to worry about what's happening in that part of the world. Of course, it came to touch, touch Americans' lives, sadly. 

In an appearance on Wednesday’s CNN Newsroom and in his so-called “Reliable Sources” Newsletter, liberal media janitor Brian Stelter kvetched about President Trump “embracing the role of word police” for barring the Associated Press from official White House events over their refusal to call it the Gulf of America. Meanwhile, Stelter had backed the Biden administration’s attempt to create a literal word police via the Department Homeland Security and the so-called Disinformation Governance Board. “In a statement, an AP spokesperson says, quote, ‘This is about the government telling the public and press that what words to use and retaliating if they do not follow government orders,’” host Pamela Brown teed up Stelter. To which Stelter whined: “Yeah, Trump is embracing the role of word police. You know, he is trying to enforce the idea that the Gulf of America is the only acceptable name.” Stelter went on to argue that, “The AP has clients and customers around the world, many of whom recognize it as the Gulf of Mexico.” And touted how the AP was “not going to back down here. And as a result, this is a stalemate that's now going into a second week.” He went on to bellyache about the lack of overt support the AP was getting from other outlets and shared the AP’s frustration with it: The AP, I'm told by editors and others, is kind of frustrating, feeling kind of alone on this matter because the Trump administration has targeted the AP and not other news outlets. But there is a behind the scenes effort to try to get the AP off the banned list and back into the Oval Office, back into Air Force One, for example. The White House Correspondents Association has been working behind the scenes, galvanizing support from dozens of other news outlets basically to express a solidarity with the AP, and it's all happening in secret, behind the scenes. There's been no public display of that kind of solidarity.     “There is a big push happening. The White House Correspondents' Association, which represents the press corps, has been trying to work out a solution…WHCA president Eugene Daniels has privately described it as a very delicate matter – so delicate, in fact, that leaks have been strongly discouraged,” Stelter wrote in his newsletter. But despite his apparent outrage at Trump acting as the “word police,” Stelter has shown that he supports the idea quite literally. In July of 2022, before his ouster from the network, Stelter lamented the demise of former-President Biden’s attempt at creating word police under the Department of Homeland Security via the Disinformation Governance Board. In an interview with the would-be board’s lead censor, Nina Jankowicz, the two commiserated and lamented how the public decried the creation of a Ministry of Truth from George Orwell’s 1984: STELTER: So the sympathetic view, to you, is that the disinformation board was the victim of disinformation. Is that how you feel? JANKOWICZ: Oh, it absolutely was the victim of disinformation. All of these narratives, that the disinformation governance board was going to be this Orwellian ministry of truth and all of the harassment and disinformation that was directed against me, was based on that falsehood. Based on that falsehood that was knowingly peddled by many people in the conservative media ecosystem and on Capitol Hill.     The evidence quite obviously points to the fact that Stelter and CNN were for the existence of “word police,” they just wanted to wield the Billy club. They wanted to be the ones to tell you not talk about Hunter Biden’s laptop, President Biden’s failing mental facilities, and not to speak of a weaponized DOJ. CNN couldn’t be trusted to police words either. As became apparent during their defamation trial, no one at CNN knows the correct definition of “black market” and they don’t have a preferred dictionary. The transcript is below. Click "expand" to read: CNN Newsroom February 19, 2025 10:45:55 a.m. Eastern (…) PAMELA BROWN: In a statement, an AP spokesperson says, quote, "This is about the government telling the public and press that what words to use and retaliating if they do not follow government orders." So, you have some new reporting, Brian, on how this is resonating. BRIAN STELTER: Yeah, Trump is embracing the role of word police. You know, he is trying to enforce the idea that the Gulf of America is the only acceptable name. The AP views it differently. The AP has clients and customers around the world, many of whom recognize it as the Gulf of Mexico. So, the AP is not going to back down here. And as a result, this is a stalemate that's now going into a second week. The AP, I'm told by editors and others, is kind of frustrating, feeling kind of alone on this matter because the Trump administration has targeted the AP and not other news outlets. But there is a behind the scenes effort to try to get the AP off the banned list and back into the Oval Office, back into Air Force One, for example. The White House Correspondents Association has been working behind the scenes, galvanizing support from dozens of other news outlets basically to express a solidarity with the AP, and it's all happening in secret, behind the scenes. There's been no public display of that kind of solidarity. So, basically the AP is trying to get the Trump White House to come to the table, have some sort of conversation, try to get back, things back to normal. But let's be clear, right, the Trump White House wants this fight. Trump wants this. You could hear it in his voice yesterday. He is embracing this battle. And it's not just going to end with what the name of the Gulf of Mexico is, it's not going to end at the Gulf. This is a broader battle by Trump to define the terms of the relationship with the press. And I suspect, Pamela, we're going to be talking about this for some time to come because it's not going to end with the Gulf of Mexico. BROWN: No. Well, and his base loves it, right? Brian Stelter, thank you.

If Jeff Bezos really wants to make the Washington Post a non-partisan paper, he still has a lot of work to do because on Wednesday, the Post tried to rebut President Donald Trump and say it is inaccurate to say that there are only two sexes. Reporters Kelsey Ables and Mark Johnson didn’t just speak for themselves; they tried to roll out some impressive-sounding professors to boost their case. First, “Maurine Neiman, a University of Iowa professor who has studied the biology of reproduction for 25 years, said: ‘While there are some areas of active debate, scientists are in wide agreement that biological sex in humans as well as the rest of life on earth is much more complicated than a simple binary.’” Then there was “Eve Feinberg, a professor of obstetrics and gynecology at Northwestern University, echoed the sentiment. ‘It’s scientifically incorrect,’ she said of the order. ‘And I think it’s a disservice to people who don’t fall into one of those two sexes.’” Less scientific was “Michael Ulrich, a professor of health law at Boston University, said Trump’s executive order is in all likelihood targeting transgender people. ‘It’s trying to explain away people,’ he said. ‘They want to try to present it as this extremely simple issue — as if it’s really just one or the other, you’re male or you’re female.’” If you are not male or female, what are you? Well, “The Gender Equity Unit at Johns Hopkins University defines sex as ‘the biological and physiological reality of being male or female or intersex based on external genitalia, hormones, and chromosomes,’ and gender identity as reflecting ‘one’s innermost concept of self as male, female, a blend of both or neither.’” Ables and Johnson then returned to Neiman, who is a self-professed DEI adherent, ‘“While these cases are a minority, sex is legitimately difficult to assign for close to 2 percent of the U.S. population,’ she said. ‘We can find real exceptions in real people to whatever rule we might apply to define sex, whether it be sex chromosomes, the size of reproductive cells, hormone levels, internal organs or genitals.’” There are two major problems with the idea that intersex is a third sex. First, is that, by definition, intersex means “between sexes.” An interstate highway is real, but it is not a 51st state. Second, Leonard Sax wrote back in 2002: Anne Fausto-Sterling’s suggestion that the prevalence of intersex might be as high as 1.7% has attracted wide attention in both the scholarly press and the popular media. Many reviewers are not aware that this figure includes conditions which most clinicians do not recognize as intersex, such as Klinefelter syndrome, Turner syndrome, and late-onset adrenal hyperplasia. If the term intersex is to retain any meaning, the term should be restricted to those conditions in which chromosomal sex is inconsistent with phenotypic sex, or in which the phenotype is not classifiable as either male or female. Applying this more precise definition, the true prevalence of intersex is seen to be about 0.018%, almost 100 times lower than Fausto-Sterling’s estimate of 1.7%. In other words, intersex people have female chromosomes but male body parts or vice versa; there is no Z chromosome or third type of sex organ.

The left is screaming that President Donald Trump is on some kind of ideological crusade. Some recent headlines: “Trump and Musk’s Purge Isn’t Cost Cutting -- It’s a Coup”; “Doge is About Ideology and Mindless Budget Cutting”; “Elon Musk’s Indiscriminate Carnage”; “Dems Must Stand Up Against the Bully in the White House.” It’s sort of like labeling a company CEO ideological because he is driven to keep his company profitable and competitive. One column in The Guardian says Trump is “lacerating the structures of U.S. democracy.” In other words, protecting taxpayers and running the country efficiently is anti-democratic. But forgiving $189 billion of student loan debt -- done under Biden -- and dumping it all on taxpayers is not. Or government spending trillions and larding it all onto the federal debt rather than raising taxes is not. The Congressional Budget Office just issued its latest 10-year outlook, and it is not a pretty picture regarding today’s economic realities of the nation. It forecasts that the federal debt will grow from 100% of GDP in 2025 to 118% of GDP by 2035, the highest in American history. CBO forecasts GDP growth over this same 10-year period to average 1.8% per year. It is not ideology to point out that this is pathetic and dangerous. It’s about one-half the 3.5% per year that the U.S. economy grew over the half century from 1950 to 2000. Hoover Institution economist John Cochrane has pointed out that if the U.S. economy grew 2% per year from 1950 to 2000 instead of 3.5% per year, per capita income would have been less than half what it was in 2000. Ideology is about words -- slogans with no reality check. Business is about numbers, measurement and performance. The failure of socialism, the failure of societies with oversized intrusive government and the failure of ideas like social justice falling into the realm of politics is politicians seize more and more power and take less and less responsibility. When government expands at the expense of individual freedom, productivity and creativity suffer, and economic growth shrinks. These are not words. They are quantitative results. In a recent Pew Research survey, 74% of Americans said they feel that our children will be worse off financially than their parents. These are Americans living in a country with government bigger and more intrusive than that of their forebears. The Fraser Institute in Vancouver, Canada, publishes annually an Economic Freedom of the World report. Fraser measures economic freedom in 165 countries around the world. For every country, they measure the size of government, the extent of regulation, the extent to which the legal system works to protect personal freedom and private property, the extent to which every country is careful to not debase its national currency, and the extent to which it allows citizens and firms to trade freely internationally. Every nation is quantitively scored in each of these areas and given a score for overall economic freedom. The top 25% of countries in overall economic freedom scores have average per capita income -- $52,777 -- 7.6 times higher than average per capita income of the lowest 25% -- $6,968. These are numbers, measurements, performance. Not ideology. It’s much harder to diet and lose weight than to overeat and get fat. It’s much harder to sober up than to drink in excess. But every individual, every country, sooner or later, must deal with reality. Our country has lost its way. Those on the left who are verbally assaulting the new Trump administration are the ideologues. They are in love with empty words and bankrupt ideas. Fortunately, we now have tough and courageous leadership willing to do the very hard work of getting a great country that has lost its way back on track. Star Parker is founder of the Center for Urban Renewal and Education. Her recent book, “What Is the CURE for America?” is available now.