On Tuesday, Bloomberg Lawreported that the National Labor Relations Board has ruled against Ben Domenech, publisher and co-founder of the ultra-conservative online commentary site The Federalist, after he tweeted he would send his staff "back to the salt mine" if they tried to unionize.
“We find that employees would reasonably view the message as expressing an intent to take swift action against any employee who tried to unionize the Respondent,” said the NLRB. “In addition, the reference to sending that employee ‘back to the salt mine’ reasonably implied that the response would be adverse.”
Domenech, the husband of Meghan McCain, was ordered to delete the offending tweet. He has denied any illegal coercion of his employees, claiming the "salt mine" tweet was just a joke and that he will appeal to federal court.
The ruling comes after a series of clashes between the NLRB and businessmen over anti-union comments on social media, including a settlement with the founder of Barstool Sports, who got into an argument with Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) after tweeting that employees involved in union activity would be fired "on the spot."
EDITOR’S NOTE: Raw Story journalists are members of the Newsguild — Communications Workers of America.
In recent weeks, President Donald Trump has been angrily railing against Fox News and Fox Business, urging his supporters to watch Newsmax TV or One American News instead. And a Daily Beast article by journalists Sam Stein and Maxwell Tani, published on November 21, contemplates what the bad blood between Trump and Fox News could mean for Democrats going forward.
It wasn't a good sign for the Fox News/Trump alliance when head honcho Rupert Murdoch predicted that former Vice President Joe Biden would win the 2020 presidential election, and Trump was furious when Fox News' decision desk called Arizona for Biden on Election Night — even when many other media outlets were still declining to do so. Fox News' decision desk, like the Associated Press, believed that the math was insurmountable for Trump in Arizona; others took a wait-and-see approach.
Stein and Tani explain, "The cable news behemoth has vexed prior Democratic administrations, darting between acting as the voice of the opposition and a legitimate news outlet with the nation's largest audience. But a series of recent developments — including growing animosity between President Donald Trump and some of the more straight-faced personalities at Fox News — has changed the dynamics of this particular political-media nexus. And it has sparked a renewed argument among Biden allies and White House veterans about how and whether he should engage the network more fully."
Biden has a history of interacting with parts of Fox News. Wallace interviewed him during the Democratic presidential primary and went on to moderate the first presidential debate between the former vice president and Trump. Some pundits believed that interacting with Wallace was good for Biden's campaign, as he needed to answer tough questions from someone who is conservative-leaning but not an extremist. And former South Bend, Indiana Mayor Pete Buttigieg stressed that Biden shouldn't try to pretend that conservatives don't exist.
Buttigieg told the Beast, "Everyone on our side wonders how 70 million people could have voted for this president with their eyes open. If they believe these 70 million people are evil, then our country is not going to make it. If, on the other hand, you believe they're largely working from different information, or so-called information, than the rest of us, then the real problem is not the character of the voters as it is the nature of the information that's getting to them. Then we have a responsibility to try and change the information they receive."
The former South Bend mayor, in fact, has been willing to appear on parts of Fox News.
"The train has very much left the station as to whether Fox News will be perceived as legitimate by tens of millions of Americans," Buttigieg told the Beast. "That's over. And it happened without us. The time for starving it of oxygen is long gone."
But Tommy Veitor, a former spokesman for President Barack Obama, warns that extremism often prevails at Fox News.
Veitor told the Daily Beast, "You go in there knowing it is not a news network and that it's a Republican propaganda channel. They might play nice in the dayside programming. Chris Wallace might do a decent interview once every few years. But three weeks out from an election, you need to realize it will be wall-to-wall 'ISIS is coming, the caravan is down the street, and they're going to kill your family.'"
With Trump angrily railing against Fox News, Stein and Tani stress, the question for Democrats is: how should the Democratic Party handle the cable news outlet going forward? Buttigieg told the Beast, "It just shows you how far through the looking glass we've come if Fox News is too reasonable and moderate for today's Republican Party." But as Stein and Tani point out, Trump still has plenty of strident supporters at Fox.
Stein and Tani explain, "If an editorial course correction is coming at Fox, it's not yet readily apparent…. Laura Ingraham and Sean Hannity have fully touted Trump's recount efforts, even as the preponderance of evidence shows it to be an abject failure…. And last week, Maria Bartiromo, one of Trump's top allies in the financial media world, gave airtime to a bogus voter-fraud conspiracy theory, and continues to promote debunked claims about election integrity regularly on her show."
Chuck Todd is once again under fire, as calls mount to fire the host of NBC News' once-venerated "Meet the Press."
Todd on Sunday hosted Republican U.S. Congressman Kevin Cramer of North Dakota, an early supporter of Donald Trump, and allowed him to lie on-air with nearly no push-back.
Among the lies Rep. Cramer spewed in just 21 seconds: The Obama administration spied on Donald Trump, the Mueller Russiainvestigation "started with no evidence and ended proving that there was no evidence," and the impeachment of the President was "crazy."
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Cramer also went on to falsely claim Trump's baseless and frivolous lawsuits – including the most recent one that a judge tossed out "with prejudice" – are "appropriate." Out of three dozen lawsuits Trump has lost thirty-four and won just two.
And while Cramer did say that the GSA should release the transition funds to President-elect Joe Biden he refused to acknowledge Biden won the election. He also spewed other lies, with no pushback from Todd, including: Joe Biden has not yet won the election, Trump "is just exercising his legal options," and Biden has been "over-dramatic."
An endless flow of information is coming at us constantly: It might be an article a friend shared on Facebook with a sensational headline or wrong information about the spread of the coronavirus. It could even be a call from a relative wanting to talk about a political issue.
All this information may leave many of us feeling as though we have no energy to engage.
As a philosopher who studies knowledge-sharing practices, I call this experience “epistemic exhaustion.” The term “epistemic” comes from the Greek word episteme, often translated as “knowledge.” So epistemic exhaustion is more of a knowledge-related exhaustion.
It is not knowledge itself that tires out many of us. Rather, it is the process of trying to gain or share knowledge under challenging circumstances.
Currently, there are at least three common sources that, from my perspective, are leading to such exhaustion. But there are also ways to deal with them.
1. Uncertainty
For many, this year has been full of uncertainty. In particular, the coronavirus pandemic has generated uncertainty about health, about best practices and about the future.
Experiencing uncertainty can stress most of us out. People tend to prefer the planned and the predictable. Figures from 17th-century French philosopher René Descartes to 20th-century Austrian philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein have recognized the significance of having certainty in our lives.
With information so readily available, people may be checking news sites or social media in hopes of finding answers. But often, people are instead greeted with more reminders of uncertainty.
As Trump supporters denounce the 2020 election results, feelings of uncertainty can come up for others.
Many writers have discussed the negative effects of polarization, such as how it can damage democracy. But discussions about the harms of polarization often overlook the toll polarization takes on our ability to gain and share knowledge.
Second, polarization can lead to competing narratives because in a deeply polarized society, as studies show, we can lose common ground and tend to have less agreement.
For those inclined to take the views of others seriously, this can create additional cognitive work. And when the issues are heated or sensitive, this can create additional stress and emotional burdens, such as sadness over damaged friendships or anger over partisan rhetoric.
As chess grandmaster Garry Kasparov put it: “The point of modern propaganda isn’t only to misinform or push an agenda. It is to exhaust your critical thinking, to annihilate truth.”
Misinformation is often exhausting by design. For example, a video that went viral, “Plandemic,” featured a large number of false claims about COVID-19 in rapid succession. This flooding of misinformation in rapid succession, a tactic known as a Gish gallop, makes it challenging and time-consuming for fact checkers to refute the many falsehoods following one after another.
What to do?
With all this uncertainty, polarization and misinformation, feeling tired is understandable. But there are things one can do.
The American Psychological Association suggests coping with uncertainty through activities like limiting news consumption and focusing on things in one’s control. Another option is to work on becoming more comfortable with uncertainty through practices such as meditation and the cultivation of mindfulness.
To deal with polarization, consider communicating with the goal of creating empathetic understanding rather than “winning.” Philosopher Michael Hannon describes empathetic understanding as “the ability to take up another person’s perspective.”
As for limiting the spread of misinformation: Share only those news stories that you’ve read and verified. And you can prioritize outlets that meet high ethical journalistic or fact-checking standards.
These solutions are limited and imperfect, but that’s all right. Part of resisting epistemic exhaustion is learning to live with the limited and imperfect. No one has time to vet all the headlines, correct all the misinformation or gain all the relevant knowledge. To deny this is to set oneself up for exhaustion.
Two of Donald Trump's post-election lawyers have canceled scheduled Fox News appearances.
Donald Trump has been feuding with Fox News as the network has not embraced the president's conspiracy theories about election fraud to the extent the president expects.
As is common in his administration, the event has played out on Twitter:
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On Friday night, Fox News personality Tucker Carlson responding by questioning the Trump campaign's conspiracy theories.
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Also on Friday, Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell canceled their planned appearance on "Justice" with former Judge Jeanine Pirro on Saturday evening.
CNN's Andrew Kaczynski noted that the hyped guest list for the show had changed.
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HuffPost and New York Magazine contributor Yashar Ali received confirmation from a Fox News spokesperson that Giuliani and Powell had canceled.
Geraldo Rivera suggested that the coronavirus vaccine be named after President Donald Trump to make him feel better about losing the presidential election and Twitter users quickly fired back.
During an appearance on Fox & Friends, Rivera proposed a wild idea of naming the coronavirus vaccine "The Trump." He even went a step further to offer dialogue examples of how that suggestion would work. According to Rivera, naming the vaccine after Trump could be a way to "honor" following his election loss.
"I had an idea, with the world so divided and everybody telling him he has to give up and time to leave and time to transition and all the rest of it, why not name the vaccine 'The Trump'? Make it — 'have you gotten your Trump yet?' It would be a nice gesture to him, and years from now it would become kind of a generic name," Rivera said. "'Have you got your Trump yet? I got my Trump, I'm fine.' I wished we could honor him in that way. Because he's definitely the prime architect of this Operation Warp Speed and but for him we'd still be waiting, you know, into the grim winter these amazing, miraculous breakthroughs."
Unfortunately for Rivera, many Twitter users were not in agreement with his suggestion. Rivera faced a flood of critical tweets from those with deeply opposing views regarding Trump's handling of the coronavirus outbreak. In fact, many took the moment as an opportunity to remind Rivera of all the racist nicknames he gave the virus as he offended so many others.
It also opened the door for Twitter users to compile a list of other things that should be named after Trump, like cemeteries commemorating the lives lost as a result of Trump's recklessness. Others suggested naming the virus, itself, as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif) has. According to the top-ranking Democrat, the virus "is, in fact, the Trump virus" based on his lacking leadership and handling of the pandemic.
As of Friday, November 20, there are nearly 12 million coronavirus cases in the United States as the virus continues its accelerated spread across the country. The death toll, which has surpassed 255,000, is also continuing to rise.
Newsmax host Greg Kelly is calling on conservative Trump supporters to overthrow the Republican Party by forming a new MAGA-inspired political party.
During his Wednesday evening segment of Greg Kelly Reports, he encouraged his viewers to distance from both the Democratic and Republican Parties as he claimed they are not "cutting it." Kelly went on to pitch idea of possibly forming a Make America Great Again (MAGA) political party.
"We need a new party," Kelly told his viewers. "Democrats aren't cutting it, and quite frankly, I don't think the Republicans are cutting it. At least a lot of them are just mailing it in."
According to Kelly, a so-called "MAGA Party" should be taken into "serious consideration." The "party," he said, would focus on the Constitution and place an emphasis on "canceling" the so-called "deep state."
He added, "The 'MAGA Party' — a party about ideas, the Constitution, opportunity, liberty," Kelly said. "Term limits, the Second Amendment, and canceling … the deep state and the federal bureaucracy."
While he conceded that there are "some good people" in politics, he believes it may be time for the American public to embrace other parties.
"There are some good people, but let's face it," Kelly added. "It is big and bloated, and all kinds of waste could be cut away. I think it's something that deserves serious, serious consideration in this country."
Since 2016, the Republican Party has become enmeshed with the MAGA movement. Although Trump's presidency will be coming to an end in January 2021, the president's spread of misinformation and his focus on circulating conspiracy theories while undermining the presidential election results signals the MAGA movement will haunt the Republican Party long after the embattled president is gone.
Based on the number of Americans who voted for Trump, the country will also be polarized for quite sometime.
The much-delayed Warner Bros. superhero sequel "Wonder Woman 1984" will premiere on HBO Max and in theaters simultaneously from Christmas Day in the United States, the studio announced Wednesday.
The decision to release the eagerly awaited movie on the company's own recently launched streaming platform represents a gamble for a film which cost a reported $200 million, and comes as Hollywood scrambles to respond to the Covid-19 pandemic.
"It wasn't an easy decision and we never thought we'd have to hold onto the release for such a long time but COVID rocked all of our worlds," wrote star Gal Gadot on her social media accounts.
She added: "You can watch it IN THEATERS (they're doing an amazing job keeping it safe) and you can also watch it on HBOMAX from your homes. Sending you my love. Please keep safe and wear a mask."
The movie, which was originally due to launch in June, will hit theaters in other countries a week earlier starting on December 16.
Before the pandemic, blockbuster movies ran only on the big screen for a theatrical window of 90 days, but with theaters closed in many parts of the US, including New York and Los Angeles, distributors have been forced to innovate.
The move comes after Disney released "Mulan" on Disney+ in September, but unlike that launch "Wonder Woman 1984" will be offered at no extra cost to subscribers of Warner's rival streaming platform for one month.
"As we navigate these unprecedented times, we've had to be innovative in keeping our businesses moving forward while continuing to super-serve our fans," said WarnerMedia studios and networks chairwoman Ann Sarnoff.
The sequel to 2017's $800-million-grossing "Wonder Woman" will see Gadot reprise the title role as one of the comic book universe's biggest female superheroes.
Chris Pine also returns for the sequel, which is set in the 1980s, decades after the World War I-set first movie. Patty Jenkins returns to direct.
The original "Wonder Woman" received the best reviews of any of the inter-connected DC Universe superhero movies from Warner Bros., which also include the latest Superman and Batman films.
For years, Real Clear Politics has been a go-to site for campaign wonks to get a top-level state of major political races around the country, gathering polls for presidential, House, and Senate contests. But in recent years, it has taken a hard ideological turn, becoming a cheerleader for President Donald Trump, curating polls to favor those that showed the GOP performing better, and providing a platform for right-wing conspiracy theories.
A new deep dive by The New York Times on Tuesday highlights how this shift took place.
"As the administration lurched from one crisis after another — impeachment, the coronavirus, a lost election the president refuses to concede — Real Clear became one of the most prominent platforms for elevating unverified and reckless stories about the president’s political opponents, through a mix of its own content and articles from across conservative media," reported Jeremy Peters. "In recent days, as Mr. Trump and his loyalists repeated baseless claims of rampant voter fraud and counting errors, Real Clear Politics gave top billing to stories that reinforced the false narrative that the president could still somehow eke out a win. Headlines on Monday — more than a week after Mr. Biden had clinched the race — included 'There’s Good Reason Not To Trust Election Results' and 'Trump Attorney Says Results in Several States Will Be Overturned.'"
One potential source of these shifts, said the report, was a change in the newsroom's structure and funding.
"Interviews with current and former Real Clear staff members, along with a review of its coverage and tax filings, point to a shift to the right within the organization in late 2017, when the bulk of its journalists who were responsible for straight-news reporting on Capitol Hill, the White House and national politics were suddenly laid off," said the report. "Though the staff always knew the website’s founders were conservative and harbored strong views about liberal media bias, several said they never felt any pressure from above to slant their stories." The writers were never given a reason for their dismissal, and were replaced with writers who had strong ties to the GOP, including a former Manhattan Republican Party chair.
"Top Real Clear executives also developed business ties with a hard-right conservative outlet, The Federalist, that is frequently promoted on the Real Clear flagship website," said the report. "Public records and interviews show that The Federalist, whose funding sources have been largely secret, draws from the same pool of donor money as Real Clear."
"From 2016 to 2017, donations to the Real Clear Foundation more than quadrupled to $1.7 million, with nearly all of that coming from two entities that conservatives use to shield their giving from public disclosure requirements, Donors Trust and Donors Capital Fund," the report continued. "In 2018, the Real Clear Foundation had its best year yet, reporting more than $3 million in donations. One donor whose identity is disclosed on tax filings is Andrew Puzder, who was briefly Mr. Trump’s nominee for labor secretary and writes opinion pieces for Real Clear."
Both Real Clear and The Federalist also received backing from GOP megadonors Richard and Elizabeth Uihlein. Furthermore, "The Real Clear publisher David DesRosiers was listed as a director with The Federalist’s nonprofit foundation. And as reported by BuzzFeed and others, The Federalist has used the same address that Real Clear Politics uses as the location of its Chicago office."
President Donald Trump has been feuding with Fox News, believing the network has not done enough to push his conspiracy theories about voter fraud.
While continuing to refuse to concede the 2020 presidential election -- despite the networks declaring the race a week ago -- Trump has tweeted his complaints about the network.
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The feud has fascinated onlookers.
"No institution bent itself more fully to Trump over the last four years than Fox News, skewing and spinning in every contortion possible. And now, because it will not submit fully to his detached reality, Fox has become the enemy, discarded like another used up husk," Edward-Isaac Dovere, a staff writer at The Atlantic, explained.
"Fox News championed trumpism for four years and all they have to show for it is a spurned, radicalized audience who turned on the network after it called AZ and the race for Biden. Now trumpists think FNC is 'too liberal' and they’re flooding to Newsmax," New York Times reporter Mike Isaac noted.
Three videos on Saturday illustrate the success Trump has had in the feud.
The first was from Trump's rally in DC.
"Fox News sucks," a speaker led the crowd in chanting.
"How bad is Fox News now? What the hell happened? What the hell happened? What a disgrace," the speaker said. "They are the enemy of the people."
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A second video showed why Trump was so angry at the network. Trump campaign spokesperson Erin Perrine was interviewed on Fox News by Leland Vittert -- and the host asked questions about the voter fraud conspiracy theories that Perrine was unable to answer.
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A third video started simply enough, with Fox News personality Jeanine Pirro hyping her Saturday evening show.
She was quickly greeted with contempt from Trump supporters.
President Donald Trump attacked Fox News on Saturday for their coverage his rally in DC, which is being held one week after all the networks declared Joe Biden president-elect.
Trump did not bother to address the thousands gathered for his March for Trump in Washington, DC on Saturday.
Instead, Trump drove through the crowd on his way to his Virginia golf course.
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"President Trump arrived at Trump National Golf Club in Sterling Virginia at 10:44 am," CNN's Jim Sciutto reported. "This is the 412th day he has spent at one of his properties and 301st day he's spent at one of his golf clubs during his presidency."
Upon returning to the White House, Trump repeatedly tweeted that he will "win" the 2020 election -- that he lost -- because of his supporters taking to the streets.
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But apparently, that message did not catch on enough for Trump, who lashed out at Fox News for their coverage.
More than two decades after her death, princess Diana's ill-fated entry into the British royal family is the main storyline in the long-awaited fourth season of the hit Netflix drama "The Crown".
Emma Corrin, a 24-year-old actress little known until now, immerses herself in the role of the young Diana, capturing her soft voice and timid gaze from under a heavy fringe.
But the actress admitted in an interview with The Sunday Times that she felt a "huge amount of pressure" to pull off the role in the new season, which starts on Sunday.
fidelities and Diana's confessional television interview was scandalous at the time and is making headlines even today.
The BBC has pledged to hold an independent investigation into how its journalist Martin Bashir persuaded Diana to take part in the sensational interview in 1995.
Diana's brother, Charles Spencer, claims Bashir showed faked documents to persuade Diana to take part in the interview, where she famously complained "there were three of us in this marriage so it was a bit crowded."
"She wanted to hurt and damage Charles. But I think she was a very fragile woman, her mental health was very fragile," said Junor.
"I think that a lot of people exploited her... for their own ends and the BBC was amongst them."
Strong female roles
The love triangle is one of the main storylines in the fourth season, which covers the late 1970s and the 1980s.
The period was marked by deadly violence over British rule in Northern Ireland, which included the assassination of Charles' great-uncle and confidant, Louis Mountbatten, by the IRA in 1979.
It also included the Falklands War with Argentina in 1982 during which Charles' younger brother, Andrew, served as a Royal Navy helicopter pilot.
The scriptwriters also dramatise a notorious incident that year in which a 33-year-old man, Michael Hagan -- frustrated at being unemployed and separated from his wife -- broke into Buckingham Palace and entered the queen's bedroom.
The queen, who kept her legendary sang-froid, is again played by Olivia Colman, the British actress who won an Oscar for "The Favourite" in 2019.
In the fifth series, she will hand over the role of the older queen to 64-year-old Imelda Staunton, known for playing the cruel Dolores Umbridge in the "Harry Potter" films.
The US actress Gillian Anderson plays Margaret Thatcher, the imperious first woman to head the British government, in a season dominated by strong female roles.
A critical and popular success, "The Crown" was first broadcast in 2016 and has won numerous awards, including three Golden Globes and 10 Emmy Awards.
A total of 73 million people have watched at least one episode of the series, Ted Sarandos, Netflix's joint chief executive and chief content officer, said in January.
President Donald Trump on Thursday shared the tweets of multiple former Fox News viewers who are angry over the outcome of the 2020 election.
"Like it or not Fox News tried to persuade an election," one retweet said. "Wether they did or not I don’t know but the intent was definitely there. I’ll never watch the channel again."
"NEWSMAX and OANN are all we got for now," another tweet shared by the president opined.
Other retweets shared by the president were from angry Fox News viewers who said they have switched to OAN and Newsmax.
Insiders told Axios this week that the president plans to "wreck" Fox News over its reporting on the 2020 election.
“He’s going to spend a lot of time slamming Fox,” one source said.
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[caption id="attachment_1687283" align="alignnone" width="894"] Trump attacks Fox News with retweets (screen grab)[/caption]
