THE DAILY NEWSLETTER - WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 29, 2021 

Media Winners & Losers

MEDIA WINNER:
Katty Kay

MSNBC contributor Katty Kay announced Wednesday she was resigning from Ozy Media after just four months in the wake of allegations that include fraud engulfing the company.

“Yesterday morning I handed in my resignation to Ozy Media,” Kay wrote in a morning note posted on social media. “I was looking forward to working with the talented young reporters but I did not expect this!”

Noting she left the BBC to join the company, Kay said new allegations about its management team and practices “caught me by surprise, are serious and deeply troubling,” adding, “I had no choice but to end my relationship with the company.”

The FBI was looking into allegations that Ozy co-founder and Chief Operating Officer Samir Rao impersonated a YouTube executive in an effort to sell the company to Goldman Sachs. Not to mention the accusations of inflating traffic reporting. And there's and internal investigation underway at the company.

Having been with Ozy only a short time, it's still important that Kay made her resignation and reasoning public. Every week, people who follow media hear a new story about how trust in the press continues to decline.

To support a promising idea by committing to it as a career move is bold. Taking a public stance on ethical grounds in any circumstance is hard.

Katty Kay combined both risks in deciding to resign on principle. That's strong.

MEDIA LOSER:
Laura Ingraham

Fox News’ Laura Ingraham made the baffling assertion Tuesday that “it’s almost always a lie” when people say hospitals are being overwhelmed due to Covid-19.

Hundreds of unvaccinated health care workers in New York were suspended this week. Ingraham railed at the news, saying they've "gone from frontline heroes to public health menaces.”

“The staffing shortages due to the mandates are getting worse by the day,” Ingraham said as she claimed this is what’s “sabotaging the health care system.”

“It kind of makes you think this wasn’t about saving the hospitals right from the outset,” she continued, before making her stunning, false claim

"We now know that when they say the hospitals are being overwhelmed it's almost always a lie," she said. "And with the delta variant, any hospitals that were stretched usually found themselves in that situation due to staffing shortages created by their stupid vaccine mandates."

There has been report after report after report after report after report after report after report after report after report of hospitals all across the country being overwhelmed in the past few weeks.

Wild unsupported accusations designed specifically to treat hospitals as a menaces, done in a pursuit of ratings. Low blow even for an opinion host.

Oh sorry, we meant: such things are almost always done in pursuit of ratings.

The A-Block

“I apologize for the behavior of my colleague.”

Congressman Matt Gaetz (R-FL) unleashed on General Mark Milley and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin in a hearing on the U.S.’ chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan.

As Milley and Austin appeared before the House Armed Services Committee the day after their hearing with the Senate committee, Gaetz went off about their assessments on Afghanistan and broader decisions around the Middle East.

“It seems like you are chronically bad at this,” Gaetz said, railing on about the Afghanistan government’s fragility and Milley’s conversations with multiple journalists.

It went on for some time, as Gaetz accused the general of undermining the military’s chain of command, steamrolled over the chairman of the Joint Chief of Staff when he tried to counter that insinuation, and more. He eventually brought the tirade to a crescendo on resignations.

Gaetz’s time expired at the end of his harangue, and Congresswoman Chrissy Houlahan began her allotted time by saying: “I apologize for the behavior of my colleague.”


In Other News...

Kamala Harris Tells Student Who Accuses Israel of ‘Ethnic Genocide’: ‘Your Truth Cannot be Suppressed’

Elon Musk Accuses Biden of Being 'Biased' Against Tesla After White House Snub: He's 'Controlled by Unions'

'What Are You Talking About?!?' Pelosi Loses Patience with Reporters Grilling About Passing Biden Bills

HOWE: Columbia Journalism Review Actually Asserted, As a Fact, That Liberal Voices Are 'Underrepresented in Media'

Must See Clip

Tables Turned

TikTok comic Rachel Maria has taken the bit popularized by Sarah Cooper’s lip-synch videos of then-President Donald Trump and turned it against current White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki.

The oldsters among us can remember how, way back in the early days of the coronavirus pandemic, Sarah Cooper caught social media lightning in a bottle with a series of videos lampooning Trump that really caught fire when she parodied his infamous disinfectant moment.

Picture that, but the opposite party.

Links We Like

America Is Having a Violence Wave, Not a Crime Wave
- David A. Graham, The Atlantic
A Referendum on Democracy
- Erick Erickson, Substack
Things Can’t Go on Like This for the German Left
- Alexander Brentler, Jacobin
This is a Covid Horror Story in Which No One Actually Gets Covid, And It Could Still Happen to Anyone
@SummerBrennan, Twitter
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