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The 4PM: A highlight reel of today’s news.
For conservatives.
Every afternoon at 4PM.

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How NPR Handled a Debunked Story Shows Why the Media Is Doomed

National Public Radio has remained defiant in the face of backlash to its report about a masking controversy among Supreme Court justices, all three of whom refuted the story.

SO WHAT

Some in the legacy media seem not to realize their days of dictating truth are over.

WHAT HAPPENED

NPR public editor Kelly McBride said Thursday that the debunked Tuesday report, by NPR chief legal affairs correspondent Nina Totenberg, merited a “clarification, but not a correction.”

McBride accepted Totenberg’s narrative that Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch’s had refused Chief Justice John Roberts’ request to wear a mask on the bench in deference to fellow Justice Sonia Sotomayor, a “high-risk” diabetic.

  • According to McBride, Totenberg claimed to have “multiple, solid sources,” so “the core” issue must just be the veteran NPR reporter’s word choice.
  • “Totenberg and her editors should have chosen a word other than ‘asked.’ And she could have been clear about how she knew there was subtle pressure to wear masks (the nature or even exact number of her anonymous sources) and what she didn’t know (exactly how Roberts was communicating),” McBride said.

As McBride also noted, the previous day, NPR said it was standing by Totenberg’s report in spite of public denials by Gorsuch, Sotomayor and Roberts.

  • “Reporting that Justice Sotomayor asked Justice Gorsuch to wear a mask surprised us. It is false. While we may sometimes disagree about the law, we are warm colleagues and friends,” Gorsuch and Sotomayor said in a joint statement Wednesday.
  • “I did not request Justice Gorsuch or any other Justice to wear a mask on the bench,” said in a statement later the same day.

THE REACTION

Media critics, including Jeryl Bier, mocked the hair-splitting defenses of Totenberg’s reporting as less than credible.

Many on the right, like talk show host Erick Erickson, saw NPR’s refusal to correct the story about Gorsuch, a conservative, as the latest demonstration of the mainstream media’s liberal bias.

Others, such as commentator Kimberly Ross, suggested the episode was further proof of journalists’ unwarranted sense of self-importance.

MEANWHILE

Corporate news outlets have been rapidly losing audience to independent upstarts, like podcaster Joe Rogan, and trust in the traditional media has plummeted to crisis lows.

(Fin Costello/Redferns)

AMERICAN GREATNESS: 4 Videos of Meat Loaf Stealing the Show

Meat Loaf, who died Thursday at age 74, didn’t take himself too seriously, but some of his musical and film performances were truly legendary.

AMERICAN GREATNESS

In response to news that Meat Loaf died following a severe COVID-19 infection, tributes poured in remembering the rocker-actor — born Marvin Lee Aday in Dallas, Texas — for his incredible versatility.

  • But a through-line in Meat Loaf’s four-decade career was a self-deprecating sense of humor that helped endear him to millions of Americans.

1. “The Rocky Horror Picture Show,” 1975: Meat Loaf showcased supernatural rockabilly charisma as Eddie the Ex-Delivery Boy.

2. “Spiceworld: The Movie,” 1997: Meat Loaf iconically played the Spice Girls’ bus driver, who would do anything for the band — except fix the bus toilet.

3. “Fight Club,” 1999: As sensitive giant Robert “Big Bob” Paulson, Meat Loaf memorably helped Edward Norton’s main character, a white collar insomniac, find his true self: the leader of an anti-capitalist terrorist cell.

4. “The Celebrity Apprentice,” 2011: Meat Loaf stole the Donald Trump-hosted show with a viral rant at co-contestant and fellow actor Gary Busey.

ABOUT THAT “APPRENTICE” APPEARANCE

A longtime conservative activist, Meat Loaf backed Presidents George W. Bush and Donald Trump and, near the end of his life, opposed what he called “power-mad” pandemic restrictions.

(Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

BIDEN WATCH: Has the President Deteriorated this Week?

You be the judge.

QUOTE OF THE DAY: M&M’s Are ‘Woke’ Now

The M&M’s mascots are getting a makeover to make them more gender-neutral, feminist and all-around “inclusive,” Mars, Incorporated said Friday.

THE QUOTE

“M&M’S®, part of the Mars, Incorporated portfolio of brands, has announced a global commitment to creating a world where everyone feels they belong and society is inclusive,” per the press release — that is, to a “more dynamic, progressive world.”

Mars — one of America’s largest private companies, with $40 billion in sales in 2020 — has been widely ridiculed for the announced changes to its cartoon spokes-candies.

  • The two female M&M’s — Ms. Green and Ms. Brown — will lose the “Ms.” as part of their mission to de-emphasize gender.”
  • Green, whom some had deemed overly sexual, will start wearing sneakers instead of high-heeled boots to “reflect confidence and empowerment, as a strong female,” Mars said.
  • Brown will similarly see her stilettos “lowered to a professional heel height.”
  • Meanwhile, according to Mars, the orange M&M, “one of the most relatable characters with Gen-Z,” will “embrace his true self, worries and all,” now that he can “acknowledge his anxiety.”
(Grabien Media)

CHYRON OF THE DAY: Joe Biden’s ‘Big Lie’

“Tucker Carlson Tonight” called out President Joe Biden Thursday for questioning the legitimacy of the 2022 election.

THE CHYRON

“Joe & Kamala Want to ‘Stop the Steal!'” a chyron read as host Tucker Carlson mocked Biden for floating the idea that this year’s midterms will be stolen.

Carlson’s guest, podcaster Dan Hollaway, noted that despite Democrats’ outrage over former President Donald Trump’s “Stop the Steal” campaign following the 2020 election, party leaders have been arguing that without voting reforms “we can’t guarantee the legitimacy of elections ever again, I guess?”

(Lintao Zhang/Getty Images)

What We’re Reading

Elite grifters … Chile’s next socialist president … the new hotspot in America’s heartland … L.A.’s Black Lives Matter hypocrisy … Biden’s bowing to China …

WHAT WE’RE READING

  • Julius Krein demolishes the elites in a book review for City Journal, “Today, few if any of the 9.9 percent are willing to sacrifice something for an ideology, yet a great many hope to raise money on one. Climate change is an urgent crisis when it comes to clean-tech subsidies, for instance, but McKinsey and Goldman Sachs are not going to stop working with the Saudis or advising companies to offshore production to pollution havens. Republicans who insist their mission is saving Western civilization likewise will not lift a finger to move critical industries back from China if it might harm a hedge fund portfolio. Whereas at one time a political cause might be criticized for beginning as a movement and degenerating into a racket, now most just begin as rackets — or ‘grifts,’ in contemporary parlance.” READ HERE.
  • Nick Burns previews Chile’s first hard-left leader since Augusto Pinochet in Americas Quarterly: “A charismatic activist who got his start in the university is elected amid calls for wide-reaching social and cultural change. With the memory of recent military rule still fresh in the minds of citizens, he sets out to promote progressive reforms on gender and other issues, and to build a more substantial social safety net. These words describe Gabriel Boric, who will take office as Chile’s next president in March.” READ HERE.
  • Joel Kotkin and Cullum Clark explain in City Journal: “There’s an adage in Texas about a braggart being someone who’s ‘all hat and no cattle.’ But you can’t say that about ‘Big D,’ rapidly emerging as the de facto capital of the American Heartland. The DFW metroplex is now home to 24 Fortune 500 company headquarters, trailing only New York and Chicago; 40 years ago, the region had fewer than five. DFW’s economy has grown markedly faster than those of its three largest rivals (New York, Los Angeles and Chicago), and it has come through the Covid-19 pandemic with less employment loss than any other metro among the nation’s 12 largest.” READ HERE.
  • Cerise Castle reports in Vice: “Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti’s former chief of staff told colleagues she found a local Black Lives Matter chapter ‘annoying,’ disputed the meaning of ‘structural racism’ and disparaged a newly appointed civilian police commissioner who worked with the activists, according to private emails from 2016 and 2017 … In one message from October 2016, Ana Guerrero, Garcetti’s chief of staff at the time, was irritated over the praise the mayor was receiving after declaring LA a sanctuary city.” READ HERE.
  • Jim Geraghty piles on in National Review: “Month by month, the Biden administration is proving more and more reticent to confront the Chinese government in substantive and consequential ways. The investigation into the origins of COVID-19 is effectively dropped, and Biden didn’t mention China’s refusal to cooperate with the WHO’s separate investigation in his teleconference summit with Xi Jinping. Biden did not mention China, the Uyghurs, Hong Kong or the origins of COVID-19 in his address to the United Nations.” READ HERE.
(Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

Who’s Having a Good/Bad Day on Twitter

HAVING A GOOD ONE

Casey DeSantis: Florida’s first lady celebrated her final chemotherapy treatment for breast cancer Thursday, and Twitter celebrated with her.

HAVING A BAD ONE

Robert Reich: Twitter cut the pugnacious ex-Clinton labor secretary down to size over his since-deleted tweet urging Democratic senators to b*tch slap their colleague for voting Wednesday to preserve the filibuster.

(Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

THE 4PM POLL: What’s Your Favorite Classic Trump Tweet?

Screenshots of Donald Trump’s old Diet Coke tweets went viral this week, reminding fans of the former president’s Twitter genius.


THE PEOPLE HAVE SPOKEN: 4PM Readers Know How to Handle Russian Aggression

If Russia invades Ukraine, most readers of The 4PM said the U.S. should go further than President Joe Biden sounds willing to help the underdog democracy — but not as far as all-out war.

THE RESULTS

In Thursday’s poll, 35% of readers supported the Biden administration’s official policy that Russia would face U.S.-led sanctions were it to go ahead with an invasion of Ukraine.

  • 35% of readers wanted to arm Ukrainian militias against any Russian occupiers.
  • 19% of readers said the U.S. should stay out of the escalating conflict.
  • 8% of readers were willing to directly fight Russia to help Ukraine.
  • 4% of readers said Biden was right to hint that only a major Russian invasion would incur U.S. sanctions, before he backpedaled.

The 4PM: A highlight reel of today’s news.
For conservatives.
Every afternoon at 4PM.