#morning report is the flagship public radio news show

[sixth-light]

New Zealand always shuts down over the Christmas-New Year period in a way that Northern Hemisphere countries simply don't because it's also our long summer break, but I think it's a sign of how...everything...2022 has been that it's December 20th and pretty much everything is already shutting down - and was as of the 19th. This will mean nothing if you don't live here but we've already hit a 7am start for Morning Report! Everybody is simply Done.

[abcnewspr]

ABC NEWS ANNOUNCES SPECIAL PRIMETIME COVERAGE OF THE 2024 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION ON SUPER TUESDAY

‘World News Tonight’ Anchor and Managing Editor David Muir Leads Network Coverage With ABC News’ Powerhouse Political Team

Coverage and Analysis Begins Tuesday, March 5, at 7:00 p.m. EST on ABC News Live and 10:00 p.m. EST on ABC

ABC News*

ABC News announced today special coverage of the 2024 presidential election on Super Tuesday. “World News Tonight” anchor and managing editor David Muir leads the network’s coverage of the voting results, issues, candidates and campaigns. ABC News Live, ABC News’ 24/7 streaming network, will kick off coverage Tuesday, March 5, at 7:00 p.m. EST, anchored by ABC News Live “Prime” anchor, Linsey Davis, which will be combined with and lead into coverage on ABC at 10 p.m. EST.

Muir will be joined by ABC News’ powerhouse political team, including Davis; chief global affairscorrespondent and “This Week” co-anchor Martha Raddatz; chief Washington correspondent and “This Week” co-anchor Jonathan Karl;chief White House correspondent Mary Bruce; senior congressional correspondent Rachel Scott from Trump HQ in Florida; correspondent Alex Presha from the trail in South Carolina; chief national correspondent Matt Gutman; senior national correspondent Terry Moran; senior White House correspondent Selina Wang;political director Rick Klein; deputy political director Averi Harper; White House correspondent MaryAlice Parks; correspondents Aaron Katersky, Mola Lenghi,Elizabeth Schulze,and Mireya Villarreal;executive editorial producer John Santucci; senior Washington reporter Devin Dwyer; senior reporter Katherine Faulders; and multiplatform reporter Jay O’Brien. Contributors Dan Abrams, Donna Brazile, John Katko, Reince Priebus,and Kate Shaw will provide analysis across platforms. ABC News will have on-the-ground reporting from California, Alabama, Virginia, Texas and Colorado to deliver viewers up-to-the-minute reporting of all election results and campaign updates.

Additional ABC News Network-Wide Coverage

“Good Morning America,” “World News Tonight with David Muir,” “GMA3: What You Need to Know,” “This Week with George Stephanopoulos” and ABC News Radio will have the latest reporting from ABC News’ powerhouse political team on Super Tuesday delivering results, campaign updates and analysis.

“Nightline” will air special content and features surrounding Super Tuesday. Co-anchor Juju Chang will anchor live from New York and will be joined by an ABC News political powerhouse team, including Scott, Gutman, Klein and more.

“The View” welcomes Davis to the Hot Topics table on Super Tuesday, and Karl joins the show the following morning to discuss the results.

ABC News Digital will have a 538-led live blog reporting on what to watch for on Super Tuesday and why it matters. Topics also include analysis of polling data surrounding Nikki Haley’s presidential chances, notable races in Texas, a California Senate primary preview and more. On the night of the race, ABC News Digital will have 16 state result pages updated constantly, exit poll analysis, key takeaways and commentary from our ABC News and 538 political team.

“Start Here,” ABC News’ flagship daily news podcast, will feature special coverage and analysis of Super Tuesday with host Brad Mielke and ABC’s powerhouse political team.

ABC NewsOne, the affiliate news service of ABC News, will be reporting from Washington with ABC News multiplatform reporter Perry Russom. Klein will also be offering an analysis of the results for ABC stations. NewsOne provides news content and services for more than 200 ABC affiliates and international news partners.

*COPYRIGHT ©2024 American Broadcasting Companies, Inc. All photography is copyrighted material and is for editorial use only. Images are not to be archived, altered, duplicated, resold, retransmitted or used for any other purposes without written permission of ABC. Images are distributed to the press to publicize current programming. Any other usage must be licensed.

-- ABC --

[scotianostra]

Clifford Leonard Clark “Cliff” Hanley was born on October 28th 1922 in Glasgow.

Hanley was a journalist, novelist, playwright and broadcaster from Shettleston in the city’s East End, he was educated at Eastbank Academy.

His journalistic career began with a life of crime - reporting from the city courts for a local news agency. By the time he had graduated to the Daily Record, it was clear that he had an astonishingly versatile range. In particular, he loved the then hectic world of Glasgow show-business, reporting on the raft of theatres which still survived in the city in the 1960s.

On that scene Hanley was always more than a commentator and reviewer, his membership of Equity testifying to his skills on the speaking circuit, and to his talent as a lyricist. With the musician Ian Gourlay, he wrote some marvellously witty parodies of Scottish folk songs, substituting institutions like the Glasgow underground for Granny’s Hielan’ Hame.

Hanley’s hallmark was that brand of self-deprecating, but sharp, humour which ensures that no Glaswegian can entertain ideas above his station in the company of a fellow citizen.

Cliff Hanley’s childhood in Glasgow’s East End provided the material for his most celebrated novel, Dancing In The Street, a semi-autobiographical work which was much acclaimed on publication in the late 1950s. It is still considered one of the most engaging books about Glasgow, the grittier experiences always leavened and laced with Hanley’s irrepressible humour. Several other novels quickly followed to a similarly warm reception.

I know some of you will still be struggling to recall Hanley’s work, but he wrote the lyric for one of the most famous Scottish songs ever, putting the words to well known bagpipe tunes that we know as “Traditional” Hanley gave us the words to Scotland the Brave, which emerged as the de facto national anthem. It remained so for two decades before being supplanted by Flower Of Scotland, I still remember football matches where they played the tune at International matches as our national team anthem.

Of course, Cliff’s tongue-in-cheek verses were never designed for mass singing, as was evidenced by the confused expressions on the faces of the national soccer team when they struggled to get their bagpipes, heather and glens in the right order. But played at full tilt by a pipe band, the anthem struck the appropriate note of terror into the opposition.

For a while Hanley also worked in radio, but although he continued as a regular contributor, his career as a presenter was relatively short lived. In 1970, he was hired to work on Good Morning, Scotland, the flagship morning news programme, but fell foul of the accent police - at that time received pronunciation was still considered desirable. Thank god we still don’t adhere to the old rules, we would never have the likes of Lorraine Kelly, Dougie Henshall and Ken Stott using their own god given accents on TV.

Hark when the night is falling Hear! Hear the pipes are calling, Loudly and proudly calling, Down thro' the glen. There where the hills are sleeping, Now feel the blood a-leaping, High as the spirits of the old Highland men. Towering in gallant fame, Scotland my mountain hame, High may your proud standards gloriously wave, Land of my high endeavour, Land of the shining river, Land of my heart for ever, Scotland the brave. High in the misty Highlands, Out by the purple islands, Brave are the hearts that beat Beneath Scottish skies. Wild are the winds to meet you, Staunch are the friends that greet you, Kind as the love that shines from fair maiden's eyes. Towering in gallant fame, Scotland my mountain hame, High may your proud standards gloriously wave, Land of my high endeavour, Land of the shining river, Land of my heart for ever, Scotland the brave. Far off in sunlit places, Sad are the Scottish faces, Yearning to feel the kiss Of sweet Scottish rain. Where tropic skies are beaming, Love sets the heart a-dreaming, Longing and dreaming for the homeland again. Towering in gallant fame, Scotland my mountain hame, High may your proud standards gloriously wave, Land of my high endeavour, Land of the shining river, Land of my heart for ever, Scotland the brave.

[chalkrevelations]

Leading actresses Zhao Wei and Zheng Shuang are the latest victims of the Chinese government’s ongoing crackdown on the entertainment industry and the excesses of celebrity fan culture.

On Thursday, all entries related to Zhao on Chinese social media platforms such as Weibo were removed, her name was scrubbed from the credits of films and TV shows, and all content featuring her — including film, TV, chat show appearances and more — was removed from major streaming sites like Tencent Video and iQiyi.

All discussion of Zhao on social media was also censored.

Zhao, who is also known as Vicky or Vicki Zhao and notably starred in My Fair Princess, Shaolin Soccer and Lost in Hong Kong, is a popular star turned billionaire investor and is the face of Italian fashion house Fendi in China.

Chinese state newspaper The Global Times reported that no official reason had been given for the moves to erase Zhao’s presence and work from the Internet, but it did resurface historical allegations of financial impropriety and a number of other scandals*. Most notably, in 2018, the Shanghai Stock Exchange banned Zhao and her husband Huang Youlong from acting as listed company executives for five years due to issues and irregularities related to a failed takeover bid in 2016.

A close friend of Alibaba founder Jack Ma, Zhao and her husband were early investors in Alibaba Pictures Group, buying a $400 million stake in 2015. Once China’s highest-profile billionaire, Ma’s star has dimmed after spectacularly falling out of favor with Beijing**.

The downfall of Zhao comes a few weeks after a professional and business acquaintance of hers, the actor Zhang Zhehan was similarly banned and scrubbed from the Internet after pictures surfaced of him at Japan’s controversial Yasukuni Shrine to war dead.

On Friday, tax authorities in Shanghai fined actress Zheng Shuang $46.1 million for tax evasion.

Zheng, the star of the hit series Meteor Shower and a popular celebrity, was fined for failing to report income between 2019 and 2020 while filming a TV series.

The AFP reported that China’s state broadcasting regulator, the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television, reiterated it had a “zero tolerance” policy on tax evasion. The regulator pulled the show in question from streaming sites and asked production companies to not work with Zheng in the future.

* “Chinese Nationalists Blast Director Vicki Zhao for Casting Taiwanese Actor“ (July 2016)

Nationalists on Chinese social media have set their sights on actress-turned-director Vicki Zhao after she cast a well-known Taiwanese actor in the lead role of her next film.

The Communist Youth League, long a training ground for elite positions within the Chinese Communist Party, has waged a coordinated social media campaign over the past week criticizing Zhao (also known as Zhao Wei) for casting Leon Dai (Assassin, Double Vision) in the lead of her upcoming romance No Other Love.

In an article entitled “Zhao Wei’s New Film Met with Universal Boycott by Internet Users,” the nationalist organization has alleged that Dai is a supporter of Taiwanese independence and Hong Kong’s pro-democracy Umbrella Movement — political issues of particular consternation among the Chinese Communist Party.

“The state interests come before idol worship. I have liked you for many years, but you should have known better,” wrote one Weibo user, according to the South China Morning Post.

** “Billionaire Jack Ma Disappears From Public View After China’s Crackdown on Alibaba” (January 2021)

Chinese billionaire Jack Ma, famous for his love of the spotlight, hasn’t been seen in public in over two months following Beijing’s aggressive crackdown on his Alibaba business empire.

The celebrated entrepreneur was slated to appear as a star judge on the season finale of Africa’s Business Heroes, a reality TV show created by his own philanthropic organization. But Ma dropped out of the appearance and the show’s broadcast was postponed, the Financial Times was the first to report. Ma’s image and name, previously the program’s biggest selling point, have since been removed from promotional materials related to the finale.

... The celebrated entrepreneur’s retreat from the public eye in China follows an official fall from grace that has been swift and stunning. Formerly known for his cozy government connections and rare outspokenness, Ma has found himself on the receiving end of a sudden reassessment of his celebrated tech conglomerate’s reach and power.The trouble began in early November when Beijing canceled the IPO of Alibaba’s fintech behemoth Ant Financial, which was set to raise $34 billion in the biggest stock-market debut in history. The sudden regulatory halt came after Ma gave a speech criticizing China’s regulators and state-owned banks for their backwardness. His remarks are said to have infuriated Beijing’s party brass, leading Chinese president Xi Jinping to personally order an end to Ant’s offering.

The clouds darkened further for Ma and Alibaba in late December when Chinese regulators issued a bluntly worded set of statements indicating they would be launching an antitrust investigation into Alibaba’s flagship e-commerce business, as well as enforcing new rules constraining Ant’s business activities. Government investigators were reported to have entered Alibaba’s headquarters in Hangzhou shortly after.

Just FYI, Alibaba owns Youku, which is the platform that produced WoH.

Stuff is just starting to trickle out, but it sounds like there’s also a big anti-LGBTQ crackdown coming down the pike as part of government efforts to “clean up” C-ent and its effects on The Youth.

Competitors might have taken advantage of a perfect storm of events to push our guy in front of an oncoming train, but what happened to him was just the shot across the bow, and the butcher’s bill is going to be coming due. It was never really about the shrine. It was a convenient excuse to start a purge.

[onenettvchannel]

BREAKING NEWS: Radio Anchorman of RBSFM Bacolod has Died at 54

BACOLOD, NEGROS OCCIDENTAL -- A flagship local radio programme in Hiligaynon dialect of 11 MBPS (Mga Balita kag Public Service) airs his final radio show for health reasons of 103.9mhz DYQU-FM's Radyo Bandera: Sweet FM Bacolod last Tuesday morning (September 7th, 2021), just a week before he was died.

His name is Rushmore Funtevilla Ubas, where he was born in December 14th, 1966. The legacy of his Radio Commentaries, Public Service and the Latest News in Bacolod & Western Visayas. Listeners are tuned in region-wide in Western Visayas including Facebook LIVE (in a TeleRadyo-style format) with a thousands of listeners here in the Philippines and around the world in most of the Overseas Filipino Workers (OFWs).

During his final radio show, he was encouraged for its Facebook viewers or radio listeners rather to interact as you want while he was tackling a hottest issues and topics of the day. However, he won't be reading any of its nonsense such as the haters in toxic, offensive trolls, negative backlash, etc. in every said of its both of them. Shoutouts and Greetings via Facebook comments and text messages in Short Messaging Service (SMS) is rarely valid for now. He'll be only focused professionally as a balanced news and public affairs format every Weekday mornings at 11am onwards (Bacolod local time).

As his final radio episode ends, he plays an extro with the Original Pinoy Music (OPM) called "Pasko Ang Damdamin" by Freddie Aguilar under the album of "Diwa ng Pasko" in late mid-October 1994, along with a final batch of greetings before 1pm.

He was a former Assistant Station Manager and a Radio Anchorman of DYWB-AM 630khz's Bombo Radyo: Bacolod for Zona Libre and 104.7mhz's Muews Radio Negros in Talisay, Negros Occidental as stated from its Facebook post in Hiligaynon dialect to Radyo Bandera (an Internet TV affiliation for this news organization in Dumaguete City). And in 2017, Ubas joins for a newest radio programme as he moved here through Radyo Bandera as "11 MBPS" was born.

With a few changes in radio programming, Jean Paul Cañete Generoso will be replaced as final last Thursday (September 9th, 2021), followed by his saddened announcement of its death to Ubas as Generoso noted by this Wednesday morning (September 15th, 2021), an hour later before the radio programme on his first day of radio broadcasting.

Generoso adds, he will be replaced as a radio anchor from "Sentensyador" to Rods Palma the same day, "I am very saddened to inform everyone, ang inyo na-anda na ng anchorman na tingog sa kada alas-11 sang udto basta ala-1 sa hapon, no other than our captain, ka-Banderang Rushmore Ubas... Ang nakakilanlan sa buong sa inyong prayers, ara siya subong na-admit sa isa ka ospital na hindi maayo na kondisyon. And by health reasons, nag-resign si Ubas as he submitted his resignation in RBSFM Bacolod. We were suprised because, last ko sa nakita is Martes eh (September 7th, 2021), sa Miyerkules (September 8th, 2021), nag-absent siya... And if you can remember, ako abi ang naka linya adan na 2nd liner niya. Whenever there will be an anchor, ni-ara ki dapat 2nd liner. In fact, hindi ako tapos in my humble self sa substitution kay Ubas, he is the only one".

The Bacolodnon & Western Visayas radio listeners and Facebook viewers of RBSFM Bacolod tries to pray in for Ubas but, it was all too late.

In a radio interview of RBSFM Bacolod during the 11 MBPS radio programme with Generoso, as his best friend of Ubas is a local physician doctor tells to Radyo Bandera... There is a family history of Diabetes which is due to a low blood sugar level drops down equal to 50 over 50 last December 2020. Christmas celebration for Ubas cancels out, except for everyone else in Bacolod and Negros Occidental. Until this past week today by mid-September 2021, Eljohn Castaño (Station Manager of RBSFM Bacolod) accepts his immediate resignation in health reasons.

Physician Doctor says, he was confirmed dead at 10am onwards by this Wednesday morning as he suffered for a Myocardial Infarction just days after he was resigned from RBSFM Bacolod.

Yves Montecillo (president of the Negros Press Club) told the Philippine Daily Inquirer, an unexpected cause ended up for a vaccine of Corona Virus Disease-19 (CoViD-19) as received from a Johnson & Johnson jab. Montecillo warns the entire community of Western Visayas is to follow a health protocols off from this said virus, "I urged all NPC members to continue implementing the health standards to prevent the spread of CoViD-19 and to get vaccinated if possible".

Ubas is positive for CoViD-19 with a few complications and dies afterwards as Montecillo noted from the NPC. He was laid to rest at a nearest cremation in Bacolod.

Radyo Bandera: Sweet FM Network (in Bacolod) is an affiliated firm on this Internet TV Station of OneNETtv Channel and OneNETnews.

EDITOR's NOTE: We are in a tougher condolences like Ubas did for a legacy of news and public affairs radio programme of RBSFM Bacolod. In behalf from our news team of OneNETnews, madamo po salamat ka-Banderang Rushmore F. Ubas. May you rest in peace, for now.

SOURCE: *https://www.facebook.com/100000422565631/posts/4688203137870392 [Eljohn Castaño - SM of RBSFM Bacolod] *https://www.discogs.com/Freddie-Aguilar-Diwa-Ng-Pasko/release/14737172 [Discography Album of Diwa Ng Pasko] *https://www.facebook.com/178524228888744/posts/6266666666741106 [Bombo Radyo Bacolod - Short Brief History of RU before RBSFM] *https://www.facebook.com/106671071630488/posts/968411257074533 [11MBPS with BG - Sep72021 - The Final Episode on his News Anchor of RBSFM + skip to 1hr45m43s] *https://www.facebook.com/106671071630488/posts/590796608754282 [11MBPS with BG - Sep92021 - Jean Paul Generoso joins in as a primary fill-in anchor] *https://www.facebook.com/106671071630488/posts/149097774062033 [11MBPS with BG - Sep102021 - Babes Gantalao joins in as a secondary fill-in anchor] *https://www.facebook.com/106671071630488/posts/548182026478058 [11MBPS with JPG - Sep132021 - Jean Paul Generoso officiates a permanent radio anchor for 11MBPS + skip to 7m22s] *https://www.facebook.com/106671071630488/posts/985186038991334 [11MBPS with JPG - Sep142021 - regular programming with smaller details] *https://www.facebook.com/106671071630488/posts/383062596669099 [11MBPS with JPG - Sep152021 - final day in death for R.U. + skip to 8m3s] *https://newsinfo.inquirer.net/1488329/radioman-vlogger-die-from-covid-19 [Reference News Article from the Philippine Daily Inquirer] *https://www.facebook.com/100056879962520/posts/340162977889698 [Arlen Ballon Ballener's post] *https://www.facebook.com/100067049456325/posts/183299047248409 [RIP R.U. - Jean Paul Generoso's post #1] *https://www.facebook.com/100067049456325/posts/183284850583162 [RIP R.U. - Jean Paul Generoso's post #2f] and *https://www.facebook.com/106671071630488/posts/167570315540563 [RIP NOTICE from RBSFM Bacolod]

Special Thanks to a former Sparta Remix YouTuber (Matthew Fopalan a.k.a. nalapof) for confirmation and contributing our news report.

HONEST DISCLAIMER: The views and opinions expressed from this Breaking News report are not necessarily those from 5K Broadcasting Network Inc. & Radyo Bandera Network. Furthermore, the assumptions of this Breaking News report will NOT state, intervene or reflect those of our Radyo Patrol reporters. The show, the station, the management, interwebs and the network. Thanks for reading, mga ka-Bandera! Stay safe and may the Celestia blesses you. Later!

-- OneNETnews Team

[gordonwilliamsweb]

Lie of the Year: The Downplay and Denial of the Coronavirus

This story was produced in partnership with PolitiFact. It can be republished for free.

A Florida taxi driver and his wife had seen enough conspiracy theories online to believe the virus was overblown, maybe even a hoax. So no masks for them. Then they got sick. She died. A college lecturer had trouble refilling her lupus drug after the president promoted it as a treatment for the new disease. A hospital nurse broke down when an ICU patient insisted his illness was nothing worse than the flu, oblivious to the silence in beds next door.   

Lies infected America in 2020. The very worst were not just damaging, but deadly. 

President Donald Trump fueled confusion and conspiracies from the earliest days of the coronavirus pandemic. He embraced theories that COVID-19 accounted for only a small fraction of the thousands upon thousands of deaths. He undermined public health guidance for wearing masks and cast Dr. Anthony Fauci as an unreliable flip-flopper. 

But the infodemic was not the work of a single person. 

Anonymous bad actors offered up junk science. Online skeptics made bogus accusations that hospitals padded their coronavirus case numbers to generate bonus payments. Influential TV and radio opinion hosts told millions of viewers that physical distancing was a joke and that states had all of the personal protective equipment they needed (when they didn’t).

It was a symphony of counter-narrative, and Trump was the conductor, if not the composer. The message: The threat to your health was overhyped to hurt the political fortunes of the president. 

Every year, PolitiFact editors review the year’s most inaccurate statements to elevate one as the Lie of the Year. The “award” goes to a statement, or a collection of claims, that prove to be of substantive consequence in undermining reality. 

It has become harder and harder to choose when cynical pundits and politicians don’t pay much of a price for saying things that aren’t true. For the past month, unproven claims of massive election fraud have tested democratic institutions and certainly qualify as historic and dangerously baldfaced. Fortunately, the constitutional foundations that undergird American democracy are holding. 

Meanwhile, the coronavirus has killed more than 300,000 in the United States, a crisis exacerbated by the reckless spread of falsehoods.

PolitiFact’s 2020 Lie of the Year: claims that deny, downplay or disinform about COVID-19. 

‘I Wanted to Always Play It Down’

On Feb. 7, Trump leveled with book author Bob Woodward about the dangers of the new virus that was spreading across the world, originating in central China. He told the legendary reporter that the virus was airborne, tricky and “more deadly than even your strenuous flus.”

Trump told the public something else. On Feb. 26, the president appeared with his coronavirus task force in the crowded White House briefing room. A reporter asked if he was telling healthy Americans not to change their behavior.

“Wash your hands, stay clean. You don’t have to necessarily grab every handrail unless you have to,” he said, the room chuckling. “I mean, view this the same as the flu.”

Three weeks later, March 19, he acknowledged to Woodward: “To be honest with you, I wanted to always play it down. I still like playing it down. Because I don’t want to create a panic.”

His acolytes in politics and the media were on the same page. Rush Limbaugh told his audience of about 15 million on Feb. 24 that the coronavirus was being weaponized against Trump when it was just “the common cold, folks.” That’s wrong — even in the early weeks, it was clear the virus had a higher fatality rate than the common cold, with worse potential side effects, too.

As the virus was spreading, so was the message to downplay it. 

“There are lots of sources of misinformation, and there are lots of elected officials besides Trump that have not taken the virus seriously or promoted misinformation,” said Brendan Nyhan, a government professor at Dartmouth College. “It’s not solely a Trump story — and it’s important to not take everyone else’s role out of the narrative.” 

Hijacking the Numbers 

In August, there was a growing movement on Twitter to question the disproportionately high U.S. COVID-19 death toll.  

The skeptics cited Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data to claim that only 6% of COVID-19 deaths could actually be attributed to the virus. On Aug. 24, BlazeTV host Steve Deace amplified it on Facebook.

“Here’s the percentage of people who died OF or FROM Covid with no underlying comorbidity,” he said to his 120,000 followers. “According to CDC, that is just 6% of the deaths WITH Covid so far.”

That misrepresented the reality of coronavirus deaths. The CDC had always said people with underlying health problems — comorbidities — were most vulnerable if they caught COVID-19. The report was noting that 6% died even without being at obvious risk. 

But for those skeptical of COVID-19, the narrative confirmed their beliefs. Facebook users copied and pasted language from influencers like Amiri King, who had 2.2 million Facebook followers before he was banned. The Gateway Pundit called it a “SHOCK REPORT.”

“I saw a statistic come out the other day, talking about only 6% of the people actually died from COVID, which is very interesting — that they died from other reasons,” Trump told Fox News host Laura Ingraham on Sept. 1.

Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, addressed the claim on “Good Morning America” the same day. 

“The point that the CDC was trying to make was that a certain percentage of them had nothing else but just COVID,” he said. “That does not mean that someone who has hypertension or diabetes who dies of COVID didn’t die of COVID-19 — they did.”

Trump retweeted the message from an account that sported the slogans and symbols of QAnon, a conspiracy movement that claims Democrats and Hollywood elites are members of an underground pedophilia ring. 

False information moved between social media, Trump and TV, creating its own feedback loop.

“It’s an echo effect of sorts, where Donald Trump is certainly looking for information that resonates with his audiences and that supports his political objectives. And his audiences are looking to be amplified, so they’re incentivized to get him their information,” said Kate Starbird, an associate professor and misinformation expert at the University of Washington.

Weakening the Armor: Misleading on Masks

At the start of the pandemic, the CDC told healthy people not to wear masks, saying they were needed for health care providers on the front lines. But on April 3 the agency changed its guidelines, saying every American should wear non-medical cloth masks in public.

Trump announced the CDC’s guidance, then gutted it.

“So it’s voluntary. You don’t have to do it. They suggested for a period of time, but this is voluntary,” Trump said at a press briefing. “I don’t think I’m going to be doing it.”

Rather than an advance in best practices on coronavirus prevention, face masks turned into a dividing line between Trump’s political calculations and his decision-making as president. Americans didn’t see Trump wearing a mask until a July visit to Walter Reed National Military Medical Center.

Meanwhile, disinformers flooded the internet with wild claims: Masks reduced oxygen. Masks trapped fungus. Masks trapped coronavirus. Masks just didn’t work.

In September, the CDC reported a correlation between people who went to bars and restaurants, where masks can’t consistently be worn, and positive COVID-19 test results. Bloggers and skeptical news outlets countered with a misleading report about masks.

On Oct. 13, the story landed on Fox News’ flagship show, “Tucker Carlson Tonight.” During the show, Carlson claimed “almost everyone — 85% — who got the coronavirus in July was wearing a mask.”

“So clearly [wearing a mask] doesn’t work the way they tell us it works,” Carlson said.

That’s wrong, and it misrepresented a small sample of people who tested positive. Public health officials and infectious disease experts have been consistent since April in saying that face masks are among the best ways to prevent the spread of COVID-19.

But two days later, Trump repeated the 85% stat during a rally and at a town hall with NBC’s Savannah Guthrie. 

“I tell people, wear masks,” he said at the town hall. “But just the other day, they came out with a statement that 85% of the people that wear masks catch it.”

The Assault on Hospitals 

On March 24, registered nurse Melissa Steiner worked her first shift in the new COVID-19 ICU of her southeastern Michigan hospital. After her 13-hour workday caring for two critically ill patients on ventilators, she posted a tearful video.

“Honestly, guys, it felt like I was working in a war zone,” Steiner said. “[I was] completely isolated from my team members, limited resources, limited supplies, limited responses from physicians because they’re just as overwhelmed.” 

“I’m already breaking, so for f—’s sake, people, please take this seriously. This is so bad.”

Steiner’s post was one of many emotional pleas offered by overwhelmed hospital workers last spring urging people to take the threat seriously. The denialists mounted a counteroffensive.

On March 28, Todd Starnes, a conservative radio host and commentator, tweeted a video from outside Brooklyn Hospital Center. There were few people or cars in sight.

“This is the ‘war zone’ outside the hospital in my Brooklyn neighborhood,” Starnes said sarcastically. The video racked up more than 1.5 million views.

Starnes’ video was one of the first examples of #FilmYourHospital, a conspiratorial social media trend that pushed back on the idea that hospitals had been strained by a rapid influx of coronavirus patients. 

Several internet personalities asked people to go out and shoot their own videos. The result: a series of user-generated clips taken outside hospitals, where the response to the pandemic was not easily seen. Over the course of a week, #FilmYourHospital videos were uploaded to YouTube and posted tens of thousands of times on Twitter and Facebook.

Nearly two weeks and more than 10,000 deaths later, Fox News featured a guest who opened a new misinformation assault on hospitals.

Dr. Scott Jensen, a Minnesota physician and Republican state senator, told Ingraham that, because hospitals were receiving more money for COVID-19 patients on Medicare — a result of a coronavirus stimulus bill — they were overcounting COVID-19 cases. He had no proof of fraud, but the cynical story took off. 

Trump used the false report on the campaign trail to continue to minimize the death toll. 

“Our doctors get more money if somebody dies from COVID,” Trump told supporters at a rally in Waterford, Michigan, on Oct. 30. “You know that, right? I mean, our doctors are very smart people. So what they do is they say, ‘I’m sorry, but, you know, everybody dies of COVID.’”  

The Real Fake News: The Plandemic

The most viral disinformation of the pandemic was styled to look as if it had the blessing of people Americans trust: scientists and doctors.

In a 26-minute video called “Plandemic: The Hidden Agenda Behind COVID-19,” a former scientist at the National Cancer Institute claimed the virus was manipulated in a lab, hydroxychloroquine is effective against coronaviruses, and face masks make people sick. 

Judy Mikovits’ conspiracies received more than 8 million views, partly credited to the online outrage machine — anti-vaccine activists, anti-lockdown groups and QAnon supporters — that push disinformation into the mainstream. The video was circulated in a coordinated effort to promote Mikovits’ book release.

Around the same time, a similar effort propelled another video of fact-averse doctors to millions of people in only a few hours. 

On July 27, Breitbart published a clip of a press conference hosted by a group called America’s Frontline Doctors in front of the U.S. Supreme Court. Looking authoritative in white lab coats, these doctors discouraged mask-wearing and falsely said there was already a cure in hydroxychloroquine, a drug used to treat rheumatoid arthritis and lupus.

Trump, who had been talking up the drug since March and claimed to be taking it himself as a preventive measure in May, retweeted clips of the event before Twitter removed them as misinformation about COVID-19. He defended the “very respected doctors” in a July 28 press conference. 

When Olga Lucia Torres, a lecturer at Columbia University, heard Trump touting the drug in March, she knew it didn’t bode well for her own prescription. Sure enough, the misinformation led to a run on hydroxychloroquine, creating a shortage for Americans like her who needed the drug for chronic conditions. 

A lupus patient, she went to her local pharmacy to request a 90-day supply of the medication. But she was told they were granting only partial refills. It took her three weeks to get her medication through the mail. 

“What about all the people who were silenced and just lost access to their staple medication because people ran to their doctors and begged to take it?” Torres said.

No Sickbed Conversion

On Sept. 26, Trump hosted a Rose Garden ceremony to announce his nominee to replace the late Ruth Bader Ginsburg on the U.S. Supreme Court. More than 150 people attended the event introducing Amy Coney Barrett. Few wore masks, and the chairs weren’t spaced out.

In the weeks afterward, more than two dozen people close to Trump and the White House became infected with COVID-19. Early on Oct. 2, Trump announced his positive test.

Those hoping the experience and Trump’s successful treatment at Walter Reed might inform his view of the coronavirus were disappointed. Trump snapped back into minimizing the threat during his first moments back at the White House. He yanked off his mask and recorded a video.

“Don’t let it dominate you. Don’t be afraid of it,” he said, describing experimental and mostly out-of-reach therapies he received. “You’re going to beat it.” 

In Trump’s telling, his hospitalization was not the product of poor judgment about large gatherings like the Rose Garden event, but the consequence of leading with bravery. Plus, now, he claimed, he had immunity to the virus.

On the morning after he returned from Walter Reed, Trump tweeted a seasonal flu death count of 100,000 lives and added that COVID-19 was “far less lethal” for most populations. More false claims at odds with data — the U.S. average for flu deaths over the past decade is 36,000, and experts said COVID-19 is more deadly for each age group over 30.

When Trump left the hospital, the U.S. death toll from COVID-19 was more than 200,000. Today it is more than 300,000. Meanwhile, this month the president has gone ahead with a series of indoor holiday parties. 

The Vaccine War 

The vaccine disinformation campaign started in the spring but is still underway.

In April, blogs and social media users falsely claimed Democrats and powerful figures like Bill Gates wanted to use microchips to track which Americans had been vaccinated for the coronavirus. Now, false claims are taking aim at vaccines developed by Pfizer and BioNTech and other companies.

A blogger claimed Pfizer’s head of research said the coronavirus vaccine could cause female infertility. That’s false.

An alternative health website wrote that the vaccine could cause an array of life-threatening side effects, and that the FDA knew about it. The list included all possible — not confirmed— side effects.

Social media users speculated that the federal government would force Americans to receive the vaccine. Neither Trump nor President-elect Joe Biden has advocated for that, and the federal government doesn’t have the power to mandate vaccines, anyway.

As is often the case with disinformation, the strategy is to deliver it with a charade of certainty. 

“People are anxious and scared right now,” said Dr. Seema Yasmin, director of research and education programs at the Stanford Health Communication Initiative. “They’re looking for a whole picture.” 

Most polls have shown far from universal acceptance of vaccines, with only 50% to 70% of respondents willing to take the vaccine. Black and Hispanic Americans are even less likely to take it so far.

Meanwhile, the future course of the coronavirus in the U.S. depends on whether Americans take public health guidance to heart. The Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation projected that, without mask mandates or a rapid vaccine rollout, the death toll could rise to more than 500,000 by April 2021.

“How can we come to terms with all that when people are living in separate informational realities?” Starbird said.

PolitiFact staff researcher Caryn Baird contributed to this report.

Note: Readers can find the detailed source list for this story, as well as PolitiFact’s related coverage, or vote in the Lie of the Year Readers’ Choice Poll at PolitiFact.com.

Kaiser Health News (KHN) is a national health policy news service. It is an editorially independent program of the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation which is not affiliated with Kaiser Permanente.

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Lie of the Year: The Downplay and Denial of the Coronavirus published first on https://nootropicspowdersupplier.tumblr.com/

[stephenmccull]

Lie of the Year: The Downplay and Denial of the Coronavirus

This story was produced in partnership with PolitiFact. It can be republished for free.

A Florida taxi driver and his wife had seen enough conspiracy theories online to believe the virus was overblown, maybe even a hoax. So no masks for them. Then they got sick. She died. A college lecturer had trouble refilling her lupus drug after the president promoted it as a treatment for the new disease. A hospital nurse broke down when an ICU patient insisted his illness was nothing worse than the flu, oblivious to the silence in beds next door.   

Lies infected America in 2020. The very worst were not just damaging, but deadly. 

President Donald Trump fueled confusion and conspiracies from the earliest days of the coronavirus pandemic. He embraced theories that COVID-19 accounted for only a small fraction of the thousands upon thousands of deaths. He undermined public health guidance for wearing masks and cast Dr. Anthony Fauci as an unreliable flip-flopper. 

But the infodemic was not the work of a single person. 

Anonymous bad actors offered up junk science. Online skeptics made bogus accusations that hospitals padded their coronavirus case numbers to generate bonus payments. Influential TV and radio opinion hosts told millions of viewers that physical distancing was a joke and that states had all of the personal protective equipment they needed (when they didn’t).

It was a symphony of counter-narrative, and Trump was the conductor, if not the composer. The message: The threat to your health was overhyped to hurt the political fortunes of the president. 

Every year, PolitiFact editors review the year’s most inaccurate statements to elevate one as the Lie of the Year. The “award” goes to a statement, or a collection of claims, that prove to be of substantive consequence in undermining reality. 

It has become harder and harder to choose when cynical pundits and politicians don’t pay much of a price for saying things that aren’t true. For the past month, unproven claims of massive election fraud have tested democratic institutions and certainly qualify as historic and dangerously baldfaced. Fortunately, the constitutional foundations that undergird American democracy are holding. 

Meanwhile, the coronavirus has killed more than 300,000 in the United States, a crisis exacerbated by the reckless spread of falsehoods.

PolitiFact’s 2020 Lie of the Year: claims that deny, downplay or disinform about COVID-19. 

‘I Wanted to Always Play It Down’

On Feb. 7, Trump leveled with book author Bob Woodward about the dangers of the new virus that was spreading across the world, originating in central China. He told the legendary reporter that the virus was airborne, tricky and “more deadly than even your strenuous flus.”

Trump told the public something else. On Feb. 26, the president appeared with his coronavirus task force in the crowded White House briefing room. A reporter asked if he was telling healthy Americans not to change their behavior.

“Wash your hands, stay clean. You don’t have to necessarily grab every handrail unless you have to,” he said, the room chuckling. “I mean, view this the same as the flu.”

Three weeks later, March 19, he acknowledged to Woodward: “To be honest with you, I wanted to always play it down. I still like playing it down. Because I don’t want to create a panic.”

His acolytes in politics and the media were on the same page. Rush Limbaugh told his audience of about 15 million on Feb. 24 that the coronavirus was being weaponized against Trump when it was just “the common cold, folks.” That’s wrong — even in the early weeks, it was clear the virus had a higher fatality rate than the common cold, with worse potential side effects, too.

As the virus was spreading, so was the message to downplay it. 

“There are lots of sources of misinformation, and there are lots of elected officials besides Trump that have not taken the virus seriously or promoted misinformation,” said Brendan Nyhan, a government professor at Dartmouth College. “It’s not solely a Trump story — and it’s important to not take everyone else’s role out of the narrative.” 

Hijacking the Numbers 

In August, there was a growing movement on Twitter to question the disproportionately high U.S. COVID-19 death toll.  

The skeptics cited Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data to claim that only 6% of COVID-19 deaths could actually be attributed to the virus. On Aug. 24, BlazeTV host Steve Deace amplified it on Facebook.

“Here’s the percentage of people who died OF or FROM Covid with no underlying comorbidity,” he said to his 120,000 followers. “According to CDC, that is just 6% of the deaths WITH Covid so far.”

That misrepresented the reality of coronavirus deaths. The CDC had always said people with underlying health problems — comorbidities — were most vulnerable if they caught COVID-19. The report was noting that 6% died even without being at obvious risk. 

But for those skeptical of COVID-19, the narrative confirmed their beliefs. Facebook users copied and pasted language from influencers like Amiri King, who had 2.2 million Facebook followers before he was banned. The Gateway Pundit called it a “SHOCK REPORT.”

“I saw a statistic come out the other day, talking about only 6% of the people actually died from COVID, which is very interesting — that they died from other reasons,” Trump told Fox News host Laura Ingraham on Sept. 1.

Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, addressed the claim on “Good Morning America” the same day. 

“The point that the CDC was trying to make was that a certain percentage of them had nothing else but just COVID,” he said. “That does not mean that someone who has hypertension or diabetes who dies of COVID didn’t die of COVID-19 — they did.”

Trump retweeted the message from an account that sported the slogans and symbols of QAnon, a conspiracy movement that claims Democrats and Hollywood elites are members of an underground pedophilia ring. 

False information moved between social media, Trump and TV, creating its own feedback loop.

“It’s an echo effect of sorts, where Donald Trump is certainly looking for information that resonates with his audiences and that supports his political objectives. And his audiences are looking to be amplified, so they’re incentivized to get him their information,” said Kate Starbird, an associate professor and misinformation expert at the University of Washington.

Weakening the Armor: Misleading on Masks

At the start of the pandemic, the CDC told healthy people not to wear masks, saying they were needed for health care providers on the front lines. But on April 3 the agency changed its guidelines, saying every American should wear non-medical cloth masks in public.

Trump announced the CDC’s guidance, then gutted it.

“So it’s voluntary. You don’t have to do it. They suggested for a period of time, but this is voluntary,” Trump said at a press briefing. “I don’t think I’m going to be doing it.”

Rather than an advance in best practices on coronavirus prevention, face masks turned into a dividing line between Trump’s political calculations and his decision-making as president. Americans didn’t see Trump wearing a mask until a July visit to Walter Reed National Military Medical Center.

Meanwhile, disinformers flooded the internet with wild claims: Masks reduced oxygen. Masks trapped fungus. Masks trapped coronavirus. Masks just didn’t work.

In September, the CDC reported a correlation between people who went to bars and restaurants, where masks can’t consistently be worn, and positive COVID-19 test results. Bloggers and skeptical news outlets countered with a misleading report about masks.

On Oct. 13, the story landed on Fox News’ flagship show, “Tucker Carlson Tonight.” During the show, Carlson claimed “almost everyone — 85% — who got the coronavirus in July was wearing a mask.”

“So clearly [wearing a mask] doesn’t work the way they tell us it works,” Carlson said.

That’s wrong, and it misrepresented a small sample of people who tested positive. Public health officials and infectious disease experts have been consistent since April in saying that face masks are among the best ways to prevent the spread of COVID-19.

But two days later, Trump repeated the 85% stat during a rally and at a town hall with NBC’s Savannah Guthrie. 

“I tell people, wear masks,” he said at the town hall. “But just the other day, they came out with a statement that 85% of the people that wear masks catch it.”

The Assault on Hospitals 

On March 24, registered nurse Melissa Steiner worked her first shift in the new COVID-19 ICU of her southeastern Michigan hospital. After her 13-hour workday caring for two critically ill patients on ventilators, she posted a tearful video.

“Honestly, guys, it felt like I was working in a war zone,” Steiner said. “[I was] completely isolated from my team members, limited resources, limited supplies, limited responses from physicians because they’re just as overwhelmed.” 

“I’m already breaking, so for f—’s sake, people, please take this seriously. This is so bad.”

Steiner’s post was one of many emotional pleas offered by overwhelmed hospital workers last spring urging people to take the threat seriously. The denialists mounted a counteroffensive.

On March 28, Todd Starnes, a conservative radio host and commentator, tweeted a video from outside Brooklyn Hospital Center. There were few people or cars in sight.

“This is the ‘war zone’ outside the hospital in my Brooklyn neighborhood,” Starnes said sarcastically. The video racked up more than 1.5 million views.

Starnes’ video was one of the first examples of #FilmYourHospital, a conspiratorial social media trend that pushed back on the idea that hospitals had been strained by a rapid influx of coronavirus patients. 

Several internet personalities asked people to go out and shoot their own videos. The result: a series of user-generated clips taken outside hospitals, where the response to the pandemic was not easily seen. Over the course of a week, #FilmYourHospital videos were uploaded to YouTube and posted tens of thousands of times on Twitter and Facebook.

Nearly two weeks and more than 10,000 deaths later, Fox News featured a guest who opened a new misinformation assault on hospitals.

Dr. Scott Jensen, a Minnesota physician and Republican state senator, told Ingraham that, because hospitals were receiving more money for COVID-19 patients on Medicare — a result of a coronavirus stimulus bill — they were overcounting COVID-19 cases. He had no proof of fraud, but the cynical story took off. 

Trump used the false report on the campaign trail to continue to minimize the death toll. 

“Our doctors get more money if somebody dies from COVID,” Trump told supporters at a rally in Waterford, Michigan, on Oct. 30. “You know that, right? I mean, our doctors are very smart people. So what they do is they say, ‘I’m sorry, but, you know, everybody dies of COVID.’”  

The Real Fake News: The Plandemic

The most viral disinformation of the pandemic was styled to look as if it had the blessing of people Americans trust: scientists and doctors.

In a 26-minute video called “Plandemic: The Hidden Agenda Behind COVID-19,” a former scientist at the National Cancer Institute claimed the virus was manipulated in a lab, hydroxychloroquine is effective against coronaviruses, and face masks make people sick. 

Judy Mikovits’ conspiracies received more than 8 million views, partly credited to the online outrage machine — anti-vaccine activists, anti-lockdown groups and QAnon supporters — that push disinformation into the mainstream. The video was circulated in a coordinated effort to promote Mikovits’ book release.

Around the same time, a similar effort propelled another video of fact-averse doctors to millions of people in only a few hours. 

On July 27, Breitbart published a clip of a press conference hosted by a group called America’s Frontline Doctors in front of the U.S. Supreme Court. Looking authoritative in white lab coats, these doctors discouraged mask-wearing and falsely said there was already a cure in hydroxychloroquine, a drug used to treat rheumatoid arthritis and lupus.

Trump, who had been talking up the drug since March and claimed to be taking it himself as a preventive measure in May, retweeted clips of the event before Twitter removed them as misinformation about COVID-19. He defended the “very respected doctors” in a July 28 press conference. 

When Olga Lucia Torres, a lecturer at Columbia University, heard Trump touting the drug in March, she knew it didn’t bode well for her own prescription. Sure enough, the misinformation led to a run on hydroxychloroquine, creating a shortage for Americans like her who needed the drug for chronic conditions. 

A lupus patient, she went to her local pharmacy to request a 90-day supply of the medication. But she was told they were granting only partial refills. It took her three weeks to get her medication through the mail. 

“What about all the people who were silenced and just lost access to their staple medication because people ran to their doctors and begged to take it?” Torres said.

No Sickbed Conversion

On Sept. 26, Trump hosted a Rose Garden ceremony to announce his nominee to replace the late Ruth Bader Ginsburg on the U.S. Supreme Court. More than 150 people attended the event introducing Amy Coney Barrett. Few wore masks, and the chairs weren’t spaced out.

In the weeks afterward, more than two dozen people close to Trump and the White House became infected with COVID-19. Early on Oct. 2, Trump announced his positive test.

Those hoping the experience and Trump’s successful treatment at Walter Reed might inform his view of the coronavirus were disappointed. Trump snapped back into minimizing the threat during his first moments back at the White House. He yanked off his mask and recorded a video.

“Don’t let it dominate you. Don’t be afraid of it,” he said, describing experimental and mostly out-of-reach therapies he received. “You’re going to beat it.” 

In Trump’s telling, his hospitalization was not the product of poor judgment about large gatherings like the Rose Garden event, but the consequence of leading with bravery. Plus, now, he claimed, he had immunity to the virus.

On the morning after he returned from Walter Reed, Trump tweeted a seasonal flu death count of 100,000 lives and added that COVID-19 was “far less lethal” for most populations. More false claims at odds with data — the U.S. average for flu deaths over the past decade is 36,000, and experts said COVID-19 is more deadly for each age group over 30.

When Trump left the hospital, the U.S. death toll from COVID-19 was more than 200,000. Today it is more than 300,000. Meanwhile, this month the president has gone ahead with a series of indoor holiday parties. 

The Vaccine War 

The vaccine disinformation campaign started in the spring but is still underway.

In April, blogs and social media users falsely claimed Democrats and powerful figures like Bill Gates wanted to use microchips to track which Americans had been vaccinated for the coronavirus. Now, false claims are taking aim at vaccines developed by Pfizer and BioNTech and other companies.

A blogger claimed Pfizer’s head of research said the coronavirus vaccine could cause female infertility. That’s false.

An alternative health website wrote that the vaccine could cause an array of life-threatening side effects, and that the FDA knew about it. The list included all possible — not confirmed— side effects.

Social media users speculated that the federal government would force Americans to receive the vaccine. Neither Trump nor President-elect Joe Biden has advocated for that, and the federal government doesn’t have the power to mandate vaccines, anyway.

As is often the case with disinformation, the strategy is to deliver it with a charade of certainty. 

“People are anxious and scared right now,” said Dr. Seema Yasmin, director of research and education programs at the Stanford Health Communication Initiative. “They’re looking for a whole picture.” 

Most polls have shown far from universal acceptance of vaccines, with only 50% to 70% of respondents willing to take the vaccine. Black and Hispanic Americans are even less likely to take it so far.

Meanwhile, the future course of the coronavirus in the U.S. depends on whether Americans take public health guidance to heart. The Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation projected that, without mask mandates or a rapid vaccine rollout, the death toll could rise to more than 500,000 by April 2021.

“How can we come to terms with all that when people are living in separate informational realities?” Starbird said.

PolitiFact staff researcher Caryn Baird contributed to this report.

Note: Readers can find the detailed source list for this story, as well as PolitiFact’s related coverage, or vote in the Lie of the Year Readers’ Choice Poll at PolitiFact.com.

Kaiser Health News (KHN) is a national health policy news service. It is an editorially independent program of the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation which is not affiliated with Kaiser Permanente.

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This story can be republished for free (details).

Lie of the Year: The Downplay and Denial of the Coronavirus published first on https://smartdrinkingweb.weebly.com/

[shirlleycoyle]

Facebook Hires Fox News Producer Who Has Poisoned Boomer Brains for Years

Facebook has hired Jennifer Williams, a longtime Fox News producer, to work on its editorial video strategy. At Fox News, Williams spent years working in key roles on Fox & Friends and The Daily Briefing, flagship programs of a network that has long operated as a right-wing propaganda machine.

Williams will work on Facebook's official curated feed of news sources alongside journalists from publications including CNN, the New York Times, ABC News, Huff Post, and the BBC.

“Jennifer will work with other curators to build out video news components that may be added to the curated sections Facebook News in the future," Facebook said in a statement to Motherboard. "The stories that appear in Today’s Stories are selected by a diverse team of journalists hired by Facebook.”

According to her LinkedIn profile and news outlets who have covered the hiring, Williams worked in a variety of roles at Fox News from 1997 to 2019. She landed at Fox and Friends, where she became a producer in 2006 and a senior producer in 2007. From 2013 to 2019, she worked as an executive producer for The Real Story with Gretchen Carlson, the AEHQ radio program, and finally The Daily Briefing with Dana Perino, the titular host of which did a stint as former President George W. Bush’s press secretary.

Besides having a reputation as Donald Trump's favorite news show, Fox and Friends also has a long history of fueling America’s right-wing culture war with fake or exaggerated news. As MediaMatters pointed out, during Williams’ tenure the show ran a debunked report that Obama was “educated at a madrassa.” John Moody, then Fox Vice President for news, reportedly issued an editorial note reminding the newsroom "seeing an item on a website does not mean it is right. Nor does it mean it is ready for air on FNC" and went to the New York Times to lambast the hosts for "violat[ing] one of our general rules, which is [to] know what you are talking about."

While an executive producer at Carlson's show, the program pushed Ebola conspiracy theories and covered an imaginary war on Christmas. While Williams was executive producing Perino’s show, it let the FCC's Ajit Pai lie about net neutrality to sell its repeal and had Ben Shapiro on to brand the New York Times as an “activist organization” for its reporting on Donald Trump.

Really, standard Fox News stuff that we’re all familiar with by now and which has melted many boomer brains via long-term exposure.

Years later, Carlson defended her time at Fox and said, "We all have producers in the morning who set the agenda, and there are many times that you don't agree with what you're going to be saying that particular day."

In an interview with Judd Legum, a Facebook spokesperson apparently stressed that her time on Fox and Friends came before Trump was president, which apparently is supposed to count for something.

In October, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg wrote a blog post revealing that Facebook would be shifting away from using algorithms to curate news and will rely instead on human curators to help build Facebook News' feature tab. What Zuckerberg did not mention is that news on the platform used to be curated by humans, but that initiative was scrapped in 2016 after conservatives accused the company of a bias against them. The decision turned its Trending Topics section into a breeding ground for fake news that flooded the platform.

Facebook has gone out of its way to cater to the far right over the years—for example, by enabling right-wing propaganda, filling key positions with Republican operatives, and now by hiring someone who contributed to today’s warped political landscape in a key editorial role. On top of that, Facebook has a long documented history of introducing changes and features which, at best, have hurt the media’s ability to check fake news and more often undermine everyone’s ability to make sense of the world on and off the platform.

Facebook keeps assuring us it takes its role in our media landscape and cultural commons seriously, but its actions rarely seem to match those honeyed words. In fact, it makes a lot of sense that Facebook would hire a Fox News producer who played a role in feeding baby boomers misleading stories, given that research has shown boomers share the most fake news on Facebook. Really, Facebook is just the Fox News of social networks.

Facebook Hires Fox News Producer Who Has Poisoned Boomer Brains for Years syndicated from https://triviaqaweb.wordpress.com/feed/

[jimbrown1940]

GET HEALTHY-DRINK MORE COKE?

Baton Rouge, Louisiana

GET HEALTHY-DRINK MORE COKE?

I picked up a recent copy of Men’s Health Magazinewith a lengthy article on weight loss based on research from Louisiana’s own Pennington Biomedical Research Center.  The results were typical-eat less, eat early, breath deep, get and lots of exercise. And sugar?  The Pennington study concludes that all those naysayers who express concern over the dangers of sugar are exaggerating a bit.  “The evidence is underwhelming that sugar is much or any worse than other refined carbs.”  So great news for all you sugar addictors.  Just cut back a bit on the carbs say the folks at Pennington.

There’s always been a disconnect between the accolades LSU gives itself for academic achievement and the bottom line results that come from national rankings. Louisiana’s flagship rarely cracks the top 100 universities in the U.S., with a majority of SEC schools outperforming LSU year after year. In the 2019 university rankings by US News and World Report, LSU comes in at number 140.

But there’s always been one shining star in the LSU System — The Pennington Biomedical Research Center. Pennington has been recognized as a world leader in obesity research and disease prevention. The center’s mission statement reflects the pride it takes in its work:

“Since 1988, the mission of the Pennington Biomedical Research Center has been to promote healthier lives through research and education in nutrition and preventive medicine. As the largest academic-based nutritional research center in the world, we have the unique distinction of housing the greatest concentration of obesity research scientists.”

The center’s mission is commendable considering that the most recent statistics from the Center for Disease Control and Prevention conclude that more than one-third (34.9% or 78.6 million) of U.S. adults are obese. The annual medical cost of obesity in the U.S. is approaching $200 billion. The public picks up on any new study from Pennington Center, because of its stellar national and international reputation.

The LSU Center released another study not too long back on why so many Americans are overweight. Pennington’s executive director called the study “cutting-edge research.” Their conclusion? The center’s press release cites “a lack of physical activity” as the main culprit. Nothing about Big Macs, fries, and sugar coated almost everything. And, oh yes — no mention at all of soft drinks like Coca Cola.

So who paid for the study? What public interest organization funded this noble effort to get our kids healthier? Why none other than, you guessed it, Coca Cola. The world’s largest producer of sugar loaded beverages wants us to quit worrying about cutting calories. Just get more exercise. That apparently is the key to losing lots of weight. Yeah, right!

The Baton Rouge Advocate’s James Gill succinctly asked: “Why do academics bother was such a charade? Give ‘em a sack full of money and they’ll solemnly go through all the motions of a quest for the truth. All together now: ‘I’d like to buy the world a Coke.’”

Back during my days in public life as Louisiana’s Insurance Commissioner, I proposed legislation that would eliminate sugar loaded soft drinks from dispensaries in public schools. The beverage alliance, including Coca Cola, strongly lobbied against such legislation, arguing that profits from these machines went to buy school athletic uniforms. So you load up the kids with sugar before sending them out on the playing field in great looking uniforms.

The front organization for Coca Cola’s money, called The Global Energy Balance Network, has issued a press release that says, “Most of the focus in the popular media and in the scientific press is that they’re eating too much, eating too much, eating too much — blaming fast food, blaming sugary drinks and so on. And there’s really virtually no compelling evidence that that in fact is the cause.”

No compelling evidence? What! There have been numerous non-biased scientific studies that repeatedly and conclusively prove fast food and sugary drinks cause obesity. To say otherwise insults the intelligence of even the average observer. Coca Cola does a great disservice by allowing their front organization to make such unfounded claims.

The Pennington Center press office told me that this study is ongoing and subject to refining as research progresses. They have their work cut out for them. To leave their initial conclusions that exercise far outweighs poor dietary choices doesn’t pass the smell test. Or for that matter, the taste test.

Peace and Justice

Jim Brown

Jim Brown’s syndicated column appears each week in numerous newspapers throughout the nation and on websites worldwide.  You can read all his past columns and see continuing updates at http://www.jimbrownusa.com. You can also hear Jim’s nationally syndicated radio show each Sunday morning from 9 am till 11:00 am, central time, on the Genesis Radio Network, with a live stream at http://www.jimbrownusa.com.

[abcnewspr]

ABC NEWS PRESENTS SPECIAL COVERAGE OF THE CORONATION OF KING CHARLES III ON SATURDAY, MAY 6 

‘Good Morning America’ To Broadcast Live From London Beginning Monday, May 1 

ABC News will present special coverage of the historic coronation of King Charles III and Queen Camilla on Saturday, May 6, beginning at 5 a.m. EDT on ABC and streaming live on ABC News Live. Coverage will be anchored by “Good Morning America” co-anchor Michael Strahan alongside senior national affairs correspondent Deborah Roberts, “Good Morning America”’s Lara Spencer, chief foreign correspondent Ian Pannell, foreign correspondents James Longman, Maggie Rulli, Britt Clennett and Lama Hasan, contributors Robert Jobson and Victoria Murphy and others. 

“Good Morning America” will have coverage throughout the week leading up to the coronation, beginning Monday, May 1. Stories on “GMA” will include Rulli live from Caernarfon Castle in Wales, Longman live from Poundbury with a piece on King Charles’ interest in environmental issues, and Spencer live from Dumfries House in Scotland, giving viewers a look at the house King Charles saved for the nation and how he’s trying to open up the monarchy to the public. Spencer joins Roberts and the ABC News team live from London on Thursday, May 4, highlighting last-minute preparations, the crown jewels, and the roles of the royal children and the British military at the coronation. Strahan, Spencer, Roberts and the entire team will be live from London on Friday, May 5, as the morning show looks at the life and family of King Charles III, his relationship with Queen Camilla and the Commonwealth, and what viewers can expect from Saturday’s coronation. A special edition of “Good Morning America” will air on the West Coast from London following the Coronation. 

“GMA3: What You Need to Know” will also feature coverage of the coronation throughout the week. 

ABC News Digital and “GMA” Digital will have coverage throughout the week, leading up to the coronation on May 6, including a live blog, wall-to-wall coverage of the big events, royal family moments, and the fashion from the historic day. Digital will also showcase historic moments from Queen Elizabeth II’s coronation, a look back at King Charles III’s environmental work, and how the coronation is being received in Caribbean Commonwealth countries where anti-monarchy sentiments have been at the forefront. ABC News Digital will also have coverage across several social channels, including “GMA,” ABC News and ABC News Live. 

ABC News’ flagship daily podcast “Start Here,” hosted by Brad Mielke, will feature special coverage of the king’s coronation, including interviews with correspondents covering the event. ABC News Radio will provide audio of ABC’s special coverage to affiliates, hourly status reports on Saturday, May 6, from 5:00-10:00 a.m. EDT, and two-ways with correspondents in London. 

ABC NewsOne, the affiliate news service of ABC News, will be providing live reports from London on all the festivities with multiplatform reporter Ines de la Cuetara. NewsOne provides news content and services for more than 200 ABC affiliates and international news partners. 

*COPYRIGHT ©2023 American Broadcasting Companies, Inc. All photography is copyrighted material and is for editorial use only. Images are not to be archived, altered, duplicated, resold, retransmitted or used for any other purposes without written permission of ABC. Images are distributed to the press to publicize current programming. Any other usage must be licensed.   

ABC News Media Relations  Anna Negrón  anna.m.negron@abc.com  

-- ABC -- 

[scotianostra]

Clifford Leonard Clark “Cliff” Hanley was born on October 28th 1922 in Glasgow.

Again, not a well known man, but he had a great career, Hanley was a journalist, novelist, playwright and broadcaster from Shettleston in the city’s East End, he was educated at Eastbank Academy.

Hanley’s journalistic career began with a life of crime - reporting from the city courts for a local news agency. By the time he had graduated to the Daily Record, it was clear that he had an astonishingly versatile range. In particular, he loved the then hectic world of Glasgow show-business, reporting on the raft of theatres which still survived in the city in the 1960s.

On that scene Hanley was always more than a commentator and reviewer, his membership of Equity testifying to his skills on the speaking circuit, and to his talent as a lyricist. With the musician Ian Gourlay, he wrote some marvellously witty parodies of Scottish folk songs, substituting institutions like the Glasgow underground for Granny’s Hielan’ Hame.

Hanley’s hallmark was that brand of self-deprecating, but sharp, humour which ensures that no Glaswegian can entertain ideas above his station in the company of a fellow citizen.

Hanley’s childhood in Glasgow’s East End provided the material for his most celebrated novel, Dancing In The Street, a semi-autobiographical work which was much acclaimed on publication in the late 1950s. It is still considered one of the most engaging books about Glasgow, the grittier experiences always leavened and laced with Hanley’s irrepressible humour. Several other novels quickly followed to a similarly warm reception.

I know some of you will still be struggling to recall Hanley’s work, but he wrote the lyric for one of the most famous Scottish songs ever, putting the words to well known bagpipe tunes that we know as “Traditional” Hanley gave us the words to Scotland the Brave, which emerged as the de facto national anthem. It remained so for two decades before being supplanted by Flower Of Scotland, I still remember football matches where they played the tune at International matches as the national team anthem.

Of course, Cliff’s tongue-in-cheek verses were never designed for mass singing, as was evidenced by the confused expressions on the faces of the national soccer team when they struggled to get their bagpipes, heather and glens in the right order. But played at full tilt by a pipe band, the anthem struck the appropriate note of terror into the opposition.

For a while Hanley also worked in radio, but although he continued as a regular contributor, his career as a presenter was relatively short lived. In 1970, he was hired to work on Good Morning, Scotland, the flagship morning news programme, but fell foul of the accent police - at that time received pronunciation was still considered desirable. Thank god we still don’t adhere to the old rules, we would never have the likes of Lorraine Kelly, Dougie Henshall and Ken Stott using their own god given accents on TV.

Cliff died on  August 9th, 1999.

[euroman1945-blog]

The Daily Tulip

The Daily Tulip – News From Around The World

Monday 4th June 2018

Good Morning Gentle Reader….  Just like clockwork another Monday has arrived, it only seems like only six days ago we had one… Warm breeze blowing from Africa just 20 kilometers across the water, Bella lift’s her head and sniffs can’t have been very interesting, she moves on .. and so must I, thoughts of all the things I have to do run through my head and as if she understand, Bella pulls for home, the start of another Monday…

ICELAND'S PAGAN ZUIST RELIGION HOPES TO BUILD TEMPLE…. Members of a pagan Icelandic religious movement based on ancient Sumerian beliefs are set to get a temple in the capital of Reykjavik, it's been reported. According to the Iceland Monitor news website, Zuists - people belonging to a modern pagan religious movement based on the Sumerian religion - have applied for permission to build a two-story "Ziggurat" as a centre for their growing congregation. Zuism is a relatively new faith; it was registered as an official religion in Iceland in 2013, and over 2,800 people are members. Zuist leader Águst Arnar Ágústsson told the paper that the group had always planned to have a place of worship for its followers, but given the movement's rapid expansion in Iceland, this had grown all the more urgent. He says the movement needs space for name-giving, weddings and general worship, as well as "beer and prayer" meetings. Iceland Monitor says that a surge of attraction in Zuism may be because members do not have to pay parish fees. Registered Zuists - also known as Zuistar - are being asked, instead of paying old-school parish fees, to contribute to a Ziggurat Fund to help build and maintain the planned temple. Some may also have been drawn to ancient Sumerian beliefs through their worship of the 1984 film Ghostbusters, yet might be disappointed to find that Zuism recognises no Zuul, and no Gozer the Gozerian, and that civilisation is unlikely to be destroyed by a giant marshmallow man. The movement claims its belief system is the oldest in the world, and is based around the Sumerian pantheon in that it recognises An, Enlil, Enki and other deities as worshipped in ancient Mesopotamia…

BALLET AND FOOTBALL COLLIDE ON THE RUSSIAN STAGE…. One Russian city is to get a different view of the 2018 FIFA World Cup with a football-based ballet celebrating the "Beautiful Game", but at least one critic isn't impressed. Ufa, a city of more than one million inhabitants in Bashkiria on the Volga river, was overlooked for football's major event, but will instead host the premiere of "On Football", the Vesti.ru news website reports. The World Cup will take place in Russia between 14 June to 15 July, but FC Ufa's 15,000 seat Neftyanik Stadium, a model of mid-table respectability in the Russian Premier League, was not deemed worthy of inclusion. Instead, the action will be at the city's Bashkir Theatre on 30 June, where the ballet's organisers claim there will be "passions worthy of Shakespeare on the stage", as well as scenes from the game.

SWEDISH SHEEP BREACHES ROYAL PROTOCOL…. The Swedish army has re-raised a regiment on the island of Gotland to counter any Russia threat from across the Baltic Sea, but during the official ceremony, its new sheep mascot stole the show by interrupting King Carl XVI Gustaf as he addressed the troops. The P18 Gotland Regiment was disbanded in 2005, but the government decided to re-establish it in 2015. One task was to recruit a local sheep to follow in the hoof-prints of the four previous mascots, all called Harald, Swedish public radio reports. Harald I served from 1979 to 1988, rising to the rank of honorary corporal before retiring, according to the local Helagotland news site. And the latest Harald was chosen from a highly competitive field, as the regiment's commander Mattias Ardin reported on Twitter. All the Haralds have been Gotland sheep, a breed descended from the vädur - a "symbol for both Gotland and the regiment", regimental chief of staff Hans Håkansson told Swedish radio. The ancient breed is famous for both males and females with dramatic curled horns. They have featured on regimental standards since 1811, and still appear on the sleeve insignia to this today, But the latest incarnation broke with protocol when he interrupted the King at the re-dedication ceremony on Gotland this week. Carl XVI Gustaf had called on the soldiers and their co-workers "to always to do your best to protect the core values upon which the Swedish nation and its armed forces rest", prompting an emphatic bleat, perhaps of approval, from the new mascot at the word "co-workers", Swedish radio reports.

MOSCOW STATIONS GET WORLD CUP SELFIE SPOTS…. World Cup visitors arriving at Moscow railway stations will not have to look far for the perfect spot to take a selfie, as platforms and ticket halls will soon have special labels marking out the ideal camera angle. Green stickers of a camera image adorned with a smiley and the words "photography allowed" will be rolled out across nine mainline railway stations, in time for this summer's football World Cup in the Russian capital, Komsomolskaya Pravda newspaper reports. There will be an average of 20 stickers per station, and at nine centimetres (four inches) in diameter they will be easily visible, according to the Moscow mayor's office. They will mark out prime spots in waiting rooms, business centres, on platforms, and in front of the main entrances. The Moscow department of Russian Railways says the aim is to "encourage amateur photography, and allow tourists and passengers to take that first beautiful picture right after stepping off the train". There are already some stickers on the platforms of Moscow underground stations, and the flagship Moscow Central Circle line will get 190 of the green camera labels this week, the Mayor's office said. "Many Moscow Central Circle stations are located in the historic city centre, and provide the perfect camera angle for memorable photos," according to the railway press office. Moscow is expecting an influx of fans for the World Cup on 14-15 July, and railways stations are gearing up to hand out maps and guidebooks to those who choose to arrive by train - primarily at the Kazan and Leningrad terminuses. The official attitude to railway photography has changed dramatically since Soviet times, when stations were treated as strategic sites, and unwary snappers often ended up having uncomfortable conversations with secret policemen.

Well Gentle Reader I hope you enjoyed our look at the news from around the world this, Monday morning… …

Our Tulips today are just in case you thought it was "Hot Air"...

A Sincere Thank You for your company and Thank You for your likes and comments I love them and always try to reply, so please keep them coming, it's always good fun, As is my custom, I will go and get myself another mug of "Colombian" Coffee and wish you a safe Monday 4th June 2018 from my home on the southern coast of Spain, where the blue waters of the Alboran Sea washes the coast of Africa and Europe and the smell of the night blooming Jasmine and Honeysuckle fills the air…and a crazy old guy and his dog Bella go out for a walk at 4:00 am…on the streets of Estepona…

All good stuff....But remember it’s a dangerous world we live in

Be safe out there…

Robert McAngus #robertmcangus #tulips #travel

[mastvideos]

Can The President Actually Take Away A Network’s Broadcast License For “Fake News”?

Irked by an NBC News story he claims is false, President Trump stated this morning that it may be time to “challenge” the network’s broadcast license. But what does that even mean — and would the Trump administration have the authority to yank a TV station’s access to the airwaves over a news story?

It all started when NBC News ran a report about the President claiming that he had at one point asked national security advisers for a massive increase in the nation’s nuclear arsenal.

Trump objected to the report, calling it “pure fiction” and denigrating it with his frequent epithet, “fake news.” Then, in a second tweet, he went a step farther, saying, “With all of the Fake News coming out of NBC and the Networks, at what point is it appropriate to challenge their License? Bad for country!”

With all of the Fake News coming out of NBC and the Networks, at what point is it appropriate to challenge their License? Bad for country!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 11, 2017

He doubled down on his words in a press conference later in the day, adding, “It is disgusting the way the press can write whatever they want. People should look into it.”

This outburst left the internet with two major questions. One: what is a broadcast license, anyway? And two: can he do that?

What is a broadcast license?

When you boil it down, all of the data that travels to us wirelessly — from the oldest old-school AM radio to as-yet unavailable 5G mobile data — travels through radio waves, in a fairly narrow slice of the EM spectrum.

But as we learn in high school physics, when too many things try to use the same frequency in close proximity to each other, the signals interfere with each other, everything gets screwed up, and nothing works. So the Federal Communications Commission has long managed everything to do with who can use what stretches of spectrum.

That includes issuing licenses for all TV and radio broadcast stations.

A broadcast license grants a specific entity permission to carry its radio or TV station in a specific region, on a specific frequency (i.e., “102.5 FM” or “channel 12”).

In return for getting sole access to a certain slice of spectrum, the station operator agrees to operate in the “public interest, convenience and necessity.”

Who needs a broadcast license?

The FCC licenses individual TV and radio broadcast stations — but not cable, broadcast, or on-demand networks.

That’s a key difference. NBC is a network, not a channel.

Comcast, NBCUniversal’s parent company, does own several affiliate stations. Take, for example, New York City’s flagship NBC affiliate, WNBC (channel 4). That station, like any other, needs and has, a valid broadcast license. But its parent company, from which it gets network content, does not.

Do licenses mean the FCC regulates content?

For the most part, aside from obscene and profane content, no.

The FCC’s guide to broadcast licensing explicitly says that the free expression of a wide range of views is judged to be in the public interest — exactly what broadcasters are licensed to do.

“The First Amendment and the Communications Act bar the FCC from telling station licensees how to select material for news programs, or prohibiting the broadcast of an opinion on any subject,” the Commission explains.

There are two exceptions. The first are hoaxes: The FCC can intervene when a news broadcaster knowingly perpetuates false information that causes “substantial harm” that it should have foreseen.

The second is knowing perpetuation of false news, or “news distortion.” This is, as you might guess, something the Commission notes it often receives complaints about. However, it very rarely investigates such claims.

“The Commission generally will not intervene in such cases because it would be inconsistent with the First Amendment to replace the journalistic judgment of licensees with our own,” the FCC’s guide notes. If someone presents evidence that a broadcaster intentionally directed employees to falsify news reports, the FCC might investigate.

“However,” the Commission concludes, “absent such a compelling showing, the Commission will not intervene.”

And it’s been a long time since the Commission received such a compelling showing: Politico notes that the last time a U.S. broadcaster lost a license was in the 1970s, when a station’s management was convicted of bribery.

So, it’s an empty threat?

In the details, yes. NBC, as a network, doesn’t have a station license to begin with — and even if it did, the FCC’s own rules say it wouldn’t investigate or revoke it for doing broadcast journalism that one person, even the nation’s most powerful person, didn’t like.

However, observers note, just because the President’s threat is technically empty doesn’t mean it’s harmless.

Several outlets immediately drew a parallel to the Watergate era, when President Nixon tried to prevent the Washington Post — which of course broke the infamous Watergate story — from renewing the license of a station it owned in Florida.

Former FCC chair Tom Wheeler told the New York Times, “Broadcast licenses are a public trust. They’re not a political toy, which is what [Trump is] trying to do here.”

That sentiment was echoed by other past and present commissioners.

“This madcap threat, if pursued, would be blatant and unacceptable intervention in the decisions of an independent agency,” former FCC Commissioner Michael Copps, now an advisor to the advocacy group Common Cause, said in a statement. “The law does not countenance such interference … additionally, it’s not just NBC stations that will find this threat chilling, but also smaller independent stations around the country who might lack the resources to fight back.”

Current commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel, meanwhile, settled for Tweeting one very simple statement: “Not how it works.”

Not how it works.

See here: https://t.co/1JgiJyk5wK https://t.co/1aNpYsk7BG

— Jessica Rosenworcel (@JRosenworcel) October 11, 2017

by Kate Cox via Consumerist via Blogger http://ift.tt/2gvJZkw http://ift.tt/eA8V8J

[yes-dal456]

Never Downplay The ‘Worst Headache Of My Life,’ And More Key Facts About Brain Aneurysms

Editor’s note: Last week, we began an emphasis on American Stroke Month with the story of a woman whose life was saved by her son because he know how to spot a stroke F.A.S.T. We continue with the cautionary tale of a woman who suffered a different type of stroke, and her husband’s promise to ensure that other families avoid the devastating loss he and his boys face each day.

In March 2015, Lisa Colagrossi began suffering the most intense and frequent headaches she’d ever felt. They intensified in bright light.

One afternoon, she arrived home from work, clutched her head and told her husband, Todd Crawford, “I have the worst headache of my life.”

If only he’d known what it all meant.

After you read this, Todd hopes you’ll never forget.

***

Lisa Colagrossi joined WABC, the ABC network’s flagship station in New York City, soon after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

Once she and Todd had children – Davis and Evan – Lisa took an early morning shift. This let her pick up her kids from school and be with them through bedtime.

The afternoon she complained of the violent headache, Todd encouraged her to see a doctor. She opted to power through it. After all, she rarely suffered anything more than a cold. Maybe this was just all those nights of five hours of sleep finally catching up.

The following Wednesday night, Lisa, Todd and the boys huddled around the kitchen table filling out their NCAA tournament brackets. When Todd took Davis to hockey practice, Lisa and Evan mounted the brackets on colored paper and displayed it all on a door in the kitchen.

She wanted everything ready for their Super Bowl-esque tournament-watching party that was to begin right after school Thursday.

***

Early Thursday, Lisa reported live from a four-alarm fire engulfing several homes in Queens. At the usual time – 7:15 a.m. – she called home to make sure the boys had their lunches and homework ready to go.

“I love you,” she said. “See you this afternoon.”

After enjoying a laugh with the driver of the news truck, she clutched her head with both hands and said, “Marvin, something is happening to me.” A cameraman flagged down an ambulance.

Around 9:30 a.m., a doctor at Presbyterian Hospital called Todd. Lisa’s heart had stopped and been revived.

“You need to check her head,” Todd said. “She’s been complaining of massive headaches the last few weeks.”

***

Lisa had a subarachnoid hemorrhage. She was bleeding in the space between her brain and skull.

The bleeding came from a blood vessel that tore open – a ruptured brain aneurysm.

An aneurysm is a weakness in a vessel wall that causes it to bubble out. That “worst headache of her life” was the aneurysm emerging.

Had she taken it more seriously, doctors could have discovered and probably repaired it.

Now?

“As soon as I saw her, I knew she was not going to make it,” Todd said.

Doctors discussed end-of-life options with Todd. During his hour-long drive home, he searched for the words he knew would forever shatter their sons’ lives.

Davis and Evan were watching basketball when he arrived.

***

Everyone said goodbye to Lisa at the hospital Friday morning. Todd went first.

He held her hand and kissed her forehead. He leaned to her ear and whispered:

“I love you. Please go be with God. I will raise the boys the way you want me to. And I promise to do everything I can to prevent this from happening to other people.”

***

The vow wasn’t planned. The words tumbled from his lips in that moment.

Weeks later, the promise became his purpose. Todd would support a credible organization promoting awareness and education about brain aneurysms. He just needed to find it.

Googling “brain aneurysm foundation,” he came across organizations that funded research and treatment. As for awareness and education …

“A big, big void,” he said.

And, from his perspective, a big opportunity.

***

The Lisa Colagrossi Foundation launched in September 2015.

The organization’s tagline is, “Shedding light on brain aneurysms.” It all starts with teaching the warning signs and symptoms, the most common being:

Sudden WHOL – “Worst headache of life.”

Sudden sensitivity to light.

Sudden stiffness of neck.

Many of the other brain aneurysm signals are the same as the F.A.S.T. warning signs for a stroke: face drooping, arm weakness and speech difficulty. That’s because brain aneurysms trigger a type of stroke. It’s also why the response should be the same: Call 911.

Between Lisa’s friends and fans, and Todd’s connections over 30 years as an executive in sports and entertainment, he began spreading the word on “Good Morning America,” “Fox & Friends,” “The Dr. Oz Show” and more.

He built a crew of ambassadors including Whoopi Goldberg, chef Mario Batali, actress Maryam D'abo, NASCAR driver Joey Gase and several current and former NFL players. All either survived a brain aneurysm or lost a loved one to a brain aneurysm. (Goldberg’s connection is especially chilling: The day after Lisa died, Goldberg paid her respects on “The View,” adding, “Please love your families. Moments happen like that,” she said, snapping her fingers. A month later, her brother died of a ruptured brain aneurysm.)

Last September, the foundation held its first gala, dubbed “A Cerebral Affair.” A featured guest: Kris Sorensen, the first person to credit the foundation for saving her life.

Kris’ sister heard Todd discussing the warning signs on Glenn Beck’s radio show. When Kris called her sister complaining about “the worst headache of my life,” her sister insisted that Kris get to a hospital. She eventually had an operation to repair two aneurysms.

Todd has heard from many others around the world who credit the foundation’s work for lifesaving awareness. They’ve reached him directly or left messages on the foundation’s Facebook page.

“Our approach has been validated,” he said.

Anecdotally, Todd knew most people know little about aneurysms. He quantified it through a survey last September, which is National Brain Aneurysm Awareness Month.

Among the findings: 90 percent of American adults don’t know what a brain aneurysm is. Not a single responder knew all the warning signs, leading to this headline for the foundation’s news release:

100% OF AMERICANS FAILED TO IDENTIFY ALL WARNING SIGNS OF A BRAIN ANEURYSM, YET RUPTURES OCCUR EVERY 18 MINUTES

Awareness and public education will remain the foundation’s top priority. Todd is considering targeting medical professionals, too, such as those in emergency rooms (because of the need for immediate diagnosis) and obstetricians-gynecologists (because women face a 50 percent higher risk than men). He also notes that the first support group recently began in Florida.

And, just in time for what would’ve been Lisa’s 52nd birthday Tuesday and Mother’s Day on Sunday, the foundation released its first public service announcement.

***

Davis turned 17 last week and is a junior in high school. Evan is 13 and in seventh grade. Both have a gaping hole in their lives.

They also understand how sudden and random catastrophic events can be.

“If I’m even 30 seconds late for school pickup, my son automatically begins to panic,” he said. “He calls me and the first words out of his mouth are, `Are you OK?’”

They’re working through their grief together. They also take solace in the lives saved by The Lisa Colagrossi Foundation.

“Even though it’ll never bring back their mom, they know we are making a positive difference in the world,” Todd said.

Another challenge is the annual arrival of the NCAA tournament. Its connection to both their final happy time with Lisa and to her death make it tough to navigate. To the boys, the eve and opening day of the tournament are the anniversary more than the actual dates.

Then there’s Todd. As the founder, executive director and lead spokesman of The Lisa Colagrossi Foundation, and as a widower/single parent, his life revolves Lisa’s absence.

Some people might find that more difficult. To him, it’s empowering.

“Love does not die in death,” he said. “I still talk to Lisa every day. I believe she is guiding this organization from above.”

He’s also driven by this thought:

“If somebody had been doing the work that the Lisa Colagrossi Foundation is doing today, Lisa might still be with us.”

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

from http://ift.tt/2praolZ from Blogger http://ift.tt/2pTI1iU

[imreviewblog]

Never Downplay The ‘Worst Headache Of My Life,’ And More Key Facts About Brain Aneurysms

Editor’s note: Last week, we began an emphasis on American Stroke Month with the story of a woman whose life was saved by her son because he know how to spot a stroke F.A.S.T. We continue with the cautionary tale of a woman who suffered a different type of stroke, and her husband’s promise to ensure that other families avoid the devastating loss he and his boys face each day.

In March 2015, Lisa Colagrossi began suffering the most intense and frequent headaches she’d ever felt. They intensified in bright light.

One afternoon, she arrived home from work, clutched her head and told her husband, Todd Crawford, “I have the worst headache of my life.”

If only he’d known what it all meant.

After you read this, Todd hopes you’ll never forget.

***

Lisa Colagrossi joined WABC, the ABC network’s flagship station in New York City, soon after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

Once she and Todd had children – Davis and Evan – Lisa took an early morning shift. This let her pick up her kids from school and be with them through bedtime.

The afternoon she complained of the violent headache, Todd encouraged her to see a doctor. She opted to power through it. After all, she rarely suffered anything more than a cold. Maybe this was just all those nights of five hours of sleep finally catching up.

The following Wednesday night, Lisa, Todd and the boys huddled around the kitchen table filling out their NCAA tournament brackets. When Todd took Davis to hockey practice, Lisa and Evan mounted the brackets on colored paper and displayed it all on a door in the kitchen.

She wanted everything ready for their Super Bowl-esque tournament-watching party that was to begin right after school Thursday.

***

Early Thursday, Lisa reported live from a four-alarm fire engulfing several homes in Queens. At the usual time – 7:15 a.m. – she called home to make sure the boys had their lunches and homework ready to go.

“I love you,” she said. “See you this afternoon.”

After enjoying a laugh with the driver of the news truck, she clutched her head with both hands and said, “Marvin, something is happening to me.” A cameraman flagged down an ambulance.

Around 9:30 a.m., a doctor at Presbyterian Hospital called Todd. Lisa’s heart had stopped and been revived.

“You need to check her head,” Todd said. “She’s been complaining of massive headaches the last few weeks.”

***

Lisa had a subarachnoid hemorrhage. She was bleeding in the space between her brain and skull.

The bleeding came from a blood vessel that tore open – a ruptured brain aneurysm.

An aneurysm is a weakness in a vessel wall that causes it to bubble out. That “worst headache of her life” was the aneurysm emerging.

Had she taken it more seriously, doctors could have discovered and probably repaired it.

Now?

“As soon as I saw her, I knew she was not going to make it,” Todd said.

Doctors discussed end-of-life options with Todd. During his hour-long drive home, he searched for the words he knew would forever shatter their sons’ lives.

Davis and Evan were watching basketball when he arrived.

***

Everyone said goodbye to Lisa at the hospital Friday morning. Todd went first.

He held her hand and kissed her forehead. He leaned to her ear and whispered:

“I love you. Please go be with God. I will raise the boys the way you want me to. And I promise to do everything I can to prevent this from happening to other people.”

***

The vow wasn’t planned. The words tumbled from his lips in that moment.

Weeks later, the promise became his purpose. Todd would support a credible organization promoting awareness and education about brain aneurysms. He just needed to find it.

Googling “brain aneurysm foundation,” he came across organizations that funded research and treatment. As for awareness and education …

“A big, big void,” he said.

And, from his perspective, a big opportunity.

***

The Lisa Colagrossi Foundation launched in September 2015.

The organization’s tagline is, “Shedding light on brain aneurysms.” It all starts with teaching the warning signs and symptoms, the most common being:

Sudden WHOL – “Worst headache of life.”

Sudden sensitivity to light.

Sudden stiffness of neck.

Many of the other brain aneurysm signals are the same as the F.A.S.T. warning signs for a stroke: face drooping, arm weakness and speech difficulty. That’s because brain aneurysms trigger a type of stroke. It’s also why the response should be the same: Call 911.

Between Lisa’s friends and fans, and Todd’s connections over 30 years as an executive in sports and entertainment, he began spreading the word on “Good Morning America,” “Fox & Friends,” “The Dr. Oz Show” and more.

He built a crew of ambassadors including Whoopi Goldberg, chef Mario Batali, actress Maryam D'abo, NASCAR driver Joey Gase and several current and former NFL players. All either survived a brain aneurysm or lost a loved one to a brain aneurysm. (Goldberg’s connection is especially chilling: The day after Lisa died, Goldberg paid her respects on “The View,” adding, “Please love your families. Moments happen like that,” she said, snapping her fingers. A month later, her brother died of a ruptured brain aneurysm.)

Last September, the foundation held its first gala, dubbed “A Cerebral Affair.” A featured guest: Kris Sorensen, the first person to credit the foundation for saving her life.

Kris’ sister heard Todd discussing the warning signs on Glenn Beck’s radio show. When Kris called her sister complaining about “the worst headache of my life,” her sister insisted that Kris get to a hospital. She eventually had an operation to repair two aneurysms.

Todd has heard from many others around the world who credit the foundation’s work for lifesaving awareness. They’ve reached him directly or left messages on the foundation’s Facebook page.

“Our approach has been validated,” he said.

Anecdotally, Todd knew most people know little about aneurysms. He quantified it through a survey last September, which is National Brain Aneurysm Awareness Month.

Among the findings: 90 percent of American adults don’t know what a brain aneurysm is. Not a single responder knew all the warning signs, leading to this headline for the foundation’s news release:

100% OF AMERICANS FAILED TO IDENTIFY ALL WARNING SIGNS OF A BRAIN ANEURYSM, YET RUPTURES OCCUR EVERY 18 MINUTES

Awareness and public education will remain the foundation’s top priority. Todd is considering targeting medical professionals, too, such as those in emergency rooms (because of the need for immediate diagnosis) and obstetricians-gynecologists (because women face a 50 percent higher risk than men). He also notes that the first support group recently began in Florida.

And, just in time for what would’ve been Lisa’s 52nd birthday Tuesday and Mother’s Day on Sunday, the foundation released its first public service announcement.

***

Davis turned 17 last week and is a junior in high school. Evan is 13 and in seventh grade. Both have a gaping hole in their lives.

They also understand how sudden and random catastrophic events can be.

“If I’m even 30 seconds late for school pickup, my son automatically begins to panic,” he said. “He calls me and the first words out of his mouth are, `Are you OK?’”

They’re working through their grief together. They also take solace in the lives saved by The Lisa Colagrossi Foundation.

“Even though it’ll never bring back their mom, they know we are making a positive difference in the world,” Todd said.

Another challenge is the annual arrival of the NCAA tournament. Its connection to both their final happy time with Lisa and to her death make it tough to navigate. To the boys, the eve and opening day of the tournament are the anniversary more than the actual dates.

Then there’s Todd. As the founder, executive director and lead spokesman of The Lisa Colagrossi Foundation, and as a widower/single parent, his life revolves Lisa’s absence.

Some people might find that more difficult. To him, it’s empowering.

“Love does not die in death,” he said. “I still talk to Lisa every day. I believe she is guiding this organization from above.”

He’s also driven by this thought:

“If somebody had been doing the work that the Lisa Colagrossi Foundation is doing today, Lisa might still be with us.”

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from Healthy Living - The Huffington Post http://huff.to/2pTw1xO

[abcnewspr]

ABC NEWS ANNOUNCES SPECIAL COVERAGE OF THE 2023 STATE OF THE UNION ADDRESS BY PRESIDENT JOE BIDEN AND THE REPUBLICAN RESPONSE

‘World News Tonight’ Anchor David Muir Leads Coverage From Washington, D.C., With ABC News’ Powerhouse Political Team

ABC News Live Will Have Dedicated State of the Union Coverage Throughout the Day

ABC News* 

ABC News presents special coverage of the 2023 State of the Union address by President Joe Biden and the Republican response by Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders, airing Tuesday, Feb. 7 (9:00 p.m.-11:00 p.m. EST), on ABC, and streaming on ABC News Live. 

“World News Tonight” anchor David Muir will lead primetime coverage from Washington, D.C., with ABC News’ powerhouse political team, including “ABC News Live Prime” anchor Linsey Davis, chief Washington correspondent Jonathan Karl, chief global affairs correspondent Martha Raddatz, senior White House correspondent Mary Bruce, senior congressional correspondent Rachel Scott, chief justice correspondent Pierre Thomas, senior national correspondent Terry Moran, “Nightline” co-anchor and chief national correspondent Byron Pitts, political director Rick Klein, and ABC News contributors Chris Christie and Donna Brazile previewing the speeches, providing analysis and reporting on news and developments. Correspondents will also report during coverage on ABC News Live. 

Muir will anchor a special edition of “World News Tonight,” and Pitts will anchor a special edition of “Nightline” from Washington, D.C., on Tuesday, Feb. 7.  

“Good Morning America” and “GMA3: What You Need to Know” will have special pre- and post-coverage of the State of the Union.  

ABC News Live will have comprehensive coverage throughout the day, with Davis anchoring a special edition of “ABC News Live Prime with Linsey Davis” from Washington, D.C., as well as a late-night recap following the State of the Union address. Moran will anchor a 30-minute special ahead of the address. 

ABC News Digital will provide in-depth coverage of the State of the Union address, including an up-to-the-minute live blog with the politics team from FiveThirtyEight, key takeaways focusing on main themes and an analysis of the speech’s political implications.  

ABC News Radio will offer live anchored coverage of the address on Tuesday evening, including a one-hour preview show at 8 p.m. EST, anchored by senior investigative reporter Aaron Katersky and White House correspondent Karen Travers with insight and analysis from multiplatform reporter Elizabeth Schulze on Capitol Hill and the powerhouse political team. ABC News’ flagship daily podcast “Start Here,” hosted by Brad Mielke, will have reactions and analysis from its team at the Capitol. 

ABC NewsOne, the affiliate news service of ABC News, will be providing reports from Capitol Hill with multiplatform reporters Faith Abubey and Ike Ejiochi. Klein will be providing analysis. NewsOne provides news content and services for more than 200 ABC affiliates and international news partners. 

For more information, follow ABC News PR on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. 

*COPYRIGHT ©2022 American Broadcasting Companies, Inc. All photography is copyrighted material and is for editorial use only. Images are not to be archived, altered, duplicated, resold, retransmitted or used for any other purposes without written permission of ABC. Images are distributed to the press in order to publicize current programming. Any other usage must be licensed. Photos posted for Web use must be at the low resolution of 72dpi, no larger than 2x3 in size.   

ABC News Media Relations  

Anna Negrón   anna.m.negron@abc.com  

Alisa Vasquez   alisa.vasquez@abc.com 

-- ABC --