MEDIA LIES, CULTURE-WAR CRAP
The opinions expressed in blog posts are those of the author and not necessarily those of YouthFacts.org
Librarians Punch Down on Teenagers By Anthony Bernier | October 2023 | Toleration for difference, unfettered access to contrary opinions, and the promotion of free expression number among the institution’s core values […] So, it’s all the more disturbing to continually discover national library leaders punching down on the very young people they purport to be defending in these pitched battles.
Los Angeles’s Astounding Youth Trends Terrifying Everyone. By Mike Males | April 2023 | The LA Times and other media run tiresomely repetitive articles hyping “crises” of youths, guns, drugs, crime, and suicide that dodge real facts.
American journalists, politicians, and interest groups left to right agree: It’s okay to lie about teens. Mike Males| February 2022 Ninety-nine percent of the tens of thousands of news stories and commentaries on teenagers, suicide, and drug overdose lie. The willfully create a false impression.
Schools Squander Imperative Schools are struggling, to say the least. By their own report, the US Department of Education paints a damning picture of the inability of educators and school leaders to recapture and re-institute the “good ol’ days” before the pandemic. Stories I have heard directly from teachers on the ground confirm this reality. By Adam Fletcher | January 2023
Michelle Obama Blames Her Relationship Challenges On Her Young Daughters It is never okay to make such sweeping generalizations about an entire group of people, especially with the kind of platform Michelle Obama has as a former First Lady. And if a Harvard-educated woman living in a mansion paid for by the government is struggling to raise her kids, what does that say about the rest of us?. By Milo Santamaria | January 2023
Why does anyone pay attention to Jonathan Haidt? Jonathan Haidt, who should be a national laughingstock. Instead, the New York University business professor is splashed across major media for quips trashing Generation-Z youth as social-media “weakened” employees, intolerant, shallow students, and an “entire generation that’s doing terribly” that endangers the future of America’s economy. By Mike Males | January 2023
America’s news media: a cesspool of anti-youth misinformation. YouthFacts’ fact-checking of media stories reveals a repeated series of identical falsehoods. Every media story on youth is mindlessly, numbingly the same. There’s no sense of editor or reporter initiative, responsibility, professionalism, fairness, interest in accuracy, or even avoiding the most primitive insanity and hostile exploitation.
Is the internet safer for youths than church? Leave those kids online alone. Their odds of being raped or murdered by online predators are far lower than in church or at home.
Why is bigotry and distortion against young people the one prejudice that remains acceptable in political and media forums? The growing power of once-stigmatized minority groups has created a dilemma for mainstream and liberal leaders and commentators who seek both the support of minority constituencies and the privileges of ugly “demographic scapegoating” (blaming powerless groups for social ills). Solution: Trash young people, the one remaining safe scapegoat… facts and fairness be damned. (read more)
What’s really wrong with young people today: Juvenoia. “Teens and young adults remain one group of people that can be publicly disparaged with almost no condemnation,” writes psychologist Chris Ferguson. “A vein of true loathing runs through much of the discussion. And until we’re honest about that it will continue to produce urban legends and junk science.”
“Commonsense.org” mongers senseless fear and censorship. Parents should never allow even older high schoolers to watch “Game of Thrones,” “Girls,” “Nurse Jackie,” “Orange Is the New Black”, “The Sopranos,” “NCIS,” and dozens of other shows? Are they f****** kidding?
“Knuckleheads”? The real “knucklehead:” First Lady Michelle Obama’s gratuitous, mean-spirited youth bashing delights right-wingers. In truth, her middle-aged generation’s “knuckleheaded” misbehaviors, from skyrocketing violent crime to drug-driven deaths to obesity and family disarray, that are costing young insurance consumers big money.
“Teens and Torture”–more atrocious “alternative media” misreporting on youth, featuring dubious survey.The Huffington Post and Daily Beast continue their atrocious culture-war hate campaigns against modern youth with junk reporting uncritically recycling the unfounded claim from a scam survey that teens (but not adults) “support torture.” On youth issues, there is no “alternative” or “progressive” media–right to left, corporate to alternative, it’s all the same old anti-youth panics.
Is there an “epidemic” of teens terrorizing the homeless? Not even nearly. This supposed “new fad” of teens to beat and murder homeless people stems from a tiny number of sensational cases that advocates and their media sycophants eagerly generalize to all teenagers. As with most populations, the biggest threats of violence by far to the homeless are from their homeless peers.
School-bus bullying rage shows how crazy bullying discourse has become. Four students who bullied a school bus monitor with cruel taunts have received thousands of violent threats–including promised beatings, sexual dismemberments, even death directed at their families–from grownups across the country whose knowledge of the incident is limited to viewing a 10-minute online video and press accounts. As much as these youths may deserve punishment, are their verbal tauntings really the big issue?
The right way to be racist in 2010. What was shock-jock Don Imus thinking? “Nappy-headed ho’s” is racist! Enlightened liberals know the correct phrasing is, “Young African American women afflicted with corporate-advertising-driven promiscuity and pseudo-native hairstyles.”
If Lindsay is the Everygirl, then is her even worse mother the Everymom? Yes, the girl’s got problems (beginning with her parents), but that doesn’t excuse the lynch mob mentality that seems to include her publicity-craving mother.