Behold this morning’s bland, almost boring headline from the New York Times: “Wisconsin Judge Arrest: What We Know.” That’s it! Not, Trump Escalates War With Judicial Branch, or even Experts: Trump Arrests Cause Constitutional Crisis. Just “what we know,” like it’s too soon to draw any conclusions.
Jeff Childers ….
This is a great piece on how the Corporate Media backtracks and walks back the narrative when the fuck up
Paywalled . So here you go

The Times was backpedaling wildly, like a crab with a windup windmill strapped to its back. The article is a hilarious study in narrative reverse-gear. Let’s use it to learn more media manipulation tactics! We’ll start with the story’s three opening paragraphs:

Can you see the psychological inversion? The first paragraph offers a neutral description of what happened, with nearly no slant (except “undocumented,” but that’s an NYT style guide requirement). More importantly, it plainly admitted what the judge did— “directing (him) out of her courtroom through a side door.”
Then the second paragraph —the bridge— primed readers to transition away from yesterday’s NYT narrative of outrage! It was the shortest of the three paragraphs, mentioning “condemnation” and “protests” but did not quote anybody or even say what the problem was.
See how easy it is to hide the stale narrative salami? You just oil across it without getting in the weeds.
By the third paragraph, the Times was ready, even eager, to throw in the towel. It did quote someone, the Attorney General, and placed in skeptical quotation marks the very same words it had just quoted as fact in the first paragraph (“escorting (him) out a back door”). It was not accidental that those critical narrative-framing paragraphs were bookended with the same repetitive statements of fact.
There were just enough differences between the two to give cover for journalistic neutrality. What Bondi called “escorting,” the Times corrected to “directing.” What Bondi labeled “a back door,” the Times primly revised to “a side door.” And of course, Bondi properly called him a “criminal defendant,” which the Times laundered down to “undocumented immigrant.” (That one was especially annoying, since the whole reason Flores-Ruiz was there was on account of his criminal case and not for any immigration matter. But never mind.)
Anyway, by the time the reader finished the third paragraph, everyone understood what the judge did, as an uncontroversial truth, as though it were not a hotly debated fact about ten minutes ago. Whatever— having wrapped that failed narrative in chains and sunk it in the Hudson River, now the Times could get down to putting out the flames its pyromaniacal reporters started yesterday.

The next paragraph, below an ad, quoted FBI Director Kash Patel’s tweet that “no one is above the law.” So —don’t miss this— the Times published the Administration’s complete position before quoting anybody else on the other side. It could be the first time this has ever happened. That’s how bad their error was yesterday, and they obviously know it.
The next seven paragraphs —still without quoting a single opponent— described what happened on the day Judge Dugan sealed her fate. Astonishingly, the Times described it straight. While the paper took pains to minimize what the judge did (she only “directed him out a side door”), it also reported helpful facts, like how the Clerk of Court had already told the arrest team it was okay to do it in the hallway outside Judge Dugan’s courtroom.
Following that was about twenty paragraphs divided into two sections. The first section was headed “Who is Judge Dugan?”, and the second (naturally) was titled “Who is Flores-Ruiz?” Twenty more paragraphs later, there was still not a single peep from anyone protesting the arrest. The persistent reader, having made it thus far, enjoyed no hint whatsoever as to what the controversy was all about.
The article described Ruiz’s criminal charges clinically and minimally, but honestly. “Mr. Flores-Ruiz got into a fight with his roommate,” the Times explained, “who had asked him to turn down the music he was playing. The roommate said Mr. Flores-Ruiz struck him about 30 times and also hit the roommate’s girlfriend and her cousin.”
Sounds like a delightful individual.
The article also mentioned —drily, but it was there— Ruiz’s previous 2013 deportation and his illegal re-entry to Milwaukee, where he’s lived off the books for twelve years. By this point, any reader who wasn’t an all-out open borders fanatic would pretty much side with the INS. Flores-Ruiz should be on the next plane to El Salvador.
And still not a single word from the Times about what is the controversy?
Finally, at long last, we reached the concluding section, blandly but thoughtfully titled, “What are some potential implications of the arrests?” Don’t skim by the word “potential” too fast. That’s a psychological nugget designed to stealthily hollow out any worries about dictatorships or autocracies springing up in the White House rose garden. In other words, right now, what we know is that the dangers remain “potential.”
And, they aren’t even dangers. They’re just implications. Implied stuff.
As the paper finally moved into the merits, it discovered a rare equanimity and balance that almost never appears in its pages. I defy you to find another example of the Times being this even-handed. Behold:

It then tossed around a few quick ideas about how this could affect other judges, and then, finally, at long last, the “condemnations” teased in the article’s second paragraph appeared —forty paragraphs after its debut.
Ready? It quoted only two concerned citizens, and no “Democratic leaders.” One of the quotes was not even a full sentence. It must have been humiliating for the Times, and thus is so delicious for we observers.
The first quote was from Ann Jacobs, a random Milwaukee lawyer, a local barrister whose only qualification was that she’d appeared before Judge Dugan once. According to the Times, Ann said, get ready, that Judge Dugan’s arrest was so “profound and unheard-of” it was difficult to foresee how it might affect judges’ behavior “and the court system at large.”
In other words, nobody knows yet. That’s hardly controversial.

The next and final quote was, confusingly, another Ann. This one was Ann Rohrer, 62, who is a health care worker from Wauwatosa, Wisconsin. Wauwatosa Ann joined a handful of elderly protestors defending Judge Dugan outside the courtroom on Friday. Why? The Times said Ann worries that “our democracy, our country is under attack.”
And that’s it. That’s the whole “controversy.”
? There were no quotes from oleaginous Adam Schiff. No quotes from the cackling congressional coven of Nancy Pelosi, Elizabeth Warren, and AOC. No quotes from ‘legal experts.’
Most telling of all— there were no quotes from any judges.
It’s like an indefinable controversy sprouted thin roots in the story’s second paragraph, but then dissolved back in melting Milwaukee snow by the time readers reached the Spring thaw of the article’s conclusion fifty paragraphs later.
And there you have it. This is how the malevolent media tries to frantically reel back a failed narrative when it realizes it’s leaned too far out over its skis. They bury it in confusion and “potential” problems, and hint that “we don’t know everything yet,” showing a kind of prudent reserve that, like a rare flower, only appears in its storied pages once in a decade.
The next step is to memory-hole this story. It’s about to disappear entirely. Mark my words.
They can make the Judge Dugan and Judge Cano stories go away, but they can’t resurrect their now-dead deportation narrative. Not to say they’ll try, of course, but two arrested judges later, everything is different.
Apart from that lone “What We Know” story, guess what was completely missing from the Times’ website? Any headlines or op-eds about deportations. Just like that, in three days, Trump squashed the narrative.