PAFOUA YANG, UNVAXXED AND UNSILENCED
Former WCCO/CBS Minnesota reporter Pafoua Yang has rejoined her former WCCO/CBS Minnesota colleague Liz Collin at Alpha News, on whose board I sit. We are excited to have them both join the team under the editorship of Anthony Gockowski. Alpha News has posted the announcement here. Liz interviews Pafoua about her move in the video below. Like Liz, she has a story to tell (it’s touched on in the video).
The Twin Cities badly need the alternative press Alpha News aspires to provide. The dominant daily newspaper is like the NPR described by William Deresiewicz in the UnHerd column “Escaping American tribalism.” The Star Tribune fits right in here with Mr. D’s declaration of independence from NPR and the rest of the media herd:
My discontent had been building since the previous summer, the summer of the George Floyd protests. It was clear from the beginning that the network would be covering the movement not like journalists but advocates. A particular line was being pushed. There was an epidemic of police violence against unarmed African-Americans; black people were in danger of being murdered by the state whenever they walked down the street. The protests were peaceful, and when they weren’t, the violence was minor, or it was justified, or it was exclusively initiated by the cops. Although we had been told for months to stay indoors, the gatherings did not endanger public health — indeed, they promoted it. I supported the protests; I just did not appreciate the fact that I was being lied to.
But it wasn’t just that story. Overnight, the network’s entire orientation had changed. Every segment was about race, and when it wasn’t about race, it was about gender. The stories were no longer reports but morality plays, with predictable bad guys and good guys. Skepticism was banished. Divergent opinions were banished. The pronouncements of activists, the arguments of ideologically motivated academics, were accepted without question. The tone became smug, certain, self-righteous. To turn on the network was to be subjected to a program of ideological force-feeding. I was used to the idiocies of the academic Left — I had been dealing with them ever since I started graduate school — but now they were leaking out of my radio.
Nor was it only NPR. One by one, the outlets that I counted on for reliable reporting and intelligent opinion — that I, in some measure, identified with — fell in line.
Alpha News will not fall in line. I thought readers might be interested in Pafoua’s personal story as set forth in the brief video.
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