Category Archives: Joel’s J School

Diggs Standard for Supremes

By Joel Thurtell Staff Writer A former congressman named Charles Diggs spent seven months in prison in 1978 for what reportedly is routine behavior by three justices on the U. S. Supreme Court. According to the April 30, 2023 New … Continue reading

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Times n-word hypocrisy

I sent the following letter to letters@nytimes on May 2, 2021. So far, it has not appeared in The Times. To the Editor: Regarding The Times’ May 2 op-ed, “How the N-Word Became Unsayable,” by John McWhorter: Times editors thought … Continue reading

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CASS COUNTY ‘JUSTICE’

BY JOEL THURTELL Police unions are taking the rap for defending lawbreaking cops. Police chiefs argue that they are powerless to fire bad cops. There was a time when top cops openly made the case for protecting bad police officers. … Continue reading

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THE 1977 POLICE KILLING OF MCELDON TISDEL

BY JOEL THURTELL She might as well have shot him herself.  The cops did the job for her. The victim was 28-year-old McEldon Tisdel, a black man  living with his family in a nearly all-white village in southwestern Michigan. Through … Continue reading

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THE DOWNWARD SPIRAL — underground at the Free Press

BY JOEL THURTELL Thirty years ago, journalists at Detroit’s two daily newspapers were just waking up to the realities of the merger of their operations into one operation aimed at making a fortune for owners Knight-Ridder and Gannett. No, no, … Continue reading

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First Amendment for reporters? Gannett says ‘NOPE!”

BY JOEL THURTELL Screams from The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and Washington Post. Those authoritarian Chinese booted our journalists! But Trump expelled 60 Chinese journalists from the US. Do foreign journalists have First Amendment rights? Better question: do … Continue reading

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Flint’s man-made water crisis: where are the watchdogs?

By Joel Thurtell What a disaster the Flint water crisis has become. There was no need for tens of thousands of people to lose their publicly-provided source of clean drinking and bathing water. But government stupidity, folly, dishonesty made it … Continue reading

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Calling Schuette’s shots

By Joel Thurtell I complimented Free Press reporter Joe Guillen for dogging the billionaire Matty Moroun and his brazen takeover of the Detroit-Wayne County Port Authority. I was glad to see the Free Press report Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette’s … Continue reading

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Good job, Free Press — keep the heat on Matty!

By Joel Thurtell The Detroit Free Press reports that Michigan Attorney General William Schuette, without explanation, has declined to review the deal that gave billionaire Manuel “Matty” Moroun control of the Detroit/Wayne County Port Authority. That is disgusting. Kudos to … Continue reading

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Free Press memory hole

A memory hole is any mechanism for the alteration or disappearance of inconvenient or embarrassing documents, photographs, transcripts, or other records, such as from a website or other archive, particularly as part of an attempt to give the impression that … Continue reading

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