Free Republic

THE share of Americans who believe that news organizations are "politically biased in their reporting" increased to 60 percent in 2005, up from 45 percent in 1985, according to polls by the Pew Research Center. Many people also believe that biased reporting influences who wins or loses elections. A new study by Stefano DellaVigna of the University of California, Berkeley, and Ethan Kaplan of the Institute for International Economic Studies at Stockholm University, however, casts doubt on this view. Specifically, the economists ask whether the advent of the Fox News Channel, Rupert Murdoch's cable television network, affected voter behavior. They...

June 29 - Just in case anyone was reaching for the remote, President George W. Bush hit his keynote as early as he could while still being polite. After thanking the troops at Fort Bragg, N.C., on Tuesday night, the first two lines of his speech were blindingly simple. “The troops here and across the world are fighting a global war on terror,” he said. “The war reached our shores on September the 11th, 2001.” In other words: forget about the Downing Street memos and Colin Powell’s now discredited speech at the United Nations. This is one war, against one...

Complaints about the U.S. military's treatment of terrorists at Guantanamo Bay were once again featured on all three broadcast network evening newscasts Wednesday. Full stories on ABC, CBS and NBC cast the military on the defensive at congressional hearings. CBS Evening News anchor Bob Schieffer — who has likened Guantanamo to the "Hanoi Hilton," the infamous North Vietnamese prison camp — grumped that "Congress asked a lot of questions today" about Guantanamo, but "the problem is, they didn't get many answers." ABC followed up its story on yesterday's hearings with a second full report by ABC's Terry Moran, who zeroed...

looks like he is waving to the audience. Drudge says the 'Hitler' word.

Newsweek's false account of a Koran being dumped in a toilet caused much damage to U.S. foreign policy. On May 20, the New York Times tried to do more damage. It devoted over 6000 words to the deaths of Afghans who had been in the custody of U.S. forces at Bagram Air Base on suspicion of involvement in terrorism. Seven people have been charged for alleged abuse of those described in the Times account. But that didn't stop reporter Tim Golden from including a lot of gratuitous details about the alleged abuse. The article was timed just before Afghan President...

Watched the Discovery Channel show on the Greatest American countdown? You get to vote who you feel is the greatest American. The votes were web paged at aol.com./greatestamerican. It only takes a few readings of the bio's to see where they are going. Matt Lauer was the host, need I say more?

BAGHDAD, Iraq - The bodies of 34 men shot execution-style were found in three locations in less than 24 hours, police said Sunday, a day when drive-by shootings and suicide bombings killed at least eight Iraqis, including a senior Industry Ministry official and a top Shiite cleric. The spree of attacks came as Secretary of State of Condoleezza Rice made a surprise visit to Iraq, a day after the U.S. military announced it had successfully wrapped up a weeklong offensive in a remote desert region near the Syrian border aimed at followers of Iraq's most-wanted terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. Rice...

LOS ANGELES (AP) - The Los Angeles Times dismissed a reporter after an investigation found that his story about the death of a fraternity pledge at a state university "fell far short" of standards, the newspaper said Tuesday. An editor's note in the Times said the March 29 story by Eric Slater had numerous inaccuracies and carried quotations from two named and other unnamed sources that could not be verified. Among the errors, the paper said the story erroneously reported that the victim was alone at the time of his death. "Beyond the specific errors, the newspaper's inquiry found that...

The Washington Post published a story on Match 25 faulting President Bush for not injecting himself quickly enough into the tragic killings at the Indian reservation in Red Lake, Minnesota. Post reporter Ceci Connolly found a volunteer at an Indian office who said about Bush, "I don't feel he cares about the American Indian people." This is a classic case of a manufactured story designed to make the president look bad. Connolly, a contributor to Fox News, wrote that "The reaction to Bush's silence was particularly bitter given his high-profile, late-night intervention on behalf of Terri Schiavo, the brain-damaged Florida...

Business Week Magazine has a cover story on the future of The New York Times. Coverage of the business strategy and economic prospects (not terribly encouraging) is pretty good. BW is rather sympathetic and admiring of Arthur Sulzberger, Jr., the paper's hereditary publisher, and does not even mention his widely-used nickname "Pinch" - probably an effort to protect his dignity. BW is nearly as leftist in its editorial stance as the Times itself, so the role of the NYT's extreme ideological bias is downplayed. Here is what BW has to say on the topic. The growing polarization of the body...

At the University of North Carolina, three incoming freshmen sue over a reading assignment they say offends their Christian beliefs. In Colorado and Indiana, a national conservative group publicizes student allegations of left-wing bias by professors. Faculty get hate mail and are pictured in mock "wanted" posters; at least one college says a teacher received a death threat. And at Columbia University in New York, a documentary film alleging that teachers intimidate students who support Israel draws the attention of administrators. The three episodes differ in important ways, but all touch on an issue of growing prominence on college campuses....

The launch of Christian Aid's 2004 Christmas campaign appeal once again highlights the biased political agenda of this powerful organization regarding the Middle East conflict. Drawing upon powerful Christian imagery and symbolism, Christian Aid headlined its appeal "Child of Bethlehem", concentrating on the story of a seven-year old Palestinian girl living in Bethlehem who was "hit in the eye by shrapnel from a bullet fired by Israeli soldiers." In keeping with previous reports, as analyzed by NGO Monitor, Christian Aid's focus on sympathy for this child in large subway advertisements and elsewhere erases the context and the dilemmas posed by...

I was just thinking about the Jeremy Glick episode. O'Reilly may be moderate politically, but that doesn't mean unbiased these days. His problem is that he isn't neutral when it comes to the United States. He is pro-American. To the left, that's biased.

Excerpt .. balance at link The Education of Dan Rather From the golden age of network TV to the end of its hegemony. Thursday, December 2, 2004 12:01 a.m. EST Life is complicated, people are complicated, and most of us are a jumble of virtues, flaws and contradictions. I like to try to understand the past, try to put it together in a way that makes sense to me. This can involve judging not only your own actions and decisions but those of others, which can be hard. I have a friend who once said in the middle of a...

Dan Rather has pretty much conceded with yet another of his "Ratherisms"... "Knock, knock, knock, you hear that? George W. Bush is ready for re-election!" I believe he may have a shotgun under his news desk.

I just got back from my shift as a poll watcher in the predomiantly black area here is SC. What I saw was poll workers not asking if the adress was the same as the id. The biggest thing I saw was that the poll workers were hovering over voters. If some voter acted a bit clueless, well then the poll worker was right in there with the voter and the electronic vote machine. In several instances their hands were in the machine, who knows pushing what. So much for pretending to act impartial or standoffish. I brought this to...

The propaganda wing of the Democratic Party and Kerry campaign tried to stick it to the Bush Administration yet again with another concocted story. Dan Rather, of course, was readying to trash Bush with a Halloween trick on what is still euphemistically called CBS News, but the New York Times scooped him. One would think that these media morons would at least ask around within their own ranks before running stories that later make them look like the biased fools they really are. But no, these rabid lefties are chomping at the bit to "get" bush. Therefore, honor, ethics and...

This is an email-able, copyright-ready graphic you can use in emails, on blogs, in flyers, on posters... anything that's noncommercial.

When Andrea Mackris was dumped by her fiancé in early 2002, her boss, cable-TV host Bill O'Reilly, took her out to dinner. No longer supported by her lawyer partner of eight years, Daniel Slatopolski, the hard-working and aggressive career woman needed a shoulder to cry on — and more money. . .

It's that time again, folks. This is our time to send all the liberals searching for their Prozac. It's time we extract our pound of retribution from each of their socialist hides. And the best way to do that is to vote straight Republican. Unfortunately, we rejected some of the most Constitutionally oriented candidates in the primary process. No matter, though. We can still work with those we have running. The Republicans are, after all, an electable bunch. Sure, I can nit-pick and find problems with most of them. Nevertheless, collectively, the Republicans are fielding a pretty good group --...