Free Republic

CNN delighted in reporting the results of a recent poll question that asked: "How much do you trust the things you hear in official communications from the White House? Do you trust almost all, most of it, just some of it, or nothing at all?" If a regular viewer of CNN were to choose anything higher than zero, you'd assume he was a victim of the opioid epidemic. Given the size of CNN's audience as a percentage of the national population, this was an issue. Forty-three percent picked "some of it," as people tend to do in a poll. Twenty-four...

On Tuesday, August 1, Media Research Center President Brent Bozell issued the following statement:  On behalf of my late father and my family, I am denouncing Senator Jeff Flake and his new book, dishonestly titled, Conscience of a Conservative.   Since entering the Senate in 2013, Jeff Flake has, time and again, proven he is part of the indulgent hypocrisy in Washington. While he waxes poetically about conservative principles, his Conservative Review Liberty score is an abysmal 53%, also known as: “F”. In 2013, I watched first-hand as Flake refused to sign a letter pledging to defund ObamaCare, among his...

American conservative leaders welcomed President Donald Trump’s tweet suggesting to Republicans that they immediately repeal Obamacare first and then work together to replace it later. On a media conference call Friday morning, national conservative group leaders overwhelmingly applauded Trump’s suggestion and rebuked GOP leaders for introducing Obamacare “replacement” legislation that they say simply continues former President Barack Obama’s disastrous healthcare reform. The leaders made clear to Republicans that they hold power in both chambers of Congress largely because the conservative base elected them to repeal Obamacare and put GOP leaders on notice that their draft healthcare bill is costing them...

Liberals made a big deal out of the report that Fox News has dropped its old slogan "Fair and Balanced." The liberal media always made a mockery out of it, rejecting it as "false balance." It's "false balance" because the conservative view is false. From their arrogant viewpoint, only the "truth" is worth reporting. That same worldview infects public broadcasting, which has been a left-wing propaganda project from its very beginnings in President Lyndon B. Johnson's days. They passed the Public Broadcasting Act with a meaningless rhetorical bow to fairness and balance, and liberals made sure any legislative teeth in...

How could Kathy Griffin think she didn't cross a line with her Islamic State group-beheads-the-president imitation? In a sense, her ignorance is understandable. Since Donald Trump was elected, there have been no lines to cross. Anything ... everything ... has been acceptable. The challenge has been not to temper the outrage but to push its limits. It was "art," she claimed at first. Despite taping a video apology, she was dumped by CNN, which had promoted this "comedian" for 10 years as New Year's Eve entertainment in Times Square alongside Anderson Cooper. It tells you everything you need to know...

It was big news when Roger Ailes died. Everyone in his industry acknowledged that a serious, even transcendent force in American media and politics had passed away. Without Fox News over these last 20 years, the shape of American politics would be far different. The heretofore unanimously liberal media suddenly had a counterweight, and, much to their horror, this uppity network soon had surpassed all of its rivals in cable news -- combined. The era of unchallenged liberal enlightenment was over. Ailes was accused of making American dumber, angrier and more bigoted. One notable Ailes critic really stretched reality beyond...

The time has come for the media to pull out the artificial measuring stick of 100 days to evaluate President Trump. If they're kind, he'll get an I for "incomplete." But it's more likely they'll use other I words like "inability," "incompetence" or "incoherence." Whatever they say, it won't be kind. But eight years ago? Time magazine's Joe Klein graded President Obama with an S for "spectacular" and "stupendous," saying, "The legislative achievements have been stupendous -- the $789 billion stimulus bill, the budget plan that is still being hammered out (and may, ultimately, include the next landmark safety-net...

On April 5, The New York Times published an op-ed by retired Army Gen. Stanley McChrystal headlined "Save PBS. It Makes Us Safer." McChrystal now runs a big lobbying firm, so that may be why he cares so much -- he's a gun for hire. So how does the general think PBS makes us safer? And from what are we safer? The answer: commercialism. Parents like his son and daughter-in-law "are busy in the morning and busy at night," he says. "They want to protect their children from over-commercialized content." This argument is bizarre -- actually, let's call it what...

One after another, the pundits hailed President Trump's first address to a joint session of Congress as his finest speech, though the usual naysayers were quick to snarkily add that it was his only good speech. Yuk-yuk. Fox News Channel's Brit Hume, a serious analyst with, by his count, some 40 of these speeches under his belt, called Tuesday night's address one of the most riveting and unforgettable speeches he's ever heard. Hume said the general consensus was Trump "hit it out of the park." We agree. We wish only that he'd given this speech in Cleveland when he...

Editor's Note: This piece was coauthored by Tim Graham.The Boy Scouts of America, or BSA, used to be derided as a "traditional, values-based" organization, whose oath spoke of a "duty to God" and whose law insisted the Scouts be "reverent." Now the BSA worships something else: corporate donations. It should have been expected after it folded on homosexual Scouts and then on homosexual scoutmasters. Within a month of being pressured by the case of 8-year-old Joe Maldonado, who was born a girl named Jodi Maldonado, the BSA folded on God and how he "made them male and female." In today's...

At the dawn of 2017, let us offer a philosophical question for the news media. If the scourge of the new year is "fake news," should we not concede that it's not news to speculate about what will happen after a news event? The problem is, without speculation about the future -- whether immediate or distant -- cable news channels and radio news outlets would surely enter a crisis about how to fill 24 hours a day, and newspapers would struggle to fill their pages. Time magazine offered a double issue called "The Year Ahead." Obviously, it cannot be...

In reaction to the news that Facebook is partnering with the Associated Press, ABC News, and Snopes, among other apparent “fact checkers” to tag and weed out “fake news” on the popular social site, Media Research Center President Brent Bozell said Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg assured him that “his express aim is to eliminate only patently false news stories from Facebook.” “I have been in communication with Mark Zuckerberg at Facebook since he announced their new ‘fake news’ initiative,” said MRC President Bozell in a Dec. 16 statement. “I expressed grave concern with this decision and the liberal ‘fact-checking’ organizations...

As President Barack Obama's White House days run out, it's time for his obsequious courtiers in the liberal media to announce his glorious "legacy." On Dec. 7, CNN devoted a two-hour prime-time special to the Obama legacy. It was hosted by Fareed Zakaria, a journalist whom Obama had invited to the White House so he could soak in Zakaria's wisdom and expertise -- in other words, so he could flatter a journalist into giving him softball coverage. Mission accomplished. Just as it began nine years ago, Zakaria started by celebrating the president's race, the gauzy references to Kenya and Kansas...

Statement by Brent Bozell: "The leftist media are out of control and the American people know it and are furious. These so-called 'news' journalists are doing everything in their power to AFFECT THE OUTCOME OF THE ELECTION. In 30 years I've never seen anything like this. Protesters went to the CNN affiliate in Hollywood to protest, and at least one was assaulted. Enough is enough. We have never done this before, but we are calling on people to organize and publicly protest against their local network 'news' affiliates around the country. The media will never hold themselves accountable, so now...

Washington Post reporter Callum Borchers should win some kind of award for the worst pre-debate spin. He tried to defend NBC anchor and presidential debate host Lester Holt: "It turns out Holt is actually a registered Republican. Trump still might find things to complain about Monday night, but a case for partisan bias against him will be tough to make." Right after the debate, despite all evidence, the Post's Chris Cillizza doubled down, saying: "Want a testament to how well Holt did? I guarantee you no one is talking about him tomorrow. That's a win." That is precisely as the...

Civility and political decorum demand that one should never pick on a president's family. Presidents' children did not choose their parents' careers. Until they are grown and speaking out on the campaign trail, they should be left out of political commentary. Their privacy should not only be respected; it should be actively protected. Pretty much the entire media observed this rule perfectly when Radar Online published blurry pictures of 18-year-old Malia Obama puffing some sort of cigarette at the Lollapalooza music festival in Chicago, Illinois on July 31. Radar's eyewitness cried weed. Video footage also showed Obama dancing suggestively to...

The radical leftist collective known as WikiLeaks tried to ruin the Democratic convention by posting a trove of Democratic National Committee emails that easily proved that party leader Debbie Wasserman Schultz and her staff shunned neutrality in favor of pushing Hillary Clinton's nomination. The Bernie Sanders socialists were enraged, their suspicions confirmed. The media paid some attention to that, especially when Schultz was quickly ousted from her job. Guess what else was confirmed, which the media largely skipped over? The evidence in the emails that revealed great chumminess and coordination between Democrats and the supposedly "objective" national press. You really...

The Republican National Convention's rowdy chants about Hillary Clinton -- "Lock her up!" -- have caused liberal journalists to get extremely distressed. In its lead editorial on July 21, The Washington Post fulminated that team Trump's "descent from standard red-meat partisanship to unprecedented accusations of criminality displays contempt for the rule of law and a startling disinterest in fact and reason." That's strong brew. It's too bad for them that it's completely false. Somehow, the Post writers are acting like they were born yesterday, or slept through the last Republican presidency. They've chosen to overlook that their liberal friends in...

... Influential leaders with direct ties to the founding of modern conservatism are rallying behind Ted Cruz...

The Rev. Franklin Graham quitting the Republican Party poses a significant blow to the GOP's 2016 White House aspirations, especially if other evangelical pastors follow suit and their millions-plus congregations stay away from the polls. Graham suggested earlier this week that the last straw was congressional Republicans funding Planned Parenthood in the recently passed, $1.8 trillion tax-and-spending package, despite revelations about the group harvesting fetal tissue. However, he made clear Wednesday night that the funding was only part of the reason he left the GOP to become an independent. "It's not just that," Graham said on Fox News' "On the...