Free Republic

In October 2006 the national media projected Rep. Mark Foley’s online sex chats with House pages into a disaster that would swallow the Grand Old Party whole. CBS, for example, proclaimed it the “congressional equivalent of Katrina.” In 2008, when federal investigators found Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich trying to put Barack Obama’s Senate seat on the auction block, these same “news” gatherers found a storm, to be sure, but a storm they suggested would in short order be “pushed out to sea.” With the governor caught on tape unloading obscenity after obscenity about how he expected to reap a financial...

Ever since liberal media types felt robbed by the Bush-Quayle campaign's "lies" about Michael Dukakis in 1988, we've been suffering through their attempts to "police the facts" in advertisements. "Correction" squads are insisting John McCain can't say Barack Obama will raise taxes, no matter how much that announcing Democrats will raise taxes is like announcing the sun will rise. In 1992, then-Vice President Dan Quayle suggested Bill Clinton would raise taxes on the middle class. Quayle said at the vice-presidential everyone making more than $36,000 would be affected. Media "experts" accused the GOP of mangling "facts." President Clinton was elected,...

Media Research Center President Brent Bozell said on "Fox & Friends" that the media reported more this year on the 2002 Enron collapse than the collapse of government-backed mortgage lenders Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. VIDEO

For two decades, going back to the Willie Horton ads of 1999, we've heard liberals accuse Republicans of race-baiting. Throughout this campaign, there have been endless whispers, suggestions and outright accusations that GOP could/would play the race card because Obama is half-black. Now Barack Obama has found his bizarre version of Willie Horton, and it's . Rush Limbaugh. Obama sneakily tried to air a Spanish-language TV ad telling Latinos that Limbaugh thinks all Mexicans are stupid, Mexican immigrants should all shut up and go home, and that Limbaugh and John McCain are identical twins on immigration. None of it is...

The executive suite at MSNBC is the last hardened corner of America to concede that maybe Keith Olbermann and Chris Matthews are nowhere close to the textbook definition of detached, "straight news" anchor. Their decision to abandon what was tenderly called their anchoring "experiment" only acknowledges that the idea was a bust: MSNBC was regularly coming in dead last among the commercial cable-news and broadcast-news network covering the conventions. NBC News is coming to the realization that Olbermann and Matthews aren't only suppressing MSNBC's ratings on election and convention nights, they're ruining whatever credibility NBC's brand retained. When the boos...

For months, the CW network has been pushing its reworking of the old teen soap "Beverly Hills 90210." When it finally debuted, Entertainment Weekly magazine joked: "'90210' is the Sarah Palin of TV shows -- it's new, it's pretty, few people have seen it in advance ... and its main purpose is to remind you of a trusty old product while adding some new vigor and soap opera to the cultural discourse." Put aside that nasty insult aimed at the new star on the political scene. It's the "new vigor" phrase that's salient. The lame, recycled "90210" opened with --...

When MSNBC's Chris Matthews suggested in Denver that Barack Obama earned his present elevation in American politics, unlike "showcase appointments" like Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice, he reminded the world of the peculiarity of liberalism. John McCain's selection of Gov. Sarah Palin as his running mate underlined it. Liberals find no joy when Republicans select women or minorities for top positions. They are all fraudulent traitors to their own apparent group interests. Conservative blacks aren't really black. Conservative Latinos aren't really Latino. Now, conservative women are somehow not really women. Newsweek's Eleanor Clift spoke for her colleagues on the Palin...

Doug and Annie Brown became a hot topic of conversation in June when his book came out, called “Just Do It." The married couple from Denver made a decision to do something dramatic to their marriage and have sex for 101 days in a row. They called it a “sexpedition." They expressed surprise at how much closer they became, relishing conversations, holding hands and strengthening their marital bond. They felt like courting each other the way they did when they first met in their twenties. On the jokey surface of our popular culture, we consistently encounter the idea that marriage...

You know there are some in the liberal media who have simply lost touch with reality when they ask with great detachment whether John Edwards will be able to run for office again soon. For months the Enquirer has been trickling out the goods they collected on Edwards having an affair and possibly a love child with campaign aide Rielle Hunter, staking out Edwards in a California hotel - and how he hid in the bathroom to avoid them. Throughout this time, the very same media spread unproven trash on John McCain's alleged relationship with a lobbyist because the source...

You know some in the liberal media have simply lost touch with reality when the headline reads "John Edwards Cheats on Wife With Cancer" and they ask with great detachment whether he'll be able to run for office again soon. Their morality is so bizarre that they showed more outrage at John McCain featuring a picture of Paris Hilton in a commercial for two eye-blinks than for Edwards catting around on a dying spouse. For months (and more hotly in the last two weeks), the National Enquirer has been trickling out the goods they collected on John Edwards having an...

You know there are some in the liberal media who have simply lost touch with reality when the headline reads "John Edwards Cheats on Wife With Cancer" and they ask with great detachment whether he'll be able to run for office again soon. These people's morality is so bizarre that they showed more outrage at John McCain featuring a picture of Paris Hilton in a commercial for two eye-blinks than for Edwards catting around on a dying spouse. ...

bad enough that parents have to shield their children from what Hollywood calls entertainment. Now they have to be equally vigilant with the messages and visuals put forward by the advertisers who sponsor that filth. Parents can become discouraged by the sheer intensity of the commercial manipulation of sex. It's everywhere. Reporter Matt Spector of ABCNews.com recently underlined how the hypersexualization of teenagers in advertising is intensifying. A Greek print ad for previously owned BMW autos features a clearly teenage-looking girl shot from her naked shoulders up, her blond hair splayed around her head across the page. The ad's come-hither...

John McCain has figured out that one way to build enthusiasm among conservatives is to confront his former best friends in the liberal media. As the media glorify Barack Obama the “statesman” on his trip abroad, with the three network anchors lining up for interviews like a gaggle of smitten fan-club presidents, the McCain campaign suddenly acquired a surprising “Annoy The Media” flavor. Like many Obama-loving press outlets, Newsweek has reported that McCain's campaign is struggling against an Obama crusade that seems “blessed by destiny." This spin is maddening. The Obama campaign has been blessed by a media that arrogantly...

The press has been endlessly dazzled with the prowess and the promise of the Barack Obama campaign. Observers of these quivering scribes have to wonder if they don't collapse from exhaustion at the end of the day from all the involuntary spine tingling and shortness of breath over Obama's inspirational aura. One obvious sign the media have been too dazzled is by their utter lack of concern about Obama's accessibility to journalists. Obama may be the least accessible primary winner in decades, but this press avoidance has in no way damaged his standing with reporters, who instead of growing frustrated...

I have the sad news of reporting that also succumbing to cancer on Saturday was Patricia “Trish” Bozell, beloved sister of WFB. Our sympathies to our good friend Brent and the entire Bozell family, to Priscilla, Jim, and Reid Buckley, and all friends and family. I read this from Philippians (1:12) as if St. Paul wrote it from Heaven: “To me life is Christ, and death is gain.” It's hard not to read it today as if a message from Tony and Trish, as if to say: Do not be afraid. We’re in good shape. Make sure you come and...

The general election season is under way, and the leftists are already displaying their hypocrisy. They've launched pre-emptive warnings against a Republican "swiftboating" of Barack Obama at the same time they're making up wild allegations about the villainous ultraconservative plots against goodness planned by John McCain. The supposed civility police in the media are emphasizing the Obama warnings of a right-wing onslaught, but not the nasty leftist attacks on McCain. Once again, Republicans are painted as the agents of character assassination, while Democrats are angels whose style is sweet civility and whose substance is the refreshing truth. Obama's campaign is...

The day after Al Gore endorsed Barack Obama in Detroit, MSNBC kept repeating the allegedly big news with the on-air question "Will Gore Help or Hurt Obama?" Left out of that question: Who cares? Does Gore's endorsement matter at all? Pundits usually declare in today's media-saturated world that endorsements from major politicians or movie stars just don't have much impact. A Who's Who of the Beautiful People in Hollywood endorsed and actively campaigned for John Kerry -- and had no impact. With Al Gore it's the same thing. He doesn't bring a single vote Obama doesn't already have. He could...

Outrage comes easy at the sight of 15-year-old Disney Channel billion-dollar phenomenon Miley Cyrus -- known to screaming 8-year-old girls as Hannah Montana -- appearing barebacked with a come-hither smile in a photo shoot for Vanity Fair. Did no one understand how the slinky satin-sheet photo would be greeted by the eyes of teenage boys -- or men twice her age? Parents are covering the eyes of their Disney-drenched little girls while their role model has a train wreck. Do we need another Britney Spears Show? But teenage boys are going wilder this week over a more dangerous cultural low:...

April 23, 2008 Richard Stengel Managing Editor Time Magazine Mr. Stengel, The cover of your April 28, 2008 Special Environmental Issue is appalling, and offensive to the veterans of the battle of Iwo Jima, the United States Marine Corps, all members of our Armed Services and every American who understands and reveres the sacrifice of those Marines who fought and died to raise our flag atop Mount Suribachi and to everyone who has ever stood up to serve to help us remain free. Your subsequent “explanation”, devoid of an apology, was no better. Co-opting the hallowed image of the United...

Pope Benedict XVI is in America and, like his predecessor, is about to be treated to curiously bipolar coverage at the hands of the American press. While in-country, John Paul the Great received almost universally positive treatment. But up to the point the papal wheels touched down, the media reports were consistently critical – some verging on the savage – and when it was wheels-up, the press immediately returned to their old ways. The tone this time around will not be so much “news” as the recycled template that our journalistic elite imposes on every papal visit to America in...