Free Republic

This is the story of MSNBC in a nutshell: It rose to prominence on its criticism of George W. Bush, peaked during Barack Obama's historic 2008 campaign, and, by criticizing Republicans and championing liberal causes, sustained its viewership in the years that followed. Until now. MSNBC suffered harder loses in 2013 -- in terms of both viewership and revenue -- than either of its competitors at Fox News and CNN, according to Nielsen data featured in a new Pew Research report. Prime-time viewership declined by a staggering 24 percent (nearly twice the loss sustained by CNN and four-times that sustained...

 Which is it? Are the Koch brothers the largest land owner in Canada’s oil sands or not? The two reporters who worked on the same article don’t seem to agree. In fact, the original article was such a mess, the Washington Post today ran a follow-up piece headlined, “Why we wrote about the Koch Industries and its leases in Canada’s oil sands.”Credit for that critical second look goes to John Hinderaker of Powerline, who thoroughly debunked the Post’s original piece, concluding that the Post “relied uncritically on a goofball far-left report” provided by the anti-Keystone XL pipeline activist group the...

Responding to comments regarding a Phoenix television reporter yesterday who initially claimed that the White House pre-screens questions from reporters, Attkisson said, “I wouldn’t surprised if sometimes there is that level of cooperation with some questions. If I need something answered from the White House and they won’t tell me, I’ll call our White House Correspondent. They’re friendlier with the White House Correspondents in general. So the White House Correspondent may ask Jay Carney or one of his folks about an issue and they will be told ‘ask that at the briefing and we’ll answer it.’ They want to answer...

Bias: How much abuse will the mainstream media take before they stand up for themselves? When the abuse comes from the Obama administration, their tolerance appears to be unlimited. This week, for example, two things happened that should have sent reporters into a frenzy of outrage.

Five-Thirty-Eight's Nate Silver mocked New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman as a "hedgehog" who "only knows one thing." When asked to describe what a hedgehog is, Silver pointed to Friedman specifically and the op-ed columnists at the Times, Washington Post, and Wall Street Journal: ... They don’t permit a lot of complexity in their thinking. They pull threads together from very weak evidence and draw grand conclusions based on them. They’re ironically very predictable from week to week. If you know the subject that Thomas Friedman or whatever is writing about, you don’t have to read the column. You can...

CBS News investigative correspondent Sharyl Attkisson has reached an agreement to resign from CBS News ahead of contract, bringing an end to months of hard-fought negotiations, sources familiar with her departure told POLITICO on Monday. Attkisson, who has been with CBS News for two decades, had grown frustrated with what she saw as the network's liberal bias, an outsized influence by the network's corporate partners and a lack of dedication to investigative reporting, several sources said. She increasingly felt like her work was no longer supported and that it was a struggle to get her packages on television. At the...

Vladimir Putin, tired of being labeled as a "bully" by media left and right, held a press conference in the Kremlin earlier today, offering a completely new angle to his case for the seizure of the Crimean Peninsula and the possible invasion of Ukraine: the presence of a Tea Party element at the Maidan in Kiev. Vladimir Putin, tired of being labeled as a "bully" by media left and right, held a press conference in the Kremlin earlier today, offering a completely new angle to his case for the seizure of the Crimean Peninsula and the possible invasion of Ukraine:...

Like certain other TV networks, CNN likes gun control supporters. For more than a year, it allowed Piers Morgan to relentlessly and viciously attack the Second Amendment and anyone who supports it, until Morgan’s perennially low-rated show had cost the network so much in lost advertising revenue that keeping him on the air was no longer financially sustainable.As noted in the previous Alert story, CNN recently made the decision to cut “Piers Morgan Live” from its lineup. However, from the network’s perspective, the problem was the messenger, not the message.So, this week, with Morgan on the way out, CNN teamed with another anti-gun messenger—Sarah Brady, chairwoman...

There have been times when the CNN host Piers Morgan didn’t seem to like America very much — and American audiences have been more than willing to return the favor. Three years after taking over for Larry King, Mr. Morgan has seen the ratings for “Piers Morgan Live” hit some new lows, drawing a fraction of viewers compared with competitors at Fox News and MSNBC. It’s been an unhappy collision between a British television personality who refuses to assimilate — the only football he cares about is round and his lectures on guns were rife with contempt — and a...

“Proposed FCC study of news organizations sparks conservative outcry,” The Washington Post declared on Friday. The story revealed details of the backlash against a Federal Communications Commission plan to investigate the news-gathering and information dissemination practices of a variety of print and broadcast media outlets. The Post quickly amended that headline, as someone decided the study should have sparked a general “outcry,” even though it apparently did not –- at least, not in The Post’s newsroom. Still, some bright fellow at The Post noted that this latest encroachment by the federal government should be met with at least a perfunctory...

The real mystery behind the FCC's now abandoned "study" to police American newsrooms is why the mainstream media refused to raise holy hell over it. While Obama's lapdogs refused to bark, it was conservative media who fought for newsroom independence and got the FCC to finally back down. Other than the media's natural obedience to Obama, the fact that the fingerprints of left-wing billionaire George Soros have been found on the FCC study might also help to explain the media's silence. ... The media's hands-off policy with Soros is nothing new ... The mainstream media not only shares Soros' hard-left...

On this pre-recorded broadcast of Mic'd Up, Michael Voris is joined by Dr. Christopher Blum to discuss "Meditations for Lent", a short book compiled from the spiritual writings of Bishop Jacques-Benigne Bossuet (1627-1704). Christopher Blum is the Academic Dean at the Augustine Institute. In the bulk of the show, Michael will be joined by former congressman Bob Dornan to discuss the financial influence of homosexual groups on American political policy. Also, following the broadcast will be our 15 minute in-depth report "Dispatch: Pink Money".

Dear Entertainment Tonight: You had invited me to do an interview concerning the Ladies’ Figure Skating results and my advice for gold medal winners. I had agreed subject to you allowing me to also use the interview to raise awareness to the more than 70 people killed and 600 injured in the Ukraine in their fight against Ukrainian government corruption. Unfortunately, you pulled a “bait and switch” on me and instead dealt with issues in your program irrelevant to anything that we had agreed to discuss. I should have known better than to trust you after having only recently learned...

The U.S. plummeted 13 slots to 46th overall “amid increased efforts to track down whistle-blowers and the sources of leaks,” Reporters Without Borders warned in an annual report. The trial and conviction of Private Bradley Manning and the pursuit of NSA analyst Edward Snowden were warnings to all those thinking of assisting in the disclosure of sensitive information that would clearly be in the public interest,” the organization said.

High in the polls with a dream candidate’s resume, Hillary Clinton's advantages in the 2016 presidential race are the stuff of near-constant media chatter these days. Except for one topic: Univision. The Spanish-language network, which broadcasts from Doral, has remarkably close ties with Clinton — from the way the media giant covers immigration to the financial backing of its top leader to a new initiative between the network and the Bill, Hillary & Chelsea Clinton Foundation.Barely a peep from the press, though. Last week, at an East Harlem event featuring Clinton, Univision touted a multi-year partnership with a foundation-led learning...

I follow many reporters on Twitter. They are usually free with their observations of the political scene—some more free than others. They have a caustic wit from years of covering hack politicians, but they also have a protective manner when it comes to President Barack Obama. A case in point is Obama’s interview with NBC Sports’ Bob Costas taped Thursday but broadcast Friday evening as part of the network’s coverage of the opening ceremonies of the Sochi Winter Olympic Games. As reported last night at the Gateway Pundit, viewers took to Twitter last night to express their astonishment at...

Earlier today, Garry Kasparov accused NBC Sports of pushing Putin propaganda. This latest downplay of decades of communism probably won’t make Kasparov change his mind about the network that’s airing the Sochi Olympics. Many viewers of the opening ceremony couldn’t believe their ears when the narrator referred to decades of Soviet-era communism as a “pivotal experiment”:

At the top of Thursday's NBC Nightly News, anchor Brian Williams proclaimed that "the [Republican] governor of Georgia [Nathan Deal] chose to fall on his snow shovel" over how Tuesday's rare southern snowstorm "was handled, or better yet, mishandled" in the state. However, the coverage that followed failed to mention Atlanta's Democratic Mayor Kasim Reed by name even once. [Listen to the audio or watch the video after the jump] In his report, correspondent Tom Costello declared: "A lot of anger directed toward city and state officials for failing to heed the weather forecasts. And today we learned that both...

Doh! Miami NBC calls state GOP "Reprehensive Party." RPOF wants on-air apologyThe Florida GOP demanded Friday that a Miami NBC affiliate issue an on-air apology after the station referred to the party as "the Reprehensive Party of Florida" in a broadcast. The error surfaced when WTVJ aired a segment that featured a Republican Party web ad bashing Democratic candidate for governor Charlie Crist in an ad that accuses him of politically running away from Florida when the economy went south. Accident or not, the spot needs to be corrected, Republican Party of Florida Chairman Lenny Curry wrote the station's president...

The Cheerios family is back. The breakfast cereal’s new Super Bowl ad features the same fictional biracial family that sparked a conservative backlash last year. SNIP Link to YouTube video of ad.(On Twitter, MSNBC promoted this article with this message:Maybe the rightwing will hate it, but everyone else will go awww: the adorable new #Cheerios ad w/ biracial family.