Free Republic

<p>You don’t see any sort of problem with this photo you ran of 2016 presidential candidate Ted Cruz? Any at all?</p>

As journalists the most important thing we have is our credibility and integrity. We maintain that, in part, through transparency with our audience, our colleagues and our critics. That is why I am disclosing that my daughter, Paola, has accepted a position working with Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign. [blather snipped] Like many reporters who have parents, siblings or other family members that are active in politics, this will not change how I approach my duty as a journalist. I will continue to report with complete independence and ask the tough questions, the same way I have done for the last...

The former head of Al Jazeera America's documentary unit announced a lawsuit against her former employer on Thursday, charging the American branch of the Qatar-based news network with a vitriolic bias against Israel, as well as discrimination against non-Arabs and women. Shannon High-Bassalik, who formerly worked with CNN, NBC and MSNBC, sued the company for discrimination after being fired in February only half way through her three-year contract, reports The Guardian. She charged the company with showing a blatant pro-Arab bias both in terms of employment and news coverage, with the most intense bias coming out against Israel. High-Bassalik said...

A Syrian Christian fighter has beheaded an Islamic State group (IS) militant to avenge people "executed" by the jihadists in northeastern Syria, a monitor said on Friday. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the incident took place on Thursday in Hasakeh province, where IS holds large areas of the countryside. According to the monitor, the Christian fighter, a member of the minority Assyrian community, found the jihadist in the local village of Tal Shamiram. "He took him prisoner and when he found out he was a member of IS, the Assyrian fighter beheaded him in revenge for abuses committed...

it’s possible that the attention the ad revenue charts were generating on the Internet may have contributed to the decision by the Newspaper Association of America (NAA) in 2013 to suddenly stop its long-standing practice of reporting quarterly advertising revenue data, and switch to releasing only annual data ... In a 2013 interview, NAA CEO Caroline Little was quoted as saying that she and the organization’s board decided it was time to stop beating themselves up four times a year with the negative numbers. ... Newspaper print advertising revenues of just $16.4 billion in 2014 fell to the lowest level...

Many historians call the Armenian Holocaust the first holocaust of the 20th Century, a dress rehearsal for the Nazi nightmare that followed. This April 24 marks the 100th anniversary of the death of roughly 1.5 million Armenian Christians at the hands of Turkish Muslims. That mass slaughter has gone virtually unreported by the broadcast networks. It was a genocide so awful that candidate Barack Obama promised in 2008 he would acknowledge it as such. “As president, I will recognize the Armenian genocide,” he vowed. Obama has violated that promise every year since. This will be the seventh anniversary that Obama...

Republican senator Rand Paul walked out of a live interview with the Guardian on Friday, in the third testy exchange he has had with a journalist since launching his campaign for president three days ago. Paul, who said during his campaign launch on Tuesday he would like to see “any law that disproportionately incarcerates people of color is repealed”, responded awkwardly when asked which specific piece of legislation he would repeal. In a live broadcast via the smartphone app Periscope, Paul said he had “a host of bills” that would amend or repeal part of the statute. Midway through his...

Although I'm extremely excited for the 2016 election even without having a particular GOP candidate in mind as my hoped-for annihilator of Hillary Rodham, Rand Paul really ticked me off this week. I mean REALLY ticked me off. It looks like he is not going to play ball with the press. And that's a huge mistake. So what happened? He tussled with Savannah Guthrie, the 'Today' host, over her editorializing rather than simply questioning him. She was pressing him on whether or not he'd changed opinions on foreign aid to Israel and he not only objected to her talking over...

The Republican-led House passed budget resolutions every year since taking control in the 2010 midterms, while Senate Democrats under Harry Reid refused to pass any at all for four years. After less than 24 hours, though, a Republican “failure” to come up with an agreement between the House and the Senate is not just “cataclysmic” already, but proof that the GOP can’t handle the “basic functions of governing.” Republicans handled it for four years while Democrats failed to perform the basic function of legislating, but somehow that didn’t get seen as “cataclysmic” for them at Politico. Maybe Politico’s analysts could...

Several months ago, your GetReligionistas created our "What is this?" logo to salute a question that we have found ourselves asking over and over during the past decade. Here's the deal. So you are reading something in a newspaper or online source that is supposed to be producing old-school hard news. Then you hit a passage or two that, simply stated, are wildly opinionated or built on what appears to be secret information, without a source that is shared with readers. In other words, you hit a patch of blatant opinion in the middle of a "news" article, like a...

MRC's Dan Gainor alerted us that Ben Smith of the Daily Signal tweeted out a shocking visual: the New York Times front page on Sunday cropped George W. and Laura Bush out of its photo of a Selma anniversary march. They cropped it just to include President Obama. (Notice the Bushes didn't try to crowd right next to the president to get into the frame.) And a fuller shot: The online story by Peter Baker and Richard Fausset doesn't have column-inch limitations, but its photo, too, excludes the Bushes. http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/08/us/obama-in-selma-for-edmund-pettus-bridge-attack-anniversary.html?_r=0

The 50th Anniversary of the Bloody Sunday march was held in Selma, Alabama on Saturday. The New York Times cropped out the George and Laura Bush. Discrimination still exists in America. MRC reported:

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, a prospective Republican presidential contender, said Saturday he does not know whether President Obama is a Christian. “I don’t know,” Walker said in an interview at the JW Marriott hotel in Washington, where he was attending the winter meeting of the National Governors Association. Told that Obama has frequently spoken publicly about his Christian faith, Walker maintained that he was not aware of the president’s religion. “I’ve actually never talked about it or I haven’t read about that,” Walker said, his voice calm and firm. “I’ve never asked him that,” he added. “You’ve asked me to...

How in the world did NBC News let its biggest star and face of its division run around America for more than ten years telling stolen valor lies, lie-lies, whoppers, white lies, exaggerations, and — if you want to be charitable — embellishments. Brian Williams didn’t just spew bald-faced lies from David Letterman’s couch. He lied repeatedly on the air at NBC News and its affiliates. He lied to NBC News legend Tim Russert. Stories Williams’ shared with NBC’s own Tom Brokaw both on the air and at Columbia Journalism school are now disputed. Things told to other reporters don’t...

there are a lot of Brian Williams fabrications. Like, a lot. And yesterday’s suspension of the anchor over revelations that he exaggerated stories from the Iraq War allegedly stemmed from a larger internal investigation at NBC, with enough findings to compile a full dossier and enough allegations to prompt an overview of his expense accounts. ... sources at NBC say that Williams’ history of stretching the truth was well-known, and NBC execs had tried to curb his habits for the past decade: ... NBC was also investigating his expense accounts for reasons unknown

Brian Williams is stepping away from NBC Nightly News for several days. The anchor sent a note to the show's staff, announcing that Lester Holt is replacing him this week. The news comes as the anchor is embroiled in a scandal surrounding his story about being a passenger in a helicopter that took fire in the Iraq War. Williams' message can be seen, below. "In the midst of a career spent covering and consuming news, it has become painfully apparent to me that I am presently too much a part of the news, due to my actions. "As Managing Editor...

ABC honcho’s ‘secret task force’ to investigate Brian Williams as NBC probes Iraq helicopter attack tale: sources Ben Sherwood, the president of Disney-ABC Television Group, has put together the task force to see if the ‘NBC Nightly News’ anchor has told any other tall tales, sources told The Daily News on Friday. ABC officials denied that such a task force exists. Meanwhile, Richard Esposito, who leads the Peacock Network’s investigative unit, has been assigned to look into Williams for lying about dodging danger while reporting in Iraq, sources said. The head of NBC’s investigative unit is breathing down Brian Williams’...

One of the reasons that Romney lost is that he failed to take on the media. The ultimate lost opportunity came when CNN’s debate moderator Candy Crowley directly inserted herself into the argument between Obama and Romney to declare her favorite right and Romney wrong. Romney had won the Republican primaries, but had failed to absorb the lesson of his most tenacious opponent. Newt Gingrich did not treat the media as a neutral moderator, but as a debate opponent, challenging its premises and agendas. And so Romney was left unprepared for Crowley’s attack. On the road to 2016, the latest...

CNN reports there is “widespread shock and disbelief” at NBC over the lies and explanation by NBC Nightly News anchor Brian Williams over his now infamous military helicopter ride in Iraq in 2003.“An NBC News spokeswoman said Thursday that the network stood by Williams’ apology and had nothing further to say. “But others within the news division, granted anonymity to speak freely about the situation, said there was widespread shock and disbelief about Williams’ foggy-memory explanation. One correspondent called it “unreal.”” CNN also reported NBC war correspondents and producers are “particularly perturbed” with Williams and question whether he will be...

If credibility means anything to NBC News, Brian Williams will no longer be managing editor and anchor of the evening newscast by the end of the day Friday. The admission from Williams Wednesday that he lied about being in a Chinook helicopter that was hit by enemy fire during the invasion of Iraq in 2003 is astonishing. And he only admitted the lie after being confronted with it by the military publication, "Stars and Stripes," which has a well-documented report and timeline showing his shifting version of events over the years. SNIP Really, if this was 10 or 15 years...