Free Republic

Good Morning America co-host Diane Sawyer on Tuesday helped promote an upcoming HBO documentary on Barack Obama and allowed producer Ed Norton to gush over the "zen" presidential campaign of the Democratic candidate. Sawyer breathlessly teased the program as "the Obamas behind closed doors. The grandmother who raised him and the man you’ve never seen." Sawyer played several clips of the By the People: The Election of Barack Obama, a film that followed Obama and his family during the 2008 campaign. The segment, which ran six and a half minutes, will be supplemented by more promotion on Tuesday’s Nightline. When...

FOR nearly three decades, I’ve felt conflicted about presidential salutes. After all, my United States Marine Corps instructors drilled into me the idea that “you never salute without a cover” which, in civilian, meant without a hat. My fellow Marines and I were also informed, in no uncertain terms, that we weren’t to salute out of uniform. (I don’t think that presidential blue suits, white shirts and red ties quite qualify.) So whenever I saw a president stepping off a helicopter and bringing hand to brow, my drill instructor’s unambiguous words came back to me with much of their original...

Showing that the media sees every act by the Obamas as an historic achievement, at the end of Sunday’s Face the Nation host Bob Schieffer was amazed by the romping of First Lady Michelle Obama: “Michelle Obama took it to another level as she set records as the first First Lady to run barefoot across the White House lawn. She also became the first to jump rope there.” After explaining how Mrs. Obama “took it to another level,” Schieffer praised her efforts as example to the rest of us: “But whatever her skills at jumping rope, she performed a mean...

The Obama White House's war on Fox News heated up when President Obama appeared on five Sunday talk shows in September, but snubbed Fox's Chris Wallace. Then White House Communications Director Anita Dunn told CNN's Howard Kurtz, "Fox News often operates almost as either the research arm or the communications arm of the Republican Party." On ABC's "This Week" Sunday, Obama guru David Axelrod commented on Fox mogul Rupert Murdoch's "talent for making money" -- and added that Fox News programming is "not really news."

<p>The Obama campaign's press strategy leading up to his election last November focused on "making" the media cover what the campaign wanted and on exercising absolute "control" over coverage, White House Communications Director Anita Dunn told an overseas crowd early this year.</p>

Here is video of Glenn Beck on his show today mocking Chris Matthews and the fawning liberal media...(Video)

Beck is completely right here. He is a bit upset that the MSM spends their time digging at his past rather then reporting on the issues he has been so right about. Van Jones? Yup, hit the nail on the head. Acorn? Yup, hit the nail on the head. (h/t Hot Air) [VIDEO AT SITE] But what does our MSM do? They fact check.....FACT CHECK....a Saturday Night Live skit. [VIDEO AT SITE] Un-freakin-believable. Did they fact check the Palin skits? Nope. Have they fact checked ANY snl skits? But when they attack their messiah they suddenly decide to fact check...

Via Greg Hengler. Heaven forbid that the average half-drunk late-night Saturday TV viewer be “misinformed” about our savior by a comedy show reminding them that health care’s “not done” (which it isn’t) and that Afghanistan’s gotten worse this year (which it has). Even if you want to clap Obama on the back for keeping his promise to send more troops, might it not perhaps be worth mentioning that he’s currently rethinking the entire “war of necessity” mindset on which he campaigned? Let’s see if you can guess how the segment ends. Think: Media outlet is in the tank, subject is...

President Obama took his health care message to Sunday morning TV today, appearing on five different networks. Host Guy Raz recaps the major points the president hit — again and again — in his interviews.

They say you shouldn't bite the hand that feeds you. But the 44th President of the United States doesn't seem to be worried about that. President Barack Obama, still with no fear of being overexposed, made the rounds on five Sunday morning talk shows on Sept. 20 to make another attempt at winning the hearts and minds over on his vague health care proposal. According to Obama, it alleged he wasn't doing any "media-bashing," mention the three major cable news networks by name, saying they were the ones enabling the "rude" behavior that some of their on-air voices have decried...

President Obama will appear on a record five TV networks on Sunday -- the morning talk shows of ABC, NBC, CBS and sit for interviews with CNN and Spanish-language network Univision. Since becoming president, Obama will have done 124 print, broadcast and radio interviews, according to a tally by Maryland's Towson University -- three times more than George W. Bush did by the same point in his presidency. White House spokesman Robert Gibbs says the interviews are "an attempt by the president to speak to as many different people as he can on an issue that's as important as something...

Since when is a political agenda promoted like a feature film?! President Obama is continuing his media tour to state his case on revitalizing healthcare with appearances on Meet the Press, This Week, Face the Nation, State of the Union AND Late Show with David Letterman which he'll stop by on Monday. One of these things is not like the other!

What happened to the media's crush on President Obama? In the second 100 days of his administration, the majority of press coverage was bad, with the president's policy proposals receiving more criticism than praise from reporters. According to a study by researchers at George Mason and Chapman universities, 59 percent of press coverage was positive during Obama's first 100 days in office, but then it dipped to 43 percent from May through mid-August. Especially tough on Obama was Fox News. Researchers analyzed portions of "Special Report with Bret Baier" because it most resembled a network newscast and found that 25...

The US White House has released a photograph of President Barack Obama's daughter Sasha sneaking up on her father as he works in the Oval Office. The image has drawn comparisons with the famous 1963 image of John F Kennedy Jnr playing underneath the Oval Office desk as his father reads documents. That picture helped create the image of "Camelot" associated with the Kennedys. Mr Obama has said being able to work and live at home is "one of the huge benefits of being president". The photograph, taken in early August and released through the official White House Flickr website,...

Media coverage of Obama has taken a sudden sour turn over the past few days – especially from the more unapologetically leftist crowd – since the president hinted over the weekend that the so-called "public option" could be scrapped from his health care reform plans. "How did we get here?" objected MSNBC host Rachel Maddow. "How did we get to the foretold 'death' of the public option? ... We got here through a collapse of political ambition." In an eight-minute advocacy piece for government-run health care, blasting Big Business and free market insurance coverage, Maddow turned her ire on the...

Minnesota GOP Gov. Tim Pawlenty joked Monday night that MSNBC host Chris Matthews is looking for some “bromance” with President Barack Obama. Asked to follow up on a comment he made Friday night during a speech at the second annual GOPAC conference in Chicago in which he said the “Hardball” host had a “man crush” on the president, Pawlenty explained to Fox News’ Greta Van Susteren that he “jokingly said that the only thing rising faster than the debt and deficit of the government is Chris Matthews's man crush on Barack Obama.” “I was going to use the term, Greta,...

In George Orwell's allegorical novel "Nineteen Eighty-Four," the picture of "Big Brother" appears constantly in the adoring media. Perceived enemies are everywhere — supposedly plotting to undo the benevolent egalitarianism of Big Brother. Citizens assemble each morning to scream hatred for two minutes at pictures of the supposed public traitor Emmanuel Goldstein. The "Ministry of Truth" swears that the former official Goldstein is responsible for everything that goes wrong in Oceania. In Orwell's Oceania, there is a compliant media that offers "Newspeak" — recycled government bulletins from the Ministry of Truth. "Doublethink" means you can believe at the same time...

TV and Obama: mutual love affair By David Bauder July 6, 2009 Reporting from New York -- Even President Obama, a gleam in his eye as he talked at the Radio and Television Correspondents' Assn. dinner two weeks ago, seemed to recognize the special relationship he's forged with TV networks in the opening months of his administration. "A few nights ago, I was up tossing and turning and trying to figure out exactly what to say," he said. "Finally, when I couldn't get back to sleep, I rolled over and asked Brian Williams what he thought." The reference to the...

Obama and TV Networks Forge Relationship Updated: Sunday, 05 Jul 2009, 1:00 PM EDT Published : Sunday, 05 Jul 2009, 12:59 PM EDT By DAVID BAUDER AP Television Writer NEW YORK - Even President Barack Obama, a gleam in his eye as he talked at the Radio and Television Correspondents' Association dinner two weeks ago, seemed to recognize the special relationship he's forged with TV networks in the opening months of his administration. "A few nights ago I was up tossing and turning and trying to figure out exactly what to say," he said. "Finally, when I couldn't get back...

Michelle Obama bringing glamour to Moscow Despite global acclaim, first lady may face challenge winning Russian public Michel Euler / AP Perhaps in deference to Russia's uneasiness about a political wife with popular support of her own, U.S. White House officials have suggested Michelle Obama will avoid the limelight during the visit. Michelle Obama bringing glamour to Moscow Despite global acclaim, first lady may face challenge winning Russian public Michelle Obama brings her superstar glamor to Moscow this weekend as she accompanies her husband on his summit with the Russian president. But the American first lady, who has wowed publics...