Free Republic

On Wednesday evening, Meta released their “friendly” alternative to Twitter called Threads. Within seven hours of its launch, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerburg claimed that 10 million people have signed up. The Instagram-linked competitor (you currently need an Instagram account to sign up for Threads) currently looks more or less just like Twitter. Users can post text-based messages up to 500 characters, as well as videos or photos, and respond to or repost other posts. However, unlike Twitter, direct messaging is currently unavailable, and hashtags are nowhere to be found. Also, if you decide Threads isn’t for you, the only way...

Elon Musk has recently put his Twitter ownership to good use, first slapping American and British state media with a disclaimer label identifying them as government propaganda outlets on their Twitter profiles. Now he’s going to work on Canada’s government propaganda machine, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. ... Public broadcaster Canadian Broadcasting Corporation’s (CBC) Twitter account was on Monday labeled as “69% Government-funded Media” by the social media website. The Twitter label on the CBC site previously showed “70% Government-funded Media”, but Twitter owner Elon Musk said the “Canadian Broadcasting Corp said they’re “less than 70% government-funded”, so we corrected the...

A federal judge just sided with Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA) in his defamation suit against The Washington Post. . According to the federal judge, the Washington Post published an article with “at least reckless disregard of the truth that it had previously reported.” . From The Epoch Times: The paper said in its motion to dismiss that its correction erased any claims to malice, but U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols rejected that argument. “A newspaper’s own prior (and correct) reporting that is inconsistent with its later (and incorrect) reporting could certainly give the paper reason to seriously doubt the truth...

"Enemy of the people" is an incendiary phrase. It's been uttered by some of history's most vicious thugs — Robespierre, Goebbels, Lenin, Stalin, Mao — to vilify their opponents ... who were often murdered. President Trump must know that history by now when he calls the press "the enemy of the people." As he must also know the anti-Semitic and racist history of the America First slogan, by which the president describes many of his policies. But Sarah Sanders, the White House press secretary, pointedly declined the chance this week to say, as Ivanka Tump did, "I do not feel...

Libya's late leader Muammar Gaddafi and Syrian President Bashar al-Assad warned that terrorism would be on the rise in Europe if Western leaders help to destabilize the two countries, but no one listened. As a result, Libya and Syria have been plunged into chaos and now Europe has to grapple with a string of gruesome terrorist attacks. Broken windows of the terminal at Brussels national airport are seen during a ceremony following bomb attacks in Brussels metro and Belgium's National airport of Zaventem, Belgium, Brussels Attacks Again Confirm That Terror, Not Russia, is Real ‘Existential Threat’ to West The latest...

In January of 2014, award-winning investigative journalist for NBC News Lisa Meyers announced she was leaving the network after thirty-three years—supposedly to work on her golf game. However, an interview this week with the Des Moines Register gave credence to the speculation that she left because network news no longer wanted to upset the White House and other politicians. […] Meyers has made similar charges in the past: months before she left NBC, Newsbusters reported about a Meyers appearance where she called the press one of Obama’s most important constituencies. …

The BBC license fee should be scrapped and replaced with a voluntary subscription service, TV presenter Nick Ross has claimed. The former host of Crimewatch warned support for the BBC would “fall off a cliff” if the mandatory charge for all owners of a television set is not axed, but the Corporation hit back saying the change would mean fewer people paying much more each year to maintain a quality service. Viewers must buy a TV license for £145.50 if they want to watch live broadcasts, but they can legally avoid paying by waiting until their favorite show is available...

A St. Louis County police records clerk was stumped when a concealed-carry permit applicant presented a certificate showing he had received the required eight hours of firearms training that very day. She looked at her watch. It was about 1:30 p.m. March 5. She asked exactly when he took the class. It started at 10 a.m., he said. She alerted supervisors.

...By 9:37, the New York Post had published an item on the trip based off the TOLONews tweet, and by 9:53 it was running in the ticker “Breaking News” at the top of its home page. By 10:06 the story was updated to add the “strong” White House denial and minutes later the breaking news alert was removed from the homepage. Sometime in the interim, the initial tweet from TOLONews was removed as well.

Barack Obama has gone to Congress asking for more money to spend. The President, in a rambling and tedious exercise mixing blame with demands, made quite a few dubious statements in laying out the case for Congress to vote for the plan which as yet does not exist. Much like Obamacare, Congress must ultimately vote for the bill to know what is in it. At one point Mr. Obama made a major gaffe; he identified Abraham Lincoln as the founder of the Republican Party. Lincoln did not join the Republicans until 1856, over two years after the party was founded....

A list of potential policy recommendations to reinvent the field of journalism that has been compiled by the Federal Trade Commission is a "dangerous" overreach of power and a waste of taxpayer funds, critics of the project told FoxNews.com. FTC officials began a project in May 2009 to consider the challenges the journalism industry faces in the digital age. The federal agency recently released a discussion draft titled "Potential Policy Recommendations to Support the Reinvention of Journalism," a 47-page document that outlines a major government push to rescue the country's flailing media platforms -- specifically newspapers, which have seen advertising...

The reality of the situation is such that the state run media, or main stream media if you will, controls what a vast majority of America sees. If you have cable or a satellite dish, you have choice in news programming. If you have an antenna in the air, you are stuck with the state run media of ABC, CBS and NBC. The state run media is not the news media of integrity and facts. There are no real journalists to be found on the news any longer. The news providers are entertainers, who offer you their perspective on the...

The federal government is preparing an inquiry into the endangered field of news and reporting -- and Federal Trade Commission Chairman Jon Leibowitz is dropping some broad hints about what will be in it. In an exclusive interview with TheWrap, Leibowitz expressed some sympathy to easing antitrust enforcement of media consolidations to prevent more newspapers from folding or further declines in TV news staffs. He also said the FTC intends not just throw out a lifeline. He wants to ensure that media companies are doing a good enough job finding alternative revenues. Some media critics contend that at least part...

How big brother and big media can put the Internet genie back in the bottle. by John Walker September 13th, 2003Revision 3 -- October 9th, 2003 imprimatur 1. The formula (=`let it be printed'), signed by an official licenser of the press, authorizing the printing of a book; hence as sb. an official license to print. The Oxford English Dictionary (2nd. ed.) Introduction Over the last two years I have become deeply and increasingly pessimistic about the future of liberty and freedom of speech, particularly in regard to the Internet. This is a complete reversal of the almost unbounded optimism I...