Free Republic

Rinelle Harper was left for dead on a Winnipeg riverbank, beaten and sexually assaulted. Omar Khadr was imprisoned in Guantanamo, captured in 2002 by American forces in Afghanistan and charged with war crimes. Amanda Lindhout was kidnapped by Somali criminals, and held hostage for 460 days. The three Canadians have little in common, beyond the recognition of their names from the news. But they have each suffered immensely more than most of us can understand. ... She became a symbol for racist violence against Aboriginal women - though her alleged attacker was himself Aboriginal. That girl on the right is...

There are many things that real people do to become the subject of sympathetic movies. Make a flawless emergency landing in the Hudson River with a disabled jet full of passengers. Survive a devastating storm atop Mt. Everest. Become the most lethal sniper in the history of the US military. Before the advent of the movie “Truth,” no one would have thought broadcasting a shoddy and immediately discredited report that ruined the careers of the journalists involved and gave their storied network a black eye would make the list. In a better world, the bloggers who exposed the malfeasance of...

UN and Oxfam caught bribing media to write crusading climate stories By Ian Wishart News journalists are being bribed by the United Nations and the Oxfam charity to write scare stories about climate change ahead of the global climate treaty negotiations in Paris later this year. Details of the bribes – which take the form of ego-boosting “awards”, global travel in CO2 generating airliners and financial payments – are contained in a news release just published by the UNDP today, an organisation headed by former New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark. Journalists’ codes of ethics prohibit being induced to give...

DoD manual allows journalists to be held as 'belligerents' Aug 26, 3:16 AM (ET) By WENDY BENJAMINSON WASHINGTON (AP) — New Defense Department guidelines allow commanders to punish journalists and treat them as "unprivileged belligerents" if they believe journalists are sympathizing or cooperating with the enemy. The Law of War manual, updated to apply for the first time to all branches of the military, contains a vaguely worded provision that military commanders could interpret broadly, experts in military law and journalism say. Commanders could ask journalists to leave military bases or detain journalists for any number of perceived offenses. "In...

On Monday night, Fox News host Megyn Kelly doubled down in defense of her questions during Thursday night’s inaugural Republican presidential debate.She explained: You may have heard that there was a dustup between yours truly and presidential contender Donald Trump. Mr. Trump was upset with a question I asked him at the debate last week about his electability and specifically comments he had made in the past about women.

AP reporter Matt Lee sparred with a State Department spokesperson who insisted the administration was adequately briefed on a side deal between the IAEA and Iran, despite not having read it. “We haven’t received a written copy of it, but we have been briefed on its contents,” State Department Deputy Spokesperson Mark Toner said. “So someone with a photographic memory has looked at it and copied everything down in their brain and then repeated it up on the Hill?” Lee asked. The Obama administration has defended this anti-transparency measure, calling it standard practice and objecting to the term “secret deal.”...

It's time for someone on TV to step up and take Donald Trump down — or, at least, put him in his place.. The situation has not risen to the level of Edward R. Murrow and Sen. Joseph McCarthy. But it's definitely in a league with Katie Couric and Sarah Palin. And every day that Trump gets away with driving the vast majority of political coverage on network and cable TV with his reckless, tabloid-style attacks and unsubstantiated claims is another day that the nation loses in having an informed discussion about where it wants to go in terms of...

Reporter and weekend news anchor Tom Murray is leaving WTMJ-TV (Channel 4) to join the ministry staff at Oak Creek Assembly of God church. Murray made the announcement on his Facebook page Sunday morning, saying he's joining the church staff at the end of August. Murray joined WTMJ in 2007. A Portage, Mich., native, he is the anchor on the station's Saturday and Sunday morning news shows, and a general assignment reporter.... Murray and his wife, Jennifer, are active in Oak Creek Assembly of God's young adult, drama and Sunday school ministries. "My Christian faith is the source of happiness...

Fox News television host Bill O’Reilly sent an anonymous reporter to San Francisco on Tuesday to approach local politicians about the tragic murder of Kathryn Steinle at Pier 14. A segment on last night’s “O’Reilly Factor” shows two supervisors immediately brushing off the television network, while one delivered a terse response. Fox approached Supervisor Wiener at City Hall saying,” I don’t want to be a pest it’s just literally a minute…” Wiener quickly cut off the interviewer saying, “Fox News is not real news and you’re not a reporter.” Wiener told SFGate that “tea party” members are flooding him with...

IM Global and producers State Street Pictures have launched production in Chicago on “Southside With You,” the romantic dramedy inspired by Barack and Michelle Obama’s first date. The film is focused on the 1989 date when a young Obama — portrayed by Parker Sawyers — was trying to woo lawyer Michelle Robinson (played by Tika Sumpter) on a summer afternoon and evening. The date took place at the Art Institute of Chicago, followed by a screening of Spike Lee’s “Do the Right Thing” and their first kiss outside of an ice cream parlor.

When it was announced that the parents of Kathryn Steinle, were going to appear on Bill O’Reilly’s national news show, it was hard to imagine what they were going to say. And it didn’t go the way anyone expected. Jim Steinle and Liz Sullivan are understandably lost in grief. But the Pleasanton couple didn’t say we need to tighten the borders or crack down on undocumented immigrants. They slipped into Fox News-speak a couple of times, saying “illegal aliens,” a jarring term that has long passed, like “colored people,” into the realm of pejorative. And I suppose it is also...

As a lifelong reader of newspapers, and a devoted follower of the journalism profession, although not a part of it, I am sad to write this.  It's like a eulogy for a body long dead but failed to be given a proper burial.  Or like the M. Night Shyamalan movie "The Sixth Sense," where Bruce Willis' character walks the earth as a dead man until a boy who can see dead people leads him to realize his own fate and depart. Large, centralized news gathering operations are dead.  The New York Times, Boston Globe, Washington Post, USA Today--all the old-line...

The Supreme Court could not have been clearer when it ruled late last month that states may not refuse to marry same-sex couples. But in several states where the resistance to marriage equality has been most entrenched, government officials whose job it is to license or perform marriages continue to misunderstand, stall or flatly defy the court. However they justify these tactics, their conduct is illegal and they must stop. These public employees seem to forget that taxpayers pay them to do their job. If doing that job violates his or her religious beliefs, the best solution is to find...

In her 1985 speech after receiving the Best Actress Oscar for her role in "Places in the Heart," actress Sally Field famously gushed, "You like me; you really, really like me." The latest in a long history of surveys examining the public's level of trust in the news media might paraphrase Field's line this way: "You hate us; you really, really hate us, but we don't care." The 2015 State of the First Amendment Survey, a project of the Newseum Institute's First Amendment Center, has "discovered" what most of us could have told them. According to the survey, "Only 24...

Wow. The media just allowed a bogus AP hit job on Cosby to happen. He did not admit to what AP insinuates he did. It editorializes with commentary from the PLAINTIFF'S LAWYER. It also notes that two other women took quaaludes voluntarily. At NO TIME does Cosby state that he gave *anything* to *anyone* involuntarily. A question that is unanswered because of an objection means NOTHING. It is NOT an admission of anything, folks. They want you to leap to a conclusion unsupported by any evidence. This is NOT a smoking gun. He admitted that he took quaaludes for sex,...

Every once in a while there comes along a candidate who is head and shoulders above the rest. Such a person is Senator Ted Cruz. He is that rare candidate who stands his ground, does not intimidate, never loses his cool and is, above all, always a gentlemen. Everyone who is anyone in the liberal media has been having interviews with Cruz. Not because they are so enamored of the Senator, but more because they are on a mission-a mission to trip him up, catch him off-guard, back him into a wall. They haven't been successful yet. Cruz is fully...

“What I’ve got is F*****G Golden,” said jailed Democrat Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich. He was referring to his opportunity to appoint an IL senator to Congress after then Senator Barack Obama became President in 2009. Well, pardon my hubris, but what I have is Golden also, in today’s Hades of Politically Correct Journalism. I have a FIFTIES JOURNALISM DEGREE from that same state, Illinois. Therefore, permit me to advise you budding cub reporters and “J Skul” students of some imperatives I was taught way back when Dinosaurs roamed Wright Street into Greg Hall. “Just the Facts, ma’am; Just the Facts,”...

In America, “accuracy, honesty, transparency, impartiality, and accountability,” went out the day Obama came in The country infamous for its running dog-mainstream media cheering anything Obama in a cacophony of barks, including the “fundamental transformation” of their own country, is now branching out through its State Department to the world. Bureaucrats of the U.S. State Department, who have already taken it upon themselves to teach “ethics” to the “up and coming journalists” of India, are going to “embed” up-and-coming Russian journalists in American newsrooms. Having gained control of the mainstream media on home turf, why not try for world media...

Now that the United States has "normalized" relations with Cuba, which was taken off of the State Department terror sponsor list this week, journalism professors from American universities are starting to train students inside the communist country. Despite the liberal leanings of the professors embarking on this task, this is a very good thing. Press freedom and holding government accountable through the sunlight of reporters are two fundamental principles of a free society. Because of this, despite "normalization" and a "new era," the Castro regime still counts practicing journalism as a crime. It's not just that they are studying journalism...

The economic recovery is really coming along great. For the third time since the expansion began in June 2009, the U.S. economy suffered a setback. Don’t call it a setback. It’s a strategic retreat. Those ‘optimistic’ estimates keep being revised. Such declines in GDP are rare in economic expansions, pointing to the fragile nature of the current rebound. The economy hasn’t contracted in three different quarters during good times since the 1950s. It’s the fault of the GOP. Also the weather. That’s the weakest reading since frigid winter temperatures derailed growth at the start of 2014. We can’t have an...