Free Republic

Lital Shemesh is a 29-year-old successful, female, Israeli journalist who recently participated in a seminar with other young Israelis and Arabs in hopes of igniting optimism for peace. She returned from the seminar disappointed and disillusioned. She is a rising star in the Israeli media who openly expresses her political aspirations in the Knesset. She worked as Editor-in-Chief for the Yedioth Youth Magazines, reported for the Israel Broadcasting Authority and the Hot CableTV News channel, and is CEO and Founder of a web-based girls magazine “Pinkish – Everything that Girls Love.” In her first video blog in English two years...

NBC is unable to reach its Middle East bureau chief Richard Engel, who was also reporting from inside Syria.

NGOs are urging Syrian rebels to release a Ukrainian journalist, Anhar Kochneva, who is set to be executed Thursday. Meanwhile the group behind the kidnapping warned it would now target all Russians, Ukrainians and Iranians on Syrian soil. The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), ARTICLE 19, the International Press Institute and Reporters Without Borders issued a joint statement expressing deep concern about Kochneva’s life and urging the leadership of the Free Syrian Army and of the Syrian Opposition Coalition to ensure that the journalist is safe and set free. The groups also called on the French, British and US governments,...

In case anyone just arrived from Mars, the mainstream media wants Mitt Romney to fail in his quest for the White House. Surprised? They will do whatever possible as “legitimate journalists” to collaborate with the Obama re-election campaign — shamefully so.(Snip)The mainstream media is in the tank for Obama. Every student journalism can recognize that. It’s too late for most already involved “professionally.” Most of them have already violated most of the ethical rules and sold their souls to Obama long ago. As a journalism graduate from the University of Oregon, I am personally ashamed.

Douglas McKinnon teases us with "That said, in off-the-record conversations with my left-leaning journalistic friends, not one believes Obama is going to win re-election. Not one. While most believe Mitt Romney to be a weak candidate, they are still convinced that he will comfortably defeat Obama on Nov. 6. These liberal and jaded journalists privately admit that Obama has been exposed for what he is: an overhyped, self-invented candidate with no real-world experience who has been frozen into inaction by the enormity of the office he holds."

My tour of Israel continues with the Young Jewish Conservatives. Today we had the opportunity to meet with Gil Hoffman — the Chief Political Correspondent of the Jerusalem Post. He told us that U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s trip to Israel in a few days is because the “Palestinians are afraid of Mitt” and understand that he has a good chance of winning the election. The Palestinians are worried that a potential President Romney, who is scheduled to visit Israel soon, as well, will be much harder on them, and therefore believe that now is the time to draw...

Robert Maurius Reno, one of former U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno’s two younger brothers, died Saturday morning, according to their sister, Maggy Hurchalla, of Stuart. The Miami native was born Dec. 11, 1939, at Jackson Memorial Hospital and succumbed to Alzheimer’s disease at the Miami Veterans Administration Medical Center, where he’d been living for about four years. He was 74 and, said Hurchalla “a proud liberal Democrat.’’ Reno became a journalist, like his parents, the late Henry and Jane Reno, and spent most of his career at Newsday, the New York daily, starting as a reporter in 1968. As a...

News channel France 24 hosted a panel Monday night to discuss Egypt’s first civilian president, the Muslim Brotherhood’s Mohamed Morsi. One of the guests on the panel, via satellite from Cairo, was Nader Amram, a member of the Freedom & Justice Party’s foreign relations committee. (The Freedom & Justice Party (FJP) is the Muslim Brotherhood’s political party.) When Amram learned that an Israeli journalist was also included on the panel, he protested that he had not been informed beforehand that he would have to appear with an Israeli. He then launched into a mini-diatribe about how Israel is the real...

The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) reacted with "anger, shock and disbelief" at a decision by a Rome judge to fine an Italian journalist who had the courage to speak out against an anti-Semitic cartoon. In a ruling last week, Judge Emanuela Attura ordered journalist Peppino Caldarola to pay a fine of 25,000 euros for slandering extreme-leftist writer Vauro Senesi, whose caricature of Italian Jewish politician Fiamma Nirenstein was published in 2008 in the communist newspaper Il Manifesto and has been widely condemned as anti-Semitic. The cartoon, titled "Fiamma Frankenstein," depicted the Italian Jewish candidate for parliament as monster-like, with a hook-nose,...

U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder has declared that there is no proof that in-person voter fraud is a problem. He's about to see proof that even he can't deny.In a new video (below) provided to Breitbart.com, James O’Keefe’s Project Veritas demonstrates why Holder should stop attacking voter ID laws--by walking into Holder’s voting precinct and showing the world that anyone can obtain Eric Holder’s primary ballot. Literally. The video shows a young man entering a Washington, DC polling place at 3401 Nebraska Avenue, NW, on primary day of this year--April 3, 2012--and giving Holder’s name and address. The poll worker promptly...

Last night things got so shrill on Roseanne Barr's Twitter timeline that we're pretty sure this tweet from Roseanne to our own Dana Loesch broke some windows:

New Delhi An Israeli official said an explosion was hit an Israeli diplomat's car in New Delhi on Monday. He said one person was hurt in the blast, but did not identify the victim. Israeli Embassy spokesman David Goldfarb said the car was near the embassy when the blast went off. Indian police said only that a car was on fire on the street outside the embassy.

LONDON (AP) — She was instantly recognizable for the eye patch that hid a shrapnel injury – a testament to Marie Colvin’s courage, which took her behind the front lines of the world’s deadliest conflicts to write about the suffering of individuals trapped in war. After more than two decades of chronicling conflict, Colvin became a victim of it Wednesday, killed by shelling in the besieged Syrian city of Homs. Colvin, 56, died alongside French photojournalist Remi Ochlik, the French government announced. Freelance photographer Paul Conroy and journalist Edith Bouvier of Le Figaro were wounded.

A court ruling last December would seem to indicate that no, bloggers are not privy to the same legal protections afforded so-called real journalists. Via the Washington Examiner: This past December, federal judge Marco Hernandez of Oregon issued a ruling in the libel trial of Obsidian Finance Group v. Cox that has dangerous First Amendment implications. Hernandez ruled that blogger Crystal Cox was not entitled to the same protection under media shield laws that other members of the press enjoy. This ruling made it easy for a jury to find her guilty of libel. That result threatens the First Amendment...

Not long after North Carolina State lost to rival North Carolina for the 11th straight time on Thursday night, reporters asked junior forward Scott Wood how frustrating it was to have never beaten the Tar Heels. Wood's response was brilliant in its simplicity. "Has your wife ever cheated on you?" Wood deadpanned in response. Then after a few seconds of the most awkward silence imaginable, he responded, "that's probably how frustrating it is."

Under the National Operations Center (NOC)’s Media Monitoring Initiative that emerged from the Department of Homeland Security in November, Washington has written permission to collect and retain personal information from journalists, news anchors, reporters or anyone who uses “traditional and/or social media in real time to keep their audience situationally aware and informed.” According to DHS, the definition of personal identifiable information can consist of any intellect “that permits the identity of an individual to be directly or indirectly inferred, including any information which is linked or linkable to that individual.” RT adds: "Previously established guidelines within the administration say...

Richard Threlkeld, a far-ranging and award-winning correspondent who worked for both CBS and ABC News during a long career, has been killed in a car crash on New York's Long Island.

The race for the Republican nomination may be coming down to Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney, but in the contest for the Iowa caucuses, their high-profile battle might still turn out to be a sideshow. The national party has spent the last two weeks resigning itself to a choice between the former speaker and the former Massachusetts governor. But Iowa Republicans may end up choosing between Gingrich and Representative Ron Paul. In every post-Thanksgiving poll but one, Paul has been neck and neck for second place in Iowa. In most of them, he has lagged well behind the soaring speaker,...

“Montana blogger is not journalist,” Jeff Barnard of the Associated Press reported Wednesday. U.S. District Judge Marco A. Hernández ruled that “investigative blogger” Crystal L. Cox “was not a journalist and cannot claim the protections afforded to mainstream reporters and news outlets.” Per Alex Dobuzinskis of Reuters: Hernandez found Cox failed to present evidence that she had any media credentials or affiliation with a “recognized news entity,” or that she had checked her facts or tried to contact the other side to “get both sides of the story.” “Montana blogger is not journalist,” Jeff Barnard of the Associated Press reported...

Many people believe in the Constitutional misconception that the newsman is afforded extra Constitutional protection by the First Amendment which states that "Congress shall make no law...abridging...the freedom of speech, or of the press." This is simply not the case. The Supreme Court rightly recognized that notion is based on fallacious reasoning, though later federal appellate courts have not been as wise in applying that precedent. "Freedom of the press" is not a term synonymous with today's media or news reporting, it refers first and foremost to the printing press, (which produced, for example, such important political opinionated works as...

Saudi journalist Mshari Al-Zaydi wonders in an Al-Arabiya commentary why we don’t dispense with the euphemisms, and call the Arab Spring what it is quickly becoming: the Muslim Brotherhood Spring. That should not have been a surprise, Al-Zaydi notes: Shock is acceptable if one is surprised by something completely unexpected… I recall how many Arab writers at the beginning of this year – the year of the Arab Spring – prophesied that what we were witnessing were uprisings staged by non-political civilians and youth, and claimed that not a single radical or ideological slogan was chanted in Cairo’s Tahrir Square,...

With the feeding frenzy that's going on over the Cain sexual harrasment incidents I was wondering what the track record of the various journalists, media outlets, editors, producers, etc. is. It would be really fun to confront them and make them explain it applying the same standard they are using against Cain. It would be really funny if Politico had some. Same with some of the MSNBC hosts. Turn about is fair play. It's time some of the left wing hit squads get hit back I haven't the slightest idea of how to obtain this information.

The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has released new guidelines for employees dealing with reporters, and some journalists are none too pleased about it. The new media policy requires all HHS employees to notify the agency’s office of public affairs about contact with the media and coordinate any interview requests with the office. It also discourages off-the-record conversations without prior approval. Jim Dickinson, editor of FDA Webview and FDA Review, issued a scathing critique of the new guidelines.

Media: Talk about the elite lagging behind a more sophisticated public. Newsweek, trying to overcome its slide into obscurity, thought it could grab attention by smearing Tea Party favorite Michele Bachmann. Big mistake. The smear came in the form of this week's cover story, which tried unconvincingly to depict GOP presidential candidate and Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann as "The Queen of Rage," with a cover shot that made her look maniacal. But if anything, Bachmann comes across as Thatcheresque in her unmovable opposition to more deficit spending. Question her opposition a journalist may do, but don't make it out as...

Herewith is my proposal for a new word to be added to the English langtuage. I looked it up and no such word currently exists. The word is "ediphile". The word applies to (for example) a typical New York Times journalist who would call patriots and those genuinely concerned with the future of their country "terrorists" in an effort to generate "buzz" over their harebrained, left-twisted nonsense. Since Conservatives generally do not engage in this type of bomb-throwing juvenile name calling and are thus left undefended against same, we need a word to describe someone who would commit unspeakable acts...

A Pakistani journalist who wrote last week about the suspected infiltration of Pakistan's navy by al Qaeda terrorists was found dead Tuesday, two days after he went missing in Islamabad. Syed Saleem Shahzads body was found almost 100 miles north of the Pakistani capital.His face had been battered, and he had a gunshot wound in his stomach, according to sources. Mr. Shahzad was Pakistan bureau chief of Hong Kong-based Asia Times Online and author of “Inside al Qaeda and the Taliban: Beyond Bin Laden and 9/11.” He disappeared on Sunday, two days after he wrote an article claiming that al...

Excerpt - Human Rights Watch researcher Ali Dayan Hasan has said he suspects Pakistani intelligence officials abducted Shahzad, possibly because of a recent story he did on al-Qaida infiltration in the Pakistani navy.

Peshawar, May 22, 2011, Salman Shahzad from Khyber Pukhtoon khwa and Wali Afridi from FATA plan to initiate tour in last week of this month. It will be a first trip of its kind to create awareness and mobilize journalist community for their rights and protection and vows to continue their struggle till conveying message all over the World The constant acts of terrorism had adversely affected all segment of the society, including journalists’ community. The journalist is the worst suffered over the past five years According to a rough estimate, about 13 media persons both from electronic and print...

MANCHESTER, England (CNS) -- U.S. and British diplomats discussed exerting pressure on Pope Pius XII to be silent about the Nazi deportations of Hungarian Jews, according to newly discovered documentation. The British feared that the wartime pope might make a "radio appeal on behalf of the Jews in Hungary" and that in the course of his broadcast would "also criticize what the Russians are doing in occupied territory." Sir Francis D'Arcy Osborne, the British ambassador to the Vatican, told an American diplomat that "something should be done to prevail upon the pope not to do this as it will have...

Peshawar 12 May 2011, Nasr Ullah Afridi who’s lost his life in yesterday blast at Peshawar was 13 journalists who have lost his life in war in terror. Mostly journalist from Khyber Pukhtoon khawa and tribal area are killed in firing and planted IED. Allah Noor was the first journalist who’s killed in wana by unknown person. Allah Noor was attached with private pushto TV channel AVT Khyber and during duty unknown person start firing on him which hit not only to Allah Noor but also his friend Amir Nawab also take life in firing. Amir Nawab also worked with...

BEIRUT - An Al-Jazeera journalist has not been heard from since she entered Syria on Friday to report on the political turmoil there, the Arab satellite TV station said Monday. A regional official of the Committee to Protect Journalists said there was "strong evidence" to suggest the journalist, Dorothy Parvaz, had been detained on arrival at Damascus airport on a flight from Qatar. She has U.S., Iranian and Canadian citizenship, and formerly was a reporter and columnist for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. "We are deeply concerned for Dorothy's safety, security, and well-being," Al-Jazeera said in a statement. "We are requesting full...

In yet another segment where he is double-teamed by two liberals, Pat Buchanan defends why he is skeptical of President Obama's past. "I'll tell you what. He went to Occidental College then suddenly he ends up at one of the best schools in the country, Columbia. He vaults from there to Harvard Law School. Suddenly he's on the Harvard Law Review. Suddenly he's the editor of Harvard Law Review. We've never seen any grades of the guy. These are legitimate questions," Buchanan said. Key quote: Pat Buchanan to Chris Matthews: "You're supposed to be a journalist."

Matthew VanDyke didn't go into Libya to be in the middle of a war. The 31-year-old freelance journalist from Baltimore thought Moammar Gadhafi would be ousted from power by the time he arrived in early March. He would report on the changes sweeping the country and help friends he had met on previous visits build a new country. But VanDyke hasn't been heard from since mid-March, when he called his mother and girlfriend on a cellphone with a scratchy connection while on a truck headed from the rebel stronghold of Benghazi to the town of Brega. (snip) The journalist decided...

A writer who publicly mocked the victim of a sex assault has resigned from his post at the London School of Economics after only two days. Nir Rosen, 33, stepped down from his role as a visiting fellow after the university was criticised for employing him. He got the job at LSE just weeks after resigning in disgrace from New York University for making fun of Lara Logan, a CBS correspondent who was attacked and sexually assaulted by a mob while covering protest in Egypt. He wrote a series of comments about the reporter on his Twitter page and said...

Any business owner who uses largely unpaid labor, with a handful of underpaid, nonunion employees, to build a company that is sold for a few hundred million dollars, no matter how he or she is introduced to you on the television screen, is not a liberal or a progressive. Those who take advantage of workers, whatever their outward ideological veneer, to make profits of that magnitude are charter members of the exploitative class. Dust off your Karl Marx. They are the enemies of working men and women. And they are also, in this case, sucking the lifeblood out of a...

We've heard a lot about Geert Wilders, the Dutch parliamentarian whose warnings about Muslim influence in his nation place him in the crosshairs of the powers-that-be. But while the tow-headed modern-day Templar has thus far dodged the hangman on Truth-speech charges, another intrepid defender of Western civilization has not been so lucky. And we haven't heard much about him. He is French journalist Eric Zemmour, and he was just convicted this week of "inciting racism." Writes The New American's R. Cort Kirkwood: Zemmour's "controversial" remarks included his observation that most drug dealers in France were black or Arab, and that...

News Crew Attacked At Natomas Murder Scene SACRAMENTO (CBS13) — Grieving family and friends attacked a reporter and photojournalist from a Sacramento news station Sunday as they covered the aftermath of a deadly shooting in north Natomas. KTXL reporter John Lobertini and photojournalist Rebecca Little were attacked at an IHOP restaurant on the 2900 block of Advantage Way by a number of bystanders who had gathered at the site of the murder. Video captured by CBS13 news crew a short distance away shows several people shouting profanities at the news crew at about 4:00 p.m. as a growing crowd began...

The Jerusalem Post's Ben Hartman and Melanie Lidman describe the Egyptian uprising, painting a harrowing picture of lynchings, beatings and fear for their lives.

On Friday February 11, the day Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak stepped down, CBS correspondent Lara Logan was covering the jubilation in Tahrir Square for a "60 Minutes" story when she and her team and their security were surrounded by a dangerous element amidst the celebration. It was a mob of more than 200 people whipped into frenzy. In the crush of the mob, she was separated from her crew. She was surrounded and suffered a brutal and sustained sexual assault and beating before being saved by a group of women and an estimated 20 Egyptian soldiers. She reconnected with the...

CBS News says that correspondent Lara Logan was attacked and sexually assaulted last Friday in Cairo’s Tahrir Square while filming a piece for “60 Minutes.” From the CBS News statement: On Friday February 11, the day Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak stepped down, CBS Correspondent Lara Logan was covering the jubilation in Tahrir Square for a 60 MINUTES story when she and her team and their security were surrounded by a dangerous element amidst the celebration. It was a mob of more than 200 people whipped into a frenzy. In the crush of the mob, she was separated from her crew....

<p>On Friday February 11, the day Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak stepped down, CBS correspondent Lara Logan was covering the jubilation in Tahrir Square for a 60 MINUTES story when she and her team and their security were surrounded by a dangerous element amidst the celebration. It was a mob of more than 200 people whipped into frenzy.</p>

Beaten Fox News Journalists: Arab crowd went straight for our heads. A few days after being pummeled nearly to death by crowds of pro-Mubarak Arab thugs on the streets of Egypt, Fox News journalists Greg Palkot and Olaf Wiig finally felt strong enough to appear on camera and give first-hand testimony of what kind of barbarism they suffered at the hands of said thugs. To hear Palkot and Wiig tell their story, it sounded like they were right in the middle of a war zone in Tahrir Square. Particularly telling is Palkot’s testimony that the Arab crowd intentionally made a...

Q: You make two very interesting points in your writings. You argue that people are naïve when they think that a democratic Egypt is just around the corner, and that the size of the opposition may be overstated. Let's start with the latter: Could Mubarak's NDP win in free and fair elections? Rubin: Nobody knows. Now, it's very doubtful. The question is, will some kind of regime party survive and get a significant amount of votes? No one knows the answer. Mubarak has a base of support. The Communist parties in Europe survived even after falling from power. A regime...

A group of angry Egyptian men carjacked an ABC News crew and threatened to behead them today in the latest and most menacing attack on foreign reporters trying to cover the anti-government uprising.

[Update 8:21 p.m. in Cairo, 1:21 p.m. ET] The United States has information suggesting that the Egyptian Interior Ministry is involved in rounding up journalists who are covering the unrest there, U.S. State Department officials said Thursday. [Update 7:29 p.m. in Cairo, 12:29 p.m. ET] The Washington Post's Cairo bureau chief, Leila Fadel, and a Post photographer, Linda Davidson, were among two dozen journalists arrested Thursday by the Egyptian Interior Ministry, the newspaper reported on its website, citing multiple witnesses.

Covering the melee in Cairo as an American journalist has taken a turn for the worse in the last 24 hours. In addition to the dangers of reporting from an area where the government has failed to ensure basic safety, an alleged pro-Hosni Mubarak mob has infiltrated the protests and is turning violent on protesters and western journalists. Ashley Webster, the overseas market editor for the Fox Business Network, is the latest to face the threats from the pro-Mubarak demonstrators. On Monday, around 10 a.m. Eastern time, Webster tweeted the following:

ABC's Christiane Amanpour said Wednesday that she and a crew came under attack from a "mob" on the same day CNN's Anderson Cooper reported the same. Amanpour wrote in a reporter's notebook released by ABC News that the attack came after trying to film on a bridge into Tahrir Square. "An angry mob surrounded us and chased us into the car shouting that they hate America," she said. "They kicked in the car doors and broke our windshield as we drove away."

A recently completed investigation of the killing of Daniel Pearl in Pakistan nine years ago makes public new evidence that a senior al-Qaeda operative executed the Wall Street Journal reporter. Khalid Sheik Mohammed - the self-described mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, who is being held at the U.S. detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba - said at a military hearing in 2007 that he killed Pearl. But there have been lingering doubts about his involvement, and the United States has not charged him with the crime. According to the new report, which was prepared by faculty members and...

A general rule of politics is that families are off limits. Criticize a political opponent, go after a public official but leave spouses and kids alone, unless there are special circumstances that expose them to scrutiny. Ohio Democratic Party Chairman Chris Redfern broke that code on Nov. 11, nine days after Democratic Gov. Ted Strickland lost re-election. Redfern personally signed a public-records request with the city of Cleveland for the payroll records of a city employee, Mary Ann Consolo Larkin. Here is what Redfern might have learned from his request: Larkin has worked as a part-time graphic artist in the...