Free Republic

There’s a place for opinionated journalism; in fact, it’s vital. But our causal, profession-wide smugness and protestations of superiority are making us unable to do it well. Our theme now should be humility. We must become more impartial, not less so. We have to abandon our easy culture of tantrums and recrimination. We have to stop writing these know-it-all, 140-character sermons on social media and admit that, as a class, journalists have a shamefully limited understanding of the country we cover. What’s worse, we don’t make much of an effort to really understand, and with too few exceptions, treat the...

Seems Google is paying homage to the "great" Walter Cronkite's birthday. Father of the mainstream liberal media. Must be pining for the days before the internet and alternate media exposed the press for what they were; completely in the tank for dems as they are right down to today.

With the clock ticking toward Election Day, the mainstream media seems intent on committing ritual suicide by eviscerating the tattered remnants of its credibility. See, thereÂ’s some good news out there if you just look for it.At this writing, it still looks like Felonia Milhous von Pantsuit will convince enough morons to vote for her to defeat Donald Trump, but who the hell knows? The polls are tightening, my book remains eerily prescient, and in Hades they are getting out the mittens. So whatÂ’s next from our disgraced media drones as they face the possible repudiation of every libfascist thing...

NBC Meet the Press host Chuck Todd has a wife who’s active in Democratic Party strategic communications, and sometimes donates to Democrats. In 2012, Kristian Denny Todd contributed $2,500 to Sen. Tim Kaine. Todd never felt any need to disclose this during his three recent Kaine interviews on NBC (August 7, September 18, and October 23). But Maverick Mail & Strategies, the firm Mrs. Todd founded in 2007 with fellow James Webb aides Steve Jarding and Jessica Vanden Berg, did heavy lifting for openly socialist Bernie Sanders for President this year. Open Secrets shows a bill for $1.992 million made...

NBC seems to have gone out of the news business. The network has been remarkably shy about reporting on the massive amount of e-mails being released through WikiLeaks, but more than willing to give time to anyone who says anything bad about Trump. Competitor CBS, on the other hand, seems to be dividing up with time equally into a “Bad Donald, Bad Hillary” segment. NBC, of course, is the network that employs John Harwood, a CNBC correspondent who sent love notes to the Clinton campaign and even generously offered his advice. I hope Harwood was auditioning for a job with...

Bill Donohue comments on how the mainstream media are covering the Wikileaks story on anti-Catholicism in the Clinton campaign: Most of the media have been delinquent in reporting on the latest Wikileaks story involving Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman John Podesta, communications director Jennifer Palmieri, and Center for American Progress senior fellow John Halpin. In a series of email exchanges, Palmieri and Halpin made patently disparaging remarks about Catholics, and showed disdain for evangelicals as well. They shared their vitriol with Podesta, who did not respond (the source we quoted from yesterday mistakenly attributed a remark by Halpin to Podesta). Fox...

Good Morning America anchor Amy Robach was under fire after she used a racial slur during a broadcast. During the Monday broadcast, Robach, who was filling in for Robin Roberts, used the words “colored people” while speaking about diversity or lack thereof in Hollywood. During the segment, Amy Robach used the term “colored people” when talking about the criticism Hollywood has received by giving most roles to Caucasian actors. Specifically, the segment dealt with the casting of mixed actress Zendaya as the reimagined Mary Jane in the upcoming Spider-Man: Homecoming. As the Inquisitr reported, many fans were up in arms...

Observation: Have you noticed that when Trump talks to or about the Black Community, that CNN's headline is: "Trump To Blacks: What Do You Have To Lose?" or "Trump Makes Outreach Bid To Blacks From A White Suburb", yet when they talk about Queen Hillary, the term AFRICAN-AMERICAN is used and not BLACK? Trump's speech this afternoon from Michigan was really good -- and he never said the word "BLACK". He said "AFRICAN-AMERICAN". Yet CNN's headlines say "Trump... Black". Such a misrepresentation! This is why the mainstream media blows!

On the final night of a convention filled with mishaps -- of the plagiarism, non-endorsement varieties -- Donald Trump painted a bleak picture of America, even as he officially accepted the Republican party's nomination for presidency. His name was stamped in bold font across the convention hall jumbotron as he walked on stage. "I humbly and gratefully accept your nomination for the presidency of the United States," Trump began his speech. He paused for a moment before departing from his prepared remarks to join the audience in chanting: "USA! USA! USA!" At this point, Trump couldn't help but gloat a...

The entire purpose of my satirical piece demanding the immediate defunding of Planned Parenthood and reconsideration of the Supreme Court's gay marriage ruling "as a result of" the Orlando terrorist attack was to promote fact-based rationality in policymaking, even in the wake -- or especially in the wake -- of a terrible event.  "Public policy should be crafted based on evidence and empiricism, ever mindful of the constitution, even when it's politically inconvenient. Our discourse should encourage thoughtful disagreement, not seek to squelch it by serially impugning others' motives.  Our analysis of stomach-turning violent instances should be rooted in reality and fact, not shoe-horned into pre-existing ideological narratives," my author's note...

What’s super sad is that when I started counting all of the mainstream media reporters I respect I didn’t run out of fingers. Most of them are just what Glenn “Instapundit” Reynolds memorably labeled “Democrats with Bylines.” And that’s literally true – something like 90% of them are, in fact, Democrats. And they act like it. So when Trump refuses to play nice with them, or I hear about another round of lay-offs, the best I can summon up, if I’m in a generous mood, is a half-hearted “Meh.”The MSM, of course, wants to have it both ways. It wants...

<p>Donald Trump just took the mainstream media to the woodshed.</p> <p>During a press conference to clear up the confusion around his donations to veterans organizations, Trump went after the mainstream media, but specifically ABC News reporter Tom Llamas.</p> <p>“I’m not looking for credit,” Trump said of the $5.6 million in donations he has given to various veterans organizations.</p>

WTAE-TV news anchor Wendy Bell has been fired after a recent public apology from the station regarding a post on her Facebook page. A statement made today from Hearst Television, the station's parent company, reads "WTAE has ended its relationship with anchor Wendy Bell. Wendy's recent comments on a WTAE Facebook page were inconsistent with the company's ethics and journalistic standards."

My wife Susan and I look forward in 2016 to our 40th anniversary. Like God's loving-kindness described in song, a good marriage does not fade away, but is new every morning. Wish that I could say the same about daily mainstream media reporting. Yet as I fill in my 28th straight annual ballot for the Media Research Center's "Worst Reporting" award, the tragedy of reporters-turned-propagandists is ... old every evening. Yes, some journalists covered Hillary Clinton's scandals with the hope of knocking her off and making Bernie Sanders or Joe Biden the Democratic nominee. Joy Behar, co-host of ABC's The...

Sarah Palin got to take another jab at the “lamestream media” on Tuesday after The Washington Post issued an embarrassing correction on a false report that the former Fox News commentator is joining Al Jazeera. The Washington Post’s attention-grabbing mea culpa followed reporter Suzi Parker’s claim that Palin signed a deal to be a host and commentator for the Qatari-based network. Parker had called the faux-scoop “a cautionary tale about what can happen with politics and celebrity meet.” The story became a cautionary tale of another sort, however, when it emerged that the “news” came from The Daily Currant, a...

Sarah Palin is slamming daughter Bristol's former fiance after he filed court papers involving the couple's daughter Sailor. Dakota Meyer filed papers seeking joint legal and physical custody of Sailor Grace, who was born on December 23 in Alaska. In the court documents filed by Meyer which were obtained by TMZ he is also asking for one other thing from Bristol - child support. Sarah responded by telling Entertainment Tonight in a statement; 'For many months we have been trying to reach out to Dakota Myers [sic] and he has wanted nothing to do with either Bristol's pregnancy or the baby.' She then said that Meyer...

"Muslims account for only about 1 percent of the U.S. population but account for about half of terrorist attacks since 9/11. That means Muslims in the United States are about 5,000 percent more likely to commit terrorist attacks than non-Muslims." -- Mark Krikorian2) "Consider, for example, that in 1958 a mere 4 percent of Americans approved of interracial marriage. By 2013, that number had grown to 87 percent. In 2012 these once-taboo unions hit an all-time high.Ku Klux Klan membership has shrunk drastically from millions a century ago to fewer than 5,000 today. The Black Panthers are essentially extinct. While plenty...

Three people were killed and nine were injured when Robert Lewis Dear opened fire at a Planned Parenthood center in Colorado Springs, Colorado. After capturing the shooter, the authorities resisted identifying a motive for Dear's attacks, because they didn't have one. Early reporting based on interviews with his recent neighbors in North Carolina turned up nothing. "If you talked to him, nothing with him was very cognitive," said neighbor James Russell to CBSNews.com. "Two topics Russell said he never heard Dear talk about were religion or abortion." The Washington Post found the same: "The neighbors said they never saw Dear...

CBS correspondent Tracy Smith visited with Governor Sarah Palin at her home in Wasilla, Alaska. CBS’s Tracy Smith began her interview in a harsh fashion, asking Palin if she felt "like a loser" in the aftermath of the 2008 presidential election. The Governor didn’t hedge her response, "Well sure, you either win or you lose. It’s like dang, I wish I could have added more, contributed more positively. Maybe there was no chance that we were going to win anyway." Smith pressed her assault, "Do you feel like you’re to blame for the loss in 2008, cause people do blame...

Apparently, integrity and critical thinking are not qualities found in today's mainstream media. We know this after watching the CNBC-hosted Republican debate billed as one which would focus on "the key issues that matter to all voters-job growth, taxes, technology, retirement and the health of our national economy." Obviously, that did not happen. Instead, Americans watched moderators with the seeming intellectual prowess of June bugs disrespectfully hurl boneheaded attacks and stupid questions at GOP presidential hopefuls, offering millions of viewers a front row seat to observe proof positive they are nothing more than extensions of, and left-wing propagandists for, the...