Free Republic

Does it seem you hear a little bit less about political controversies in the sports world than you did a year or two ago? Do you find yourself grumbling at your television, “I just want to enjoy watching the game” less frequently? Today’s Los Angeles Times profiles ESPN President Jimmy Pitaro, who took over running the network in March 2018. Deep in the article: Pitaro has also satisfied ESPN’s more traditional fans by steering commentators away from political discussions on-air and on social media, which heightened during President Trump’s criticism of NFL player protests against social injustice during the playing...

Salon Media says they have reached an 11th hour deal to sell the company and its flagship property Salon.com for $5 million. In an SEC filing, Salon also revealed its position was dire and that it would face imminent “bankruptcy and liquidation” if the deal should fall through. “We have agreed to sell substantially all of our assets (the “Asset Sale”), including all pertinent intellectual property rights comprising the Company’s business of owning, operating and publishing the website known as Salon.com,” the filing read. The company buying Salon was named only as Salon.com LLC and appeared to be getting an...

–Read Note to Editor at the end.– Hurting in ratings, CNN is now pushing for ‘voluntary layoffs’. CNN says roughly 100 employees have accepted voluntary buyouts a month after an overhaul by parent company AT&T. Brian Stelter, also confirmed the rumor, trying to spin it as “hundreds of staffers leaving CNN, as voluntary buyouts.” In a tweet, Brian Stelter said: There’s a rumor making the rounds today about big impending layoffs at CNN. A CNN spokeswoman is knocking it down on the record: “No layoffs.” There WERE voluntary buyouts throughout the organization, and about 100 people opted for it. This...

President Trump blasted a New York Times report Wednesday morning on his business losses decades ago, calling the story "a highly inaccurate Fake News hit job."The report notes that his businesses had lost almost $1.2 billion between 1985 and 1994, based on IRS transcripts.  The data — printouts from Mr. Trump’s official Internal Revenue Service tax transcripts, with the figures from his federal tax form, the 1040, for the years 1985 to 1994 — represents the fullest and most detailed look to date at the president’s taxes, information he has kept from public view. Though the information does not cover...

<p>Maybe President Trump ought to use the adjective “failing” in front of CNN instead of the New York Times. In point of fact, Trump hatred has been good for the Gray Lady, with digital subscriptions up substantially (over $700 million in revenue last year) as the paper became the premier source of anti-Trump fulminations.</p>

Recently there have been three news reports of children dying in the U.S. while in custody of the U.S. Border Patrol. That phrase, “while in custody of” is used to imply that the child would be alive today if only the Border Patrol had let them illegally trespass without interruption. If a child dies in a hospital, the media rarely claims that the child died “while in the custody of” a hospital. It doesn’t have the same impact. Every media outlet in America knows that a news story about the death of a child is emotionally heartbreaking. Children are a...

CBS2’s Greg Mills reports that mosques in our area have gone on high alert. This is an important time for those of the Islamic faith. The 30 days of Ramadan are just beginning. “It’s a month where we try to be better versions of ourselves. Both mentally, spiritually and physically,” says Qureshi. The holiday begins under the dark cloud of their fellow worshipers who share their faith and those of other faiths. Imam Quereshi has talked about what he called people who are isolated and have murder in mind. The Islamic Center has been also reaching out to synagogues, churches...

No one doubts that the liberal media acts as an arm of the Democrat party. But MSNBC's Yasmin Vossoughian has now provided an absolutely brazen example of the phenomenon. Usually, they refrain from using the royal We when discussing Democrat strategy. Vossoughian subbed for Ari Melber on his MSNBC show The Beat on Thursday. Interviewing ultraliberal Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland, Vossoughian three times asked Raskin which was the best way that "we" should go after Attorney General Bill Barr and/or the Mueller report and testimony by Mueller. After Raskin called Barr's attitude "constitutionally intolerable," Vossoughian responded. "You’re bringing up...

There’s really only one word to describe what has happened to viewership at flagship cable news channel CNN and its big sis MSNBC over the past month: Collapse. According to Nielsen Media Research, CNN‘s viewership tanked a whopping 26 percent in April, a dip tied inextricably to the release of special counsel Robert Mueller’s report in which he officially cleared POTUS Donald Trump of “colluding” with Russia to “steal” the 2016 election from Hillary Clinton. Mueller also did not recommend charging the president with obstruction of justice because he also could not find any evidence for that, as well. Meanwhile,...

The liberal subscribers of the Washington Post adored the latest grand ruling from the paper's "Fact Checker," Glenn Kessler. He asserts President Trump has just crossed the threshold of "10,000 false or misleading claims." Kessler did a round of interviews with delighted anchors on CNN and MSNBC. Everyone knows the president can unload a whopper, like when he recently suggested of wind turbines, "they say the noise causes cancer." But the Post's 10,000 is a Democratic Party talking point, a marketing strategy to build a liberal subscriber base. "Readers begged us" to do this, Kessler said. Of course they did....

Last week, The New York Times published a cartoon so anti-Semitic that Bret Stephens wrote in his Times column that it was "an image that, in another age, might have been published in the pages of Der Sturmer." Der Sturmer was the Nazis' major anti-Semitic newspaper. A Times columnist charging the Times with publishing a Nazi-like cartoon is quite a moment in American publishing history. For those who haven't seen the cartoon, here is Stephens' description: "The Jew in the form of a dog. The small but wily Jew leading the dumb and trusting American. The hated Trump being Judaized...

Sports Illustrated has released its annual swimsuit issue and declared itself “proud” to present the first Muslim model to wear a hijab and “burkini” within its pages.The Somali-American model [Halima Aden] was born in Kenya at the Kakuma Refugee Camp, where she lived until the age of seven before moving to the United States. For her SI Swimsuit rookie spread, we couldn’t think of a more perfect place travel than her birth country, where she shot at Watamu Beach with photographer Yu Tsai.“I keep thinking [back] to six-year-old me who, in this same country, was in a refugee camp,” Halima said during her shoot. “So...

It used to be that we were told that Trump was fostering “Trump antisemitism” and driving a new wave of antisemitism in the US. But the cartoon depicts him as a Jew. Well, which is it? Is he fostering antisemitism, or is he now a closet Jew being led by Israel, depicted as a Jewish dog? We used to say that images “conjured up memories” of 1930s antisemitism. This didn’t conjure it up; this showed us exactly what it looked like. ... This isn’t like some story of unclear antisemitism. This isn’t a dog whistle. This is a dog. This...

In this scruffy, high-desert town encircled by prairies and potato farms, Sen. Cory Gardner drew shouts of approval last week for his message that Democrats are shoving the country toward socialism. “That’s not what government is or what it should be,” he told about 200 Alamosa County Republicans at a barbecue fundraiser in a National Guard armory. “We have to stand up and fight. Are you going to join me in this fight?” For Gardner and other Republicans making the same pitch , including President Donald Trump and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, the key question is whether it will...

Former police Chief Jane Castor was elected mayor of Tampa, Florida, on Tuesday, becoming the first out lesbian mayor of a major city in the state. Castor said that her win “sends a resounding message to our community — no, it sends a resounding message to the nation, that Tampa celebrates its diversity and lifts everyone... [An activist] 2019 the “Year of the Lesbian Mayor” because the number of lesbians elected mayor of a big city rose from two to seven, and could end up at eight later this year if Jolie Justus is elected mayor of Kansas City. According...

On Easter Sunday, bombs ripped through Colombo, Negombo, and Batticaloa in Sri Lanka. The targets were churches. The death toll has surged to nearly 300 people. It’s horrific. It’s a terrorist attack perpetrated by radical Islamic terrorists. It’s a terrible tragedy. At least four Americans were killed in the attacks. This was a targeted assault on Christians, but the liberal media decided to use this attack to somehow drum up some trash story about the far right is now animated or something.  The Washington Post headline read, “Christianity under attack? Sri Lanka church bombings stoke far-right anger in the West.” Well, first, Christianity is...

The Hollywood Reporter performed a poll on the news media, and the finding is still unexpected and shocking to some. The headline was "Americans Think All Network News Channels Lean Liberal, Poll Finds." Common sense has won. Can we dispose of the ridiculous fiction that the network news product is objective, strictly balanced and nonpartisan? The poll of 2,200 Americans from March 28 to April 2 asked if certain media outlets are "more liberal" or "more conservative" or have "no political lean." The Big Three networks averaged 35 percent "more liberal" and about 20 percent "no political lean." Count on...

The media landscape used to be straightforward: Content companies — studios — made stuff — TV shows and movies — and sold it to pay TV distributors, who sold it to consumers. Now things are up for grabs: Netflix buys stuff from the studios, but it’s making its own stuff, too, and it’s selling it directly to consumers. That’s one of the reasons older media companies are trying to compete by consolidating. Disney, for example, recently completed its purchase of 21st Century Fox. Distributors like AT&T, which bought Time Warner last year, are becoming media companies, too. Meanwhile, giant tech...