Free Republic

FREAK SHOW IN DENVER? DON’T INSULT FREAK SHOWS! For those younguns out there, back in the Dark Ages of the 1950’s and before, circuses and travelling carnivals actually did feature “freak shows” in which unfortunates such as the Bearded Lady, the Tattooed Lady, the World’s Fattest/Tallest/Skinniest/Tiniest Man, the Lizard Man, and other human genetic anomalies as well as animal oddities such as two-headed calves and the like.... Political Correctness is itself an anomaly and a perversion of common sense but P.C. did prevail in ending such exploitative exhibitions which are now rightly considered an affront to human decency. It is...

Blogosphere: Doing the Research the Mainstream Press Won't DoMSM: Trying to improve the Bottom Line?Simon Scowl at Deceiver is upset. He's discovered that the blogosphere, which was the only place--besides, of course, the National Enquirer--doing any digging into John Edwards' affair with Rielle Hunter and his cover up operation--is serving as the Mainstream Media's unpaid and uncredited Research Division. Weird, huh? Deceiver was the only place talking about this stuff for at least a week and a half, and all of a sudden everybody else has been doing original research on it the whole time? Or maybe it doesn’t count...

The liberals misrepresent what Bush said about Iraq and Al Qaeda http://www.thebulletin.us/site/index.cfm?newsid=19895473&BRD=2737&PAG=461&dept_id=576361&rfi=8

What explains all the over-the-top media coverage and adulation for Barack Obama? The presumptuous treatment by the press of Obama as president-elect or a head of state, stems from a belief that an election isn’t necessary, because, in the eyes of many in the mainstream media, as the first African-American candidate for the presidency, Barack Obama is entitled to the office. In a very real sense, Barack Obama is an affirmative-action candidate for the presidency. Should he be defeated by the American voters, it will not be a mere loss due to his numerous shortcomings and foibles, but rather, an...

Obama's Magical Mystery Tour After a week of intense media foreplay, Obama has finally embarked on his magical mystery tour. As he boarded the plane that took him on the first leg of his anxiously awaited Middle East and European tour, a pair of uniformed Air Force officers saluted simultaneously, as they do each time President Bush boards Air Force One. As the media-anointed President in waiting, Obama is virtually guaranteed superstar non-stop media coverage as he makes his taxpayer financed 'fact finding' tour this week. Joining him on this excellent adventure are all three of the major network anchors...

"John McCain has taken three foreign trips in the past four months, all unaccompanied by a single network anchor." --Howard Kurtz, Washington PostIf anyone needed more proof that the Mainstream Media is the PR wing of the Democrat Party, look no further than Barack Obama's Excellent Adventure. Obama is being attended to by the breathless anchors of ABC, NBC and CBS News. The three network anchors will travel to Europe and the Middle East next week for Barack Obama's trip, adding their high-wattage spotlight to what is already shaping up as a major media extravaganza. Lured by an offer of...

FINDLAY, Ohio -- On his corner of College Street, Jim Peterman stares at the four American flags planted in his front lawn and rubs his forehead. Peterman, 74, is a retired worker at Cooper Tire, a father of two, an Air Force veteran and a self-described patriot. He took one trip to Washington in 1989 -- best vacation of his life -- and bought a statue of the Washington Monument that he still displays in a glass case in his living room. He believes a smart vote is an American's greatest responsibility. Which is why his confusion about Barack Obama...

After nearly 15 years of attempting to describe how the mainstream media has often negatively portrayed conservatives, I have found there are some basic truths which have prompted such coverage. Certainly those who fall on the right of the political spectrum are not fairly represented or reported on by many journalists in the dominant press. However, the dynamics of conservatism and the varied views which make up this broad political idiom has, at times, fostered the coverage it receives...

Imagine the reaction from the mainstream media if some conservative group, no matter how fringe, had called for the trial of Barack Obama on unproven charges. Does anybody doubt that they would focus on such a story in a very big way? Well, something like this has happened except it is the dean of the unaccredited Massachusetts Law School at Andover, Lawrence Velvel, who has called for a conference this September to plan war crimes trials against members of the Bush administration. Of course, the MSM is ignoring this story because it would hurt the Obama campaign. Here is what...

Usually, when a journalist is censored in a Western nation, American news organizations respond with collective outrage. But as a major attack on press freedom unfolds in Canada, America’s mainstream media are silent. Neither the TV networks nor the major newspapers have reported on hearings last week at what amounts to a Stalinesque show trial in Vancouver, British Columbia. Mark Steyn, a Canadian journalist who now lives in New Hampshire and whose column appears in National Review magazine as well as several U.S. and Canadian newspapers, is facing charges before British Columbia’s Human Rights Tribunal. His crime? Spreading “hatred.” The...

To date, not one "mainstream media" journalist has pressed the leading advocates of unconditional surrender to describe in detail what might happen after we "bring the troops home now." There's plenty of unchallenged sloganeering, but no serious debate. This selective political softball and pep-rally journalism serves neither our country nor our political process well. So, let's bring those quit-Iraq time-travelers back to mid-2008 and fill them in on what's happened since they were ideologically stranded five years ago: * After our troops reached Baghdad, al Qaeda's leaders made a colossal strategic miscalculation and publicly declared that Iraq was now the...

RFFM.org Commentary While watching politics for most of my adult life, I never cease to be amazed at how dumb the two major political Parties can be. And this year may top them all for absurdity. Heading into the primary season, the Democrats had everything going their way. George Bush's favorability ratings hovered somewhere around 30%, the Democrats just came off of winning back both Houses of Congress in 2006 and, in general, during the last decade the Republican Party was doing its best imitation of how to govern like Democrats. Hillary Clinton herself had high disapproval numbers, but a...

Consider This by 3-wood Here's something that should drive the MSM up a wall. Consumer-level inflation's tame in April, U.S. says "WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) ~ Growth in consumer prices came in below expectations for April even as food prices rose at the sharpest rate in 18 years, a government report showed Wednesday. The consumer price index rose a moderate 0.2% last month, the Labor Department said. Excluding volatile food and energy prices, the core consumer price index increased 0.1%. Inflation was just a bit weaker than expected, but financial markets welcomed the April CPI figures. Consumer prices are up 3.9% in...

Open Season on the Clinton Scandals? by Nancy Morgan FLASH: The Mainstream Media Discovers--GASP!--the Underbelly of the Clintons Eight Years LaterThe day following the crucial Indiana and NC primaries that seemed to end Hillary's presidential aspirations, a strange thing happened. The media started releasing bits and pieces of Hillary's seldom reported, nefarious doings. Doings that have been in the public arena for years but never followed up by the media. The Washington Times headline Once-Secret Memos Question Clinton's Honesty appeared Wednesday. The article outlined the decades old information that federal prosecutors had assembled hundreds of pages of evidence suggesting she...

Duane "Dog" Chapman, Don Imus, and Michael Richards have all made national news recently for making racist comments.  Each, having been fully and mercilessly covered by the mainstream media paid a price for his errors.  Some caught in the same circumstances, however, get a pass.  The latest example is left of center independent newspaper publisher Michael Lacey.  Lacey is the owner of Village Voice Media, a conglomerate of "alternative weeklies," including the New Times in Phoenix and the Village Voice in New York, which service a niche readership group in an increasingly growing number of markets throughout the country. Lacey used...

It would be wrong to say that some vital information is ‘lost’ in the barrage of feel-sad stories the main stream media throws our way each night when it come to the ongoing struggle in Afghanistan. The term ‘lost’ would imply something was actually there to begin with. That doesn’t apply here.

I never thought I would find myself defending Hillary Clinton, but there are times when we must all simply bite the bullet. However, why am I, a man, the only one to figure out the reason for Hillary Clinton's exaggeration when it came to her trip to Bosnia where she told reporters she was dodging sniper bullets on an airport tarmac. It's really very simple...

“Recession is when a neighbor loses his job. Depression is when you lose yours.” Perhaps the above Ronald Reagan quote is a good example of why the Mainstream Media is so gloomy about the economy. If you’re employed by the MSM, job cuts and downsizing is not only a fact of life, there’s no end in sight for the members of the Media Pampered Class. It’s easy to see why the MSM talking heads are so obsessed with bad economic news: if arrogance and conservative-bashing are no longer enough to ensure one’s continued employment in the MSM, then the economy...

The problem with CBS and Katie Couric is not that the show isn't working. CBS Evening News is a mother on life support and Katie was just stillborn. She never had a chance. Ever since CBS lied about the Bush National Guard story, it has as much credibility as, well....a major news network that makes up news. Small disconnect in that strategy but overcomeable with time except for the fact that CBS, ABC, and NBC are running out of time. All three of the major networks have been losing evening news viewers for the past 10 years in a major...

He's only the Governor of Pennsylvania and former head of the Democratic National Committee, and he has Olbermann's number...

It is great fun watching the mainstream media turn against the Clintons with a vengeance. For once, the shoe is on the other foot. The spectacle is especially entertaining for conservatives, since the media has been treating the Clintons with a disdain to which Republicans have grown accustomed for the past twenty years. The Clintons fall from grace with their formerly reliable enablers has been sudden and swift. Confused, in desperation, they keep reaching into their bag of old tricks that had served them so well in the past, only to be rebuked by a turncoat media, from whom they...

LESS THAN 48 HOURS AFTER Iraqi security forces began their campaign against militant Shia factions in Basra, the media had already declared the operations a failure. The operations, which were initiated on March 25, were designed to quell rogue factions of Muqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army. In covering the fighting, the press displayed its previously seen penchant for quickly throwing in the towel when a military operation does not instantaneously meet its goals. Of course, the expectation of immediate success for an operation aimed at clearing densely-populated urban terrain is highly unrealistic. Recent history in Iraq shows this: it took months...

NEW YORK The newspaper industry has experienced the worst drop in advertising revenue in more than 50 years. According to new data released by the Newspaper Association of America, total print advertising revenue in 2007 plunged 9.4% to $42 billion compared to 2006 -- the most severe percent decline since the association started measuring advertising expenditures in 1950.

March 2008 Cable News Ratings From Drudge CABLE NEWS RACE NIGHT OF MARCH 13, 2008 VIEWERS FOXNEWS O'REILLY 2,979,000 FNC HANNITY/COLMES 2,280,000 FNC GRETA 1,896,000 CNN KING 1,640,000 FNC HUME 1,530,000 CNN COOPER 1,417,000 FNC SHEP 1,392,000 CNN DOBBS 1,057,000 MSNBC OLBERMANN 1,001,000 CNNHN GRACE 605,000 MSNBC HARDBALL 507,000

"But when I did learn about it, I also learned that some evil lurks in my heart. I shouldn’t be feeling even a touch of glee over seeing a firm that has been such a major source of really nefarious economic nonsense get in trouble."

I am struck, though not entirely surprised, by the widening gulf between some Cable TV commentators and pundits reaction to Obama's speech and that of most of middle america. So disparate is the treatment, that It leads me to ask: did we watch the same speech? By and large, the acclamation given his speech by most liberal pundits has been unrestrained and effusive: On MSNBC, Sally Quinn gushed that it was the greatest in all of human history; tune in to any cable news channel and you will hear similar accolades. We have seen this all before, most notably in...

Anderson Cooper: Focus on Rev. Wright 'Completely Off Track' By Mark Finkelstein | March 13, 2008 Who cares if our next president has chosen as his "spiritual guide" someone who calls on God to damn America, and believes the US brought 9-11 on itself? Completely off track! Let's get back to the important stuff. You know, like the fine print of the candidate's plan to nationalize health care. That in a nutshell is Anderson Cooper's kvetch about the controversy over the outrageous statements made by Rev. Dr. Jeremiah Wright, Jr., the pastor of Barack Obama's church and the man Obama...

Eliot Spitzer is just the latest in a long line of Democratic Party demagogues that the liberal mainstream media created and protected. http://www.thebulletin.us/site/index.cfm?newsid=19389109&BRD=2737&PAG=461&dept_id=576361&rfi=8

The slam so nice she said it twice...Well, at least one thing is cleared up now. When the controversy first arose, I read a comment from someone who claimed to have been at Obama's speech. The commenter said he or she didn't hear Michelle say "really," before "proud." That modifier makes a big difference. You can understand how someone might feel restrained pride in America. I mean, that's a lot different than not ever having felt proud at all, right? Relistening to the Breitbart version, there seems to be a glitch, and, while it appears she intends to say "really,"...

Revealing how the liberals don't want separation of church and state when it comes to their politics. http://www.thebulletin.us:80/site/news.cfm?newsid=19250142&BRD=2737&PAG=461&dept_id=623508&rfi=6

...How quickly America has been lulled back to sleep. With a heap of help from our watchful media. For more than four years, every news outlet in the Country was stirring its anti-American pot and blasting news of the carnage from Iraq. They were counting the bodies and inflating the count.They were giving more coverage to the paltry numbers of paid anti-war protestors than they were to our military heroes and their families. We heard about the horrors of the Iraq War day in and day out....And just as predictably, the 2008 Presidential election, according to our media elites, isn't...

Chicago (AP) -- Real estate magnate Sam Zell took control of newly private Tribune Co. on Thursday and began shaking up the newspaper and TV company the moment the $8.2 billion buyout he led closed, reshuffling the board, naming two top executives and promising more action ahead. Taking on the CEO's role as well as chairman, Zell made clear he won't hesitate to make sweeping changes at the media conglomerate even though he has no previous experience in the industry. He signaled he has no immediate asset sales in mind at the company that owns 23 television stations and nine...

The Philadelphia Inquirer's Nov. 18 editorial was the perfect example of how Philadelphia's crime problem is partly the result of a civic mentality that embraces discredited liberal ideas. The editorial was titled "Fighting Violent Crime, Wage War on Causes." This was the first piece of misinformation. The editorial board acted as if they know what causes violent crime. They do not. The fact is that nobody knows what causes crime. There are many criminogenic theories. Indeed, there are so many, they are divided into different categories such as biological, psychological, economic and social, which are then subdivided into more categories....

An important study has found that if you rely solely on the mainstream media for your news and information, you've been conned and may well have voted for the wrong candidates for the wrong reasons. "Even Harvard Finds the Media Biased." Yes, Investor's Business Daily (IBD), a financial newspaper, hit it out of the park with that headline and the story on this study, which it summarized as follows: "The debate is over. A consensus has been reached. On global warming? No, on how Democrats are favored on television, radio and in the newspapers." IBD was too polite to also...

RICHMOND, Va.—There's no shortage of polls underscoring America's sour mood these days. Surveys generally show that 7 in 10 Americans say the country is headed in the wrong direction and that most Americans believe their leaders in Washington are doing a poor job. U.S. News led the way in explaining this trend with a recent special report on why Americans think Washington is broken and what can be done about it. If anything, the warning signs are getting gloomier. A new focus group of Republican voters from the Richmond area, conducted last Thursday evening, was a case in point. All...

If it’s Monday morning, it means I’m talking to one of the Thompson Associates, who offers his thoughts on Jay Cost’s contention that Fred Thompson is running against the mainstream/drive-by media and its expectations as much as his rivals. The Thompson Associate said that he and others close to Thompson had studied the campaign of McCain in 2000, and began to wonder if glowing profiles from the mainstream media, and the traditional definition of ‘good press coverage’ no longer applied in Republican primaries. “What happens if you start from the assumption that the conservative base has no respect at all,...

In a recent speech at the National Press Club, Katie Couric expressed somber disapproval of the jingoistic excesses after 9/11. Among the things that vexed her: "The whole culture of wearing flags on our lapel and saying 'we' when referring to the United States." From what I can tell, nobody among the journalistic swells bothered to ask, "Who isn't 'we,' Kemo Sabe?" I don't want to revisit those supposedly Orwellian flag pins, which sat so heavily on so many journalistic lapels. But it's worth recalling that during World War II, civilian correspondent Walter Cronkite -- whose anchor job Couric now...

Again it comes, for the sixth time now — 2,191 days after that awful morning — falling for the first time on a Tuesday, the same day of the week. Again there will be the public tributes, the tightly scripted memorial events, the reflex news coverage, the souvenir peddlers. Is all of it necessary, at the same decibel level — still?

As a questioner, along with George Stephanopoulos, of Republican presidential candidates at the Sunday debate in Iowa carried on ABC's This Week, veteran Des Moines Register political reporter and current columnist David Yepsen pressed the candidates to raise taxes. For the last question in the first hour of the 90 minute session from Drake University, Yepsen urged Mike Huckabee: “Is it time we raise the federal gas tax to start fixing up our nation's bridges and roads?” After Huckabee answered it was a matter of budget priorities, Yepsen turned to Rudy Giuliani: “In Minnesota, Governor Pawlenty, who vetoed an increase...

WHOM DO YOU KNOW WHO SAT OUT THE LAST ELECTION?HOW MANY PEOPLE DO YOU KNOW WHO SAT OUT THE LAST ELECTION BECAUSE THEY BELIEVED THE MEDIA'S HYPE ABOUT "REPUBLICAN CORRUPTION"?  YOU CAN PLANT THE SEEDS OF MEDIA DOUBT NOW -- Copy this and email it to absolutely everybody you can -- and ask them to do the same.   Also, be creative: find the email addresses of the officers, staff and members of various clubs and Chambers of Commerce in the towns around you and the areas you're most concerned about:------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------    Did YOU sit out the last election because you...

Networks' on-air loss offset on Web. For more than two decades, discussions of TV news have been dominated by a discourse of decline. No statistic has been quoted more often than that of network evening newscasts collectively losing 27 million viewers - roughly half their audience - across a 25-year span starting in 1980. But for all the talk of dinosaurs and audience erosion, major TV news programs - such as PBS' The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer and Tim Russert's Meet the Press on NBC - have found new life on computer screens, iPods and cell phones during the past...

The first step to recovery is admitting there is a problem... Noted German Blogger Davids Medienkritik was interviewed by the BBC and CBN on bias in the European media against the US and Bush. (Check the videos at http://gatewaypundit.blogspot.com/2007/06/in-europe-if-you-repeat-distortion-long.html)

(author of the new novel A Sense of Duty available at Amazon.com) Chicago Tribune reporter Christi Parsons wrote a piece for the Sunday, May 6 edition titled, “Parody targets role of race in Obama candidacy.” Parsons said, “Weeks after radio personality Rush Limbaugh began airing a parody titled “Barack the Magic Negro,” the song about African-American Sen. Barack Obama’s popularity with many white voters is drawing fire from critics who say it is racist. The audio clip features a comedian imitating the singing voice of Rev. Al Sharpton, bemoaning Obama’s popularity with whites who will, the lyrics predict, “vote for...

It is rare for a mainstream media journalist to openly criticize the media’s coverage of a particular issue. But that is exactly what CNN’s Lou Dobbs did on Tuesday’s "American Morning." In an interview with co-host Kiran Chetry, Dobbs blasted the media’s coverage of illegal immigration, saying "They're selling an agenda. And they're not applying critical judgment. And critical judgment and skepticism is our job as journalists. We're talking about comprehensive immigration legislation as reform. We're using the word 'reform' as if it were true. There's no skepticism." Dobbs’s interview was part of "American Morning’s" coverage of pro-illegal immigration rallies...

Trouble at the L.A. Times: An editor kills a Page One story on Armenian genocide, and charges of bias fly By Daniel Hernandez Wednesday, April 25, 2007 - 7:00 pm Did the Los Angeles Times kill a front-page article about the fight over the recognition of the Armenian genocide because its writer, Mark Arax, is Armenian? It’s a question L.A. Times managing editor Douglas Frantz would probably prefer not to address. News broke earlier this week that Frantz killed Arax’s story in a terse email message to the writer because, Frantz said, Arax had “a conflict of interest” and a...

The head of the Democratic Party said Wednesday that the best way to get presidential candidates to talk frankly about issues is to lock out the media. During the Mortgage Bankers Association conference, a banker expressed frustration with candidates who only talk in sound bites and wondered how that could be changed. Howard Dean, once a presidential candidate, offered a simple solution. "I suggest you have candidates in to meetings like this and bar the press," Dean said. The Democratic National Committee chairman criticized media coverage, arguing that networks such as CBS used to put content first and didn't mind...

Slurs against Italian-Americans considered no big deal by Liberal Mainstream Media even though Italian-American organizations have complained to the Liberal Mainstream Media. Why do you think that is? Could it be the Imus affair was more about politics than ethnicity? Here is the link. If it doesn't work cut and paste to your browser. http://www.thebulletin.us/site/news.cfm?newsid=18219856&BRD=2737&PAG=461&dept_id=576361&rfi=6

Helen Thomas chatted with young [National Press] Club members over breakfast March 13 and with characteristic bluntness dismissed President George W. Bush as a chief executive who has made little contribution. The legendary White House correspondent, who has covered every president since John Kennedy, was acerbically critical of the Democratic Congressional leadership as well. Even at this stage in her long career, Thomas, now a syndicated columnist for Hearst, pointed out that she still depends for information on other journalists. “I’m reading newspapers every day like you are. And as eager as she was to take questions, Thomas was just...

THE ZOA MIDDLE EAST REPORT WEDNESDAY, MARCH 21.2007 12:00 NOON - 1:00 PM EST 1540 AM - Philadelphia area www.zoaphilly.org anywhere in the world (click on "listen live" or on "listen anytime" if you missed us live) Steve Erlanger, NYT Jerusalem Bureau chief, will join us as we question him about his coverage of the Middle East,and particularly his "news"story that ran in the NYT on March 12th: A GENERATION LOST: The Second Intifada; Years of Strife and Lost Hope Scar Young Palestinian Lives. Following the interview with Erlanger, we will be joined by Richard Landes, BU History Professor and...

KEYSTONE — Global warming is the hottest story of our time, and it will get even bigger as the full implications of melting ice caps and rising sea levels percolate through the media pipeline and into general public awareness, a panel of journalists said last weekend during the American Bar Association's environmental law conference. The discussion was focused on how the media has covered the story and whether or not public perception of global warming has changed in recent months and years. Among the questions the panelists tried to answer is why it has taken so long for the story...