Free Republic

Any day now, I am expecting to turn on the tube and see an ad that says, “More Americans get their TV news from Fox than anywhere else.”. Whether that pleases or horrifies you, it’s time to think seriously about what that says about Fox, CNN, MSNBC, the state of network news today and the role TV plays or doesn’t play in providing us with reliable, trustworthy information. Much of the media establishment seems bent on ignoring the incredible ratings success of Fox News. Or, maybe it’s just that Fox has pounded CNN and MSNBC in the ratings for so...

The White House is exasperated with the major broadcast networks – ABC, CBS and NBC -- for skipping out on President Barack Obama’s Thursday primetime address on his executive actions on immigration. “In 2006, Bush gave a 17 minute speech that was televised by all three networks that was about deploying 6000 national guard troops to the border. Obama is making a 10 minute speech that will have a vastly greater impact on the issue. And none of the networks are doing it. We can’t believe they were aggrieved that we announced this on Facebook,” a senior administration official told...

American Soldiers Kill Nine Germans Nuremberg, October 6, 1946 Seven German civilians and two military personnel were killed by American soldiers today in a Bavarian town recently devastated by Allied bombing. The victims were identified as Hans Frank, 46; Wilhem Frick, 69; Alfred Jodl, 56; Ernst Kaltenbrunner, 43; Wilhelm Keitel, 64; Joachim von Ribbentrop, 53; Alfred Rosenberg, 53; Fritz Saukel, 51; and Arthur Seyss-Inquart, 54. The victims either had their necks broken or were strangled.

The Obama administration, despite the president's promises of transparency, is "more dangerous" to the media than any other White House in history, USA Today's Washington Bureau Chief Susan Page said this weekend. Page, speaking Saturday at a White House Correspondents' Association (WHCA) seminar, also said the administration is "more restrictive," in reference to the its leak investigations and naming Fox News' James Rosen as a co-conspirator in a violation of the federal Espionage Act, writes The Washington Post's Eric Wemple in an opinion piece Tuesday. Veteran New York Times reporter Peter Baker, telling one of the stories, said that while...

At some point, a compendium of condemnations against the Obama administration’s record of media transparency (actually, opacity) must be assembled. Notable quotations in this vein come from former New York Times executive editor Jill Abramson, who said, “It is the most secretive White House that I have ever been involved in covering”; New York Times reporter James Risen, who said, “I think Obama hates the press”; and CBS News’s Bob Schieffer, who said, “This administration exercises more control than George W. Bush’s did, and his before that.” USA Today Washington Bureau Chief Susan Page has added a sharper edge to...

Sunday on Fox News Channel's "MediaBuzz," Bob Woodward said there are, "lots of unanswered questions," about the Obama administrations involvement in the IRS scandal surrounding the targeting conservative groups for extra scrutiny. Woodward said, "The reality now in my view that in the Obama administration, there are lots of unanswered questions about the IRS, particularly. If I were young, I would take Carl Bernstein and move to Cincinnati where that IRS office is and set up headquarters and go talk to everyone."

The nation’s Big Three TV networks that breathlessly reported the 2006 anti-Bush election which gave Democrats control of Capitol Hill have practically ignored this year’s anti-Obama midterms that are expected to return full control of the Hill to the GOP. A new and exhaustive Media Research Center analysis compared the last seven weeks of CBS, NBC and ABC news coverage with the same period in 2006 and found a 6-1 disparity between the Democratic election wave and the current election. The story count: 159-25.

It's important to remember that, in police shooting cases like the one in Ferguson, Missouri, the initial facts are often wrong. You don't want to end up looking like Rich Lowry, National Review editor, whose March 23, 2012, column on the Trayvon Martin shooting was titled, "Al Sharpton Is Right."

Paul Farhi of The Washington Post writes today about a trend at the White House—and throughout journalism—that threatens the quality and credibility of news-gathering: Public-relations "minders" are injecting themselves into our interviews with politicians, CEOs, and other policymakers. Minder madness joins the surge of "background briefings" and the decline of access to decision-makers as evidence that the White House—and other big instititutions—are manipulating the press. It's that, but it's also something worse: It's evidence that journalists are ceding control when they should be seizing it, accepting canned news rather than breaking it. Farhi writes, "Almost every officially sanctioned exchange between...

According to the AP, a CIA agent’s name was leaked by the White House . The AP calls it an “embarrassing flub” even though it was a crime when an aide in the Bush administration leaked the name of part-time agent Valerie Plame. What’s given little attention in the story is the fact that the Washington Post reporter who wrote the story sent his copy to the White House to be checked for “accuracy.” ... First of all, any reporter worth his salt would not depend on the subject he’s reporting on to verify accuracy. That’s just crazy. He’d make...

In June 2013 Judicial Watch filed a Freedom of Information (FOIA) lawsuit against the State Department. The most transparent administration in history has largely refused to respond to FIOA requests concerning Benghazi. Judicial Watch had enough and filed suit. The result is fairly substantial evidence that the administration made up the anti-Mohammed video protest to save face for Obama. Jay Carney continues the charade, pretending the emails don’t actually mean what they say. The most transparent administration in history wants us to believe that straight forward emails aren’t at all straight forward. This shouldn’t come as much of a surprise....

Bill O’Reilly said there’s no question that the White House misrepresented the Sept. 11, 2012, terror attack in Benghazi. Five days after the attack, then-Ambassador Susan Rice told the world that the attack was not pre-planned and was a spontaneous reaction to a YouTube video. “That was not true, that was not even close to being true,” O’Reilly said. According to a White House memo obtained by Judicial Watch, Ben Rhodes sent an email to prep Rice about the attack, listing the following two goals:

In his speech last January at the Conservative Forum in Silicon Valley, Evan Sayet addressed the question of “Why the Mainstream Media gets Every Major Story Not Just Wrong But as Wrong as Wrong Can Be.” The short answer to the question about the media’s utter, complete and total failure, Sayet claims, is that to today’s “journalists,” “It’s an act of bigotry, to be an objective reporter.” This is the line that Rush Limbaugh, in his hour-long rhapsodizing on the speech, called “brilliant,” saying “I wish I’d thought of it myself.” Rush’s plaudits aside (indeed, he has cited Sayet’s speech...

A plan by the Federal Communications Commission to study how news organizations select stories has prompted about 10,000 people to sign a petition saying “no government monitors in newsrooms.” That’s according to the American Center for Law and Justice, which announced the petition Wednesday and said it reached that number within the first two hours. The agency announced a Multi-Market Study of Critical Information Needs last year, explaining that it wanted to understand the process of which stories are selected, station priorities, content production, populations served, perceived station bias, and perceived percent of news dedicated to each of the “critical...

IT’S WELL KNOWN AMONG THE SMALL WORLD of people who pay attention to such things that the liberal-leaning reporters at The Wall Street Journal resent the conservative-leaning editorial page of The Wall Street Journal. What’s less well known—and about to break into the open, threatening the very fabric of the institution—is how deeply the liberal-leaning reporters at The New York Times resent the liberal-leaning editorial page of The New York Times. The New York Observer has learned over the course of interviews with more than two-dozen current and former Times staffers that the situation has “reached the boiling point” in...

Whatever happened in New Jersey under Governor Chris Christie in regards to the already-infamous “bridgegate,” the open gloating by the media over the unacceptable behavior of the Republican governor’s staffers is extremely revealing. Regardless of one’s views on Governor Chris Christie, this coordinated political feeding frenzy is liberal hypocrisy at its finest. ... Here are 25 underreported stories that most news media barely reported on, or blew by as quickly as possible because Democrats are involved. Fast & Furious Benghazi IRS Targeting Scandal AP/Fox News Tracking ObamaCare’s No-Bid Website NSA Scandal Weinergate Spitzer Prostitution Scandal Jon Edwards’ Infidelity Chris Dodd...

After ringing in the new year resolving to help Americans make government as irrelevant as possible, former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin added another resolution on Saturday: be more aggressive in calling out the so-called "lamestream" media for their "lapdog laziness." She related how Richard Nixon's presidency was ended once reporters busted him for spying, but Obama is celebrated even though one of his hallmarks has been the National Security Agency widespread spying programs. Palin said she was glad to "hear the new political year kicked off with Sen. Rand Paul suing the President for violating our rights," in reference to...

The debacle brought forth by the New York Times Benghazi whitewash and comments from Fox News Benghazi sources referring to the report as "baloney" lead me to re-purpose a graphic created back in 2011 (almost 2 years ago to the day)...

Getting it wrong, news outlets’ erroneous forecasts: Healthcare.gov like online shopping, abundant Atlantic hurricanes, $24 billion government shutdown and more. Print, broadcast or web, the media sure aren’t Nostradamus. In spite of their best attempts, the news media have gotten it wrong prediction after prediction on a wide range of business and economic issues in 2013. Just in the past year, reporters warned of “economic doomsday,” thought Healthcare.gov was going to be “easy” just like Amazon.com, and warned of melting polar ice, even as a new record was set for ice mass. In many cases, the failed predictions were an...

Tribune Co., the parent of the Los Angeles Times, unveiled a restructuring plan that will slash nearly 700 jobs over the next year. [Snip] The cutbacks indicate that the newspaper division is bracing for another drop in advertising in 2014, analysts said. Print ad revenue fell nearly $200 million in the last two years and an additional $62 million in the first nine months of this year.