Free Republic

KMOV anchorman Larry Conners has been “advised” by KMOV’s parent company Belo Corp. to not make statements, post on Facebook, or participate in interviews concerning a recent controversy over Facebook comments he made about the Internal Revenue Service. Conners has hired St. Louis attorney Merle Silverstein. Silverstein issued a letter to media outlets claiming that the corporate order “is the only reason for his silence.” Conners wrote Monday night that shortly after he interviewed President Obama and his wife in April of 2012, the IRS “started hammering” him.

Reports that Koch Industries is exploring a bid to buy the Tribune Co.’s newspapers has Orlando’s far left in a lather over the prospect of losing “its” paper. The Orlando Sentinel is one of several Tribune newspapers, which also include the Los Angeles Times, the Chicago Tribune, the Baltimore Sun and the Sun Sentinel. Florida Watch Action organized a rally Thursday in front of the Orlando Sentinel’s offices to “fight back” against the dastardly billionaire industrialists Charles and David Koch, arch enemies of all things progressive...

Larry Connors, the KMOV anchor who asked Barack Obama some tough questions about his family's vacation habits and claimed earlier this week that he might have been harassed by the IRS as a result, has been taken off the air.

After keeping the White House press corps waiting for more than 40 minutes in the rain... Obama finally emerged from the West Wing to hold a press conference with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Obama took the first question from Bloomberg’s Julianna Goldman, whose parents contributed at least $5,400 to Obama during the last cycle. Today was not the first time Goldman has received preferential treatment from Obama. Obama personally served birthday cake to Goldman during an Air Force One flight from Afghanistan last May. Goldman’s employer is currently facing a scandal. The company was caught granting its journalists...

President Obama is already trying to sweep another one of his scandals under the rug, the IRS debacle, in which that agency "used inappropriate criteria that identified for review tea party and other organizations applying for tax-exempt status based upon their names or policy positions." This is a huge scandal, with many major ramifications for free speech and other aspects of our constitutional rights. The President stood before the American people for "a mere four minutes" yesterday and fired the acting director of the IRS, a guy who already had decided to step down before the scandal broke, and who...

... putting Benghazi, the IRS's Tea Party targeting and the Justice Department's leak-hunting seizure of Associated Press phone records in the same basket is like comparing a mirage to a dishwasher to a diamond. There is no common thread. Benghazi is a scam, not a scandal. It began as a political ploy during the 2012 presidential campaign. Republicans tried to pin a cover-up on the President.... The Justice Department's secret seizure of AP phone records is more a policy dispute than a scandal..... The irs's targeting of Tea Party groups is, however, an actual full-blown scandal. In fact, it is...

...while some junkies live, Elvis died. And this Elvis syndrome is, oddly enough, happening again right now, politically. And now, this week, the chickens have not only come home to roost, they’re freebasing in the garage. The family is fed up. Our national hive of hacks are really nothing more than the Memphis Mafia, the folks who protected Elvis Presley through his worst excesses, until his particular administration ended on a toilet. But why did the media become so much like this mafia? This behavior is caused by a deep desire to be liked and to be perceived as cool....

CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER: It's clear that that the press has turned. I'm not sure how permanent it will be but this is surely different than what we've seen over the four years being acolytes and cheerleaders and really supine. And the reason I think, a, is the accumulate of scandals all at once and the remarkable coincidence that the president was speaking early on about conspiracies and don't worry about government, tyranny, you know. The IRS scandal, which is the second most powerful agency in government as an agent suppression of political speech is almost a definition of tyranny. But that...

This morning from The Washington Post’s Kathleen Parker: "Breaking news: Conservative organizations suddenly have found common cause with one of their favorite objects of contempt — the benighted Mainstream Media ... Or as the tea party queen and former Alaska governor likes to put it, the ‘lamestream media.’ In a twist of irony, the two groups have coalesced around a common enemy: the U.S. government.” The Tea Party queen here is, of course, Sarah Palin. Interesting, because Parker was among the first to announce, when Palin first arrived on the scene, that Palin was “out of her league.” “The league”...

Two Southern California offices were named Tuesday in an Internal Revenue Services scandal where offices singled out Tea Party organizations during the 2012 election. Offices in El Monte and Laguna Niguel came under fire after allegedly targeting conservative social welfare groups with the words “tea party” or “patriot” in their names in the national scandal. IRS officials sent questionnaires to the groups, probing about their donor lists and requesting other information after the groups filed for tax exempt status.

Reporters across The Associated Press are outraged over the Justice Department’s sweeping seizure of staff phone records - and they say such an intrusion could chill their relationships with confidential sources. In conversations with POLITICO on Tuesday, several AP staffers in Washington, D.C., described feelings of anger and frustration with the DOJ and with the Obama administration in general.

Somewhere, Andrew Breitbart is smiling. You can almost see the metaphorical light bulbs going on in bubbles over the heads of liberal media figures. Obama loyalists are expressing outrage at the subpoenaing of the phone records of 20 lines serving over a hundred AP reporters. The timing could not be better. Just days after it has sunk in on the White House press corps that the administration has been lying through their teeth about Benghazi. On the very day that the AP published its own outraged account of the subpoena, calling it a "massive and unprecedented intrusion" into how news...

...Obama said...has "no patience" for reports that the [IRS] singled out conservative groups....

Let’s talk. Let’s talk talk radio. Specifically, let’s talk Cumulus Media and all those stories like this one about Cumulus being unhappy with Rush Limbaugh. You know what the Big Story is here? For once, this is a Big Story in talk radio that really isn’t about Rush Limbaugh at all. And the same Big Story isn’t about Sean Hannity either, although Hannity’s name has been thrown into the mix. The Big Story here is this: What in the world is going on at Cumulus Media? What’s with this very, very discernible pattern that should be obvious as the sun...

Angelina Jolie says that she has had a preventive double mastectomy after learning she carried a gene that made it extremely likely she would get breast cancer.

The Justice Department used a secret subpoena to obtain two months of phone records for Associated Press reporters and editors without notifying the news organization, a senior department official tells NBC News, saying the step was necessary to avoid “a substantial threat to the integrity� of an ongoing leak investigation, NBC News reports. The seizure of the phone records, disclosed earlier Monday by AP President and CEO Gary Pruitt, is the latest move in a series of high profile and controversial investigations of leaks of classified information by the Justice Department. In a letter of protest to Attorney General Eric...

CBS News’ Scott Pelley, speaking at Quinnipiac University Friday, admitted that big news agencies are “wrong, over and over again,” so now would be a good time for them to start getting it right. Ask the tough questions of the gun prohibition lobby, and anti-gun media personalities, now that the Bureau of Justice Statistics and Pew Research Center have both released reports loaded with strong evidence that gun grabbers have been wrong on firearms and crime for the past 20 years. This has anti-gunners feverishly spinning the news.Firearm-related homicides have declined dramatically during a period when gun sales have climbed...

A quick review this morning of the LOCAL news reports for this morning show.....NOTHING being done by the "journalists" in Miami regarding the two big me national stories over the weekend. Nothing on Benghazi, nothing on Obama targeting Tea Party and Jewish groups... Instead, we have seen breathless stories about OJ Simpson asking for a new trial and more talk about the women in Cleveland..... That Miami media....refusing to do any story that might reflect badly upon their hero BO.

CBS Anchor: 'We Are Getting Big Stories Wrong, Over and Over Again' "Our house is on fire." Daniel Halper May 11, 2013 12:09 PM CBS anchor Scott Pelley said at a speech at Quinnipiac University that journalists "are getting big stories wrong, over and over again." "Our house is on fire," said Pelley. The video of Pelley's speech is courtesy of nowthisnews.com. "These have been a bad few months for journalism," he added. "We're getting the big stories wrong, over and over again." The CBS newsreader was quick to take at least partial blame. "Let me take the first arrow:...

In the real world, when you cover up four murders after the fact, you likely go to jail. In government, you retire with dignity and run for president with full media support. Up until yesterday, that was the Benghazi scenario following the death of four Americans including our ambassador to Libya. The Obama administration has lied, stonewalled, bullied, and intimidated – the true marks of an open and transparent administration. And, with a few notable exceptions, the American media haven’t just let them get away it. Heck, they’ve helped. Hill testimony of State Department whistleblowers might change that, but it’s...

Stretching Oscar Wilde’s adage “I never put off til tomorrow what I can do the day after,” some in the mainstream media have finally started to Think Again about the Benghazi attack launched last year on the anniversary of 9/11 — thanks to new revelations by high-ranking State Department whistle-blowers including experts in security, counterterrorism, and the No. 2-ranking diplomat in Libya under slain Ambassador Christopher Stevens. Contrary to the “spin” that the U.S. Consulate assault was a spontaneous response to an anti-Islam YouTube video, the truth is that American officials knew “from the get-go” that it was a premeditated...

Been doing some quick looks at the local news coverage....ABC, CBS, FOX, and NBC..... Basically NOTHING on the murder of our people in Libya....about 30 seconds worth among all the stations...... How did YOUR stations do?

Eight months after four Americans died in a terrorist attack on the American diplomatic compound in Benghazi, Libya, a House committee held another hearing on Wednesday to examine whether the Obama administration mishandled the tragic events. What follows is an update on what is known about the Benghazi episode and why it has become such a political flash point: Q. Why is the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform holding a new hearing on Benghazi? A. Committee investigators found two State Department officials who previously had not spoken publicly and who are scathingly critical of the administration’s response to...

If ponies rode men and grass ate cows, And cats were chased into holes by the mouse … If summer were spring and the other way round, Then all the world would be upside down. Once in a long while, an event evokes one of my favorite historical images: the British Army band, at Lord Cornwallis’ surrender at Yorktown which sealed the Americans’ revolutionary victory, playing “The World Turned Upside Down.”In this case, the event is the dramatic change over the past two weeks in the “mainstream” media’s coverage of President Obama. From reporters to opinion writers, from newspapers to...

The Benghazi cover-up perpetrated by the Obama administration and his co-conspirators in the mainstream media cost Romney the election. This egregious Obama/Media cover-up was designed to prevent Obama from losing the election. Throughout the attack and afterwards, job one for Team Obama was to win the election, even if that meant abandoning Americans to die. They would simply lie about it afterwards, knowing all they had to do was deceive the American voter just long enough to get their vote. They were not worried about what would happen after November 6; They'd deal with that later.. Commander-In-Chief Obama is directly...

After hitting an oil spot on my bike and bouncing off the asphalt a few times, I had to spend a few hours in the ER last night - where the TV was set to MSNBC. I was forced to listen to O'Donnell, Hayes and Maddow for parts of all of their shows. These people are bizarre. Yes, I knew from sound bytes and clips from Newsbusters that they were, but when forced to listen for a couple hours straight, as I was, their mental illness really hits a new perspective. Their view of the world is some sort of...

Here are advertisers on ABC World News for tonight and Saturday, if anyone would like to write to them about ABC's blackout of the Gosnell trial. Sat. 5/4: Progressive Sunsweet USPS Preen Nexium Axiron EnergyTomorrow Biomet Oxford partial knee Tvboss.org, Ad Council BP Phillips Off, SC Johnson Mon. 5/6: Publisher's Clearinghouse Enbrel Prudential USPS Aleve Depend Fidelity Dr. Scholl's Biomet Nexium Constitution USA, PBS Infiniti Phillips I see good coming out of this situation which the networks wouldn't expect. "They meant it for harm," but God can bring good out of it. Maybe because of how this story is so...

In the old Soviet Union, the oppressed subjects of regime had a phrase used to describe the news media: "There's no pravda in Izvestia and there's no izvestia in Pravda." In Russian, "Pravda," the leading Communist Party periodical, means "Truth," and "Izvestia," the principal state periodical, means "News." The bosses of the Kremlin had no interest in their subjects knowing anything about the world or having any honest opinions expressed. Instead, the news media (also all cultural life, all educational institutions, all common means of ordinary people sharing anything together) was placed in the hands of bureaucratic flacks, well-trained in...

In the latest example of how the mainstream media is clueless to the online democratization of journalism, a CBS Miami reporter, who makes a living standing in front of the camera, confronted me about video recording him in public while on assignment. Brian Andrews accused me of interfering with his job when I was not even talking to him or standing in his shot. All I was doing was attempting to video record him interviewing my girlfriend, Rachel Mestre, about a brewing scandal involving a local towing company that she has been documenting on her blog. My plan was to...

Oh golly, what a horrifying thought! Yes, rumor has it that those conservative Big Oil Koch brothers may purchase and politically pollute the Tribune Co., a company which owns the Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Times, Hartford Courant, Baltimore Sun and other bastions of mainstream moderation. Can you imagine that? Isn’t it bad enough to have Rupert Murdoch and his Fox Cable News and Fox Broadcasting Company Network out there stirring things up? Liberal Doses of Angst: As noted by Joe Strupp of Media Matters, this prospect is downright scary. He writes: “The Kochs are major funders of the American conservative...

In the wake of the Boston Bombings, media commentators, academic experts and Obama administration officials exhibited classic signs of the five stages of liberal grief when faced with a mass casualty terrorist attack:Stage 1 — Anger: Whoever did this was obviously a right wing, Tea Party-affiliated, patriot, militant, white, religious, Republican, tax-protesting, NRA-loving gun nut.Stage 2 — Self Righteousness: Anyone who assumes that this tragedy was perpetrated by Muslim extremists is engaging in the worst form of racial profiling, jumping to conclusions based on no evidence whatever, and is undoubtedly a racist Islamophobe.Stage 3 — Bargaining: The fact that the...

We've gathered some poll numbers that anti-Second Amendment politicians should take into account before national elections in 2014, so tell your reps. Of Americans surveyed: 1) "58 percent of people worry that stricter gun legislation would make it more difficult for people to protect their families;" 2) only 4% consider gun control the "most important problem facing this country today;" and, 3) only 47% "say they are 'angry' or 'disappointed' that gun legislation failed to pass." First, from Pew via ABC: ... 48 percent of gun owners purchased firearms for protection -- an increase of 22 percent from the survey...

<p>World Press Freedom Day recognizes the value of freedom of expression, and the sacrifices journalist have made to attain this freedom. It was created, and is sponsored, by the United Nations. While we enjoy this freedom in the United States, freedom of the press, and freedom of expression, is not a given right in many countries.</p>

The people of Los Angeles would be up in arms if some out-of-town billionaires tried to buy the Dodgers and institute a rule that only right-handers could play on the team. Petitions would be signed, protests would be organized and politicians would rise up to condemn the sale. It would be nice if there were a similar outcry at the prospect of the Koch brothers buying the Los Angeles Times. After all, as exciting as it may be for a city to have a major league sports team, a good newspaper is a far more valuable asset.

Kim Daniels Washington D.C., Apr 30, 2013 / 04:22 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops has hired religious liberty attorney and mother of six Kim Daniels as spokesperson for conference president Cardinal Timothy M. Dolan. The bishops’ conference said April 29 that it “welcomes� Daniels, who brings with her experience as director of Catholic Voices USA, a lay Catholic organization that “works to bring the positive message of the Church across a broad range of issues to the public square.� In recent years, Daniels has emerged as a leader in efforts to engage the culture and...

I have been posting the advertisers of the nightly network news if any one is interested in writing to them. I've gotten a number of responses and have been encouraged by them, including when I talked to a woman in customer service who was very interested in the case and thought something was wrong that she hadn't heard of it herself. These are advertisers for the last few days: CBS, Tues 4/30 Biomet Angieslist USPS Allstate Bounty Biotene LifestyleLift Salonpox? NBC, Monday 4/29: Ally Bank Symbicort Pace salsa Citracal Transitions lenses Humira Enbrel USPS Aleve NBC, Sun 4/28 Castor EnergyTomorrow.org...

MSNBC has signed Chris Matthews to a new, long-term contract with the channel, TVNewser has learned. As part of the new deal, however, he will be ending “The Chris Matthews Show,” a syndicated public affairs show produced out of the NBC News DC bureau. The final edition of the program will air July 21. The half-hour show typically aired on Sunday mornings, though not every local market carried it. The show has been produced by NBC since 2002.

<p>Wendell Goler just announced the Assclown will demand media attention again this morning.</p>

Sarah Palin reared her head in American airspace this weekend. As the country’s media, entertainment and political elite gathered in Washington, D.C., for the annual roast that is the White House Correspondents Dinner, Palin could not resist lobbing darts from afar. “Yuk it up media and pols,” she tweeted. “While America is buried in taxes and a fight for our rights, the permanent political class in DC dresses up and has a prom to make fun of themselves. No need for that, we get the real joke.” She panned the event again in a second tweet: “That #WHCD was pathetic....

Stories the media is not reporting that irk Obama and the left:1. Kermit Gosnell 2. Benghazi 3. Saudi National 4. Fast and Furious 5. Training Drills Across The Country 6. Sheriff Joe's Obama Investigation 7. Obamacare And Its Effects Anything else you can think of that the media is ignoring is welcomed.

NBC News Political Director Chuck Todd says President Obama was making it “clear” at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner over the weekend how he feels about the rise of Internet news sites like Politico, Buzzfeed and … well, WND. “He hates it.” Appearing on “Meet the Press” Sunday morning following Saturday night’s media, politics and celebrity soiree, Todd explained the president’s disdain for independent online news sources was showing during his speech. “It did seem … I thought his pot shots, joke-wise, and then the serious stuff about the Internet, the rise of the Internet media and social media and...

Former Alaska governor and vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin, who has fiercely fought crony capitalism and the permanent political class, absolutely blistered the White House Correspondents Dinner on Saturday, tweeting that the dinner was "pathetic" and that "DC assclowns" were throwing "themselves a #nerdprom" while "the rest of America is out there working our assess off." @SarahPalinUSA: That #WHCD was pathetic. The rest of America is out there working our asses off while these DC assclowns throw themselves a #nerdprom In recent years, Washington veterans have expressed similar concerns. Tom Brokaw has compared Washington to "Versailles," Ron Fournier has said...

Tom Brokaw sat out the last White House Correspondents Association Dinner, and he plans to do it again in 2013. The veteran newsman says the increasing tabloid level go the invited guests is what ruined it for him. "For me the breaking point was Lindsay Lohan," Brokaw tells Politico. "She became a big star at the White House Correspondents Dinner. Give me a break." The former "NBC Nightly News" anchor says the annual dinner must leave home viewers wondering, "'That's the Washington press corps?' I mean, there was more dignity at my daughter's junior prom than there is, what I'm...

If anyone wants to write to sponsors and complain about the lack of coverage on the Gosnell trial, these are advertisers from the three networks this week. I left some comments yesterday and already have gotten one personal response from a company, which said that the concern would be brought to upper management. ABC (Fri.): Fidelity Dodge Citracel, Bayer Restasis Chantix Preen Bayer aspirin Mass Mutual Alleve Ford Dr. Scholls Phizer CBS (Thurs.): Infiniti The Company You Keep (movie) - (Sony Pictures ?) Novolog Flex Pen Ensure - Abbott Dawn United Healthcare Miracle Gro Alka Seltzer (I think I may...

The Koch brothers have become the nation’s leading cheerleaders for free markets where consumers, employees, entrepreneurs and investors are free to pursue their own selfish interests without interference from government or unions or anyone else for that matter. Now comes word that the billionaire brothers want to buy up Los Angeles Times, one of the nation’s last remaining quality newspapers, or its parent, the Tribune Co., which has only recently emerged from bankruptcy reorganization following the disastrous takeover by real estate mogul Sam Zell. All this has come to a head because the bottom-fishing hedge funds that grabbed control of...

Featured Term (selected at random):INTER MIRIFICA Decree on the Means of Social Communication of the Second Vatican Council. After defining the media as those "which of their nature can reach and influence not merely single individuals but the very masses and even the whole of human society," the Council spelled out how these are to be used. Most important, it declared that "the content of what is communicated must be true and -- within the limits set by justice and charity -- complete" (December 4, 1963). All items in this dictionary are from Fr. John Hardon's Modern Catholic Dictionary, ©...

Harold Meyerson doesn't want the LA Times to become a political toolNewser) – The Tribune Company's board likely views the Koch Brothers' attempt to buy its eight newspapers as a purely financial transaction. But almost no one else sees it that way, writes Harold Meyerson at the Washington Post. Thousands of LA Times readers, for instance, have already signed petitions against the move, because they see it for what it would be: "a political transaction … turning LA's metropolitan daily into a right-wing mouthpiece whose commitment to empirical journalism would be unproven at best." The deal would include the LA...

These are well-known companies that advertised on the NBC Nightly News tonight. Please consider contacting some or all of them to complain about the lack of coverage of the trial. It will make a difference! And if anyone can confirm that NBC didn't mention the Gosnell trial tonight, as there was about 15 seconds that I missed trying to see advertisers on the other networks, I'd really appreciate it. Thanks. NBC Nightly News: Fidelity United Healthcare Capital One Xarelto (missed the drug maker) Mass Mutual Alka Seltzer Infiniti Dr. Scholls GE CBS: Miracle Gro ABC: Merck Chrysler/Dodge

The CIA asked the main U.S. counterterrorism agency to add the name of one of the suspected Boston Marathon bombers to a watch list more than a year before the attack, according to U.S. officials.

A Colorado judge's threatened contempt sanctions against Fox News investigative reporter Jana Winter—who refuses to reveal a confidential news source—has refocused public attention on how journalists operate. News must often be gathered from confidential sources, or not at all. Given how vital is the freedom of the press in a democracy, that confidentiality must be maintained. It is time that Congress recognize this and enact legislation that enables journalists to protect their confidential sources and newsgathering materials. Ms. Winter covered the July 20, 2012 mass shooting that killed 12 people and injured 58 others in an Aurora, Colo., movie theater....