Free Republic

The Nothing-to-see-here media continue to do a grand job. Chris Matthews: We may never know if religion was a factor at Fort Hood. That's almost certainly true in your case, Chris. As for yelling "Allahu akbar" as you open fire, Michael Tomasky, one of the American lefties on the Guardian's payroll, explains it for us know-nothings: The fact that Hassan reportedly shouted the above is meant, I suppose, to imply that he was an extremist fanatic. I'm not sure that it does. My understanding is that it's something Arab people often shout before doing something or other. It's used in...

My apologies if this a duplicate. I didn't see this posted. I couldn't help but notice on ABC's 20/20 'report' on the Fort Hood shooting last night, that they went out of their way to blame "stress" for the shooting despite the fact that the shooter had never been deployed anywhere, nor had he ever been on the battle field. Although they did touch upon his islamic jihadi tendencies of late, they didn't dare point to that as the motive. They also only gave a brief (literally 10-15 seconds) mention of the heroic woman (Kimberly Munley)who stopped the killer's rampage...

First, let me say that I have hated the media for some time now, but today was a new low. I was driving through Des Moines this afternoon, and heard an NPR story on the Ft Hood shooting. It started out surprisingly balanced - a little too much "one the one hand, on the other hand," but better than I expected from NPR. Something along the lines of, (paraphrasing, obviously) "this event may have happened because the shooter was stressed out from counseling PTSD soldiers, or it may be because he's a muslim." Then they played a clip of Gen...

Inside ACORN Allie Winegar Duzett, November 5, 2009 Often we hear about the corruption of ACORN, the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now. While many of ACORN’s members are corrupt, a few have the courage to speak for truth and virtue. Anita MonCrief is one of those people. MonCreif told her story at Accuracy in Media’s 40th Anniversary Conference, held on October 23, 2009. “In spring of 2007, after noticing a pattern with ACORN and how they were treating employees regarding voter registration fraud especially, I contacted the Employment Policies Institute,” she said. “They run a site called RottenACORN.com....

WASHINGTON -- Bob McDonnell's decisive victory is even more impressive if one stops to acknowledge that it came in the face of incredibly daunting opposition, misleading and low-brow campaign commercials, and a "news" organization which often advocates for left-of-center candidates and causes. To win the election, McDonnell had to defeat not only the Deeds campaign, but the DNC, the White House, and The Washington Post. Lest we forget, this is not the first time this "take no prisoners" strategy was employed by the Democrats and The Washington Post against a Virginia Republican. In fact, three years ago, not only was...

Stay classy, MSNBC. On the day after the Republican Party showed gains in a few statewide elections and with key health care and cap-and-trade legislation pending, MSNBC went back to the well to do what it does best - attack the character of one of the network' favorite targets, former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin. On the Nov. 4 broadcast of MSNBC's "Countdown," with fill-in host Lawrence O'Donnell substituting for Keith Olbermann (still MIA since New Jersey gubernatorial race went Republican), Michael Musto, gay columnist for The Village Voice and author of "La Dolce Musto" dressed up as Palin and reenacted...

Bob McDonnell won big tonight in the Virginia gubernatorial race, as did the entire Virginia Republican party. The implications of the race will be sorted out soon enough. But one big loser is the Washington Post which may unwittingly have helped the Republican, despite their best efforts to put his opponent over the top. On the last weekend in August the Post ran the first of dozens of stories about McDonnell's 1989 masters' thesis, in which he wrote, among other things, that working women were detrimental to families and that government should favor traditional marriage over gay unions. While they...

It's probably safe to assume many Democrats weren't happy about last evening's election results, no matter how they spun them and how they pertained to President Barack Obama. And to his credit, that's something MSNBC "Hardball" host Chris Matthews admitted was not good for the Democratic Party. However, MSNBC, the so-called "Place for Politics" hyped up its Nov. 3 "Super Tuesday" election coverage throughout the day (emphasis added): "Tonight, Super Tuesday continues on MSNBC with live coverage of ‘Decision ‘09' inside the key elections that will set the stage for a 2010 political battle," the announcer on the TV spot...

Warren Buffett, the second richest man in the world and CEO of Berkshire Hathaway (NYSE:BRK.A), doesn't have much faith in the future of print media. In an interview on CNBC's Nov. 3 "Squawk Box," following the announcement of his purchase of Burlington Northern (NYSE:BNI), Buffett was asked to comment on the future of news media, in particular newspapers and business news by "Squawk Box" co-host Becky Quick. Buffett is optimistic on the future of business news. "Our system has just gotten started," Buffett said. "I mean, we've had a couple of hundred years of progress, but we have not exhausted...

Want more evidence print media is giving way to digital formats? According to CNBC "Squawk on the Street" Nov. 3, Internet behemoth Google (NASDAQ:GOOG) could have its sights set on The New York Times (NYSE:NYT). Brian Shactman, a general assignment reporter for CNBC noted an article in the Nov. 2 Wall Street Journal that indicated a lot of big companies are hoarding cash and short term investments and it pointed out the information technology sector had nearly $280 billion to invest. ...more (w/video)...

One of the country's leading Tea Party organizations is calling for all Tea Party supporters to boycott the "Big 3" TV networks (ABC/CBS/NBC) from November 9 - 14, during middle of the Nielsen "sweeps" rating period. From the web site: TURN ’EM OFF Take a stand against the BIG 3 TV NETWORKS - CBS, ABC, and NBC/MSNBC - for their distorted, biased, and manipulative media coverage. BLOCK THEIR CHANNELS The network news blatantly promotes the most far left-wing agenda ever proposed in the history of the United States. They do not deserve our attention or our patronage - and certainly...

AP - Vice President Dick Cheney told the FBI he had no idea who leaked to the news media that Valerie Plame, wife of a Bush administration critic, worked for the CIA.

When MSNBC gave Ed Schultz a nightly segment entitled "Psycho Talk," it was apparently in obedience to the truth in advertising laws. On Thursday night, the low-rated host of "The Ed Show" used that segment -- which is supposed to highlight over-the-top rhetoric from conservatives -- to call Rush Limbaugh "a racist, pill-poppin' radio guy." Schultz was outraged that Rep. Steve King, R-IA, had asked NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell to apologize to Rush Limbaugh for denying Rush partial ownership of the St. Louis Rams while allowing Jennifer Lopez and Fergie to become co-owners of the Miami Dolphins after worse...

On MSNBC on October 27, Rachel Maddow interviewed Jane Hamsher, well-known Hollywood roustabout and left-wing blogger for FireDogLake.com. The subject was the progress of Obamacare in the Senate and Senator Joe Lieberman's warning that he might join a Republican filibuster of the Baucus bill if it contained the so-called public option. During the discussion, however, Hamsher went off on a tangent about the 1964 Civil Rights Act and made the allusion that the famed anti-civil rights Dixiecrats joined Republicans to stand in the way of civil rights during the 1964 debates. Maddow: Let me ask you about the statistic I...

Over the past few weeks, MSNBC host Rachel Maddow has had a serious fascination with the grassroots advocacy group Americans For Prosperity (AFP) and how a "news organization" should be defined when it comes to press policy at the Obama White House. But Maddow, on her Oct. 28 show, was able to merge the two topics in an attack on Fox Business Channel's John Stossel. Stossel recently came from ABC as a host of "20/20" to host a weekly opinion show on the Fox's business channel. But in Maddow's infinite wisdom, Stossel's participation in AFP activities somehow taints him. "But...

This week in Israel there are memorials to the memory of Assassinated Prime Minister. Its interesting how the world press describes Yitzchack Rabin as the great peacemaker, and Binyamin Netanyahu as the ultimate hard-line hawk. Anybody who says that is ignoring the facts. You see Netanyahu supports the creation of a Palestinian state, Rabin never did. The truth is Rabin was the last Israeli Prime Minister who did NOT support the creation of a Palestinian state. Just before he died, Rabin Delivered a speech to the Knesset that laid out his vision for the future of Israel and the disputed...

The Palin-hatin' media just keeps pouring it on Sarah Palin. The latest example is Politico's distortion of a report that a pro-family group wants to bring her to Iowa. The Iowa Family Policy Center has asked Team Sarah, which has no formal ties to the former governor, to help it raise $100,000 to stage an event on November 21 for which the organization hopes to book Palin to be the speaker. Team Sarah's Bill Collier says that IFPC has already raised $59,000 for the event, and his group is trying to raise another $41,000. The headline for the Politico piece...

Victory for Obama Over Military Lobby CHRISTOPHER DREW October 28, 2009 When the Obama administration proposed canceling a host of expensive weapons systems last spring, some of the military industry’s allies in Congress assumed, as they had in the past, that they would have the final say. But as the president signed a $680 billion military policy bill on Wednesday, it was clear that he had succeeded in paring back nearly all of the programs and setting a tone of greater restraint than the Pentagon had seen in many years. Now the question is whether Mr. Obama can sustain that...

Ever since long-time radio talker Don Imus inked a deal with the Fox Business Network to simulcast his morning radio program, he said he has been getting pushback from several acquaintances. And as he explained and showed on his Oct. 28 program, he's not particularly pleased with the reaction about his deal with Fox News. "I get this email and the e-mail says, ‘Sorry to see you've sold out to Fox Business, or whatever. But I am not surprised you sold out to Fox Business, disappointed.' Could you explain to me exactly what does that mean? When you walk in...

Mainstream Media Ignores Juicy ACORN Nuggets by Hannah Giles The “Pimp and Pro” story, exposing ACORN’s willingness to advise a prostitute on tax evasion and child sex trafficking, hit America a few weeks ago. There were a myriad number of angles to report, yet the Mainstream Media's favorite approach seems to be the method in which James O’Keefe and I orchestrated and gathered the information. It’s like going fishing, but instead of taking a picture and raving about the 750lb Mako shark you caught, you blather on about the bait that was used. What happens when people get bored? They...

Here is video of White House Senior Adviser Valerie Jarrett on CNN telling Campbell Brown that Fox News is biased. Campbell Brown asked Jarrett "do you think Fox News is biased?" She answered "of course they're biased." Brown then asked her "do you also think that MSNBC is biased?" She avoided the question and would not say that MSNBC is biased.

There have been a lot of bad days recently for what’s come to be known as the Mainstream Media – or MSM – but Monday was one of the worst. New circulation figures showed that big city papers had lost as much as a quarter of their circulation in the last six months. And new TV ratings showed that CNN, the cable network that prides itself on news coverage down the middle, finished dead last in prime-time against more partisan rivals like Fox News and MSNBC. Are the two connected? Eric Alterman, a media columnist for the Nation, and a...

It is bad when an anchor from a sister network feels compelled to call out a colleague about the lack of ideological balance, but that's just what CNBC's Larry Kudlow did on his Oct. 27 program. In a time when some of CNBC's critics demand the network be held to a high standard when it comes to balance, a different standard is applied to MSNBC. And lack of balance is something Kudlow pointed out. Kudlow, referring to the Oct. 26 broadcast of MSNBC's "The Ed Show," which featured Rep. Barney Frank, perennial presidential candidate Ralph Nader and the host Ed...

CNN, which pioneered cable news, now rates dead last among cable news networks. Prime time ratings are down 68 percent since last year. Of course, much of that is due to 2008 being an election year, but CNN's fall relative to the other news networks can't be blamed on the election cycle. Can some of CNN's decline, at least, be attributed to the network's liberalism in general and its attacks on and sniggering denigrations of, normal Americans? It's hard to tell. But sniggerer-in-chief Anderson Cooper's ratings are sliding into the toilet. (The midsummer blip was Michael Jackson's death.) CNN apparently...

There have been a lot of bad days recently for what’s come to be known as the Mainstream Media – or MSM – but Monday was one of the worst. New circulation figures showed that big city papers had lost as much as a quarter of their circulation in the last six months. And new TV ratings showed that CNN, the cable network that prides itself on news coverage down the middle, finished dead last in prime-time against more partisan rivals like Fox News and MSNBC. Are the two connected? [Snip] But if CNN’s president accepts that political agendas...

Want to be noticed by any one of the hosts that have a primetime show on MSNBC's weeknight lineup? Just figure out a way to incorporate Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minn., with the subject matter and there's an excellent chance either Ed Schultz, Chris Matthews, Keith Olbermann or Rachel Maddow will take a shot at it or her during their shows. In the Oct. 25 Washington Post, George Will penned a column about Bachmann, outlining her ascendancy into the national spotlight, which told of her start in politics and how she grew to become reviled by the left. And it was...

Did anyone see this live? HuffPo and Weasel Zippers picked it up but I’m having a hard time believing the video edit didn’t omit some important detail. Is this really how it happened? If so, what exactly is Shep’s problem? Does “fair and balanced” now mean interviewing both candidates at the same time? If Carl Cameron nabs an interview with Harry Reid about the public option, I’m pretty sure he’s not required to go sprinting down the hall to make sure he gets some comment from Mitch McConnell before the bit airs. And given the left’s demagoguery of Fox, how...

Credit CNN here. Not only did Campbell Brown follow up with a question about MSNBC after this sorry hack went into Fox-bashing mode but CNN.com actually posted a write-up noting her lame retreat when confronted. Say, did you know that the White House is “calling everybody out,” not just Fox News? Keep watching those Sunday morning chat shows; I’m sure Axelrod and Emanuel will be on again soon to lay out their arguments against CNN and MSNBC. The money line? “We’re going to speak truth to power.” The ultimate expression of self-righteous victimhood, offered here by … a senior advisor...

I'm supporting: The White House on this one; Fox News isn't "fair and balanced." Fox News on this one; it asks questions others don't and the White House should be able to handle them. Neither side. They're both trying to play this "feud" to their advantage.

A four-hour stop in New Orleans, on his way to a $3 million fundraiser. Snubbing the Dalai Lama. Signing off on a secret deal with drug makers. Freezing out a TV network. Doing more fundraisers than the last president. More golf, too. President Barack Obama has done all of those things — and more.What’s remarkable is what hasn’t happened. These episodes haven’t become metaphors for Obama’s personal and political character — or consuming controversies that sidetracked the rest of his agenda. It’s a sign that the media’s echo chamber can be a funny thing, prone to the vagaries of news...

BigGovernment.com found another hilarious example of how sold out the left-wing, Old Media is to their Obammessiah. This time it is "journalist" John Guerra of the Key West Citizen in Florida who sent a personal email to Representative Connie Mack's office in reply to a mass emailing that the Representative sent his constituents. Mack's office sent out an email informing his voters that the "trigger" to initiate the "public option" that might be included in the healthcare "reform" bill in the House is little more than "smoke and mirrors." In reply, this is what the purported journalist sent to the...

Here is video of America's future journalists at Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism doing a hip-hop rant as part of an assignment, which included an attack on Fox News and Sean Hannity: "But I will never lose touch with my own humanityGet every side to speakBut there's no need to hear crazyOr create false sense of parityLike Fox News and Hannity . . ."Looks like they are training them well, to become clones of the impartial "journalists" at MSNBC. . . (VIDEO)

Ingraham: "I might not be invited back..."

Big shock here - MSNBC's Rachel Maddow agrees with the White House, which is the Fox News Channel is not really a news organization. Sarcasm aside, on her Oct. 23 MSNBC program, Maddow attempted to justify the Obama administration's tact over recent months with Fox News. She laid out a series of events over the past few days that indicated an escalation of the feud between Fox News and the White House, specifically an effort to exclude Fox News from the White House pool. "Well yesterday the White House said that Fox would not be among the networks invited to...

If MSNBC is the "place for liberal politics," CNN is the place for latent America bashing, especially its corporations. On his Oct. 22 CNN program, Rick Sanchez wore his American guilt like a badge of honor and said he wasn't going to stand for America to look bad because of what a corporation had been accused of doing, in this case Chevron (NYSE:CVX), whether they did it or not. "We do a lot of this, and I'm glad you like it," Sanchez said. "What we do is we try and connect with what's going on in our hemisphere, this is...

With just under a month to go before it’s released to the masses, Sarah Palin’s upcoming autobiography, Going Rogue, has already been near the top of Amazon’s bestseller list for weeks. No surprise, considering the enormous amount of interest—both bad and good—the former Alaska governor has generated since John McCain named her as his vice-presidential running mate last year. But there may be more to the story: Over the last week or so, Amazon has been steadily dropping the price of Palin’s book, to compete with other retailers, including Wal-Mart, which offered Palin’s book for pre-sale at $10. Originally listed...

Throughout the previous administration, MSNBC host Keith Olbermann would nightly attack President George W. Bush and members of his administration and regularly bash some conservative personalities for being too cozy with Bush. However, when he and his MSNBC colleague Rachel Maddow engage in the same brand of coziness, meeting with President Barack Obama earlier this week, it's no longer an indiscretion. Instead, it becomes justified - since Bush did it. Olbermann appeared on the Oct. 23 "The Rachel Maddow Show" and he and Maddow responded to critics. Maddow asked him to respond to particular comments from former White House Deputy...

If you haven't gotten your daily dose of left-wing crazy, strap yourself in. On CNN Headline News Oct. 22 broadcast of "The Joy Behar Show," left-wing author and conspiracy theorist Gore Vidal shared his thoughts about President Barack Obama. He said he thought the 44th President of the United States might be a little overqualified - at least as far as his intelligence. "I like him," Vidal said. "I wish he knew more about the United States. I was for Hillary at the beginning on the grounds she knew how to be president. Having sort of done the job as...

Last night, one of my fellow bloggers made a case that Fox News cannot be considered a right-wing propaganda mill, because it is the home of a number of left-of-center commentators. This developed an argument I made earlier this week that "part of Fox's advantage [is that] it also employs center-Left commentators like Juan Williams, Alan Colmes, Bob Beckel, Geraldo, and (IÂ’ve always assumed) Greta." But it goes beyond Fox's guest list and Saul Alinsky's advice to "personalize" the target. The White House smear campaign is not merely shameless and unseemly; it is anti-historical. Carl Cameron, the chief political...

Over the past couple of weeks, the White House has piled on the Fox News Channel, with a trio of high-ranking administration officials publicly criticizing it, followed by words from President Barack Obama himself about Fox News and topped off with the White House attempting to exclude Fox from the White House press pool. That has some members of Congress questioning why they are doing this.. Earlier, Rep. Mike Pence, R-Ind., took on the issue and defended Fox and its audience. However, Rep. Lamar Smith, R-Texas, also took on the White House and questioned why it would be something Obama...

Just when you thought the White House couldn't possibly do anything to make their bizarre feud with the Fox News Channel an even larger spectacle - the administration manages to take it to another level. Over the past two weeks, three White House officials have publicly criticized the Fox News Channel by denigrating its status as a news outlet - White House Communications Director Anita Dunn, Senior Advisor David Axelrod and Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel. And even the president himself commented on his opinion of Fox News. However, that pales in comparison to the latest petty stunt. On the...

·11250 Waples Mill Road ·   Fairfax, Virginia 22030    ·800-392-8683   Newspapers Gush Over Bloomberg's Latest Gun Control Escapade   Friday, October 09, 2009   Bathed in camera flashes during a "news conference" on October 7, 2009, New York City's mayor, Michael Bloomberg was in his element in announcing "a wide-ranging undercover investigation by the City of New York into illegal gun sales" that revealed "a willful disregard of the law" by "74% of gun show sellers." Or, so he claimed.  The ego-driven multi-billionaire's publicity stunt was neither "wide-ranging" nor representative of what occurs at gun shows, nor was it intended to be. ...

I guess this is about as close to fairness as NPR is capable of in its reporting on ACORN. The first few paragraphs of today's NPR story on ACORN, by Kevin Whitelaw, tell you all you need to know about Whitelaw's perspective on the embattled radical advocacy group: ACORN, the community organizing group, is fighting for its survival these days, but its current plight has been years in the making. Part of the story is the group's own missteps. ACORN was founded to help low- and middle-income Americans, but its edgy tactics and a series of gaffes fed the notion...

MSNBC President Phil Griffin has vowed to launch a "thorough and complete investigation" to root out "any insidious, racist teleprompters in our midst." After anchor Contessa Brewer was victimized by a racist 'prompter that couldn't tell the difference between Rev. Jesse Jackson and Rev. Al Sharpton, the news organization realized that it had a serious problem on its hands. "It's something that we probably should have paid more attention to after the first few incidents," said Griffin. Griffin then detailed some recent 'prompter faux pas that the post-racial Obama administration network of choice originally dismissed as isolated incidents. Last spring,...

The path towards irrelevancy and future insolvency taken by The New York Times continues at a frenetic pace. Democracy Now! is reporting that the publication has announced the elimination of another 100 newsroom positions, or about eight percent of the paper’s news staff, due to declining advertising revenues and circulation numbers that are in freefall.

Want to make a big splash to bolster your chances in a political campaign? A tried and true strategy for some attorneys general has been to champion a populist position by exploiting the legal system for publicity. Just look at the lead up to the launch of former New York AG Eliot Spitzer gubernatorial campaign with his attacks on Wall Street. And that appears to be the playbook California Attorney General Jerry Brown is using in a lawsuit accusing State Street (NYSE:STT) of cheating the state's two largest pension funds, the California Public Employees' Retirement System and the California State...

Do the major media outlets in the U.S. have a liberal bias? Few questions evoke stronger opinions, and we cannot think of a more important question to which objective statistical techniques can lend their service. So far, the debate has largely been one of anecdotes (“How can CBS News be balanced when it calls Steve Forbes’ tax plan ‘wacky’?”) and untested theories (“if the news industry is a competitive market, then how can media outlets be systematically biased?”). Few studies provide an objective measure of the slant of news, and none has provided a way to link such a measure...

ITHACA, NY-“Why is it just so difficult to make the search for truth the highest journalistic value?” Pulitzer Prize-winning former New York Times Reporter Linda Greenhouse asked a packed Lewis Auditorium yesterday. Greenhouse relied on her wisdom and experience as she spoke about the state of today’s news media, questioning the very rubric by which today’s journalists operate. Adolph S. Ochs, the founder of today’s modern New York Times, laid out his goal for the creation of a newspaper that would “give the news impartially, without fear or favor, regardless of party, sect or interests involved."Veteran mind: Linda Greenhouse, Pulitzer...

It was bound to happen - an inevitable character assault on former Miss California Carrie Prejean by a host from MSNBC, the place for misogyny, after K2 Productions, the company that directs the Miss California USA pageant, filed a publicity-seeking, lawsuit. Prejean unintentionally created a firestorm when she answered a question from self-proclaimed gay rights activist and gossip blogger Perez Hilton during the Miss USA pageant. Her offence was to say that she believed marriage should be between a man and a woman. On MSNBC's Oct. 20 "Countdown," host Keith Olbermann dedicated part of a segment with the Village Voice's...

Like I said in the last post, it must be driving Team Lightbringer a little nuts that they can't issue knee pads to the overseas press. The White House’s extraordinary assault on the Fox News Channel will end in tears – and not for Rupert Murdoch, Fox’s owner. The Obama administration has embarked on a high-risk strategy of shooting the messenger, in effect blaming its plummeting poll ratings on alleged political bias at the number one 24-hour cable news network. As Anita Dunn, the Mao-quoting White House communications director put it in an interview with The New York Times: “We’re...