Free Republic

Note: This is satire designed to show the ludicrous nature of the media coverage on the Ft. Hood issue. It is not designed to trivialize a terrible event but to make people understand better what happened and how the event is being dangerously distorted.] By Barry Rubin When John Wilkes Booth opened fire on President Abraham Lincoln in Ford’s Theatre in April 1865, the media was puzzled. “True, the actor was outspoken in his Confederate sympathies and viewed himself as a Southerner,” said someone who knew him, “but that was no reason he might want Lincoln to be dead.” The...

As you know by now, the “experts”–including fake doctor, Dr. Phil, and Mark Cuban’s brother (on Twitter)–are lecturing us that Dr. Nidal Malik Hasan, didn’t kill at least 13 American soldiers and injure at least 31 other soldiers because he’s a devout Muslim. Or because he apparently wrote sympathetic, anti-American messages online approving terrorist attacks on American soldiers. Or because America spoiled him with free college and medical tuition courtesy of taxpayers, which he repaid by hiring a lawyer and killing soldiers. Or because he yelled “allahu Akbar” [allah is the greater or greatest (meaning greater than the Christian or...

I opened ABCNews.com the day after the Democrats and Obama got destroyed in the election and what do you know. This is what is in the right hand column (YOU CAN'T MISS IT) A Look Back The 2008 Election: The 2008 Election PHOTO President-elect Barack Obama waves to supporters during his election night party at Grant Park in Chicago, Tuesday night, Nov. 4, 2008. ELECTION MAP REPLAY: How Obama Won the White House Obama Promises New Dawn of Leadership '08 Election Is One for the Record Books EXITS: Economy Allows Obama to Remake Map WATCH: Obama's Road to the White...

Reporting from Hoboken, N.J. - Cory Booker, the mayor of Newark, climbed on a stage here the other night and hailed his state's political history at a rally for Jon Corzine, the embattled Democratic governor running for reelection. "New Jersey," Booker shouted to supporters in the upscale sushi bar, "is a state of impossible dreams." Until recently, that described Corzine's likely odds at the ballot box Tuesday. But the unpopular governor's race against Christopher Christie, the Republican challenger, has tightened to a dead heat after months of relentless negative campaigning by both sides. Political analysts say Corzine, 62, now may...

The latest newspaper circulation numbers, measuring copies sold from April through September of this year, show a 10.6 percent decline in daily newspaper sales, the first double-digit drop in circulation ever. Newspaper readership is now at its lowest level since before World War II. The biggest losers during this six-month period, as reported by NewsBusters's Tom Blumer, were the San Francisco Chronicle (down 25.8 percent daily), the Newark Star-Ledger (down 22.2 percent daily), and the Boston Globe (down 18.5 percent daily). The New York Times's sales during the period fell to 927,861, the first time the paper sold less...

Here's a transcript of what's said: Unknown voice: "We need to change congress" Friedman: No, we don't need to change congress, excuse me. You know, people have a great misunderstanding about this. People in congress are in the business, they're trying to buy votes. They're in the business of competing with one another to get elected. The same congressman will vote for a different thing if he thinks that's politically profitable. You don't have to change congress. People have a great misconception in this way they think the way you solve things is by electing the right people. It's nice...

The New York Times has an interesting article today. Apparently, Paganism is growing, and that's just fine, at least according to the NYT. Paganism has always been seen as the "alright religion" by the left. It's hip, cool, different. Not at all like those stuffy christians. "In several ways, though, Paganism was waiting for modernity to catch up with it. The emphasis on the worship of nature in virtually all variations of Pagan faith, and the embrace of a female divinity in many, situated the religion to mesh with the environmental and feminist movements that swept through the United States...

snip It is not only the demise of big-name papers that should raise concern; the rapid decline of the newspaper industry is playing out quietly, with small, reasonably responsible dailies in cities and rural regions across the country disappearing without widespread notice. Dozens of daily and weekly newspapers have closed this year. Cities that once enjoyed the fruits of newspaper competition (Denver, Seattle) are starving. "Surviving" publications -- and many have filed for bankruptcy -- are cutting reporting staffs to the bone (this month, the New York Times said it would cut 100 more newsroom jobs). International bureaus, statehouse bureaus...

Is the mainstream media's love affair with the Obama administration on shaky ground?

Just how dumb are Obama voters? Well...dumb enough to have elected a man to the highest office based upon the same credentials that "earned" him the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize. So what's their excuse today, now that they are witnessing President Obama's executive leadership in action? Well, for one, more Americans are discovering their inner conservative. If 8 years of President Bush in no small measure lost us the '08 election and set the conservative movement one step back, President Obama in one year's worth of governance will most likely cost the Democrats 2010 (actually, Dems in Congress who choose...

As with Iraq, the troops in Afghanistan (no matter what country they are from) know, from their own experience, that their service there matters. Many of their countrymen back home do not, and the media does little to change this opinion. The main reason given by the media is that the soldiers just don't understand what they are experiencing, and fail to see the "big picture." For the troops, the violence and terror that the Taliban use is real. The fear of the local victims is also quite vivid. The troops know that their efforts against the Taliban and drug...

Over the years, I have spent a great deal of time studying psychology. To be specific, I've studied how psychology is often used to manipulate people. I first gained an interest in this subject years ago as it pertained to cultists (LONG story), but eventually I started to notice the same tactics used in the media, in political debate, and in general conversation with left-leaning people. In this post I will go over some of the basic tactics often used by those who wish to manipulate you, and how you can defend against them. ...

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...

My Extremely Cute Chinese Communist SpyPosted By Robert J. Avrech On October 28, 2009 @ 6:51 am In Obama, Politics | 6 Comments T- snip-American Journalism Goes Dark—VoluntarilyJournalism died in America when Barack Hussein Obama was running for President.The dinosaur media gleefully surrendered to the cult of personality—standard for leftist politics—and since then normally skeptical journalists have turned into nothing less than a collective Pravda for the Obama White House.- snip- Elite journalists and editors recognize in Obama a kindred spirit, a hard left, big government ideologue who is adept at mouthing—endlessly, tediously and vacuously—all the politically correct rhetoric. Questions...

Time Inc. is bracing for another round of cutbacks. Sources say the layoffs will be most severe in the division that includes Fortune, Sports Illustrated, Time and Money, and will be carried out before the Thanksgiving break. Since many of the old-line titles at Time Inc. are covered by union contracts with the Newspaper Guild, the company will likely have to offer voluntary buyout options as part of the downsizing. Time is running out if it hopes to complete the layoffs and write off the costs in the fourth quarter. Ann Moore, CEO of Time Inc., personally took over supervision...

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...

Journalism has a special, hallowed place for stories of its practitioners' persecution. There is no higher claim to journalistic integrity than going to jail to protect a source. And the Newseum in Washington, D.C., establishes the profession's legitimacy with a memorial to fallen scribes, thus drawing an implicit connection between the murdered abolitionist editors of long ago and the struggling outfit that gave you this morning's page-one story about cute pets in Halloween costumes. But no journalistic operation is better prepared to sing the tragedy of its own martyrdom than Fox News. To all the usual journalistic instincts it adds...

Earlier today, Liberal news makers and bloggers such as the Huffington Post rushed to their keyboards to make another attack on Conservatism. They were responding to a rumor going around that Supreme Court justice Antonin Scalia had claimed he would have been against the decision of the landmark case of Brown v. Board of Education. ...

Figures released yesterday showed that newspaper circulation is still in a freefall with no end in sight. From the New York Times The two-decade erosion in newspaper circulation is looking more like an avalanche, with figures released Monday showing weekday sales down more than 10 percent since last year, depressed by rising Internet readership, price increases, the recession and papers intentionally shedding unprofitable circulation.

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...

CNN's prime-time programs finished fourth and last among the cable news networks in October. CNN's programs finished behind not only Fox News and MSNBC, but also its own sister network HLN.

Have you ever stumbled on an oxymoron so stunning that it takes your breath away? Try coupling this with a case of chutzpah so revealing that the lack of shame on the part of those involved serves as prima fasci evidence that their elite cultural isolation has rendered them incapable of critical thinking. Behold the "Independent Journalism Tax." In order to preserve independent journalism in the age of the Internet, a national Fund for Local News should be created with money the FCC now collects from or could impose on telecom users, television and radio broadcast licensees, or Internet service...

"NEW YORK, Oct 26 (Reuters) - The plunge in U.S. newspaper circulation is accelerating, according to the latest figures released on Monday, as more people cancel their subscriptions and publishers cut distribution and sales of discounted copies."

The feeble pulse of moderation in the Republican Party is in danger of flat-lining in the Nov. 3 Congressional election in upstate New York. Luminaries like Sarah Palin and Newt Gingrich have taken opposing sides over whether the party dare tolerate the official Republican candidate in the 23rd district — Dede Scozzafava, a six-term assemblywoman whose record includes refreshing tinges of centrism. Ms. Scozzafava was nominated by local party leaders as eminently electable despite — or because of — her defense of women’s abortion rights and her tolerant views on same-sex marriage. She is already shunned by many more ideologically...

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)

    Feinberg interviews turn networks against Obama administrationAP Photo/Kevin Wolf The Obama administration now claims it did not try to exclude Fox News from Thursday's round of network interviews with pay czar Ken Feinberg.   A treasury department spokesperson claimed, "There was no plot to exclude Fox News, and they had the same interview that their competitors did. Much ado about absolutely nothing".  Unfortunately for the Obama administration, four other networks are fully aware of the situation and have proof that the treasury department is lying.  Fox did have the same interview as their competitors, only because the other networks came...

Return to the Article October 25, 2009The Slander NetworkBy J.R. Dunn It's a rare pleasure to see that Going Rogue doing so well ahead of publication. (Even though rescheduling the publishing date delayed my book -- but I forgive you, lass). When it appears, there's little doubt it will go through the roof.  Along with fits from the Olbermanns and Courics of the world, we can look forward to seeing a few myths definitively punctured -- the "I can see Russia" story, the shooting wolves from a helicopter narrative, or alternately, the "she can't shoot a gun" claim. (Really,...

We have known about the H1N1, swine flu, risk for many months now. We knew that last springs outbreak would turn into a more virulent strain by this fall. That is all basic science. Concerned for our citizens, the government recognized the need to produce substantial volumes of vaccine. We have spent more than $2.2B for H1N1 Swine flu. To date, only a minor amount of this vaccine has been delivered, but concern seems muted. Why?

A report on funding 'accountable' reporting recommends a mix of philanthropy and familiar ideas on leviesTHE SKIES grow heavy with portent when a former editor of the Washington Post and a distinguished professor join forces to write aColumbia University report on "The Reconstruction of American Journalism". And the same skies weep, perhaps, over Len Downie and Michael Schudson's complex prescription for funding "accountability" reporting, interwoven with foundations and philanthropists, rather as though exposing corruption in City Hall were the same as subsidising a symphony orchestra. It's a very American, very particular approach.

Chris Mathews at it again! First, I am sure this is my last Matthews post for a while. Well I am pretty sure. But, I … well I just could not stop laughing. Chris Matthews and guests Pat Buchanan and Ron Brownstein kick Wall Street around (deserved) but then demean the entire system. Paraphrasing now but it boils down to … these guys on Wall Street produce nothing … and thus deserve nothing.

Yesterday, I believe, was the game changer in the war between Fox News and the White House. The Treasury Department made Ken Feinberg available to the White House press pool. The press pool is made up of ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN and Fox News. They share the costs and so keep costs lower. The Treasury Department made Feinberg available to all of the press pool but Fox News. The rest of the press pool said if there's no Fox News the whole pool wouldn't do the interview. The White House relented.

VANITY Fair yesterday took some of the deepest staff cuts at Condé Nast, but Editor Graydon Carter didn't deliver the bad news himself. Although Carter was said to have been at his restaurant, The Monkey Bar, Wednesday night, he was a no show in the office yesterday because he had jetted off on a vacation yesterday morning. Vanity Fair's layoffs were said to be in the double-digit range, and hit as high as senior editors and as low as fact checkers, and were deep, in part, because Carter largely ignored the edict to chop 5 percent late last year.

Time Warner Inc's (TWX.N) magazine division Time Inc plans another round of job cuts as advertising declines erode revenue, a source familiar with the unit said on Thursday. The job cuts at Time Inc -- which publishes Time magazine, People, Sports Illustrated and Fortune -- would be at about the same level as the division cut last year, the source said. Time Inc. cut more than 600 positions, or more than 6 percent of its workforce, in that round. The company declined to comment, though a spokesman for Fortune magazine separately said that it plans to shave the number of...

Dispatch from the Department of Pot-Meet-Kettle . . . Katie Couric has demanded "humility" from Wall Streeters making seven-figure incomes. This from a woman pulling down . . . eight figures [an estimated $15 million/year] from CBS while cementing the Evening News' caboose status. Couric made her hypocritical plea in her "Notebook" segment yesterday, commenting on Pres. Obama's pay czar's plan to cut compensation for employees of financial firms that have received bail-out bucks [emphasis added]:

Here we are only nine months into the ubiquitously proclaimed "post-racial presidency," and all that promised harmony among the races has disappeared faster than a Chicago minute. All it took for addled minds to conjure shadows of racism behind every whitey tree in the whole American forest were voices raised in dissent over the President's far-left policies. No sooner had congress' summer recess begun -- without the President's hoped-for passage of Obamacare -- than the racist cries began their assent. Nancy Pelosi threw down the "swastika" gauntlet aimed at townhall attendees, which essentially tarred those citizens with white-supremacy slander. In...

Yesterday, I had a note on Anita Dunn, Fox News, CNN, and all that jazz. I said that a CNN anchorman, Anderson Cooper, had coined this “teabagger” epithet against anti-Obama protesters. “Teabagging” is a sexual practice defined in that earlier note of mine: and Cooper used it in a very specific context. Almost immediately, Democratic pundits and politicians picked up the epithet, “mainstreaming” it. (Of course, when something begins with a CNN anchorman, it pretty much starts life mainstream.) Many, many readers wrote me yesterday saying that George Stephanopoulos, host of This Week, had used “teabagger” or “teabagging” that very...

·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...

Here's a curious turn in the White House vs. Fox News fight. On Monday, MSNBC's Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow were among several people who attended an off-the-record briefing with Pres. Obama at the White House. Sources tell us other attendees at the two-and-a-half hour chat included Eugene Robinson of the Washington Post, Maureen Dowd of the New York Times, Gwen Ifill of PBS and Gloria Borger of CNN. Perhaps not surprisingly, no one from Fox News was in the room. ...Update: The White House has sent TVNewser the complete list of those who attended the off-the-record briefing Monday: Eugene...

When pressed by an NBC interviewer, President Obama stepped into the fray over the growing war between the White House and Fox News. President Obama spoke publicly for the first time Wednesday about his administration's portrayal of Fox News as an illegitimate news organization -- only to say he's not "losing sleep" over the controversy. Obama, in an interview with NBC, at first attempted to deflect a question about the White House's criticism of Fox News, saying "the American people are a lot more interested in what we're doing to create jobs or how we're handling the situation in Afghanistan."

Shortly before he took the reins of a government bleeding red ink and mired in ethical muck, Jon S. Corzine relaxed by tackling a different kind of challenge. It was Thanksgiving weekend 2005, after a hard-fought campaign and a couple of months before he would be sworn in to his new job. Corzine and the youngest of his three children went on an Aspen, Colo., getaway. But the slopes, Jeffrey Corzine recalled, were "unskiable." Yet Jon Corzine went all day, riding the toughest trails. Such determined gusto, according to his children, is typical. Jennifer Corzine-Pisani said her father would stumble...

TEL AVIV – President Obama's presidential campaign focused on "making" the news media cover certain issues while rarely communicating anything to the press unless it was "controlled," White House Communications Director Anita Dunn disclosed to the Dominican government at a videotaped conference. "Very rarely did we communicate through the press anything that we didn't absolutely control," said Dunn. "One of the reasons we did so many of the David Plouffe videos was not just for our supporters, but also because it was a way for us to get our message out without having to actually talk to reporters," said Dunn,...

Here's a curious turn in the White House vs. Fox News fight. On Monday, MSNBC's Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow were among several people who attended an off-the-record briefing with Pres. Obama at the White House. Sources tell us other attendees at the two-and-a-half hour chat included Eugene Robinson of the Washington Post, Maureen Dowd of the New York Times, Gwen Ifill of PBS and Gloria Borger of CNN. Perhaps not surprisingly, no one from Fox News was in the room.

We already know where Jake Tapper stands on this point, but the real question is why more journalists in the White House aren’t making their position clear. Brit Hume wondered whether American journalists from other news organizations really will become the lackeys of the Obama administration by ignoring news stories originating at Fox, just because Robert Gibbs disapproves of Fox. Toby Harnden of the London Telegraph channels Pastor Niemoller in his blog today: "Those journalists sitting this one out need to ask themselves what they will do when the White House comes after them or their news organisation."

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...

A good gregalogue.

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Accuracy in Media (AIM), America's first independent watchdog of the news media, is giving FREE tickets to FReepers to attend AIM's 40th Anniversary Conference in Washington, DC on Friday, October 23, 2009. To get your ticket, visit www.aim.org/events and enter discount code "freerepublic" or go to: http://aim40thconference.eventbrite.com/?discount=freerepublic Speakers include Rep. Lamar Smith (R-TX), Tony Blankley, John Fund, Andrew C. McCarthy, Cliff Kincaid, Trevor Loudon, Anita MonCrief, Hans von Spakovsky, Marc Morano, Robert Bluey, Ann McElhinney, J.P. Freire, and Don Irvine. Tickets are regularly $75 and include a buffet luncheon and morning and afternoon snacks. YOU MUST REGISTER IN ADVANCE for...