Free Republic

Remember when John McCain ran for president in 2008, and the liberal media were deeply concerned about his age and health? Hardcore left-wing pundits and bloggers weren’t subtle about it — they made fun of him for his age, and the health problems he developed while he was a Vietnam prisoner-of-war. They said he was an out-of-touch old man who couldn’t even handle a computer keyboard. A group of 2,000 doctors ran a full-page ad in The New York Times demanding that McCain release every last scrap of his medical documentation to the general public. Liberal website Salon.com said even...

Morning Joe host Joe Scarborough tore into the leadership at the New York Times on Friday morning for what he characterized as a misleading self-defense over the reasons for the firing of former Executive Editor Jill Abramson. He observed that the Times admitted that the pay discrepancy issue was a factor even after they denied it at first. The appearance of a cover-up on this issue led Scarborough’s co-hosts to predict a backlash against the paper and even a wave of cancelled subscriptions from female subscribers. Reading from the latest piece in the New Yorker, Scarborough noted that the Times...

“Our journalism advantage is shrinking,” a committee led by the publisher’s son warned. A call to get rid of the metaphor of “Church and State.” A 96-page internal New York Times report, sent to top executives last month by a committee led by the publisher’s son and obtained by BuzzFeed, paints a dark picture of a newsroom struggling more dramatically than is immediately visible to adjust to the digital world, a newsroom that is hampered primarily by its own storied culture. The Times report was finalized March 24 by a committee of digitally oriented staffers led by reporter A.G. Sulzberger....

Liberals often say they’re big on tolerance, but apparently tolerance must flow only one way – toward liberals and their favored identity groups. So says MSNBC contributor Jonathan Capehart. Appearing as a guest on Monday’s The Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell, Capehart rebuffed the idea ... [T]olerance, no, is not – it should not be a two-way street. It's a one-way street. ... That’s the perfect encapsulation of liberalism – they will make you to understand that you are wrong and they are right. You will tolerate whoever they like, but as for you – tough luck. If you don’t...

New York Times executive editor Jill Abramson was abruptly fired from the paper on Wednesday, sources familiar with the news informed POLITICO. Managing editor Dean Baquet will take over as executive editor, effective immediately. The news of her departure was met with shock throughout the newsroom. Senior editors were unexpectedly summoned to a 2 p.m. leadership meeting at the Times headquarters in New York. The news was then announced in a staff-wide meeting by publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. In his announcement, Sulzberger said Abramson’s departure was related to “an issue with management in the newsroom,” and had nothing to do...

Klein is a leftist journalist who had the audacity to write about his issues with the Obamacare website while working for The Washington Post. His words were immediately savaged by the farther-left blogger, Joan Walsh, who was working for Salon magazine. She penned a harsh critique, headlined: “Liberal pundit fail: Rush to attack Obamacare site only aids unhinged right.” Here’s what Walsh wrote about Klein: “Ezra Klein then picked up the cudgel, telling the crew at MSNBC’s ‘Morning Joe,’ where every Obama misstep foretells the end of his presidency, that the Health and Human Services Department is covering up a ‘massive management failure,’...

If left-leaning publications value diversity, why don't they have any?On the staff of The American Prospect, I’m the only member of an ethnic minority. That's not because I bring all the variety the magazine needs, or because the editors don't think diversity is valuable. Everyone on the masthead of this liberal publication is committed to being inclusive—not just of racial and ethnic minorities but of women; gays, lesbians, and transgender people; and the poor. Nearly 40 percent of the country is non-white and/or Hispanic, but the number of minorities at the outlets included in this article's tally—most of them self-identified...

Daily Beast columnist Eleanor Clift said on Sunday’s The McLaughlin Group that late U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens, who was killed the night of the Benghazi attacks, had not been murdered but had died from “smoke inhalation.” “I’d like to point out that Ambassador Stevens was not ‘murdered,’” Clift said, using air quotes, “but died of smoke inhalation in a CIA safe room.” This did not land well. “It was a terrorist attack, Eleanor,” panelist-for-life Pat Buchanan said. “He was murdered in a terrorist attack.” Clift responded that it was an opportunistic terrorist attack inflamed by the anti-Muslim video, the blaming...

The estimated cost of the initial segment of California's bullet train, Golden State Governor Jerry Brown's pet project, has (excuse the pun) just shot up from $6.19 billion to $7.13 billion. If this is the only overrun encountered in this opening phase, which would be atypical, and if the California High Speed Rail Authority has similar experiences on the remainder of the project, assuming it's ever completed, its cost will rise from a currently estimated $68 billion to about $78 billion. Obviously a big cost overrun is news. But normally, evidence of an attempted government coverup of such an overrun...

This administration enjoys an advantage afforded no other: a partisan media that has its back, minute-by-minute. When Jay Carney was grilled at length by Jonathan Karl of ABC News over an email outlining administration talking points in the wake of the 2012 Benghazi attack, it was not, by the reckoning of many observers, the White House press secretary's finest hour. Carney was alternately defensive and dismissive, arguably fueling a bonfire he was trying to tamp down. But Carney needn't have worried. He had plenty of backup. He had The New Republic's Brian Beutler dismissing Benghazi as "nonsense." He had Slate's...

While hyping the alleged effects on climate change, NBC’s May 6 “Nightly News” tried to localize the impact by citing a different problem in each region. The broadcast played a clip of Burr Morse, a seventh-generation maple syrup producer from Montpelier, Vermont, stating that this season’s weather had been too warm. Contrary to this clip’s implications, Morse told the MRC’s Business and Media Institute that cold weather actually did more to harm this year’s maple syrup season. Morse complained that NBC had selected a short sample of his full remarks to “support their point which was global warming.” Morse said he didn’t...

New York summers are hot. In July, Western Kentucky University senior Demetrius Freeman, from Atlanta, a New York Times intern at the time, was enflamed enough by the Trayvon Martin march and protest to make a decision without the paper’s staff being aware. Freeman documented a Trayvon Martin march and protests in New York and created prints at reasonable prices. “Photos from the Trayvon Martin March & Protest” was on display and some were sold Tuesday in the Garrett Conference Center at WKU. Six double-sided gallery stands feature 12 images of New Yorkers’ outcries over racial tension, vigilantism, police practices...

Not even a full vote by the House of Representatives to hold Lois Lerner in contempt can shake the networks out of their slumber in covering the IRS scandal. On Wednesday the House voted 231-178 (all Republicans voted yes with six Democrats) to hold Lerner in contempt for refusing to testify about the IRS’s targeting of conservative groups. Total coverage by ABC, CBS and NBC? Just a 15-second brief on Thursday’s edition of ABC’s Good Morning America. However the Big Three networks did find the 110x more time this week to tout the “dire” and “alarming” findings from the White...

The NFL draft — the league’s Radio City-staged, nationally televised, endlessly hyped off-season spectacle — opens Thursday night, and for the first time an openly gay player will be waiting for a phone call. But it could be a long wait for Michael Sam, the University of Missouri defender and all-American who came out in February. Draft analysts say he might not be selected until the last picks are made on Saturday — and perhaps not at all. If that happens, Sam could still sign with a team as an undrafted free agent and play on Sundays this fall. But...

I can't keep up with it. Under Janet Napolitano - and in the MSM then - an act of terrorism became known as (or redefined as) "man-caused disasters." Before that, under the Bush administration, it was defined as an act of "terrorism." In the MSM, now, and to a large degree some Ukrainians are called terrorists. Sometimes they are called anti-Kiev protesters, or sometimes anti-government protesters. Should the MSM call Right Sector and others in Ukraine "terrorists"? One hardly ever even sees the word "fascist." But when you look at the top four news articles cached on Yahoo.com, when entering...

A survey by the Indiana University School of Journalism found that self-described Democrats outnumber Republicans by a ratio of four to one, 28 percent to 7 percent. The survey (pdf), which has been conducted every 10-11 years since 1971, found that journalists have abandoned both parties. Compared to 2002, the last time it was taken, the percentage of Democrats dropped from 35 to 28. The percentage of Republicans dropped even more sharply over the same time period from 18 down to just seven percent today. For the first time since 1971, more than half of all journalists report they are...

<p>The mainstream, media is still trying to figure out how they are going to push back against the recently-announced House Select Committee that will investigate Benghazi.</p> <p>With polls showing that nearly two-thirds of Americans believe Obama engaged in a cover-up and want the investigations to continue, our media -- that from the beginning have fought to protect Obama, Hillary, and to ensure the truth is never known -- are in a tough spot.</p>

Bloomberg Media Group CEO Justin B. Smith and Bloomberg News Editor-In-Chief Matthew Winkler today announced Bloomberg Politics – the first in series of new digital-led, multi-platform brands that will live across all Bloomberg platforms. In March, Bloomberg announced a new, broad strategy for consumer media properties, including the development of new digital assets and a multi-platform approach. Bloomberg Politics, the first of the brands being launched under this new direction, will be created, launched, and overseen by Mark Halperin and John Heilemann, who will also lead political coverage across all Bloomberg platforms – Web, mobile, television, digital video, print magazines,...

Speaker John Boehner and House Republicans have decided to create a select committee to expand their investigation into the Benghazi attacks. Beyond that, nothing is settled. In fact, Republicans may be going on something of a mission improbable to yield new information and turn up new clues in a wide-ranging probe that has already spanned 13 hearings, 25,000 pages of documents and 50 briefings There are questions about what the select committee will set out to do and what it can actually yield. And the man who will head the committee, South Carolina Republican Trey Gowdy, will be following in...

It takes a big man to make fun of himself, to take his failures, hold them up for everyone to see, and say, as Chandler Bing might: "Could I BE any more ridiculous?" So when the president of the United States -- the most powerful man in the world, used to always getting his way, always being the smartest guy in the room, and always the one who gets the last word -- does it, we take note. It's a lesson in self-deprecation all Americans can learn from; Hey, the president mocks himself, so maybe I should just lighten up...