Free Republic

So who's crazy now? In 2011, the MSM mercilessly mocked Michele Bachmann for saying that if she became president, gas prices would fall to under $2/gallon. Typical was Time magazine, which called her prediction "fantasy." Time mocked Bachmann's drill, baby, drill policy, sniffing that if implemented, "prices at the pump might drop a whole 3 cents a gallon." But on CBS This Morning, there was top oil analyst Tom Kloza, saying that by Christmas, gas prices would be in the range of . . . $1.99-2.29 [I saw $2.18 here in Texas yesterday]. So who's crazy now, and where does...

President Barack Obama got "really angry" twice in off-the-record conversations with reporters, and one of those was "profanity-laced" as he unapologetically expressed his frustration at the fact that the journalists were reporting on scandals within his administration, retired ABC News journalist Ann Compton said in an interview with C-span's Brian Lamb. Within the past year, Compton recalled, the two times she saw Obama visibly angry at reporters was over coverage of scandals and how the press covered his foreign policy in the Middle East. "I have seen in the last year Barack Obama really angry twice. Both were off-the-record times....

SAN FRANCISCO (CBS SF) — Sustained winds at or near hurricane strength in the highest elevations with gusts exceeding 100 miles per hour across the Sierra summit are forecast for Thursday, with Bay Area winds easily gusting past 50 miles per hour in urban areas and 70-80 miles per hour in the local mountains and hills in what could be the storm of the decade. Computer models are able to break down the exact time of highest danger. By mid-morning Thursday, models indicate winds peaking. Along the coast, 60 mile per hour winds are forecast, with higher gusts.

Appearing on “The Steve Malzberg Show” Monday afternoon, author Sharyl Attkisson responded to former ABC News correspondent Ann Compton’s claim that President Barack Obama and his officials routinely direct profanity-laced tirades at reporters. Attkisson told Malzberg she has been on the receiving end of those conversations in the past, and others, specifically The Associated Press, have been subject to scorn at the hands of Obama officials. “Maybe this is just me or a personal opinion that a profanity-laced conversation with professionals in the press by the president of the U.S. is probably inappropriate,” said Attkisson. “That’s not surprising to me,”...

You won’t likely see MSNBC host Rachel Maddow filling in for Brian Williams on “NBC Nightly News.” While Maddow is usually described as the “host” of a cable news show, she is rarely called a “news anchor.” Her own NBC bio describes her as a “host”–and never even uses the word “journalist.” So it’s worth noting that a new MSNBC promo flips the script, describing Maddow as a “news anchor with a big personality. She’s smart, funny and passionate.” Conservative critics immediately jumped on the promo, noting that previous “Lean Forward” promos for MSNBC included hosts like Maddow talking about...

The Newseum is becoming a breaking news-eum this month as it prepares to exhibit artifacts from the protests and news coverage in Ferguson, Mo., while that story continues to unfold. Sharon Shahid, the Newseum’s online managing editor — call her a deadline curator — was on the ground in the simmering St. Louis suburb shortly before the announcement last week that the grand jury would not indict officer Darren Wilson in the fatal shooting of Michael Brown on Aug. 9. Shahid collected a press pass and two rubber pellet balls from a police stun grenade donated by Stephanie Lecci, a...

Nationally syndicated radio host Mark Levin suggests that The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) editorial page is in decline thanks to its “thin-skinned” editorial page chief editor Paul Gigot, who has routinely published material undercutting Texas Senator Ted Cruz. Paul Gigot, the chief editor of the WSJ’s editorial page, “is an amnesty radical who’s thin-skinned and often sophomoric,” says Levin in a Facebook Note, and “[h]e uses the paper’s opinion pages to carry not a conservative message but the corporatist water – bailouts, subsidies, debt increases, amnesty, etc.” According to National Review Online, Senator Cruz met “with Wall Street Journal editorial...

Following his on-duty shooting of robbery suspect Michael Brown in August, Ferguson, Mo., police officer Darren Wilson was targeted by protesters who automatically assumed the white officer was motivated by racism instead of a legitimate threat on his life. When a grand jury privy to the details of this incident determined the veteran officer should not be charged in the shooting, threats against his life only increased as rioters looted and destroyed businesses in the St. Louis suburb. Amid the civil unrest, New York Times reporter Julie Bosman stoked tensions by releasing the name of the street on which Wilson...

How would the events surrounding the Ferguson shooting have been reported without an alternative media? Suppose Fox News, talk radio, and blogs were shut down due to the Fairness Doctrine. There may have been a different story line if the mainstream media had their way without challenge or transparency. Here is how the Ferguson story might have been reported:

Looking back on the death and destruction in Ferguson, we can see the dirty hands of the media, especially CNN, now basking in the glow of (relatively) high ratings. Racial violence is a ratings booster and winner.

Amid all the events in the wake of the release of the grand jury findings in Ferguson, a brief moment of unusual mental clarity on the part of a liberal reporter has been overlooked. It happened last Wednesday when Ferguson was being discussed on Wolf Blitzer's CNN show as Ashleigh Banfield proclaimed she was "shocked" that the grand jury witnesses backed up former Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson's story. What's particularly notable about her proclamation is that Banfield confessed that there was actually (GASP!) another side to the Ferguson story other than the liberal hype that was widely promulgated. Here...

Let’s not forget; to the media, Ferguson was NEVER about law enforcement, death, the black community, justice, injustice, inner city poverty, or whatever other code word that exemplifies what happened in that small Missouri town. To the media, it was all about ratings because they’ve had all their pieces in place for years. The decision to cover the Michael Brown shooting was not a result of its importance. It was a calculated decision by those in the media’s upper echelon to shed their white guilt and bring “attention” to what they consider long-simmering, racial injustice. When the shooting occurred, the...

Joe Scarborough is mad as hell and not etc. “Someone needs to tell me why Michael Brown has been chosen as the face of black oppression,” Scarborough said, arguing the left’s martyrdom of Brown mirrored the right’s lionization of George Zimmerman. “There are so many great people to embrace as heroes in the black community, that deciding you’re going to embrace a guy who knocked over a convenience store and then according to a Grand Jury testimony acted in ways that would get my children shot? …That’s your hero? That’s the reason you want to burn down black businesses?…Really? This...

As Seton Motley, the former MRCer now head of Limited Government said in bringing Joe Scarborough's comments to our attention: "credit when it's due." Because the Morning Joe host had the guts this today to speak truth to MSM power, including people at his own network, over the liberal media's cowardly, misleading coverage of Ferguson. Scarborough tied the media's misinformation to the decision of five members of the St. Louis Rams to take the field last night in a "hands-up, don't shoot" gesture. Said Scarborough: "they might as well have come out with a flying saucer attached to all of...

During the Gaza war this summer, it became clear that one of the most important aspects of the media-saturated conflict between Jews and Arabs is also the least covered: the press itself. The Western press has become less an observer of this conflict than an actor in it, a role with consequences for the millions of people trying to comprehend current events, including policymakers who depend on journalistic accounts to understand a region where they consistently seek, and fail, to productively intervene. An essay I wrote for Tablet on this topic in the aftermath of the war sparked intense interest....

Eeek! How dare he?! National Review editor Rich Lowry actually committed the "heresy" of citing the evidence presented to the Ferguson case grand jury on Meet The Press today. Such evidence is rarely cited by liberal circles because it confirms the account given by police officer Darren Wilson. Lowry's flagrant disregard of avoiding the inconvenient truths caused quite a reaction from Eugene Robinson of the Washington Post who was left sputtering in reply and from Andrea Mitchell who entertained the audience with her body language outrage.

This past week Fox News regular contributor Juan Williams penned a column on the Ferguson situation questioning where the black leadership was.When I was reading through his column one particular comment written by Williams jumped off the page at me.In his column he wrote, “Incredibly, the best leadership on the scene has come from the family of the murdered teen”. My question to Juan Williams is, what “murdered” teen ?There was no teenager murdered as a result of the police shooting in Ferguson that I’m aware of.There indeed was a black teenager who lost his life while attacking a police...

I cannot stand the Today Show. I cannot stand the execrable hosts. It used to be a news show back when I grew up, but today it is anything but. You no longer can discern where the Today Show ends and where The View and Entertainment Tonight begin. They've all morphed into the same thing. In no way can any of them be considered "news" or "informative." Woe unto those who watch The Today show and think otherwise. It is the very definition of one sided. The Today Show description says this: NBC News pioneered the morning news program when...

Advisers for the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) will meet next week to decide whether gay men should be allowed to donate blood, the agency’s biggest step yet toward changing the 30-year-old prohibition. If the FDA accepts the recommendation from its advisory board, it would roll back a policy that has faced mounting criticism from LGBT advocates and some members of Congress for more than four years. “We’ve got the ball rolling. I feel like this is a tide-turning vote,” said Ryan James Yezak, an LGBT activist who founded the National Gay Blood Drive and will speak at next week’s...

Last year, Philadelphia abortionist Dr. Kermit Gosnell stood trial in Philadelphia for the deaths of one woman and seven babies who had their throats slit, but national reporters didn't want to cover it. It's a "local crime story," they said. Washington Post media blogger Erik Wemple said that when he asked national reporters about avoiding the Gosnell story, the typical response was "Get out of my face with this agenda-driven stuff, and come back when you have a real story." Ferguson, Missouri, is merely the latest proof that a "local crime story" can be elevated to national news -- when...