Free Republic

Monday, January 28, 2019 Author by Ben Thompson If you remove the societal impact, just for a moment, the story of publishers’ demise — first newspapers, and now digital-only companies like BuzzFeed and Huffington Post, which both announced significant layoffs last week — is rather banal: infinite competition combined with an inferior product resulted in failed business models.Infinite competition is the result of the Internet: any piece of content is only a tap away, a far cry from a world where geographic areas were dominated by a small number of newspapers. The inferior product is advertising: when newspapers were the...

‘We apologise unreservedly to the first lady and her family for any embarrassment caused by our publication of these allegations. As a mark of our regret we have agreed to pay Mrs. Trump substantial damages as well as her legal costs.’ < snip > The amount of the damages was not specified in this case, but Melania Trump was previously awarded almost $3 million in a lawsuit brought against the Daily Mail for false and defamatory statements about her. “Mrs. Trump often refers to opportunists out to advance themselves by disparaging her name and image,” Trump’s communications director said in...

Never in the history of the country has there been a more dangerous and damning statement. Yet, based on a report from one publication that has had a problematic past, the Press of America was ready to bring down a duly-elected president based on: “If It Is True.” It is questionable whether the American public would tolerate this thinly-veiled maneuver so the Trump-haters had to have real ammunition.   They got it Thursday night January 17th at 10:11 P.M. when BuzzFeed released a story that caused even people like myself to be knocked back on their heels.  Trump purportedly had...

I don’t want to divide up the country. I don’t want to occupy New York City or San Francisco. I just want to take the minority of outraged Communist and build a monument to freedom with their skulls. The Democrat Party is willing to burn America down in order to steal it, and they are now the open enemy of the state and the people, and they’re going to get their reply ballistically, not rhetorically. Once you’re kissed in the forehead that way, there is no further reply. Nature is brilliantly subtle like that. Nothing less will suffice any longer....

The minute I heard Savannah Guthrie say the following to Nick Sandmann: "Do you feel, from this experience, that you owe anybody an apology?" I immediately thought of this scene from One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest -- Nurse Ratched talking to Billy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Onm5gjgL97Y There are no words, in my opinion, to describe the wretchedness of news people these days. Hopefully, in time, enough people will turn away from these slimy network news people that they -- the news organizations -- will end up turning out their lights -- for good.

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Without consulting with its users, Microsoft has installed an establishment media browser extension, purportedly designed to rate the accuracy of news websites, as a default setting on mobile versions of its Edge browser. In practice, it creates a news blacklist by warning users away from sites including Breitbart News, The Drudge Report, and the Daily Mail. The browser extension, called “Newsguard,” presents users with a red warning label if they navigate to a website that it judges to be unreliable. A “green” rating is given to websites that NewsGuard considers trustworthy. A number of pro-Trump websites, including Breitbart News, are...

Users of Microsoft's internet browser Edge are being met with a message not to trust the Daily Mail's journalism as part of the browser's new feature designed to fight fake news. Visitors to the Mail Online who use the Microsoft Edge browser are now greeted with a statement saying 'this website generally fails to maintain basic standards of accuracy and accountability'.

Sen. Kamala Harris, who went from being the daughter of immigrants to a potential 2020 presidential candidate, said in an interview with "Good Morning America" that she finds her political strength in knowing that "if it's worth fighting for, then it's a fight worth having."

The 48-hour build-up to President Trump’s first Oval Office address to the nation was chock-full of breathless hand-wringing in the media over whether they should air the speech in the first place. “How can we air a speech that will be full of lies and distortions?” they asked each other on endless panel shows. “Maybe we should tape-delay the address so we can contextualize his statements and provide a thorough fact-check,” they insultingly suggested. This is the Trump era. Fact-checking has moved into the mainstream. CNN’s 22-year-old production assistants are now responsible for running lower-third graphics designed to snark the...

FR CANTEEN MISSION STATEMENT Showing support and boosting the morale of our military and our allied military and the family members of the above.Honoring those who have served before. FReeper Canteen Just Hangin' Cafe Come on in, we're open Need a place just to hang out? This is it. We serve coffee, tea, conversation and music. Our AWESOME military, our AWESOME allies, and their families are welcomed and honored here. No worries in the FReeper Canteen Just Hangin' Cafe. Grab a cup and start a conversation. You never know who you might meet in the Cafe. Glad you could...

There has been a sharp decline in the number of American Jews participating in the “Birthright” trips to Israel this winter, reported Haaretz, describing “a downturn of this magnitude, unrelated to the security situation” as “unprecedented”. Since its establishment in 1999, the Birthright organisation has brought some 500,000 young Jews from around the world on free trips to Israel. According to the paper, citing some of Birthright’s key trip providers, the drop ranges from 20 per cent to 50 per cent – depending on the provider – in comparison with the last winter season (which extends from December through March)....

An attempted hack into Georgia’s voter registration database was traced back to the Department of Homeland Security, The Wall Street Journal reported Thursday. A third-party security firm working for the state detected the unsuccessful breach and linked it to an IP address associated with DHS, the report said. Georgia Secretary of State Brian Kemp reportedly sent a letter to Homeland Security asking the department to confirm whether an attempt was made. In his letter, The Wall Street Journal reported, Kemp asked the department to confirm whether a scan attempt was made, who authorized the scan and whether the department was...

**SNIP** ...covers the controversial decision by CBS News and anchor Dan Rather to run a story involving unauthenticated memos claiming President George W. Bush had received favorable treatment during his time in the Texas Air National Guard.

President Donald Trump's top security adviser has arrived in Turkey in an attempt to secure a deal to protect Pentagon-backed Syrian Kurdish fighters from rebel forces once supported by the CIA under former President Barack Obama. White House national security adviser John Bolton's trip to Ankara came just a day after he appeared to reverse the president's calls for a timely pullout from Syria, where the U.S. has led a coalition battling the Islamist State militant group (ISIS) since 2014. Prior to that, the U.S. had offered tacit support for insurgents in the wake of a 2011 rebel and jihadi...

One prevalent theme of 2018 was the further deterioration of the mainstream news media. The meltdown began in late 2016, after President Trump won the election. The media went into full assault mode, bashing Trump and churning out fake news at a breathtaking speed. They could not handle this new type of Republican president who aggressively went about a conservative agenda and frequently attacked the press. But Trump fought back, taking to Twitter to speak directly to the American people. He got his message out first, before the media could report on it. The media was forced to report afterwards...

FR CANTEEN MISSION STATEMENT Showing support and boosting the morale of our military and our allied military and the family members of the above.Honoring those who have served before. FReeper Canteen Come on in, we're open Need a place just to hang out? This is it. We serve coffee, tea, hot cocoa, conversation and music. Our AWESOME military, our AWESOME allies, and their families are welcomed and honored here.No worries in the FReeper Canteen Just Hangin' Cafe. Pull up a chair. Grab a cup and start a conversation.You never know who you might meet in the Cafe. Glad you...

On 7 December 2018, at about 7:45 p.m., the owner of the Alibaba's convenience store in Syracuse, New York shot and wounded an armed robber. The robber ended up in the hospital. The story made the news. A local reporter for syracuse.com, Patrick Lohmann, investigated the story and wrote it up. While doing a followup, Lohmann discovered the store owner had shot another robbery suspect six weeks earlier.That story did *not* make the news. From syracuse.com: SYRACUSE, N.Y. — A tobacco shop owner who shot and badly injured a would-be robber Friday night at his North Side store also...

Some advertisers say they are leaving conservative host Tucker Carlson's show following his remarks that immigrants could make the U.S. "poorer and dirtier." It's the latest example of sponsors leaving a Fox News Channel show after controversy, but experts say the flap is likely to blow over. So far, the show's biggest advertisers appear to be sticking with him and his prime-time show, "Tucker Carlson Tonight." Carlson said last Thursday that there's pressure from "our leaders" to accept immigrants "even if it makes our own country poorer and dirtier and more divided." He added Monday that in the Southwest, "thanks...

Families of people killed by illegal immigrants visited the U.S.-Mexico border on Dec. 14 to call for stronger border security. The Angel Families organization held a rally giving parents whose children were murdered a chance to speak in support of building the border wall, KUSI reported. “We are fighting so that no other American family has to feel the pain and the grief that we do,” said Mary Anne Mendoza, whose son was killed by an illegal alien in 2014.