Free Republic

For the past week or so, seems to me that no news network, including Fox, has said anything about anything other than 1) gun control, 2) the fake flu epidemic and 3) the mind-numbing doubletalk about the debt ceiling. IMHO, talking heads on Fox (I don't watch the others other than flipping past but they also only had the same three stories) seem very concerned, noticeably more than usual. Usually after a few days we get on to a "new" news cycle, but this one does not seem to be ending. And when it does, it just seems like it's...

Hurricane Sandy brought with it unfathomable destruction. For the past few days we have endless reports of the suffering that is sure to continue for many weeks to come. As the nation prays for the victims and their lost loved ones and sends whatever support they can muster – I am stricken with the difference I see in the news coverage of Hurricane Sandy when contrasted with what we witnessed with Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans just a few short years ago. In early September of 2005 and the months, even years that followed, the media mantra was loud and...

Shortly after Obamacare was passed and signed by the President, Michael Tanner of the Cato Institute noted a sudden plethora of articles that had begun to appear in a wide variety of MSM outlets about the probable ill-effects of "reform." This prompted him to ask, "Where were these reporters before the passage of the health care bill?" The answer to this question is now pretty obvious. They were colluding, via JournoList and other such forums that we don't know about, to make sure that no one screwed up and told the truth before that morass of taxes and regulations became...

TREASON

America’s news organizations did not spend much time reporting on the most recent Gallup poll (www.gallup.com/poll/157589/distrust-media-hits-new-high.aspx) that looked at how the public feels about them. That is understandable. After all, not many folks want to dwell on the fact that most of the world does not trust them. At least that’s what Gallup says about the state of the American journalism profession today. The survey determined six out of ten Americans (that’s 60 percent for those keeping score at home) have little or no trust in the media to do their jobs fully, accurately, and fairly. But this is nothing...

Who Owns The Media? The 6 Monolithic Corporations That Control Almost Everything We Watch, Hear And Read Back in 1983, approximately 0 corporations controlled the vast majority of all news media in the United States. Today, ownership of the news media has been concentrated in the hands of just six incredibly powerful media corporations. These corporate behemoths control most of what we watch, hear and read every single day. They own television networks, cable channels, movie studios, newspapers, magazines, publishing houses, music labels and even many of our favorite websites. Sadly, most Americans don't even stop to think about who...

At Big Journalism, William Bigelow writes, “According to a new Gallup poll measuring Americans’ confidence in television news, the level is the lowest since the poll was begun in 1993:” 21% of adults expressed a great deal of confidence in television news reporting. No wonder CNN’s ratings are in the toilet. Gallup tested 16 institutions, including newspapers, and TV news ranked 11th. Newspapers were ranked 10th. There was an interesting divide among those on the left; Democrats were the most confident in television news of all the groups surveyed (now there’s a shock) but postgraduates, who are more generally Democrats,...

(Speaking notes for an address to the Canadian Journalism Foundation Toronto, Canada, 2/16/2012)Good evening. I’m old media. This is my 36th year as a newspaper man – apologies – my 36th year as a multi-platform news executive. It’s a career I started as a copyboy on this same street about a dozen blocks east of here. I was hired for taking a picture of a belly dancer fooling with a drunk columnist. I was given the job of a guy who had just been fired for being a drunk. And I ended my first night on the job, taking home...

Copyright troll Righthaven's flawed business model—suing hundreds of bloggers and small websites for dubious cases of alleged copyright infringement of newspaper articles—appears to be grinding to an inexorable finish. But even as the Righthaven cases prove that litigation isn't going to magically make print media profitable in the age of the Internet, a new generation of journalists and creators are adapting to the digital world—including one of Righthaven's former clients. Last week, reports were circulating that Righthaven was on "life support" after admitting that they aren't currently filing more lawsuits and are apparently teetering on the edge of bankruptcy. Even...

"We'd prefer if you skip Fox please," a White House broadcast media staffer advised a Treasury Department public affairs secretary ahead of the interview. In other emails during the same time frame, deputy White House communications director Jennifer Psaki called Fox News anchor Bret Baier "a lunatic" and boasted that "I am putting some dead fish in the fox cubby--just cause." In yet another email, another White House press officer wrote: "We've demonstrated our willingness and ability to exclude Fox News from significant interviews …"

Interesting speech I came across comparing the great inventions and how they evolved. The Rail Roads brought people, products and prosperity to America but eventually they began to control all aspects of who could use their services and they began to set rates based on the kickbacks they got from large corporations. The small farmer started dieing out because they could not compete with corporations that demanded more and more of the Rail Traffic cutting out the small guy. Farms withered up and died. Towns disappeared. The internet will become the same as Corporations (AT&T, COMCAST, ABC, CBS, NBC etc,...

Most people rely on information provided by daily newspapers and television networks to be aware of current events and how those events might affect their lives. Unfortunately, many media sources have become so “politically correct” and fearful of losing advertising that they no longer serve the public, but their dwindling bottom lines. Many have heard that the Federal Reserve gave some media such as MSNBC “bail-out” money, thereby compromising their reporting. Their credibility is down the tubes. Other television is compromised with huge sums of advertising from mostly big pharma and other large multi-national companies like BP. Will they report...

Sec. of State Hillary Clinton: Al Jazeera is 'Real News', U.S. Losing 'Information War' March 02, 2011 5:36 PM ABC News' Kirit Radia reports: Secretary of State Hillary Clinton made it clear today that she is worried the United States is losing what she calls the “information war” abroad. China and Russia, she says, have started English-language networks that push their message overseas and even the Taliban controls the airwaves in Afghanistan. And in the Arab world? Al Jazeera is king, and Clinton says she can see why. “Al Jazeera has been the leader in that are literally changing people’s...

Hillary Clinton was defending her department budget in front of the U.S. Foreign Policy Priorities committee this morning on C-Span. She says a major reason the State Department needs money is because "we are in an information war and we are losing that war." Clinton said private media is not good enough to handle the job: "Our private media cannot fill that gap. Our private media, particularly cultural programming often works at counter purposes to what we truly are as Americans. I remember having an Afghan general tell me that the only thing he thought about Americans is that all...

When someone says they don’t think President Barack Obama is actually a Christian, the expectation would be that they think he’s secretly a Muslim. Not Bill Maher. On tonight’s Real Time, in the process of arguing that Obama’s not really a centrist politically, Maher also revealed that he doesn’t think Obama’s actually Christian, either, but rather a secular humanist. The belief Maher apparently holds – that Obama isn’t actually a Christian, but merely pretends to be one to keep up appearances for the sake of his political career – strikes us as one of the most cynical things anyone could...

Samaritan’s Purse is a nondenominational Christian charity with a 40-year history of bringing aid to the suffering people of the world.  It has been deeply involved in aid for Haiti, which recently imported a cholera outbreak on top of its other woes.  SP President Franklin Graham invited Sarah Palin and Fox News host Greta van Susteren to join him on a weekend visit to the island, to “see our work first-hand, and to draw attention to the plight of the Haitian people,” as stated in a report on the organization’s website.  Palin has worked with Samaritan’s Purse before, on a...

Google and The Associated Press have agreed to a new deal after years of wrangling over alleged misuse of AP's content. As part of the pact, Google has said it will help AP better understand how its content is being used across the Web and what stories are gaining widest distribution.The deal could help AP modify its story selection based on what's popular. "AP and Google will work together in a number of new areas, such as ways to improve discovery and distribution of news," the news organization said ..... News Corp. CEO Rupert Murdoch has argued in recent months...

Sure, you can call it a biased report since the video release is from Shraga Simmons at MediaGoliath.com, but why not watch the video and discuss the facts? It will be our featured video for the next few days. Certainly, the media is being used -- in my opinion -- to support the narrative that Israel is the aggressor in the Middle East, but since we now have bloggers and independent dispatches from the region published online daily, will the main stream media wake up? Hat tip to Pamela Gellar at Atlas Shrugs.

Um ... Mr. Councilman, the camera is on. An embarrassing moment at city hall was caught on camera when a city councilman refused to have a conversation with a local TV news reporter. Councilman: "I'm Carl Baker and I'm a councilman here. Get your ass out of here." Reporter: "Why is that?" Councilman: "Because I said so -" Reporter: "This is a public building." Councilman: "Oh yeah it is and I am a public official ... (Cue awkward pause when Baker notices the camera is on him) ... is that on?"

China will toughen requirements for reporters by launching a new certification system that requires training in Marxist and communist theories of news, a media official said, citing problems with the current crop of mainland journalists.