Free Republic

If .. Barack Obama isn’t happy with his press coverage in the United States, he ought to take a look at how he’s being portrayed in the Arab media. As Obama steps up his push for congressional authorization for a strike on Syria, the president is coming under withering criticism by opinion leaders throughout the Middle East, according to a review by POLITICO and experts of Arabic- and English-language media in the region. The increasingly unfavorable coverage Obama’s receiving in the Arab world - even come from the press in countries that support U.S. intervention in Syria - is doing...

CBS’ This Morning omitted the fact that former Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. (D., Ill.) is a Democrat during a story Wednesday about the disgraced politician’s sentencing for misuse of campaign funds. Jackson faces up to five years in prison after pleading guilty to spending nearly $750,000 in campaign funds on items like mink coats and a Rolex. His wife Sandra, a former Chicago alderman, also will be sentenced on a related charge of failing to report about $600,000 in taxable income.

The newspaper business stinks Take a look at the product People don't read, they skim, Readers trust peers, not institutions Does anyone really "read" a newspaper anymore? Did they ever? (snip) According to Gallup, 55 percent of Americans get their news from TV, 21 percent from the Internet, and 6 percent from radio. Print? 9 percent. But no one is really talking about the product. Once you take the movie times (Fandango) and the classified ads (Craigslist) out of the paper, you're pretty much left with news stories. (OK, and the comics.) (snip) And those news stories haven't changed much....

The Tampa Bay Times this week resumed its attacks on Florida state officials for enforcing existing law by removing non-citizens and convicted felons from Florida voting rolls. On August 3, the Times published an article, “Renewed ‘scrub’ of Florida voter list has elections officials on edge.” The article quoted local election officials who object to doing the work required to maintain the integrity of local voter rolls. Revealing a lack of objectivity, the article did not quote any elected officials who support efforts to ensure that illegal votes do not cancel out the votes of legal voters. Adding additional bias...

In an open letter to the public in late July, several retired Border Patrol agents wrote on behalf of the National Association of Former Border Patrol Officers to warn that Mexican drug cartels are actively operating inside the United States spending millions every year to try to build their networks here. They argued that American politicians are protecting their activities as well. “Transnational criminal enterprises have annually invested millions of dollars to create and staff international drug and human smuggling networks inside the United States; thus it is no surprise that they continue to accelerate their efforts to get trusted...

The Washington Post Co. has agreed to sell its flagship newspaper to Amazon.com founder and chief executive Jeffrey P. Bezos, ending the Graham family’s stewardship of one of America’s leading news organizations after four generations. Bezos, whose entrepreneurship has made him one of the world’s richest men, will pay $250 million in cash for The Post and affiliated publications to the Washington Post Co., which owns the newspaper and other businesses. Seattle-based Amazon will have no role in the purchase; Bezos himself will buy the news organization and become its sole owner when the sale is completed, probably within 60...

Fortunately (and unfortunately), Democrat elected officials in Colorado aren’t even trying to hide their incestuous relationship with the –ahem – “unbiased” media anymore. In an un-surprising twist of staffing fate, Governor John Hickenlooper announced this week that yet another “unbiased” member of the Denver journalism cabal is joining his staff – and for a basement bargain annual salary of just $130,000. That’s right. Mr. Maximillian Potter will join Hickenlooper’s staff as a Senior Media Advisor after parting ways with 5280: Denver’s Magazine last month. Presumably, Potter got a chance to know Hickenlooper when researching a glowing profile piece he did...

Drew Johnson, the editorial page editor of the Chattanooga Times Free Press was fired after 14 months on the job for publishing an editorial with a headline that read: "Take your jobs plan and shove it, Mr. President." The editorial ran Tuesday, the same day Obama visited Chattanooga. The powers-that-be posted a notice Thursday explaining the firing: The headline was inappropriate for this newspaper. It was not the original headline approved for publication, and Johnson violated the normal editing process when he changed the headline. The newspaper’s decision to terminate Johnson had nothing to do with the content of the...

The Associated Press (AP) is refusing to comment on why it requested that the Montana Department of Justice (MDOJ) give it a list of the names and personal information of every concealed weapons permit (CWP) holder in the state... Montana’s Republican Attorney General Tim Fox had denied requests by the AP and a Boston media outfit called MuckRock News for all information pertaining to the state’s CWP holders. Fox cited concerns that the width and breadth of the requests violated CWP holders’ “reasonable expectation of privacy” guaranteed by the Montana Constitution... AP reporter Matt Gouras formally requested the information on...

Marley Lion was killed in Charleston, South Carolina, at around 4 am on June 16, 2012. He was 17. His life and death has been ignored by the national media. Marley was white. His killers were black. Unlike Trayvon Martin, Marley Lion was shot in cold blood. There was no fight. He did not approach the thugs who murdered him. Unfortunately, some deaths are more important than others. ... Marley is a victim of black gang violence. Violent crime against white Americans was up 18% last year.

the New York Times Company, that bought the Boston Globe for $1.2 billion in 1993, is now accepting bids in the range of $100 million, or about a tenth of what it paid just twenty years ago. Complicating matters further is $110 million in pension liabilities ...

Newsroom layoffs at The Oregonian have topped 35 reporters, editors and photographers today as the paper reduces home-delivery days and cuts staff. Among the more prominent names WW has confirmed The Oregonian has laid off are editorial columnist David Sarasohn, environmental reporter Scott Learn, and Multnomah County reporter Dana Tims. Many staffers have begun posting their own layoff announcements on the web. Sports reporter John Hunt wrote this morning on Twitter that he is flying home after being laid off with a phone call in Omaha, Neb., where he was covering the Oregon State Beavers baseball team in the College...

On September 10, 2010, the day before our enormous freedom rally at Ground Zero protesting the Ground Zero victory mega-mosque, the New York Times profiled a Muslim named Sinclair Hejazi Abdus-Salaam, who had no place to pray. The whole story was a subtle advertisement for the Ground Zero mega-mosque. But as it turns out, Sinclair Hejazi Abdus-Salaam is not quite the "moderate" that the leftist NYT dhimmis assumed he was, but calls openly for the murder of apostates from Islam -- here in the U.S. Here again we see The NY Times legitimizing and norming the most extreme voices. They...

Americans' confidence in newspapers fell slightly to 23% this year, from 25% in 2012 and 28% in 2011. The percentage of Americans saying they have "a great deal" or "quite a lot" of confidence in newspapers has been generally trending downward since 1979, when it reached a high of 51%. Newspapers rank near the bottom on a list of 16 societal institutions Gallup measured in a June 1-4 survey. Television news is tied with newspapers on the list, with 23% of Americans also expressing confidence in it. That is up slightly from the all-time low of 21% found last year....

especially interesting in a New York Times story from Friday on Iran, where they found it advantageous to edit out an America-hating Iranian who wished the Times building would burn down: “He is a war veteran, a good manager and a religious person,” said Noushin Sobhani, 31, a gynecologist. She and her parents voted at the Imam Sadegh University, where most of Iran’s cadre of bureaucrats are trained. “We hate America,” her father said, smiling. “I hope The New York Times building burns down.”

Well, this news should launch a thousand more goofy Beverly Hills Occupy protests: WICHITA, Kan.—Billionaire Charles Koch confirmed that his company, Koch Industries Inc., is looking into the possibility of acquiring newspapers, but insisted he is looking for a profitable business, rather than a forum to advance his politics. "There is a need for focus on real news, not news with an agenda or news that is really editorializing," Mr. Koch said in an interview. Mr. Koch added in a follow-up statement to The Wall Street Journal that the editorial page of any newspaper his company acquired "would be a...

MSNBC’s ratings are so bad that even The Huffington Post is slamming its decline. On their media page, Olivia Nuzzi wrote an article titled “MSNBC: ‘All In’ or ‘All Over’?” “MSNBC has hit a ratings low in primetime not seen since the days that the network still carried a show hosted by raspy-voiced Fox News refugee Rita Cosby,” Nuzzi wrote. Especially disappointing were the 8pm ratings of "pleasant but exceedingly dry" Chris Hayes after they put Ed Schultz out to pasture on the weekends: Chris Hayes' new 8 PM lynchpin show has lost a third of the audience Ed Schultz...

The studio space at the Newseum in Washington, D.C. is changing hands, Broadcasting & Cable’s John Eggerton reports. Next month, ABC’s “This Week” will vacate the space and return to the network’s Washington bureau, and Al Jazeera America will move in. ... Al Jazeera America, which B&C reports will have both office space and editing facilities in the Newseum, is preparing for its launch later this year. The network recently hired Adam May, a local reporter from Baltimore, as a D.C.-based national correspondent.

Larry Connors, the KMOV anchor who asked Barack Obama some tough questions about his family's vacation habits and claimed earlier this week that he might have been harassed by the IRS as a result, has been taken off the air.

CBS Anchor: 'We Are Getting Big Stories Wrong, Over and Over Again' "Our house is on fire." Daniel Halper May 11, 2013 12:09 PM CBS anchor Scott Pelley said at a speech at Quinnipiac University that journalists "are getting big stories wrong, over and over again." "Our house is on fire," said Pelley. The video of Pelley's speech is courtesy of nowthisnews.com. "These have been a bad few months for journalism," he added. "We're getting the big stories wrong, over and over again." The CBS newsreader was quick to take at least partial blame. "Let me take the first arrow:...