Free Republic

Why even teach journalism any more, they're just making it up all the time now. Only through the magic of a mainstream media that has built up an immunity to embarrassing itself can George W. Bush be portrayed as eternally stupid and a more gaffe prone guy who got worse grades in college be thought a genius. One has to wonder: if we drug tested at the polls would any Democrats be allowed to vote? Al Gore steps onto the portico of his century-old white colonial, its stately columns framing him and the black Lab mix, Bojangles, that he and...

There are 29 of 'em. And they can be handily compared with the Newsweek Obama covers (here: http://trackacrat.com/2009/10/09/5007/), which number 30, both in terms of frequency and tone of coverage. I can safely report that the findings conform to the pattern established earlier: namely, that President Bush was consistently treated like a leper, while President Obama receives the all-star treatment. Some choice Newsweek Bush covers include the wonderfully objective titles of, “Bush’s $87 Billion Mess“, “The Price of Denial“, “How Much Power Should They Have?“, “Will Bush Listen?” and the awesomely condescending “Father Knows Best.” Follow the jump for links...

As Obama flails about, a very few of his fans are beginning to notice he can't deliver. His image sold to the public during the campaign was as phony as a David Axelrod astroturf group shilling for Commonwealth Edison. But for those who bought into him hook line and sinker, failure needs rationalization. Reality is intruding. Barack Obama never ran anything. And it shows to those not blinded by the light from the light worker. He is making it up as he goes along, letting others sweat the details. As a result, there is no coordination, no cross communication. They...

MOSCOW, October 17 (RIA Novosti) - An Iranian court has released on a $300,000 bail a Newsweek journalist with dual Iranian-Canadian citizenship, arrested in the wake of the disputed presidential elections in June, Iranian media said. Maziar Bahari, 42, who worked as a Newsweek reporter since 1998, was arrested on June 21 during the post-vote protests in Tehran "for his role in instigating events occurred after the presidential election," the Press TV said. "Bahari was released on 3 billion rials ($300,000) bail from Evin prison on Saturday night," the semi-official Islamic Labor News Agency said citing a judiciary source. Bahari...

Iran's state-run media says the government has released an Iranian-Canadian journalist on bail almost four months after he was arrested following the country's disputed presidential election. The Islamic Republic News Agency says Newsweek reporter Maziar Bahari was freed from Tehran's Evin Prison on Saturday evening after posting bail of 3 billion rials ($300,000), citing the Tehran prosecutor's office. Newsweek confirmed the release in a statement posted on its Web site.

Out on stands in Japan today!Title:"Obama Wa Nobel-sho Ni Ataeshinai" ("Obama Unworthy of Nobel Prize")Sub-title caption (also on cover overlay of monochrome Obama photo):""The Idiocy Of Him Receiving Such An Award, With Less The One Year In Office With No Accomplishment"

Somewhat unbelievably, there are even more Newsweek covers featuring the Obamas than there are TIME covers. TIME's racked up 28 (one more than the last time I posted here because I found a past TIME Europe exclusive cover featuring Barry), whereas Newsweek has 29 - and there may be more, as I've a few more searches to do. Way to go! For the Newsweek covers: http://trackacrat.com/2009/10/09/5007/ For the TIME covers: http://trackacrat.com/time-magazine-%E2%99%A1%E2%99%A1%E2%99%A1-obama/ Or follow the jump...

Howard Fineman takes to the pages of Newsweek to say the words Obamaniacs do not want to hear, especially not from another lib. Barack Obama is an empty suit: The president’s problem isn’t that he is too visible; it’s the lack of content in what he says when he keeps showing up on the tube. Obama can seem a mite too impressed with his own aura, as if his presence on the stage is the Answer. There is, at times, a self-referential (even self-reverential) tone in his big speeches. They are heavily salted with the words “I” and “my.” (He...

There's a side of America that scares Frenchmen, French Culture Minister Frédéric Mitterrand was quoted by Time magazine Paris-based writer Bruce Crumley, and it's the side of American determination that doesn't let a 32-year-old rape case die, even if the perpetrator is an elderly survivor of the Holocaust. Seeking to explain the "cultural divide" that's as "wide as the Atlantic" between America and Europe, Crumley noted that Europeans are "shocked and dismayed that an internationally acclaimed artist" such as Roman Polanski "could be jailed for such an old offense." Of course, at no point did Crumley cite any public opinion...

Another installment from the It's Not Just Me Dept. If ubiquity were the measure of a presidency, Barack Obama would already be grinning at us from Mount Rushmore. But of course it is not. Despite his many words and television appearances, our elegant and eloquent president remains more an emblem of change than an agent of it. He's a man with an endless, worthy to-do list—health care, climate change, bank reform, global capital regulation, AfPak, the Middle East, you name it—but, as yet, no boxes checked "done." This is a problem that style will not fix. Unless Obama learns to...

A virulent moral blindness has seized hold of a substantial slice of America's educated elite. Convinced they know better, they argue for a shallow, illogical, and horrifying vision of people as disposable. I was wrong last week when I declared that Newsweek's cover showing a baby next to a headline declaring that we're all born racist was evidence that the mainstream media had hit bottom and destroyed itself. It was intellectual arrogance on my part that led me to underestimate the determination of Newsweek's editors to find new deeper bottoms to hit.

Writing in Newsweek, Joe Meacham expressed a little remorse that liberals were not a little less vindictive these last eight years. “Words have consequences, too. I wish that more liberals had appreciated this point during the George W. Bush years. It was wrong then to demonize the president, and it is wrong now,� Meacham wrote. And, he warned conservatives: “What begins in vitriol has far too often ended in violence.� But (there is always a but). “I would argue that the 1980s were manageably mad in political terms. Liberals went crazy decrying Ronald Reagan, who was said to be a...

In 1998, Matt Drudge made his big mark breaking the Monica Lewinsky scandal, which Newsweek had buried to protect President Clinton. Think Obama’s Tiger Beat would have done that for Bush? It has only gone way downhill since into Soviet-era Pravda territory. The MSM’s modus operandi today is identical, and I don’t say that lightly. But having listened to Radio Moscow broadcasts on ham radio for years during the Cold War era, combined with some Naval Intelligence training and research into the subject, I deconstructed the Soviets’ propaganda MO down to five simple canons.

I recently received an email from a listener looking for answers… James, I read the following Newsweek article http://www.newsweek.com/id/214989 and was wondering if you thought being a racist was a choice? I don’t see how. Why would someone choose a life of scorn and ridicule? How did you come to accept it? How did you come out? Any help would be appreciated…I’m scared. Anonymous

There was brief discussion this afternoon on Rush Limbaugh's show about an article in Newsweek regarding babies and racism. I'm not sure what the point of the story is although the slant from left-leaning Newsweek is likely to be similar to the University of Maryland position that all whites are born racist and must be taught how to reject this and adapt a multicultural worldview. I see this issue differently. I agree that children (of all races) are probably born bigots but not for whatever reasons the liberals would like you to think. As someone who owns birds, I have...

Rifqa Bary, the teenage girl who converted to Christianity from Islam and then fled for her life after her father threatened to kill her, faces daunting obstacles in her quest to be free. As a high-profile apostate, she is Islamists' highest value target right now. And on top of that, she faces a Leftist media that is complicit with those who want to see her dead or institutionalized. Witness the outrageous treatment that Newsweek gave to her story in its September 9 issue, and especially to Jamal Jivanjee, Rifqa's friend and confidante. Newsweek reporter Arian Campo-Flores, said Jivanjee, asked him...

Dear Newsweek, I have subscribed to your publication for 21 years, subscriber number #########, and have decided to allow my subscription to end as scheduled December 13, 2010. As can be told from both the length of my subscription and expiration date I have renewed early and often. However I can no longer welcome a magazine so contrary to my personal and family views into my home on an ongoing basis. First it was having to digest your skewed polls with MSNBC, fine, everyone needs a media partner and having sold television advertising for the better part of my professional...

Mark today as the date that the mainstream media put a gun in its mouth and pulled the trigger. The cover of Newsweek: IS YOUR BABY RACIST? Illustrated with a close up photo of a (white) baby. To ask the question is to answer it. Welcome to the post-racial world of Barack Obama.

At the Children's Research Lab at the University of Texas, a database is kept on thousands of families in the Austin area who have volunteered to be available for scholarly research. In 2006 Birgitte Vittrup recruited from the database about a hundred families, all of whom were Caucasian with a child 5 to 7 years old. The goal of Vittrup's study was to learn if typical children's videos with multicultural storylines have any beneficial effect on children's racial attitudes. Her first step was to give the children a Racial Attitude Measure, which asked such questions as: How many White people...

Newsweek, in all of its wisdom, is still arguing that Sarah Palin lied about the death panel provisions in ObamaCare, but we really should have a death panel anyways. The author of the below piece, Evan Thomas, writes that his 79 year old mother wanted to die but the doctors wouldn't let her because the assisted living facility she was staying at was sustained by Medicare. He didn't like this and muses on how we can fix health care in this country by, you guessed it, getting people into hospice care and out of hospitals. People need to die and...

Money-losing Newsweek hopes to break even by 2011 and plans to as much as double its subscription rate over the next two years. Ann McDaniel, managing director of Newsweek, which is owned by The Washington Post Co., said the magazine will aim for a "smaller base of very committed subscribers and get more money from each of them," while speaking at The Post Co.'s annual shareholders meeting at the company's D.C. headquarters. Analysts suggested that the new Newsweek is modeling its editorial strategy on England's Economist, and now it appears to be doing the same thing with its business strategy....

If you’re Caucasian, don’t think you’re ever clean of the moonbat answer to original sin. According to Newsreek, even babies are racist. At the Children’s Research Lab at the University of Texas — located in liberal Austin, the Berkeley of the Southwest — Birgitte Vittrup attempted to measure how effective propaganda is at instilling multiculturalist ideology in small children. She found that despite parents’ progressive intentions and the homogenous political correctness of everything they see on TV, children 5 to 7 years old tended to consider blacks but not whites to be “mean.” That this could have something to do...

The Obama administration has added anoother journalist to its payroll. From the American Spectator Daren Briscoe, a Newsweek correspondent who was embedded with Barack Obama's 2008 presidential campaign, has taken a job with the Obama administration, according to an email sent to a listserv of his classmates at the Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism. The email, written by Time reporter and fellow Columbia grad Jay Newton-Small, said Briscoe would be serving as deputy associate director of public affairs for the Office of National Drug Control Policy as of Monday.

Death, Republican Style It's the GOP that's out to get Granny.

Bank On More Failures If the economy is rallying, why are hundreds of banks in danger of closing in the coming months? By Nancy Cook | Newsweek Web Exclusive Aug 28, 2009 While big institutions such as Citi, Bank of America, and Morgan Stanley have grabbed headlines and billions in bailout money, 81 small banks have shuttered their doors so far this year. Despite a rebound in the markets, hundreds of additional banks are expected to close in the coming months as consumers and small businesses default on loans and as local real-estate investments drop. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.warned...

Don't like ObamaCare? Well, more than likely - you're suffering from some sort of psychological delusion according to Newsweek Senior Editor and self-declared psychiatrist Sharon Begley. Begley, in a piece posted on Newsweek's Web site on Aug. 25, theorized that the widespread opposition to President Barack Obama's health care reform is from any legitimate reason, but instead it exists mostly because people are not willing to go against their own beliefs, but have a desire to satisfy their need to think they're beliefs are right. ...more...

Last night, FOX News host Sean Hannity looked at Daren Briscoe, a Newsweek correspondent who just left the magazine to work at the Obama White House. Briscoe’s new title is Deputy Associate Director of Public Affairs for the Office of National Drug Control Policy. Briscoe was “embedded” with Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign and penned Newsweek’s book about the historic event, entitled A Long Time Coming. Briscoe is only the latest mainstream journalist to make the switch from “hack” to “flack.”

Here is video of President Obama today mocking the latest cover of Newsweek which declares that "the Recession is Over." He then did go on to talk as if things are much better in America, saying himself "we may be seeing the beginning of the end of the recession." Interestingly, Obama cited the Markets being up, even though Obama said months ago that you can't watch the day to day "girations" of the market. Unless it suits you. Obama never mentioned the 9.7% Unemployment rate nor the massive debt he has piled upon Americans through his failed Stimulus Plan. ....

Speaking at a town hall meeting in Raleigh, N.C., President Obama defended his stimulus plan and poked fun at Newsweek ... ... for its latest cover, declaring: "The Recession is Over." "I don't know whether you've seen the cover of the latest Newsweek magazine on the rack at the grocery store, but the cover says: 'The Recession is Over,'" Obama said, prompting chuckles in the audience. "I imagine you might have found that news a little startling," he continued, to more laughter. "I know I did."

Daren Briscoe, a Newsweek correspondent who was embedded with Barack Obama's 2008 presidential campaign, has taken a job with the Obama administration... as deputy associate director of public affairs for the Office of National Drug Control Policy as of Monday.

The only time in my life as a broadcaster that I departed from impartial analysis was after 9/11, when I waxed lyrical about Donald Rumsfeld. He had united a fractured nation with his oft-hilarious press conferences. His wit and raw patriotism were an inspiration to many at home and to those of us suffering abroad in a fiercely anti-American world. However adoring the press was towards Rumsfeld, nothing equals in unctuousness a recent issue of Newsweek, “Obama on Obama.” Journalists are supposed to be impartial in reporting on the peregrinations of leaders. Little wonder I nearly dropped my pizza slice...

Reporters from roughly 30 television networks, newspapers, magazines, and web sites celebrated the Fourth of July with Barack Obama at the White House last weekend. Why didn't you know that? Because they were sworn to secrecy. We reported yesterday that Politico's Mike Allen was spotted milling about as a guest at the White House's "backyard bash" by the pool reporter, who was allowed into the event for 40 minutes and kept in a pen before being ushered out. When Allen quoted from the pool report in his Playbook column the next day, he deleted a reference to his own name...

A Canadian journalist working in Iran was arrested without charge on Sunday and has not been heard from since. Maziar Bahari, 42, a correspondent for Newsweek magazine, has been reporting on Iran for the past decade from his base in Tehran, where he was born. His most recent article for Newsweek, published in the aftermath of Iran’s disputed presidential election, examined opposition supporters’ concerns that groups loyal to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad were staging violent incidents at their rallies to undermine support for their movement. “Newsweek strongly condemns this unwarranted detention, and calls upon the Iranian government to release him immediately,”...

As a senator, Barack Obama denounced the Bush administration for holding "secret energy meetings" with oil executives at the White House. But last week public-interest groups were dismayed when his own administration rejected a Freedom of Information Act request for Secret Service logs showing the identities of coal executives who had visited the White House to discuss Obama's "clean coal" policies. One reason: the disclosure of such records might impinge on privileged "presidential communications." The refusal, approved by White House counsel Greg Craig's office, is the latest in a series

Newsweek’s recent decision to get out of the news-digesting business and reposition itself as a high-end magazine selling in-depth commentary and reportage follows Time magazine’s emergency retrenchment along similar lines. It accelerates a process by which the 76-year-old weekly will purposely reduce its circulation from 2.7 million to a bit more than half of that. (Its circulation was nearly 3.5 million in 1988.) Likewise, Time’s circulation, which 20 years ago was close to 5 million, is now at 3.4 million. Both newsweeklies are seeking to avoid the fate of U.S. News & World Report, which after years (decades?) of semi-relevance...

When Gerard Baker a year ago wrote in the Times of London that Barack Obama had "Ventured Forth to Bring Light to the World," it was widely acknowledged to be a clever satire, but this past week we have broken new ground in divinity politics. Forget the comparisons to our Slain Prince (John F. Kennedy), to our Good Father (Franklin D. Roosevelt), and even to Abraham Lincoln, the closest thing to a martyred saint that Americans have in our secular lexicon. These are mere mortals. According to those who should know--Chris Matthews of MSNBC, and Evan Thomas of the New...

Anyone who has seen former Newsweek reporter Richard Wolffe on MSDNC or any of the other pro-Obama legacy media is no doubt aware that he sold whatever was left of his journalist's soul to the One a long time ago. Now it's official; the author of the totally inappropriately named Obama biography, Renegade: The Making of a President, got the idea for the paean to Oabama ... from Obama, himself.

UNBELIEVABLE!

[Evan Thomas:] "...he [Obama] has a very different job from Reagan was all about America and you [Chris Matthews] talked about it. Obama is 'we are above all that now.' We're not just parochial. We stand for something. I mean in a way, Obama's standing above the country, above the world, he's sort of God."

“In a way Obama is standing above the country, above the world. He’s sort of GOD. He’s going to bring all different sides together.” - Newsweek editor Evan Thomas

Newsweek editor Evan Thomas brought adulation over President Obama’s Cairo speech to a whole new level on Friday, declaring on MSNBC: "I mean in a way Obama’s standing above the country, above – above the world, he’s sort of God."

In the two weeks since Newsweek has redesigned, the magazine’s editors have sent out a statement that they intend to sever any and all connection to the turgid, dusty newsweekly of yore. And Jon Meacham, the magazine’s editor, is trying to recapture that age-old magazine editor’s trick for his newly conceived book: buzz. For the next issue that hits newsstands on June 8, Comedy Central funnyman Stephen Colbert will be Newsweek’s guest editor, The Observer has learned.

Newsweek reinvented itself a couple of issues ago, to widespread derision. Cover of this week's Newsweek: Everything You Know About Iran is Wrong The title almost says it all but some excerpts give it some additional flavor: The article is written by Fareed Zakaria who avers: ----------------------------------------------------- "The regime wants to be a nuclear power but could well be happy with a peaceful civilian program (which could make the challenge it poses more complex). What's the evidence? Well, over the last five years, senior Iranian officials at every level have repeatedly asserted that they do not intend to build nuclear...

I'm not sure what's scarier: the fact that Newsweek International editor Fareed Zakaria wants us to believe that Iran seeks nuclear power only for peaceful purposes or that President Obama might be seriously buying into this guy's delusions by reading his book, The Post-American World. Zakaria wants us to put away our fears of a nuclear Iran by making the case in his Newsweek article that that nation has no interest in weaponizing nukes: Everything you know about Iran is wrong, or at least more complicated than you think. Take the bomb. The regime wants to be a nuclear power...

Everything you know about Iran is wrong, or at least more complicated than you think. Take the bomb. The regime wants to be a nuclear power but could well be happy with a peaceful civilian program (which could make the challenge it poses more complex). What's the evidence? Well, over the last five years, senior Iranian officials at every level have repeatedly asserted that they do not intend to build nuclear weapons. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has quoted the regime's founding father, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, who asserted that such weapons were "un-Islamic." The country's Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, issued a...

Having recently been dumped by Time, I naturally had great hopes for this week's much-anticipated makeover of Newsweek. Both surviving newsmags (US News is said to exist still in some form, but no one I know has seen it lately) are in an Internet panic like that affecting newspapers. Newsweek has always been a bit faster on its feet. But judging from its first issue, the new Newsweek is not going to be the instrument of my revenge, alas. In his editor's letter--one of many traditional newsmagazine features that have survived the scythe of change--Jon Meacham says, "We are not...

Twenty-seven years ago, I began my professional career at Time Magazine as a reporter-researcher in the World section, which was devoted to international news. Generally speaking, the World section ran 12 pages in the magazine. Nation, devoted to news within our borders, ran about the same or a page shorter. Think of that—an American publication, marketed to millions, that devoted slightly more of its attention, and vastly more of its budget, to news about events outside the United States.

"Hey Dad! Great news! My report card grades are half of what they were last term!" And just before my father would have smacked me upside my head for being so absurd, I would have quickly pointed out that the editor of Newsweek, Jon Meacham, is celebrating the fact that his magazine's circulation is being cut in half. Of course, back when I was a kid Newsweek at least made an attempt to be balanced and no magazine editor in his right mind would have been happy about such a drastic decline in circulation. However, that is exactly what Meacham...

FYI: Headline misleads ...On Monday, Newsweek unveils the most dramatic overhaul in its history -- one that parent Washington Post Co. hopes will take it from a money-losing position in the weekly-news category to a money-making one in the thought-leader category. ...

According to Newsweek's Ramin Setoodeh, "American Idol's" Adam Lambert could "be heading home" due to those homophobic Christians that watch every week. Lambert, Setoodeh wrote in a May 12 blog post, "has been called the best ‘Idol' singer in the history of the show, thanks to his Celine Dion-like pipes. But he's also one of the most controversial, thanks to his Marilyn Manson-like wardrobe and his (not-so) ambiguous sexuality." Despite the fact that Randy, Simon and Paula all like Lambert, and he's garnered enough votes to compete in the semi-finals of "Idol," Setoodeh warned of a "possible roadblock" to a...