Free Republic

An interesting line appears in a $27 million lawsuit recently filed against the New York Times. “Liberals may live to love the New York Times, and conservatives may live to hate it, but all must admit that it has historically been among a handful of American media outlets that occupy a unique niche of authority and respect within American and world culture.” This struck me as only partly true. Conservatives rightly hate this newspaper, which we view as being a fifth column for the forces that want to drag down American society. However, can even liberals trust what they’re getting?...

Earnings reports released by the New York Times Company in October indicate that drastic measures will have to be taken over the next five months or the paper will default on some $400 million in debt. With more than $1billion in debt already on the books, only $46 million in cash reserves as of October, and no clear way to tap into the capital markets (the company’s debt was recently reduced to junk status), the paper’s future doesn’t look good.

Journalists, accountants and bankruptcy experts found accord Thursday on the No. 1 issue facing Tribune Co. as it begins its Chapter 11 bankruptcy adventure: It isn't owner Sam Zell. It isn't the company's huge indebtedness. The question, said Los Angeles Times editor Russ Stanton, is "whether this is a viable business." In one way, Stanton told a gathering at USC's Annenberg School for Communication, the answer is already clear. "I think big-city newspapers, the way we have known them, are not long for this world, as they're now configured." Stanton said his troops at the Times are scrambling to "reinvent...

During the recently completed presidential campaign, Newsweek's Michael Isikoff was all excited over his "web exclusive" piece on staffers with the McCain campaign that had connections with past lobbying efforts. Back in those days Newsweek was all about the evils of those darn lobbyists. For their part, Obama supporters at the time ballyhooed the pledges that Barack Obama had made stating that his was going to be a kinder, gentler campaign, one that chased those evil lobbyists away. Phooey on those lobbyists, became the popular mantra. But, now that The One has made a successful and historic run for the...

GENEVA, NY--President-elect Barack Obama’s proposed economic stimulus package hasn’t yet been voted on, and Obama himself has warned it won’t be a quick fix. But at least one reporter is already predicting that it will work. Writing in the Thursday, December 11, 2008 Finger Lakes Times, staff writer Craig Fox describes the Obama plan as “a way to overcome the current recession.” The prediction is made even as the article goes on to recognize that Congress will not vote on the plan until January at the earliest and that local officials are “scrambling” to find projects to include in the...

The first two paragraphs of a recent Salon Magazine piece by Michael Lind on Obama's plans for America's future are striking for the utter lack of any relationship whatsoever between them. Take a look at the aforementioned graphs: Barack Obama is a man with a plan. On Dec. 6, the president-elect announced major parts of his plan to revitalize the American economy. He listed four priorities: "a massive effort to make public buildings more energy-efficient"; "the single largest new investment in our national infrastructure since the creation of the federal highway system in the 1950s"; "the most sweeping effort to...

Jonathan Alter was an early accuser of new President George W. Bush when he and VP Cheney began to try to warn the country that an economic downturn was well underway as he was taking office. As Bush tried to warn the nation, the media jumped all over him for "talking down the economy." Yet, as we watch the reporting of Obama's current down talking of the economy, the media has said nothing similar to the condemnation reigned upon Bush. The myth that people like Alter was pushing in 2001 was that Clinton bequeathed a good economy to Bush, but...

OK. I'm not going to bother posting the article, since the next four years are going to be a constant Obama love-fest, and we're all going to get tired of 24/7/365 articles like this. Just an observation to Todd Lewan. Todd: Obama was elected because the stock market imploded just before the election, and the New Obama Government Media engineered pinning the blame on the Republicans. This was a lie. So, your entire article is a crock of bunny poo. Now, let's get to it, and start the list from this Ossociated Press piece. The Mighty Todd outs himself as...

As the presidential campaign comes to a close, a majority of voters (51%) say most reporters have tried to help Barack Obama win the presidency. Just seven percent (7%) think they tried to help John McCain. Thirty-one percent (31%) say reporters have offered unbiased coverage, according to a new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey. Ten percent (10%) are undecided. Men are far more suspicious than women. Fifty-seven percent (57%) of male voters think reporters actively favored Obama, compared to a plurality of female voters (46%). Eighty-four percent (84%) of Republicans and 51% of unaffiliated voters say reporters have tried to...

By now, most people have heard about The Associated Press report that Sen. Barack Obama has a distant aunt –- his deceased father’s half-sister -– living in Boston who is an undocumented alien. They may also know that Zeituni Onyango, from Kenya, was denied political asylum by an immigration judge four years ago. As Josh Micah Marshall at Talking Points Memo reported Saturday, Rep John Conyers (D-Mich), chairman of the House Judiciary Committee wrote an angry letter to Michael Chertoff, secretary of the Dept. of Homeland Security, saying the disclosure, by at least one “federal law enforcement official,” according to...

Based on her interview with Sen. Joe Biden, we may assume that WFTV, Orlando Anchor Barbara West: 1. Did not graduate from a school of communications, 2. Will never receive an award from the Society of Professional Journalists, 3. Is unlikely to be employed by The New York Times in the foreseeable future, and 4. Will soon be working with Joe the Plumber, installing bathroom fixtures. Silly rabbit -- Didn’t West know that tough questions are reserved for Republicans? Yet, there she was asking old leaden-tongued Joe how his running mate’s spread-the-wealth platform differed from standard Marxist redistributionism (from each...

Palin stirs up vitriolic hatred among liberals because she is a conservative Christian who practices her beliefs, especially regarding abortion. If the mainstream media and other liberals are going to continue vilifying Sarah Palin, then they should at least be honest about the reason for their attacks. Their issue with Palin is not her foreign policy experience. After all, Palin’s critics love Obama, who has about the same amount of foreign policy experience as Palin. Nor do any of them really care about her folksy manner, little winks and moose hunting. Palin stirs up vitriolic hatred among liberals because she...

This is really intended for Republicans who did not follow the primaries on the Democrats’ side this year (because, well, we guess you took a nice long Atlantis cruise to Mars, in which case, color us jealous). The same pattern that unfolded during our primaries is happening again, because the media has just one tattered old used playbook (written by David Axelrod, of course), and they have not deviated from it yet. What the media and Obama campaign did, in concert, to Hillary Clinton before every major primary is what they are doing to McCain/Palin now. Here are the top...

What if they gave an election – and the Media was Wrong? I know this election is over. I first heard the election was over last year. Fortunately, ABCCNNNBCCBS let me know that it was the year of the Democrat and that there would be no need for the Republicans to take the field. This year, they crowned Obama the “one,” the “messiah,” and some other names indicating that there was no need to believe in ideas, it was enough to believe in a person. Oh, and they also reaffirmed that the election was over. I realize that there was...

The Los Angeles Times has been a huge part of Barack Obama's rocketing to fame and power. It was the Los Angeles Times that sued, persisted and insisted that Jack and Jeri Ryan's child custody files be unsealed in 2004. It was the the Los Angeles Times that insisted their family records be made public against the wishes of both the Ryans, whose agreed-upon intention was to protect their special needs son. Ryan volunteered their divorce records for public scrutiny. It's a totally different story today. Jack Ryan, you'll remember, had emerged from a tough IL GOP primary as the...

Tonight at 8 o'clock EST there are at least a gazillion things that you can be doing besides listening to another infomercial. Perhaps you might remember someone close to you and spend a little quality time reacquainting yourselves. Could be great fun. Face it, just taking a half hour off is a present all unto itself. Parents can take advantage of Obama's admonition to turn the kids' TVs off. I have socks to sort and some seriously neglected ass scratching to attend to. The McCain camp has requested that people make phone calls during this time slot. I think it...

McCain stays on Khalidi, L.A. Times My colleague Lisa Lerer reports that in a morning interview with a Hispanic radio station in Florida, McCain compared Palestinian-American activist Rashid Khalidi to a "neo-Nazi" and sugggested that Bill Ayers attended a 2003 going-away party for a prominent Palestinian-American activist with Obama. “I think the whole issue of the relationship with Bill Ayers needs to be known by the American people. Sen. Obama said it was just a guy in the neighborhood. We know much more than that. I don’t care much about an old, washed-up, unrepentant terrorist, and his wife who was...

BOWLING GREEN, OH - Sarah Palin joined her running mate's attacks against Barack Obama and the media Wednesday, suggesting the Los Angeles Times is withholding a videotape that shows Obama watching as a former Palestinian Liberation Organization spokesman bashed Israel. Palin departed from her stump speech to talk about Obama's "assortment of friends from Chicago." She described Rashid Khalidi, the former PLO spokesman, as "another radical professor from the neighborhood who spent a lot of time with Barack Obama going back several years." She said Obama was at a party for Khalidi in 2003, when he described Israel as the...

Today, it was NBC anchor Brian Williams’ turn to interview Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, making him the last of the network anchors to quiz the Republican vice presidential candidate. Williams conducted a joint interview with Palin and Sen. John McCain this afternoon in Ohio, and according to early reports, the news out of their exchange may be what wasn’t said. In an on-air discussion with MSNBC’s Chris Matthews about the interview, NBC News political director Chuck Todd offered a frank assessment of what he said was an awkward tension between the two candidates and the sense of gloom that hung...

Dear mainstream media reporters: Have you considered the impact your coverage of the 2008 election might have on your career? Many of you have gone all out to elect Barack Obama as president, completely oblivious to the long-term impact that advocacy could have. It's easier than ever for news consumers to do research on specific reporters and see whether they have a habit of lying, misleading, ignoring relevant facts, failing to ask tough questions, or other forms of bias. And, as time goes on that's going to become even easier. Some will help in that effort, such as by publishing...

A photographic essay of Obama propaganda and the Media's willing assistance with itIn America we have always been a skeptical people. One of our states even has a skeptical motto. Missouri calls itself the “Show Me State� proving that Missourians don’t imagine they’d be apt to have the wool pulled over their eyes too readily. Consequently, when most American citizens look at their politicians they usually view them through a prism of skepticism and since the assassination of John F. Kennedy, our skepticism has almost bordered on the irrational. (Photo with Obama logo behind by Reuters)The American press has traditionally...

WASHINGTON, October 21, 2008—As The New York Times increasingly comes under fire for an October 18 story that delved into Cindy McCain’s personal life, a prominent critic of the paper is calling for a boycott of what he terms “America’s newspaper of wretched.” Don Feder, the editor of the Boycott The New York Times website http://boycottnyt.com, says the lengths that The Times went to in order to “trash” Mrs. McCain is further proof of a relentless pro-Obama bias at the newspaper. “How low will The New York Times go to trash John McCain and his wife Cindy? Think the bellies...

Here is amazing video of former CBS Anchorman Dan Rather talking on MSNBC with Joe Scarborough about Sen. Joe Biden's comments Sunday that electing Barack Obama will generate an "international crisis" within six months as America's enemies will want to "test" Obama's mettle. Even Dan Rather agrees that there is a huge double-standard in the media, agreeing that if Sarah Palin had said such a thing, it would be the top story in every major American paper and on every network. Rather says the Obama camapaign "can't be happy" about Biden's comments. The video also contains audio of Biden's comments...

(CNSNews.com) – As the U.S. troop surge in Iraq has succeeded, leading to a dramatic decline in the number of U.S. casualties in that country, The New York Times’s coverage of the Iraq war also has declined, falling to an all-time low in the last two months, according to a CNSNews.com analysis of stories retrieved on the Nexis database. At The Washington Post, coverage of the war has been significantly lower this year than in previous years. In the months leading up to the 2004 and 2006 elections, when U.S. casualties were running higher in Iraq, coverage of the Iraq...

The whisper of September has turned to a roar in October: Barack Obama may be on the verge of a landslide victory. A year ago, no one on the planet could have conceived of such a thing. After all, Democrats have elected just two American presidents since 1968, moderate white Southerners Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton, both by modest popular vote margins. In 2008 Democrats took a daring leap of faith and chose a far more liberal nominee who is the first African-American standard-bearer - no minor matter in a nation that is just 11% black and has been plagued...

John McCain has never had a metastatic melanoma, no matter how often The New York Times' Larry Altman tries to insinuate that he has. In May, I joined 19 other medical journalists (including two other MDs) to review 1,000-plus pages of McCain's medical records. Altman, a non-practicing physician, wasn't invited and has never seen the entire record. But representatives of many major media outlets did. Yet the Times just ran Altman's Page One piece asserting that the release "leaves questions, even confusion, about his cancer. . . A critical question concerns inconsistencies in medical opinions about the severity of his...

After Joe the Plumber voiced concern that Barack Obama’s tax policies would stifle the economy, he learned what Kathleen Willey learned during Bill Clinton’s reign in the 1990s: If you accuse a Democrat of wrongdoing or question their policies, you can count on your character being attacked in the mainstream media. You may even face legal charges. The Left is sponsoring a war on truth, and casualties in this war continue to be those brave enough to stand up against corruption and exercise the increasingly “fringe” right of freedom of speech. The right to free speech protected by the First...

The New York Times and their comrades-in-harm, CBS, last week declared Barack Obama the winner of the 2008 presidential election.... "During presidential elections, poll results frequently are presented in the news. Reporters use these polls to tell the public what it thinks about the presidential candidates. We argue that polling results tell the public what it should think about the presidential candidates as well." - Bruce W. Hardy and Kathleen Hall Jamieson, writing in Public Opinion Quarterly

Would the Last Honest Reporter Please Turn On the Lights? By Orson Scott Card Editor's note: Orson Scott Card is a Democrat and a newspaper columnist, and in this opinion piece he takes on both while lamenting the current state of journalism. An open letter to the local daily paper — almost every local daily paper in America: I remember reading All the President's Men and thinking: That's journalism. You do what it takes to get the truth and you lay it before the public, because the public has a right to know. This housing crisis didn't come out of...

Let's see. ACORN has been submitting thousands of fraudulent voter registrations and is being investigated by the FBI. However, if you are John McCain you should just keep your mouth shut and not complain about it. That is the absurd assertion of an editorial in today's Los Angeles Times (emphasis mine): John McCain committed a malicious misrepresentation in the last presidential debate when he claimed that ACORN, the liberal activist group, "is now on the verge of maybe perpetrating one of the greatest frauds in voter history in this country, maybe destroying the fabric of democracy." As ACORN acknowledges, it...

Samuel Joseph Wurzelbacher, a.k.a “Joe the Plumber,” was in his Holland, Ohio home, minding his own business when he looked out the window and saw Sen. Barack Obama doing neighborhood canvassing. Joe seized the opportunity to ask the Democratic presidential candidate a tax policy question that has resonated with the American people. Joe walked up to Sen. Obama and asked him if he believed in the American dream. He tells the candidate that he intended to purchase a plumbing business that made more than $250,000 per year, and then asked him, “You’re tax plan is going to tax me more,...

The New York Times is planning to run a hit piece on Cindy McCain. Cindy McCain, who has admitted years ago to problems with addiction, responded with a letter to the Times telling them exactly what she thought of it, according to Fox News. It's signed her lawyer. Read it: Dear Mr. Keller: I represent Cindy McCain. I write to appeal to your sense of fairness, balance and decency in deciding whether to publish another story about her. I do this well knowing your obvious bias for Barack Obama and your obvious bias hostility to John McCain. I ask you...

While the answer to “Joe the Plumber’s” question by Barack Obama clearly proved the socialist agenda of the candidate, it is the aftermath that followed that should send chills down the spine of every American who believes not only in the First Amendment right of free speech, but our right as American citizens to question those we elect and may possibly elect into office. When Gov. Sarah Palin was named as John McCain’s running mate on the Republican ticket, Leftist media propagandists were immediately dispatched to Alaska to comb through her garbage and badger with questions anyone and everyone who...

A refreshing trend is becoming fashionable all over the country. Ordinary working class Americans are standing up and speaking out in response to the savage attacks against Joe the Plumber. In Joe they see themselves. Someone just trying to live the American dream. Families only trying to better their lives and leave behind a more prosperous future for their children. To them Joe is a hero. Not because he is a plumber and a single father, but because he had the audacity to question The One about his tax plan. And after he received the response he had his personal...

Remember the intensive investigations by the press to determine if Sarah Palin had ever been a member of the Alaska Indedence Party? Contrast that with the almost total lack of interest by the media into looking at the ties (and membership) of Barack Obama in the far left New Party. Your humble correspondent has written about this lack of interest by the MSM in Obama's New Party connection but Stanley Kurtz of the National Review now provides a wealth of information on Obama's ties to both that far left party and ACORN. Kurtz documents how Obama's connection to the New...

I lurk enemy territory so you don't have to. It's painful i know. I can post the lib rat site if you it is permitted. We need to stop this ASAP! The New York Times will break new ground on the health of the presidential candidates and their running mates in a major expose set to be published in Monday's print edition. Lawrence Altman -- the veteran Times reporter, George Polk Award winner, and one of the few medical doctors working as a full-time journalist -- has spent weeks working with the campaigns and medical professionals on the piece, sources...

There is an article in today's Washington Post that exemplifies the despicable bias of the mass hysterical media. In a column written by Juliet Eilperin the distortions could not be more apparent. To Avoid Being 'Depressed,' Palin Skimps on Campaign News No wonder GOP vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin harbors such hostility toward the mainstream media: her staff imposes limits on her access to it. Isn't that the stupidest premise you have ever heard? It represents exactly why the majority of us don't listen to or read the crap these people call reporting any longer. I wonder if the tiny...

Joe Wurzelbacher: Media Won't Demand Obama Records But Plenty of Media Investigative Fire Power to Probe Joe the Plumber “Before men can act,an issue must be polarized. Men will act when they are convinced their cause is 100 percent on the side of the angels, and that the opposition are 100 percent on the side of the devil. [The community organizer] knows that when the time comes for negotiations it is really only a 10 percent difference.” --Saul Alinsky, Chicago's Godfather of Community Organizing Media Investigates Plumber, Not the CandidateIf anyone was thinking of asking Barack Obama an uncomfortable question,...

HOLLAND, Ohio (CBS) ― Republican John McCain said Thursday that 'Joe the Plumber,' whose questions about Democrat Barack Obama's tax policy became a centerpiece of the final presidential debate, was the real winner of the televised forum. But it turns out that 'Joe The Plummer' doesn't have a plumbing license, owes back taxes, makes less than $250,000 a year and is a registered Republican, according to television, newspaper and wire service reports Thursday. Joe Wurzelbacher, 34, of Holland, Ohio was cited by McCain in Wednesday evening's debate as an example of someone who wants to buy a plumbing business but...

This article is an acid example of awful and inaccurate editorializing against ordinary Americans by the leftwing Old Media on behalf of Obama's duplicitous minions. HOLLAND, Ohio - Joe the Plumber's story sprang a few leaks Thursday. Turns out that the man who was held up by John McCain as the typical, hard-working American taxpayer isn't really a licensed plumber. And court documents show he owes nearly $1,200 in back taxes. "Joe," whose name is Samuel J. Wurzelbacher, was cited repeatedly in Wednesday night's final presidential debate by McCain for questioning Barack Obama's tax policy. This is an excerpt. Click...

Call this a concerted effort by the media to assassinate the character of an ordinary guy for calling out a liberal politician for wanting to raise taxes. Journalists covering Democratic presidential nominee Sen. Barack Obama, Ill., haven’t asked tough questions about his tax proposals – specifically who will see their taxes increase, decrease or stay the same. So “Joe the Plumber” did it for them. Samuel J. Wurzelbacher, known as “Joe the Plumber,” was mentioned many times during the Oct. 15 presidential debate because he confronted Obama on taxes while the candidate was canvassing neighborhoods in Toledo, Ohio on Oct....

TOLEDO, Ohio - “Joe the plumber,” the new face of middle-class America after Sen. John McCain made him famous in Wednesday night’s presidential debate, isn’t technically a plumber, and he probably wouldn’t be adversely affected by Sen. Barack Obama’s tax plan. But the issues he has raises are important and worth examining for their impact on small businesses...

Fox to change World Series time for Obama Presidential candidate's ad buy interfering with game By Paul J. GoughOct 15, 2008, 03:15 PM ETUpdated: Oct 15, 2008, 10:06 PM ET NEW YORK -- Barack Obama might have the power to move the World Series by a few minutes. To accommodate a half-hour Obama time buy on Fox on Oct. 29, Major League Baseball has agreed to move the start time of World Series Game 6 by about 15 minutes. That would move the start of the game from 8:20 p.m. ET or so to 8:35 p.m. "Fox will accommodate Senator...

Joe the Plumber on social security, Iraq Joe did an impromptu press conference this morning in front of his house in fron of a hostile media trying to bait him and make him into a kook. You know, the usually MSM hit job. Watch how Joe, like the great American he is, stands up for himself (and us) and gives it right back to them.

The “Kill Them” claim spread like wildfire across the MSM as evidence of “insane rage” on the Right. Barack Obama mentioned it during the debate. Now that the Secret Service has investigated and failed to find a single person to corroborate the reporter’s claim, I’m sure you’ll be seeing this on the front pages and nightly news lead stories in all the media outlets that spread it. Right? Riiiiiight. The Times-Leader reports: The agent in charge of the Secret Service field office in Scranton said allegations that someone yelled “kill him” when presidential hopeful Barack Obama’s name was mentioned during...

It was becoming apparent she went into the interview with an Agenda (i.e. "There were rumors of you not being registered to vote) He slammed Obama, calling him a socialists and said yes he is registered to vote.

October 15, 2008 Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania Today, KDKA Radio in Pittsburgh, PA, the oldest radio station in the country, and a CBS affiliate, censored Kevin Miller, one of its conservative talk show hosts while he was on the air.

BAMA CAMPAIGN ISSUES TALKING POINTS TO MEDIA AHEAD OF DEBATE Wed Oct 15 2008 11:15:03 ET The Obama campaign issued a set of debate 'talking points' to media on Wednesday morning, the DRUDGE REPORT can reveal. Press Secretary Sean Smith issued the directive in an email from Pennsylvania, 12 hours before the debate. The directive oddly mirrors much of the main press analysis and theme of the current campaign: * This is John McCain's last chance to turn this race around and somehow convince the American people that his erratic response to this economic crisis doesn't disqualify him from being...

One of the oldest phenomena of American elections — criticism of one's opponent — has in recent times been stigmatized by much of the media as "negative advertising." Is this because the criticism has gotten more vicious or more personal? You might think so, if you were totally ignorant of history, as so many graduates of even our elite universities are. Although Grover Cleveland was elected president twice, he had to overcome a major scandal that he had fathered a child out of wedlock, which was considered more of a disgrace then than today. Even giants such as Lincoln and...

Dana Milbank of the Washington Post often writes with a good deal of attitude, and his Tuesday column was no exception. In his report on Sarah Palin’s campaign speech in Clearwater, Florida, laced with mocking Palinisms (“darn right,” “betcha”), he wrote that “the self-identified pit bull has been unleashed, if not unhinged.” The “unhinging,” in Milbank’s assessment, came when Palin charged that Obama still has some explaining to do about his relationship with 1960s Weatherman bomber William Ayers. Milbank also wrote that Palin blamed Katie Couric for her “less-than-successful” CBS interview. Other newspapers reported a more light-hearted Palin response to...