Free Republic

Public confidence in television news is at an all-time low, according to a survey released today by Gallup. ... only 10 percent said they had “a great deal” of confidence in T.V. news, and 8 percent said they had “quite a lot” of confidence.

Starting August 1, the left-wing Ohio newspaper, The Toledo Blade, intends to lay off about 130 of its unionized employees due to a permanent shutdown of its Toledo production center that handles printing and inserting. ... In 2013, The Blade lost $8.5 million and has been losing millions for years. As of now there are no plans that will affect the advertising and news-gathering departments. In 2012, The Toledo Blade urged it readers to re-elect President Obama, arguing in part that "He has dealt effectively with economic recession at home

According to the AP, a CIA agent’s name was leaked by the White House . The AP calls it an “embarrassing flub” even though it was a crime when an aide in the Bush administration leaked the name of part-time agent Valerie Plame. What’s given little attention in the story is the fact that the Washington Post reporter who wrote the story sent his copy to the White House to be checked for “accuracy.” ... First of all, any reporter worth his salt would not depend on the subject he’s reporting on to verify accuracy. That’s just crazy. He’d make...

Morning Joe host Joe Scarborough tore into the leadership at the New York Times on Friday morning for what he characterized as a misleading self-defense over the reasons for the firing of former Executive Editor Jill Abramson. He observed that the Times admitted that the pay discrepancy issue was a factor even after they denied it at first. The appearance of a cover-up on this issue led Scarborough’s co-hosts to predict a backlash against the paper and even a wave of cancelled subscriptions from female subscribers. Reading from the latest piece in the New Yorker, Scarborough noted that the Times...

Liberals often say they’re big on tolerance, but apparently tolerance must flow only one way – toward liberals and their favored identity groups. So says MSNBC contributor Jonathan Capehart. Appearing as a guest on Monday’s The Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell, Capehart rebuffed the idea ... [T]olerance, no, is not – it should not be a two-way street. It's a one-way street. ... That’s the perfect encapsulation of liberalism – they will make you to understand that you are wrong and they are right. You will tolerate whoever they like, but as for you – tough luck. If you don’t...

The estimated cost of the initial segment of California's bullet train, Golden State Governor Jerry Brown's pet project, has (excuse the pun) just shot up from $6.19 billion to $7.13 billion. If this is the only overrun encountered in this opening phase, which would be atypical, and if the California High Speed Rail Authority has similar experiences on the remainder of the project, assuming it's ever completed, its cost will rise from a currently estimated $68 billion to about $78 billion. Obviously a big cost overrun is news. But normally, evidence of an attempted government coverup of such an overrun...

Michael Isikoff, the left-wing journalist most famous for getting scooped on The Story of the Decade by Matt Drudge, is exiting NBC News ... It was during his time with Newsweek that Isikoff became yet-another icon of a mainstream media more interested in protecting power than holding power accountable. In 1998, Isikoff had uncovered the affair between then-President Bill Clinton and a young intern named Monica Lewinski. Newsweek, however, refused to publish the story. So Drudge did -- not the story but the news that Newsweek was refusing to explode its own bombshell... -- and an era in New Media...

Five-Thirty-Eight's Nate Silver mocked New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman as a "hedgehog" who "only knows one thing." When asked to describe what a hedgehog is, Silver pointed to Friedman specifically and the op-ed columnists at the Times, Washington Post, and Wall Street Journal: ... They don’t permit a lot of complexity in their thinking. They pull threads together from very weak evidence and draw grand conclusions based on them. They’re ironically very predictable from week to week. If you know the subject that Thomas Friedman or whatever is writing about, you don’t have to read the column. You can...

The real mystery behind the FCC's now abandoned "study" to police American newsrooms is why the mainstream media refused to raise holy hell over it. While Obama's lapdogs refused to bark, it was conservative media who fought for newsroom independence and got the FCC to finally back down. Other than the media's natural obedience to Obama, the fact that the fingerprints of left-wing billionaire George Soros have been found on the FCC study might also help to explain the media's silence. ... The media's hands-off policy with Soros is nothing new ... The mainstream media not only shares Soros' hard-left...

Sanaz Nezami was a beautiful, intelligent young woman with a bright future ahead of her. She was 27-years-old and newly married to Nima Nassiri, an Islamic man from Los Angeles. This tragic story broke on January 1st. The AP whitewashed the story. USA Today’s story read “Woman’s Tragic Death Leads Nurses To Bond With Her Family Overseas.” The title is correct, but the truth about what happened to the brilliant young woman, who could speak three languages, is much darker. She died at the hands of her Islamic husband, in what was most obviously an honor killing. Why does the...

It was only his fourth day on the job and already he’s breaking the law. New York City Mayor Bill De Blasio was filmed shoveling his sidewalk this week. The media loved it. He was shoveling his walk and throwing the snow in the street. He also was breaking the law. It is illegal to throw your snow in the street in New York City.

Among the steadily dwindling justifications for paying a cable bill remains Fox News's Journal Editorial Report. The weekly half hour commentary features the brightest political minds. With faces and personalities meant for print, the brain power of this bunch carries the show. Lead by Paul Gigot, but with a brain after-burner in Kim Strassel, this is a political enthusiast's best TV program. With such high regard, last week's program was the let-down of the year. Dan Henninger starts with a misunderstanding of the Lance Armstrong affair. Henninger opined that Armstrong's cheating was a "miss" of note for 2013. Maybe he...

On Election Day this year, CBS4′s Shaun Boyd had a story detailing the true intentions of the national environmentalist groups pushing fracking bans in four northern Colorado towns. The article contained an admission from local fractivists that national groups seeking a total ban on fracking in Colorado were driving their campaign. But the fractivists were successful in getting their admissions and national connections stricken from the story by lobbying higher ups at CBS. Sources say Shaun Boyd is none too pleased with the edits. The current version of the story lacks a quote from Water Defense, a national environmental group...

Unrepentant domestic terrorist and President Obama’s “friend from the neighborhood” Bill Ayers has received a warm welcome for his new book, Public Enemy, on MSNBC... hosts fawned over him. ... From October 6 through October 20, Ayers sold a grand total of 467 copies of his book. By contrast, Mark Levin’s Ameritopia sold 56,756 copies in its debut week in 2012.

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 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...

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...

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.