Free Republic

It was supposed to be a joke. As an endless parade of corporate beggars marches to Washington in search of handouts for their beleaguered industries, some of us in the news business snarked that journalists would be next in line. I launched a Newspaper Bailout Countdown Clock on my blog after The New York Times Company's bonds plunged into junk territory in October. A few weeks later, columnist Jon Fine published a tongue-in-cheek memo in BusinessWeek outlining a federal newspaper rescue proposal. The jibes were meant to be facetious critiques of for-profit enterprises demanding massive taxpayer expenditures under the guise...

Barack, The Amazing ObamaBy Mark S. McGrew Barack Obama is truly an amazing man, with many amazing friends. He has succeeded where countless others have failed. And he has also succeeded where many before him have succeeded with the same time honored methods.He has managed to create an illusion of a Public Office that does not exist, The Office of the President Elect.Barry Sotero, AKA Barack Obama, along with the Democratic National Committee and the Federal Election Commission have successfully ignored a Federal Lawsuit asking him to produce a valid Birth Certificate. When the time to respond to that lawsuit...

Wonder why the media have been looking at Republican presidential contenders for three years, 11 months from now, and paying quite a bit of attention to Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal? The push on to make him the frontrunner way in advance has more to do with the left’s agenda than covering a good horse race. Ever since Jindal succumbed to the electoral politics bug, liberals have recognized the danger he presents to their agenda. Jindal does not apologize for his conservatism but neither does he come off as much of an ideologue; he articulates it well both at a philosophical...

Birmingham Mayor Larry Langford was arrested this morning on federal charges and is being held at the federal courthouse, the FBI and other federal officials confirm. A special grand jury for several months has been investigating county bond deals and Langford's financial dealings. Langford was Jefferson County Commission president 2002-06. Al LaPierre, a close friend of Langford's who also was part of the federal investigation, will be surrendering today, said his attorney, Tommy Spina. David McKnight, Montgomery banker Bill Blount's attorney, said Blount is on his way to Birmingham from Montgomery to surrender. U.S. Attorney Alice Martin will hold a...

The media coverage of the race for president has not so much cast Barack Obama in a favorable light as it has portrayed John McCain in a substantially negative one, according to a new study of the media since the two national political conventions ended. Press treatment of Obama has been somewhat more positive than negative, but not markedly so. But coverage of McCain has been heavily unfavorable—and has become more so over time. In the six weeks following the conventions through the final debate, unfavorable stories about McCain outweighed favorable ones by a factor of more than three to...

I have a BA in journalism, and over time have kept in touch with a number of people who are still working in that profession. So when one of them emailed me the following about the atmosphere in today's newsrooms, I wasn't surprised at all. This person does offer some hints at the end on how to push for more fairness in your local coverage: .... It's unbelievable here. I've been through a few election cycles and have gotten pretty used to the open sneering every time a Republican candidate appears on the television, but this year is unlike anything...

John McCain’s campaign and a supporter at a McCain rally separately accused the press of favoring Barack Obama on Monday, with McCain’s top strategist calling The New York Times a “pro-Obama advocacy organization.” “Let’s be clear and be honest with each other about something fundamental to this race, which is this: Whatever the New York Times once was, it is today not — by any standard — a journalistic organization,” strategist Steve Schmidt told reporters on a conference call. “It is a pro-Obama advocacy organization that every day attacks the McCain campaign, attacks Senator McCain, attacks Governor [Sarah] Palin and...

Seven out of 10 voters (69%) remain convinced that reporters try to help the candidate they want to win, and this year by a nearly five-to-one margin voters believe they are trying to help Barack Obama. A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 50% of voters think most reporters are trying to help Obama win versus 11% who believe they are trying to help his Republican opponent John McCain. Twenty-six percent (26%) say reporters offer unbiased coverage (demographic crosstabs available for Premium Members). Just last week a Rasmussen Reports survey found that 51% of voters believed reporters...

HOWDY FREEPERS;You know folks, Shawn Hannity is right. Journalism as we once knew it is dead.I don't think it could have been anymore evident than the disgusting treatment that Sarah Palin and her family have been getting at the hands of the establishment media.When you contrast all that to the gussing favorable treatment that Michelle Obama has been receiving, it's understandable why more and more people are throwing bricks at their TV sets and hanging picutres of TV news anchors on dart boards and throwing darts at those pictures and so on.I think it's quite obvious why all this is...

Ruth Bader Ginsburg has no need any longer for her "I'm Ruth, Not Sandra" T-shirt. She could, however, use Sandra Day O'Connor's vote. O'Connor retired from the Supreme Court last year, replaced by a man. Her departure almost certainly cost Ginsburg's side a victory in an abortion case, decided 5-4 in April, and might have been a factor in a wage discrimination lawsuit the court last week decided, also by a 5-4 vote, against a woman and in favor of her employer. Ginsburg and O'Connor, the only women among the 110 justices in U.S. history, were not always on the...

Shepard Smith just said Kerry Campaign due on FOX BUT they "missed" their spot.Bush campaign showed up! Kerry campaign afraid of AMMOGATE questions?LOL

Apparently it wasn't just conservatives that thought Bush drop-kicked Kerry Friday night. Charlie Gibson didn't think much of ABC's candidate either. Enjoy! http://www.stltoday.com/stltoday/news/columnists.nsf/debpeterson/story/2A03A9BD4839815886256F28001DA9CB?OpenDocument&Headline=Debate+moderator+tells+Gephardt%3A+%22It+should+have+been+you+up

Between the death of Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer Eddie Adams last Sunday and U.S. President George W. Bush's appearances on Thursday with his puppet in Iraq, "interim" Prime Minister Iyad Allawi, I had acid flashbacks to 1968. It was early that year in Saigon, on the day after the start of Tet Offensive, that Adams, working for the Associated Press, and Vo Suu, a Vietnamese cameraman shooting for NBC, happened upon government troops hustling a barefoot prisoner up to Gen. Nguyen Ngoc Loan, chief of South Vietnam's national police. "The soldiers marched him up to Loan, who drew his revolver and...

The president IMMEDIATELY DISBELIEVED the reporters yesterday, and EVEN mocked them when he said to the effect that reporters "surely" wouldn't "misreport" the context of something a general said. Does anyone know if there was any follow-up released? Pres. Bush's disdain for the media was (for me) the best part of yesterday's news conference.

For those so inclined. Feel free to join in. A document expert who isn't Verified a memo he didn't. Now all eyes can see the "BS" in "C", As we bid the fraud network "Good riddance!"

A press corps that is growing increasingly liberal is inclined to believe that President Bush has gotten an easy ride from the news media, according to a poll released yesterday. The poll, conducted by the Pew Research Center in collaboration with the Project for Excellence in Journalism and the Committee of Concerned Journalists, surveyed more than 500 national and local reporters, editors, and news executives. Most of the respondents declared themselves political moderates, but the percentage of national journalists who described themselves as liberal rose from 22 percent in 1995 to 34 percent in 2004, while the ranks of liberal...

I just heard His Portliness's latest Iraqi lying diatribe. I'm just venting, but I assume his condition has something to do with loose fecal material and elimination, since his comments lack sense, coherence, and regularity. That is all.

Perhaps nothing so epitomized what is wrong with the media as Wolf Blitzer of CNN "reporting" on the war in Iraq, talking not about what had happened but about something that had not happened. No one had yet found weapons of mass destruction, he said, even though it was almost a month since the war began.A month!If only we could have asked Wolf Blitzer how many countries he had invaded, that he was able to blithely assume that a month was a long time to get things under control and to search a country that is far larger than Italy.From...