Free Republic

Wherever Jesse Jackson goes the media usually follow and on Tuesday the cable news networks highlighted his arrival outside the Florida hospice care facility holding Terri Schiavo, but the day Jackson took the side of those wishing to save Schiavo, and put a Democratic face with those on the side of her life, ABC's World News Tonight suddenly found the whole matter unnewsworthy. For the fist time in more than ten days, the newscast had no Schiavo story and didn't utter a syllable about Jackson, but Peter Jennings found time to pick up on a liberal cause celebre, abuse of...

It was a surprise to NBC in 1992 when "Saturday Night Live" aired pop star Sinead O'Connor ripping up a picture of Pope John Paul II and crying "Fight the real enemy!" But now NBC has aired a planned, scripted episode of a sitcom that attacks not the Pope, but Jesus Christ Himself. The Feb. 22 episode of the painfully unfunny new sitcom "Committed" made a mockery out of the sacrament of the Eucharist. As William Donohue of the Catholic League explained about the show: "By far the most offensive scene occurs when [male characters] Nate and Bowie accidentally flush...

Have our partisan liberal media evaporated? Are we now in an era when President Bush has as much control of Washington's journalism output as Vladimir Putin's defenders assert he does? (The Moscow line, if you haven't heard, is that Bush ordered the firing of Dan Rather.) These questions are overwrought and self-evidently silly, and yet, the Left is on Orange Alert over its slipping control of the public agenda. Witness the still-ongoing attempts to inflate the teeny-weeny scandal over James Guckert (a.k.a. "Jeff Gannon"), the former White House reporter and alleged male escort. Here we have the supposedly momentous scandal...

The New York Times seems highly upset that anyone would question the existence or objectivity of what they call the Public Broadcasting "Service." Last week, the paper put PBS's internal worries on Page One, concerned that pressure from conservatives threatens to send PBS lurching -- horrors! -- to the right. Liberal lobbyists inside and outside PBS, including the Times editorial page, are once again trying to convince the Congress to allow them to create a massive $5 billion endowment so they may achieve "financial independence." When PBS stations go digital, requiring less space on the broadcast spectrum, they want to...

American TV watchdogs have rejected a raft of complaints about everything from Friends characters discussing a phallic-shaped cake to mention of homosexual kissing on Will And Grace. Clean-up campaigners the Parents Television Council filed 36 complaints about incidents they thought were dragging down standards. They also included an episode of The Simpsons in which striking students carried banners saying "Don't cut off my pianissimo" and the scene in the Austin Powers movie where a naked Mike Myers had his genitals hidden by cunningly-placed objects. The Federal Communications Association rejected all the complaints, ruling: “None of the segments were patently offensive...

As Christians prepare to celebrate the birth of the Christ child and Jews give thanks and praise to God for sustenance even in alien lands and hostile cultures, it's a great time to reflect on how the relentlessly secular entertainment industry reflects -- in fact, mocks -- the religious beliefs of its American audience.  In the arid land of secular orthodoxy, there is no alarm at simple "spirituality" if it is trendy and harmless, and the God-idea is conveniently controlled by the individual, instead of the individual submitting to a sovereign you-know-Who. Even traditional faiths can be tolerated by Hollywood...

While so many in the media have found it outrageous that Bill Clinton could be accused of having "blood on his hands" over administration inaction on violence in America, for CBS it is perfectly acceptable -- even worthy of nationwide TV promotion -- to charge a Pope had the blood of six million Holocaust victims on his. On March 19, CBS’s "60 Minutes" promoted the book "Hitler’s Pope," by British journalist John Cornwell. If an author of Cornwell’s disposition were writing about Bill Clinton, CBS would have no trouble dismissing him as a "Clinton hater," as a vicious tool of...

For decades, kids have enjoyed following the out-of-this-world exploits of comic-book heroes, learning along the way about courage and heroism, and the need for the forces of good to triumph over the nefarious plots of those possessed by evil. Every generation needs to learn their own duty to sacrifice and fight for the good. But lately, ever since the first "Spiderman" live-action movie roared at the box office, fans of the long-lasting Marvel Comics stable of superheroes have been inundated with big, noisy, expensive blockbusters bringing these two-dimensional pen-and-ink heroes to life. Unfortunately, in attempting to dramatize Marvel honcho Stan...

Election Night Sweats by L. Brent Bozell III November 9, 2004 Anyone who is a political junkie -- if you stayed up into the wee hours of Election Night, you qualify -- had a couple of beefs with the national media amidst an otherwise riveting evening. First, just who were those so-called polling professionals hired to do the exit polls for the networks? For about six hours on Election Day, the Kerry camp was positively giddy and the Bush folks were forlorn as word spread of exit polls indicating not a Kerry win, but a Kerry landslide. All of those...

Who Dares to Question the Great and Powerful? Last weekend the media made great sport of the expressions on President Bush's face during the first presidential debate. Many surmised that he looked irritated because he is unaccustomed to being questioned. Yet a certain media figure has come right out and expressed his annoyance at being questioned. Tom Brokaw, soon-to-retire anchor of NBC Nightly News, has had about all he can stand of media bias activism. One in particular has been irritating enough to be mentioned by name. "It is a little wearying, but you've got to rise above it and...

Speaking to a media conference thrown by the financial giant Goldman Sachs last week, CBS boss Les Moonves gave his view from the mountaintop about the Dan Rather forgery scandal and how the network's independent investigation would proceed:     "Obviously, it should be done probably after the election is over, so that it doesn't affect what is going on."     What? Dan Rather and CBS try to destroy the Bush campaign with a file of phony military documents, and now they think it would be politically sensitive to release an independent critique of their bias before the election. Obviously, CBS and...

URGENT ACTION ALERT! FORWARD THIS E-MAIL TO YOUR FRIENDS, RELATIVES AND COLLEAGUES! Enough’s enough! Please join me in demanding that CBS News suspend Dan Rather. More than three years ago, CBS Evening News anchor Rather showed his true liberal colors when he appeared as a speaker at a Democratic Party fund-raising meeting in Texas. And now he’s exposed his liberal partisanship for all to see by using admittedly phony documents on CBS’s “Sixty Minutes” to try to influence the presidential election. It’s even been revealed that Rather’s “Sixty Minutes” staff went so far as to put the provider of the...

Rather's Game Is Over by L. Brent Bozell III September 21, 2004 The jig is up. The game is over. CBS tried to energize the country into voting against President Bush by highlighting forged documents it said would prove Bush’s failure to serve honorably in the Texas Air National Guard. The smoking gun went up in smoke. Once caught, CBS and Dan Rather could have responded with a simple apology. Instead, they went ballistic – and now mus pay the price for their defiance. For more than a week, Dan Rather responded like a cornered politician, blaming a vast right-wing...

The jig is up. The game is over. CBS tried to energize the country into voting against President Bush by highlighting forged documents it said would prove Bush's failure to serve honorably in the Texas Air National Guard. The smoking gun went up in smoke. Once caught, CBS and Dan Rather could have responded with a simple apology. Instead, they went ballistic -- and now must pay the price for their defiance. For more than a week, Dan Rather responded like a cornered politician, blaming a vast right-wing conspiracy of "partisan political activists" for unfairly trying to change the subject...

CBS News and anchorman Dan Rather have entered the journalistic equivalent of one of Dante’s circles of Hell, forced to live forever with a scandal they created. With their Texas Air National Guard forgeries, they now live in a neighborhood of national media embarrassments. Faked Food Lion resumes. Staged GM pickup truck explosions. Janet Cooke’s profile of Jimmy the eight-year-old coke addict. Jayson Blair’s phony travelogues from "West Virginia." Watergate was a scandal Mr. Rather thoroughly enjoyed, since he built his career on ripping into Richard Nixon. Now Rather is Nixon, a bitter, vengeful man who allowed his friends to...

The Media Research Center, the parent organization of CNSNews.com, says CBS must "immediately suspend anchor Dan Rather, producer Mary Mapes and all other staff involved" in the "60 Minutes II" report that used memos of questionable authenticity to slam George W. Bush's National Guard service Letter to CBS News President By Media Research Center CNSNews.com Information Services September 15, 2004 (Editor's note: The following letter has been sent to CBS News President Andrew Heyward by L. Brent Bozell III, president of the Media Research Center, the parent organization of CNSNews.com.) Mr. Andrew HeywardPresidentCBS News524 West 57th StreetNew York, NY 10019...

It’s late August and someone in America decided it’s time to scrutinize John Kerry’s life story on television. For a week in Boston, John F. Kerry wrapped himself around a war effort he had spent decades denouncing, and Dan, Peter, and Tom sat around and nodded. No one even considered the possibility that Kerry could be – should be – challenged on any point of his self-serving history. Then the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth came along and shattered that mythology. Without their TV ads, the pro-Kerry media would have spent the entire election year with their collective fingers in...

Bruce Springsteen has been the darling of the rock press for three decades, first marked by simultaneous Time and Newsweek cover stories in 1975, when he hadn't yet had a big hit song. Two years ago, Springsteen was the toast of rock music again for his album "The Rising," a sober set of songs about the losses of September 11, and Time put him back on the cover. He offered the response the press had wanted: sad literary chronicles of loves lost and hopes dashed, without any of what they saw in country star Toby Keith, oafish flag-waving bravado with...

Minutes before John Kerry marched into the Fleet Center to accept the Democratic nomination, CBS reporter Byron Pitts pulled out the intimate personal information: "Senator Kerry is a very superstitious man. Just before he steps into the hall, he will do what he has always done before a major moment in his life. He will make a Sign of the Cross, then kiss the St. Christopher medallion his mother gave him as a child." Aside from the confusion of religion and superstition, there is one obvious question for viewers: How does Pitts know this is true? Even if it is...

Free pass on Democratic legends Brent Bozell (archive) Minutes before John Kerry marched into the Fleet Center to accept the Democratic nomination, CBS reporter Byron Pitts pulled out the intimate personal information: "Senator Kerry is a very superstitious man. Just before he steps into the hall, he will do what he has always done before a major moment in his life. He will make a Sign of the Cross, then kiss the St. Christopher medallion his mother gave him as a child." Aside from the confusion of religion and superstition, there is one obvious question for viewers: How does Pitts...