Free Republic

[BIG SNIP].............. In spite of the high level of trust in broadcast news, or perhaps because of it, the 1960s were also the early days of conservative antagonism toward the networks and, more broadly, toward the “eastern establishment” press. The Nixon administration seethed at CBS, the Times, and the Post (even before Watergate). In the words of Theodore H. White, “the hostility of the Liberal Press obsessed Nixon.” Nixon transformed his resentment of an elite that he believed used every opportunity to undo his career into an institutionalized response. His White House created an office led by firebrand Pat Buchanan...

An amendment to a bill currently being considered by the Senate would deny ordinary citizens doing vital investigations in the public interest the same legal protections as professional journalists. If it were to become law, the change could significantly stifle important citizen journalism efforts similar to the recent ACORN expose

Blairsville — To some in this mountain town, this is a troubling tale of what happens when a rogue journalist arrives from the big city, distorting facts and poisoning goodwill. To others, it is the saga of an outsider exposing corruption and challenging Goliaths within a tightknit rural community. To anyone with access to Google, it's the surreal story of a conspiracy theorist and fringe presidential candidate who once broke a briefly infamous story about Bush family financial links to a Nazi sympathizer — a story that nearly destroyed him. This journalist tried to leave his mental and legal problems...

There are high and low reasons for following the thrilling spills of Judith Miller. High reasons include a tangle over Iraq policy that could cripple the Bush administration. Low reasons include rivals' delight at seeing the pomposity of the New York Times punctured yet again. But there's also an overarching horror of an issue to come to grips with. Miller refused to name her sources in the Plamegate affair. Who had these cherished sources been? Certainly the vice-president's right-hand man. Possibly Karl Rove, George Bush's super-spinner. Why did they need to be protected? As Michael Kinsley, one of America's shrewdest...

Eight years ago, an obscure little cable outlet debuted by the name of Fox News. Shows like the ''The O’Reilly Factor'' and ''Hannity and Colmes'' were not to be confused with anything on the then-present alphabet media empires of ABC, NBC, and CBS. One can imagine the suits of the elite media chortling among themselves about this upstart channel, while they thumbed through the op-ed pages of the New York Times and Washington Post. But soon, nobody in the board rooms was laughing anymore. ''Special Report'' with Washington veteran Brit Hume had become one of the most popular political news...

WASHINGTON -- In its rush to broadcast a story besmirching George W. Bush's Vietnam-era war service, CBS News has managed to turn a long-running controversy over the President's lacklustre military career into a public accounting of its own judgment. After watching the network and iconic news anchor Dan Rather squirm for days amid mounting evidence that CBS fell for a hoax when it cited memos indicating that a squadron commander was pressured to "sugar coat" Mr. Bush's performance in the National Guard, the President finally slid in the dagger over the weekend. "There are a lot of questions about the...

WITH THE revelation that CBS News aired what appear to be forged memos as part of its "60 Minutes II" story on President Bush's Vietnam-era National Guard service, the "memogate" story shifted from Bush vs. Kerry to old media vs. new media. Hours after the show aired, questions about the authenticity of the memos, purportedly written by Bush's then-superior officer Jerry Killian in 1973, surfaced on right-of-center blogs (short for "weblogs"). By the next day, those questions were also being posed by the mainstream media such as The Washington Post and ABC News. A defining moment in the Battle of...

We can't say when the obituaries of the CBS news division will finally be written, but we now know what it will say on the tombstone: "Fake But Accurate!" The phrase first appeared in a September 15, 2004, New York Times article about CBS's "exclusive": Texas National Guard memos attesting to dereliction of duty by George W. Bush, memos supposedly typed in 1972 and 1973 but actually produced on a personal computer. All credit to the Times headline writer, but he was only crystallizing CBS's corrupt defense of its bogus story. Dan Rather admitted he'd been chasing the story for...