Free Republic

According to the Daily Beast, the black protester at the Alabama Trump rally, one Mercutio Southall, Jr., was “beaten” by the crowd and is planning to file hate-crime charges. Donald Trump is being considered as a possible accessory to the crime. The New York Times also states as fact that he was “beaten.” The Washington Post says that he was “punched.” Keep in mind that in the absence of clear evidence and a criminal trial, reporters are supposed to insert an “allegedly” or “reportedly.” But in all these cases, they claim without equivocation that a crowd of fat old angry...

-snip- CBS News airs a report about a Vietnam-era controversy. Almost immediately the report comes under harsh attack, its credibility and essential honesty challenged. There's a huge uproar, complete with calls for a congressional investigation. CBS is compelled to acknowledge certain errors in its handling of the story, though senior officials say pointedly that no one has challenged its basic thrust. Does this sound familiar? It is, but this is not just a quick-and-dirty recap of the current mess at CBS. For the few CBS News staffers who have been at the network for more than 30 years, the events...

NBC-owned television stations in cities across the nation just teamed up with a nonprofit “journalism” group funded by a billionaire husband and wife team who not only spent millions campaigning for President Obama but also topped donor lists to groups like ACORN and MoveOn.org. The nonprofit, ProPublica, will contribute to the news operations of all NBC owned-and-operated stations, including those in such cities as Los Angeles, Chicago and Philadelphia, the network announced Monday. The NBC affiliates will get early access to investigative reports from ProPublica, which describes itself as an “independent, non-profit newsroom that produces investigative journalism in the public...

From the article: He also claimed that he was unfamiliar with the “Tea Party movement,” when asked by a reporter. When told that different people labeled him a conservative, moderate and a liberal Republican, he responded “I’m a Scott Brown Republican.”

The late Christopher Lasch once wrote that public affairs generally and journalism in particular suffered not from too little information but from entirely too much. What was needed, he argued, was robust debate. Lasch, a historian by training but a cultural critic by inclination, was writing in 1990, when the Internet was not yet a part of everyday life and bloggers did not exist. Bloggers now are everywhere among us, and no one asks if we don't need more full-throated advocacy on the Internet. The blogosphere is the loudest corner of the Internet, noisy with disputation, manifesto-like postings and an...

A Chinese court sentenced reporter Zi Beijia, 28, to a year in prison for faking a hidden camera television story about cardboard-filled pork buns, reports The Associated Press. According to testimony at Zi’s trial, he paid four migrant workers from Shaanxi province to make the buns according to his instructions, which included stuffing the dough with cardboard softened with caustic soda and a small amount of fatty pork, and then edited the footage at home. A freelance reporter for Beijing Television, Zi’s motive for faking the story was to advance his career. Unfortunately, it is not unheard of for freelance...

In February 1997, Palestinian English teacher Ali Abu Kamal went to the 86th floor observation deck of the Empire State Building, pulled out a gun, and opened fire, killing one person and wounding six others before killing himself. Even though he carried letters ranting about the US and Israel, the media heavily promoted the story that he was despondent and suicidal after a financial loss. Today the killer’s daughter—who works for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian “refugees” (UNRWA)—admitted that this story was a complete fraud. She wants the world to know that her father was “martyred...

The Crisis in American Journalism: Is This the Best We Can Do Under the Circumstances? Jeffrey Dvorkin, CCJ Executive Director, November 17, 2006 The following is a transcript of a speech Dvorkin delivered to the 42nd Institute of Ethics in Journalism held by the Department of Journalism and Mass Communication at Washington & Lee University in Lexington, VA. The speech was delivered on November 10, 2006. Click here for Washington& Lee's press release about the speech. I recently came across an interesting complaint by a foreign correspondent about how tough it is to be a reporter. As you may know,...

Last night on '60 Minutes Wednesday' (yes, it's still on the air, despite the forged documents fiasco) they kicked off the show with a story about the shooting of Giuliana Sgrena's car in Iraq. That's the communist journalist from Italy whose freedom was bought from her Islamic captors by the Italian government. By the way, she is a communist and she works for a communist newspaper, something you won't hear too much of from the mainstream media (although 60 Minutes did get that right.) At any rate, the piece last night by Scott Pelley included an interview with Giuliana Sgrena....

It wasn't his use of forged documents to slander President Bush along with a lifetime of slanting the news leftward that angered conservatives; it was his support of such causes as Civil Rights, said Dan Rather with a straight face. According to RatherBiased.com, Rather attended a CBS holiday press party where he encountered liberal Vanity Fair magazine writer Michael Wolff, who writes in his magazine's current issue that he sought to learn why the CBS anchorman is so unpopular with conservatives. Wrote Wolff: "Really ... how ... I mean ..." - I began trying to circle the elephant - "do...

conservative columnist says the liberal bias of The New York Times extends far beyond the environs of New York and should be a matter of concern to every American. As a native New Yorker, Bob Kohn grew up reading the Times. But now the columnist for WorldNetDaily has written a book about the newspaper called Journalistic Fraud: How The New York Times Distorts the News and Why it Can No Longer Be Trusted (WND Books, 2003). Kohn says every other liberal news agency follows the Times, even broadcast news organizations. "The old joke applies -- Peter Jennings is not a...