Free Republic

The nation's largest telephone and cable companies are crafting an alarming set of strategies that would transform the free, open and nondiscriminatory Internet of today to a privately run and branded service that would charge a fee for virtually everything we do online. Verizon, Comcast, Bell South and other communications giants are developing strategies that would track and store information on our every move in cyberspace in a vast data-collection and marketing system, the scope of which could rival the National Security Agency. According to white papers now being circulated in the cable, telephone and telecommunications industries, those with the...

Ted Koppel kicked off his neo-pundit career by delivering a stern global warming speech in New York while outside a merciless snowstorm bore down on the Eastern Seaboard in a brutal blast of freezing -- Oh, wait -- that was Al Gore, wasn’t it? I tend to get all these neo-pundits mixed up. Mr. Koppel’s post-Nightline era more correctly began with a January 29 Op-Ed in the New York Times which is actually quite similar to Mr. Gore’s address both in fervent presentation and excruciatingly bad timing. Which may explain my confusion. Ted, likely grateful to now be immersed in...

Libby's Defense Goes after Antique Media Reporters January 30th, 2006 Last week, Lewis Libby filed a long-anticipated motion to compel discovery of reporters and organizations, making a significant strategic move in the perjury and obstruction case brought against him by the Special Prosecutor. As anticipated, he seeks broad discovery of the reporters and news organizations which covered the fake charges of Joseph C. Wilson IV and the claimed Administration response to it. As we know, Wilson’s well-hyped story, of a White House deliberately ignoring what he claimed to have found in Africa, was not true and the Senate Select Commission...

I just got done watching the Oprah interview where she tore author James Frey apart for lying in his "memoir," "A Million Little Pieces." Others joined in such as Richard Cohen and Frank Rich who DEMANDED honesty in memoir books that are supposedly non-fiction. Not too much of a problem for these folks to make such a demand on Frey since his lying "memoir" is non-political but would they make such demands on lying "memoirs" by liberals? "I, Rigoberta Menchu" leaps to mind since it is supposed to be the TRUE memoir of a Central American Indian who was oppressed...

Among the many temptations of the digital age, photo-manipulation has proved particularly troublesome for science, and scientific journals are beginning to respond. Some journal editors are considering adopting a test, in use at The Journal of Cell Biology, that could have caught the concocted images of the human embryonic stem cells made by Dr. Hwang Woo Suk. At The Journal of Cell Biology, the test has revealed extensive manipulation of photos. Since 2002, when the test was put in place, 25 percent of all accepted manuscripts have had one or more illustrations that were manipulated in ways that violate the...

Check out the promotional ad for this Thursday evening's (December 29, 2005) episode of ABC's Primetime. The promo is for the story, "On the Trail of Pope Joan" (audiotape on file; emphasis mine): "Diane Sawyer takes you on the trail of a passionate mystery. Just as intriguing as The Da Vinci Code. Chasing down centuries-old clues hidden even inside the Vatican. Could a woman disguised as a man have been Pope? Thursday night. One astonishing Primetime." It doesn't get much uglier than this, folks. Quite simply, there was never a female pope, or "Pope Joan." The tale is a complete...

AP) Little Falls, Minn. It has been reported many times that the residents of Little Falls were so angry with hometown hero Charles Lindbergh's comments that the U.S. should stay out of World War II that they painted over his name on the water tower. The story was part of a PBS documentary about the famous pilot. It was reported in a Pulitzer Prize-winning biography released in 1999. However, many experts doubt it happened. "I've heard the stories but I've never seen the documentation myself," said Marlene White, president of the Anoka-based Lindbergh Foundation. There are some newspaper articles from...

The year 2005 is ending as it began, with another successful election in Iraq and a liberal media still flapping around trying to find other controversies to submerge it. It does not matter to them that a Gallup poll found that 74 percent of Americans express confidence in their military, but only 28 percent express confidence in their newspapers or TV news outlets. The "mainstream" media excels in excoriating the performance of nearly everyone else, but acts as if nothing they do should be held up as ineffective, inaccurate or just plain absurd. That's why the Media Research Center and...

Commentary: Also, bloggers -- I want to hear from you NEW YORK (MarketWatch) - Sad to say, at the start of the holiday season, I'm a typical journalist. That means I am one of the many now reeling in the wake of the Judy Miller and Bob Woodward fiascos. And yes, I'm cringing in the corner as Maureen Dowd flexes her columnist's muscles and shamelessly bullies Miller in print. I'm waiting helplessly for columnist Robert Novak to be a mensch and finally do the right thing by going public with his role in the CIA leak investigation. I'm a typical...

The Washington Timeswww.washingtontimes.com Only half see press as fair to BushBy Jennifer HarperTHE WASHINGTON TIMESPublished November 10, 2005 About 50 percent of Americans say the Bush administration is being treated fairly by the press, the lowest number since President Bush was elected, and an increasing percentage say the press is too critical of the president, according to the Pew Research Center.     "There has been a notable rise over the past two years in the percentage who say the press is too critical of the Bush administration," the survey released Tuesday stated.     Many stories that appear to methodically build a...

Using the Press to Attack Political Opponents Everyone is weighing in on what Bill Bennett said on his radio program. Everyone is eager to offer their opinion on his words and whether or not he should have said them. Everyone is missing the point. The travesty is that we’re even talking about this at all. The most abhorrent behavior that occurred regarding this issue came from the Associated Press (AP). Allowing news hit men like John Conyers, Bruce Gordon, Ralph Neas, Howard Dean and many elected Democrats to assault Bill Bennett is detestable and the AP should be held accountable....

If Michelle Kosinski's canoe had sprung a leak on NBC's "Today" show Friday, she didn't have much to worry about. In one of television's inadvertently funny moments, the NBC News correspondent was paddling in a canoe during a live report about flooding in Wayne, N.J. While she talked, two men walked between her and the camera _ making it apparent that the water where she was floating was barely ankle-deep. Matt Lauer struggled to keep a straight face, joking about the "holy men" who were walking on water. "Have you run aground yet?" Katie Couric asked. "Why walk when you...

It is heartening to read and hear the collective "mea culpa" from some of the nation's news media regarding the inaccurate reporting of rape, pillage, and murder in New Orleans in the days immediately following Hurricane Katrina. The encouraging part of this sorry incident is that a great national outrage did not precede the cleansing confession.

With the all-but-corporate death of the UPI, the AP is the main American source for news in the United States. Associated Press articles are mindlessly quoted by newspapers across the nation. Many local radio and TV stations rip and read either directly from the AP, or indirectly from local newspapers which use the AP. Therefore, it’s reprehensible that the AP, three weeks after Hurricane Katrina hit, has not found out that there WAS an Evacuation Plan for New Orleans and southern Louisiana which was not followed. The Plan is on the Internet and available to anyone who can push a...

YAHOO has hired a veteran war correspondent to single-handedly report on every armed conflict on the planet. Video, audio and daily blog entries will be combined to "bring some of the world's most important, yet under-reported" stories to a website called Kevin Sites in the Hot Zone, the company said. Sites will spend a year reporting from spots deemed armed-conflict areas by the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London, Yahoo said in a statement. His first reports from a war zone will be published at hotzone.yahoo.com on September 26. "This project is the most important thing I will do...

WASHINGTON · A narrow plurality of likely voters in Florida thinks the United States was not justified in waging war in Iraq and should bring its troops back home within a year, according to a new statewide poll. The poll, commissioned by the South Florida Sun-Sentinel and Florida Times-Union, reflects drooping public support for the war policy nationwide, with opinions sharply divided by gender and political party.

NBC's Brian Williams says the lasting legacy of Hurricane Katrina for journalists may be the end of an unusual four-year period of deference to people in power. There were so many angry, even incredulous, questions put to Bush administration officials about the response to Katrina that the Salon Web site compiled a "Reporters Gone Wild" video clip. Tim Russert, Anderson Cooper, Ted Koppel and Shepard Smith were among the stars. The mute button seemingly in place since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks has been turned off. "By dint of the fact that our country was hit we've offered a preponderance...

A Tampa Tribune investigation has found previous ethical lapses in the work of Brad Smith, a former Tampa Tribune reporter who fabricated parts of a story in April.

Dinasour Media bias in action, here is how the story was posted yesterday by AP. Notice how AP edited out the actual QUOTES that DIRECTLY contradicted their spin lie and had the writer write the story interjected their own interpretation of what was said by the sources. Here is yesterdays AP story. Gen. Steven Blum, chief of the National Guard Bureau, said that "arguably" a day or so of response time was lost due to the absence of the Mississippi National Guard's 155th Infantry Brigade and Louisiana's 256th Infantry Brigade, each with thousands of troops in Iraq. Blum said that...

Associated Press "Story" Compares Bush Tardiness With Crazy Baghdad Bob An editorial disguised as a news story bashing President Bush for his supposedly belated response to the New Orleans fiasco reveals the biased venom that the AP has always had for Conservatives/Christians/Republicans/Independent Americans. Today, on the front page above the fold, the local Akron Beacon Journal, which celebrated the thirtieth anniversary of Vietnam's Communization, printed an AP story which mercilessly bashes Bush, comparing him with the infamously goofy Baghdad Bob. Saddam's Information Minister, Baghdad Bob, bragged of "slaughtering the American infidels" - even as United States forces surrounded him...