Free Republic

The White House blew off a demand for openness and transparency from 40 prominent media groups, offering instead a “bunch of spin” that has reporters calling for a public debate on the administration’s anti-press policies, according to a prominent journalism organization. “We need to have a discussion,” said David Cuillier, president of the 10,000-strong Society for Professional Journalists. Cuillier, in Washington to address a national convention of archivists, told Secrets that White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest on Monday sent a response to a July 8 letter from SPJ and others demanding that the administration stop blocking reporter

On Monday, Wall Street Journal columnist James Taranto expanded on themes he recently wrote about relating to Florida’s thin case against George Zimmerman, the man accused of murdering Trayvon Martin in 2012. Taranto told WSJ’s Mary Kessel that the prosecution of Zimmerman, in the words of one Slate columnist, was supposed to serve as a “referendum” on racial privilege in America. “There’s a word for a trial that is held as a referendum – it’s a show trial,” Taranto said. “We don’t do show trials in this country.” “Why has the press been so convinced from the very beginning that...

Once you understand that the media is a soulless left-wing propaganda machine determined to marginalize the right, everything they do makes sense. Those of you asking, "How can the media make the same mistakes over and over again?", fail to understand that falsely speculating that the right is behind or at fault for mass murder is not a mistake on the media's part, it is a political tactic. Our craven corrupt media see tragedy -- be it dead schoolchildren or theatre-goers -- as a partisan political opportunity, not a time to come together and mourn until all the facts are...

Don't be fooled by the false praise being heaped upon Chief Justice John Roberts by the mainstream media and its favorite go-to legal commentators. Jeffrey Toobin, no less, of the New Yorker and CNN, lets the cat out of the bag--they are celebrating Roberts's opinion in the Obamacare case, even though they know it is a total farce: In the end, of course, Roberts did uphold the A.C.A. as an exercise of the constitutional power to tax. Frankly, that argument is not a persuasive one. As the conservative Justices wrote in their joint dissenting opinion, taxes are enforced contributions to...

According to Politico editors Jim VandeHei and John Harris, Barack Obama is currently "playing the press like a fiddle" by "exploiting some of the most long-standing traits among reporters who cover politics and government — their favoritism for politicians perceived as ideologically centrist." VandeHei and Harris pointed out journalists such as Christiane Amanpour for lauding the President as "Reaganesque." They then oddly portrayed Obama's good press as a new thing. The co-authors of February 7 piece flatly denied a hard-left tilt in the media: "Conservatives are convinced the vast majority of reporters at mainstream news organizations are liberals who hover

It’s encouraging for commonsense conservatives who are frustrated with media cover-ups and biases to see truth revealed. Remember the infamous “JournoList” – the listserv chat group of hundreds of “prominent” mainstream media personalities? It seems The Daily Caller obtained copies of the JournoList email exchanges from the 2008 campaign having to do with the media’s coverage of Rev. Jeremiah Wright, then candidate Obama’s pastor of 20 years. It’s everything you may have suspected. This, in the words of one JournoList member: “I do not endorse a Popular Front, nor do I think you need to. It’s not necessary to jump...

"From what I've seen thus far, much of the reporting in the U.S. and abroad has exaggerated the situation, according to General Casey. The number of attacks on mosques, as he pointed out, had been exaggerated. The number of Iraqi deaths had been exaggerated. The behavior of the Iraqi security forces had been mischaracterized in some instances. And I guess that is to say nothing of the apparently inaccurate and harmful reports of U.S. military conduct in connection with a bus filled with passengers in Iraq. Interestingly, all of the exaggerations seem to be on one side. It isn't as...

Underfunded and overshadowed, conservative state Sen. Tom McClintock has kicked off his gubernatorial campaign with a strategy that tries to turn the huge media focus on Arnold Schwarzenegger to his own advantage — appearing on radio and television as the actor's conservative counterpoint. The good news for the veteran anti-tax crusader from Thousand Oaks is that broadcasters have been eager to give him a platform. In the first five days after Saturday's candidate-filing deadline, McClintock has appeared about two dozen times on the electronic media, including half a dozen spots on some of the nation's most visible news-talk programs.