Free Republic

Joe Biden’s final act of shamelessness was pardoning his entire crime family in the final hours of his presidency. There’s a mountain of corruption that’s yet to be fully revealed. On the weaponization of government front, you’d think the sustained lawfare launched against President Donald Trump from the Department of Justice was evidence enough. Pro-life activists and the January 6 defendants also being ensnared by the Biden DOJ’s extralegal crusade on political dissidents. That’s only the tip of the iceberg. The Media Research Center found not one, not ten, but 57 anti-free speech and censorship initiatives aimed at chipping away...

ransomnote: I posted Matt Taibbi's introduction to the article below. Follow the link for the core of the article.Susan Schmidt, Andrew Lowenthal, Tom Wyatt and 5 others provide a well organized overview to their extensive research. They describe 30 main players in the Censorship-Industrial Complex (CIC), and another 20 in the 'honorable mentions' catagory. I will put a hyperlinked table of contents in post #1. Illustration by mrmooremedia.comIntroduction by Matt TaibbiOn January 17, 1961, outgoing President and former Supreme Allied Commander Dwight D. Eisenhower gave one of the most consequential speeches in American history. Eisenhower for eight years had been...

Tucker Carlson’s new media company has found a backer. Omeed Malik, through his newly launched 1789 Capital boutique investment company, has invested $15 million in seed capital into Last Country, the startup founded by Carlson and Neil Patel, according to The Wall Street Journal.

Last week, Tucker Carlson had a brief segment about the leaked FBI memo recommending surveillance of traditional Catholics as potential domestic terrorists. The contents of the memo became widely known only because of a fearless FBI whistleblower assigned to the relatively small Richmond, Va. district office. It later became known that the (false) accusation originated from a wing of the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) in Norfolk, Va. The FBI immediately walked it back, and the nightly news returned to coverage of the spy balloon skeet shoot, the Super Bowl, and the devastating earthquake in Turkey. I am no Catholic,...

The liberal Poynter Institute for Media Studies seems to have an obsession with conservative media outlets getting put on blacklists. The Washington Examiner exposed how the State Department and liberal Big Tech giant Microsoft actively bankrolled the leftist British group Global Disinformation Index (GDI). GDI was reportedly “feeding blacklists to ad companies with the intent of defunding and shutting down” conservative websites “peddling alleged ‘disinformation.”’ GDI's blacklist included news sites like The Daily Wire, RealClear Politics, Breitbart, Newsmax, One America News, The Daily Caller, The Washington Times, the Examiner and Blaze Media. The former associate director for Poynter’s George Soros-funded...

Tom Jones at the Florida-based Poynter Institute -- touted by Johnny Dollar as a "Stelter press agent" -- has penned a deeply disturbed piece headlined "CNN ‘hewing toward the center’ is not necessarily good for our democracy: Pushing for fairness and completeness in journalism is never a bad idea. But presenting 'both sides' sometimes can be." Jones was attempting to shame the Chicago Tribune for an editorial touting this purported CNN move to the center -- which sorely lacks evidence so far, other than dismissing a few flagrantly opinionated staffers like Stelter and John Harwood. Jones sounds like a press...

A New York Times business correspondent in Hong Kong, a weekend editor at The Guardian who lives in New York, a British Business Insider reporter with a focus on the Saudis, and the executive editor of The Daily Beast. A 48-year-old blogger who works for Rachel Maddow, a union activist who covers “extremism, far-right politics and media disinformation” for The Huffington Post, and the 29-year editor of the Arkansas Times. A breaking news reporter at The Washington Post who wrapped up her most recent internship in May 2016, a 2016 University of Pennsylvania graduate who covers “young people doing big...

The New York Post's breaking news of emails purporting to show Hunter Biden scheming to make money off the family name has created a social media firestorm. Twitter began blocking users from sharing it almost instantly. Facebook didn't block the story outright, but they did announce almost immediately that they were "reducing its distribution on our platform." Even for the most sober observer, it sure seems like the social media platforms are interfering with the free flow of information relevant to our election. This is all the more so when you consider that stories critical of President Donald Trump, such...

A new case study illustrates clearly that Facebook should reevaluate its partnership with PolitiFact, which does not operate as a responsible fact-checking organization. Challenged over its vague ruling on a new ad targeting the Equality Act from the American Principles Project PAC, PolitiFact refused to muster a serious defense of the decision, choosing instead to brush aside fair questions.“Our story is complete and accurate, and the ad is most certainly missing context. I could expound on those points, but it is not necessary, so I have nothing more to add,” Editor-in-Chief Angie Holan told The Federalist on Thursday.Holan sent...

The Tampa Bay Times announced Monday it will no longer publish mug shot galleries of arrests made in the newspaper's circulation area, with the executive editor saying the photo collections "serve little journalistic purpose." "The galleries lack context and further negative stereotypes," said Tampa Bay Times Executive Editor Mark Katches. "We think the data is an important resource that our newsroom will continue to analyze and watch carefully, but the galleries alone serve little journalistic purpose." Katches said the paper, which is owned by the Poynter Institute, will still publish individual mug shots with stories when arrests have been made....

An announcement from the Poynter Institute naming NBC’s Chuck Todd the “media personality of the year” while calling his Meet the Press the “gold standard” was met with derision and laughter on the internet which has long hammered the NBC host for his failures as well as his habit of not asking follow-up questions. According to Poynter — which describes its mission as helping “journalists sharpen skills and elevate storytelling throughout their careers” — Todd’s “excellent interview skills and accessible delivery make him THE voice when it comes to news in these politically divided times.” Not everyone agreed with that...

A usual round of media self-criticism turned into a schoolyard brawl last week, as editors, reporters and bloggers traded insults over a front-page article in The Washington Post, all at the very online water cooler where they usually get their news about the industry. The Post article, which ran on Nov. 29, was about rumors of Barack Obama’s ties to the Muslim world. snip Then things got really ugly. On Dec. 10, Chris Daly, a Boston University journalism professor, posted an entry on his blog that turned the debate over the merits of the article’s reporting into a debate over...

The organization partnered with Facebook to help determine whether a certain story is “disputed” is financed by billionaire George Soros and a slew of other left-wing funders. The International Fact-Checking Network (IFCN) drafted a code of five principles for news websites to accept, and Facebook yesterday announced it will work with “third-party fact checking organizations” that are signatories to the code of principles. Facebook says that if the “fact checking organizations” determine that a certain story is fake, it will get flagged as disputed and, according to the Facebook announcement, “there will be a link to the corresponding article explaining...

On April 8, House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi headlined a Boston conference on ''media reform.'' She was joined by four other congressmen, a senator, two FCC commissioners, a Nobel laureate and numerous liberal journalists. The 2,500-person event was sponsored by a group called Free Press, one of more than 180 different media-related organizations that receives money from liberal billionaire George Soros. Soros, who first made a name for himself in investing and currency trading, now makes his name in politics and policy. Since the 2004 election, the controversial financier has used his influence and billions to push a laundry list...

Filed at 10:02 p.m. ET TAMPA, Fla. (AP) --The St. Petersburg Times will pay more than $33 million over 12 years for the rights to rename a hockey rink for the newspaper, according to terms released Friday after questions were raised about the deal. The Tampa Bay Lighting hockey team and the Times initially decided to keep the terms of Tuesday's agreement private. Both said the arena would be the only major sporting venue in the country named after a newspaper. ``Like most business contracts of such scope it had a confidentiality clause,'' said Paul Tash, editor and president of...