Free Republic

NBC over the weekend pushed gun control repeatedly, casually dismissing calls for focusing culpability on the perpetrators of mass shooters as simply a talking point of “gun control opponents.” The Today show also touted using children to promote the gun control agenda. On Sunday, reporter Mike Viqueira sounded annoyed that Donald Trump would blame the shooters: “At his New Hampshire rally, Thursday, no mention of checks on criminal records, only for mental health history. The President echoing a familiar argument of gun control opponents.” He then played a clip of Trump noting, “It’s not the gun that pulls the trigger....

Does watching a movie nowadays leave you with the feeling that you’ve just been preached to? Quite likely it’s because you have. The whole Hollywood industry has abandoned its primary cause of entertainment and moved into the field of social conditioning. And the agenda is not in our interests; it’s in the interests of the big corporations and the liberal elites. Consider one example: Neill Blomkamp’s 2013 blockbuster Elysium. The human race lives in two divided societies, one in the space station Elysium, where all is clean and diseases are miraculously cured, and the other on the poor, polluted planet...

How can they seriously be considered of any value in the political arena anymore? Needing any occasion to appear pertinent, this year’s gathering of White House “correspondents” did make the effort to remain relevant and address this issue at the previously vaunted annual “Correspondents’” Dinner held in Washington, D.C. Unfortunately, elections have serious consequences, and the American people may have a different take on the relevance of the MSM. And despite how much MSM apologists would like to believe in their self-importance and value within American society at this time in our history, we the people are the ones who...

Four weeks ago, Big Hollywood posted audio of a conference call in which Obama administration officials asked "grant recipients to plug Barack Obama’s domestic agenda." At least six federal laws and regulations were violated when then–NEA communications director Yosi Sergant and White House Office of Public Engagement deputy director Buffy Wicks tried twisting the arms of artists and arts groups interested in getting federal arts grants to produce government propaganda. To protect the scandal from expanding further, the White House threw Sergant under the bus, denied that they were involved issued new guidelines for the NEA and promised that it...

Should the National Endowment for the Arts encourage artists to create art on issues being vehemently debated nationally? That is the question that I set out to discuss a little over three weeks ago when I wrote an article on Big Hollywood entitled The National Endowment for the Art of Persuasion?” The question still requires debate but the facts do not. The NEA and the White House did encourage a handpicked, pro-Obama arts group to address politically controversial issues under contentious national debate. That fact is irrefutable.

This is it; the story we were speculating about today. Well, this is the "pre-story" and the rest breaks tomorrow at noon (don't know EST or PST) But, there is even a larger issue that hasn’t yet received much attention in the press. Among the Obama Administration officials on the call were Buffy Wicks, Office of Public Engagement and the lead White House official on the President’s Serve.Gov initiative to promote national service. Also on the call was Nell Abernathy, Director of Outreach for Serve.Gov. One of their mail goals on the call, it seems, was to encourage artists to...

Andrew Breitbart's Big Hollywood is out today with new details on the National Endowment for the Arts scandal, including a full transcript and audio recording, as well as a CliffsNotes summary by John Nolte, of the notorious Aug. 10 conference call in which administration officials urged artists to help promote President Obama's legislative agenda. Formally, the call was led by Michael Skolnik, who is not a government employee. But Skolnik declares at the start of the call that he is acting on behalf of the administration:I have been asked by folks in the White House and folks in the NEA about...

Former deep-cover Russian spy Anna Chapman plays a starring role in a new promotional video for President Vladimir Putin's military and it sounds a whole lot like Cold War propaganda. Chapman, you may recall, was the femme fatale rolled up by the FBI in the early summer of 2010 with nine other "illegals" – all working undercover for the SVR, Moscow's foreign intelligence service. Their job was to gather U.S. political and economic secrets for the motherland. But unfortunately for them, they had reportedly been betrayed by one of their own. The FBI had secretly snooped on them for years...

excerpt: In 2009, Richard H. Thaler and Cass R. Sunstein published a book, called “Nudge,” on how government and other organizations could induce people to avoid common errors. Last year, Sunstein gave the Storrs Lectures at Yale on the topic, which will soon be published as a book called “Nanny Statecraft.” Last month, the Obama administration announced that it is creating a new team to explore applications of this sort of empirical research to policy-making.

Cass Sunstein, Obama’s former regulatory “czar” and one of the smartest and most devious thinkers on the left, has a highly revealing Bloomberg column out this week reporting on the results of a study of the way China has attempted indoctrination in its school system. This column and the underlying study (it’s an NBER paper, behind a paywall unless you have academic access) are useful as background reading for everyone who is rightly concerned about how Common Core standards will likely become the means of nationalizing a liberal school curriculum. (What? You mean you aren’t reassured by the promises from...

On more than one occasion, President Obama has quietly met with select members of the media. The off-the-record meetings were notable in that conservative journalists were seldom included. On Tuesday, the tables were turned somewhat as Obama invited a small number of conservative reporters, columnists and commentators to the White House for a private chat, but is the president looking for an edge in the ongoing budget impasse with Congress? Ben Shapiro, editor-at-large of Breitbart News, called the meeting “a clear attempt to woo largely establishment conservative commentators who have loudly opposed the GOP’s current government shutdown strategy.” Those in...

Rep. James Clyburn (D-S.C.), the third-ranking House Democrat, on Wednesday accused the U.S. media of spreading "manufactured controversies" that pose dangers similar to the propaganda spread by the Nazis during the Holocaust. Speaking to Sirius XM, Clyburn accused the modern Internet-based media of misrepresenting the statements of people in order to hurt their reputations. "You have people´s words and phrases being misrepresented and looped through the news media and thrown out there on the Internet, and people run with it because these things start getting reported in the mainstream media, and before you know it, people believe that stuff," Clyburn

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...

President Barack Obama's senior campaign adviser David Axelrod said on CBS's "Face the Nation" on Sunday that his next project will include inspiring young people to become "journalists." "What do you do next?" CBS's Bob Schieffer asked Axelrod. "I'm going to spend part of my time starting an institute of politics at the University of Chicago," said Axelrod. "My feeling is if I can help inspire some young people to get into this arena as candidates, as strategists, as journalists, then that would be a great contribution to make."

Benetton returns to its controversial marketing roots with a new campaign that features President Obama and other world leaders engaging in a kiss. In two separate ads, Obama is seen kissing Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez, and Chinese President Hu Jintao. The Unhate Foundation, founded by the Italian clothing company, is an advocacy group for tolerance. The controversial ad campaign is an attempt for Benetton to regain its status from the “United Colors” ads that regularly shocked viewers with subjects that had nothing to do with clothing: A priest kissing a nun, a man dying of AIDS, a just-born baby with...

A San Francisco State University instructor writes in Poynter today that the media is misrepresenting some basic features of the debate over the value of a college education. In reviewing recent coverage, Sarah Fidelibus argues that journalists are taking surveys out of context in making the case that a college education isn't worth young people's time and money anymore. The critique comes on the heels of a piece in the New Republic titled "Why the media is always wrong about the value of a college degree." In the latter article, Education Sector's Kevin Carey mocks media stories that profile woeful...

So much for objectivity. One of the FCC stipulations of the Comcast – NBCU merger was the incorporation of non-profit journalism centers into NBC newsrooms. They are charged with maintaining and increasing local news coverage, the regulation based on the relationship between KNSD-TV and VoiceofSanDiego.org. KNSD airs the segments, but really can’t take all the credit for them. They are largely the work ofVoiceOfSanDiego.org, a local nonprofit journalism center that has been sharing news tips, co-producing and supplying content to the station for several years. [...] Under the terms of the FCC order approving Comcast’s takeover of NBCU, at least...

<p>Reporting from Washington — A president governs in prose, but every now and then some poetry slips through.</p> <p>Speaking in West Virginia after an explosion killed 29 coal miners, President Obama talked about the victims: "Most days they would emerge from the dark mine, squinting at the light. Most days, they would emerge, sweaty, dirty, dusted with coal. Most days, they would come home. Most days, but not that day."</p>

Oliver Stone, whose admiration for Marxist dictators knows no bounds, is also fond of a few capitalists. The "Wall Street 2: Money Never Sleeps" director was spotted recently in the Hamptons, where he lunched at the house of George W. Bush-bashing hedge fund billionaire George Soros.

Obama 'Hope' poster artist arrested in Boston By Milton J. Valencia and Mark Shanahan Globe Staff / February 7, 2009 Shepard Fairey, the controversial street artist riding a roller coaster of publicity with his red, white, and blue posters of President Barack Obama, was arrested last night on his way to DJ an event kicking off his exhibition at the Institute of Contemporary Art. Fairey, a 38-year-old known for his countercultural style, was arrested on two outstanding warrants and was being held at a police station, according to a police official with knowledge of the arrest who requested anonymity.