Free Republic

VATICAN CITY (ChurchMilitant.com) - The Holy See Press Office has a new vice director. Greg Burke, former Fox News correspondent and a member of Opus Dei, has been appointed deputy spokesman for the Pope, as announced by the Vatican Monday. As of February 1, Burke --- a St. Louis, Missouri native ---will become the Pope's No. 2 spokesman, reporting directly to longtime head spokesman Fr. Federico Lombardi. In addition to arranging press conferences and helping communicate information about Vatican activities, Burke will also step in for Lombardi when he is unavailable. The new appointment leaves the position of the current...

One thing that journalism and the humanities have in common is that people don’t like either of them. Yet another thing they have in common is that journalists and English professors can’t figure out why. “Americans’ distrust in the media hit a new high this year, with 60% saying they have little or no trust in the mass media to report the news fully, accurately, and fairly,” the Gallup organization reported on September 21, 2012. Meanwhile, at the last Modern Language Association (MLA) convention, which this correspondent attended, the thousands of English professors in attendance could attend panels on topics...

…you referred to her now famous Hardball appearance, and you incorrectly reported that she said that the “government would do well to investigate ‘anti-American’ congressmen.” What she actually said was that the American media should do so, not the government, which is something quite different.

"Reporters from roughly 30 television networks, newspapers, magazines and Web sites celebrated the Fourth of July with Barack Obama at the White House last weekend. Why didn't you know that? Because they were sworn to secrecy," John Cook writes at Gawker.com. "We reported that Politico's Mike Allen was spotted milling about as a guest at the White House's 'backyard bash' by the pool reporter, who was allowed into the event for 40 minutes and kept in a pen before being ushered out. When Allen quoted from the pool report in his column the next day, he deleted a reference to...

The past three months in Iraq have been the deadliest stretch for Florida's fighting men and women since 2005. From July through September, 15 service members who called Florida home were killed in Iraq -- including six last month. "Yes, they're Marines, they're Army, but they're our babies, too," said Donna Hunsicker, 41, mother of Marine Cpl. Christopher L. Poole Jr., killed when a suicide bomber steered a vehicle into a security checkpoint. U.S. service members are doing their job, she said, but their duty is complicated by the fact that "they don't want us over there anymore." "These people...

If your idea of fighting terrorism involves dropping bombs on al Qaeda hide-outs, chances are you're probably not a Swarthmore College student. Some students at Swarthmore (annual tuition, $33,232) spent the fall semester learning how to deal with terrorism by studying "the dynamics of cultural marginalization" and examining "the rich history of nonviolent counterterrorist tactics." Visiting professor George Lakey's "Nonviolent Responses to Terrorism" class earned Swarthmore a spot in the "Dirty Dozen," a listing of the "most bizarre" college classes in the nation as compiled by the Young America's Foundation (YAF). Among YAF's picks for 2006 are courses in Marxism,...

NEW YORK, September 28, 2006 (LifeSIteNews.com) – The New York Times reputation for objectivity took another blow today as one of that paper’s reporters has ripped into those who would “threaten abortion rights.” Linda Greenhouse, speaking at a Harvard University appearance this summer, complained of a “sustained assault on women’s reproductive freedom and the hijacking of public policy by religious fundamentalism. To say that these last few years have been dispiriting is an understatement.” Greenhouse, who received a Pulitzer Prize for her coverage of the Supreme Court, told National Public Radio (NPR) she would not be backing away from the...

I am posting this observation of the ABC Evening News, which has just concluded its evening broadcast here in the Central Time zone, without any mention of what I, and I suspect many of you, view as one of the major news stories of this day -- the revelations surrounding the discovery of Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) in Iraq. I believe that ABC News's failure to do this is news in and of itself. I watched carefully this evening to see if, either as a stand-alone story or within its reporting of the Senate Debate on Iraq policy, whether...

The past few months have certainly brought to the fore any number of what psychologists and other so-called "mental health professionals" would identify as "presenting issues" with regard to the schism between Democrats and Republicans in the United States. During that time, for instance, we were privy to the removal of feeding tubes from a human being (Terri Schiavo) in order that she might die at the behest of her husband and an activist judge, while at the same time we witnessed the insertion of feeding tubes into a number of dolphins (yes, "dolphins") that they — having beached themselves...

SACRAMENTO – Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger lauded teachers union leaders and educators last year for their "generosity and great vision" when they agreed to give up $2 billion in education funding to help balance the state budget. This year, when the same coalition demanded that Schwarzenegger follow through with that deal and give more money to schools as he promised, he called them "special interests." Since being swept into office in the recall campaign of 2003, Schwarzenegger has defined "special interest" selectively. Most Californians consider special interests to be all-powerful Sacramento players that spend millions on lobbying and campaign contributions. Schwarzenegger...

Inside a dim American Legion hall in Florida, President Bush (news - web sites) had just finished his inaugural address, and Joe Echeverria was impressed. AP Photo Reuters Slideshow: Bush Inauguration Bush spoke of freedom, of the goal to end tyranny and urged the nation to find unity. Echeverria, a 62-year-old Air Force veteran and Republican, drank his whiskey from a tall glass, then pumped his fist in the air. He liked how concise Bush was and that he didn't make empty promises. "All right, Bush!" he said to the television above the bar in Tampa. Two barstools away, Democrat...

Sometimes it's hard to set the record straight. That's because it's hard for some people to admit mistakes. It was refreshing this week to see Tampa police Chief Steve Hogue's response to a minor traffic accident in his own city. He rear-ended a Volkswagen Jetta and sparked one of those chain reaction wrecks that frequently tangle us up on our way to work. His own officer ticketed him for following too closely. "It was my fault," Hogue said. "I just wasn't careful enough." What a refreshing response. How many times have you heard those words from a public official? Or...

It is time for this blog's second annual review of the performance of the Los Angeles Times, which is known to Patterico readers as the Los Angeles Dog Trainer. ... Documenting a whole year's worth of this paper's distortions, omissions, and misrepresentations is a Herculean undertaking -- much like when Hercules cleaned a year's worth of manure out of a barn in a single day. The parallels are striking indeed. In fact, because there is too much material here to put in a single blog post,...

The Dan Rather story has so far been reported from two angles: The mainstream media views his retirement as the first nail in the coffin of network news; the blogosphere views it as the crowning triumph of the "Pajamahadeen"—the conservative bloggers who helped blow up the story of the fake 60 Minutes memos into a full-fledged media scandal. Neither, it seems to me, quite gets it right. With Rather's retirement from the nightly news, the news anchor may have been replaced by a new paradigm of TV journalism—and that's not necessarily a bad thing. To the likely dismay of...

In Jonah Goldberg’s column of Sept. 14, he didn’t hold back on how Rathergate made him feel. He said he loves the story so much he would like to hug it and squeeze it and call it George (referencing a line from Bugs Bunny). Those words caused me to consider my feelings over the recent implosion of CBS News. To paraphrase a verse from a children’s song, I love it a bushel and a peck and a hug around the neck and a barrel and a heap and I’m talking in my sleep, about the news. So why do conservatives...

This is the presidential election that changes all those to come. The Internet, with its potential to assemble nearly instantaneously a self-selected panel of experts on most any arcane issue -- John Kerry's exploits and Navy operations in Vietnam and Dan Rather's apparent forgeries of George W. Bush's National Guard memos -- is the most important new media element of this and future campaigns. On any complex story, journalists struggle to find insiders and experts. The Internet connects them. They enter and leave at will. How else to explain the success of the swift-boat veterans, who combined a book, a...

More soundings about coverage of the campaign of 2004 . . . The Laura Bush picture. More than two weeks after it was published, we're still getting comments about the front-page photo we used of first lady Laura Bush during the Republican National Convention. The photo prompted dozens of readers to complain that it was an unflattering portrait of Bush and, most of the callers and e-mailers contended, it was chosen purposefully to make her look bad. I think I've developed a pretty keen sensitivity to readers' concerns about photos, but frankly, I was stunned by the reaction. Interestingly, the...

If Sen. Hillary Clinton needs a vice presidential running mate in 2008, she might give Dan Rather a look: They apparently have the same view of the world. When her husband, President Bill Clinton, was under attack for his affair with White House intern Monica Lewinsky, then-first lady Hillary Clinton laid the blame on a "vast right-wing conspiracy." Now Rather is blaming questions about his "60 Minutes" story on President Bush's National Guard record on a similar kind of partisan conspiracy. Rather told USA Today that no one has disputed "the heart" of his report last week, but complained that...

The press and media are pulling for John Kerry and John Edwards. This is so obviously true it is almost mundane – like calling a press conference to proclaim the sun rises in the East. But the press and media vociferously deny any bias and become indignant at the mere suggestion of partiality. Don’t take my word for it. The Assistant Managing Editor of Newsweek, Evan Thomas, recently said, “Let’s talk a little media bias here. The media, I think, wants Kerry to win. And I think they’re going to portray Kerry and Edwards … as being young and dynamic...

I'm beginning to wonder whether our major news outlets should run a disclaimer after any story about President Bush: "This report reflects the personal opinion of the journalist and does not necessarily represent XYZ News Company's policy of objective reporting." We all know that the media trend liberal — just 7 percent of journalists identified themselves as conservative in the most recent Pew Research poll. But while we may wince at biased reporting every now and then, we generally trust media outlets to prevent personal views from influencing news. However, every now and then we glimpse the intense journalistic desire...