Free Republic

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., views the media in a way that will likely make conservatives' heads turn, portraying them in a new interview as "accomplices" of the president. "I do think that he was assisted by the communications industry, not just Hollywood, but the press as well, because all they do is enable him, and that is really a sad thing," she told The Hollywood Reporter in an interview published Wednesday. She added that she calls her friends in the press "accomplices" and seemed to push back on the idea that Trump's words should make news. "I've said to...

Fox News Behaving Badly? -- Jack Engelhard October 15, 2009 02:27 PM EDT The Obama administration has found the enemy and it is Fox News. The New York Times and CNN got it straight from the lips of White House communications director Anita Dunn who revealed that, “We’re going to treat them [Fox News] the way we would treat an opponent.” Hello Lady? The press is SUPPOSED to be an opponent! That’s why it’s called the Fourth Estate, to keep a sharp eye on the other three Estates, executive, legislative, judicial. Nowhere is it written that the press shall collaborate...

A health care debate at top of our lungs The half assed Pilot editorial staff begins by "begging the question"; note the desperate need for change: For decades now, the congressional debate over health care has been so distorted by politics and money that it has been worse than useless - it has been an active impediment to reform of a broken system that is too expensive, serves too few and rations care based on insurance company caprice. The vast majority of people who - when asked - are satisfied with the best health care in the world may disagree....

Charles Krauthammer of The Washington Post recently made the astute observation that Obama's relationship with the press has entered the cigarette stage -- that is, they have already attained coitus and passed climax, and are now relaxing with a cigarette. (No need, by the way, to lecture anyone about the evils of smoking, or to inquire about the practice of "safe sects". And of course it was good for them -- he's the best!) The question remains, just what is it about this man-child which evokes such quivering ecstasies of adoration from what is in every other respect, a jaded,...

Everywhere you turn these days, you find the press in an agitated-to-furious state about the McCain-Palin campaign. Many reporters are downright angry, according to the Washington Post's media critic Howard Kurtz, in part because of the "lipstick on a pig" controversy. That's obvious to anyone who has watched the news this last week. Many in the press are lacerating themselves for covering this story, and they blame the McCain campaign for having done it to them.    A broader anti-McCain critique is embodied by one of the Washington Post's resident Obamaphiles, E.J. Dionne, Jr., "The campaign is a blur of...

What the 2007 NIE actually says - "We judge with moderate confidence that the earliest possible date Iran would be technically capable of producing enough HEU for a weapon is late 2009," News agencies around the globe are gushing over the latest U.S. National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) issued on Iran and its nuclear proliferation program. TIME reports Europe Relieved by Iran Finding, the Chicago Tribune say’s Twice now, Bush has confronted faulty intelligence and the Telegraph UK announces Iran president hails nuclear report as ‘victory’. Unfortunately, it appears that none of these reporters bothered to actually read the NIE before...

The Talk Shows Sunday, April 29th, 2007 Guests to be interviewed today on major television talk shows: FOX NEWS SUNDAY (Fox Network): Presidential candidate Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., and wife Cindy McCain. MEET THE PRESS (NBC): Sen. Joe Biden, D-Del., presidential candidate. FACE THE NATION (CBS): Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice; Rep. John Murtha, D-Pa. THIS WEEK (ABC): Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice; Sens. Russ Feingold, D-Wis., and Sam Brownback, R-Kan., presidential candidate; actress Natalie Portman. LATE EDITION (CNN) : Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice; Reps. Adam Putnam, R-Fla., and Jane Harman, D-Calif.; Hoshyar Zebari, Iraqi foreign minister; European Commission...

Zlatan Ibrahimovic, one of the most spectacular soccer players ever, comes from the infamous, Muslim dominated area of Rosengård in Malmö, Sweden's third biggest city. He presently plays for the major European club of Inter Milan and has formerly been contracted by Juventus, Ajax and Malmö FF among others. Zlatan Ibrahimovic, known as "Ibra" to Italian soccer fans, is one of the very few Muslim immigrants from the Malmö region who've made major success in any area of life (another exception is Hip hop artist Timbuktu - not especially well known in the US though). Many Rosengård Muslims strive to...

June 10, 2003, 9:30 a.m.The Devil & the Gray LadyAll about vogue. By Mark Goldblatt SEE NOTE    Truman Capote, who had a stake in saying so, once famously declared, "All literature is gossip." He was wrong, of course, but it's the kind of declaration that bamboozles literary types by its very implausibility; something so obviously false must be profound, so it gets repeated at cocktail parties and invoked in book reviews (like this one) until it becomes an inside-out cliché, a false truism, a knowing nod towards nothing whatsoever. Still, an interesting question emerges if you reverse Capote's...

aj-Jazeera gets some women & a kid right up front for their “manipulate the dumb Americans’ emotions” shot in an insolent new blog titled “Don’t Bomb Us,” devoted to cynically exploiting the recent British press story and otherwise influencing Western public opinion.

Quick story. In the mid 1980s I went to a fancy Fifth Av. party for Senator Ted Kennedy. There were journalists there and lots of other bigwigs. The only time I'd seen Kennedy before was at a campaign stop in 1979 when he'd been seeking the Democratic presidential nomination. He might have won, but I realized at the party that it would have been a terrible thing because he was the drunkest human being I had ever encountered in my life, and chances were that it hadn't just started that night. Sure, he already had this reputation, but it was...

Billions of American dollars, and Hundreds of American lives may be flushed down the drain because American journalists can't keep their mouths shut. Here it is! In a country where the majority of the populace felt gratitude for our liberation of them from a fanatical tyranny, and many were actively cooperating with our forces in action against the hard-line remnants of that ousted regime - an unsubstantiated rumour is enough to make it all blow up in our faces. Why? Certainly the volatile psychodynamics of the region has much to do with it, But, The plausibility of the rumour stems...

A good friend of mine once pointed out to me that the first thing liberals do, after someone commits a crime with a gun, is try to disarm everyone who didn't do it. I found his words to be both insightful and troubling, and it's the same sort of pretzel logic to which he referred that has become evident over the past few years in the actions of the many left-wingers seeking to defame Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. Apparently, leftists believe that Mr. Rumsfeld is somehow responsible for our military's lack of optimum preparedness, which is sort of like blaming...

"...They helped me relearn another of journalism’s basic lessons. The job of trying to tell the truth about people whose job it is to hide the truth is almost as complicated and difficult as trying to hide it in the first place. Unless you’re willing to fight and refight the same battles until you go blue in the face, drive the people you work with nuts going over every last detail to make certain you’ve got it right, and then take hit after unfair hit accusing you of “bias”, or these days even a point of view, there’s no use...

DoD promises press freer access to war With the U.S. military on the verge of war with Iraq, the Pentagon plans to give the media a wide-ranging and essentially uncensored view of the fight. And if it does, soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines will find themselves going into combat with reporters at their sides. The plan is ambitious and unprecedented. About 800 reporters, photographers and TV crews — 20 percent from non-U.S. media, including, possibly, the controversial Qatar-based network al-Jazeera — will be assigned slots in specific ground units, ships and headquarters throughout the combat zone. Once assigned, they will...