Free Republic

Mainstream media is at it again, promulgating fake news. I woke up this morning to a slew of stories about “Palestinian Protestors Killed in Gaza Protests.” The imagery of a man holding up a cardboard sign while getting shot comes to mind, from such a headline, doesn’t it? I became concerned, read further. Turns out, it’s the same ‘ol anti-Israeli fake news. Mainstream media at it again. Headlines:CNN: “37 Palestinians killed in Gaza protests ahead of US embassy opening”ABC News: “Death toll in massive Palestinian protests climbs to at least 41, bloodiest day in Gaza since 2014 war”Washington Post: “Israelis kill dozens of...

The metro editor of The New York Times, Wendell Jamieson, resigned on Monday following an internal investigation at the newspaper. "I regret and apologize for my mistakes and leaving under these circumstances," Jamieson said in a statement published by the Times... "We intend to fully investigate and while we do, Glenn will be suspended. We support his decision to enter a substance abuse program. In the meantime, we will not be commenting further."

Not all liberal media outlets are giving favorable coverage to former FBI Director James Comey's new book, A Higher Loyalty. One such media source is Vox which reminds its readers about why most liberals were clamoring for Comey to be fired...right up to the moment when President Donald Trump actually did fire him. The reason for Vox writer Matthew Yglesias's ire towards Comey in his April 13 article is that Comey admitted in his book that he believed the polls that predicted Hillary Clinton was certain to win the 2016 election so he figured his re-opening of the probe into her...

An article at Vox has gained attention for illustrating America’s “unique gun violence problem” in 17 maps and charts. Below, we will respond to the individual graphs below on Vox’s terms. But there are a lot of assumptions behind Vox’s graphs. Often, just one or two public health studies are cited to make a particular point, without discussing any of the known weaknesses with these studies. It would also be valuable for Vox to acknowledge and critique research that reaches the opposite conclusions. Economists focus on the notion of substitution. If you take away guns, people might commit suicides or...

An article at Vox has gained attention for illustrating America’s “unique gun violence problem” in 17 maps and charts. Below, we will respond to the individual graphs below on Vox’s terms. But there are a lot of assumptions behind Vox’s graphs. Often, just one or two public health studies are cited to make a particular point, without discussing any of the known weaknesses with these studies. It would also be valuable for Vox to acknowledge and critique research that reaches the opposite conclusions.

The New York Times is what Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg considers “good, trustworthy” journalism. During an interview with Vox’s Ezra Klein, Zuckerberg spoke about attempts by Facebook to crack down on what is deemed “fake news.” Zuckerberg laid out three kinds of fake news: spammers, state actors, and legitimate news sources that are “speaking their truth” although they may have “varying levels of accuracy or trustworthiness.” In his conversation, Zuckerberg referenced the January 2018 News Feed changes. In that announcement, Facebook claimed it would be changing the news people see in their feeds to prioritize news that is...

Although much of the mainstream media such as The New York Times and CNN has recently gone ga-ga over the candidacy of Texas Congressman Beto O'Rourke (D) who currently is running for the U.S. Senate from that state, Vox wasn't quite so kind in analyzing how he did in Tuesday's Democrat primary. In fact they called him a "Loser (sort of)" since he underperformed despite running against nonentities in his primary. Vox's loser label for O'Rourke came in their politics reporter's, Andrew Prokop's, assessment of the Texas primary election:

Rep. Devin Nunes’s infamous memo — the document numerous House Republicans claimed would demonstrate fundamental anti-Trump corruption at the FBI — was released early Friday afternoon. The entire thing is three and a half pages and only takes a few minutes to read closely and carefully. After doing that, there is only one conclusion a fair reader could draw: There is absolutely nothing here. There is no proof in the memo that the FBI is biased against Trump, no proof of abuse of surveillance powers by the FBI, and no proof that the investigation into the Trump campaign’s ties to...

...But Democrats weren’t about to let facts get in the way of advancing their collusion narrative. The House Intelligence Committee released their cherry-picked examples of “Russian Facebook ads” in November. [....] The media didn’t let facts get in the way of fueling the collusion narrative, either. After receiving their marching orders from CNN, the media swung into action: This includes Vanity Fair, Natasha Bertrand at Business Insider, The Daily Mail, Fortune, The Hill, Reuters, and CNBC. Far-left sites like the Daily Kos, Vox, Salon, and Talking Points Memo joined the fray to falsely characterize all the ads as targeting swing...

Yale psychiatry professor Bandy Lee has been raising concerns about President Trump’s mental health for over a year and suggested in a new interview that Trump should be physically contained for an “urgent evaluation” to determine his mental state. In a Vox interview published Saturday, reporter Eliza Barclay asks Lee, “Okay, so you’re calling for an evaluation; you’re serious about that. How could he possibly be evaluated, since it seems like he wouldn’t voluntarily do it?” Lee responded, “We encounter this often in mental health. Those who most require an evaluation are the least likely to submit to one. That...

Oh Great Pumpkin! Where were you in 2017? You were supposed to bring us evidence of Trump-Russia collusion but you never showed up. Oh well, perhaps we will see you in 2018. Please! Pretty please, Great Pumpkin! Andrew Prokop of Vox wrote a rather dispirited December 28 article about how no evidence of Trump-Russia collusion has yet appeared despite the mainstream media early this year loudly hyping the reality of such collusion. In fact, it seemed that finding evidence of such collusion was a mere formality since the MSM guaranteed it happened. The only problem is, despite nearly eight months of...

Congressional Republicans may not celebrate the passage of the tax bill at the inside-the-Beltway equivalent of the Bada Bing, but Talking Points Memo editor and publisher Josh Marshall nonetheless likens them to some notable patrons of that fictional North Jersey strip club. "The absolute need to pass something and to pass it fast led to a legislative process which was akin to driving the truck up to the loading bay and just taking everything. Looting. Or perhaps a mob bust-out," wrote Marshall on Tuesday. "One episode of The Sopranos…was based on the 'bust out' idea. A guy got into debt...

In less than a month, Alabama voters will decide whether to send to the United States Senate a man accused of abusing and romantically pursuing teenage girls. If Roy Moore wins, it will mean his constituents either don’t believe or don’t care about the woman who says Moore assaulted her when she was 16, or the woman who says Moore kissed and touched her when she was 14, or the women who say Moore kept approaching them at the mall when they were teenagers. And a Moore victory will set the standard that someone who is the subject of multiple...

The Satanic Temple might be the religion for 2017. On a quiet New England street, just steps from a yoga studio, a giant wicker sculpture of Baphomet — a demonic entity often associated with Satan — looked down on passersby. The statue is perched upon a historic colonial-style house, filled with occult and diabolical-themed art. And that house is the national headquarters of The Satanic Temple, a national organization that’s equal parts performance art group, leftist activist organization, and anti-religion religious movement. The house, which opened to the public in 2016, doubles as an art gallery. Each room is filled...

With the revelation yesterday in the Washington Post that the Hillary Clinton campaign and the DNC paid for the research that resulted in the infamous Steele (aka "Golden Showers") dossier that contained allegations of supposed ties between Donald Trump's campaign and the Kremlin, it will be interesting to see what the reaction will be from liberal media outlets. In the case of Vox, we didn't have to wait very long. Just a little over an hour after the October 24 Washington Post report, Andrew Prokop of Vox had already decided that Hillary Clinton has become toxic and has thrown her under...

Liberals are getting crushed by the right’s agitprop, and Verrit will not save them. Democrats, and the center-left more broadly, are obsessed with numbers games. They are animated more than anything by facts, by a consensus reached among themselves that they possess an exclusive monopoly on empirical reason. They blurt out facts and stats among one another, devoid of any context but the conviction that if God is not on their side, then reason is, and so long as that’s the case they’re bound to win. It is no surprise, then, that when the world’s most thankless Clinton hype man,...

If someone with a psych degree can add a new term to the list of disorders, I’d be much obliged. Let’s call it “Virtual Empathy Overload Syndrome” and define it as “Someone who can’t read another hot take and/or virtue signaling attempt, be it in the form of a solidarity avatar, hashtag, or asinine essay from mush-minded twits desperate for strangers to know Just How Much They Care(TM).” Because I’m suffering from it and need some kind of pill. Or a special bathroom. That’s how it works, right? Bake me a cake or I’ll sue. Not helping is Vox’s latest...

When Donald Trump used the phrase “alt-left” to describe the anti-neo-Nazi protesters in Charlottesville last week, most people had no idea what he meant. I’m actually not sure he knew what he meant. “What about the alt-left that came charging at the, as you say, the ‘alt-right’? Do they have any assemblage of guilt?” Trump said during a rambling press conference. If the alt-left exists, it’s probably best represented by “antifa” (short for “anti-fascist”) — a loose network of left-wing activists who physically resist people they consider fascists. These are often the scruffy, bandana-clad people who show up at alt-right...

"Kim Jong-un blinked and backed off some of his threats. So is it possible that some of the President’s amped up rhetoric worked?" That was John Berman today at CNN's Newsroom blurting out that perhaps President Donald Trump should get credit for North Korea backing down on its threat to hit Guam with a missile. Unfortunately for Berman, he broke an important taboo among the left that Trump should never be given credit for any positive achievements.So how to explain that North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un apparently blinked? Well, Vox has come up with a highly creative, if laughable, solution. The...

Special Counsel Robert Mueller is leading one of the biggest witch hunts in American political history. According to a new report by VOX, the witch hunt just got worse, as Mueller has notified former FBI Head James Comey and former Acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe that they should be prepared to testify against President Trump. VOX reports: Shortly after the appointment of special counsel Robert Mueller in May, Acting Director of the FBI Andrew McCabe told several of the highest-ranking managers of the bureau they should consider themselves possible witnesses in any investigation into whether President Donald Trump engaged in...