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A revolution is sweeping the American media that will eventually spread to this part of the world. What is happening is that for the first time in decades, if not ever, the power of the mainstream media (MSM) in the United States is being seriously challenged by a mostly ragtag army of outsiders armed with little more than the internet. The age of the blogger is upon us. A blogger is someone who keeps a web-log, updated on an almost daily basis. They offer blow-by-blow commentary on current events. They can do so at almost no cost and their sites...

The first few columns I wrote as a burgeoning political commentator were mainly on the subject of media bias. Even after writing 4 separate articles on the subject, I was still not prepared for what has been revealed about the Bush National Guard memos, as reported on by Dan Rather on CBS’s 60 Minutes II last week. Not 24 hours after Dan Rather reported these memos, questions began to arise regarding the authenticity of these supposed National Guard file documents. The first implications that the documents were probably not written when and by whom the 60 Minutes II piece indicated,...

John Kerry's been having a rough go of it lately. No post-convention bounce. The Swiftees continue to pound Kerry with his own words and deeds. Unfit for Command has been the number one bestseller at Amazon.com for over a month. Pundits cite Kerry's abysmal Senate record and skewer him as a "girlie-man." A campaign shakeup has advisers divided over how best to blame Bush for inflicting Charley, Frances and Ivan upon the hapless voters of Florida. And we won't even mention what America's 1.2 million Vietnamese immigrants are saying, seeing as they're mainly refugees from the Communist slaughter Kerry helped...

Sept. 9, 2004, will be remembered as a paradigm-shifting day in media history. That was the day the "blogosphere" took down CBS News. ....But if the bloggers have power, it's because they form a robust intellectual marketplace, in which assertions must prove themselves before a jury of cyber-peers. In the words of James T. Smith, of critical-thinker.blogspot.com, "The blogosphere is the people." To be sure, the marketplace can make mistakes, but on the whole, like democracy itself, the more folks participating, the better the functioning. But this democratization of the media is bad news - for those who liked it...

Retired Capt. Larry Bailey of Vietnam Vets for the Truth speaks at the "John Kerry Lied" rally at Upper Senate Park, September 12, 2004. Dan Rather's defense of his network's reporting on Friday night was so shoddy, it must be reviewed in slow motion to truly appreciate the attempts at spin and evasion. Let us go to the Nexis transcript (my comments are in italics): RATHER, anchor: There were attacks today on the CBS News 60 Minutes report this week, raising questions about President Bush's Vietnam era time in the Texas Air National Guard. The questions included in our report...

"Liberal" media? Hogwash, liberal media-ites routinely retort. Then, in typical fashion, they continually affirm the tag. Take, for instance, the reportage involving the military service of George W. Bush and John Kerry. "If there were any lingering doubts about whether network reporters are in the tank for John Kerry, Wednesday's newscasts put them to rest," conclude Brent Baker and Rich Noyes of the Media Research Center. To wit, the MRC found that, from May to August, the networks "ignored or disparaged charges" against Mr. Kerry by the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. But last week, ABC, CBS, CNN and NBC...

Accepted wisdom says today's political conventions have become little more than gargantuan, glitzy commercials for each party, good mostly for showcasing each group's rhetoric and alerting inattentive potential voters to the home stretch of the presidential campaign. And for proof, viewers need look no further than TV coverage of both the Democratic and Republican national conventions. Even big-name broadcasters seemed to give up during the Republican gathering last week, with soon-to-retire NBC anchor Tom Brokaw lamenting the stage-managed nature of the proceedings. With just three hours in prime time devoted to the event, Brokaw and his network news colleagues were...

Our media jihadis By Bret Stephens | Jerusalem Post Online Edition | Oct 4, 2003 So here's the question of the week, month, year: After Iraq, will the media ever again allow a democracy to topple a fascist dictatorship? The question isn't mine but John Reid's. On March 31 at nine o'clock in the morning, the Labour Party Chairman was in 10 Downing Street watching the TV news. On screen were pictures of "distressed Iraqi civilians and dead allied soldiers." Reid became incensed. "The broadcasters are in Iraq not because they want to tell the truth, but because of commercial...

While researching articles on our country's fallen heroes, I came across one article, originally published in the New York Times by one of their own reporters. But I then found that same article, picked up and published in other media outlets carried a slightly different title. Here is the NYT link Doubt and Death on the Drive to Baghdad, (archived, now), and first paragraph of the article. Doubt and Death on the Drive to Baghdad By STEVEN LEE MYERS (NYT)Late Edition - Final , Section A , Page 1 , Column 1 The sandstorm lasted two days, sapping morale and...

(TRANSLATED FROM ARABIC-to-ENGLISH)"Editor of the London Arabic Daily Al-Sharq Al-Awsat Criticizes the Arab Media's War Coverage"In a series of three articles the editor-in-chief of the London-based Saudi daily Al-Sharq Al-Awsat, Abd Al-Rahman Al-Rashed, criticized the Arab media coverage of the Iraq War.(1) The following are excerpt from the articles: Title: 'Slow Down, Media of 1967'In an article under the title 'Slow Down, Media of 1967,' Al-Rashed wrote: "...The war in Iraq may last several years... and may be a lightning war... and end in 45 days. Fighting is the duty of military people, while the duty of the media is...

00:44 2003-03-07 Iraq: The Truth, The Whole Truth Dominican Sister Sharine, Iraqi, lives in Baghad. She went to the World Social Forum in Porto Alegre, Brazil, where she was heard by Pravda.Ru contacts, among them Joao Pedro Stedille, who sent us this report. We thank Senhor Stedille most sincerely for this chilling report. Viruses and mice dropped by parachute against Iraqi agriculture “One of the main causes of the hunger which afflicts the Iraqi people is the policy adopted by the USA, for more than eight years now, of sending viruses against Iraqi crops and the policy of dropping thousands...

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story2&cid=544&ncid=703&e=3&u=/ap/20030218/ap_on_go_pr_wh/bush_faith Headline:  Bush Increasing Religious Allusions Allusions?  Interesting choice of words.  No it isn't incorrect, but the editors know full well that upwards of 90% of Americans do NOT know the true meaning of the word and would interpret the headline as Bush is suffering from Religious DELUSIONS.But ... NO ... They aren't slanting the news, are they?   Look at the opening sentence: (negative sounding words) President Bush , often portrayed as using a strict good-and-evil compass tohi navigate national issues, has always peppered his speeches with exhortations to moral and civic duty. With war, tragedy and terrorism confronting him...

<p>A GROANING SHELF of evidence bears out what many people know intuitively: The American mass media suffer from a left-wing slant. The data come in a variety of forms: classic studies such as ''The Media Elite'' (first published in 1986) and William McGowan's ''Coloring the News'' (2001), insider exposes like CBS veteran Bernard Golberg's recent bestseller ''Bias,'' and a thick sheaf of industry studies and public opinion polls.</p>

US president wrecks the budget Republicans will probably keep tax cuts for the wealthy, even if it means no money for health and education By Jeffrey D. Sachs Wednesday, Jan 01, 2003,Page 9 ILLUSTRATION: MOUNTAIN PEOPLE US President George W. Bush seems poised to wreck America's budget for years to come. When Bush came into office, the outlook was for budget surpluses as far as the eye could see. Today, through a combination of irresponsible Republican-led tax cuts, a slowing economy, the bursting of the stock market bubble and a massive increase in defense spending, huge deficits dominate the fiscal...

ITEM 7. MANAGEMENT'S DISCUSSION AND ANALYSIS OF FINANCIAL CONDITION AND RESULT OF OPERATIONS OVERVIEW Salon Media Group, Inc. is an Internet media company that produces a total network of ten subject-specific, Websites, and two online communities - The Well and Table Talk. Salon was incorporated in July 1995 and launched its initial Websites in November 1995. Salon has averaged approximately 3.5-3.8 million unique visitors per month. A unique user is an individual visitor to Salon's network. Most of Salon's revenues are advertising revenues, derived from the sale of promotional space on its Websites. Services that have been offered range from...

How Easy Is It to Slant A News Report? Written by d14truth, edited by Avoiding_Sulla This question was asked and answered by our contributors, a writer and editor from FreeRepublic.com. We are reproducing it here as an educational benefit for our readers. Our contributors show us, by simply changing a few words and their slant, how easily is changed the bias. Care was taken on their part not to alter or remove any quotes that were employed by the original reporter. What were altered was some of the reporter's words and a good deal of the reporter's spin. It is...