Free Republic

On Friday's "Good Morning America," ABC reporter David Wright narrated a sympathetic look at Barack Obama's decision not to wear an American flag lapel pin and asserted that this country's "obsession with flag pins is relatively new." To further defend the Democratic presidential candidate, Wright pointedly noted that liberal bogeyman Richard Nixon wore such a pin. He observed, "Ike didn't wear one. JFK either. Nixon did wear the flag as he told the American people he had nothing to do with Watergate." Of course, Wright himself was not wearing a pin with the U.S. flag on it. As the MRC...

On Friday's "Good Morning America," reporter Claire Shipman fretted over the fact that local governments are aggressively fighting illegal immigration. An ABC graphic worried, "Crackdown on Illegal Immigrants: Have Communities Gone Too Far?" Discussing the efforts by a Texas town to stop the influx of illegals, Shipman claimed, "...Neighbors suddenly find they can't help themselves. The immigration debate exploding without the niceties." She also lamented the tone of the debate, saying that since the defeat of the Senate immigration bill, "...What had once been a lofty political debate has now become a gritty, explosive reality." At no point did it...

So much for that Code of Ethics promoted by the Society of Professional Journalists. The group undermined its own code by holding an entirely eco-friendly session on climate change. Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) told a group at the 2007 Washington, D.C., conference on October 4 one of the things that made the SPJ great is its Code of Ethics. But the code didn't come into play during the hour-long October 5 program at the convention entitled "Climate Change Affects Every Beat." The event had three panelists: Larry Evans, managing editor of Daily Environmental Report; Judi Greenwald, director of innovative solutions...

The Washington Post's Fredrick Kunkle let a leftist group skate away with the bland "nonprofit group" tag. The group, the Boston-based World Against Toys Causing Harm (WATCH) named Heelys -- a pair of sneakers with small wheels recessed into the heel -- the worst toy of 2006. But a review of WATCH's Web site reveals that the group is headed by a trial attorney who boasts of raking in "record-setting settlements and jury verdicts throughout the country." Oh, and they don't like toy laser guns, although they, you know, don't actually shoot real lasers:

NBC Today co-host Meredith Vieira opened her Today at the Pump segment cheering the recent decrease in gas prices as "sweet relief" but then wondered: "Would we be better off...if gas prices were even higher?" On this morning's Today show, Vieira invited on Chevron’s CEO, David O’Reilly, to harass him about getting America off its "dependence" on oil and cited critics of Chevron’s allocation of profits to find alternative sources of energy as merely, "symbolic."

An Eco-System Runs Through It" trumpets the June 19 front page headline in the San Antonio Express-News. The Anastasia Ustinova story manages to combine two liberal positions together in the guise of protecting the environment, as the sub-head tells readers that "Fencing threatens critters - and eco system." The story goes on to note that the fence "would cut large swaths through sensitive habitat and harm rare or threatened species." The story reads like liberal environmental literature and even has time to push a non-green liberal cause: preventing border fencing. Yet once again the left gets confused about the difference...

On her blog, CBS anchor Katie Couric is once again offering her love and kisses to Jimmy Carter. In a "Katie Couric's Notebook" video (which airs on some CBS affiliates as an Evening News promo), Couric used the occasion of Carter being awarded an honorary doctorate of civil law from Oxford to demand of viewers that "you have to respect him for sticking to his principles." Tell that to President Bush. She began by citing another Carter cheerleader:

For the second day, The Washington Post rounded up hostile global opinion toward America’s gun culture in a Molly Moore story headlined "Va. Killings Widely Seen as Reflecting a Violent Society: World Reaction Mixes Condolences With Criticism of Policies." But Moore’s article turned unintentionally comic when she quoted an Iraqi praising the gun-control policies of....Saddam Hussein. "But America has terrorism and they are exporting it to us. We did not have this violence in the Saddam era because the law was so tough on guns." Perhaps it’s not surprising for a liberal newspaper to use a terrible mass shooting as...

For today's lesson in bias by labeling, class, turn to today's "Annapolis Notebook" in the March 28 Washington Post. It's there that reporter Lisa Rein skewed her portrayal of a debate over tuition for illegal aliens in favor of the liberal Democrats in the Maryland General Assembly, with everything from watering down the label "illegal immigrant" to painting Republicans as angry partisans and Democrats as righteously angry protecters of the underprivileged. While the headline reads: "House Heats Up Over Bill to Give Illegal Immigrants In-State Tuition," Rein herself chooses the term "undocumented immigrants," even though, well, they apparently must have...

Yesterday's indictment of former Reagan budget director David Stockman was cause enough for the Washington Post's Jeffrey Birnbaum to use Stockman's personal ethical and possibly criminal lapses in the private sector as a way to lodge liberal attacks on the Reagan tax cuts. But that was just the beginning for Birnbaum, who, in a Washington Post chat later that day, said that "without question, the Reagan tax cuts went too far." Four paragraphs into his March 27 Business section story, Birnbaum found a Stockman critic to assail the Reagan fiscal policy that Stockman defended in the late president's first term....

Who says the long sound bite is dead? According to an MRC analysis, "Good Morning America" devoted over 26 minutes of its two hour time slot on Monday to a fawning town hall meeting with Senator Hillary Clinton. Even more incredible is the fact that GMA host and event moderator Robin Roberts allowed Clinton to talk uninterrupted or unchallenged for almost 18 of those 26 minutes. During some of these long soliquies, the former First Lady repeatedly plugged her campaign website. ABC promises that future town hall meetings will include other presidential candidates, including, one assumes, Republicans. Will Mitt Romney...

CNN anchor Don Lemon just couldn’t resist editorializing over liberal Senator Barbara Boxer’s slam against a conservative Senator, James Inhofe. During the cable program "CNN Newsroom," anchors Lemon and Briana Keiler played a contentious exchange between the Democratic Senator and her Republican colleague in which Boxer chastised Inhofe for interrupting former Vice President Al Gore’s global warming testimony. After the clip, this exchange followed: Video clip: Real (1.62 MB) or Windows (1.84 MB) plus MP3 (281 KB) Brianna Keiler: " Wow. All right. That was quite an exchange. And, you know, we were expecting something from Senator James Inhofe. He...

In time for the Persian New Year, CBS's Melissa McNamara trawled the blogosphere (including MySpace blog entries) and found bloggers who think Iran's Islamic extremist government has a point about "300" being "anti-Persian." In doing she, she produced a handful of blogs that appear to generate light traffic and in at least one case is just a rambling screed. McNamara told readers that the "Islamic Republic News Agency" (IRNA) finds fault with the film's version of historical events. She left out that IRNA is Iran's official state-controlled news/propaganda service. CBSNews.com's resident "Blogophile" also noted objections from an Iranian newspaper, Hamshahri,...

Call Tom Cruise and pass out the vitamins because conservatives are officially sad. It seems “Time” magazine is trying to top last week’s “Verdict on Cheney” cover that photoshopped storm clouds over the lightning-rod vice president. The cover for the March 26 issue shows a close-up headshot of the late Ronald Reagan who appears to have a single tear on his cheek, ala Iron Eyes Cody. The “photo illustration” is accompanied by the caption, “How The Right Went Wrong,” referring to “these gloomy and uncertain days” for conservatives. Both images are hoaxes. Iron Eyes Cody was featured in one of...

Newsweek's Eleanor Clift on Friday morning complained, as many liberals have this week, that Attorney General Alberto Gonzales has drained all the independence out of his office, that he's acting too much like the president's "personal lawyer." In 1993, when Janet Reno announced the mass dismissal of all 93 U.S. Attorneys, no one demanded her resignation for her lack of independence from the White House. In fact, it could be because someone else was coordinating with the White House on how to run the Justice Department, the felonious one-man Webster Hubbell. At that time, the Wall Street Journal editorial page...

On Thursday’s "Good Morning America," anchor Chris Cuomo and reporter Brian Ross discussed the recent report that terrorist mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammad admitted to planning 9/11 and other major attacks. However, Cuomo and Ross spent much of the segment fretting over the interrogation techniques used by the U.S. And Mr. Ross chose to recount an oddly sympathetic quote by the terrorist, noting that Mr. Mohammad said, "he was sorry that 3000 people were killed in the 9/11 attacks, but, quote, ‘I don’t like to kill children and the kids.’" One would think that such an absurd comment would at least...

On the March 14 edition of "Imus in the Morning" guest and "60 Minutes" commentator Andy Rooney discussed the possibility of a draft with Don Imus. In that exchange Rooney, like Senator Kerry and Congressman Rangel, implied that those who volunteer to serve do so out of desperation rather than patriotism. DON IMUS: Tell me about your thoughts on re-instituting the draft. ANDY ROONEY: Well, I think a draft produces a better army than the one we would have with all volunteers. Because I think you get average Americans if you, if you have a draft. And if it’s an...

Five days ago, Diane Sawyer promised viewers they could wake up to ABC’s morning program to find her and her colleagues “taking your case” to insurance companies “and getting answers” about unresolved Hurricane Katrina claims. Yet on the February 20 show, when the answers weren’t to her liking, Sawyer’s colleague Robin Roberts presented a Democratic congressman attacking the industry as a champion of homeowners, and only mentioned her own compromising emotional connection to the story at the end of her report. “And full disclosure here, to be fair, you are understanding [sic] that my family was very much affected by...

As Manhattan enjoyed an unseasonable 72-degree winter day on January 6, news media quickly claimed that the weather inspired fears of “the end of the world.” But as the thermometer dipped into extreme cold, the rhetoric of human-caused global warming has not cooled off. “Do people here [South Beach, Fla.] know that very likely in the next – well several decades – all of this is going to be underwater?” asked CBS “Early Show” anchor Harry Smith during an interview with author Carl Hiaasen. Smith injected the topic of global warming into his interview about the appeal of Miami on...

A CNN reporter who moonlights as a marriage “Proposal Guru” and women’s magazine columnist used a February 5 report on the cost of the war in Iraq to lament the billions on war spending that prevent the Bush administration from being wed to liberal solutions for energy, health care and education. Joshua Levs appeared on the February 5 “CNN Newsroom” to put “into perspective” the additional $245 billion President Bush is requesting for military commitments in Iraq and Afghanistan. The cost of war has “added up to $400 billion so far,” Levs began his report, citing the Iraq Study Group...