Free Republic

If you thought there was something odd about CNN's YouTube Republican presidential debate you are correct. As it turns out, at least nine of the “undecided Republican voters” have subsequently been identified as Democrats who have taken stands in support of one or another of the current Democratic presidential candidates. CNN President Jonathan Klein was quick to defend loading the questions in this fashion. “Who better to show the unsuitability of these Republican candidates than knowledgeable Democrats?” Klein asked. “The American people deserve to see these poseurs exposed to critical scrutiny. Our only disappointment is that the revelation of the...

U.S. to Strike N.Korea Off Terror List Under 'Secret Deal' The U.S. in a closed-doors deal on Oct. 3 agreed to strike North Korea from its list of state sponsors of terrorism and suspend the Trading with the Enemy Act by year's end provided North Korea disables its nuclear facilities by then, a senior South Korean official says. The official told Korean reporters in Washington last week the Oct. 3 deal “includes a list of facilities North Korea agreed to disable. It also includes what the other five nations agreed to do, including the issues of striking North Korea from...

Media people have watched closely for indications why viewership for the evening news is dropping and readers are turning away from newspapers toward the web. Perhaps they should be looking at attitudes toward the newsgatherers themselves. Americans are increasingly distrustful of the national mass media, and that’s often divided along political party lines, according to a new Gallup poll. Only 9 percent of Americans say they have a great deal of trust in mass media, and just 38 percent say they have a fair amount of trust. While that’s roughly the same as polls in 2005 and 2004, it is...

 PARIS (AP) — The French Defence Ministry on Friday debunked the credentials of a former ABC News consultant who claimed to have worked as an adviser to the ministry, saying the man was just an intern for five months. Alexis Debat, who was fired by the TV network last year, quit a Washington think tank on Wednesday after being accused of faking an interview with Barack Obama. Previously, he had been identified in stories by a range of media, including The Associated Press, as a former French Defence Ministry official or analyst. The National Interest, an online publication he wrote...

(US News) Watching Iowa straw poll winner and would-be Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney squirm on Fox News Sunday was a bit discomfiting as the former Massachusetts governor tried to explain away his now infamous 180-degree flip-flop on abortion rights to host Chris Wallace. He essentially said (to paraphrase former Democratic presidential nominee Sen. John Kerry), "I was never really for it, but I pretended to be for it before I was against it" (meaning a woman's right to choose). Check out the transcript of the show, and decide for yourself. But dig a bit deeper, and there's an even more...

Because they don't want to defend anything or anyone. Watch the video. Jihadists vs Democratic politicians. It is worth every article you have read so far. Just compare.

A computer researcher has devised a way of tracking changes made to Wikipedia, the online encyclopaedia that anyone can edit, to expose organisations and individuals who tweak and airbrush their own entries. The sleuthing tool allows Wikipedia users to trace the source of millions of changes to entries on the popular website, even those done anonymously. So far the Wikipedia Scanner has unearthed a host of entry fiddling by organisations ranging from the CIA and the Labour Party to WalMart and the Mormon church. For example, employees of the intelligence agency have been found altering the biographical information on former...

Radio change The site also indicates that a computer owned by the US Democratic Party was used to make changes to the site of right-wing talk show host Rush Limbaugh. The changes brand Mr Limbaugh as "idiotic," a "racist", and a "bigot". An entry about his audience now reads: "Most of them are legally retarded." We really value transparency and the scanner really takes this to another level Wikipedia spokesperson The IP address is registered in the name of the Democratic National Headquarters. A spokesperson for the Democratic Party said that the changes had not been made on its computers....

BBC Forcing Employees To Take Honesty Training By Noel Sheppard | July 28, 2007 - 14:27 ET This is certainly an initiative right-thinking people around the world should welcome: in response to identifying several instances of fraudulent audience phone calls made by staffers during some of its programs, the BBC has decided to send its employees to - wait for it! - honesty training. You really can't make this stuff up! As reported by England's Telegraph Thursday (extremely grateful h/t to NBer SMGalbraith, emphasis added throughout): John Humphrys and Jeremy Paxman will be required to join Mark Thompson, the director...

LONDON, July 28 (UPI) -- British viewers' trust in the BBC has plummeted in the wake of scandals, a new survey found. Nearly 60 percent of viewers polled said they trust the corporation less than they did before two widely-publicized recent scandals, The Guardian reported Saturday. First, it was revealed that phone calls to a call-in competition were faked. Then an on-air promotion for a television special about Queen Elizabeth II was edited to give viewers the erroneous impression that the queen stormed out of a photo shoot.

BOSTON -- When former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney began airing television ads in a handful of states last winter, his opponents paid little notice. Early advertising in presidential campaigns -- particularly commercials broadcast almost 11 months before the first contests -- seemed a classic waste of resources. Four months and more than $4 million later, Romney's ads are still running, and the GOP presidential candidate is reaping the dividends. Although he remains well behind former New York mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani and Sen. John McCain of Arizona in most national polls, his standing in the states that will kick off...

As you know America is at war. But I’m not talking about the Iraq war no I’m talking about the war which many Americans think less important yet this war is much more insidiously devastating to America. This war has ripped the concept of truth right out of the soul of this nation and will be the death of this country if allowed to continue. This war is the war on credibility.

Regarding the Iraq withdrawal measures in Congress, there is no way to avoid stating the obvious, but let me allow Mark Steyn's favorite Anglosphere head of government do it for me:The US Congress' vote to push for the withdrawal of troops from Iraq was wrong and will bring comfort to Al-Qaeda insurgents, Australian Prime Minister John Howard said Friday. ..."I think it is wrong, and I don't think it is doing anything other than giving great comfort and encouragement to Al-Qaeda and the insurgency in Iraq," Howard said....If there is a perception of an America defeat in Iraq, that will...

Russia is responding to allegations Putin engineered the poisoning of former FSB Colonel Litvienko. I'm not a fan of Putin - or his regime - but the denials make more sense than the media's rush to judgment !

/begin my translation N. Korean Nuke Test: China, the Biggest Loser (German newspaper) (Berlin = Yonhap News) Song Byung-seung = China is the biggest loser from N. Korea's reckless nuclear test, according to Oct. 10 issue of German Daily, Frankfurter Algemeine Zeitung. In its editorial, the paper pointed out, if China cannot control a bankrupt 'brother nation' in its backyard, it would damage the image of China as an aspiring major power of the world. It argued that N. Korean nuclear test would make China worry about the prospect of nuclear-armed Japan. This will turn into a long-term challenge which...

Fox News journalist Steve Centanni's credibility is SHOT. He will forever be viewed as "the journalist that converted to Islam" to save his skin and then "unconverted" when he thought he was "safe", and as the "journalist" who praised the terrorists and their cause and told the west that they and Israel are the bad guys and admonished more reporters to “come to Gaza and report on the plight of the poor Palistinians”. The reality is his conversion was presented and viewed by MILLIONS of Muslims (along with the rest of us) world-wide. According to Islam, he has now become...

Amid the controversy over certain pictures from Lebanon, a longtime student of war photography asks, "I'm not sure if the craft I love is being murdered, committing suicide, or both." By David D. Perlmutter (August 18, 2006) -- The Israeli-Hezbollah war has left many dead bodies, ruined towns, and wobbling politicians in its wake, but the media historian of the future may also count as one more victim the profession of photojournalism. In twenty years of researching and teaching about the art and trade and doing photo-documentary work, I have never witnessed or heard of such a wave of attacks...

Reuters has withdrawn all photographs taken by Beirut-based freelance Adnan Hajj from its database after establishing that he had altered another image. By Julia Day. Reuters has withdrawn all photographs taken by Beirut-based freelance Adnan Hajj from its database after establishing that he had altered not one, but two, images since the start of the conflict between Israel and the Lebanon. The news agency has also instituted "a tighter editing procedure" for images of the war in the Middle East conflict after what it calls "the gravest breach" of Reuters standards. Reuters' new procedure will "ensure that no photograph from...

For once, "Wonkette" backs into the truth... I'm so proud of the professional journalism at TIME. Can't wait for Larry Flynt to become Style Guide Editor. "Ana Marie Cox, the Washington editor of Time.com, said Americans have come to distrust the mainstream media. "They're more likely to believe something that comes straight from the horse's mouth," Cox said."

While American news audiences remain polarized by ideology, a new study finds that regardless of their individual political leanings, Americans are unilateral in their increasing skepticism about the credibility of all major TV news outlets. According to the latest study from the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, fewer than a quarter of the 3,204 adults surveyed believe all or most of what they see on NBC News (23 percent), ABC News (22 percent) or CBS News (22 percent), continuing a downward trend in credibility that stretches back to the mid-1980s. For the sake of comparison, the...