Free Republic

Fifty years ago, on Sept. 7, 1964, a political ad called “Daisy” aired on behalf of President Lyndon Johnson. The commercial opened with a little girl in a meadow, then a horrific nuclear blast filled the screen. We’ve been feeling the fallout ever since. It was only a minute long. The paid ad ran on national television only once, and only on one network, NBC. But that’s all it took.

James Vanderbilt's Truth, the high-profile movie chronicling the scandal that derailed Dan Rather's career, has gotten the greenlight to begin shooting this fall. Brett Ratner's RatPac Entertainment and Echo Lake Entertainment will finance the movie, starring Robert Redford as the iconic news anchor and Cate Blanchett as Mary Mapes, Rather's producer. At the same time, FilmNation has come aboard to represent international rights and will pre-sell the project to foreign buyers at the Toronto Film Festival, which kicks off Thursday night (based on the cast, it's sure to whet appetites). Mythology Entertainment is the driving force behind Truth, which was...

How many nine-year-old Antonio's need to die in Chicago before the national media will park its satellite trucks in front of Mayor Rahm Emanuel's City Hall and demand answers and action. How many black people, including black children, need to die in Chicago before the national media stops counting civilian casualties in Gaza as a political weapon against Israel and starts counting them in one of our own cities. Overnight in Chicago 10 people were shot. One night. One. How many more until the national media cares enough to look into the root causes of the violence, poverty, despair, terrible...

Huff Post’s Ryan Reilly recently had problems telling the difference between earplugs and rubber bullets. He also has long struggled with telling the difference between fact and fiction. Reilly was recently arrested covering the mob violence in Ferguson, Missouri. He described the loss of his cell phone and communication devices incident to his arrest as “dehumanizing,” which gives you a sense of his priorities I suppose. But Reilly’s clownish debut on the national stage isn’t news to anyone who has followed his checkered history as a “reporter.” Reilly formerly worked for a privately owned website that served as a Department...

In 2003, my Atlantic colleague James Fallows performed a huge public service. He painstakingly reviewed the evidence and concluded that perhaps the single most iconic anti-Israel image did not in fact document an Israeli action at all. Muhamed al-Dura was, we were told, the name of a 12-year-old Palestinian boy shot dead by Israeli soldiers, as he crouched against a concrete wall beside his helpless father. This image still defines the conflict for millions in the Muslim world. It was cited by Osama bin Laden as justification for his crimes. However, and having examined the evidence, Fallows concluded: It now...

And why reporters won’t talk about it. The idea that one of Hamas’ main command bunkers is located beneath Shifa Hospital in Gaza City is one of the worst-kept secrets of the Gaza war. So why aren’t reporters in Gaza ferreting it out? The precise location of a large underground bunker equipped with sophisticated communications equipment and housing some part of the leadership of a major terrorist organization beneath a major hospital would seem to qualify as a world-class scoop—the kind that might merit a Pulitzer, or at least a Polk. So why isn’t the fact that Hamas uses Shifa...

In response to a report that the Facebook group "Death to Israel and the Zionists" is offensive, Facebook has declared that it "doesn't violate our Community Standards." Similarly, the also declared that the group "DEATH TO ZIONISTS" was also found not to violate Facebook's standards. Here are the declarations from Facebook reporting on their decision: And: Death to Zionists' page wrote on the first day of their group’s creation, “Army of Mohammed has started to return.” ...And, of course, the group "Death to the Jews" is still up on Facebook.

On Thursday, with PJ Media's J. Christian Adams as her guest, Fox News's Megyn Kelly recited a list of assertions (under oath, she reminded us) made by Internal Revenue Service officials which have later been shown to be lies or cause for agency flip-flops after "new" facts have been revealed. It's a significant list. By implication, it's an indictment of the vast majority of the establishment press, which has refused to give the IRS scandal the attention it deserves. Video and a transcript follow the jump. ... The establishment press has been almost completely uninterested in telling their readers, listeners,...

Both ABC World News with Diane Sawyer and NBC Nightly News failed to mention a new, troubling report from the Census Bureau on Thursday night that sales of new homes decreased by 8.1% in June and that May’s originally reported double-digit increase was revised lower, from almost 19% to only 8%. The CBS Evening News did cover this story, but it only was in the form of a 12-second news brief from anchor Scott Pelley. Pelley grimly reported that: “Today's report on the housing market is raising concerns about the economic recovery. Sales of new homes dropped sharply last month,...

When I interviewed The Daily Show’s Jon Stewart two years ago for a documentary I co-directed, The Muslims Are Coming!, one of the questions I posed to the talk show host was: Do you think your show has had an impact on issues? Surprisingly, Stewart responded “no.” At first, my co-director, Negin Farsad, and I thought Stewart was being unduly modest. But he was actually being sincere. Stewart went on to list issues he had railed against for years—such as media sensationalism—and noted that nothing tangible had changed despite his best efforts. But if that question were put to Stewart...

Predictably, the nation’s mainstream media has launched a sob campaign publishing stories and airing broadcasts illustrating the industry’s support and compassion for the barrage of illegal immigrant minors that have entered the U.S. recently. Of particular note is a lengthy piece published this week in the capital-area’s mainstream newspaper, the Washington Post. It sympathetically tells the story of an illegal immigrant from Honduras who grew up dirt-poor (a child servant who sold tortillas on the streets) and has lived for a decade in the Washington D.C. area. The woman, Allis Godoy, abandoned her children in Honduras when she came to...

Wow. A reputable poll shows that the public believes Barack Obama is the worst president since World War II. Worse than Richard M. Nixon, driven from the presidency by Watergate? Much. Worse than Jimmy Carter, for decades the very symbol of the feckless chief executive? Loads. Worse than George W. Bush, still a lightning rod on the left and a symbol of disappointment on the right? Definitely. These startling poll results set loose the predictable reaction: A flurry of told-you-so nods on the right and a fusillade of this-tells-us-nothing assertions on the left. For once, they're both right. Obama is...

In what appears to be an act of leftist self-defense, an unbylined story at the Associated Press, aka the Administration's Press, describes certain Colorado Democratic politicians' crticisms of former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg over recent "off-base remarks about two of its cities," but noted no reactions from Republicans — who are genuinely outraged, as opposed to arguably trying to cover their political tracks. ... Bloomberg told Simon Vozick-Levinson that in recent recall elections in the Centennial State, "The NRA went after two or three state Senators in a part of Colorado where I don't think there's roads. It's...

MSNBC host Chuck Todd assembled a panel of liberal-media veterans on his morning show "The Daily Rundown" Monday and joked that the assembled heavyweights presented "a nightmare scenario for Brent Bozell." But what these journalists proceeded to issue was a devastating indictment of the Obama presidency and a real nightmare for this president. Carolyn Ryan, the Washington bureau chief of The New York Times, brought up "the national funk we're in, the sort of national malaise." The word "malaise" is never a good word to be around if you're the president. But for President Barack Obama, who is now...

SANFORD -- Judge Debra Nelson has ruled in favor of NBC in a defamation lawsuit filed by George Zimmerman. Zimmerman filed the lawsuit in December 2012, saying NBC aired an edited version of the call he made to 911 right before his confrontation with 17-year-old Trayvon Martin. SNIPPDF file of judge's ruling.

Why The Palestinians Have Better PR Than IsraelBy Joel Leyden Israel News AgencyJerusalem --- June 28, 2014 ... If you asked me this question a year ago or ten years ago, my knee jerk response would be money. The Palestinians and the Arab world have oil dollars, millions of them to make us look bad while slamming our towns and cities with rockets and missiles. But the real answer is actually two fold. Yes, money is one part. But we also have access to money. The Palestinians (when I say the Palestinians it means the Arab world) are more creative...

Various statements and events defy the claim of a ‘universal consensus’ on ‘harmful’ climate change. “Have you noticed that the nature of the crisis du jour may change, but the solutions always involve higher taxes and more power for the political class?” ... There’s a reason some global warming enthusiasts demand that the media refuse to print or broadcast skeptical views. Polls show Americans continually rank “climate change” near the bottom of lists of important issues. Apparently, “global warming is harmful because shut up” is the only argument many activists have left. And there’s a reason the Environmental Protection Agency...

Yahoo MUST be exposed for their vicious bias.

mainstream media reporter Glenn Thrush revealed that a former editor of his at Newsday in 2008 delayed and buried his story on Hillary Clinton's defense of a child rapist because "it might have an impact." When Thrush wrote the story on February 24, 2008, Clinton was battling Barack Obama for the Democratic presidential nomination. The more things change, the more they stay the same. ... Newsweek had killed the story to protect its ally Clinton in the White House. ... Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, who has pioneered the use of social media to further level the playing field, said,...

Public confidence in television news is at an all-time low, according to a survey released today by Gallup. ... only 10 percent said they had “a great deal” of confidence in T.V. news, and 8 percent said they had “quite a lot” of confidence.