Free Republic

Although I'm extremely excited for the 2016 election even without having a particular GOP candidate in mind as my hoped-for annihilator of Hillary Rodham, Rand Paul really ticked me off this week. I mean REALLY ticked me off. It looks like he is not going to play ball with the press. And that's a huge mistake. So what happened? He tussled with Savannah Guthrie, the 'Today' host, over her editorializing rather than simply questioning him. She was pressing him on whether or not he'd changed opinions on foreign aid to Israel and he not only objected to her talking over...

The Republican-led House passed budget resolutions every year since taking control in the 2010 midterms, while Senate Democrats under Harry Reid refused to pass any at all for four years. After less than 24 hours, though, a Republican “failure” to come up with an agreement between the House and the Senate is not just “cataclysmic” already, but proof that the GOP can’t handle the “basic functions of governing.” Republicans handled it for four years while Democrats failed to perform the basic function of legislating, but somehow that didn’t get seen as “cataclysmic” for them at Politico. Maybe Politico’s analysts could...

Several months ago, your GetReligionistas created our "What is this?" logo to salute a question that we have found ourselves asking over and over during the past decade. Here's the deal. So you are reading something in a newspaper or online source that is supposed to be producing old-school hard news. Then you hit a passage or two that, simply stated, are wildly opinionated or built on what appears to be secret information, without a source that is shared with readers. In other words, you hit a patch of blatant opinion in the middle of a "news" article, like a...

MRC's Dan Gainor alerted us that Ben Smith of the Daily Signal tweeted out a shocking visual: the New York Times front page on Sunday cropped George W. and Laura Bush out of its photo of a Selma anniversary march. They cropped it just to include President Obama. (Notice the Bushes didn't try to crowd right next to the president to get into the frame.) And a fuller shot: The online story by Peter Baker and Richard Fausset doesn't have column-inch limitations, but its photo, too, excludes the Bushes. http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/08/us/obama-in-selma-for-edmund-pettus-bridge-attack-anniversary.html?_r=0

The 50th Anniversary of the Bloody Sunday march was held in Selma, Alabama on Saturday. The New York Times cropped out the George and Laura Bush. Discrimination still exists in America. MRC reported:

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, a prospective Republican presidential contender, said Saturday he does not know whether President Obama is a Christian. “I don’t know,” Walker said in an interview at the JW Marriott hotel in Washington, where he was attending the winter meeting of the National Governors Association. Told that Obama has frequently spoken publicly about his Christian faith, Walker maintained that he was not aware of the president’s religion. “I’ve actually never talked about it or I haven’t read about that,” Walker said, his voice calm and firm. “I’ve never asked him that,” he added. “You’ve asked me to...

How in the world did NBC News let its biggest star and face of its division run around America for more than ten years telling stolen valor lies, lie-lies, whoppers, white lies, exaggerations, and — if you want to be charitable — embellishments. Brian Williams didn’t just spew bald-faced lies from David Letterman’s couch. He lied repeatedly on the air at NBC News and its affiliates. He lied to NBC News legend Tim Russert. Stories Williams’ shared with NBC’s own Tom Brokaw both on the air and at Columbia Journalism school are now disputed. Things told to other reporters don’t...

there are a lot of Brian Williams fabrications. Like, a lot. And yesterday’s suspension of the anchor over revelations that he exaggerated stories from the Iraq War allegedly stemmed from a larger internal investigation at NBC, with enough findings to compile a full dossier and enough allegations to prompt an overview of his expense accounts. ... sources at NBC say that Williams’ history of stretching the truth was well-known, and NBC execs had tried to curb his habits for the past decade: ... NBC was also investigating his expense accounts for reasons unknown

Brian Williams is stepping away from NBC Nightly News for several days. The anchor sent a note to the show's staff, announcing that Lester Holt is replacing him this week. The news comes as the anchor is embroiled in a scandal surrounding his story about being a passenger in a helicopter that took fire in the Iraq War. Williams' message can be seen, below. "In the midst of a career spent covering and consuming news, it has become painfully apparent to me that I am presently too much a part of the news, due to my actions. "As Managing Editor...

ABC honcho’s ‘secret task force’ to investigate Brian Williams as NBC probes Iraq helicopter attack tale: sources Ben Sherwood, the president of Disney-ABC Television Group, has put together the task force to see if the ‘NBC Nightly News’ anchor has told any other tall tales, sources told The Daily News on Friday. ABC officials denied that such a task force exists. Meanwhile, Richard Esposito, who leads the Peacock Network’s investigative unit, has been assigned to look into Williams for lying about dodging danger while reporting in Iraq, sources said. The head of NBC’s investigative unit is breathing down Brian Williams’...

One of the reasons that Romney lost is that he failed to take on the media. The ultimate lost opportunity came when CNN’s debate moderator Candy Crowley directly inserted herself into the argument between Obama and Romney to declare her favorite right and Romney wrong. Romney had won the Republican primaries, but had failed to absorb the lesson of his most tenacious opponent. Newt Gingrich did not treat the media as a neutral moderator, but as a debate opponent, challenging its premises and agendas. And so Romney was left unprepared for Crowley’s attack. On the road to 2016, the latest...

CNN reports there is “widespread shock and disbelief” at NBC over the lies and explanation by NBC Nightly News anchor Brian Williams over his now infamous military helicopter ride in Iraq in 2003.“An NBC News spokeswoman said Thursday that the network stood by Williams’ apology and had nothing further to say. “But others within the news division, granted anonymity to speak freely about the situation, said there was widespread shock and disbelief about Williams’ foggy-memory explanation. One correspondent called it “unreal.”” CNN also reported NBC war correspondents and producers are “particularly perturbed” with Williams and question whether he will be...

If credibility means anything to NBC News, Brian Williams will no longer be managing editor and anchor of the evening newscast by the end of the day Friday. The admission from Williams Wednesday that he lied about being in a Chinook helicopter that was hit by enemy fire during the invasion of Iraq in 2003 is astonishing. And he only admitted the lie after being confronted with it by the military publication, "Stars and Stripes," which has a well-documented report and timeline showing his shifting version of events over the years. SNIP Really, if this was 10 or 15 years...

MSNBC registered its lowest full-day rating in nearly a decade on Tuesday, a devastatingly low benchmark that shows just how severe the network's decline has become. The liberal cable news network drew an average of 55,000 viewers in the all-important 25-to-54 year-old demo on Tuesday, its lowest full-day rating since July 2005, according to Nielsen ratings provided by an industry source. CNN had nearly three times as many viewers in the demo; Fox News nearly five times as many. That low reflects a more general decline in recent years.

NBC Nightly News anchor Brian Williams admitted Wednesday he was not aboard a helicopter hit and forced down by RPG fire during the invasion of Iraq in 2003, a false claim that has been repeated by the network for years. Williams himself repeated the claim Friday during NBC’s coverage of a public tribute at a New York Rangers hockey game for a retired soldier that had provided ground security for the grounded helicopters. In an interview with Stars and Stripes, he said he had misremembered the events and was sorry. The admission came after crew members on the 159th Aviation...

With its ratings at an all-time low and its journalistic ethics almost constantly under fire, left-wing CNN is once again conceding it can no longer compete as a serious news organization with the revelation Wednesday that the production of a game show is under way. Rumors surfaced in December that CNN chief Jeff Zucker might go this way. TV Newser confirmed the humiliating news today. ... 2014 might have been the worst year for CNN of any news outlet in recent memory. We’re only 21 days into the new year, but 2015 is already shaping up to be worse.

The Associated Press is among the numerous news outlets that have been self-censoring images of the Charlie Hebdo cartoons that may have provoked Wednesday's deadly Paris attack. In a statement, the news organization said that such censorship is standard policy: None of the images distributed by AP showed cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad. It’s been our policy for years that we refrain from moving deliberately provocative images. The conservative Washington Examiner publication then pointed out that the AP nonetheless continued to carry an image of Andres Serrano's 1987 "Piss Christ" photograph—which is certainly provocative, having been the subject of massive...

How bad was 2014 for MSNBC? So bad, the left-wing cable news network lost the 2014 ratings war to CNN. Yes, that CNN. According to Deadline, MSNBC is hemorrhaging viewers, especially in the all-important news demo (viewers aged 25-54): ... For the 13th consecutive year, Fox News annihilated its left-wing counterparts at CNN and MSNBC. In total viewers, Fox beat MSNBC and CNN combined.

Attkisson contended that while it’s beneficial to ask questions about events such as Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, which disappeared earlier this year, and the missing AirAsia plane, news networks often devote a lot of coverage to such mysteries to avoid covering controversial stories. .... There are some gatekeepers occasionally who look for excuses if there are controversies that they don’t agree with or they don’t want to cover,” Attkisson

Some of us, who are old enough to remember the old television police series "Dragnet," may remember Sgt. Joe Friday saying, "Just the facts, ma'am." But that would be completely out of place today. Facts are becoming obsolete, as recent events have demonstrated. What matters today is how well you can concoct a story that fits people's preconceptions and arouses their emotions. Politicians like New York mayor Bill de Blasio, professional demagogues like Al Sharpton and innumerable irresponsible people in the media have shown that they have great talent in promoting a lynch mob atmosphere toward the police. Grand juries...