Free Republic

The New York Times features reporter reprimanded by his editors for referring to first lady Melania Trump as a "hooker," took to Twitter Tuesday to out himself, take responsibility for his mistake and apologize for his "stupid" remark. "I want to take ownership of a mistake I made," Jacob Bernstein said in the first of four tweets. Bernstein, 38, is the son of legendary Watergate reporter Carl Bernstein and his second wife, the late journalist-turned-Hollywood filmmaker/screenwriter, Nora Ephron. He said his editors made it clear that this was not in keeping with Times standards, "and I agree." He concluded by apologizing "profusely."...

by Brooke Bosca | Top Right NewsTalk of a Trump "scandal" hit the Washington and New York press corps this weekend, as "bombshell" videos of President Trump's father Fred Trump "emerged" showing "racist" ads the elder Trump made during a 1969 run for Mayor of New York City. The videos were shared by The Washington Post's fact-checker, Glenn Kessler, on Twitter, and quickly spread by re-tweets by reporters from multiple publications. Here's the report describes the "ads": In 1969, Fred Trump plotted to run for mayor of New York … He made two test television commercials. One of them, called ‘Dope Man’, featured...

The Daily Beast falsely reported Sunday night that a pair of white supremacists had been identified as the perpetrators of the mass shooting at a Quebec City mosque. The rumor that white supremacists David M.J. Aurine and Mathieu Fournier were identified as the shooters appears to have been begun by a hoax Reuters account. Again, that isn’t really Reuters, but the tweet racked up over a thousand retweets. While many fell for the hoax on social media, the only outlet that reported on it was the Daily Beast. The parody account appeared to acknowledge the Daily Beast story, tweeting two...

Respected news icon Dan Rather launched a Facebook page to counter the lies and “alternative facts” from Donald Trump.

Rep. Barbara Lee (D., Calif.) accused Congressional Republicans on Tuesday of wanting women to die from “unsafe abortions” while she spoke in opposition to H.R. 7. “Madam Speaker, I rise in strong opposition to H.R. 7. This discriminatory bill would undermine a woman’s access to abortion care, which is a Constitutional right, as affirmed by Roe v. Wade, 44 years ago,” Rep. Lee said. Lee said that by Republicans making the Hyde Amendment permanent, they would be “restricting access“ to reproductive health care for millions of women, especially low-income and minority women. The Hyde Amendment prevents federal funds from being...

ABC Digital has issued an apology for mistakenly listing Amy Adams, Annette Bening and Tom Hanks briefly on the Oscar.com site as Oscar nominees following Tuesday morning’s Academy Awards announcement. “This morning, in an attempt to release breaking news as announced, ABC Digital briefly posted inaccurate nomination information on the Oscar.com website,” ABC said in a statement. “The nominees announced by the Academy on Twitter were accurate. ABC quickly identified and corrected the errors. We apologize to the Academy, press, and fans for any confusion.” Adams was inadvertently named one of the nominees for best actress for her work as...

Three Americans charged with running a private counter-terrorism operation in Afghanistan (news - web sites) are set to reappear in court to face charges they jailed and tortured eight Afghan citizens. Jonathan Idema claims that he and two other Americans and a group of Afghan employees were working with the full knowledge of US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to hunt down terrorists in Afghanistan. Both the US and Afghan governments have disavowed any ties with Idema and his two co-defendants Brent Bennett and Edward Caraballo. The case has shone a spotlight on the shadowy world of security and counter-terrorism in...

(CBS) A German resident held by the U.S. for almost five years tells 60 Minutes correspondent Scott Pelley that Americans tortured him in many ways - including hanging him from the ceiling for five days early in his captivity when he was in Kandahar, Afghanistan. Even after determining he was not a terrorist, Murat Kurnaz says the torture continued. Kurnaz tells his story for the first time on American television this Sunday, March 30, at 7 p.m. ET/PT. Kurnaz, an ethnic Turk born and raised in Germany, went to Pakistan in late 2001 at age 19 to study Islam and...

Former CBS News anchor Dan Rather is teaching an online course in journalism called “finding the truth in the news” at UDemy. Now, he’s taken to Facebook to say that the media, the American people, and the political class has to call out President Trump on his lies. No, this isn’t the Onion.“These are not normal times. These are extraordinary times. And extraordinary times call for extraordinary measures,” wrote Rather. “What can we do? We can all step up and say simply and without equivocation. "A lie, is a lie, is a lie!" And if someone won't say it, those...

In October 2015, Robert Redford played Dan Rather in the cinematic retelling of those phony 2004 memos about George W. Bush’s National Guard service during the Vietnam War. The movie was titled, paradoxically enough, Truth. Here’s now interested the public was in Rather’s Truth:

The FBI did not look over the Democratic National Committee's servers before issuing a report that Russia had hacked the organization, according to a report published Wednesday evening. Other than the FBI, no federal agency has conducted an investigation into the DNC's email server since the incident was uncovered six months ago. "The DNC had several meetings with representatives of the FBI's Cyber Division and its Washington (DC) Field Office, the Department of Justice's National Security Division, and U.S. Attorney's Offices, and it responded to a variety of requests for cooperation, but the FBI never requested access to the DNC's...

Raising eyebrows among some critics, former CBS anchor Dan Rather is now teaching an online course focused on ethics in journalism. Called “Journalism & Finding the Truth in the News” and offered through Udemy, the class is aimed at both media career aspirants and the general public.

As federal officials investigate suspicious Internet activity found last week on a Vermont utility computer, they are finding evidence that the incident is not linked to any Russian government effort to target or hack the utility, according to experts and officials close to the investigation.

It'd be pretty hard for the Russians to hack America using the computers in Fallout 4. For one, the computers in Fallout 4 are not connected to the internet: in Bethesda's alternative history, America never makes it that far into the future. Another obstacle stopping Russia from hacking America via the computers in Fallout 4 is that, no matter how you approach it, it'd simply be impossible. That hasn't stopped CNN using footage of a Fallout 4 computer in a story about Russian hacking, though. It's not a huge faux pas on the news outlet's part: it's simply used as...

The subjects of a TV documentary series about the Ku Klux Klan abruptly canceled last week by A&E allege to Variety that significant portions of what was filmed were fabricated by the producers. Some KKK leaders divulged that they were paid hundreds of dollars in cash each day of filming to compel them on camera to distort the facts of their lives to fit the documentary’s predetermined narrative: tension between Klan members and relatives of theirs who wanted to get out of the Klan. The findings are based on an exclusive Variety investigation based on interviews with over two dozen...

Once again, a hostile liberal -- this time Chris Hayes, host of the MSNBC weeknight program All In -- has shown that he is willing to go to any length to diminish President-elect Donald Trump and his family before the Republican officially moves into the White House on January 20. On Wednesday, the Politico website's Julia Ioffe complained about the fact that one of Trump's daughters -- Ivanka -- will set up an office in the White House that is usually reserved for the first lady, which led Ioffe to post on Twitter: “Either Trump is f***ing his daughter or...

Hateful notes and emails allegedly sent to a North Park University student were “fabricated,” the school’s president said Tuesday in a statement, and the woman who claimed they were aimed toward her is no longer enrolled at the school. “We are confident there is no further threat of repeated intolerance to any member of our campus community stemming from this recent incident” the university’s President David Parkyn said in a statement. The student, Taylor Volk, said on Nov. 14 she had received emails and notes taped to her door containing harassing, threatening language and mentions of President-elect Donald Trump. She...

President-elect Donald Trump exploded at media bigs in an off-the-record Trump Tower powow on Monday, sources told The Post. “It was like a f—ing firing squad,” said one source. “Trump started with Jeff Zucker and said I hate your network, everyone at CNN is a liar and you should be ashamed…. “The meeting was a total disaster. The TV execs and anchors went in there thinking they would be discussing the access they would get to the Trump administration, but instead they got a Trump-style dressing down,” the source added. A second source confirmed the encounter. “The meeting took place...

A close and — to pundits, journalists, and Democrats — unexpected victory like Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump’s is always overdetermined, and no one particular thing pushed Trump over the edge on Tuesday night. His chosen party’s lately increasing openness to explicit white nationalism, the still-recent global-scale failure of the liberal economic consensus, the apparently deep-seated misogyny and racism of the American electorate, Hillary Clinton’s multiple shortcomings as a candidate, or even the last-minute intervention of FBI director James Comey might each have been, on its own, sufficient to hand the election to a man who is, by any reckoning,...

In March, an investigation by ProPublica and Gawker revealed that a “secret spy network” that was not on the State Department payroll, run by longtime Clinton aide Sidney Blumenthal, was “funneling intelligence about the crisis in Libya directly to the Secretary of State’s private account starting before the Benghazi attack.” Now the WEEKLY STANDARD has learned that Tyler Drumheller, the former chief of the CIA’s clandestine service in Europe who was working directly with Blumenthal as a member of Clinton’s spy network, was concurrently working as a consultant to CBS News and its venerable news program 60 Minutes. According to...