Free Republic

In reporting on a Chinese company marketing condoms under the brand names Clinton and Lewinsky, USA Today notes that Clinton "was accused of having a sexual relationship with Monica Lewinsky, a former White House intern." Accused? Clinton himself ultimately admitted he "did have a relationship with Ms. Lewinsky that was not appropriate. In fact, it was wrong." Moreover, a Federal judge fined Clinton more than $90,000 for providing ""false, misleading and evasive answers" about his relationship with Lewinsky. No, Clinton was not just "accused" of intimacy with a White House intern. Simple justice requires an accurate account of what he...

Former presidents, Bush and Clinton gave a news conference today. Towards the end, as Bush and Clinton were walking off the stage, at about 10:20 am EST, I heard a female reporter shout a last question that went "how do you respond to rumors that the levees were intentionally opened ?"

As I sit watching DHS Secretary Chertoff hold a press conference, something has clarified itself that has been teasing the back of my mind for days now: The problem with the press corps, national and international, cub reporter to senior editor, is that the vast majority of them have never been responsible for something truly worthwhile in their lives. As a result, damn few of them can fathom the least complexity involved in the least element of this massive disaster relief effort that is going on, let alone fathom the vast complexity of the combined elements themselves. This is classic...

Here is the lede paragraph from a Washington Post Editorial today (3 September), entitled “Left Behind”: “THE LACK OF National Guard troops because of the war in Iraq; the Bush administration's failure to protect coastal wetlands; the reorganization of the Federal Emergency Management Agency: All have been blamed, somewhat arbitrarily, for the stunning scenes of chaos at the New Orleans Superdome and convention center, for the unprecedented floodwaters in the city, and for the huge numbers of people without food or water. But if blame is to be laid and lessons are to be drawn, one point stands out as...

Newspaper Apologizes to Bo Jackson for Reporting He Took Steroids The Associated Press Apr 10, 2005 ONTARIO, Calif. (AP) - A newspaper being sued by former pro football and baseball star Bo Jackson apologized to him Sunday and retracted part of a story saying he used steroids. "Jackson has stated publicly he has never used steroids," the Inland Valley Daily Bulletin said on its Web site. "We retract the quote and the further statement that the speaker personally witnessed this damage to his life. We apologize to Mr. Jackson, without reservation." In a story published March 24 under sports editor...

Covering a big story, live, is hard, and journalists will make mistakes. When Christiane Amanpour of CNN described John Paul II in the hours after his death as "the first non-Catholic to be elected pope in more than 455 years," she provided some much-needed levity to the day. Nobody will hold it against her. What is more problematic is the media's unconscious tendentiousness in describing the teachings of this pope and his Church. The Pope, nearly everyone said, was a complex man: He was progressive on economics, war, and the death penalty, yet took doctrinaire and divisive positions on moral...

BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) - Iraqi militants claimed in a Web statement Tuesday to have taken an American soldier hostage and threatened to behead him in 72 hours unless the Americans release Iraqi prisoners. The posting, on a Web site that frequently carried militants' statements, included a photo of what appeared to be an American soldier in desert fatigues seated with his hands tied behind his back. A gun barrel was pointed at his head, and he is seated in front of a black banner emblazoned with the Islamic profession of faith, "There is no god but God and Muhammad is...

DUBAI (Reuters) - A little-known Iraqi insurgent group said on Tuesday it was holding a U.S. soldier and threatened to kill him within 72 hours if Iraqi prisoners were not released, according to an Internet statement. "Our mujahideen ... have managed to capture the American soldier John Adam after killing a number of his colleagues," said the Mujahideen Squadrons in the undated statement. It carried a picture appearing to show a U.S. soldier sitting in front of a black banner with a rifle pointed at his head. The authenticity of the claim, which did not say where the man was...

Betsy Newmark wrote us to point out that her daughter's blog had reported on an error committed on Friday by the Washington Post: an error that resulted in this anti-administration headline: "Change Means Fewer Students Will Be Eligible For Pell Grants". The article claimed that 80,000 to 90,000 low-income students would be knocked out of the Pell program on account of new regulations issued by the Department of Education. Yesterday, the Post issued a correction. Actually, the new regulations, which are based on updated government data, will expand the number eligible for grants, even though some will become ineligible at...

MOSUL (Reuters) - U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld on Friday took a delighted dig at the media after troops he was visiting in Iraq complained their good works were ignored by the press while disasters grabbed the headlines. A soldier at his first stop in Mosul asked Rumsfeld how the "propaganda" worked? Rumsfeld, under attack since he appeared to brush aside a question about poor equipment from a U.S. soldier in Kuwait that later turned out to have been composed with help from a reporter, jumped at the opportunity to turn the tables. "That doesn't sound like a question placed...

An unfortunate byproduct of George W. Bush's political strategy is that his success has depended on moving the base of the Republican Party down into a demographic that should by all rights be Democratic. That's right, I'm talking about the moron vote. This was best illustrated by that recent incident in Fallujah in which a cameraman caught on tape the shooting of an Iraqi prisoner by a U.S. Marine. The Marine apparently presumed the Iraqi was pretending to be dead for the purpose of preparing a later ambush. Now the Marine has been removed from duty and may be court-martialed....

"America is a strange country. All of its best generals are journalists," quipped Defense Undersecretary Douglas J. Feith in the middle of an interview Thursday. Touché, as fencers say. I never served in the military, haven't been to Iraq and don't know if the criticism that the Bush administration has not put enough troops in Iraq is accurate or not -- although I pay attention when veterans who return from Iraq say as much. So I'll pass on what Feith said to me and you can decide. Columnist Thomas Friedman wrote in the New York Times Thursday that more troops...

I was just watching Wolf Blitzed on CNN yakking away about CNN's wondrous, marvelous, stupendous, scintillating, extraordinary wall-to-wall election night coverage. They even have a screen for each state! Goody! Now if they only knew what they were talking about. Wolf pointed to the Florida screen and talked about polls closing there at 8 PM Eastern time. This is the BIG mistake they made in 2000 that cost Bush who knows how many votes in the western most part of the state. In the Florida panhandle, conservative GOP country, polls are open an hour later due to time zone difference....

Let's imagine it's August 2001. And let's pretend that the Clinton Justice Department never erected the procedural war that, to borrow the words Deputy Attorney General Jamie Gorelick wrote in 1995, went "beyond what is legally required" in obstructing communications between the FBI's intelligence division and its criminal investigators. As a result, let's say the FBI connects its dots. When an intelligence agent realizes terrorists Khalid al-Midhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi (two of the eventual 9/11 hijackers) are in the country and asks the Bureau's criminal division for help in locating them, headquarters encourages a cooperative effort instead of turning him...

Reporters Aren’t Biased, Just Stupid!!! Let’s face it; most of the crop of reporters running around in the media today is Uneducated. The local beat reporters are 22-30 years old and don’t know much about history or about life. Here is my anecdotal evidence. Every time I see a reporter at an event I ask, “Where is Guadalcanal?” The most common answer, “I just moved here.” I ask “Who is Tojo?” The most common answer is a blank stare. Ok, so they don’t know World War 2 history. They don’t know Stalin, Chairman Mao or Pol Pot and they think...

A Study of Headlines Says Yes Economists have been puzzled this year by the persistence with which perceptions about the economy have lagged the economic data. For the most recent 12-month period for which we have data, for example, the economy grew almost exactly as fast as it did during the best 12-month period during President Clinton's two terms. But the economic mood of the country has been much different. It isn't just the economy that influences people's perceptions. In research we just released, we find that media coverage is also an important determinant. We found that newspaper headlines reporting...

This is a WorldNetDaily printer-friendly version of the article which follows. To view this item online, visit http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=40699 Thursday, September 30, 2004 The media that couldn't shoot straight Posted: September 30, 20041:00 a.m. Eastern By Larry Elder © 2004 Laurence A. Elder Can Americans now purchase assault weapons? If you listen to some pols and mainstream media, you probably cannot answer that question. In 1994, Congress passed and President Clinton signed a 10-year ban on so-called "assault weapons." In reality, the bill outlawed certain semiautomatic weapons with cosmetic features that made them look, well, military. The law banned the manufacture and...

CORAL GABLES, Fla. Sept. 30, 2004 — After a deluge of campaign speeches and hostile television ads, President Bush and challenger John Kerry got their chance to face each other directly Thursday night before an audience of tens of millions of voters in a high-stakes debate about terrorism, the Iraq war and the bloody aftermath. The 90-minute encounter was particularly crucial for Kerry, trailing slightly in the polls and struggling for momentum less than five weeks before the election. The Democratic candidate faced the challenge of presenting himself as a credible commander in chief after a torrent of Republican criticism...

http://www.aol.com/ Click the link and go to the area where they let you "discover" who you need to vote for. Go through the Q&A section. Towards the end it has a tricky little question about how important it is to you that a candidate has served in the military. Kerry is "yes". Bush is "no". National Guard isn't service to our country?!