Free Republic

No good deed goes unpunished . . . particularly when it comes to the liberal media, and the person performing the good deeds is a top contender to wrest the White House from Democrat grip. Example A: this Politico magazine column by Politico's "senior media writer" Jack Shafer. Don't be fooled by the benign headline: "Ron DeSantis Shows Some Good Manners." You might anticipate an article praising Florida Governor Ron DeSantis for his admirable handling of Hurricane Ian. But to the contrary, Shafer's entire thrust is to cast DeSantis in the most cynical light.

Will the new Disinformation Governance Board be forced to label mockery of it as disinformation? They might have to because at this point there is such widespread mocking of that new section of the Department of Homeland to Security that it could well be laughed out of existence. One measure of how popular the mockery of what is being called the updated "Ministry Of Truth" is that even Politico is laughing at it. On Friday, Politico's senior media writer, Jack Shafer, demonstrated his libertarian streak by ripping that new squad to shreds in "Biden’s Hopeless Disinformation Police."

So much for closing ranks. Perhaps Arthur Sulzberger thought that his newspaper’s rant about conservatives doing to his reporters what they do to conservatives would generate some sympathy from colleagues in the media. Instead, media critics at the Washington Post and Politico delivered the same message to the New York Times’ publisher — stop whining.The Post’s Erik Wemple wrote that Sulzberger can’t have it both ways. These are public statements of the same kind — and on the same platform — as the media likes to resurface when it suits their purposes. Despite the breathless description used by the...

The reaper came for another editorial cartoonist over the weekend. The Brunswick News newspaper group in Canada canceled Michael de Adder’s contract a couple of days after he distributed a cartoon on Twitter depicting Donald Trump on the fairway, golf club in hand, asking two face-down, drowned migrants, “Do you mind if I play through?” De Adder told the Washington Post that his editor didn’t say why his contract was being canceled, but he surmises it was because of his history of Trump-critical cartoons—which he didn’t offer to Brunswick News publications. “The only subject I was told that was taboo...

Live by the media hype, die by the media hype...for someone else. Such is the sad fate of poor Beto O'Rourke who just a few short weeks ago basked in the glow of mainstream media adulation. Unfortunately for the Irish guy with the Mexican nickname, the media has switched its attention to another shiny object in the form of Mayor Pete Buttigieg of South Bend, Indiana, now "burning with the velocity of a prairie fire on a gusty Indiana day." On Wednesday, Politico chronicled Beto's tragic loss of his magic mojo in "Why the Media Dumped Beto for Mayor Pete."...

Could Politico have already reached peak Beto and is now on the downward slope from the zenith? Despite their own senior media Jack Shafer back in October begging "Stop the Press Before It Profiles Beto O’Rourke Again," the paeans to failed senate candidate Beto O'Rourke have continued unabated at Politico. However, that might have changed on Saturday when Politico writer David Siders expressed how irked he was with their beloved Beto appearing to be playing games as to whether he would announce his candidacy for president that he wrote that he "is now manufacturing suspense."

If recently retired New York Times publisher, Arthur O. "Pinch" Sulzberger, expected to finally receive some respect now that he has turned the keys of his newspaper kingdom over to his son, A.G. (Arthur Gregg) Sulzberger, he would be quite disappointed after reading the January 14 Politico Magazine story. Senior Media Writer Jack Shafer ridicules Sulzberger and how he ran the Times during his quarter century reign there until he retired on January 1. The profile of just how out of his depth the elder Sulzberger was is brought to us as part of advice to Sulzberger the Younger in...

It is no secret that the mainstream media might as well be on the DNC’s payroll. Major scandals involving Democrats go unremarked. When they are remarked upon, often the political affiliation is buried deep in the story if mentioned at all. I’m not talking only about the editorial pages, the devotion of the media to Democrats infests the actual news gathering function of newspapers, magazines, and online media. One of the most pernicious things to be contrived by the media is the “fact checking” charade. It started out with a simple premise: the media would check statements made by various...

Donald Trump isn’t a simpleton, he just talks like one. If you were to market Donald Trump’s vocabulary as a toy, it would resemble a small box of Lincoln Logs. Trump resists multisyllabic words and complex, writerly sentence constructions when speaking extemporaneously in a debate, at a news conference or in an interview. He prefers to link short, blocky words into other short, blocky words to create short, blocky sentences that he then stacks into short, blocky paragraphs. The end result of Trump’s word choice is less the stripped-down prose style of Ernest Hemingway than it is a spontaneous reinvention...

So how did Politico break the George Stephanopoulos Clinton Foundation donations story? Actually they didn't break it at all. The story was shopped to Politico after the Washington Free Beacon made inquiries to ABC News about Stephanopoulos' contributions to the Clinton Foundation. Apparently ABC News thought Politico would offer more favorable coverage so they leaked the story to Politico. However, to his great credit, Politico writer Jack Shafer not only acknowledged the critical role of the Free Beacon but was also highly critical of ABC News for this tactic. First let us look at this morning's  Free Beacon announcement of  who really broke this...

"I don't believe that the Times is pulling for Barack Obama." Jack Shafer, Slate, 9-23-08 There's actually much to agree with in Jack Shafer's column today regarding McCain senior adviser Steve Schmidt's criticism of the New York Times. For example, I'd note this observation by him: "The press corps does adore Barack Obama. They like his story. They like writing about him. They like the way he gives speeches. They like the way he makes them feel. And they don't mind cutting him slack whenever he acts like a regular politician—which he is." But Shafer, Slate's resident media critic, also...

If "Dear Leader" Kim Jong-il of North Korea and George W. Bush ever meet, I suspect the two will bond like long-lost brothers. Both men are first-born sons of powerful fathers who partied like adolescents well into their adult lives, after which they submitted to their dynastic fates as heads of state. Both avoid critical thought, preferring to surround themselves with yes men and apply propagandistic slogans to the onrushing complexities of justice, culture, economics, and foreign policy. Bush churns out buzz phrases with the best of them: He believes in "compassionate conservatism" and fancies himself part of the "army...