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When I pointed out that Lippmann is widely considered the Father of Modern Journalism, I did of course overlook one thing. A rather large thing. As I pointed out then, Harvard has a monument to Walter Lippmann on it's campus, (Lippmann House, 1 Francis Ave, Cambridge, Middlesex, MA 02138) but what about what goes on inside this and other locations? One of the items that I have had an extremely hard time locating is a book titled "A Test of the News", which Lippmann co-wrote with Charles Merz. The thought never really occurred to me until recently to go digging...

Fox Business’s Don Imus had a delicious trifecta Thursday trashing three perilously liberal journalists in less than 90 seconds. After telling Jonathan Alter to “shove” his request to come on the program and hawk his new book, Imus called Howard Fineman a “sniveling little weasel” and Jon Meacham a “phony b*st*rd” (video follows with transcript and commentary): DON IMUS: "I’m in a horrible mood because of a couple of reasons. And I don’t like it when people tell me what a great friend they are of mine, because I know it’s nonsense. And here’s, you don’t need to tell me...

U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder told NBC News on Wednesday that he has no plans to resign for the time being and insisted that he has "great respect" for the news media despite signing off on requests by his Justice Department to examine the phone and email records of journalists. "There's some things that I want to do, some things that I want to get done that I’ve discussed with the president, and once I have finished that I'll sit down with him and we’ll determine when it’s time to make a transition to a new attorney general," Holder told...

The national media have evinced some outrage over the Obama Justice Department's aggressive persecution of investigative journalists. But not enough. It is more important to help President Hope and Change overcome the legacy-strangling notion of an "atmosphere of scandal" than to investigate a scandal that is strangling their very profession. On Sunday's "Face the Nation," New York Times editor Jill Abramson claimed to be very concerned about the leak probe, but proclaimed of all these scandals that, "I'm just not sure, you know, they come together and create, you know -- quote, unquote -- 'an atmosphere of scandal.'" Even worse...

A video has emerged which seems to show Palestinian terrorists throwing stones and fire bombs at Israeli soldiers while hiding behind journalists

An obscure November 2012 Wikileaks email dump points to former White House counterterrorism adviser and now-CIA chief John Brennan as the person behind the “witch hunt” of journalists who reported unflattering Obama administration leaks. A little over a week after President Barack Obama’s reelection, Wikileaks released an email dump of global intelligence files from the private intelligence company Stratfor. One particular email, dated September 21, 2010 discussed President Obama’s “Leak Investigations.”

On April 8, House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi headlined a Boston conference on ''media reform.'' She was joined by four other congressmen, a senator, two FCC commissioners, a Nobel laureate and numerous liberal journalists. The 2,500-person event was sponsored by a group called Free Press, one of more than 180 different media-related organizations that receives money from liberal billionaire George Soros. Soros, who first made a name for himself in investing and currency trading, now makes his name in politics and policy. Since the 2004 election, the controversial financier has used his influence and billions to push a laundry list...

The inaccurate report by CNN and other news organizations about an arrest in the Boston bombing case was arguably one of the most flagrant errors on a story of major national consequence in years. When the news organizations later corrected their mistakes, there seemed to be something missing — any big shows of contrition, or even a sense of the magnitude of the error. It fell to Twitter and the merciless mockery of Jon Stewart, who devoted much of “The Daily Show” to skewering CNN’s John King, to call out the media for their failures. In an earlier era, many...

File this in the overflowing cabinet labeled: No Wonder the Mainstream Media Is Dying. On Tuesday, the Associated Press announced that it is banishing the phrase "illegal immigrant" from its famous stylebook. The world's largest newsgathering outlet now advises reporters that "illegal" will "only refer to an action, not a person." AP directs writers not to use the terms "illegal alien, an illegal, illegals or undocumented" anymore, except "in direct quotations." It won't be long before illegal border crossers, illegal visa overstayers, illegal deportation evaders, document fraudsters and illegal alien traffickers are all referred to as "our fellow Americans." Without...

In the book "Public Opinion", Walter Lippmann writes the following: (Page 355) It is a problem of provoking feeling in the reader, of inducing him to feel a sense of personal identification with the stories he is reading. News which does not offer this opportunity to introduce oneself into the struggle which it depicts cannot appeal to a wide audience. The audience must participate in the news, much as it participates in the drama, by personal identification. Just as everyone holds his breath when the heroine is in danger, as he helps Babe Ruth swing his bat, so in subtler...

It's most gratifying that people are beginning to wake up to the bullying tactics of the White House toward those in the press who occasionally stray from the government-owned media model, but this has been going on for a while. Veteran reporter Bob Woodward has said in interviews with Politico and CNN that a White House official warned him he would "regret" publishing a story reporting that the sequestration was President Obama's idea. "(The White House aide) yelled at me for about a half-hour," said Woodward. The aide later apologized to Woodward in an email and claimed he was...

By John Crewdson, Tribune senior correspondent. Reporting and research assistance was provided by Drew Crosby in Madrid MADRID -- The most sweeping criminal indictment to arise thus far from the Sept. 11 attacks reflects a quiet but dramatic change in understanding by investigators here and across Europe of the terrorist organization known as Al Qaeda, and the international Islamic radical-terrorist network of which, they now agree, it is merely a part. As laid out in the indictment, the defendants' alleged activities--from arranging travel and providing introductions to procuring false documents and, especially, moving money--provide the first detailed look at one...

Sports Illustrated has come to my mailbox for nearly 40 years. I hope it comes for 40 more. But I also hope whomever is assigning the stories in the future begins to think more about the readers than their political and social agendas. Super Bowl week featured a cover of a praying Ray Lewis rising from the water, and a cover story by New York Times’ religion columnist Mark Oppenheimer on Christians in the NFL. The story was enough to cause PJMedia writer Andrew Klavan to declare he would not renew his SI subscription, and most serious Christian athletes are...

Whittaker Chambers and Totalitarian Islam Playwright David Mamet recently acknowledged that he had been profoundly influenced by Communist apostate Whittaker Chambers’s 1952 anti-Communist memoir, Witness. Mamet described how reading Chambers’s opus inspired “the wrenching experience� of forcibly reevaluating the way he thought, particularly his confessed leftist-herd co-dependence. Also, echoing the delusive herd mentality of the Left’s ad hominem attacks in the 1950s on Chambers — whose allegations of Communist conspiracies have been entirely vindicated with irrefragable documentation from the captured Soviet Venona cables — Congressman Peter King’s staid initial hearings of March 10, 2011, on American Muslim radicalization engendered similarly...

The federal government is, in practice, a one-party state controlled by an oligarchy, which is a relatively small group, composed of financiers, politicians and journalists. Written by Lawrence Sellin The oligarchy is roughly divided into two types of individuals: ideologues and pragmatists. Ideologues are adherents to uncompromising and dogmatic policies and are determined and unyielding in achieving their goals. Pragmatists have no solid core principles and will adjust their political positions for the purpose of remaining accepted members of the oligarchy. The ideologues always drive the political agenda, which is only moderated or delayed when met by sufficient resistance. Think...

New effort by James O'Keefe

The media agenda against guns is nothing new. But recent mass shootings have encouraged supposedly neutral journalists to push for gun regulation instead of reporting the facts surrounding the tragedies. One thing the media seldom mention is that both the Newtown and Aurora shootings occurred in gun free zones. In the Clackamas Town Center Shooting in Oregon, however, a gunman was stopped when someone with a concealed carry permit intervened. There were only two casualties in this shooting which received little media attention. If this incident was mentioned, the concealed carry part of the story was almost completely ignored. Some...

Guns are a sad fact of life in American culture and are a major topic in modern journalism. A good Journalist has a duty to get involved and make a difference in this important societal debate. By following certain guidelines, the concerned Journalist can be assured of having the maximum impact on this shameful problem. The first principle to remember is that subtle use of terminology can covertly influence the reader. Adjectives should be chosen for maximum anti-gun effect. When describing a gun, attach terms like "automatic," "semi-automatic," "large caliber," "deadly," "high powered," or "powerful." Almost any gun can be...

Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman Thursday launched a fierce attack against journalists in general, and Channel 10 and Yediot Aharonot in particular, according to a report in media news website Ice. Speaking at a conference in Tel Aviv, Lieberman said that some journalists in Israel serve an agenda, and are "liars without limits." Channel 10, said Lieberman, is trying to influence the outcome of the investigation against him. "Channel 10 blackmails and places unreasonable pressure on all of the decision makers in my case," he explained. "Anyone who tries to be objective is simply threatened by them." He also singled out...

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip (AP) — Israeli airstrikes killed three Palestinian journalists in their cars Tuesday, a Gaza health official and the head of the Hamas-run Al Aqsa TV said. Israel acknowledged targeting the men, claiming they had ties to militants. The strikes came on the seventh day of Israel's offensive against Gaza's Hamas rulers. A number of journalists have been killed over the years while covering fighting between the Jewish state and the Palestinian militant group, but not in targeted strikes Israel acknowledged. Two of those killed were cameramen working for Al Aqsa TV, the centerpiece of a growing...

Sick of the elections yet? So is four-year-old Abigael Evans from Colorado. Her mother, Elizabeth Evans, 27, posted a Youtube video of her daughter saying that she is tired of "Bronco Bamma and Mitt Romney." The 22-second YouTube clip, published yesterday, shows the little girl with a frown on her face and tears rolling down her cheeks, telling her mother she is tired of this election. Elizabeth Evans told ABC News that her daughter got emotional listening to NPR.

Newsweek plans to end its print publication after 80 years and will shift to an all-digital format aimed at online users starting in early 2013. Job cuts are expected. Newsweek's last U.S. print edition will be its Dec. 31 issue.

As he tries to engineer a comeback in this week's presidential debate, President Barack Obama needs to recognize two things. First, when it comes to politics, Mitt Romney treats himself as a product, not a person. Second, Republicans cannot defend their proposals in terms that are acceptable to a majority of voters. Romney, Ryan and the entire right know that their most deeply held belief – the one on which they won't compromise – is rejected by the vast majority of Americans. That's their faith that every problem in the economy and in society can be solved by throwing more...

Truth wins out. So much for the freelance Mukhabarat’s efforts at squelching Pamela Geller’s voice. For more on the arrest of a former Guardian journalist-shocking, I know-who’s as conversant with the 1st Amendment as Barack Obama is with comparative religion and American history, check out updated coverage from Jihad Watch which includes the New York Post article and the video detailing my friend’s gutsy tutorial in expressive advocacy and constitutionally protected speech. Is this what progressive Islam looks like? Count me out. Hat Tip: Vigilant Squirrel Brigade.

A recent Gallup survey reports Americans are increasingly frustrated with the quality of television news. Only 21 percent of Americans now express “a great deal” of confidence in television news. That is the lowest score ever, dropping from the 46 percent level when Gallup started asking this question in 1993. Declines in confidence are found across all age groups and political affiliations. Given the recent performance of TV news, further deterioration in confidence is inevitable. ABC’s Brian Ross jumped to conclusions and suggested a link between the Aurora movie shooter and the tea party. NBC’s unprofessional editing of the George...

After bloggers broke the Fast and Furious gunwalker story, and drove it home day after day after day, Congressman Darrell Issa's Oversight Committee announced they have placed blame and will release several reports in coming days - but "journalists" were given a copy yesterday. Sipsey Street Irregulars says the report was "embargoed until midnight," and all "authorized journalists" got copies - but bloggers who have been involved, even in the halls of Congress. I can't even count the times I've heard Greta Van Susteren report on Fast and Furious and it was obvious much of her information came from bloggers....

(or some other form of direct payments, how about a TIME[or other magazine] subscription?) We got screwed by John Roberts and the SCOTUS on Obamacare. But not really. Roberts capitulated because he feared what the journalist chattering class would print about him. Page 2 of the story If you want to save America, defeating the media is job #1.

It's come out how Chief Justice Roberts totally capitulated to the Mainstream Media. While it may be said that the SCOTUS raised your taxes in affirming this ruling, now that we know what went on behind the scenes it's clear that the media is who raised your taxes. Roberts Switched Views to Uphold Health Care Law (Because of fear from what the media would report) Have you canceled your newspaper subscription yet? If you truely want to save the country, defeating the media is more important than even winning elections. This supreme court ruling proves it without a shadow of...

We now have three instances of three individual Politico writers digging up and publishing political oppo-research about the private lives of private citizens who don't support Obama, and the motive behind these attacks can only be for two reasons: 1. To change the narrative of effective criticism of Obama to the less flattering moments of the private lives of these individuals. 2. To intimidate and frighten others who might consider supporting a candidate not named Obama. So desperate is the media to Palace Guard for their Precious One that everyday Americans who dare ask Obama a question he flubs, appear...

Attention pro-Life and Liberty Tea Party Citizen Reporters/Bloggers: If you are pro-life, pro-family, pro-liberty, pro-limited government, pro-strong defense and you are a great citizen reporter/blogger and would like to help us promote our Life and Liberty causes and would like to see your great work promoted to our millions of monthly readers on FR, then this post could be for you. Our Bloggers Forum ( http://www.freerepublic.com/tag/bloggers-forum/index ) is open to all liberty-loving bloggers to post their great work to FR. But our readers are mostly interested in reading relevant posts in their entirety on FR without having to click to...

Barbara Walters on Journalists: You 'Don't Know Whether We're Republicans or Democrats' By Scott Whitlock Created 04/09/2012 - 5:10pm What world does she live in? According to veteran journalist Barbara Walters on Monday, the American public doesn't know whether "most" reporters are "Republicans or Democrats." The unbelievable claim came during a View segment on the passing of 60 Minutes journalist Mike Wallace. Walters, who once recoiled at the prospect of the "scary" Sarah Palin becoming President, insisted, "But, most of us...you don't know whether we're Republicans or Democrats or exhibitionists." (Exhibitionists?) The comment came after comedienne Whoopi Goldberg insisted, "And...

"This bears on your reporting," President Obama said to journalists. "I think that there is oftentimes the impulse to suggest that if the two parties are disagreeing then they're equally at fault and the truth lies somewhere in the middle. And an equivalence is presented which I think reinforces peoples' cynicism about Washington in general. This is not one of those situations where there's an equivalency."

We hear stories often about the media crying because access is denied. In the courtroom, in the back room, in the smoke-filled room. If the media is banned, it will complain, and most often it is justified. What about when the media itself denies access to one of its own? The annual White House Corespondents Dinner is coming up in April, and the media has banned C-SPAN from broadcasting the event. No reason given, just C-SPAN cannot do what it has done in the past by providing full video of the event. Some journalists have complained about the lack of...

Two senior journalists working for Rupert Murdoch's News International have apparently attempted suicide as pressure mounts at the scandal-hit publisher of the now-defunct News of the World. Three sources close to the company told Reuters on Tuesday the two journalists at the Sun daily appeared to have tried to take their own lives. Investigations sparked by a phone-hacking scandal continue to expose dubious practices by present and past employees. Eleven current and former staff of the Sun, Britain's best-selling daily tabloid, have been arrested this year on suspicion of bribing police or civil servants for tip-offs. Their arrests have come...

He's done it again. For a third time, President Obama is snubbing the annual gathering of prominent Washington journalists known as the Gridiron Dinner next month. Instead, he is attending the 2012 Seoul Nuclear Security Summit. "I'm disappointed," said Gridiron President George Condon of National Journal. And, he kidded, "I'm not sure what it says of his priorities when the president puts the nuclear security of the world ahead of our dinner." Subbing for Obama at the March 24 dinner will be Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, ironically the hands-on manager of the nation's nuclear arsenal that will be discussed at...

-excerpt- Valérie Pécresse, the French government spokeswoman, identified the dead as Marie Colvin, an American reporter working for The Sunday Times of London, and Rémi Ochlik, a French photographer. -excerpt- Video footage posted on social networking sites showed what seemed to be two bodies lying face down in rubble inside a building identified in news reports as a makeshift media center in a beleaguered neighborhood of Homs, where rebels have been under sustained fire for almost three weeks. Three other Western journalists were injured in the attack, activists said. According to his Web site, Mr. Ochlik, in his late twenties,...

You will recall that last Friday, I blogged a report that CNN Israel had fired all its Jewish journalists. Several of my blogging friends were afraid to run with the story, largely because it came from a blog that most of us had never seen before. I ran with it (although as a "Report" and not as confirmed fact) because I found the fact that they had all the journalists' names and that one of them was confirmed to me independently by someone who knew him, convincing. CNN has finally responded to the rumor. The response is not going to...

A former staffer for Bay State Sen. John F. Kerry has been charged with leaking the names of CIA operatives, including one who was involved in the interrogation of terror suspects held at the U.S. military base in Guantanamo Bay, according to the U.S. Department of Justice and Kerry’s office.

The hoopla surrounding the ABC News interview with former House Speaker Newt Gingrich’s second ex-wife, Marianne Gingrich, has raised a question for conservative radio show host Rush Limbaugh: How come journalists aren’t held to the same standard they hold those they investigate to? On his Thursday show, Limbaugh asked that question and said that it was appropriate to do so since the media is no longer just reporting, but passing judgment as well. “That’s another thing, this always gets me — are journalists monogamous?” Limbaugh asked. “Are journalists faithful? Are they as clean and pure as the wind-driven snow? This...

Under the National Operations Center (NOC)’s Media Monitoring Initiative that emerged from the Department of Homeland Security in November, Washington has written permission to collect and retain personal information from journalists, news anchors, reporters or anyone who uses “traditional and/or social media in real time to keep their audience situationally aware and informed.” According to DHS, the definition of personal identifiable information can consist of any intellect “that permits the identity of an individual to be directly or indirectly inferred, including any information which is linked or linkable to that individual.”

A Wikipedia-style website launched on Monday which provides information about the journalists behind the bylines. News Transparency is a creation of Ira Stoll, the founder of another website called FutureOfCapitalism.com and the former managing editor of the now defunct New York Sun. In a statement on its home page, newstransparency.com, the website said its goal is to help users "find out more about the people who produce the news" and "hold them accountable, the same way that journalists hold other powerful institutions accountable, by posting reviews and sharing information." News Transparency features an alphabetical list of hundreds of journalists and...

After 30 months of unemployment, 400 applications, and only three in-person interviews, I stood looking at my last unemployment benefit without a job in sight. The temptation was to frame it, since it marks one of those transitions in life that merits being remembered. But I needed the money more than a memento, so I took my last unemployment check to the bank and deposited it -- $367 for some necessities. Food, rent, gas. My last unemployment check was $160 less than my usual weekly benefit, but still a welcome boost to my sagging finances. How I will miss those...

We have been in the thick of the fighting, but also cut off from it. Dozens of us journalists have been trapped for days in the luxury Rixos Hotel, kept there by government enforcers whose weaponry has convinced us of the wisdom of staying put. Once in awhile, though, the news comes to us. Take the reports that Seif al-Islam, a favored son of Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi and one-time heir-apparent to his desert regime, had been captured by rebel fighters as they stormed through the city. But here he was, confident and smiling in his camouflage pants and army-green...

-excerpt- "I do not think it is necessary or in Turkey's interests to be cracking down," Clinton said, adding that Turkey's institutions could withstand the scrutiny and debate that a free press brings. "It seems to me inconsistent with all the other advances Turkey has made."

At least 10 people, mostly journalists, were injured on Friday when police tried to stop clashes between pro-reform demonstrators and government supporters in central Amman. Police used batons to disperse the clashes outside city hall, beating and injuring nine journalists who were wearing orange vests marked "press," an AFP reporter at the scene witnessed. The wounded included an AFP photographer and a female Islamist activist. "We were beaten by police, although we were wearing special press vests," said the photographer. "We thought we would be safe when we stood next to the police and away from the clashes." A photographer...

Iran and Cuba together have forced more journalists into exile over the past year than all other countries combined, a survey by the Committee to Protect Journalists said Monday. "Nearly 70 journalists were forced into exile over the past 12 months, with more than half coming from Iran and Cuba, two of the world's most repressive nations," the report said. "Iran, which has waged a massive, two-year-long crackdown on the independent press, and Cuba, which freed journalists from prison only to force them to leave their homeland, each sent 18 journalists into exile," it said. The survey said most --...

This was a big catch by Brian Wedemeyer from the Arizona Independent. A Boston Globe reporter hid information on Barack Obama’s father for at least two years as she worked on a novel about the man’s life. I posted the story on our web site and then watched to see what kind of reaction, if any, there would be. A small part of me wondered if The Independent — something we have worked so hard to establish as a credible and reliable community news source — would be written off as a bunch of crackpots. After all, we’re not even...

Part of the regime’s survival strategy is to keep out foreign journalists. Agency reporters have been expelled, bloggers detained. Snippets of information leak out through furtive phone calls, Facebook and Twitter, revealing a partial picture of a regime trying to repress dissent with increasing desperation. Last week, however, I spent five days in Damascus and the south of the country where the protests began, talking to political activists, students and ordinary families. Some were too scared to discuss politics; others could not stop. On the surface, everything was normal. The sun shone, tourists trod the ancient streets of Damascus and...

Human Rights Watch released a report Wednesday detailing the abuse of journalists in the West Bank and Gaza at the hands of the Palestinian Authority. The report, “No News is Good News: Abuses Against Journalists by Palestinian Security Forces,” accuses Palestinian Authority security forces of censoring, harassing and torturing reporters, resulting in a severe restriction of free speech. Documenting seven instances of journalist detention and abuse, Human Rights Watch concludes that the effect has not only been active censorship but also a “chilling effect” of self-censorship by journalists in the area. “Security forces of the Palestinian Authority have arbitrarily detained...

Germany had facilitated the clearance of India’s outstanding oil bill with Iran in February this year in return for the release of two German journalists held in custody by Tehran, a German news magazine has reported. The online edition of Der Spiegel today reported that India’s payment of about $ 1.5 billion to Iran through a bank in Germany, the European-Iranian Trading Bank (EITB), was “facilitated” by the German government as part of a deal to get its journalists released. Germany’s central bank, Bundesbank, cleared the transaction, the magazine quoted sources as saying. India was wary of making a direct...