Free Republic

Media Bias: Not long after pro football welcomed a convicted felon back on the playing field, Rush Limbaugh is dropped for his opinions from a group seeking to buy an NFL franchise. Won't someone throw a flag? When even Keith Olbermann says back off, you know the politically correct critics of the conservative icon and megaradio talk host's proposed part ownership of the St. Louis Rams are guilty of piling on. The prospect of the leading conservative voice in America participating in the purchase of a football team sent the liberal elites into cardiac arrest and into a frenzied campaign...

A Times writer joins Taliban fighters in an especially dangerous part of Afghanistan. The men appear to have no fear of troops, and prove to be gracious hosts.......

Without a Prayer Subtitle: John McCain can't stand sucking up to the Christian right. Is this the end of the GOP's unholy alliance? "The Bible-thumpers, mainly working- and middle-class whites with limited educations from the landlocked states of the South and the Midwest, would seem to have had little in common with the archpriests of the neoconservative movement, who as it happened were mainly Jewish academics with fancy degrees from the East and West Coasts. But they did: They shared an almost equal disdain for democracy, free speech and learning, and paradise for both groups was an intellectually mute America...

Clinton Backer's Firm Alleged to Aid Scammers BY JOSH GERSTEIN - Staff Reporter of the Sun May 22, 2007 URL: http://www.nysun.com/article/54982 A Nebraska entrepreneur facing allegations that his firm does business with scam artists targeting the elderly, Vinod Gupta, has directed more than $3 million in the past decade to political campaigns and projects connected with President Clinton and Senator Clinton. Mr. Gupta's company, infoUSA, Inc., repeatedly rented marketing databases to unscrupulous individuals who used the lists to engage in fraud, according to the New York Times. A front-page article in the Sunday paper said the company promoted a list...

The Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) has issued a call to media outlets to stick to a script of liberal bias and emphasize "Falwell's history of denigrative comments and examine the cultural progress toward inclusion, acceptance and respect that he fought against." Their website even included a story from CNN’s Newsroom from Tuesday afternoon, in which CNN prominently included old protest video that placed a large illustration of Falwell’s face next to a large illustration of Hitler’s face. So much for GLAAD's "anti-defamation" pose. On "Anderson Cooper 360," CNN correspondent Randi Kaye, who raised eyebrows in December for a story worrying...

Our last column, “Utopia and its Scapegoats,” showed how the 1960s New Left portrayed whites as a uniquely power-hungry and greedy race that was to blame for the world’s suffering. While the New Left was a small, radical movement, the “whites as cancer” myth would entrench itself in the American psyche over the next 40 years. One of the primary vehicles by which the New Left’s ideas entered the mainstream was the portrayal of the Vietnam War in the American media. Two lies about Vietnam that had their origin in the New Left have been repeated to us so often...

 In America, people are innocent until proven guilty, unless of course they are Republican.No finer example of such legal relativism has occurred in recent memory than the case of President Bush’s top advisor, Karl Rove. For months, virtually every mainstream media outlet proclaimed his guilt regarding the Valerie Plame Wilson affair, or what has been not so affectionately named the CIA-leak case.Take for example the media’s excitement over pending indictments for Rove. This hit a fevered pitch last fall as Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald, after almost two years of research, depositions, and grand jury testimonies, was about to announce his...

The English-language Al-Jazeera International TV network faces enough hurdles to make Olympic champion Edwin Moses tremble. It has missed its target launch date and won't set another, has no public commitments by anyone to show it in the United States, saw its closest competitor beat it to the market and is the target of a pressure campaign by a group hoping it never airs here. Al-Jazeera International's operators are nonetheless pressing forward with plans to create a worldwide news operation, despite a name that immediately raises hackles in the West. "Give us a fair crack of the whip," urges Lindsey...

Leftist media, congressmen, and elitist groups have already committed premature evaluation concerning the role of members of the Kilo Company, 3rd Battalion, 1st Marine Regiment. The left and our drive-by media have already pronounced our troops guilty of murdering 24 men, women, and children last November 19, at Haditha, a farm town in the Upper Euphrates Valley. And this includes not just Kilo Company, but all Marines and the entire chain of command. Sadly, they have convicted our military of all charges prior to any trial, and much worse, two weeks before the completion of either the investigation or the...

OKLAHOMA CITY - Another day, another headline. The world moves on. Not I. I'm obsessing about those 12 cartoons, a world gone mad and an American media lost in self-righteous loser-ness. My own tribe surrendered without a fight, and we may pay for generations. Unless. -SNIP- In Shakespeare's "Julius Caesar," when the soothsayer warned, "Beware the Ides of March," Caesar brushed him off, saying: "He is a dreamer, let us leave him. Pass." Those rioting in the Middle East against the West dream of a world ruled by Islamic law. American newspapers have a duty not to ignore them or...

There are few less edifying sights than Terry McAuliffe in full battle cry. But alas there was no avoiding him after the Cheney hunting accident. There he was demanding to know why the vice president waited 22 hours before informing the press and shouting that if Al Gore had done something like this he'd be in Leavenworth by nightfall (a dubious if pleasing supposition). The White House press corps was even more insufferable. One reporter asked, "Is it proper for the vice president to offer his resignation or has he offered his resignation?" Another demanded, "Scott (McClellan), would this be...

RUSH: I've got to take care of something first. These idiots over at Bill Schneider's office and CNN. You remember the bit that I did yesterday in which I describe what would be happening if a Democrat vice president had shot a buddy accidentally while hunting? We would be hearing about, "Oh, this is a terrible thing. We must give the vice president room while he grieves and assembles himself as he suffers along with his friend." We'd get all kinds of features on hunting safety and there would be a totally different approach. They took one sentence out...

RUSH: Here's a little story today in the New York Sun. Did you know that Judith Miller was back in court fighting with the special prosecutor, Patrick Fitzgerald, again? "Journalist Judith Miller and U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald squared off in court again yesterday, with a lot less public attention than last year, when the dogged special prosecutor in the Valerie Plame case had the then-New York Times reporter jailed for 85 days to force her to disclose the identity of an anonymous source. Yesterday appearance in Manhattan before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit was another...

http://www.time.com/time/archive/preview/0,10987,944265,00.html   AMERICA'S families are in trouble—trouble so deep and pervasive as to threaten the future of our nation," declared a major report to last week's White House Conference on Children. "Can the family survive?...unmarried couples living together call into question the very meaning and structure of the stable family unit as our society has known it."   Hand-wringing over welfare cuts and other ‘community growth’ goodies?  No.  It was…12/28/70     http://www.time.com/time/archive/preview/0,10987,943113,00.html   THE Supreme Court had forbidden it, but they prayed defiantly in a school in Netcong, N.J., reading the morning invocation from the Congressional Record.…[e]verywhere, they...

Former CBS anchor Walter Cronkite, whose 1968 conclusion that the Vietnam War was unwinnable keenly influenced public opinion then, said Sunday he'd say the same thing today about Iraq. "It's my belief that we should get out now," Cronkite said in a meeting with reporters. Now 89, the television journalist once known as "the most trusted man in America" has been off the "CBS Evening News" for nearly a quarter- century. He's still a CBS News employee, although he does little for them. Cronkite said one of his proudest moments came at the end of a 1968 documentary he made...

Three Kansas NBC affiliates have announced they will not be carrying NBC’s "The Book of Daniel.” KSNG in Garden City, KSNC in Great Bend and KSNK in Oberlin have responded to community concern and will not air the program. They join KNSW-TV in Wichita, Kan., KARK-TV in Little Rock, Ark. and WTWO in Terre Haute, Ind., in refusing to carry NBC’s new series. American Family Association (AFA) says that NBC has received more than 600,000 emails protesting the program. After viewing the first episode at WBIR in Knoxville, several religious leaders gave their views on the program. Brian Kearns, minister...

The TV networks are getting edgier in their '06 pilot plans. The nets have filled their development slates with a bevy of brave ideas and bold format experiments, VARIETY reports on Monday, including shows about THE END OF AMERICA! ABC alone has at least two would-be shows set in post-apocalyptic America ("Resistance" and "Red & Blue") while Gavin Polone and Bruce Wagner are teaming for the comfy-sounding plague drama "Four Horsemen" at CBS (which also is developing "Jericho," about life in a small town after America is destroyed). Says Fox exec VP Craig Erwich: "The creative community appears to be...

NBC did not interrupt its broadcast of the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade yesterday to bring viewers the news that an M&M balloon had crashed into a light pole, injuring two sisters. In fact, when the time came in the tightly scripted three-hour program for the M&Ms' appearance, NBC weaved in tape of the balloon crossing the finish line at last year's parade - even as the damaged balloon itself was being dragged from the accident scene.

Americans have a short attention span, and it's even shorter for the news media. Although we've stopped talking about Terri Schiavo, the debate over her fate that gripped the nation for weeks in March didn't end with the death of the 41-year-old brain-injured Florida woman. The discussion over the right to die versus the right to life, and feeding tubes representing extraordinary medical intervention versus basic, humane care is not over. Every day, families across the country continue to grapple with this complex issue quietly under the radar screen of inquiring journalists. Proceeding outside of the media spotlight may not...

The Investor's Business Daily has a tremendous editorial today entitled, "Schumer's Plumbers." Now, it's amazing. When we talk about the area of politics where corruption resides, it's amazing how all this attention is focused on DeLay because of this indictment, but what Chuck Schumer has done here, people on his staff, it's basically still under the radar, and that's why I want to talk about it. "Staff members for a champion of the right to privacy and a leading critic of identity theft fraudulently obtained the credit report of a rising black political star. Your turn for tough questions, Sen....

Thanks to a virtual blackout by his fellow editors elsewhere in the media, odds are good that you haven’t heard or read that Executive Editor Bill Keller of The New York Times recently capitulated in the debate over bias in America’s newspaper of record. Keller’s capitulation came in a lengthy memo he distributed in the Times’ newsroom in May as a response to an updating of a massive report by a committee appointed in the wake of the Jayson Blair scandal to recommend measures to restore the gray lady’s credibility. In a section of the memo headed “The News/Opinion Divide,”...

Reuters reports: “As the world prepares to mark the 60th anniversary of the dropping of the 1st atomic bomb on Saturday, some American media experts see uncomfortable echoes between the suppression of images of death and destruction then, and coverage of the war in Iraq today.” Reuters cites an article in Editor & Publisher by Greg Mitchell, claiming American officials seized film after the “atomic attacks” on Hiroshima and Nagasaki to prevent us from seeing the devastation. Mitchell compares this to Iraq: “The chief similarity is that Americans are still being kept at a distance from images of death, whether...

CNN commentator Robert Novak's decision to storm off the set of "Inside Politics" yesterday has already received four times as much news coverage as a similar meltdown by ex-President Clinton. Clinton walked out in the midst of a 1994 interview with NBC in Prague. A Lexis-Nexis search conducted midday Friday turned up 39 stories on the Novak tantrum, detailing how the conservative columnist exploded during a debate with fellow CNN'er James Carville, yanked off his microphone and walked away. Novak's actions were almost a mirror image of Clinton's, who pulled the plug on a Jan. 14, 1994 interview with NBC...

Big Fat Yawn Media: Rush Limbaugh's prescription drug troubles were splashed all over the media. Yet a financial scandal rocking a leftist radio network rates no coverage. The mainstream media, fixated on bringing down Karl Rove, have so far deemed apparent funding irregularities at Air America unworthy of note. But that doesn't make them any less of story. Here's the gist, according to The New York Sun -- which is giving the scandal the coverage it deserves -- and a few others, mostly bloggers and columnists, who are providing a public service: New York City's Department of Investigation is looking...

The Washington Post is running today an "undisclosed sources" article designed to surface a supposedly new "National Intelligence Estimate" that says Iran is 10 years away from having an atomic bomb. Here we go again. The leftist mainstream media has launched its own pre-emptive attack against the Bush administration, hot on the case of making sure we don't get tough with Iran. Last month, I traveled to Israel where I addressed the Knesset about the nuclear weapons threat represented by Iran. I told the Knesset that Iran's nuclear program was a "clear and present danger," and I stressed that the...

As more comes to light about Diane Griego Erwin, the former Sacramento Bee columnist, the more revealing and instructive the story becomes. It is a story we mentioned in a recent Media Monitor, but much more has come to light. In one sense, it is another validation for the New Media, specifically the blogs; and for another, it shines a light on problems related to diversity in the newsrooms, when diversity strictly refers to skin color. It also spells potential big trouble for the Sacramento Bee editor, Rick Rodriguez, the new president of the American Society of Newspaper Editors (ASNE)....

JERUSALEM – The Associated Press yesterday retracted a story falsely claiming British Prime Minister Tony Blair blamed the London terror attacks on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It was the second time in the past few days the media agency falsely linked Israel to the deadly bombings. On Saturday, the AP published a story claiming Blair explained in a BBC Radio interview that to prevent future attacks against London the Israeli-Palestinian conflict needed to be resolved. According to the AP, while discussing the "very deep roots" of terrorism, Blair said "that meant boosting understanding between people of different religions, helping people in...

Semi-regular USA Today columnist Julianne Malveaux said Monday that President Bush is "a terrorist" and that America is "a terrorist nation." In an interview that began with Malveaux accusing U.S. troops of "beating" terrorist suspects at Guantanamo Bay, the controversial author and economist told ABC Radio host Sean Hannity: "Terrorism in the United States is as old as we are. You want me to give you a litany of terrorism? You want me to start with what's happened to the Indian population? You want to go on to what happened in Tulsa, Oklahoma in 1921?" "C'mon now, Sean," Malveaux told...

The New York Times, NBC and other dominant media have destroyed the Constitution's Freedom of the Press. Today giant tears are shed at the New York Times because one of their own, Judith Miller, appears to be on the way to prison for up to 120-days because she nobly refused to give up a source. The Supreme Court recently ruled that she, as a journalist, must assist a federal government investigation when ordered to do so. The First Amendment, in pertinent part, says: Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or...

Editor's note: The following commentary is excerpted from Jack Cashill's eye-opening new book, "Hoodwinked: How Intellectual Hucksters Have Hijacked American Culture," where he shows how, over the last century, "progressive" writers and producers have been using falsehood and fraud as their primary weapons in their attack on America."I am not and have never been a member of the Communist Party," Alger Hiss said under oath on Aug. 5, 1948, and calmly refuted the accusation of former Soviet agent Whittaker Chambers. The House Un-American Activities Committee had subpoenaed Chambers two days before. Then a senior editor at Time magazine, Chambers had...

The once perky Katie Couric may not be so perky these days. Two rising NBC news stars are being groomed for a top network anchor spot and the New York Post reports that one of them could be in line for Katie Couric's Today Show. With "Today's" ratings plummeting as ABC's "Good Morning America" on the rise, nervous NBC execs may place the blame on Couric, who has become increasingly acerbic through the years. According to the Post the two new stars are Alexis Glick, a "Today" regular, and Natalie Morales, an MSNBC news host and also a "Today" regular...

A longtime columnist of the Sacramento Bee who resigned amid controversy last month may have invented the existence of 43 people she wrote about over several years, an internal investigation found. The paper announced yesterday it had completed a probe into Diana Griego Erwin's writing, stating: "We have been unable to verify the existence of 43 people she named in her columns. This doesn't prove these people don't exist, but despite extensive research we have been unable to find them." Bee Executive Editor Rick Rodriguez wrote that recent tightening in editorial standards at the paper led to questions about the...

Libraries have become the latest battleground in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and the Israelis are getting bibliographically battered. Lies in the Library Libraries have become the latest battleground in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and the Israelis are getting bibliographically battered. by Andrea RappA few months ago, I ordered a collection of recently published children's books on Israel for our temple library. Much to my dismay, after reviewing the works I discovered that many books contained flat-out incorrect information reported as fact, demonstrated a blatant anti-Israel bias, or sometimes both. These are the library books on Israel that students across the country will...

Despite the distribution of a video of the Arab suicide bomber who intended to blow up a hospital by the IDF, nearly all foreign news agencies chose to boycott the story altogether. An outraged former undersecretary to US President Ronald Reagan and candidate for Republican Presidential nominee, Gary Bauer wrote a scathing critique of the world media’s decision to avoid the story. Excerpts from Bauer’s letter: ”If you don't get the Fox News Channel then you didn't see any of the dramatic footage of the Israeli army's arrest yesterday of a 21-year old, female Palestinian homicide-bomber, strapped with 25 pounds...

Gallup Poll: Public Trust In Media At All Time Low June 13, 2005 2:25 p.m. EST Douglas Maher - All Headline News Staff Reporter New York, NY (AHN) - A new Gallup poll released today shows statistics that many in America have been claiming for the last ten years "credibility is vanishing from news". Between the CBS Texas Air National Guard story with President Bush,to Newsweek's mishandling of the Quran story,people polled with questions relating to credibility in the news whether it be in paper or on TV proved to be shockingly low. The poll stated people who have a...

CALGARY, June 7, 2005 (LifeSiteNews.com) - An extensive study into Canada's publicly funded national broadcaster, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC), has found that CBC television news coverage of the United States is consistently marked by emotional criticism, rather than a rational consideration of US policy based on Canadian national interests. In the study, released today by the Canadian think-tank, The Fraser Institute, the authors examine the kind of anti-American views expressed in one major Canadian news outlet. They attempt to determine whether views critical of the United States reflect chiefly a rational criticism of the United States based on reasonable...

Let's head on now to the ongoing Newsweek story. This is a Washington Post story. The Washington Post has, at least as far as I count, three stories today on this. The first one I want to call your attention to by Howard Kurtz, our old buddy who is their media analyst there. "The debate over a retracted Newsweek report broadened yesterday into an argument about media and government ethics." What debate? What debate is there that's going on? Newsweek retracted a story. Would somebody tell me what there is to debate? Well, Howard says that the debate here is...

"The big point that leaps out is the cultural one. Neither Newsweek nor the Pentagon foresaw that a reference to the desecration of the Koran was going to create the kind of response that it did. The Pentagon saw the item before it ran, and then they didn't move us off it for 11 days afterward. They were as caught off guard by the furor as we were." That's what Newsweek's highly respected investigative reporter Mike Isikoff told the New York Times Monday, adding, "We obviously blame ourselves for not understanding the potential ramifications." And for anybody with even a...

A media watchdog group blasted Newsweek for its initial refusal to issue a retraction of its report that U.S. interrogators at Guantanamo Bay flushed a Koran down a toilet, and compared Newsweek's journalistic integrity to that of CBS News during the National Guard controversy. "Newsweek is guilty of pushing a false story they knew was unconfirmed but wanted to believe was true, and this time the result was tragic," said Media Research Center President Brent Bozell. "The Newsweek story is the same CBS/National Guard 'gotcha' journalism story all over again, only this time with riots and deaths as the deeply...

Fairness, impartiality and objectivity are the essence of public service broadcast journalism. This understanding is enshrined in the BBC’s charter and provides a key justification for the licence fee. Now, however, an explosive insider’s account threatens to blow this cosy assumption clean out of the water as a fraud upon the public. Robin Aitken, who spent his entire career as a BBC journalist, has written a book accusing the BBC of institutionalised leftism. This is by no means the first time such an accusation has been levelled, but generally such critics have been dismissed as parti-pris. This is why Aitken’s...

First it was CBS News fabricating a story out of whole cloth in its discredited "60 Minutes" report on George W. Bush's Air National Guard record in Texas. Two weeks ago, liberals-for-hire journalists Michael Isikoff and John Barry belched up a poorly sourced and dubious report that a copy of the Koran was flushed down an apocryphal toilet during interrogation of Muslim prisoners held at the detention center in Guantanamo Bay. Only this time the repercussions abroad have caused Muslims to riot in the streets of Kabul, leading to the deaths of about 15 people, and resulted in strained relationships...

Those worried the St. Louis Post-Dispatch would abandon its reliably liberal Democratic slant under new ownership can rest easy, according to the purchase agreement mailed to Pulitzer shareholders. Lee Enterprises Inc. agreed to purchase the company for $1.46 billion with a promise to maintain its editorial policies for at least the next five years, according to documents to Pulitzer shareholders Friday. "For a period of at least five years following the Effective Time, Parent (Lee Enterprises) will cause the St. Louis Post-Dispatch to maintain its current name and editorial page platform statement and to maintain its news and editorial headquarters...

The raging battle taking place between the governing Republican Party and the out-of-power Democrats is something to be expected. What is not so easily dealt with are the attacks from the rear, from a Fifth Column allied with the Democrats which controls a large amount of the information made available to the public -– the mainstream media, which have all but abandoned any pretense of being an unbiased source of the news. In recent days there has been a series of examples of the media’s propagandizing on behalf of the Democrats.

As the church's period of mourning for Pope John Paul II comes to a close and the election of a successor is complete, media analysts can begin to get a full picture of how this historic and influential papacy was covered. The late Pope John Paul II received positive, praise-filled media coverage after his death, according to the Media Research Center. While he led the church, however, the slant of news coverage varied depending on the issue in question. While one of the most widely reported of Pope John Paul II's accomplishments for the past three weeks has been his...

NEW YORK TIMES writer Alessandra Stanley is set to kick NBC's TODAY show host Katie Couric when she is down -- kick her hard! Facing audience erosion, Couric "has grown downright scary: America's girl next door has morphed into the mercurial diva down the hall. At the first sound of her peremptory voice and clickety stiletto heels, people dart behind doors and douse the lights," Stanley is planing to smack in Monday editions, newsroom sources tell DRUDGE. NBC has turned TODAY and Couric "into a Marxist-style cult of personality. The camera fixates on Couric's legs during interviews, she performs in...

The airfare to London and Scotland in 2000 for then-House Majority Whip Tom DeLay (R-Tex.) was charged to an American Express card issued to Jack Abramoff, a Washington lobbyist at the center of a federal criminal and tax probe, according to two sources who know Abramoff's credit card account number and to a copy of a travel invoice displaying that number. DeLay's expenses during the same trip for food, phone calls and other items at a golf course hotel in Scotland were billed to a different credit card also used on the trip by a second registered Washington lobbyist, Edwin...

Is the new pope, former Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, Catholic? Judging from the response of the mainlining media, stuffed with graduates of the Goebbels School of Public Journalism, the answer must be a resounding, "We're afraid so." In reality, Joseph Goebbels would probably blush at the propaganda techniques employed on a day-to-day basis by most of America's self-proclaimed "mainline" news outlets. News in America today is less concerned with reporting and explaining the day's events than it has ever been. That's because it is more concerned today than it has ever been with bullying public opinion into support for its plethora...