Free Republic

The government shutdown has made it abundantly obvious that the anti-conservative news media and the anti-conservative Republican establishment have joined together to the point where it's almost impossible to see where one ends and the other begins. Some might say they merge every day on the set of "Morning Joe." The media have designated as Public Enemy No. 1 a recalcitrant bloc of tea party stalwarts who have declared their intention to stop Barack Obama's statist juggernaut from imposing the Obamacare monstrosity, running up trillion-dollar deficits year after year and in so doing destroying the private sector. Amazingly, liberal Republicans...

On Sunday, Breitbart News Editor-at-Large Ben Shapiro discussed the launch of a new website that will seek to "change the nature of media" by exposing the donors and advertisers that enable the mainstream media to distort the truth and push their agendas with no accountability, especially when it comes to their bottom lines.Shapiro will lead TruthRevolt.org, which will launch on Monday to expose the mainstream media and “unmask leftists in the media for who they are, destroy their credibility with the American public, and devastate their funding bases."Appearing on Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot channel 125 with Breitbart News Executive Chairman and host...

Once again, we've reached a government shutdown over irresponsible government spending. Once more, the media are proclaiming the world is coming to an end and blaming conservative Republicans for everything. They are working hand in glove with the Never Enough Government lobby that dominates Washington, without a shred of shame. Anchors and editors continue to insist that if the GOP were smart, it would bow to "conventional wisdom" and put its foot on the fiscal accelerator. That's what this is about. The elites fully expected Republicans "led" by McConnell and Boehner to fold and are stunned -- furious, really...

For the first time in five years, the conventional media prefers Russian President Vladimir Putin over U.S. President Barack Obama. Has Vladimir sent American journalists cases of Russian vodka? Or are they fed up with Barack? It’s amusing to imagine Putin shipping cases of Russian vodka to American journalists with a note: Dearest American Journalists: Please put me on the cover of your influential news magazines, such as TIME Magazine, and also please publish my op-ed in one of your most distinguished newspapers, The New York Times. I will be truly grateful. My public image has never been stellar. Americans...

If we put ourselves into the shoes of racists who seek to sabotage black upward mobility, we couldn't develop a more effective agenda than that followed by civil rights organizations, black politicians, academics, liberals and the news media. Let's look at it. First, weaken the black family, but don't blame it on individual choices. You have to preach that today's weak black family is a legacy of slavery, Jim Crow and racism. The truth is that black female-headed households were just 18 percent of households in 1950, as opposed to about 68 percent today. In fact, from 1890 to 1940,...

President Obama is announcing for the umpteenth time he's going to "pivot" to fixing the economy -- as if that's ever worked before, since it is he who broke it. That said, Obama will pivot to tiddlywinks if that's what it takes to get out from under his mountain of scandals. On the White House website, Obama flack Dan Pfeiffer posted a blog post demanding everyone pay attention to Obama's latest speech in Galesburg, Ill., expressing tender concern for the middle class. Meanwhile, he lamented, "Too many in Congress are trying to score political points, refight old battles and trump...

NOTE: As of this writing the jury was deliberating and cable news networks were “filling time with wild speculation from media ordained experts” who know as much about what’s happening in the jury room as a coin-toss. The jury could come in at any time between hitting “send” noon on Saturday and this going live at midnight Sunday. Can I just say something controversial that must be said? I don’t care about the George Zimmerman trial. I don’t, not even a little. That’s not to say I don’t feel sorry for those involved who’ve lost a loved one, I do....

Could the boondoggle we call "Obamacare" be a bigger disaster? Is there any better example of the arrogance, incompetence and remorselessness of top-down central planning? The very name of the law, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, is a deceptive euphemism, as it neither protects patients nor makes health care more affordable. The law was born in hell. The premises upon which the bill was based, the promises its proponents made and the corruption and high-handedness in its legislative process tainted it from the outset. Remember how the administration sent a threatening letter to Humana and other companies, threatening...

The unfolding story of the Obama administration monitoring not just telephone records but Internet usage has drawn media coverage with adjectives like "astonishing." No doubt about it, even the pro-Obama press acknowledges it is a scandal. Still, it is laughable that the media would label him a "dictator" or discuss the "I word." That's not what greeted George W. Bush at the end of 2005. Just eight years ago, journalists openly discussed tyranny and the possibility of impeachment. On Newsweek's website on December 19, 2005, Jonathan Alter went ballistic: "We're seeing clearly now that Bush thought 9/11 gave him license...

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...

WASHINGTON - Over the long, hard course of Barack Obama's painfully slow, job-scarce, sub-par economy, he may have set a record for persistent media reports that his shaky recovery was finally showing signs of strength. This week, the president's economic cheerleading squad was back on the field again, applauding new data showing housing prices hitting the highest level in five years, rising consumer confidence and a bullish stock market rally that pushed the Dow to record highs. Once again, the news media's euphoria was splashed across the front pages of the nation's newspapers and led the TV nightly news shows....

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...

“I now agree that it’s fruitless to give the benefit of the doubt to people who are so obviously corrupt, so clearly malevolent, so bent on hurting innocent people for their own sick gain,” Aurora Sentinel editor Dave Perry wrote in an April 25 editorial. “No more due process in the clear-cut case of insidious terrorism. “When the facts are so clearly before all Americans, for the whole world to see, why bother with this country’s odious and cumbersome system of justice?” he asked. “Send the guilty monsters directly to Guantanamo Bay for all eternity and let them rot in...

NPR’s popular “Wait Wait, Don’t Tell Me” trivia show gets its fair share of big name political guests (Bill Clinton called in once, for example), but host Peter Sagal knows that there’s a specific shortage he’d like to fill: Republicans. Asked by Vulture, “Is there a dream guest for you? Someone you’ve been trying to get that you think you never will?” Sagal responded, “I would love to get more Republicans on the show.” "One of the things I really envy about Jon Stewart is how many times he’s able to get Republicans on his show. And that’s to his...

It doesn’t matter whether you’re on the far left, far right or somewhere in the middle, there is absolutely no denying the rise of the tea party has altered America’s political landscape. And the elite media is making clear, in no uncertain terms, they despise this type of change. Last week, Senator Heidi Heitkamp (D-ND) voted against the Schumer-Toomey gun bill because her constituents were opposed to the bill. On MSNBC’s Morning Joe, former lawmaker Joe Scarborough and his sidekick Mika Brzezinski lit into her: MIKA: She is defending her vote saying her office was flooded with calls from constituents...

On Wednesday, Mother Jones ran an article making a shocking claim: more Americans have been killed by conservative terrorists than by Islamic terrorists since September 11, 2001. “While America has been fixated on the threat of Islamic terrorism for more than a decade, all but a few domestic terror plots have failed,” the article explained. “Between September 11, 2001, and the end of 2012, there were no successful bomb plots by jihadist terrorists in the United States …. [R]ight-wing extremists killed 29 people during those 11 years.”But is it true?The Mother Jones piece is based on a study by the...

"Esquire's Charles P. Pierce wrote in an online post on the magazine's website that we should not jump to conclusions and blame foreign terrorists, then blames it on right-wing domestic terrorists. He stated "remember that this is the official Patriots Day holiday in Massachusetts, celebrating the Battles at Lexington and Concord, and that the actual date (April 19) was of some significance to, among other people, Tim McVeigh, because he fancied himself a waterer of the tree of liberty and the like." CNN's Peter Bergen stated that the bomb type could point to right-wing domestic terrorists as well. "If it...

On the Monday broadcast of Current TV's "The War Room" network host Cenk Uygur observed Americans would not be as outraged if the Boston bomber turns out to be a "right-wing white guy" instead of a Muslim terrorist. "Now, if it's a right-wing white guy, those same exact people will turn around and say, 'Well, look, let's not over blow this. I mean it's just one crazy guy, he doesn't affect anything else. It has no other implications, let's just all calm down," Uygur said. Michael Shure, the host of "The War Room," said Cenk could be totally wrong about...

When the massacre in Newtown occurred, it received wall-to-wall coverage, as well it should have. We’d never seen anything like this before – a mentally ill gunman shooting tiny children and their teachers in an elementary school. It shocked the senses and dominated the national conversation – as well it should have. And aside from opportunistic leftists, such as Michael Moore and Piers Morgan, the original coverage leaned toward what caused the murderer to act and how such mental illness might be addressed in the future. But just as a serious and productive conversation was beginning, the political agenda...

The Los Angeles Times is up for sale, and there are super-wealthy conservative bidders. Get the popcorn out and watch the liberals squeal. The hilarious kickoff came when two leftist collectives -- the Daily Kos website and the California-based Courage Campaign Institute -- set out to buy an ad in the LA Times to protest the Koch brothers pondering a bid. I kid you not, the ad began: "WE NEED NEWS, NOT MORE SPIN." This would assume that today's Los Angeles Times -- which just endorsed Obama's re-election -- is an oasis of objectivity in a desert of media bias....

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...

The liberal media know an abortion outrage when they hear it. Sadly, they only seem to hear them from the mouths of Republican candidates, and it only takes a statement to outrage the press. Can't they find a single abortion outrage inside an abortion clinic? Such is their radicalism that nothing, absolutely nothing regarding this gruesome procedure raises their eyebrows, never mind their ire. One emerging story proves the degree to which our "objective" media's views on abortion are dogmatic and extreme. Abortionist Kermit Gosnell is on trial in Philadelphia, and not just for killing babies outside the womb,...

Our left-wing media's somber, mourning coverage of Venezuelan despot Hugo Chavez once again demonstrates the double standard journalists reserve for dictators. Seven years ago, the left's greatest South American hate object, Augusto Pinochet, passed away. Never mind how he used free-market reforms to modernize Chile. Never mind that after 15 years of rule, he allowed a national plebiscite to vote against him, and he stepped down peacefully. The left-wing outrage pulsed on the front pages. The Washington Post headline for Pinochet in 2006 was "A Dictator's Dark Legacy." Reporters Monte Reel and J.Y. Smith stated his government "murdered and tortured...

For years, conservatives have been split on whether President Barack Obama is incompetent or whether he is malicious. Mitt Romney ably made the argument for incompetence during the 2012 election cycle, when he stated that President Obama was. Romney's view symbolized the majority view on the issue. Until now. With the advent of sequestration, it is now clear that President Obama is willing to throw Americans under the bus in pursuit of his vision of a transformed America. He is more than content to break eggs to make his utopian omelet. That uncomfortable reality became clear during the sequestration debate...

If Santa Claus had a State of the Union speech, it would sound much like President Obama’s latest. In it, Obama detailed a Christmas list of “investments” on Tuesday night that he wants government to make. In all, he included 11 separate versions of the term “invest” to indicate government spending – your tax dollars. The solution to all that spending was, of course, more taxes when Republicans have already said “no new taxes.” Naturally, the media loved it. MSNBC’s Ed Schultz called it “a stunning speech tonight.” CNN’s Jessica Yellin said Obama was “relaxed and confident.” Politico’s summary was...

Astoundingly we have seen the media turn into hypocrites in recent days. Shock of shocks... how can it be? But when the President that an overwhelming majority of media members voted for, was running for President, they parroted his message of compassion, and American humility, and the need for us to talk to our enemies instead of torturing them. Being in the solid minority of media members who held that we either kill the guys who are trying to kill us, or at the very least, extract information about when they are next going to try to kill us, I...

Gun control zealots state that we (the serfs of Obamaland) shouldn’t have “assault weapons with high capacity magazines” because we don’t “need” them. And these wizards—who don’t know diddly about guns—know exactly what we need. Oh, yes they do, girlfriend. If you don’t believe me just ask them. They’ll tell you what kind of guns you should and shouldn’t have even though their bodyguards and their children’s bodyguards have the exact battery that they forbid us to build. “Why can they live in a dynamic state of duplicity,” you ask? Well, Dinky, it’s because they are more special than us...

I am going to let my subscription to Sports Illustrated lapse when it runs out this year. I hope lots of other people will do the same. Like too many other publications, the magazine has become dishonest, dishonorable and even occasionally despicable in its conformist, lockstep left-wing bias. Republican politicians and conservative positions are routinely insulted in articles having nothing to do with either. Yawn-inducing left wing predictability is brought to the discussion of every issue. No SI writer is allowed to disagree with leftism ever. Despite its great photographs and occasionally good athlete profiles, the magazine has remade itself...

On Christmas Eve, seven people were shot in the city of Chicago. The media made little mention of the shootings, since they're now routine in Chicago -- the city has seen some 500 shootings in 2012 alone. The vast majority of the shooters are black, and the vast majority of the victims are black. Many of the victims are under the age of 18: Anton Sanders, 15, shot on Jan. 20; Deshun Winfert, 15, shot on Feb. 5; Damion Rolle, 14, shot on Feb. 21; George Howard and Albert Guyton, both 15, shot on Feb. 27 and Feb. 28; the...

As we go to press polls show America’s largest swing state in a dead head between Romney and Obama. Florida has 29 electoral votes and the third largest “Hispanic� population in America. Normally this means a cakewalk for any Democrat. But whoops! Turns out that about a third of these Florida Hispanics (Cuban-Americans) are actually so—as in Americans whose ancestors hail almost exclusively from Europe’s Iberian Peninsula known as Hispania by the Romans. So as a broken clock is right twice a day, the term “Hispanic� as used by the mainstream media can actually be correct about 1/1000 of...

What does it tell you when the room set aside for reporters to watch Tuesday night's presidential debate erupted into raucous applause after President Barack Obama made a mockery of Mitt Romney's personal wealth? What does it tell you when Candy Crowley, CNN's chief Washington correspondent and the debate's moderator, crossed the line and told Romney he was wrong when in fact he was right -- that Obama didn't mention "terrorism" as the reason for the attack on the U.S. mission in Benghazi, Libya until two weeks later? It tells you the media in the United States, like Crowley, is...

Rep. Paul Ryan's 100 percent rating by the pro-life National Right to Life Committee and his support of the "Protect Life Act" are evidence of the Wisconsin Republican's extremism on abortion and as such, should hurt the appeal of the Romney/Ryan ticket with women voters, MSNBC's Alex Wagner argued on the August 14 edition of her noon Eastern Now with Alex Wagner program. Of course the 100 percent pro-choice record that Barack Obama has with NARAL Pro-Choice America might strike centrist voters as equally "extreme," but Wagner failed to note Obama has never deviated from the NARAL line. What's more,...

REDMOND, Wash. — NBC News has acquired full control of msnbc.com and its digital network from Microsoft Corp. and is immediately rebranding the site as NBCNews.com. Many details of the arrangement remain to be worked out, and financial terms weren't disclosed. But NBC News President Steve Capus said the site — one of the news industry's earliest and most successful online operations — would become part of NBC News Digital, a new division led by Vivian Schiller, the former president and chief executive of National Public Radio. Schiller joined NBC News as chief digital officer last year.

In one of the uglier MSM smears of the presidential campaign to date, MSNBC's Richard Wolffe has tried to tie Mitt Romney with one of America's most reviled men: John Edwards. Appearing on Al Sharpton's MSNBC show this afternoon, Wolffe somehow suggested that Romney's decision to invest overseas and legally trim his federal tax bill was akin to Edwards reprehensible behavior. According to Wolffe, there is a "moral question" hanging over Romney, just as there was regarding Edwards. View the video here.

Last Sunday, CBS’ 60 Minutes broadcast “Christians of the Holy Land,” by Bob Simon, largely blaming Israel for an exodus of Christians from the Holy Land. The showing coincides with a growing international campaign to portray Israel as anti-Christian, showcasing Palestinian Christians as evidence. “Palestinian Christians, once a powerful minority, are becoming the invisible people, squeezed between a growing Muslim majority and burgeoning Israeli settlements,” the segment opened. “Israel has occupied the West Bank for 45 years.” But the harsher indictment came from a Palestinian Lutheran pastor and critic of Israel. “If you see what's happening in the West Bank,...

The first question at Thursday night's debate in South Carolina went to Newt Gingrich, giving him an opportunity to denounce a "vicious" news media that is "protecting Barack Obama by attacking Republicans."

(Crain's) — The federal judge overseeing the Tribune Co. bankruptcy case shot down reorganization plans submitted by the Chicago-based media company and a dissident creditor group, threatening to appoint a trustee to oversee the case if they don't resolve it soon. Tribune filed for bankruptcy protection in December 2008 under the weight of $13 billion in debt, a year after the company was taken private in an $8.2-billion leveraged buyout led by real estate mogul Sam Zell, who became its chairman. In a decision that started with the parable of the scorpion that stings the fox carrying him across the...

Look, I am past exhausted talking about liberal media bias. It’s real, we all know it, and people who deny it aren’t even fooling themselves. But some things just have to be pointed out. This morning I watched the first 15 minutes of the Today Show. I don’t particularly love or even like the program, but I find it useful to see what the producers think is the big news of the day. And sometimes Chuck Todd is on, and I like him. If I sound defensive about watching the show it’s only because I am. Anyway, the first ten...

Democrats must be in trouble if The Daily Beast is running a headline White Supremacist Stampede, with this opening line: Add to the growing list of candidates considering a bid for the GOP presidential nomination in 2012 America’s most famous white-power advocate: David Duke. Ah yes, the David Duke card gets played. Duke is an anti-Semitic kook who is far more likely in recent years to be hobnobbing with anti-Israel European leftists and Islamists than with anyone associated with the Republican Party or the Tea Party movement. Yet The Daily Beast trots out a possible (inevitable?) Duke run for President...

When Air America Media, the liberal radio network, went bust last month, it left several of its better-known contributors, including Rachel Maddow and Ron Reagan, holding i.o.u.’s. According to the company’s bankruptcy filing, its unsecured debts exceeded its net worth by more than $15 million at the end. Almost all of that is owed to Pendulum Media, the company run by Air America’s chairman, Charlie Kireker. But when the lefty chatter stopped, some of the talkers had not been paid for the last of the airtime they filled. Ms. Maddow was due $3,952 for her services, which appeared to be...

Walter Cronkite’s remarks at the end of his February 27, 1968 evening news broadcast, four decades ago today, were a watershed in the history of the MSM’s credibility.   Unless you’re at least 55 years old, you probably don’t remember that CBS broadcast 40 years ago.  The most trusted man in America had recently returned from Vietnam where he hosted a documentary on the VC/NVA TET (New Year) offensive that began January 31, 1968.  Back in NYC, he closed his program that night by introducing “an analysis that must be speculative, personal, [and] subjective.”  Among his comments were these: Who won...

The new media do themselves and the world's news consumers a great disservice by referring to the old media as "mainstream" media. As anyone who seeks "the rest of the story" knows, they are anything but mainstream in their reporting. Those of us who have used the word "mainstream" in referring to big media have not helped the cause of honest reporting. Those in the independent media model used this reference in an attempt to draw attention to the favorable Democrat and unfavorable Republican reporting that characterizes the bulk of big media's product. That effort has failed. Worse, it is...

We’ve all heard of Bush Derangement Syndrome. It afflicted mostly Cambridge types fearful that the big-belt-buckled Texan was eavesdropping on their BlackBerry calls. Then there was Sarah Palin Derangement Syndrome. Herald readers believe it’s afflicted me. But now, proving that derangement knows no partisan divide, Obama Derangement Syndrome (ODS) has taken hold. And he’s not even been elected for a week. If you Google, “Impeach Obama,” you get a million and a half references. Facebook already has “Impeach Obama” - or more to the point, “Barack Hussein Obama” - sites, with thousands of members. “Americans do not fully understand the...

There has been a lot of speculation that Barack Obama might win the election due to his better "ground game" and superior campaign organization. I had the chance to view that organization up close this month when I canvassed for him. I'm not sure I learned much about his chances, but I learned a lot about myself and about this election.

Two well-known Canadian pranksters tricked Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin into thinking she was on the phone today with French President Nicolas Sarkozy. The conversation, captured on a Montreal radio program, was, in a word, embarrassing. (Politico's Ben Smith was among the first to pick up on reports from The Canadian Press.) The fake Sarkozy buttered Palin up by telling her he hoped she would become president some day. "Haha, maybe in eight years," Palin replied. Then the conversation turned to helicopter hunting, with a mention of Vice President Dick Cheney's infamous bad shot. "One of my favorite activities...

I have many Republican friends who are disgusted that I'm voting third party this election year. They believe stopping Barack Obama from becoming president outweighs all else. Meanwhile, I have many Democrat friends who are equally disgusted; for them, seeing John McCain defeated is more important than who wins. They are all wasting their votes. Imagine a reckless teenager who constantly runs up his parents' credit cards, smashes the family car every Friday night, is failing in school, and has serious drinking and drug problems. Now imagine that no matter how reckless and dangerous that teenager became, his parents believed...

SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) -- The Chicago Tribune Media Group said Monday that Ann Marie Lipinski would step down as the editor of its flagship newspaper, with the publication preparing to go through another round of layoffs and shrink the number of its printed pages. Lipinski had been editor of the Tribune since 2001 and had been with the paper since 1978. Her resignation will take effect on Thursday. In a statement, Lipinski said that "the position is not the fit it once was." The Tribune said that Gerould Kern, the paper's vice president of editorials since 2003, will serve as...

March 16, 2007 Editorial Phony Fraud Charges In its fumbling attempts to explain the purge of United States attorneys, the Bush administration has argued that the fired prosecutors were not aggressive enough about addressing voter fraud. It is a phony argument; there is no evidence that any of them ignored real instances of voter fraud. But more than that, it is a window on what may be a major reason for some of the firings. In partisan Republican circles, the pursuit of voter fraud is code for suppressing the votes of minorities and poor people. By resisting pressure to crack...

How the New York Times Traded Journalistic Integrity for Vodka and CaviarThose of us who read the New York Times regularly have been shocked by what can be at best described as pro Kremlin reporting or at worst, a case of outright journalistic fraud. The New York Times first caught my attention with their January 25, 2007 article: TALLINN JOURNAL; Debate Renewed: Did Moscow Free Estonia or Occupy It? Penned by their Moscow correspondent, Steven Lee Myers, the article makes no reference to the fact that it was the official policy of the United States (and other democratic states) NOT...

WARSAW, Poland — Poland could be Europe's first "red state". "New evangelization"It was the late pope's fervent hope that the intense spirituality of his native Poland would spark a "new evangelization" of Western Europe. During most of his papacy, there was scant sign of that happening. But more recently Poland has emerged at the fore of a fledgling movement to restore Christian values to Europe. Beginning in 2003, the Polish government led the push — ultimately unsuccessful — to include some reference to Christianity in the new EU constitution. Aleksander Kwasniewski, the reformed communist who was Poland's president at the...