Free Republic

“That doesn't qualify as a terrorist attack,” said Carl Tobias, a professor of law at University of Richmond who analyzes terrorist investigations across the country. Understanding the Ft. Hood Attack: America’s the Bad Guy This I Know, Because My TV Told Me So By Barry Rubin thelastcrusade.org My teenage daughter watches the “Bones” series and described the latest program to me. An American soldier who had served in Iraq is found dead in the United States. FBI agents discover he was in a battle where U.S. soldiers had stormed a house and one of his friends was killed by...

Members of the mainstream media — people who call themselves “journalists” — seem to have paid absolutely no attention to a Congressional Research Service report on energy released Oct. 27 — this, despite the fact that two energy-related measures (i.e., the Kerry-Boxer and Waxman-Markey) are at the center of heated debate now taking place on Capitol Hill.

Not to be the master of the obvious here, but it is going to be hard to convince people that the earth is warming . . . when it is not. The earth's temperature peaked in 1998. It's been falling ever since; it dropped dramatically in 2007 and got worse in 2008, when temperatures touched 1980 levels. But we'll give ABC credit for reporting the poll numbers. Then they get downright hilarious trying to discredit it eight ways to Sunday. The advocacy is top-notch, it is just too bad that they don't see it as such.

Click here to read El Marco's report on Denver's Operation Can You Hear Us Now ABC and NBC News in Denver were surrounded by Tea Party protesters as part of anti-media rallies that took place in dozens of American cities on Saturday. There was almost a complete media block out of this event nationwide. El Marco dissects ABC News' fraudulent coverage in his latest photo expose. Instead of focusing their camera on Tea Party protesters (above) ABC News interviewed only these interlopers (below). An amazing story of news media malfeasance and blatant liberal bias.

If the MSM continues to decline and right wing radio continues to climb...at what point does Rush become main stream media? Give me a forecast as to when this will occur. Tell me what we will do with the moniker "MSM" when that happens.

<p>The western Massachusetts is going to New York on Oct. 12 to protest NBC studios at the today show and making the rounds to the other morning shows.</p> <p>Around 7:00 AM the commuters on the trains will meet with others and people driving in at NBC studios at Rockefeller Center. a small contingent of people will stay back at Grand Central Station for a few minutes to wait for late comers; should have very visible signs saying protest at news studios!. We should all meet at NBC around 7:20 and let the games begin.</p>

Liberals scoff at any person who points out the obvious fact that the mainstream media is overwhelmingly biased to the left. And Fox News Channel, through the eyes of a liberal, is nothing but conservative propaganda. Cable news personalities on CNN and MSNBC discredit Fox, pretending that they haven’t been overshadowed by FNC’s success for years on end. The simple reality is that, especially recently, Fox News has been the only source of quality journalism and reporting in the cable news realm. The numbers speak for themselves; Fox is consistently on top. On the evening of Tuesday, September 15, Bill...

Much of the Mainstream Media has a low opinion of the American people. They believe them to be mindless cattle who are easy to influence, similar to the President. To the MSM, it was propaganda that got us into the war on terror, and it is their job to use propaganda to get us out. The problem with that theory, is that the American people are not dumb. They mistrust government and ask lots of questions which is why people tend to gravitate toward the conservative point of view. And one thing's for sure they see through the Mainstream Media's...

For years now I have watched many talented, conservative, writers, filmmakers, television producers and journalists go unnoticed, unmentioned or unrewarded while their liberal peers are worshipped - even by conservatives. Case in point, a few years ago Andrew Sullivan was all the rage in conservative media. They said he was a great writer, he was insightful, he was a force for conservatism in the world etc etc. Baloney!!!! Andrew Sullivan's career began with what I call the Manhattan Media Mob. These are the people who launch the careers of your typical elite, liberal ...

It is clear the dominant media is attempting to inject race into the discussion over President Barack Obama's political agenda. I find it interesting the mainstream media never applies the same standards to those who oppose African-Americans on the political right. For example, during U.S. Supreme Court Clarence Thomas' contentious confirmation process he was called everything from an unqualified jurist to a sexual predator. Yet the left faced no charges regarding racist motivations concerning their verbal assaults on Thomas. Other victims of vicious attacks from liberals include Former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and current Republican Party Chairman Michael Steele....

I'm hearing that Barack Obama plans on making the rounds of most of the Sunday morning news shows this upcoming weekend, and I'm thinking; What? We don't already know you're in favor of health care reform? Of cap and trade? Of just about anything a "right" thinking leftist loves and adores? Has there been a day -- or even an hour in any day since January 20th of this year -- that the President hasn't been on the airwaves, imploring us to believe the sky was about to fall down upon our heads for real this time? Surely, as an...

Part of the fallout from the whole “ACORN-getting-busted-teaching-folks-how-to-be-better-pimps-and-prostitutes” thing is a long-overdue examination of the role of the mainstream media (I prefer the term "LameStream" Media) in basically covering up for the sins of the far Left these days. The dissembling and weak excuses issuing forth from more than a few of the so-called "giants" in the media (the New York Times, the Washington Post, ABC's Charlie Gibson...who admitted to not even knowing, or caring, about the ACORN dustup etc.) over why they failed to even demonstrate a smidgeon of curiosity about what Barack Obama's favorite community organization was up...

Obviously, the "main stream" media are hard of hearing and seeing. About 2 million mad-as-hell taxpayers assembling in Washington, D.C. for the largest-ever (most well-behaved ever, most respectful ever) protest did not make it onto their radar screens (or our TV screens). They need our help. Maybe we cannot repeat an assembly of 2 million mad-as-hell taxpaying patriots in one place, but surely those who longed to go and couldn't would love to be a part of Operation "Can You Hear Us Now?" I'll bet for every one patriot who went to D.C. there are 10-20 more who wished they...

As most of you probably know by now, Communist Van Jones, Barack Obama's new 'green jobs czar,' has resigned. This is as it should be. A self-described Communist has no business serving in the government of the United States in any capacity. Jones' resignation comes as no surprise to those astute readers of online news sources, blogs, and other alternative media. As more information became known concerning the extremist radical views of Jones, it was only a matter of time before he either resigned or got handed his pink slip. Yet millions of Americans will be shocked tomorrow when they...

What is Digg? Digg is a place for people to discover and share content from anywhere on the web. From the biggest online destinations to the most obscure blog, Digg surfaces the best stuff as voted on by its users. You won’t find editors at Digg — they’re there to provide a place where people can collectively determine the value of content and they’re changing the way people consume information online. How do they do this? Everything on Digg — from news to videos to images — is submitted by their community of users (known as "diggers"). Once something is...

Are you familiar with Saul Alinsky's rules? Take Rule 5 for example. Ridicule. So what do you see in the liberal media? Stuff like this in local media, and then you'll see stuff like this in the national media. Look like ridicule to you? Or take rule 4. Making your enemy live up to his own rules. How many times you seen liberal politicians crow about draining swamps, or culture of corruption and the media goes right along with them? How many promises has Obama broken? Haven't seen much of a showing from the media on this, have you. How...

The conspiracy theorists who have claimed for more than a year that President Obama is not a United States citizen have found receptive ears among some mainstream media figures in recent weeks. Despite ample evidence to the contrary, the country’s most popular talk radio host, Rush Limbaugh, told his listeners on Tuesday that Mr. Obama “has yet to have to prove that he’s a citizen.” Lou Dobbs of CNN said that Mr. Obama should do more to dispel the claims. Larry King, also of CNN, asked guests about it. Chris Matthews debated it with guests on MSNBC, and “NBC Nightly...

Walter Cronkite created Fox News. Cronkite's fundamental role as a "cultural artist" in creating Fox. one of the most notable moments of Cronkite's liberalism being unmasked in a highly visible fashion was his now famous series on Vietnam. But by this time conservative Americans were already well awake to the realization that this powerful new institution of television was being used in ways both subtle and not, to convey the message that there was no more enlightened or superior world view than modern American liberalism. Broadcast by broadcast it was increasingly apparent that those who disagreed or who challenged the...

Journalism: After the eulogies, the fact remains that "the most trusted man in America" betrayed that trust. He helped snatch defeat from the jaws of victory in Vietnam and tried hard to do the same in Iraq.President Obama on Friday praised Walter Cronkite as a journalistic icon, calling the CBS anchor the "voice of certainty in an uncertain world." More to the point, he was the father of advocacy journalism, the patron saint of media bias. He went from reporting news to recreating it in his own image. Far from the image of the patriotic war correspondent, Cronkite was a...

What’s the difference between a prehistoric dinosaur and a journalist dinosaur? A prehistoric dinosaur didn’t know it was a dinosaur. The “bullpen” at the New York Times in September 1942, my birth month. For the benefit of our young readers, the instrument in the foreground is a “rotary” telephone, and those things spread across the desks are printed newspapers.The old notion of a resourceful “ink-stained wretch” digging for facts out of the public eye, plucking the truth from complex human events, and writing about it all has been pushed aside on the fast track of media celebrity. Journalism’s tent of...

"Reporters from roughly 30 television networks, newspapers, magazines and Web sites celebrated the Fourth of July with Barack Obama at the White House last weekend. Why didn't you know that? Because they were sworn to secrecy," John Cook writes at Gawker.com. "We reported that Politico's Mike Allen was spotted milling about as a guest at the White House's 'backyard bash' by the pool reporter, who was allowed into the event for 40 minutes and kept in a pen before being ushered out. When Allen quoted from the pool report in his column the next day, he deleted a reference to...

Unfortunately, Michael Jackson, or "Wacko Jacko" will be remembered by many as that super weird, talented guy rather than for his artistic work and charitability. He reportedly gave to more charities than (39) than any other performer. His repressive childhood was not due so much to his Jehovah Witness upbringing - which probably gave him more "grounding," than an Ozzy Osbourne, but to his super rigorous recording and concert schedule as a kid. Jackson reported, later in life, that he was not able to have a childhood, and this, perhaps, is the foremost reason why he never wanted to grow...

We will be standing out with signs at WGGB channel 40 in Springfield MA at 5:00PM to protest the coverage Obama and the healthcare plan will be receiving on ABC news that day and evening. Looking for suggestions for signs (I am not creative).

SNIPPET: "Balance is a noble pursuit in journalism. But true balance requires more than presenting "both sides" of an issue. Stories about terrorism and extremism are complex and sensitive. But when there is a record to document many of the allegations – it requires more effort than simply asking two sides to comment."

The Obama Infatuation By Robert J. Samuelson June 1, 2009 The Obama infatuation is a great unreported story of our time. Has any recent president basked in so much favorable media coverage? Well, maybe John Kennedy for a moment, but no president since. On the whole, this is not healthy for America. Our political system works best when a president faces checks on his power. But the main checks on Obama are modest. They come from congressional Democrats, who largely share his goals if not always his means. The leaderless and confused Republicans don't provide effective opposition. And the press...

He was tall and stunningly good looking, a guy who could appear pensive and serious one moment and then, with smoke from an unfiltered cigarette swirling around his face, morph into the hippest looking dude this side of James Dean. Which is why budding photographer Lisa Jack knew the moment she saw Barack Obama walk into the campus snack shop at Los Angeles' Occidental College in 1980 that she had to get the freshman in front of a camera. "I was doing portraits of fellow students, the cool people on campus," Jack, a slender, 49-year-old bundle of energy, recalled this...

...So following the principled journalistic lead of the Associated Press, I am going to go ahead and declare that AC analysis finds that the Associated Press is racist due to the significant differences between how they address America’s first black president when compared with their historical usage of honorifics with white presidents. They should all be ashamed.

In the wake of voters' rejection of John McCain this past November, there has been a lot of advice proffered as to what steps the Republican Party should take so as to insure its viability in the Age of Obama. With few exceptions, most of the commentary on the subject, emanating as it does from liberals and Cable TV pundits, is spurious, and if followed by the Republicans, will simply ensure that the party will remain in the political wilderness. Stripped bare of its specious reasoning, the "big tent" theory — as propounded by liberals — in essence, asserts that...

Some people noticed that many reporters rose from their seats last Friday when President Obama unexpectedly entered the White House briefing room, but the same courtesy was not always extended in the past when President Bush would make an appearance. Comparison videos were even posted on YouTube. It’s a long-standing practice for reporters to rise when the president enters the East Room for a news conference, but that hasn’t been the case in the briefing room. I checked with two colleagues who served as senior wire service reporters during the Bush Presidency and who, in matters of press protocol, the...

It appears that the New York Times Co. has found it difficult to stick to sound business principles in its negotiations with unions representing Boston Globe employees, as today it caved and withdrew its threat to close down the paper in 60 days if negotiations fail. Just yesterday the death of Boston's liberal fish-wrap seemed imminent. With just hours before a midnight deadline that could determine the future of the Boston Globe, the paper's owner, the New York Times Co, has yet to reach deals with any of the Globe's four major unions over $20 million dollars in total concessions...

"Barack Hussein Obama is our first affirmative action president, that’s about it when his 'historic achievement' is concerned. There’s no politician in American history is more overrated than he is. While his resume is embarrassingly thin, his ambition and rhetoric are mind-bogglingly full-of-it and yet he was rarely called out on it and put in his real spot..."

Two states have legalized same-sex marriage in the past two weeks, but when it comes to public opinion, supporters of gay marriage are still a minority. That minority is on an upward trajectory though and Scott Barclay, political scientist at the State University of New York at Albany, explains why: newspapers. In the last two weeks, two states have legalized same-sex marriage. First, the Iowa Supreme Court ruled that a law banning same-sex marriage was unconstitutional. Then Vermont became the first state to legalize same-sex marriage through its legislature. When it comes to public opinion, supporters of gay marriage are...

As expected, the New York Times's business operations began burning cash this quarter (until now, they had remained cash-flow positive). The company has recently made several wise moves that have postponed the date at which it will run out of cash. But the situation is still critical. At the current rate of cash consumption, assuming no one-time expenses (highly unlikely), we estimate that the company will max out its current borrowing capacity in 4 quarters.

In all my years of watching news coverage in America, I don't believe I have ever witnessed more condescending, amateurish, purely politicized reporting than what just transpired among the liberal MSM covering America's Tax Day Tea Parties. The Tea Parties represented a very significant news event. Whenever close to 300,000 middle-class Americans put their productive lives on hold on a midweek workday, make original signs with their own hands, and travel miles and miles to stand with other private citizens just to demonstrate their anger with government, in more than 300 cities from coast to coast and everywhere in between,...

NEW YORK (AP) — CNN is poised to finish March third in the prime-time weeknight ratings behind Fox News Channel and MSNBC, the first time this has ever happened for the channel that pioneered the cable news genre nearly three decades ago. CNN says its overall business is healthy and it is not straying from its straight news path. But it is suffering more audience erosion than its rivals since the peak days of the presidential election, further proof that the opinionated prime-time shows on Fox and MSNBC have greater audience loyalty. CNN's weekday prime-time ratings are relatively flat compared...

Few groups take themselves more seriously when making fun of others taking themselves seriously than journalists, especially many in the species that inhabits Washington. There are fewer of them these days, but that hasn't diminished the fervor with which they celebrate their place and their access to high-powered people who come to the banquets at least to pretend to enjoy the mocking of their pretensions. Think months of work and rehearsals--an amateur roast full of in-jokes with the students making fun of the principal, the assistant principals and select faculty with everyone in formal wear and the principal called upon...

Yesterday's New York Times featured this story contemplating the very real possibility that there could soon be a major American city with no daily print newspaper. Richard Pérez-Peña discusses the imminent demise of The Seattle Post-Intelligencer's print edition (scheduled to cease next week). The Hearst Corporation, which owns the Post-Intelligencer, has also threatened to close The San Francisco Chronicle, which lost more than $1 million a week last year. The Hearst Corporation...founded by William Randolph Hearst...upon whom the title character of Citizen Kane is not so loosely based. Hmmm. (Cue Twilight Zone music, play video above.) OK, so instead of...

Here is video of Bernie Goldberg on tonight's The O'Reilly Factor, listing the five top far-left smear merchants in the mainstream media. Goldberg gave O'Reilly the following list: 5. Janeane Garofalo - representing Hollywood 4. Bill Moyers 3. Markos Moulitsas - Daily Kos 2. New York Times 1. MSNBC Goldberg gives MSNBC the top spot, not because of their influence, but because they are a division of a major network and peddle was he called "defamation" of conservatives. . . . . (Watch Video of Goldberg Giving His List)

The day following President Obama’s State of the Union speech I opened my daily newspaper to read the headline “What the president said and what the facts say.” It was an Associated Press story and it drove a tank through the President’s various promises and assertions. The AP reporters weren’t the only people who had some doubts. A Reuters news story confirmed my prediction, noting that “Stocks fell on Wednesday as investors found little new in a major speech by President Obama on how he planned to stabilize the economy, while gloomy home sales data weighed on the market.” Facts...

America is tuning out the liberal Main Stream Media and turning to Fox News in droves. Fox News is leading prime time and daytime cable news ratings during February for the 86th straight month. Many Fox News shows were up over 30% compared to last February.

The New Face of Washington’s Press Corps As Mainstream Media Decline, Niche and Foreign Outlets Grow Source: Pew Research Center Project For Excellence in Journalism “The corps of journalists covering Washington D.C. at the dawn of the Obama administration is not so much smaller as it is dramatically transformed. And that transformation will markedly alter what Americans will know and not know about the new government, as well as who will know it and who will not. In addition, the contingent of foreign reporters in Washington has grown to nearly 10 times the size it was a generation ago. And...

A righteous man regardeth the life of his beast: but the tender mercies of the wicked are cruel.

"Nightline" co-anchor Terry Moran gave an interview on Friday to the Media Bistro's "Morning Media Menu" podcast and compared Barack Obama to George Washington. Talking to host and editor Steve Krakauer, Moran gushed, "I like to say that, in some ways, Barack Obama is the first President since George Washington to be taking a step down into the Oval Office." (For those who have forgotten, George Washington defeated the strongest military power in the world. Barack Obama was a community organizer.) [Audio available here.] Moran continued, "I mean, from visionary leader of a giant movement, now he's got an executive...

The website of a New York TV network whose aim is to improve American perceptions of Islam was shut down this morning, two days after its founder admitted to the beheading of his wife. And while that irony might bring a momentary smile, another attempt to conceal the facts behind an honor killing right here in America should stir nothing short of outrage. Muzzammil Hassan, CEO of Bridges TV, whose motto is "connecting people through understanding," apparently didn't think Thursday's honor killing -- and make no mistake about what this was -- at the station might somehow blur that message....

This book, if I do say so myself, would be hilarious if it wasn’t so serious. Because you just can’t, you can’t imagine some of the stuff they said. One thing that happened after he was elected. Page one of The Washington Post -- The Washington Post isn’t, you know, the hillbilly gazette -- page one of the nation’s capital’s most important newspaper. There was a story on Christmas morning about Barack Obama’s exercise regimen. By the way, when they wrote about, when reporters wrote about George Bush’s exercise regimen some of them called it “obsessive” and “creepy,” but listen...

Over at Big Hollywood Iraq War Vet Sqt. Welch has declared war on Hollywood liberals: Almost 90% of Americans believe the war in Iraq is and was a waste. The Hollywood media feeds the public wasteful, depressing, and horribly fabricated stories. When did the U.S. military become the bad-guys? We are stereotyped “Generation Kill.” I guess that is all we do. All we do is go to Iraq, hunt innocents and slaughter them. I guess that is what I did for eight months while I was there. I guess I really didn’t save Iraqi families from being tortured by foreign...

Robert Gibbs made a splash yesterday at his first official press briefing as White House Spokesman, managing to make odd references to Brazilian soccer while outing confidential sources and generally making display of his ham-handed tactics and smarmy, arrogant style. In a triumph for incompetence and unprofessionalism, two themes that I expect to play a large part in the Obama administration, Gibbs had an uncomfortable exchange that was covered by the Washington Times, but apparently more or less ignored by the mainstream media reporters at the briefing.

Liberal media screws it up again http://www.thebulletin.us/articles/2009/01/22/news/nation/doc49781f50a165d871453486.txt

NEW YORK -- When Rick Stengel joined Time in 1981, every story in progress filled a thick binder -- the reporter's version, the editor's rewritten version, the top editors' version, the fact-checked version -- that would be unimaginable in today's cut-to-the-bone corporate culture. (snip) When Jon Meacham joined Newsweek in 1995, "there was a phrase in the culture -- 'We need to get something in on X' -- that we never use anymore," he says. The days of a "newsmagazine of record," Meacham says, are long gone. (snip) Morale in both shops has been devastated as staffers complain about a...

A Hamas official insists that a 'legacy of suffering' under Israel is what fuels Palestinian resistance... From Damascus -- While Americans may believe that the current violence in Gaza began Dec. 27, in fact Palestinians have been dying from bombardments for many weeks. On Nov. 4, when the Israeli-Palestinian truce was still in effect but global attention was turned to the U.S. elections, Israel launched a "preemptive" airstrike on Gaza, alleging intelligence about an imminent operation to capture Israeli soldiers; more assaults took place throughout the month. The truce thus shattered, any incentive by Palestinian leaders to enforce the moratorium...