Free Republic

We already know that the Obama Administration and the state-run media (SRM) represented by Couric, Williams, and Gibson have suppressed information on the bombshell 'Climategate' scandal, so why should we believe them on anything else? Obama stated in a speech this week that his 'stimulus' packages were working, that millions of jobs had been 'created or saved,' and that the economic figures indicate the first stages of a turnaround.

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.

The war against Foxnews goes on. Just one year ago, could you envision the Executive Branch of the United States government actively going out and telling major news networks they better not do what Fox News is doing or you’ll regret it? What is the Obama administration going to do? Pull a Hugo Chavez and shut them down by edict? Don’t be surprised if they do try to emulate what’s been going on in Venezuela. The next big thing will be the use of the phrase “media crimes.” Even though a crime has not happened, the administration will infer that...

Everyone routinely called them the Mainstream Media. Rush now calls them the State Controlled Media. I’ve called them the Mainstream Media, the Poodle Press, and the Lap-Dog Media. Whatever you’ve called them the time’s come to call them irrelevant? Out with the old and in with the new. When news organizations consistently slant their coverage and ignore major stories because they don’t fit their template or further their agenda it’s time to re-evaluate what they are. They portray themselves as objective yet everyone can see they’re partisan publicists for a particular party and a particular radical left-wing of that party....

Last night while listening to Glenn Beck, he challenged his viewers with a call to action. He ordered us to get off our collective arses and call the media demanding to know if they will cover the ACORN story. This morning, I called the National News desk of the ComPost - I live in Maryland and work in DC. After numerous rings, I finally got voicemail stating to leave a message and number. My message was if the ComPost - I did not call them that on the voicemail - was going to investigate ACORN. I next called the Washington...

The refusal by ABC and NBC to run a national ad critical of President Obama's health care reform plan is raising questions from the group behind the spot -- particularly in light of ABC's health care special aired in prime time last June hosted at the White House A doctor in the ad by the League of American Voters asks: "How can Obama's plan cover 50 million new patients without any new doctors? It can't." The refusal by ABC and NBC to run a national ad critical of President Obama's health care reform plan is raising questions from the group...

On a rainy day last week in Long Branch, NJ, Bob Dylan, wearing a hood, was peering into a for-sale home when a neighbor called the police fearing he might be a burglar. Two young officers arrived on the scene and neither of them knew who Bob Dylan was. They asked for I.D. - he had none but explained he was a musician on tour with John Mellencamp and they were set to play at a nearby stadium in Lakewood. Without fuss or anger, Mr. Dylan was escorted back to his tour bus where he produced I.D.

Even journalists are beginning to revolt at tactics the government is now using to spin the Global Warming myth. Controversy erupted this week at the World Conference of Science Journalists over the National Science Foundation's "underwriting" of media projects. It turns out that the NSF, which is heavily invested in propagating the Global Warming party line, has been quietly producing content for news outlets, content which the casual observer might not recognize...

Arianna Huffington has proved herself in l'affaire Pitney to be both a hypocrite and so ignorant of journalism that she should not be allowed near a news-oriented website, even to read it... Pitney was given a press pass for the event, and was specifically called on, for one reason: to make it appear that Obama was taking "a question directly from an Iranian," in Pitney's own words. The nature or wording of the question didn't matter; Obama would give his carefully prepared response, no matter the details. It was a sham. A charade. Stagecraft, in which...

With a change in directions so sharp that it could give observers whiplash, Arianna Huffington is defending the carefully orchestrated question posed by a Huffington Post writer at the presidential news conference last week. After braying criticism during the Bush administration over perceived coziness between the press and the White House, she is now defending the HuffPo's hand in glove--or should I say, hand on keyboard--cooperation with....

Explosive commentary on the news this morning that ABC News is essentially turning over its programming to the White House and using its news broadcasts as infomercials for 'Obamacare.'

A curious phenomenon is occurring with regard to cable news viewers. Since the election those networks that have been decidedly pro-Obama are in deep trouble. Revenue has tanked and viewers have been leaving in droves. At the same time, outlets such as Fox News have been gaining new viewers by leaps and bounds. What's going on here? There is a reasonable explanation for the shift, and the news isn't good for the Obama administration.

Long gone are the days of Edward R. Murrow, Charles Collingswood, Douglass Edwards, Chet Huntley, David Brinkley, Frank Reynolds and Howard K. Smith. These men were true “Broadcast Journalists.” They understood all to well the responsibility that rested on their broad shoulders. You didn’t have to tell Murrow or Brinkley, two men of great honor and distinction, that your job is to report the news, “straight down the middle, and leave your editorial comments out of your copy.” As Americans, we didn’t know if these men were Democrats or Republicans. It wasn’t our business: And they did not wear their...

**My Comment: Timothy M. Kaine and gubernatorial candidate Terry McAuliffe are "changeing" the facts to make it a story they can run with* Liberty University officials insisted Friday that they revoked recognition of the College Democrats club for religious reasons and not political ones, and they weren’t trying to stifle free speech. Politicians, including Gov. Timothy M. Kaine, urged the private school to reconsider. Using the letterhead of the Democratic National Committee, of which Kaine is chairman, he asked the school “to reverse this attack on the liberty of its students.” LU chancellor Jerry Falwell Jr. said the political club’s...

* NY Times board member denies he approached Google's Page * Says has not talked to any Google executive about NYT NEW YORK, May 12 (Reuters) - New York Times Co (NYT.N) board member Scott Galloway said on Tuesday he did not contact Google Inc (GOOG.O) Co-founder Larry Page to try to get the Internet company to buy the newspaper publisher. Galloway told Reuters he has not talked to anyone else at Google about buying the Times, denying a report in Fortune.com on Monday that said Galloway had made an overture to Page. "I've never been in same room with...

The nation's largest organization of professional journalists announced Tuesday it will oppose the reintroduction of the Fairness Doctrine. The Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ) announced it would stand against the Fairness Doctrine, which the group said would allow the government to control broadcast editorial content. The announcement makes for strange bedfellows with conservatives in Congress, who have alleged the Fairness Doctrine would result in severe constraints on their talk radio base, including superstars like Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity. "SPJ in general opposes government intervention on speech. The Fairness Doctrine does that and discussion about having it again should end,"...

See comment below.

What causes people to believe liberal lies in spite of what is obvious, to believe that 911 was an inside job when what really happened is obvious, to believe in global warming during one of the coldest winters on record? Why is it that 20 plus years of Rush Limbaugh and 10 plus years of Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham, Hugh Hewitt, Bill O’Reilly, Glenn Beck, Michael Savage, Michelle Malkin, FOX News, the internet and conservative bloggers have had no effect against the socialism that still continues to take over this country? How did Ronald Reagan win 2 landslide elections without...

Just by reading this online story, you are part of a groundbreaking trend. According to a new study from the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press released last week, the Internet has passed newspapers as the most popular source for news. Only television surpassed the Net, with about 70 percent of Americans saying they get most of their national and international news from the ubiquitous box. About 40 percent say they get most of their news from the Net, an increase of 16 percent from September 2007. Newspapers are the main source for about 35 percent. This...

Viewing the United States through the eyes of a foreign national is one thing. And viewing the United States through the eyes of foreign media professionals is another thing. So as we close-out 2008, and begin a new year with the soon-to-be President Obama, the view from the “foreign news desk” may shed some light on some of the ways in which the world misunderstands both our country, and our President-elect. I don’t have any “McCain scandal” to tell. No tabloid-style inside scoop about John McCain and Sarah Palin squabbling behind the scenes on election night, or Palin’s daughter’s boyfriend’s...

It started out 16 months ago as a mortgage crisis, and then slowly evolved into a credit crisis. Now it's something entirely different and much more serious.

ERS is still wondering, if its illegal to bring in “looted” items from Iraq, and someone has even been convicted of a crime for doing so -- why is it O-K for Lara Logan to be displaying a few of those same kind of items framed on her office walls at CBS News and have public media stories done about them without any US Customs people paying attention?. We don’t know yet for sure, but we’ll stay on the story until we find out!

Last week, we published Babba Zee's Anti-Obama Blogs Shut Down by Google, Obamabots. Thurday, Blogger locked our original (and still quite robust) site, DBKP at Blogger for being a spam blog. One would think Blogger would have a system in place before shutting down blogs with any kind of Google Page Rank. After all, your average spam site doesn't acquire much of a page rank. But, apparently, one would be wrong. Our original site is PR-5. Were Obama supporters behind this latest round of blog shutdowns, as they were last month? In Obama's Netroots Supporters Continue "Blog Burning", Confederate Yankee...

For newspapers, the news has swiftly gone from bad to worse. This year is taking shape as their worst on record, with a double-digit drop in advertising revenue, raising serious questions about the survival of some papers and the solvency of their parent companies. Ad revenue, the primary source of newspaper income, began sliding two years ago, and as hiring freezes turned to buyouts and then to layoffs, the decline has only accelerated. On top of long-term changes in the industry, the weak economy is also hurting ad sales, especially in Florida and California, where the severe contraction of the...

NEWSPAPER AD REVENUE PLUNGES, SPREADING FEAR IN INDUSTRY... DEVELOPING...

Conservatives remain scarce in the news media landscape. Only 6 percent of the national press corps describe themselves as "conservative" in a population that includes reporters, editors and producers from major television and radio networks, daily newspapers, news wires and online sources. Those who consider themselves "very conservative" amount to just 2 percent, according to a wide-ranging survey of 585 journalists and news executives released yesterday by the Project for Excellence in Journalism. In contrast, 36 percent of the overall population generally consider themselves conservative. There are more conservatives in broadcast than print — 10 percent and 2 percent, respectively....

Hillary Clinton ceased to be the Democratic front-runner weeks ago, humiliatingly enough for her formerly inevitable campaign. But it was only after her drubbing in the Wisconsin primary that she became an inconvenience, the superfluous woman of Democratic politics. Among elected Democrats and the press, there is a palpable impatience with Hillary’s continued presence in the race: Won’t this lady ever leave so we can consummate our love affair with Barack Obama? Hillary’s bulwark was to be the Democratic establishment, but here was the party’s immediate past presidential nominee, John Kerry, an Obama supporter, shooing her off the stage. On...

ABC News' Teddy Davis and Talal Al-Khatib Report: In one of the most bizarre moments of the 2008 campaign, Obama campaign lawyer Bob Bauer called into a Tuesday night Clinton campaign conference call with reporters. The four and a half minute exchange led to a series of antagonistic questions painting the former first lady's charges of caucus vote tampering as baseless. "I'd be interested to know," said Bauer, "how is this any different from the series of complaints that you've registered against every caucus that you lose?" Listen to the exchange between Bauer and Clinton campaign communications director Howard Wolfson...

Not being in the middle of it all gives me a rather unique advantage. That means I have no one to answer to for my views. I just watch things, and then I talk about them. In other words, this means I don’t have to lie about my biases in order to keep some false sense of objectivity alive for the gullible. In other words, I’m no Chris Matthews. Let me start then with the current batch of presidential hopefuls: Folks - meaning the current Republican candidates - you really need to watch out for Fred Thompson. None of you...

New Zealand Publisher Begins Newspaper Editorial Outsourcing Program WELLINGTON, New Zealand (AP) -- Newspaper publisher APN News & Media began outsourcing editorial production work Sunday, a strategy being watched by media outlets in other countries, a senior executive said. An outside contractor now will do the editing and layout work for The New Zealand Herald -- the nation's biggest daily -- along with several regional papers and weeklies, said APN deputy chief executive Rick Neville. Starting Sunday, 20 full-time sub-editors at contractor Pagemasters New Zealand will be "operating on an extension of APN's 'Cyber' computer editorial production system" at a...

The Titanics of world media crashed, full speed ahead, into these new media options years ago. These people STILL don't realize that half of the world population that will ever buy cell phones already have done so; nor are their realizations of the world view in touch with the effects of such a change from one-way media to two-way media, but are still in shock that the Internet provided media coverage to bloggers that toppled "The Great and Powerful Oz" in the form of Dan Rather, while their news reports tried and failed, to make a fake story about toppling...

Bias, Propaganda or the Truth Media Paige Turner May 19, 2007 Over the last few months, the mainstream media, along with the help of the DNC (Democrat National Committee), has created countless scenarios of cursory stories that have continued to divide a nation and appease an enemy. During World War I, President Woodrow Wilson faced invidious attempts against his foreign policies by self-proclaimed Socialist and Progressives. Meanwhile, more than fifteen million immigrants flooded into the United States from Europe. Anti-Americanism began to grow and propaganda was spread by people who did not agree with Wilson’s foreign policies...

The vast majority of American voters detect the presence of political bias in the mainstream news media... Sentiment is strong: 83 percent of likely voters think bias is "alive and well." Of that number, 64 percent said the press leans left, while slightly more than a quarter -- 28 percent -- said there was a conservative bias. Naturally, there's a partisan divide, and a pronounced one. Among Republican respondents, 97 percent said the press was liberal. Two-thirds of political independents agreed with them, with less than a quarter of the independents -- 23 percent -- saying there was a conservative...

There’s a secret within the news business—a secret probably only veteran reporters and their friends know, but would be loathe to admit—reporters don't really like surprises. Now, that might seem an odd statement to make about people who make their living pushing news. But the unexpected can really mess up the story you’ve just written, which, in turn, can cause you more work, more stress, and more time at your computer terminal. As a result of this phenomenon, once the major media have anointed a front-runner for President, they don’t like a maverick honing in on his—or this year, her—territory....

Disgruntled soldiers were “cherry picked” By W. Thomas Smith, Jr Tuesday, March 6, 2007 Sean Hannity has – pardon the cliché – hit the nail on the head. This past Sunday on his new program, Hannity’s America (9:00 pm Eastern on FOX News), he took to task CBS’s recent 60 Minutes piece that featured a handful of active-duty soldiers speaking out against the Iraq War. “CBS left out several important parts of the story,” said Hannity. “The most glaring omission is that of context.” He went on to describe how the 60 Minutes segment was introduced by correspondent Steve Kroft,...

High-paid journalists, media "experts", and pundits are greatly confused in the enormous news coverage of legal battles over the body of Anna Nicole Smith, and custody of her 5 month old little girl Dannielynn. Court hearings in Florida have prompted wall-to-wall live coverage on most of the nation's cable news channels and massive coverage overall. The nation's best journalists interviewing supposedly highly-competent legal experts have all -- ERRONEOUSLY -- reported that the Last Will and Testament of Anna Nicole Smith DISINHERITED her 5 month old daughter boron in the Bahamas in September 2006. This is entirely false. 1) FIRST, Anna...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President George W. Bush's father accused the news media of "personal animosity" toward his son and said he found the criticism so unrelenting he sometimes talked back to his television set. "It's one thing to have an adversarial ... relationship -- hard-hitting journalism -- it's another when the journalists' rhetoric goes beyond skepticism and goes over the line into overt, unrelenting hostility and personal animosity," former President George Bush said. The elder Bush, the 41st U.S. president, had a relatively collegial relationship with the press but things turned sour during his losing 1992 re-election campaign. He got...

SomaliNet) Somalia’s powerful Islamic Courts Union has claimed that its fighters have burnt four tanks from the Ethiopian forces on Sunday in heavy clashes today at Daynunay front near Baidoa city, the seat of the Transitional Federal Government. In urgent news conference held in Somalia capital Mogadishu, Sheik Mohamud Ibrahim Suley, the ICU spokesman for the war affairs said they could afford to resist against the air and ground attacks by the Ethiopian troops. He accused the Ethiopian troops of opening new fronts in central regions of Somalia using excessive power like war planes which air raids on civilian targets...

NEW YORK - Election night 2006 will go into history books as a triumph for Democrats and rebuke to President Bush. It was a watershed evening for the news media, too. The first smoothly run election night of the Internet era left many news organizations unsure of where they stood and should prompt some rethinking in time for 2008, according to a detailed new report by the Project for Excellence in Journalism. The journalism think tank monitored several forms of media that night and concluded the best place to follow the story was on Web sites run by television networks...

Citing a shortfall of more than $20 million in advertising revenue, the Orange County Register said Friday that it would offer voluntary buyouts to employees to help reduce its workforce. If enough people do not accept buyouts, layoffs will be likely, said N. Christian Anderson III, publisher and chief executive of the Santa Ana-based newspaper. He declined to specify the target savings and denied staff members' reports of $5 million to $8 million. "Along with almost every other metropolitan newspaper, the Orange County Register has suffered declines in advertising in recent months," Anderson said in a statement. "Unfortunately, we don't...

As Tribune faces the Chandler family at a board meeting Thursday, the newspaper industry is riveted by another skirmish inside the company: the growing rebellion at The Los Angeles Times. After Jeffrey M. Johnson, the publisher of The Los Angeles Times, and Dean Baquet, the editor of the paper, openly defied their bosses at Tribune last week by refusing to make layoffs at the paper, Mr. Johnson was summoned to Chicago and spent Tuesday meeting with top executives.

A journalism group passed a resolution Friday condemning the Bush administration's attitude toward the news media and claiming government practices were endangering press freedom. The Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication targeted the administration for paying columnists, reclassifying public documents as secret, and using the courts to pressure journalists into revealing sources. "The current administration has engaged in a number of practices and has enacted a series of severe and extraordinary policies that attack the press specifically and by extension, democracy itself," the resolution stated. White House officials denied the charge, saying the "administration is committed to sharing...

Tragically, however, we in the media have made mistakes. You may recall that in April 1983, some 60 people were killed in a bomb attack on the U.S. embassy in Beirut. At the time, there was coded radio traffic between Syria, where the operation was being run, and Iran, which was supporting it. Alas, one television network and a newspaper columnist reported that the U.S. government had intercepted the traffic. Shortly thereafter the traffic ceased. This undermined efforts to capture the terrorist leaders and eliminated a source of information about future attacks. Five months later, apparently the same terrorists struck...

NEW YORK (MarketWatch) -- Tribune Co., locked in a boardroom tussle with a major shareholder, said Tuesday that it's still on track to close a Dutch-auction tender offer to buy back up to 53 million shares of its common stock next week. Moreover, the Chicago-based media company won't take a big tax bite to accommodate the Chandler family, according to Chief Executive Dennis FitzSimons. The Chandler Trusts are the second-largest owner of Tribune Co. stock. During an abbreviated presentation at the annual Newspaper Association of America Mid-Year Review in New York, FitzSimons said that the tender should still close June...

David Westin George Stephanopoulos Brain Ross ABC News 7 West 66th St. New York, NY 10023 RE: False Story Regarding Justice Department Investigation Dear Mr. Westin, Stephanopoulos, and Mr. Ross: At 7:25 p.m., the Statement of the Department of Justice confirmed: “Speaker Hastert is not under investigation by the Justice Department.” At 10:21 p.m., you wrote: “Whether they like it or not, members of Congress, including Hastert, are under investigation,” on federal official said tonight.” This statement is false, and your republication of it after actual knowledge of its falsity constitutes libel and defamation. ABC News’ continued publication of this...

WASHINGTON, March 21 — An inquiry has found that an American public relations firm did not violate military policy by paying Iraqi news outlets to print positive articles, military officials said Tuesday. The finding leaves to the Defense Department the decision on whether new rules are needed to govern such activities. The inquiry, which has not yet been made public, was ordered by Gen. George W. Casey Jr., the senior American commander in Iraq, after it was disclosed in November that the military had used the Lincoln Group, a Washington-based public relations company, to plant articles written by American troops...

The NMJ.us Poll How do you rate the conduct of the mainstream media regarding the Cheney hunting accident? A) Correct to be upset B) Mad because a small town newspaper scooped them C) Sick and tired of not being able to run the hallways at the White House like in the Clinton years D) Just a bunch of jerks E) B, C & D

The first revolt of the American colonists against their British rulers was immortalized by Ralph Waldo Emerson as "the shot heard round the world." Vice President Dick Cheney's hunting accident has now become the shot heard round the Beltway. The accidental shooting of Harry Whittington, while he was on a hunting trip with Dick Cheney, has nothing to do with government policy or the Vice President's official duties but the mainstream media have gone ballistic over it nevertheless. They are also angry that the news was not given to them more quickly, which prevented it from becoming the feeding frenzy...

While the editorial page of The Wall Street Journal is conservative, the newspaper's news pages are liberal, even more liberal than The New York Times. The Drudge Report may have a right-wing reputation, but it leans left. Coverage by public television and radio is conservative compared to the rest of the mainstream media. Meanwhile, almost all major media outlets tilt to the left. These are just a few of the surprising findings from a UCLA-led study, which is believed to be the first successful attempt at objectively quantifying bias in a range of media outlets and ranking them accordingly. "I...

The latest scandal emanating from the Iraq war is the story about the US military paying the Iraqi media to publish favorable stories. News media organizations and journalists continuously harp on how this amounts to the US military using the Iraqi news media for US propaganda. (Although, they don't seem as concerned about terrorists or insurgents using the Iraqi news media for propaganda.) When this writer observed Harvard University's Marvin Kalb, an avowed expert on the news media and policy, on the Fox News Channel showing great concern over the Iraqi news organizations being part of a propaganda campaign, I...