Free Republic

Today’s opening snark courtesy of Journolister Dave Weigel from his Slate perch: Big Government breaks the news that Bill Ayers hosted a fundraiser for Barack Obama; well, this was broken by Ben Smith in 2007, but still. I call it a “snark” because the word “lie” feels a little harsh during this holiday season. However, it’s just a fact that Big Government didn’t position the piece as “breaking news” and as far as I can tell it wasn’t even a featured story. But you have to admire a guy like Weigel who poses as an objective journalist and yet sees...

Press watchdog Reporters Without Borders urged media organisations on Friday to take care to protect female reporters from sexual assault while covering unrest in Egypt, following several serious attacks. The group initially warned women journalists not to work in Cairo's Tahrir Square...It is more dangerous for a woman than a man to cover the demonstrations in Tahrir Square. That is the reality and the media must face it ... On Thursday, French television reporter Caroline Sinz from the state network France 3 was subjected to a violent sexual assualt by a gang of young men and boys and her cameraman...

Real-estate and newspaper mogul Mortimer Zuckerman voted for Obama but began seeing trouble as soon as the stimulus went into the pockets of municipal unions. 'It's as if he doesn't like people," says real-estate mogul and New York Daily News owner Mortimer Zuckerman ... The Boston Properties CEO is trying to understand why Mr. Obama has made little effort to build relationships on Capitol Hill or negotiate a bipartisan economic plan. A longtime supporter of the Democratic Party, Mr. Zuckerman wrote in these pages two months ago that the entire business community was "pleading for some kind of adult supervision"...

Left-wing financier George Soros is at it again. While he may claim he’s not behind the Occupy Wall Street protests, funding from his foundations says otherwise. Soros threw his support behind the movement at a United Nations panel on Oct. 3, “I can sympathize with their grievances.” But he does more than just sympathize, his foundations funded groups that back the protests and steer their “progressive” message..... it is hard to ignore the concerted effort by liberal groups, unions, and other Soros-funded entities that prop-up and fuel the Occupy movement. An echo-chamber of left-wing blogs and news sites that receive...

The paper's Jerusalem bureau paid barely minimal attention to the recent killing of an Israeli man and his one-year-old son by stone-throwing Palessinians who attacked their car -- with one huge stone smashing through the windshield and hitting the driver. ... Like most Western reporters, Kershner assumes that a logical peace treaty must divide Jerusalem, with Jewish neighborhoods in eastern Jerusalem remaining in Israel and Arab neighborhoods becoming part of Palestine. But neither she nor her colleagues have ever checked with Arab residents of Jerusalem about what their real preference might be. Had they done so, they would have found...

New York Times Co. swung to a second-quarter loss on a write-down tied to its news media group, along with the continuing decline of advertising revenue and higher promotion costs related to the launch of digital subscription packages. New York Times, which also owns the Boston Globe, has signaled that its cost-cutting efforts, which have allowed it to remain mostly profitable despite its top-line declines, may be winding down. Most publishers have seen slower advertising-revenue declines, but the newspaper industry continues to battle circulation losses as readers migrate to the Internet. ... Revenue dropped 2.2% to $576.7 million, reflecting a...

The 2010 elections, which changed the balance of power in the House, were driven by popular opposition to government spending, debt and the threat of tax increases. Yet even with the federal debt limit already breached and only days left to prevent a national default, the media continue to ignore the public's wishes. The theme of network reports on the debt ceiling battle is that some agreement MUST be reached so that the limit can be increased, but many Americans disagree with raising the debt limit and are more concerned about government spending. But that has barely been mentioned in...

The parent company for the Hartford Courant has announced plans to eliminate jobs in an effort to cut costs. The newspaper cites an email from CT1 Media saying that some of the positions being eliminated include those in the newsroom as well as production and administration departments. The paper reported late Thursday that it was not immediately clear how many positions will be cut and when that will happen.

RUSH: I want to move on to Sarah Palin now. You know the Beatles' Magical Mystery Tour? You know the...? That was actually, ladies and gentlemen, an experimental movie that the Beatles made about a bus tour, and nobody could figure out what the Beatles were up to, either. By the same token nobody knows what Palin's up to. They're all trying to figure it out. The Drive-Bys are trying to figure out what Palin is up to. Now, the interesting thing is that whatever it is she's doing, she is doing it bypassing the media. She's doing an end-around...

Palin is rubbing the media mob’s sense of entitlement right back in its face. In the 1970s, The Boys on the Bus exposed how a clubby pack of male political reporters ruled the road to the White House and shaped the news. Four decades later, an outsider gal from Alaska has commandeered the 2012 media bus — and left Beltway journalism insiders eating her dust. We’ve come a long way, baby. Amid frenzied speculation over her potential presidential-campaign plans, former GOP Alaska governor Sarah Palin launched an all-American road trip with her family this Memorial Day weekend. Establishment media types...

Sarah Palin’s efforts to confuse the media about her bus tour seems to have worked; she’s turning them against each other. “I want them [the mainstream media] have to do a little bit of work on a tour like this,” Palin told CNN. This morning, she fooled some of them, leaving her bus behind as a decoy. Reporters have resorted to chasing her bus. All of this confusion seems to have gotten to the press who, understandably, are trying to get the story and do their jobs. Now, some of the media frustration is playing out on Twitter. Some journalists...

Since Palin and her team won’t share where the potential candidate is headed, reporters and producers have little choice but to simply stay close to Palin’s bus. This has resulted in scenes of the Palin bus tooling down the highway followed by a caravan of 10 or 15 vehicles – including a massive CNN bus – all trying to make sure they don’t lose sight of the Palin bus. It adds up to a dangerous situation, says CBS News Producer Ryan Corsaro. “I just hope to God that one of these young producers with a camera whose bosses are making...

Meet the Press" host David Gregory said Friday there are "prominent views within Israel" that support President Obama's controversial Mideast peace ideas expressed the day before. When asked by MSNBC's Joe Scarborough, "What major Israeli public figures have come out supporting the President's speech," Gregory couldn't name one (video follows with transcript and commentary): ... Unfortunately for the "Meet the Press" host, Scarborough exposed the charade with a simple question. Readers are reminded that Gregory has been celebrated by his comrades in the media all week for his gotcha interview with Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich last Sunday. Unlike those...

For George Soros and ProPublica’s other liberal backers, it was again proof that a strategy of funding journalism was a powerful way to influence the American public. It’s a strategy that Soros has been deploying extensively in media both in the United States and abroad. Since 2003, Soros has spent more than $48 million funding media properties, including the infrastructure of news – journalism schools, investigative journalism and even industry organizations. And that number is an understatement. It is gleaned from tax forms, news stories and reporting. But Soros funds foundations that fund other foundations in turn, like the Tides...

Virtually unreported by the national media - because it might detract from President Obama's victory lap... The "Father of Waters," as President Lincoln called the Mississippi, is on a historic rampage. Almost no one now living remembers such a river crest. The levees were blown on the Missouri side of the river, below Cairo, last Monday night. Memphis is being surrounded by water. New Orleans will not even see the river crest before Memorial Day Weekend... Is CNN going wall-to-wall? Nope. ... What might this historic flood mean? Well, no one's talking, no one's predicting. Because doing so might affect...

A key backer of a political bill that could put Dog the Bounty Hunter and other bail bondsmen out of business is facing a grand jury probe that could put her behind bars for a car crash that killed a pregnant woman. Colorado state Senator Suzanne Williams is a key supporter of a bill that would allow convicted criminals to post their own bail, effectively replacing bounty hunters like Duane Chapman with the government. The problem, say opponents of the bill, is that it would flood society with criminals and no one to chase them down and bring them back...

Meanwhile, Obama says: 'Let them buy smaller cars.' It apparently didn't occur to the president that people for whom it is a hardship to pay a dollar more a gallon for gasoline can't afford to buy a new car. The remark makes Mr. Obama sound clueless, or callous, or both, but most of the journalists who covered his visit to Gamesa Technology Corp. didn't report this exchange... Gas prices have doubled since Barack Obama became president. With wages stagnant, unemployment high and food prices rising at the fastest rate since the 1970s, this imposes real hardship on many Americans. It...

A U.S. President beset by angry mobs screaming “Yankee Imperialist Go Home”, exploding Molotov cocktails, rubber bullets, tear gas, riot police. Hmmm. Could this be why the President “cancelled a public speech he was scheduled to deliver Sunday” in an “historic plaza” in the “heart of Rio de Janeiro?” Well, we may never know from most in the Make-Believe Media. Yahoo News and New York Times are too busy breathlessly praising Obama as the guru of Hoops citing his so-far superb basketball bracket noting that even women’s hoopsters have attracted Obama’s laser-like focus, promoting my new moniker for our Bookie-In-Chief:...

The rarefied world of academics recently confirmed a sneaking suspicion: those “breaking news” banners on CNBC actually hardly ever, well, break news. And the market knows it. A study that culled from almost 7,000 interviews with chief executives on CNBC over nearly a decade found a recurring pattern: the stock surged on the day the company’s head gave an interview to the business news cable television channel, then dropped right back down over the next 10 trading days.

The number of people subscribing to US cable television services has suffered its biggest decline in 30 years as younger, tech-savvy viewers lead an exodus to web-based operations, such as Hulu and Netflix...cable operators were hard hit, with subscriber numbers falling by 741,000 – the largest decline in 30 years. The figures suggest that “cord-cutting” – one of the pay-television industry’s biggest fears – is becoming a reality as viewers drift to web-based platforms.

Every now and again I like to play "name that party." This is the fun parlor game where you read a story about a politician that has either been indicted, arrested, or imprisoned and try to guess by the story from which party he hails. If you read the story and no political party affiliation is mentioned, 99 out of 100 times you can be sure that the troubled pol is a Democrat. However, if it is a Republican that is going to jail or to court his party usually makes the first paragraph if not the headline itself. Well,...

The recent firing of longtime news analyst Juan Williams of National Public Radio was a wake-up call for many Americans to the political correctness and liberal bias at the station. However, it's not so much the bias that offends me, but the fact that my tax dollars are funding it. On its website, National Public Radio describes itself as "an independent, self-supporting media organization ... that receive(s) no direct federal funding for operations." That carefully worded statement is disingenuous and hides the truth about the extent to which taxpayers are supporting the station and its liberal agenda. NPR is a...

Lt. Col. Allen West is one of the most stand up guys you'll ever meet. He first came to the public eye when his interrogation of an Iraqi yielded lifesaving results even as it was a bit unorthodox. His professional handling of that incident put him on a track to run for Florida's 22nd District House seat, a race he won handily despite the left's unhinged attacks upon him. West ran a clean campaign in Florida's 22nd. He avoided over-the-top attacks on his opponent and did not indulge fits of name-calling. This is not to say that he soft-pedaled his...

At one of the last poll watcher training sessions held by the King Street Patriots on November 1, Assistant Harris County Attorney Doug Ray made an admission that contravenes the media meme that charges KSPs poll watchers with harassing voters here in Harris County, Texas. All week the media and Democrats have charged that voters were being harassed by King Street Patriots poll watchers and thus far county officials have not countered the claims being made by KSPs opponents. But this evening the myth has been busted. During an address to those attending a late training session, attorney Ray admitted...

This is really outrageous. William Kelly, who has a program on the weekends on Chicago's WIND radio, went out with the rest of the media shadowing Rahm Emanuel as he walked around meeting and greeting Chicago voters yesterday. The outrageous part was that Kelly, a conservative, was pushed away by one self-professed "real" reporter and threatened with violence from another simply for asking Emanuel if he thought the stimulus was a failure. I am very familiar with William Kelly as I’ve worked with him off and on for the last year since his run for State Comptroller in the primary....

Forbes has published its world's most powerful women list and on that list, in the top slot no less, is Michelle Obama, the wife of the President of the United States of America. Along with Obama a few singers and entertainers made the list. It all goes to prove that apparently no one knows what "powerful" means anymore. On the most powerful list – after Obama at number one -- Lady Gaga comes in at seventh place, in ninth singer Beyonce Knowles appears, and bringing up the rear is entertainer Ellen DeGeneres. Oprah Winfrey makes it in as number three....

A veteran CBS Radio News correspondent was arrested early Saturday on drug charges after police searched his Northwest Washington home, and found marijuana plants growing in his yard, authorities said. Police arrested Howard Arenstein and his wife at their home in the 3500 block of T Street and charged them with possession with intent to distribute marijuana. Arenstein is married to Orly Azoulay, Washington correspondent for Yedioth Ahronoth, the largest and most widely read newspaper in Israel. Police executed a search warrant at the home Saturday after a tip from an area resident, and found 11 fully mature marijuana plants...

The Constitution of the United States of America. Journalist Mary Dejevsky wrote about it, but she sure hasn't the first clue about what it does, what it means, or why American politics seem to have gone awry. She did get some things correct in her article in Britain's Independent newspaper but over all she proved that she neither understands, nor even has a general feel for the greatest governing document ever written by man. Further Mary Dejevsky reveals herself to be a typical left-winger that not only doesn't "get" the USA but actively hates her and wants her destroyed and...

In an otherwise serious poll from Politico and George Washington University, the survey also asks respondents which cable-news network they access most for political news. The results aren’t terribly surprising, as they more or less mirror the ratings, but are still noteworthy for one network’s almost-total marginalization. While Fox News Channel sailed to an impressive 42% and CNN got a substantial if unimpressive 30%, MSNBC got … More people are getting their news about the upcoming election from cable television than any other source, and from Fox News more than any other cable channel, according to a POLITICO/George Washington University...

Was Washington's WJLA TV anchorman Doug McKelway fired because he dared appear too conservative to suit the station's left-wing news director and general manager? It sure is hard to escape that conclusion after reviewing the incident, in any case. McKelway had a run-in with general manager Bill Lord last month that resulted in his being fired for "insubordination." At issue was a July piece on the BP oil spill disaster in which the anchor seemed to go against the station's liberal grain. McKelway was sent for a stand up report near where a small protest against "dirty oil money" was...

WJLA-TV, the local D.C. area affiliate of ABC, has fired longtime anchorman Doug McKelway for "insubordination and misconduct" after (or during?) an April report on left-wing oil spill protesters . In his piece, McKelway said the sparsely attended event attracted protesters "largely representing far-left environmental groups." [He cited Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth.] He went on to say the protest "may be a risky strategy because the one man who has more campaign contributions from BP than anybody else in history is now sitting in the Oval Office, President Barack Obama..." McKelway added that the Senate was unlikely to...

It almost sounds like the set up to a "guy walks into a bar" joke -- or maybe a knock-knock joke -- but the Washington Post's Dana Milbank made an assessment of his own political ideology that can't help but draw a laugh. As WaPo columnist Howard Kurtz reports, Milbank is being moved to the Post's editorial pages. But it is what Milbank said of himself that amuses. "Anybody reading my column would make an informed judgment that I'm left-of-center, and I wouldn't quarrel with that," he says. "But strongly ideological people on the left do not recognize me as...

The newest faux outrage comes from the mouth of controversial Jewish Rabbi Ovadia Yousef. In a sermon from Israel, Rabi Yousef as much as called for God to commit genocide against the so-called Palestinians. I say "as much as" because he didn't actually call for genocide, but he came awfully close for comfort. In fact, even as he didn't say it explicitly it’s hard not to see it being implied. "Abu Mazen and all these evil people should perish from this earth," said Rabbi Yosef, head of the Israeli Shas party. "God should strike them and these Palestinians -- evil...

Interestingly, Politico is trying to rearrange this election's narrative from the real one of widespread voter dissatisfaction with the Democrat status quo to one of "offbeat GOP candidates" that will "hurt the GOP." Gee, why would that be, eh? As Democrats all across the land are either stepping aside so as not to face difficult reelection campaigns, or losing their incumbent seats to primary challenges, the latest polls show the GOP beating the heck out of Democrats on a generic ballot. Further, Republican voters are energized as never before and 57% of poll respondents even say that the Democrat's agenda...

The Hill conducted its annual survey of how congressmen feel about each other and the answers are instructive. The survey found that Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D. Calif.) is the most partisan, unwelcoming, hard to work with politician in all of the House of Representatives. But the list of Republicans that congressional leftists love should serve as the list of those voters should fire in November and after. (And Illinoisan Judy Biggert seems to lead the pack) The Hill, however, did have an interesting point on why the extremist, left-wing, loud, hectoring, shrill Pelosi has been able to...

What's the Old Media's latest nit-picking Palin apostasy? They claim she rolled her eyes at a nasty, negative constituent. Mean, rotten, evil Sarah the "eye roller" should be tarred and feathered over this, I guess. Here's how The New York Times' The Caucus Blog is reporting it: In a video that has been widely reported, Ms. Palin asks a woman standing next to a large “Worst Governor Ever” banner what she does for a living. The woman — Kathleen Gustafson, according to news media reports – responds that she’s a teacher. That leads to a response that prompted several outlets...

One of my early blogging assignments was the media bias beat over at Newsbusters, so I became particularly attuned to picking up on how the Old Media toes that "unbiased" journalistic line. Unfortunately, in sometimes subtle ways their rhetoric is geared to smear Republicans in any way possible. Here is a perfect example. Last week in a a Chicago-based report on Illinois Republican Gubernatorial candidate Bill Brady, NBC Chicago's Edward McClelland described suburban tea party events as "right-wing bloodfeasts." Catch this unbiased reporting... Read the rest at Publiusforum.com...

We have finally reached the number one, most left-biased journalist in America today on our top ten count down and our most biased journo pick probably won’t surprise any of you. Even though she just “retired” due to her outrageous bias and hatred for Israel, we just have to give the number one most biased slot to the ever-vitriolic Ms. Helen Thomas, long time employee of United Press International (UPI) and later an independent Washington journalist. Thomas was an over 50-year employee of UPI but in the year 2000 she quit the wire service because it was bought by News...

Number three on our list almost violates the criteria that I set up in the first piece I wrote for this series. I said then that denizens of the Old Media that are too much a “cartoon of journalism” would not be included on my list. Yet despite my dismissal of such Old Media clowns, in the number four slot on the list you’ll find Paul Krugman of The New York Times. Given this week’s revelations about the JournoList, we now know Krugman either participated in a media conspiracy to get Obama elected or at least witnessed it first hand...

Welcome once again to our top ten most left-biased working journalist list and now it’s time for number five in the countdown. As we begin our downward slope to the number one most biased, it is fitting that we come to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s Cynthia Tucker as our fifth worst, most biased American journo. Unlike the other left-wingers that merely hate conservative Americans, Cynthia Tucker seems to hate all of us. That seems true at least if her latest outrageous comment on MSNBC can be taken for granted. In recent comments made on Chris “Leg Tingle” Matthews’ MSNBC show, Tucker...

On July 11, the Boston Globe featured a story on "facts" and how people just don't seem to want to hear them when they intersect with closely held political opinions. The story has some interesting points to make, points that seem quite sensible, but there is no escaping the fact that the whole story is not only written from a left-wing perspective but is misleading in a central reality that is wholly ignored by the piece. For the Globe, writer Joe Keohane laments that people with preconceived political opinions rarely have their minds changed when presented with facts contrary to...

Here's a challenge: Can you name one difference between what the media refer to as "world opinion" and Left-wing opinion? Take all the time you need. But no matter how much time you take, you probably won't come up with any examples. The world's media and virtually all international organizations are Leftist in their politics, and they both define "world opinion" and in turn shape it. Of course, there are other powerful institutions in the world that shape public opinion. But virtually none contravene the Left-wing views of the world's media and world organizations on world issues. Take Islam, for...

Three modern myths have been sold to the American people: the promise of a transparent administration (President Obama); the promise of a more ethical Congress (Speaker Pelosi); and the myth of "global warming," or climate change. The first two are daily proving suspect and now the third is sinking with greater force than melting icebergs, if they were melting, which many believe they are not. After spending years promoting "global warming," the media are beginning to turn in the face of growing evidence that they have been wrong. The London Times recently reported: "Britain's premier scientific institution is being forced...

established old media entities are still really struggling to understand the web. Time and time again, it feels as if old media companies, rather than embracing the massive potential of the web, seem to shoot themselves in the foot. For all those people out there working in established media, here are five things you still don’t seem to get about the web: 1. People Never Wanted to Pay for the News. web users can get all that information from a variety of places. Craigslist is way better than paper for classifieds, weather is everywhere, the web updates stock prices instantly,...

Since I wrote and submitted my piece on Helen Thomas comparing the firestorm of condemnation that occurred immediately after entertainer Don Imus made his race-tinged comments about the Duke basketball players to the relative kid gloves with which Helen Thomas is being handled over her outrageous anti-Israeli comments a few new things have occurred in the story. First of all a few left leaning pundits have scolded Thomas, most prominently Clinton era operative Lanny Davis who issued a press release calling Thomas an "anti-Semitic bigot." Joe Klein, another left-wing pundit, posted a few short paragraphs saying that he felt Thomas...

descent into irrelevancy...on King's inability (much the same as his fellow CNN hosts) to compete in the ratings with Fox News and MSNBC. At 9 p.m., the time slot King used to dominate, he's a "distant third" behind Rachel Maddow and Sean Hannity. King now averages 725,000 viewers—that's about half the audience he had during the most recent presidential election; he was drawing 1.34 million in the first quarter of 2009. CNN president Jonathan Klein declined to comment on King's contract, which is up for renewal next June.

CNN's Casey Wian on Friday's Newsroom filed a one-sided report on an illegal immigrant activist who was arrested for participating in a sit-in at Senator John McCain's office on Monday. Wian omitted the liberal affiliation of the activist's group, oversimplified the DREAM Act (the cause of the activist), and neglected how it would open the path for illegals to receive in-state tuition. Wian's interview of Lizbeth Mateo aired 10 minutes into the 11 am Eastern hour. An on-screen graphic mentioned Mateo's affiliation with an organization called Dream Team Los Angeles, but the correspondent didn't mention this explicitly during his report....

The merged Honolulu Star-Advertiser debuts June 7, with nearly 400 people losing their jobs in the process, according to the publisher of the combined newspaper. The last day that both The Honolulu Advertiser and the Honolulu Star-Bulletin will publish separately will be Sunday, June 6... The Star-Bulletin purchased The Advertiser from the Gannett Co. and Francis said he expects to hire about half of the Advertiser's 580 employees, meaning about 290 Advertiser workers will lose their jobs in the merger. The Advertiser, one of Gannett’s larger newspapers with a daily circulation of about 130,000, was founded in 1856 and purchased...

Barack Obama's foreign policy has been defined so far by his attempts to "engage" with adversaries or rivals of the United States, such as Ayatollah Ali Khamenei of Iran and Dmitry Medvedev of Russia. The results have been mixed. But now the president's focus is visibly shifting. In the next 18 months, Obama's record abroad will be made or broken by his ability to do business with two nominal U.S. allies: Hamid Karzai and Binyamin Netanyahu. Both men are prickly and somewhat inscrutable... And Obama has not done well. In fact, his treatment of the Israeli and Afghan leaders during...

Did you know that if you cared about the U.S. Constitution you are a racist? Oh, and did you also know that being against big government and being against Obamacare also makes you a racist? Well if you didn't know that the Nashville Tennessean wants you to realize that if you love the Constitution but hate intrusive, overarching Obamacare… well, you, sir, are a big fat racist. The paper also resurrects the lawmaker-spate-upon lie and lays the blame for all this on the Tea Partiers. That's right, for the Gannet-owned Tennessean reporter Nate Rau wants you to know that loving...