Free Republic

ABC News and George Stephanopoulos have a credibility problem with conservatives and Middle America. And it seems to be getting worse. It’s not just that ABC News hired Bill Clinton’s White House spokesman and counselor George Stephanopoulos as a journalist; it’s that the pack mentality at ABC News doesn’t see it as a problem. “The planning meetings [at ABC News] have little political diversity. Everyone is left of center and at ease with their liberal ideals. The other viewpoint is rarely raised and never fully represented,” a current ABC News producer told me last week. ,,,,, But the bias at...

It is certainly no surprise for gun owners to see the New York Times run a story belittling the United States Constitution. After all, the Times has worked for decades to devalue our founding document. "[I]ts influence is waning," opines the Times. It is "terse and old, and it guarantees relatively few rights." The paper faults the Constitution for being difficult to amend and reflective of the times in which it was written. While the Times does not go so far as to claim the U.S. Constitution has been bad for America, it does lament that it is of "little...

The U.S. economy produced another solid month of job gains in January, offering a hopeful sign for hiring in the year ahead. Employers added a net 243,000 jobs last month, the Labor Department reported Friday. That’s higher than December, when employers added a net 200,000 jobs, and it marked the seventh straight month in which at least 100,000 jobs were created. That hasn't happened since 2005. The nation’s unemployment rate fell to 8.3 percent in January from 8.5 percent in the prior month. The unemployment rate has fallen for the past five months and is now at its lowest level...

Where was the public outcry for justice when Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry bled to death at the hands of a drug cartel in cahoots with the U.S. government? It happened in the Peck Canyon corridor northwest of Nogales, Arizona -- nowhere. The general public didn't hear about it... --snip-- Last November, Dennis Wagner of The Arizona Republic wrote a chronological exposé of the Fast and Furious scandal. But he put a fancy spin on his article which illustrates perfectly how a Big Lie can emerge from a kernel of truth told with bad intent. *The once-obscure case in Phoenix...

Newt Gingrich instantly brought the crowd to its feet last night at the last debate before Saturday's all important primary in South Carolina. What was the multitude cheering? Not his stance on tax policy, or on abortion, but rather his acid assault on the “elite media.” Gingrich expressed outrage that moderator John King of CNN would lead off the evening by asking about potentially damaging charges made by the Speaker’s second wife in an interview with ABC News's "Nightline." The audience howled its approval as Gingrich tore into the “destructive, vicious, negative nature of much of the news media…” As...

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."

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: I don't know that you've seen any of this in the Drive-By Media. I don't know on television if you've seen it. Have you seen it, Snerdley? Have you seen any reports on the unemployment news? Well, it's amazing here. "The number of Americans applying for first-time jobless benefits rose last week, the Labor Department reported on Thursday, reversing a recent decline and suggesting the labor market remained brittle. ... Initial claims for unemployment benefits rose to 399,000 in the first week of 2012, the highest in six weeks, from an upwardly revised 375,000 a week earlier....

PYONGYANG, North Korea (AP) — North Korea says a fierce snowstorm paused and the sky began glowing red above sacred Mount Paektu just minutes before leader Kim Jong Il's death. State media say the ice on volcanic Lake Chon at the mountain in the far north cracked with a load roar. And in the city of Hamhung, a Manchurian crane circled a statue of Kim's father, late President Kim Il Sung, before alighting on a tree, its head drooping before it took off toward Pyongyang. State media say Kim died Saturday morning at age 69. His death was announced two...

NBC-owned television stations in cities across the nation just teamed up with a nonprofit “journalism” group funded by a billionaire husband and wife team who not only spent millions campaigning for President Obama but also topped donor lists to groups like ACORN and MoveOn.org. The nonprofit, ProPublica, will contribute to the news operations of all NBC owned-and-operated stations, including those in such cities as Los Angeles, Chicago and Philadelphia, the network announced Monday. The NBC affiliates will get early access to investigative reports from ProPublica, which describes itself as an “independent, non-profit newsroom that produces investigative journalism in the public...

However wrong the rankings might be, I have to admit Time’s �Best of Everything� lists are pretty fun to browse. In fact, if I made a list of reasons to check Time.com, the magazine’s immortal lists would be the first and last item on it.But, really? The journalists at Time think �Occupy Wall Street� is the No. 1 U.S. news story of the year — ahead of the GOP primaries, the economy, the Gabby Giffords shooting and the debt ceiling crisis? What, oh what, was the rationale? I know you’re dying to read this: To some, Occupy Wall Street is...

Here’s a blast from the past. Remember Eason Jordan? Every conservative political blogger worth his/her salt knows and remembers who he is. Former CNN head Eason Jordan is the disgraced journalist who admitted in a 2003 New York Times op-ed piece titled “The News We Kept to Ourselves” that he deliberately and intentionally whitewashed Saddam Hussein’s atrocities and regurgitated Hussein propaganda for a decade in exchange for access. Let me underscore that: In 2003, after the U.S.-led Coalition invasion of Iraq and the fall of Saddam Hussein, Jordan confessed that CNN had deliberately reported Baathist propaganda during the Saddam era...

Last week, I discussed how Occupy protesters are being directly aided by the mainstream media and indirectly aided by White House stimulus money, as well as New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg's and even Vice President Joe Biden's households. I also detailed how the mainstream media are accelerating their progressive blitz not only to hasten the second coming, or election, of President Barack Obama but also to help him and other progressives in reaching their final goal of "fundamentally transforming the United States of America." I believe the MSM are also bent to coronate a particular GOP candidate whom they feel...

In an explosive interview on MSNBC, Chris Matthews has harsh criticism for President Obama and his team of advisers.

Meanwhile, a friend of Ms Bialek, from Chicago, told the New York Post: 'She has a very infectious personality. It’s easy to see how she won [Cain] over. But the reality of her situation is -- she’s a complete gold digger. It’s all about the money.' Adding that she was from a middle-income family but lives in a posh house while running from bill collectors, the source said: 'Most of her jobs ended in termination. It’s always the employer’s fault, not hers.

Texas Governor Rick Perry, played by SNL's Bill Hader, paid a visit to 'Weekend Update' to explain his recent strange behavior in New Hampshire that some have speculated was driven by drinking too much alcohol. Republican presidential candidate Governor Rick Perry gave a remarkable speech in New Hampshire last week that set in motion broad speculation that Perry, who is losing badly in every nationally-recognized poll, was intoxicated. Perry contended the speech was more reflective of the fact that he "felt great" during it, according to the Washington Post, where full video of Perry's speech was included.

NEW YORK (MarketWatch) — Someday, cultural historians will look back on the early 21st century and speculate about what killed the credibility of America’s so-called liberal-media elite. They will ask, Were the wounds self-inflicted or the product of a methodical plot? Make no mistake about it. We did this to ourselves. As a card-carrying member of the leftist media near-elite — alas, I’m not nearly rich or famous enough to be regarded as a 100% elitist — it pains me to see my brethren sinking like the sun in the west. But we have nobody to blame but ourselves. We’ve...

"Th newspaper does ivrything f'r us. It runs th' polis foorce an' th' banks, commands th' milishy, controls th' ligislachure, baptizes th' young, marries th' foolish, comforts th' afflicted, afflicts th' comfortable, buries th' dead an' roasts thim aftherward". -- Finley Peter Dunne (1867 — 1936), Chicago journalist, writing as "Mr. Martin J. Dooley," Writing in the golden age of "muckraking journalism," Finley Peter Dunne was acutely aware of the power of institutions and their susceptibility to corruption at the expense of justice and truth. The passage above was, and remains, a caution about his own institution -- journalism --...

“Gun scandal skipping the big fish,” The Arizona Republic headline declares. “Evidence Suggests Cover-Up in ATF Scandal, as More Guns Appear at Crime Scenes,” Fox News reveals. “Gunwalker scandal: ATF director out of top job,” CBS News reports. “Gun scandal skipping the big fish,” The Arizona Republic headline declares. “Evidence Suggests Cover-Up in ATF Scandal, as More Guns Appear at Crime Scenes,” Fox News reveals. “Gunwalker scandal: ATF director out of top job,” CBS News reports. Advertisement “Obama Is 20 Days Away from Beating Bush's Scandal-Free Record,” The Atlantic Wire contradicts, albeit admitting “the ATF blunder” was “a close call,”...

While co-host Ann Curry on Tuesday's NBC "Today" wondered if Ron Suskind's "Confidence Men" was "fact or fiction," on August 5, 2008, then-co-host Meredith Vieira touted Suskind's claim in "Way of the World" that the Bush administration's case for the Iraq war was "worse than Watergate." Speaking of Suskind's latest work on Tuesday, Curry described how Obama administration "top officials are lining up to say they were either misquoted or taken out of context by the author." She then wondered: "Did he get the story right?" In contrast, while Vieira noted the Bush White House labeling Suskind's book at that...

Full Title: How to go out with a bang — score points for censorship — a poseur for honor! An editor has resigned after committing the dastardliest of crimes: He helped publish a skeptical paper in a peer-reviewed journal. God-forbid, imagine a paper being reviewed only by people who have some sympathies with your results? It’s unthinkable. We all know that Nature and Science, for example, dutifully send all the papers by alarmists to at least one skeptical reviewer, and since 97% of 77 climate scientists are alarmists, that means the other two scientists who aren’t, are very busy people. ...

As a rule, the press is the scourge of presidents. They’re expected to endure unending scrutiny, mistrust, and badgering—plus hostility if they’re Republicans—by a hectoring herd of reporters and commentators in the mainstream media. But there’s an exception to the rule: President Obama. It’s counterintuitive, but Obama has been hurt by the media’s leniency. Both his presidency and reelection prospects have suffered. He’s grown lazy and complacent. The media have encouraged him to believe his speeches are irresistible political catnip, though they aren’t. His overreliance on words hasn’t helped. The kind of media pressure that can cause a president to...

TMZ has learned ... Chaz Bono will be hitting the hardwood on the new season of "Dancing with the Stars."

Just when you thought the campaigns coming out of George Soros’ Open Society Institute couldn’t push the envelope any further, the Soros backed institute topped itself. OSI reportedly just released a new comic book titled Methadone Man and Buprenorphine Babe — which encourages drug addicts to use Methadone and Buprenorphine to combat heroin and other opioid drug withdrawals and even to fight HIV.

There‘s some curious merchandise for sale in CBS News’ online store.* Alongside a travel mug, tote bag and T-shirt that all bear the CBS News logo, the store also includes the following: “Dreams From My Father,” by Barack Obama “Dreams From My Father,” by Barack Obama (hardcover) “Change We Can Believe In: Barack Obama‘s Plan to Renew America’s Promise” “The American Journey of Barack Obama,” by Life Magazine “Obama: The Historic Campaign in Photographs” “The Official Inauguration Celebration DVD” In fact, out of the 13 items for sale, seven are Obama-related, in addition to the late Sen. Ted Kennedy’s memoir,...

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...

Ed Schultz used a deceptive edit to misinform his audience about the content of Gov. Rick Perry's speech in Iowa yesterday. Schultz claimed that Gov. Perry was calling President Obama a "black cloud hanging over America" when in fact, the governor was talking about the national debt.

The president of the National Organization of Women actually rose to Rep. Michele Bachmann’s defense yesterday (didn’t see that coming!), while Newsweek editor Tina Brown tried to justify the “Crazy Eyes� cover that inspired so much conservative commentary yesterday. But one person seem disinclined to talk about the cover one way or another and that was Bachmann herself. As of yesterday afternoon, Bachmann still hadn’t seen the picture and she didn’t seem to care too much to talk about it when she could be talking about her campaign and her ideas for the country: Brown claims the cover is OK...

Rep. Michele Bachmann has declined to get into the scrum with Newsweek over its cover story of the presidential candidate called "The Queen of Rage," accompanied by an unflattering photo of the Minnesota Republican, but others are calling the magazine out-of-bounds in its depiction. The National Organization for Women President Terry O'Neill said that the cover of the magazine's latest edition is "sexist" and referred to a simple test by the group's founder Gloria Steinem to explain how they determined that conclusion -- would the magazine do the same to a man. "Who has ever called a man 'The King...

Rep. Michele Bachmann has declined to get into the scrum with Newsweek over its cover story of the presidential candidate called "The Queen of Rage," accompanied by an unflattering photo of the Minnesota Republican, but others are calling the magazine out of bounds in its depiction. The National Organization for Women (NOW) President Terry O'Neill said that the cover of the magazine's latest edition is "sexist" and referred to a simple test by the group's founder Gloria Steinem to explain how they determined that conclusion -- would the magazine do the same to a man.

MoveOn.org drives new liberal catch phrase: ‘Tea party downgrade’ Matthew Boyle - The Daily Caller 43 mins ago The left-wing activist group MoveOn.org picked up the new liberal slogan bashing conservatives for Standard & Poor’s U.S. credit rating downgrade: “Tea Party downgrade.” President Obama’s chief campaign strategist David Axelrod and Massachusetts Democratic Sen. John Kerry both used the phrase on Sunday talk shows. In a Sunday afternoon email to supporters, MoveOn.org accused tea partiers of being responsible for the first-ever credit downgrade in U.S. history. “This ‘tea party downgrade’ is a shameful blow to our nation’s honor and risks throwing...

Lee Bollinger is an attorney turned academic. Past president of the University of Michigan, Bollinger now holds that position at Columbia University, home of the famed Columbia School of Journalism. Bollinger believes that coming J school graduates will provide a more valuable service if the American media becomes the de facto property of the federal government. “…I propose…an American World Service…”, writes Bollinger. “A media institution with sufficient funding to bring the highest quality American journalism to the global forum.” And that “sufficient funding” will be provided by the federal government. From taxpayers. Why is government funding necessary? Because “…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...

As reported yesterday, the ultra-Leftwing, George Soros-funded 'Media Matters' confronted the reporter who first broke the ATF gun smuggling scandal as he sat outside the committee hearings on the subject in the U.S. House of Representatives on Tuesday. Shoving a cell phone camera in his face, the Media Matters propagandist demanded to know why Mike Vanderboegh had 'lied' about the Tampa field office of the ATF smuggling guns into Honduras. Media Matters posted their story yesterday, in which they accused Fox News of reporting Vanderboegh's assertions without doing an adequate fact-check. It goes without saying that Media Matters, the pompous...

This time, it's Hearst reporter Dan Freedman not doing his homework before repeating widely debunked statistics.PJM readers are among the best-informed when it comes to various stories involving firearms and crime because the editors employ writers that know firearms and firearms law. Perhaps more importantly, PJM editors and writers put in the effort to find and print the objective facts of a story. This is a not a trait of the increasingly dumbed-down mainstream media, which in this case churned out little more than a quickly re-worded press release. Yesterday, the San Francisco Chronicle printed a story by Hearst reporter...

New York Times columnist Paul Krugman on Tuesday said it was a "moral issue" for the press to censor conservative views about the debt ceiling.

My last blog before I went on holiday was about the debt crisis. It's still going on. President Obama is to address the nation this evening. One of the most interesting interventions while I was away was from the UK's Liberal Democrat cabinet minister Vince Cable. He said the world's economy was being put in peril by "a few right-wing nutters" in the American Congress.If they are nutters, they are remarkably successful ones. The truth is that Tea Party-backed Republicans are winning this fight over raising the debt ceiling. It is far from over. But they've already won the argument...

After reading the manifesto over several hours the first thing that struck me was just how meticulous Anders Behring Breivik had been. The 1500 page document reveals a chilling obsession with what he saw as being destructive to the world. He dismisses concepts such as political correctness, feminism and major religions and philosophies including Islam and Marxism and defends his views by quoting people he views as authoritative. His writings are done in such a detached man they reveal a man who prided himself on attention to detail, a narcissist who is extremely disciplined. He would have seen his work...

Earlier today, we posted a simple little video that asked an interesting question: “Is the the White House programming a news channel?” That seems like a provocative question, and it is. And some have wondered why we asked it. Why? Because a now-former MSNBC host suggested it in a resignation video posted on YouTube. Of course we’re going to do a story on that! And now it seems to have captured the attention of the White House. Let me explain.

Imagine a bargain hunter's shock and dismay when responding to an ad on Craigslist listing a bunch of possessions for sale and then receiving an email announcing that gay people, Muslims, and illegal immigrants aren't allowed to purchase the wares. Read it for yourself. Our tipster, who lives in the D.C. area, responded to an ad on Craigslist, which has been taken down, expressing interest in one of the items for sale. He received this mass email response peppered with casual racism and homophobia. I've highlighted the worst parts, but the whole thing is really amazingly awful. "i have been...

Next time you're about to slam somebody for carrying on like a Neanderthal, think twice: You might be hitting close to home. A new study published in the Molecular Biology and Evolution reports that people of non-African heritage carry a chromosome which originates from Neanderthals, offering evidence that the two populations interbred at a certain point in history.

The CNN blog just ran a lengthy interview with Tricia Erickson, who makes a variety of arguments that no believing Mormon should ever be elected President. (Link here; note that in her interview she cites language from the endowment ceremony). Erickson’s arguments...repeats the old evangelical anti-Mormon reasoning that Mormons are all basically automatons, and suggests that any Mormon politician would have a secret church-promoting agenda. It’s an argument straight out of The Manchurian Candidate (and reminiscent of the anti-Catholic arguments raised against JFK)...But what are the implications of the article’s prominent publication today — what does it say about the...

No shame: The body count may be in the hundreds, and they still scratch the president's back.“Smoking gun” emails and other recent revelations about “Operation Fast and Furious” — and other gunrunning operations by agencies of President Obama’s executive branch — have backed the mainstream media into a corner: they have been responding with silence or with outright deception. One need look no further than CNN, where syndicated columnist (and PJMedia contributor) Ruben Navarrette Jr. delivered a whopper of a lie Thursday, claiming that the administration’s attempt to create rifle reporting requirements actually affects machine guns. He claimed: The Bureau...

“Smoking gun” emails and other recent revelations about “Operation Fast and Furious” — and other gunrunning operations by agencies of President Obama’s executive branch — have backed the mainstream media into a corner: they have been responding with silence or with outright deception. One need look no further than CNN, where syndicated columnist (and PJMedia contributor) Ruben Navarrette Jr. delivered a whopper of a lie Thursday [1], claiming that the administration’s attempt to create rifle reporting requirements actually affects machine guns. He claimed: "The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives has decided to try to clean up Dodge City...

Right now if you go to newsweek.com, you'll see a basic magazine website, updated with content from the print version of the mag and a top navigation bar that directs you to content on its sister site, dailybeast.com. But starting July 19, we hear, newsweek.com will no longer exist. Instead that URL will redirect users to a channel on the Daily Beast site, like its current "politics," "entertainment," and "fashion" verticals. The Newsweek channel will still have all the archived magazine content from before (unlike Time, Newsweek puts all of its print content online), and it will be edited and...

Full headline: American Traffic Solutions -- red-light camera vendor for Houston, Fort Worth, Arlington, Irving and Amarillo --- suspends exec for posting pro-camera comments under fake identity -- As far as anyone can tell, American Traffic Solutions Inc. has resorted only to the conventional lobbying method of throwing money around to grow its red-light camera business in Texas. Until last week, at least one business development executive was making inroads in Washington state by cheerleading for the company and personally attacking opponents under an assumed name in dozens of comments left on the website of a local newspaper, according to...

You might think the British press holds a monopoly on media controversy this month, with the shuttering of a 168-year-old tabloid over a phone-hacking scandal. Still, at least one Yank media concern has won recent unwelcome notoriety--fittingly enough, for airing misleading video footage on the national holiday commemorating American independence from the British crown. CBS has been caught doctoring Fourth of July footage after Bostonians realized Thursday that the network's images of fireworks over various city landmarks were not only breathtaking, but also fake. An area research scientist appears to have been among the first to point out the discrepancy...

Bachmann signs "values" pledge to oppose same-sex marriage, Sharia law, pornography By Stephanie Condon Social conservative presidential candidate Michele Bachmann ups the ante in Iowa by signing a "values" pledge that other Republican presidential candidates may not support Socially-conservative GOP presidential candidate Rep. Michele Bachmann of Minnesota has become the first candidate to sign a conservative Christian group's pledge to oppose same-sex marriage and uphold "core values." Bachmann's commitment to the pledge ups the ante in Iowa, where the other Republican candidates may now be pressed harder to prove their social conservative credentials. The support of groups like Family Leader,...

UNITED NATIONS, July 8 (UPI) -- The Texas execution of a Mexican national puts the United States in violation of international law, the U.N. human rights chief said Friday. High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay said federations like the United States have a responsibility to ensure that individual states "respect the international responsibilities assumed by the country as a whole." ...."I am very disappointed that neither the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles nor the governor took steps open to them to prevent this breach of the U.S. obligations under international law from occurring," Pillay said.

How come we are not taking on the MSM?

The latest edition of the New York Times’s Sunday magazine gave conservatives a rare opportunity to repurpose Times Executive Editor Bill Keller as a pinata, though the paper’s intent may have been to make its conservative critics look irrational. Readers responded bluntly to Keller’s trashing of Sarah Palin in his column for the June 19 issue, in which he claimed “most journalists would recoil in horror from the idea” of a Palin presidency. The Times printed a full page of letters, a dozen in all, from insulting Keller critics and Palin sympathizers. A few were incisive: You write that only...