Free Republic

Mitt Romney's decision to avoid confrontations with the press since his victory in Florida last month -- and since his "very poor" comment on CNN -- has become a source of frustration for national reporters already wary of the campaign's strict scheduling and tight message control. But it is angering local press as well. Especially in Colorado, where one reporter from Denver's local Fox affiliate is suggesting that Romney's decision to spurn reporters could cost him should he return to the state in the general election. "[Y]our brand is now significantly tarnished in a critical swing state, one you seemed...

ORLANDO, Fla.--It's total newt-iny on the Gingrich campaign press bus. For each caucus or primary during the 2012 presidential campaign, Gingrich's campaign has organized transportation for the reporters assigned to cover him--as is customary for nearly every presidential candidate. [snip] That working relationship pretty much stopped working this weekend, two days before the Florida primary. The trouble began when Daniel Malloy, a reporter for the Atlanta Journal Constitution, started to do some simple math, [another snip] Sitting in the back of the bus that day, the penny pinching press got to thinking: [yet another snip] One by one, the reporters...

A friend of mine pointed out this morning that Mitt Romney has outspent Newt Gingrich $7 million to $.0008 million in Florida just to watch his 15 pt lead implode overnight. The Republican base does not trust Mitt Romney. Because they do not trust him, they do not like him as a candidate. His campaign, all too clever to try to sit on an ephemeral lead that any outside observer could see was more vaporware than reality, has decided to go fully negative now against Gingrich. In other words, Mitt Romney who no one much cares for outside of well...

It’s a regular feature of the 2012 GOP presidential debates — that moment when Newt Gingrich takes a deep breath, then proceeds to rip the insipid moderator and the conflict-and scandal-mongering press. Both Thursday and in numerous debates before, the former House Speaker’s stance suggested a candidate harboring deep bitterness toward the media ... The reality is very different. The same candidate who on Thursday decried “the destructive, vicious, negative nature of much of the news media” shows another face to the cadre of reporters who follow his campaign day-to-day. It’s not unusual for Gingrich to chat with reporters, off-the-record,...

So the Democratic National Committee (DNC) gave a walk-through Wednesday for network journalists planning on covering the party's nominating convention this summer in Charlotte. But while the DNC is trumpeting the convention as "the most open and accessible in history," the Charlotte Observer's Mark Washburn complained that the briefing, attended by some 500 journalists, was kept strictly off-the-record. What's more, Washburn notes, when he complained about what he saw as ludicrous ground rules for the briefing, the convention's chief operating officer, Theodore LeCompte snipped that

Glenn Reynolds has collected blog posts debunking Micheal Luo’s anti-gun propaganda the published yesterday in the New York Times. It’s pathetic how nakedly modern “journalists” serve the pursuit of ideological conversion through propaganda, instead of simply reporting the facts. Of course, that assumes that journalists were ever interested in reporting just the facts, and there is no indication that such a time ever really existed. It’s easy for people to look at areas in which they specialize and find the lies that editors and journalists pass off as “news,” but what people are afraid to do is consider is that...

BUENOS AIRES–Argentina's senate passed a controversial bill Thursday that gives the government control over newsprint, boosting the power of President Cristina Kirchner's administration in its battle against the opposition media. The legislation gives the state control over Papel Prensa SA, the country's leading producer of paper used to produce newspapers.

Once upon a time, women were considered the "fairer sex," the "better half." Stewardesses were talented and beautiful. Wives were softer and gentler. Men fought for their honor. Feminism crushed all of that. It is a testimony to their movement that in today's post-feminist entertainment media, part of what makes television so corrosive and sour is just how piggish the women have become. The latest study from the Parents Television Council drives this concept home by going to the ugly center of pop culture: MTV "reality" programming. After studying entire seasons of four MTV shows, the PTC concludes: "Females talked...

SNIP SNIP It seems to us that Gingrich's appeal to the primary electorate is best explained by reference to an earlier period in his career: 1989-94, when he was House minority whip. He was an extremely effective insurgent leader, helping to bring down two Democratic leaders, Speaker Jim Wright and Majority Whip Tony Coelho, by calling attention to their ethical problems. As the Orlando Sentinel reported in May 1989, just after the latter announced his departure: "House Democratic whip Tony Coelho said Sunday that Republican whip Newt Gingrich was trying to destroy the Democrat-controlled House in order to rebuild it...

Many people believe in the Constitutional misconception that the newsman is afforded extra Constitutional protection by the First Amendment which states that "Congress shall make no law...abridging...the freedom of speech, or of the press." This is simply not the case. The Supreme Court rightly recognized that notion is based on fallacious reasoning, though later federal appellate courts have not been as wise in applying that precedent. "Freedom of the press" is not a term synonymous with today's media or news reporting, it refers first and foremost to the printing press, (which produced, for example, such important political opinionated works as...

In the past week, ever since the first allegations were made public by Pollutico, GOP Presidential Candidate Herman Cain has been facing a crescendo of questions about misbehavior in his past. The funny thing is, even though the original allegations were made by "unnamed sources" -- which is usual liberal-press-speak for "I made it up" -- they were treated as serious issues. The second funny thing is that, even though the original allegations were of "offensive gestures" of a "non-sexual nature," the scandal has morphed in little more than a week to reports of FIVE cases "of sexual harrassment" in...

Attorney General Eric Holder to hold a press conference at 2pm

Breaking on Fox ...

This has got to be the most blanent use of the White House East room for a campaign speech ever given!

But as Newfoundland and Labrador gear up for an election race that kicked off Monday, the usual political chatter was muted by a belief the governing Progressive Conservatives will romp to an easy win in the Oct. 11 vote. “There isn’t a sense here that people have much of a choice,” said Stephen Tomblin, political science professor at Memorial University in St. John’s. “I think everyone knows what the result will be no matter what anyone does.”

More evidence that Obama’s jobs plan isn’t resonating as much more than a reelection effort. As Greg Hengler at Townhall.com asks, what do you do when even your fans laugh at you?

Some of the reaction to Politico’s tireless quest to find out if Democrats think Rick Perry is “dumb” centered on the fact that reporters conveniently have yet to produce President Obama’s school records. That’s true–and a point worth making. But David Harsanyi has an excellent article on the other double standard in the Politico piece.

Regular readers know I use the term “Authorized Journalists” to describe the establishment press, the folks who won’t cover Gunwalker but fall all over each other trying to get more gun laws passed as a result of it. This comes in from The Washington Times: At a Chicago press conference held by Sen. Dick Durbin of IL, himself one of the biggest enemies of the Second Amendment in government, conservative journalist William Kelly tried to ask him a question: “Senator, you’ve blamed the tea party…but do you bear any responsibility for this downgrade crisis?” The press went wild—the "Authorized Journalists,"...

Texas Gov. Rick Perry is a leading advocate of gun rights who likes to boast of having dispatched a coyote on a recent jog, so I asked him during today's walking press conference at the Iowa State Fair whether he was armed. "I never comment on whether I'm carrying a handgun or not," he said. "That's why it's called concealed." (If he was armed, he could have found himself in hot water with the state police over a ban at the fair that has rankled some local gun groups.) Perry's appearance at the fair, where he challenged reporters on whether...

President Barack Obama made two fundamental mistakes today in his press conference which was intended to calm the markets. First, he did not lead off with a moment of reflection on the loss of American military lives in Afghanistan over the weekend. Second, he completely missed the boat on why Standard & Poor’s (S&P) lowered the credit rating of the United States. The President should have led off his press conference with prayers and condolences for the families of the 30 members of the U.S. military who lost their lives in Afghanistan over the weekend. Instead, the President waited until...

ED HENRY, FOX NEWS CHIEF WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: …If you basically have this Boehner plan that you say can’t get through the Senate and you've got a Reid plan that the Republicans don’t think you can get through the Senate or the House and you’re saying we want a compromise, what was the point of giving a prime-time address to the nation without an Obama plan and say neither of these other plans can work? Where's his plan?

Some friends and I are starting a new blog. (Isn't everybody?). It will be mainly political/financial/constitution. We have not done this type of thing before and need help gathering E-mail addresses for the major (and minor) news outlets. Also addresses for politically active groups around the USA.

RUSH: So Obama delays this sorry excuse for a press conference in order to overlap the start of the big show today as much as possible, just as he always does, but we will not be deterred. This guy is hellbent on raising taxes. You do not want to miss the first hour of this program. Well, you don't want to miss any hour of this program, but you don't want to miss the first hour of this program particularly because I am gonna lay out for you exactly what's going on. Not only are they trying to carry through...

She might be gone, but she’s not completely forgotten. And now as a columnist for the Fall Church (Va.) News-Press, she might be making a comeback. an appearance at the Busboys & Poets bookstore in Washington, D.C. on Sunday afternoon, embattled former Hearst newspapers columnist Helen Thomas, once known as the dean of the White House press corps, said she misses her spot in the White House briefing room. “Nothing can replace being there when you’re a reporter,” Thomas said. “Seeing with your own eyes — no, nothing can replace that. I was very lucky to cover history for so...

It was the biggest non-story story in Washington since Al Gore’s global warming tirades. I’m talking about the release of thousands of emails of former Gov. Sarah Palin last Friday in Juneau, Alaska. The release of emails (printed on paper) had reporters forming lines the lengths of which made the O.J. Simpson trial look like a queue at the local Dairy Queen. News outlets such as The Washington Post publicly heralded their “read 'em here first” status. Never mind that no reporter had actually spent any time and bothered to read them. The editors just wanted to get the “full...

The state is about to release more than 24,000 pages of Sarah Palin's emails from her time as governor. But officials are also going to withhold another 2,415 pages the state deems privileged, personal or otherwise exempt from Alaska's disclosure laws. News organizations that requested the records include the Daily News, the Associated Press, MSNBC.com, The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post and CNN. Individuals include Geoffrey Dunn, author of the recently published book "The Lies of Sarah Palin," and Andree McLeod of Anchorage, who has had ethics complaints against Palin dismissed by the state.

GETTYSBURG, Pa. — Sarah Palin has apparently decided that she can treat the media any way she wants — and they will be there regardless. And she might not be wrong. On Monday night, the media following the former Alaska governor were hot and sweaty, sitting in 100-degree weather at the Gettysburg battlefield, when they got the word: Ms. Palin was at the Courtyard by Marriott a few minutes away. Within a half-hour, about a dozen reporters were lined up at the Courtyard counter, asking for rooms overlooking the hotel’s parking lot. As a reporter noted, one could keep an...

Republican senators press president on War Powers deadline Washington (CNN) – As the U.S. military campaign in Libya approaches the 60-day mark this Friday, six Republican senators wrote President Obama asking if he will comply with the War Powers Act, which says Congress must authorize action that lasts more than 60 days. "Friday is the final day of the statutory sixty-day period for you to terminate the use of the United States Armed Forces in Libya under the War Powers Resolution. Last week some in your Administration indicated use of the United States Armed Forces will continue indefinitely, while others...

Don't look now but the last time President Obama allowed questions from the press was on April 5 during the budget battle. So far, the press doesn't seem to mind very much. They meekly accept the PR handouts offered by the White House press office and bombard press secretary Jay Carney with questions he couldn't possibly answer anyway. But some in the 4th Estate are noticing. President Obama today met King Abdullah of Jordan in the Oval Office -- statements, no questions. Still, it was better than last week's meeting with the NATO leader:

The White House Press Office has refused to give the Boston Herald full access to President Obama’s Boston fund-raiser today, in e-mails objecting to the newspaper’s front page placement of a Mitt Romney op-ed, saying pool reporters are chosen based on whether they cover the news “fairly.” “I tend to consider the degree to which papers have demonstrated to covering the White House regularly and fairly in determining local pool reporters,” White House spokesman Matt Lehrich wrote in response to a Herald request for full access to the presidential visit. “My point about the op-ed was not that you ran...

IT'S MY PARTY: The Democrats in the Senate are headed to President Obama's turf on Wednesday to talk with him about the deficit and, the White House says, other things. In guidance to reporters, the White House said that at the meeting at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, Obama and the "Senate Democratic Caucus" will cover "the range of important issues on the legislative agenda, including the need to adopt a balanced approach in confronting the nation’s long-term deficit challenges." The meeting is closed to the press..

There is increasing concern in Washington that Jay Carney, the new White House Press Secretary, isn’t up to the job. Even when faced with an innocuous question that requires only that he trot out the official line, he looks completely stunned, as if the questioner is Bob Woodward asking him about Deep Throat. He gathers himself, embarks on a stuttering reply, pauses for what seems like an eternity, then starts gabbling, tripping over his words, rephrasing what he’s just said, then looking plaintively back at the questioner as if to say, “How did I do? Was that okay? Or would...

Freedom House, a U.S.-based group that monitors human rights around the world says the number of people with access to free and independent media has declined to its lowest level in more than a decade. In its newly released annual survey, the group says several key countries saw significant declines last year and that only one-in-six people live in countries with a press designated as free.

The terse announcement came just after 9:45 p.m. Sunday from Dan Pfeiffer, the White House communications director. “POTUS to address the nation tonight at 10:30 PM Eastern Time,” he wrote on Twitter, sharing the same message that had just been transmitted to the White House press corps. According to Brian Williams, the “NBC Nightly News” anchor, some journalists received a three-word e-mail that simply read, “Get to work.” *snip* That speculation was not aired out on television immediately, but it did erupt on Twitter and other social networking sites. Wishful thinking about bin Laden’s death ricocheted across the Web —...

The hip, transparent and social media-loving Obama administration is showing its analog roots. And maybe even some hypocrisy highlights. White House officials have banished one of the best political reporters in the country from the approved pool of journalists covering presidential visits to the Bay Area for using now-standard multimedia tools to gather the news. The Chronicle's Carla Marinucci - who, like many contemporary reporters, has a phone with video capabilities on her at all times - pulled out a small video camera last week and shot some protesters interrupting an Obama fundraiser at the St. Regis Hotel.

Donald Trump says his investigative team is still digging up evidence that President Obama was born in Kenya (or, at least, wasn't born in Hawaii). In a letter blasting the New York Times for blasting him, Trump lays out his evidence. He also accuses the liberal press of being complicit in what may be the "greatest scam in the history of our country."

Some are vexed indeed with the Democratic National Committee’s decision to name Rep. Debbie Wasserman-Schultz of Florida to lead the party, now that former chairman Tim Kaine has stepped down to run for U.S. Senate in Virginia. “Way to go, DNC. You found the candidate who best fit your profile for DNC chairman: a junkyard dog who is mean, nasty, shrill, able to screech at a moments notice, aggressive, and of course able to manipulate the facts and always uncompromising,” says Andrea Lafferty, president of the Traditional Values Coalition, an interfaith policy group.

The Good News On March 22 during a speech at the National Military Academy President Hamid Karzai announced that seven areas of Afghanistan will soon be under full Afghan Security control According to translation reported by the American Forces Press Service he said “We know that the people of Afghanistan do not want the defense of their country to be on others, and also those who have helped us during the last 10 years cannot afford any more sacrifices for our security and defense.”He believes that Afghanistan should be run by Afghans.For the first time in 40 years Afghans felt...

RUSH: I just listened to a little bit of Obama's press conference opening spreading his "calm" on the troubled waters between here and Japan, and he pointed out that we are at one with the Japanese people. The American people, through him, offer our condolences, and we will do anything. He said we're sending an aircraft carrier over there to help them. He didn't identify the aircraft carrier. I happen to know which one it is. It's the USS Ronald Reagan. Obama didn't identify it. I don't know if that was purposeful or a faux pas or he thought it...

ON LIVE NOW!!

George Clooney has revealed the reason he will never become a politician - he has a bad boy past. The Hollywood star, who has campaigned tirelessly for the people of Sudan, said he wasn't squeaky clean and his past could come back to haunt him if he ever held office. 'I didn't live my life in the right way for politics, you knowI f***ed too many chicks and did too many drugs, and that's the truth,' he said.

While things are falling apart in other parts of the world, things at the White House are busy — too busy to notice. During Wednesday’s White House press briefing, newly minted Press Secretary Jay Carney responded to a question from CBS News correspondent Mark Knoller about when people might expect to hear President Barack Obama address the situation in Libya. Carney’s reason why they haven’t yet: Scheduling. (h/t Real Clear Politics Video) “This is just a scheduling issue,” Carney said. “As I said, the president will meet with Secretary of State [Hillary] Clinton this afternoon, his regular meeting and they...

Governor Walker holds a press conference on the latest developments with the budget repair bill.

The national discourse on race jolts forward again. Consider that presidential hopeful Herman Cain spoke with gusto at CPAC 2011 to an appreciative audience. Mr. Cain, however, drew a caustic essay from Alternet columnist Chauncey DeVega — a pseudonym — who claimed Mr. Cain‘s “shtick is a version of race minstrelsy where he performs ‘authentic negritude’ as wish fulfillment for white conservative fantasies. Like the fountain at Lourdes, Cain in his designated role as black conservative mascot, absolves the white racial reactionaries at CPAC of their sins.”

New White House Press Secretary Jay Carney punted on Iran, fumbled a question on the national debt, and blamed Bush just ten minutes into his first press briefing.

Swedish reporters are held by Egyptian Army, accused of being Mossad spies; 4 Israelis arrested; Anderson Cooper is beaten up. Pro-government protesters and Egyptian military have attacked reporters from numerous media sources around the world during Wednesday's riots in Cairo's Tahrir Square. Two Swedish reporters were held for hours on Wednesday by Egyptian soldiers accusing them of being Mossad spies, the reporters' employer, daily newspaper Aftonbladet, reported. The soldiers reportedly attacked the reporters, spitting in their faces and threatening to kill them. Four Israeli journalists were arrested by Egyptian military police in Cairo on Wednesday. Three of those arrested work...

Just because the site was founded by an alleged plagiarist doesn't mean it's totally devoid of ethical clout. Though you do have to wonder: from where does the Huffington Post recruit its bloggers? The site reportedly informed one of its unpaid contributors last week that he was being let go. The offense: he had used his press credentials as a HuffPo blogger to get labor union demonstrators access to a Mortgage Bankers Association event, where they staged a rowdy protest. Yahoo News reporter Joe Pompeo wrote of the event on Monday: The commotion attracted a fair amount of media attention...

The White House Briefing Room was half empty when President Barack Obama delivered a statement Monday afternoon on a Senate vote related to the tax cuts legislation he's pushing. Reporters filled the first three rows for the president's appearance -- though a few were taking vacant seats. And almost every seat in the back four rows was empty. That kind of sparse attendance for a president's personal appearance is unusual, particularly for a president in his first term and one engaged in a high stales tax debate with Congress. Perhaps it was the short notice and late hour.

While United Nations global-warming dignitaries were invoking ancient Maya goddesses for help in hammering out a wealth-redistribution “climate” treaty, prominent columnists and publications around the world were heaping scorn and ridicule on the whole COP16 extravaganza currently underway in Cancun - even heralding the end of the whole “scam.” From the United States and Canada to the United Kingdom, the amount of negative press for the climate hysterics - and their whole expensive confab in Mexico - is growing daily. And as UN leaders and climate negotiators ramp up the fear mongering and propose ever-more ridiculous scams and taxes, the...

Catholic commentators are trying to correct the fact, that the Pope talked about a male prostitute in a weak-headed interview. Pressesplitter. The decadent majority as a measure of the moral. Swiss Television: Mr. Seewald, do you see the Pope as having completely made a change of the Catholic sexual morality?