Free Republic

BEIJING (AP) — China told foreign embassies Tuesday to stop publishing their own reports on air quality in the country, escalating its objections to a popular U.S. Embassy Twitter feed that tracks pollution in smoggy Beijing. Only the Chinese government is authorized to monitor and publish air quality information and data from other sources may not be standardized or rigorous, Wu Xiaoqing, a vice environmental minister, told reporters. China has long taken issue with the U.S. Embassy's postings of hourly readings of Beijing's air quality on a Twitter feed with more than 19,000 followers since 2008. But its past objections...

Who, What, Where, When and Why – The 5W's of Journalism By Norm Lenhart Special to Free Republic If there is one thing that I as a former reporter/editor can say to the reader side of the media street, it's this. NEVER trust an article that does not contain the 5Ws of Journalism. For those not in the know, they are right up there in the headline: Who, What, When, Where and Why. If I could say another, it is to barrage the publisher of any article with email/letters and public scorn until their reportage conforms to all five of...

Rhodes International, Inc. will pay over $84,000 to settle hazardous chemical reporting violations... The Rhodes facility produces frozen cinnamon rolls. According to EPA, the facility stored large amounts of anhydrous ammonia without properly (file inventory forms) reporting it to the Caldwell Fire Department.

This might not be a big deal in the end, but it sure has an odd vibe that a foreign company now owns the software used to report precinct level election results in the United States. BlackBoxVoting.org reports: In a major step towards global centralization of election processes, the world’s dominant Internet voting company has purchased the USA’s dominant election results reporting company. When you view your local or state election results on the Internet, on portals which often appear to be owned by the county elections division, in over 525 US jurisdictions you are actually redirected to a private...

Under fire for allegedly hosting a secret Halloween theme party featuring movie star Johnny Depp at the White House in 2009, President Obama's spokesman punched back, calling reports about the party "irresponsible" and denying that the White House tried to hide the event from the public. "There are outlets that have reported this as a secret party, which is just silly -- it's irresponsible reporting to suggest that you would have a pool report and the press at an event that's secret" White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said today during the press briefing, adding that photos of Johnny Depp...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke on Tuesday pushed back against reports that the Fed had lent banks $7.77 trillion or more during the financial crisis, saying they contained "egregious errors and mistakes." Bloomberg Markets Magazine last month published an article called "Secret Fed Loans Gave Banks $13 Billion Undisclosed to Congress." The article was widely referenced by other news organizations, including the New York Times. The Bloomberg article said the Fed had committed $7.77 trillion as of March 2009 to rescuing the financial system when all guarantees and lending limits were added up. While Bernanke did not...

Is the media industry in turmoil? Clearly it is, with publishers fighting declines in circulation and advertising revenue, combined with competition from digital-native entities such as blog networks and the “democracy of distribution” that comes from social-media tools like Twitter and Facebook. Journalism itself is even said to be in jeopardy, or at least the journalism we are used to. So what’s to be done? Some are recommending journalists be licensed by some kind of official body, so we can get “real” journalism from professionals — but these kinds of solutions would create even worse problems than the ones they...

Ed. note: This was originally posted on the Small Business Administration blog. Today, President Obama signed a law that removes the expanded “1099” reporting requirement from the Affordable Care Act. This is a big win for small businesses. The SBA and President Obama supported repealing this provision, which would have required businesses to send 1099 forms for all purchases of goods and services over $600 annually. With this bipartisan effort, we have removed a requirement that would have been an undue barrier to small business growth. The many benefits of the health reform law for small businesses remain in place....

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...

NPR’s Scott Simon claims that events like the Tucson shootings “Didn’t happen when 63 million people watched Walter Cronkite (1916–2009) every night.” “Uncle Walter,” as he was affectionately called, reported during a time when there were only three major TV news sources—ABC, CBS, and NBC. There were no comparable conservative competitors. ... Now to the claim that during Cronkite’s anchorman era events like the Tucson shootings didn’t happen. How quickly we forget. There were the assassinations of President John F. Kennedy (1963), his brother Robert Kennedy (1968), and civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr. (1968). King was assassinated on...

Napolitano asks fliers for ‘patience’ on body scanners The nation’s Homeland Security chief asked for air travelers’ “cooperation” and “patience” with full-body scanning and pat downs this holiday season amid a growing public backlash that the airport tactics are intrusive. “Each and every one of the security measures we implement serves an important goal,” Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano writes in a column for today’s USA TODAY, which asks the public to be a partner in defending against terrorism. Will the Dept. of Homeland Security drop the hammer on the unhappy U.S. population and go against the people’s wishes? Will...

In 1997, Henry Payne, the political cartoonist for the Detroit News and editor of TheMichiganView.com, said he was in Washington D.C. for a press conference on the international agreement on climate change called the Kyoto Protocol. Payne recalled the first question of the press conference was asked by the New York Times environmental reporter. "How do we get Americans to stop driving SUVs?" Payne said the reporter asked. Kyoto sets binding agreements for 37 countries for reducing greenhouse gas emissions, according to the United Nations. Payne said the rest of the press conference was "simple cheerleading" by reporters. He used...

Effectively reporting on the Gulf oil spill is now a Class D felony, punishable by a fine of up to $40,000. That's right, the most transparent administration in history has made it a felony, effective July 1, to get within 65 feet of what the Coast Guard determines are essential recovery efforts. According to Anderson Cooper, officials tried to up that number to 300 feet. Cooper, who claimed federal officials prevented CNN on two occasions from taking photographs in the gulf, seemed frustrated when he reported on the new laws the day they went into effect.

Reuters didn’t mean to crop Israeli soldiers’ blood and the knives of their attackers out of its photographs from the Gaza flotilla incident. It’s just that Reuters have a policy of “cropping at the edges which conveniently removed these things. Israeli officials, facing criticism for boarding an aid flotilla bound for the Gaza strip, stress that their troops used deadly force in self-defense. News that Reuters had cropped two images of armed “peace” activists, including one with bleeding Israeli soldiers surrounded by armed flotilla crews supports the Israeli position and threatens Reuters with scandal.

In its June 10 edition, the Washington Post runs an article by Michael Shear about President Obama's meeting with Palestinian Chairman Mahmoud Abbas in the White House. The article is both inaccurate about Obama's pledge of more aid to the Palestinians and also biased with its total silence about a strong disagreement between the two leaders about continued anti-Israel incitement by the Palestinian Authority ("Obama seeks new approach on Gaza -- He calls for Israeli blockade to consider aid as well as security" page A9). Shear writes that the White House announced "that it was increasing aid to Gaza by...

FYI for all interested in writing / reporting / journalism: I have discovered that Examiner.com is a great place to publish articles and they are currently recruiting writers. Think of it as a blog, except that the articles are to be structured more akin to a newspaper. They pay their writers based on amount of traffic, # of subscriptions (basically, people signing in for email alerts), etc. To get a taste; here is my site. You can register with them here. As you register, you will see a section that asks if an Examiner referred you and that is where...

NEW YORK | For more than 60 years, TV stations have broadcast news, sports and entertainment for free and made their money by showing commercials. That might not work much longer. The business model is unraveling at ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox and the local stations that carry the networks' programming. Cable TV and the Web have fractured the audience for free TV and siphoned its ad dollars. The recession has squeezed advertising further, forcing broadcasters to accelerate their push for new revenue to pay for programming. That shift will play out in living rooms across the country. The changes...

Regular readers are familiar with the concept of "Authorized Journalists"—professionals who work for "mainstream media" and are considered (sometimes by government and generally by themselves) to be the exclusive authoritative and credible purveyors of information. Think "Only Ones" with a press pass. These readers are also familiar with the many failings we've demonstrated where establishment reporters bring personal bias, along with "sins of omission and commission" into supposedly straight news stories. And then there are glaring errors where the only explanations seem the writers do not know (or fact-check) their subject matter, or they know damn well but have an...

A new government case plan directs Rifqa Bary, the girl who fled from her family in fear for her life after converting to Christianity from Islam, to talk about religion with her Muslim parents. The case plan also works toward getting Rifqa to return home. According to reporter Meredith Heagney of the Columbus Dispatch, who wore a hijab when she visited a Columbus mosque and has consistently filed slanted, anti-Rifqa stories on this case, the goal of this case plan is reunification of the Bary family. Ohio authorities would like to have Rifqa living back with her parents. They think...

Helen Thomas Remembers By Norma Zager "The only security of all is in a free press. The force of public opinion cannot be resisted when permitted freely to be expressed. The agitation it produces must be submitted to. It is necessary, to keep the waters pure." Thomas Jefferson to Lafayette, 1823 On occasion a particular revelation or thought may cause one to laugh out loud. An hour after watching the White House briefing recently where seasoned reporter Helen Thomas took Robert Gibbs to task for White House efforts to control the media, I laughed aloud. It occurred to me, at...