Free Republic

…you referred to her now famous Hardball appearance, and you incorrectly reported that she said that the “government would do well to investigate ‘anti-American’ congressmen.” What she actually said was that the American media should do so, not the government, which is something quite different.

"Reporters from roughly 30 television networks, newspapers, magazines and Web sites celebrated the Fourth of July with Barack Obama at the White House last weekend. Why didn't you know that? Because they were sworn to secrecy," John Cook writes at Gawker.com. "We reported that Politico's Mike Allen was spotted milling about as a guest at the White House's 'backyard bash' by the pool reporter, who was allowed into the event for 40 minutes and kept in a pen before being ushered out. When Allen quoted from the pool report in his column the next day, he deleted a reference to...

The past three months in Iraq have been the deadliest stretch for Florida's fighting men and women since 2005. From July through September, 15 service members who called Florida home were killed in Iraq -- including six last month. "Yes, they're Marines, they're Army, but they're our babies, too," said Donna Hunsicker, 41, mother of Marine Cpl. Christopher L. Poole Jr., killed when a suicide bomber steered a vehicle into a security checkpoint. U.S. service members are doing their job, she said, but their duty is complicated by the fact that "they don't want us over there anymore." "These people...

If your idea of fighting terrorism involves dropping bombs on al Qaeda hide-outs, chances are you're probably not a Swarthmore College student. Some students at Swarthmore (annual tuition, $33,232) spent the fall semester learning how to deal with terrorism by studying "the dynamics of cultural marginalization" and examining "the rich history of nonviolent counterterrorist tactics." Visiting professor George Lakey's "Nonviolent Responses to Terrorism" class earned Swarthmore a spot in the "Dirty Dozen," a listing of the "most bizarre" college classes in the nation as compiled by the Young America's Foundation (YAF). Among YAF's picks for 2006 are courses in Marxism,...

NEW YORK, September 28, 2006 (LifeSIteNews.com) – The New York Times reputation for objectivity took another blow today as one of that paper’s reporters has ripped into those who would “threaten abortion rights.” Linda Greenhouse, speaking at a Harvard University appearance this summer, complained of a “sustained assault on women’s reproductive freedom and the hijacking of public policy by religious fundamentalism. To say that these last few years have been dispiriting is an understatement.” Greenhouse, who received a Pulitzer Prize for her coverage of the Supreme Court, told National Public Radio (NPR) she would not be backing away from the...

I am posting this observation of the ABC Evening News, which has just concluded its evening broadcast here in the Central Time zone, without any mention of what I, and I suspect many of you, view as one of the major news stories of this day -- the revelations surrounding the discovery of Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) in Iraq. I believe that ABC News's failure to do this is news in and of itself. I watched carefully this evening to see if, either as a stand-alone story or within its reporting of the Senate Debate on Iraq policy, whether...

The past few months have certainly brought to the fore any number of what psychologists and other so-called "mental health professionals" would identify as "presenting issues" with regard to the schism between Democrats and Republicans in the United States. During that time, for instance, we were privy to the removal of feeding tubes from a human being (Terri Schiavo) in order that she might die at the behest of her husband and an activist judge, while at the same time we witnessed the insertion of feeding tubes into a number of dolphins (yes, "dolphins") that they — having beached themselves...

SACRAMENTO – Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger lauded teachers union leaders and educators last year for their "generosity and great vision" when they agreed to give up $2 billion in education funding to help balance the state budget. This year, when the same coalition demanded that Schwarzenegger follow through with that deal and give more money to schools as he promised, he called them "special interests." Since being swept into office in the recall campaign of 2003, Schwarzenegger has defined "special interest" selectively. Most Californians consider special interests to be all-powerful Sacramento players that spend millions on lobbying and campaign contributions. Schwarzenegger...

Inside a dim American Legion hall in Florida, President Bush (news - web sites) had just finished his inaugural address, and Joe Echeverria was impressed. AP Photo Reuters Slideshow: Bush Inauguration Bush spoke of freedom, of the goal to end tyranny and urged the nation to find unity. Echeverria, a 62-year-old Air Force veteran and Republican, drank his whiskey from a tall glass, then pumped his fist in the air. He liked how concise Bush was and that he didn't make empty promises. "All right, Bush!" he said to the television above the bar in Tampa. Two barstools away, Democrat...

Sometimes it's hard to set the record straight. That's because it's hard for some people to admit mistakes. It was refreshing this week to see Tampa police Chief Steve Hogue's response to a minor traffic accident in his own city. He rear-ended a Volkswagen Jetta and sparked one of those chain reaction wrecks that frequently tangle us up on our way to work. His own officer ticketed him for following too closely. "It was my fault," Hogue said. "I just wasn't careful enough." What a refreshing response. How many times have you heard those words from a public official? Or...

It is time for this blog's second annual review of the performance of the Los Angeles Times, which is known to Patterico readers as the Los Angeles Dog Trainer. ... Documenting a whole year's worth of this paper's distortions, omissions, and misrepresentations is a Herculean undertaking -- much like when Hercules cleaned a year's worth of manure out of a barn in a single day. The parallels are striking indeed. In fact, because there is too much material here to put in a single blog post,...

The Dan Rather story has so far been reported from two angles: The mainstream media views his retirement as the first nail in the coffin of network news; the blogosphere views it as the crowning triumph of the "Pajamahadeen"—the conservative bloggers who helped blow up the story of the fake 60 Minutes memos into a full-fledged media scandal. Neither, it seems to me, quite gets it right. With Rather's retirement from the nightly news, the news anchor may have been replaced by a new paradigm of TV journalism—and that's not necessarily a bad thing. To the likely dismay of...

In Jonah Goldberg’s column of Sept. 14, he didn’t hold back on how Rathergate made him feel. He said he loves the story so much he would like to hug it and squeeze it and call it George (referencing a line from Bugs Bunny). Those words caused me to consider my feelings over the recent implosion of CBS News. To paraphrase a verse from a children’s song, I love it a bushel and a peck and a hug around the neck and a barrel and a heap and I’m talking in my sleep, about the news. So why do conservatives...

This is the presidential election that changes all those to come. The Internet, with its potential to assemble nearly instantaneously a self-selected panel of experts on most any arcane issue -- John Kerry's exploits and Navy operations in Vietnam and Dan Rather's apparent forgeries of George W. Bush's National Guard memos -- is the most important new media element of this and future campaigns. On any complex story, journalists struggle to find insiders and experts. The Internet connects them. They enter and leave at will. How else to explain the success of the swift-boat veterans, who combined a book, a...

More soundings about coverage of the campaign of 2004 . . . The Laura Bush picture. More than two weeks after it was published, we're still getting comments about the front-page photo we used of first lady Laura Bush during the Republican National Convention. The photo prompted dozens of readers to complain that it was an unflattering portrait of Bush and, most of the callers and e-mailers contended, it was chosen purposefully to make her look bad. I think I've developed a pretty keen sensitivity to readers' concerns about photos, but frankly, I was stunned by the reaction. Interestingly, the...

If Sen. Hillary Clinton needs a vice presidential running mate in 2008, she might give Dan Rather a look: They apparently have the same view of the world. When her husband, President Bill Clinton, was under attack for his affair with White House intern Monica Lewinsky, then-first lady Hillary Clinton laid the blame on a "vast right-wing conspiracy." Now Rather is blaming questions about his "60 Minutes" story on President Bush's National Guard record on a similar kind of partisan conspiracy. Rather told USA Today that no one has disputed "the heart" of his report last week, but complained that...

The press and media are pulling for John Kerry and John Edwards. This is so obviously true it is almost mundane – like calling a press conference to proclaim the sun rises in the East. But the press and media vociferously deny any bias and become indignant at the mere suggestion of partiality. Don’t take my word for it. The Assistant Managing Editor of Newsweek, Evan Thomas, recently said, “Let’s talk a little media bias here. The media, I think, wants Kerry to win. And I think they’re going to portray Kerry and Edwards … as being young and dynamic...

I'm beginning to wonder whether our major news outlets should run a disclaimer after any story about President Bush: "This report reflects the personal opinion of the journalist and does not necessarily represent XYZ News Company's policy of objective reporting." We all know that the media trend liberal — just 7 percent of journalists identified themselves as conservative in the most recent Pew Research poll. But while we may wince at biased reporting every now and then, we generally trust media outlets to prevent personal views from influencing news. However, every now and then we glimpse the intense journalistic desire...

A revolution is sweeping the American media that will eventually spread to this part of the world. What is happening is that for the first time in decades, if not ever, the power of the mainstream media (MSM) in the United States is being seriously challenged by a mostly ragtag army of outsiders armed with little more than the internet. The age of the blogger is upon us. A blogger is someone who keeps a web-log, updated on an almost daily basis. They offer blow-by-blow commentary on current events. They can do so at almost no cost and their sites...

The first few columns I wrote as a burgeoning political commentator were mainly on the subject of media bias. Even after writing 4 separate articles on the subject, I was still not prepared for what has been revealed about the Bush National Guard memos, as reported on by Dan Rather on CBS’s 60 Minutes II last week. Not 24 hours after Dan Rather reported these memos, questions began to arise regarding the authenticity of these supposed National Guard file documents. The first implications that the documents were probably not written when and by whom the 60 Minutes II piece indicated,...

John Kerry's been having a rough go of it lately. No post-convention bounce. The Swiftees continue to pound Kerry with his own words and deeds. Unfit for Command has been the number one bestseller at Amazon.com for over a month. Pundits cite Kerry's abysmal Senate record and skewer him as a "girlie-man." A campaign shakeup has advisers divided over how best to blame Bush for inflicting Charley, Frances and Ivan upon the hapless voters of Florida. And we won't even mention what America's 1.2 million Vietnamese immigrants are saying, seeing as they're mainly refugees from the Communist slaughter Kerry helped...

Sept. 9, 2004, will be remembered as a paradigm-shifting day in media history. That was the day the "blogosphere" took down CBS News. ....But if the bloggers have power, it's because they form a robust intellectual marketplace, in which assertions must prove themselves before a jury of cyber-peers. In the words of James T. Smith, of critical-thinker.blogspot.com, "The blogosphere is the people." To be sure, the marketplace can make mistakes, but on the whole, like democracy itself, the more folks participating, the better the functioning. But this democratization of the media is bad news - for those who liked it...

Retired Capt. Larry Bailey of Vietnam Vets for the Truth speaks at the "John Kerry Lied" rally at Upper Senate Park, September 12, 2004. Dan Rather's defense of his network's reporting on Friday night was so shoddy, it must be reviewed in slow motion to truly appreciate the attempts at spin and evasion. Let us go to the Nexis transcript (my comments are in italics): RATHER, anchor: There were attacks today on the CBS News 60 Minutes report this week, raising questions about President Bush's Vietnam era time in the Texas Air National Guard. The questions included in our report...

"Liberal" media? Hogwash, liberal media-ites routinely retort. Then, in typical fashion, they continually affirm the tag. Take, for instance, the reportage involving the military service of George W. Bush and John Kerry. "If there were any lingering doubts about whether network reporters are in the tank for John Kerry, Wednesday's newscasts put them to rest," conclude Brent Baker and Rich Noyes of the Media Research Center. To wit, the MRC found that, from May to August, the networks "ignored or disparaged charges" against Mr. Kerry by the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. But last week, ABC, CBS, CNN and NBC...

Accepted wisdom says today's political conventions have become little more than gargantuan, glitzy commercials for each party, good mostly for showcasing each group's rhetoric and alerting inattentive potential voters to the home stretch of the presidential campaign. And for proof, viewers need look no further than TV coverage of both the Democratic and Republican national conventions. Even big-name broadcasters seemed to give up during the Republican gathering last week, with soon-to-retire NBC anchor Tom Brokaw lamenting the stage-managed nature of the proceedings. With just three hours in prime time devoted to the event, Brokaw and his network news colleagues were...

Our media jihadis By Bret Stephens | Jerusalem Post Online Edition | Oct 4, 2003 So here's the question of the week, month, year: After Iraq, will the media ever again allow a democracy to topple a fascist dictatorship? The question isn't mine but John Reid's. On March 31 at nine o'clock in the morning, the Labour Party Chairman was in 10 Downing Street watching the TV news. On screen were pictures of "distressed Iraqi civilians and dead allied soldiers." Reid became incensed. "The broadcasters are in Iraq not because they want to tell the truth, but because of commercial...

While researching articles on our country's fallen heroes, I came across one article, originally published in the New York Times by one of their own reporters. But I then found that same article, picked up and published in other media outlets carried a slightly different title. Here is the NYT link Doubt and Death on the Drive to Baghdad, (archived, now), and first paragraph of the article. Doubt and Death on the Drive to Baghdad By STEVEN LEE MYERS (NYT)Late Edition - Final , Section A , Page 1 , Column 1 The sandstorm lasted two days, sapping morale and...

(TRANSLATED FROM ARABIC-to-ENGLISH)"Editor of the London Arabic Daily Al-Sharq Al-Awsat Criticizes the Arab Media's War Coverage"In a series of three articles the editor-in-chief of the London-based Saudi daily Al-Sharq Al-Awsat, Abd Al-Rahman Al-Rashed, criticized the Arab media coverage of the Iraq War.(1) The following are excerpt from the articles: Title: 'Slow Down, Media of 1967'In an article under the title 'Slow Down, Media of 1967,' Al-Rashed wrote: "...The war in Iraq may last several years... and may be a lightning war... and end in 45 days. Fighting is the duty of military people, while the duty of the media is...

00:44 2003-03-07 Iraq: The Truth, The Whole Truth Dominican Sister Sharine, Iraqi, lives in Baghad. She went to the World Social Forum in Porto Alegre, Brazil, where she was heard by Pravda.Ru contacts, among them Joao Pedro Stedille, who sent us this report. We thank Senhor Stedille most sincerely for this chilling report. Viruses and mice dropped by parachute against Iraqi agriculture “One of the main causes of the hunger which afflicts the Iraqi people is the policy adopted by the USA, for more than eight years now, of sending viruses against Iraqi crops and the policy of dropping thousands...

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story2&cid=544&ncid=703&e=3&u=/ap/20030218/ap_on_go_pr_wh/bush_faith Headline:  Bush Increasing Religious Allusions Allusions?  Interesting choice of words.  No it isn't incorrect, but the editors know full well that upwards of 90% of Americans do NOT know the true meaning of the word and would interpret the headline as Bush is suffering from Religious DELUSIONS.But ... NO ... They aren't slanting the news, are they?   Look at the opening sentence: (negative sounding words) President Bush , often portrayed as using a strict good-and-evil compass tohi navigate national issues, has always peppered his speeches with exhortations to moral and civic duty. With war, tragedy and terrorism confronting him...

<p>A GROANING SHELF of evidence bears out what many people know intuitively: The American mass media suffer from a left-wing slant. The data come in a variety of forms: classic studies such as ''The Media Elite'' (first published in 1986) and William McGowan's ''Coloring the News'' (2001), insider exposes like CBS veteran Bernard Golberg's recent bestseller ''Bias,'' and a thick sheaf of industry studies and public opinion polls.</p>

US president wrecks the budget Republicans will probably keep tax cuts for the wealthy, even if it means no money for health and education By Jeffrey D. Sachs Wednesday, Jan 01, 2003,Page 9 ILLUSTRATION: MOUNTAIN PEOPLE US President George W. Bush seems poised to wreck America's budget for years to come. When Bush came into office, the outlook was for budget surpluses as far as the eye could see. Today, through a combination of irresponsible Republican-led tax cuts, a slowing economy, the bursting of the stock market bubble and a massive increase in defense spending, huge deficits dominate the fiscal...

ITEM 7. MANAGEMENT'S DISCUSSION AND ANALYSIS OF FINANCIAL CONDITION AND RESULT OF OPERATIONS OVERVIEW Salon Media Group, Inc. is an Internet media company that produces a total network of ten subject-specific, Websites, and two online communities - The Well and Table Talk. Salon was incorporated in July 1995 and launched its initial Websites in November 1995. Salon has averaged approximately 3.5-3.8 million unique visitors per month. A unique user is an individual visitor to Salon's network. Most of Salon's revenues are advertising revenues, derived from the sale of promotional space on its Websites. Services that have been offered range from...

How Easy Is It to Slant A News Report? Written by d14truth, edited by Avoiding_Sulla This question was asked and answered by our contributors, a writer and editor from FreeRepublic.com. We are reproducing it here as an educational benefit for our readers. Our contributors show us, by simply changing a few words and their slant, how easily is changed the bias. Care was taken on their part not to alter or remove any quotes that were employed by the original reporter. What were altered was some of the reporter's words and a good deal of the reporter's spin. It is...