Posted on 01/30/2011 5:57:38 PM PST by kristinn
Democratic Party front group Media Matters for America this afternoon accused Free Republic of being an instigator of the "Right-Wing Media Smear Machine" because of an article posted at Free Republic this morning about Barack Obama spending Saturday night partying with reporters from the White House press corps rather than burning the midnight oil keeping tabs on the crisis in Egypt. The article was titled, "As Egypt Burns, Obama and News Media Party Hearty Saturday Night." Media Matters calls criticism of Obama's partying while Egypt burns as a "particularly hollow smear."
Media Matters was upset that Jim Hoft picked up the Free Republic article for a piece at Gateway Pundit and that Hoft's piece was subsequently picked up by Fox Nation. In fact, it's the lead, banner story at Fox Nation tonight with over 1200 comments. The Fox Nation article updated its headline to read "As Egypt Burns...Obama Parties", based on Hoft's headline, "As Egypt Burns...Obama Parties, Watches B-ball" that was based on the Free Republic headline.
Making things worse for Media Matters was that the Drudge Report picked up a piece from the site White House Dossier published Sunday afternoon (an hour after the FR article) about Obama's night out partying. That article was headlined "While Cairo Burns, Obama Parties."
The Free Republic article noted that Greta Van Sustern appeared to be the only reporter who reported about the presidential party. Further research showed Politico had a short article published Saturday night that nixed mentioning that reporters were partying with Obama. Media Bistro also posted about Obama partying, even correcting the pool report that Linda Douglass works for Atlantic Media, not the National Journal as the pool reported.
The Media Matters article was titled Watch the Right-Wing Media Smear Machine in Action: Obama/Egypt Edition
Turns out that David Brock and his Smegma Matters.org team of low testosterone bed-wetters don’t matter. Are we supposed to believe the American Spectator David Brock or the Barney Frank hiney sniffer?
Cool. Can we get “Right Wing Smear Machine” t-shirts?
I don’t suppose they called for a comment before they ran their smear on MM???
Thirty-four Short of the 700 Club
By the way, your secret decoder ring is in the Cracker Jacks box.
obama jived, peoples dieds...
http://messageboards.aol.com/aol/en_us/articles.php?boardId=83010&articleId=119917&func=6&channel=Money+%26+Finance&filterRead=false&filterHidden=true&filterUnhidden=false
I’m proud, although I’d like to point out that FR isn’t media in the usual sense so much as it is a forum where free people of conservative persuasion can discuss political events.
LOL! OMG, Jim Thompson must be trembling that media matters has ordered the truth be stopped.
I’ve been writing here for years.
Gonna Party like it’s 1999..
Those were the days. ;-)
FR
Ahead of the Herd
“Smear machine?” They make themselves look bad; nobody needs us to do it. (Snicker.)
Yesterday I was looking for a particular post of my own from several years ago. I used Google to look for posts containing the tag line I used back then.
I was slightly shocked by how many (hostile) websites have used my posts, and the posts of other FReepers, to illustrate how “out of touch” or otherwise non-liberal are people here.
Another thing that’s surprising is how far the left-wing linkers have to go to make the case for malign intent here at Free Republic. In every case that I saw, the person who took offense (if that’s even the right term for it) had to intentionally distort/misunderstand my words to an absurd extent to make his point.
There are people out there who are absolutely convinced that Free Republic is comprised of extreme hate-mongers. They find evidence to support this theory in some of the most innocuous, calmly reasoned, restrained comments on this site.
Anyone who has been here a few years can Google your own FR screen name or a tag line and probably find your own words on anti-FR websites.
So pointing out that the president is partying while a serious crisis burns is now “a smear”? Hardly. Once upon a time, there were these things called “professional journalists” who found pointing something like that out to be part of their job.
That job is now the province of great internet reporters like FR’s Kristinn Taylor...!
The phone may be off the hook, but the *resident won’t be.
Looks like we’re doing The Lord’s Work to me! :)
Jim Thompson shall swing from the rafters for this!
He has soiled our reputation for civility by allowing this
freedom of speech thing to go on.
Nero fiddled, zero puttered.
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