Free Republic

A new pandemic prevention initiative by the World Health Organization will rely on “social listening surveillance systems” to identify “rumors and misinformation,” War Room can reveal.The initiative – Preparedness and Resilience for Emerging Threats (PRET) – seeks to “guide countries in pandemic planning” while “incorporat[ing] the latest tools and approaches for shared learning and collective action established during the COVID-19 pandemic.”Internal documents from the United Nations (UN) agency, however, reveal a variety of invasive tactics deployed to suppress the spread of alleged “misinformation.” The WHO is pushing for member states – including the U.S. – to adopt these suggestions when...

MSNBC, ABC News, NBC News and CBS News have nearly completely ignored Friday’s bombshell testimony in which former Hillary Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook testified Clinton approved the dissemination of materials to the media alleging a secret communications channel between the Trump Organization and a Russian bank, despite campaign officials not being "totally confident" in the legitimacy of the data. "Left-wing media outlets shout from the rooftops that disinformation matters and is a threat to democracy. Unless, of course, it makes Democrats or the press look bad," radio host Jason Rantz told Fox News Digital. The mainstream media has largely...

'Yes, people do it,' writes Brian Fallon, former spokesman for Chuck Schumer, Eric Holder, and Hillary Clinton Political journalists let sources review their stories prior to publication, a senior Democratic spokesman confirmed on Wednesday. "[Whispers] yes, people do it," Brian Fallon wrote on Twitter, the popular social networking website. Fallon has served as public relations guru for prominent Democrats including Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.), former attorney general Eric Holder, and failed presidential candidate Hillary Clinton. Fallon was responding to the journalistic controversy surrounding ESPN's Adam Schefter. The reporter was being criticized after emails revealed Schefter had let...

In his second term, the outgoing US president has grown fond of fundamental considerations. Now, at press conferences, his responses are long and philosophical. His speech in Athens, perhaps the last he will make as US president on European soil, fit the pattern perfectly. All in all, it was about democracy and his steadfast belief in the democratic political order. The problem is that its present form is doomed to failure, as some of its most important traits, achievements and outgrowths are now attacking their own foundations. Almost like a schoolteacher, Barack Obama explained to his audience why free press...

I knew this review was coming, I just wasn’t sure where it would appear first. Today the Daily Beast published a nakedly partisan review which barely spares a thought for its artistic merit or quality. What matters is that this film seems to make a point that could be seen as Trump friendly: Clint Eastwood’s Richard Jewell wants to be a gripping, outrage-inciting drama about an innocent victim persecuted by—and driven to fight back against—institutional power. Unfortunately, what it turns out to be is a MAGA screed calibrated to court favor with the red hat-wearing faithful by vilifying the...

A Colorado judge's threatened contempt sanctions against Fox News investigative reporter Jana Winter—who refuses to reveal a confidential news source—has refocused public attention on how journalists operate. News must often be gathered from confidential sources, or not at all. Given how vital is the freedom of the press in a democracy, that confidentiality must be maintained. It is time that Congress recognize this and enact legislation that enables journalists to protect their confidential sources and newsgathering materials. Ms. Winter covered the July 20, 2012 mass shooting that killed 12 people and injured 58 others in an Aurora, Colo., movie theater....

WASHINGTON — It was a foreign policy role Joseph R. Biden Jr. enthusiastically embraced during his vice presidency: browbeating Ukraine’s notoriously corrupt government to clean up its act. And one of his most memorable performances came on a trip to Kiev in March 2016, when he threatened to withhold $1 billion in United States loan guarantees if Ukraine’s leaders did not dismiss the country’s top prosecutor, who had been accused of turning a blind eye to corruption in his own office and among the political elite. The pressure campaign worked. The prosecutor general, long a target of criticism from other...

A year ago Donald Trump suggested the media is the enemy of the people. Check out this new tweet from The Hill: Really? Here's a piece from the article: Rudy Giuliani said late Wednesday that men like senior presidential adviser Jared Kushner are “disposable,” but it would cross the line for the special prosecutor to go after first daughter Ivanka Trump. Scroll down a little more and you see what Giuliani did actually say: “Jared is a fine man, you know that,” Giuliani, who joined President Trump's legal team last month, said on Fox News. “Men are disposable. But a fine woman like Ivanka?...

Obama's "echo chamber" lives on and the media are still buying... In an article on the Atlantic website, a former Obama White House staffer explains why she resigned from the Trump White House after only eight days. . . . Hers was the second story in less than a week in which a government official explained that they’d resigned because of Trump’s policies. Ned Price, a CIA analyst who worked at the Obama White House, authored a cri de coeur for the Washington Post to explain why his disagreements with Trump’s policies prompted him to leave government service. “To be...

In a tweet sent during President Donald Trump‘s Thursday press conference, MSNBC host Chuck Todd indicated he didn’t find the bizarre hour-long back-and-forth with reporters all that humorous. The Meet the Press host live tweeted the spectacle, at times sending tweets that indicated he didn’t believe the president was telling the truth, and that the rambling press conference would damage his relationship with Congress. {..snip..}

Following the presidential election, numerous stories surfaced about how “fake news” influenced the results. This prompted a reaction from the media and a concerted effort by the social media giant Facebook to crack down on the phenomenon—announcing that it would in part by using liberal fact-checkers to distinguish the “real” from the “fake” news.The truth is that while the American media landscape has been in a constant state of change over two centuries, the spread of hyperpartisan, scurrilous, and even phony news stories has been more common than uncommon throughout the history of the republic.Ultimately, despite the increasingly Wild West...

<p>The fall out from media bigwigs on the receiving end of a smack down of epic proportions from President-elect Donald Trump continues, with several participants whining to The New Yorker about how mean Trump was.</p> <p>Four executives who attended the off-the-record meeting are quoted without being identified and if there’s a common theme in the remarks, it may be the liberal application of f-bombs.</p>

For more than a year, PJ Media has been reporting on the corrupt press shop inside the Department of Justice. The unit is headed byPress Harpy Tracy Schmaler. We broke a story in July about this relationship after a PJ Media public records request revealed communications between Media Matters’ Matt Gertz and Schmaler about Fast and Furious. (More on the corrupt DOJ press shop: “ Tracy Schmaler’s (and Eric Holder’s) Trip to the Tropics ,” “ DOJ Leaks to TPM Muckraker Florida Will Be Sued Over Voter Rolls ,” “Tracy Schmaler – DOJ Shrieker in Chief.“) Tracy Schmaler Today,...

One of the most chilling realities of the contemporary age in the United States and other Western nations is the demise of the Fourth Estate. The death of a vigorous and free press came when mainstream media and other vital components of the information establishment became propaganda organs for the government. "If it were left to me to decide whether we should have a government without a free press or a free press without a government, I would prefer the latter," said Thomas Jefferson. Edmund Burke, an 18th century British political philosopher, seeded the concept of the Fourth Estate. The...

....Chávez and other thugs (such as Iranian Madman-in-Chief Ahmadinejad) send in busloads of paid agitators to interrupt challengers' speeches and make their own support look more substantial than it is. Barack Obama thought only to send Joe Biden, knowing that the throngs of supporters -- made up largely of reporters, anchormen, and their entourages -- would be provided for him by an all-in-for-Obama media aiming similarly to create a false impression of unflagging popularity. And they surely would have, had a little wind [Isaac] not sapped the brief courage of Delaware's big-talking Cowardly Lion. ....according to a 2011 PewResearch poll...

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. Read more:...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Attacks in Iraq on U.S.-led forces, local security personnel and civilians have surged 22 percent to record levels, the Pentagon said in its latest quarterly report on Iraq published on Monday. The report also noted a rise in civilian casualties and said this was directly linked to the rise of sectarian death squads, which were helped by elements of Iraqi forces. The report was released on the day Robert Gates was sworn in as U.S. defense secretary and as President George W. Bush considers changes to his Iraq policy. Gates replaces Donald Rumsfeld, heavily criticized for his...

Targeting a new frontier in the fight against smoking, California lawmakers may ban motorists from lighting up near young passengers. The measure would mark the first time that Californians would be prohibited from smoking legal tobacco products on private property not open to the public or employees. No state had passed such a vehicle smoking ban until this year, when Arkansas and Louisiana set a precedent by barring the practice when passengers are under 6 or 13, respectively. Assemblyman Paul Koretz, a West Hollywood Democrat who proposed California's ban, Assembly Bill 379, said some parents don't seem to know --...

In an effort to galvanize the message Kerry wants to deliver in the time remaining, he convened a powerful roster of journalists and columnists in the New York City apartment of Al Franken last Thursday. The gathering could not properly be called a meeting or a luncheon. It was a trial. The journalists served as prosecuting attorneys, jury and judge. The crowd I joined in Franken’s living room was comprised of: Al Franken and his wife Franni; Rick Hertzberg, senior editor for the New Yorker; David Remnick, editor for the New Yorker; Jim Kelly, managing editor for Time Magazine; Howard...

I've always heard that the media is the "permanent government" in Washington. Politicians come and go, but the bigwigs are here forever. For example, in 1989 Ben Bradlee, the executive editor of the Washington Post, dismissed John Sununu, the first President Bush's chief of staff, as "a jack-leg governor from a horse's ass state; how could he play with us in the big leagues?" This combination of power, permanence, and arrogance — not liberal bias — is often the real secret behind many of the elite media's problems. Because conventional wisdom flows from the top down, many rank-and-file journalists are...