Score One for Free Press

The White House's bid to have Fox News excluded from an interview given to the press pool has failed.

The Treasury Department on Thursday tried to make "pay czar" Kenneth Feinberg available for interviews to every member of the network pool except Fox News. The pool is the five-network rotation that for decades has shared the costs and duties of daily coverage of the presidency and other Washington institutions.

But the Washington bureau chiefs of the five TV networks consulted and decided that none of their reporters would interview Feinberg unless Fox News was included. The pool informed Treasury that Fox News, as a member of the network pool, could not be excluded from such interviews under the rules of the pool.

The White House finally gave up and agreed.

What do you know, the media finally did something right.

You can find the original article here.

An Arm of the Republican Party?

Anita Dunn says Fox News is an arm of the Republican party. Everyone's entitled to an opinion, even if it's flat out wrong.

A new survey conducted for the League of American Voters by the Global Marketing Research Center shows this:

• Among Democrats, 17 percent watched it several times each week or more

• Among Independents, 46 percent watched the station several times each week or more

• And among Republicans, 55 percent watched it several times each week or more

The survey indicated that 11 percent of all American voters watched CNN “just about every day” and 20 percent watched several times each week or more.

Combined, 31 percent watched CNN several times each week or more.

For MSNBC, the totals were 10 percent watched just about every day and 8 percent watched several times each week. Combined, 18 percent watched MSNBC several times each week or more.

You can find the original article here.

Controlling the Media

The Obama campaign's press strategy leading up to his election last November focused on "making" the media cover what the campaign wanted and on exercising absolute "control" over coverage, White House Communications Director Anita Dunn told an overseas crowd early this year.

"Very rarely did we communicate through the press anything that we didn't absolutely control," Dunn said, admitting that the strategy "did not always make us popular in the press."

I don't give them that much credit. I don't think they controlled the media as much as the media controlled itself. We all know they are worthless partisan hacks and they actively campaigned for Obama. To this day, they continue to give him a pass instead of doing their jobs.

You can see her video here.

You can see the original article here.

Let's Go To War -- Against Fox News

So says the White House, and they say it because Fox News bothers to fact check statements they make.

White House communications director Anita Dunn branded Fox "opinion journalism masquerading as news."

On Sunday, Fox's Chris Wallace retorted: "We wanted to ask Dunn about her criticism, but, as they've done every week since August, the White House refused to make any administration officials available to 'FOX News Sunday' to talk about this or anything else."

The White House stopped providing guests to 'Fox News Sunday' after Wallace fact-checked controversial assertions made by Tammy Duckworth, assistant secretary of the Department of Veterans Affairs, in August. Dunn said fact-checking an administration official was "something I've never seen a Sunday show do."

"She criticized 'FOX News Sunday' last week for fact-checking -- fact-checking -- an administration official," Wallace said Sunday. "They didn't say that our fact-checking was wrong. They just said that we had dared to fact-check."

"Let's fact-check Anita Dunn, because last Sunday she said that Fox ignores Republican scandals, and she specifically mentioned the scandal involving Nevada senator John Ensign," Wallace added. "A number of Fox News shows have run stories about Senator Ensign. Anita Dunn's facts were just plain wrong."

And let's not forget, Dunn was the one who said Mao Tse-Tung was one of her heroes when speaking to high school students.

White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel told CNN that President Obama does not want "the CNNs and the others in the world [to] basically be led in following Fox."

Obama senior adviser David Axelrod went further by calling on media outlets to join the administration in declaring that Fox is "not a news organization."

"Other news organizations like yours ought not to treat them that way," Axelrod counseled ABC's George Stephanopoulos. "We're not going to treat them that way."

Not that you have to worry, White House folks. There's no doubt in anyone's mind whose corner ABC and CNN are in.

I have to pose this one question: why is it that Obama goes around the world to apologize for America and bows to kiss the ass of people like Hugo Chavez, and then decides to take on a news organization in the U.S. that checks his facts?

Does this seem backwards to anyone else out there?

You can find the original article here.

We Want You To Die -- Really

Alan Grayson likes to say it's the Republicans who want seniors to do so we can save money on health care. A statement about wanting people to die has been made, but it wasn't from a conservative. Consider Robert Reich's words:

"I'll actually give you a speech made up entirely, almost on the spur of the moment, of what a candidate for president would say if that candidate did not care about becoming president. In other words, this is what the truth is and a candidate will never say, but what a candidate should say if we were in the kind of democracy where citizens were honored in terms of their practice of citizenship and they were educated in terms of what the issues were and they could separate myth from reality in terms of what candidates would tell them:

'Thank you so much for coming this afternoon. I'm so glad to see you and I would like to be president. Let me tell you a few things on health care. Look, we have the only health care system in the world that is designed to avoid sick people. And that's true and what I'm going to do is that I am going try to reorganize it to be more amenable to treating sick people but that means you, particularly you young people, particularly you young healthy people...you're going to have to pay more.

'Thank you. And by the way, we're going to have to, if you're very old, we're not going to give you all that technology and all those drugs for the last couple of years of your life to keep you maybe going for another couple of months. It's too expensive...so we're going to let you die.

'Also I'm going to use the bargaining leverage of the federal government in terms of Medicare, Medicaid---we already have a lot of bargaining leverage---to force drug companies and insurance companies and medical suppliers to reduce their costs. What that means, less innovation and that means less new products and less new drugs on the market which means you are probably not going to live much longer than your parents. Thank you.'"

You can find the article here.

Comparing Rush Limbaugh To a Plantation Owner

In other words, as usual, the liberals devolve to name calling when they don't like someone. It's really irritating and wearing thin.

In this case it's a Pulizer Prize-winning author named Karen Hunter. She has such American classics as Pimpology: The 48 Laws of the Game, Don't Blame It on Rio: The Real Deal Behind Why Men Go to Brazil for Sex and On the Down Low: A Journey Into the Lives of "Straight" Black Men Who Sleep With Men. Somehow, MSNBC thinks this qualifies her to talk about a conservative talk show host who wants to buy a minority stake in a football team.

"I can just see the visions of plantation grandeur dancing in his head as we speak," Hunter said. "Yeah, it doesn't make you a racist to want to own a team. But, it does kind of with all his history question his power position over these players who make millions of dollars and his ability to be able to move them around, deny them contracts and do whatever he wants willy-nilly. It's the ultimate power position to be an owner of an NFL team."

Never mind that he is going to be a MINORITY owner. As in, not the only one. As in, not owning enough to make his opinion count.

You can find the original article here.

America Is Nothing Special

Neal Gabler has a whacky post today at The Boston Globe. He starts off saying, "THE HOARIEST and most oft-repeated cliche in American politics may be that America is the greatest country in the world."

He says government is better than the American people. Quote: "The fact of the matter is that whenever anything really significant has been accomplished by our government, it is precisely because it was better than the American people." (emphasis his)

Want more? Here: "In the end, government has inspired Americans far more than Americans have inspired their government. They are too busy boasting."

And liberals complain that conservatives hate America? The hating is done by the liberals, who hate the people and love the government. Hmmm, who else had that kind of idea? Stalin comes to mind.

You can read much more at the article here.

A New American Flag

Noel Sheppard questions if the media will help sell this flag since they have been so overtly cashing in on Obamamania.

* The CBS "Early Show" promoted Obama dolls in April
* NBC Universal's online store offers at least 29 Obama-related items for sale
* The CBS "Early Show" addressed how Obama merchandise was tough to keep on the shelves when the first family vacationed on Martha's Vineyard over the summer.

You can find the original article here, complete with links.

Conseratives Hate America

So says Eugene Robinson at Real Clear Politics.

He has some heartburn because conservatives question why Obama got the Nobel Peace Prize. Geez, could it be because he hasn't DONE ANYTHING? Here is what he did in the 12 days before being nominated.

He continues with, "Some of Obama's most strident critics, however, just can't give it a rest. They use words like 'farce' and 'travesty,' as if there were always universal agreement on the worthiness of the Nobel peace laureate. Does anyone remember the controversy over Henry Kissinger or Yasser Arafat or F.W. de Klerk?"

Don't forget Jimmy Carter, the absolute worst president we have ever had in recent U.S. history.

Here is the original article.

The Obama Praise Video

Charisse Carney-Nunes, author of I Am Barack Obama and maker of the “Mmm, Mmm, Mmm” Obama praise video, decried the violent and uncivil tone in politics today after receiving an email from Michelle Malkin:

"Ms. Carney-Nunes,

"I understand that you uploaded the video of schoolchildren reciting a Barack Obama song/rap at Bernice Young elementary school in June. I have a few quick questions.

"Did you help write the song/rap and teach it to the children? Are you an educator/guest lecturer at the school? Did you teach about your book, “I am Barack Obama” at the school? Your bio says you are a schoolmate of Obama. How well-acquainted are you with the president?

"Thanks for your time.

Instead of responding to the email, she ran to Ann Gerhart at The Washington Post.

Carney-Nunes says, "How can I talk to those people? These are people who persist in believing that Barack Obama is a Muslim, that he isn't a citizen of this country. You tell me: Where is the beginning of that conversation?"

Malkin says in her post, "It’s a telling sign of the Post’s ideological agenda and its insufficient tuned-in-ness (to borrow the NYTimes’ phrase) that the paper doesn’t think parental concerns about left-wing radicalism in the schools are Page A1-newsworthy — but that the complaints of a social justice proselytizer are."

You can find the Washington Post article here.

You can find the original article here.

Ownership Decided Based on Ideology?

Rush Limbaugh wants to buy into the group that owns the St. Louis Rams (that's a football team, for those of you in Rio Linda).

Al Sharpton and DeMaurice Smith, the NFL Players Association executive director, have sent letters to NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell to complain. Smith is going even further by asking NFL players to speak out. Sharpton said Limbaugh has been divisive and "anti-NFL" in some of his comments.

As someone who has listened to Limbaugh in the past, I can tell you he is not anti-NFL. He loves football. However, in 2003, Limbaugh worked briefly on ESPN’s NFL pregame show. He resigned after saying Philadelphia Eagles quarterback Donovan McNabb was overrated because the media wanted to see a black quarterback succeed.

I don't see that being a racist statement. He was talking about the media, not about McNabb. It might have been racist if he had said McNabb was a good quarterback for a black man.

Limbaugh would be a limited partner — not the controlling partner or lead investor — in an ownership group that includes St. Louis Blues owner Dave Checketts.

You can find the original articles here and here.

Bias from Time Magazine? You betcha

Time magazine has an article detailing how the White House is fighting back against stories it doesn't like in the media. While the article lists a single instance each from The Washington Post and The New York Times, it concentrates heavily against Fox News.

In addition, it states several slightly off things:

• It casts the furor about Obama's speech to schoolkids being about the "benign contents of the speech" and not the fact that he would address them directly.


• The coverage of town hall meetings this summer, where people were truly upset about health care reform and out-of-control government spending, was "often covered as a 'controversy.' Yes, it was always a controversy.


• It laments that The Washington Post didn't question Republican charges that Obama has 32 czars. The controversy over the czars has been more about their left-leaning ideas and the fact that at least one of them was an admitted Communist.

So the White House has decided to take things into its own hands and not rely on the media, which has to this point been so pro-Obama. Obama himself said he wants to "call 'em out."

You can find the article here.

No Hosting the Olympics for Chicago -- And They Don't Know How Lucky They Are

Chicago was up recently as one of the cities to host the Olympics. Obama took time from his failing foreign policy and health care issues to try to get the Olympic committee to decide in favor of Chicago.

Yet, it did not happen. Too bad, so sad.

The people of Chicago don't realize how narrowly they dodged the bullet. When the Olympics come to town, politicians dream up all kinds of ways to grab money from it. Eminent domain abuses and higher taxes happen so that space for the Olympics can be made (1). Click here for an example of how this works in practice.

Or consider when the games were hosted in Greece. The Greek government shelled out approximately $12 billion for the 2002 Olympics in Athens -- more than twice the initial estimate -- and the spectators' Euros weren't nearly enough to make up the difference. Some Greeks did pretty well, especially in the construction industry, but the rest of the country was stuck with a steep bill (2).

Another reason they are lucky they didn't get the Olympics is because of extremely tight security and because anyone not desirable enough to be around will be quietly relocated (3).

But apparently these aren't good reasons. Liberals have to take the time to bash the conservatives, even when it wasn't the conservatives trying to latch onto the Olympics. It's Obama's failure and yet it's really the conservatives' fault.

The headline at Talking Points Memo today is, "Conservatives Revel In America's Olympic Defeat". You can find all kinds of examples of conservatives being happy Obama failed here.

But if it's their fault, that implies they had to work at making him fail. Yet, no proof of that. People that have particular reasons for not wanting the Olympics in Chicago -- like eminent domain abuses, higher taxes, cronyism to Obama's supporters, higher security measures and human rights abuses to name a few -- are somehow the villains.

You can find the original article here.

==================
1. Malkin, Michelle (2009, October 1). "How do you spell wealth redistribution? Tax-increment financing". Michelle Malkin.
Retrieved October 5, 2009, from Michelle Malkin

2. Walker, Jesse (2009, July 11). "Lucky Paris". Reason Online.
Retrieved October 5, 2009, from Reason Online

3. Walker, Jesse (2009, July 11). "Lucky Paris". Reason Online.
Retrieved October 5, 2009, from Reason Online

Media Spin on Unemployment

The unemployment rate right now is about 9%. The last time it was this high was under Reagan. Yet the media have spun the meaning of the numbers in exact opposite ways:

• When Reagan was president journalists showed unemployed families living out of their cars under a bridge in Texas and quoted Democrats or union leaders’ attacks on the president’s “wicked” and “sadistic” fiscal policies. Under Obama, these journalists have gone to great lengths to spin rising unemployment by finding “positive trends” in the job losses, even focusing on as few as 25 jobs being “saved” by the economic stimulus package.


• Here's how NBC did a report on unemployment under Reagan: "The lines for free food at food banks are four times what they were six months ago," NBC’s Don Oliver told Nightly News viewers. Oliver’s report focused on the "new poor" and the emotional effects of unemployment, including suicide and battering. For Obama? ABC’s George Stephanopoulos looked on the bright side for Obama Sept. 4, 2009, telling viewers, “the unemployment rate nears 10 percent, but the numbers aren’t all bad.”


• An overwhelming majority of stories mentioning the Reagan administration were negative 91 percent (20 out of 22) while only 7 percent (1 out of 15) of Obama administration mentions were negative. Additionally, Obama mentions were favorable 87 percent of the time, but there were zero positive mentions of Reagan.


• Unemployment stories in 1982 mentioned the Reagan administration 71 percent of the time (22 out of 31), but 2009 stories mentioned the Obama administration only 40 percent of the time (14 out of 35).


• The unemployment rate reached 9.4 percent under Reagan and Obama. But ABC’s Charles Gibson covered the identical rate very differently in 1982 than in 2009. Gibson told viewers May 7, 1982, "[T]here really isn’t any good news in the statistics. All the numbers are bad." But by 2009, Gibson had turned into an optimist citing "good news" June 5 and "hope the economy may be finally turning the corner" Aug. 7.

Now, I ask you, do you still believe the media are anything but complicit with Obama? They will not on their lives post bad things about Obama.

The original article is here.

A Parallel to Israel in 1995?

Thomas Friedman writes an editorial at The New York Times asserting that the current environment in politics is toxic and compares it to the assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. He recalls how people "...questioned his authority. They accused him of treason. They created pictures depicting him as a Nazi SS officer, and they shouted death threats at rallies. His political opponents winked at it all."

And says the right wing in America is doing the same thing to Obama. He cites the Facebook poll that was taken down recently, which asked if Obama should be assassinated.

And somehow asserts that we haven't had a legitimate president in the United States in 24 years.

It's not like people calling an American president "Hitler", "socialist" and more. Bush was demonized like no one before. I don't think Friedman cried about that.

There are nuts of every stripe, on the left and the right. Someone criticizing Obama's policies as socialist is not going to push a nut over the edge. If he's going to shoot the president, it's not because someone's argument made sense enough to pull the trigger. By definition, someone who goes that far isn't rational.

You can read Friedman's whining here.

New York Times Wants to Play Catch-Up

Well, not really. They want to keep an eye on Fox News so they can see if they are missing any stories. From an editorial at Investors Business Daily:

"The New York Times, still smarting after losing scoops to Fox News, has thrown in the towel, vowing to avoid future embarrassment by monitoring the cable channel."

You know, playing catch-up and monitoring Fox isn't reporting. It's just laziness and ideological prejudice. You want to know why virtually no one trusts you and your readership is going down the tubes? It's because you don't report, you rant.

If you want to be successful, do what the rest of us do -- our jobs. Yours is to investigate stories and to offer fair and unbiased analysis. You've failed miserably.

You can find the original editorial here.

Liberal Whackos Blame Conservatives for Census Worker's Death

It is truly a tragedy that Bill Sparkman was murdered while taking down information for the census. He was found hanged with the word "fed" written on his chest (1).

The liberals are going crazy, blaming conservatives and their disdain of the census:

• Think Progress, which I don't think does much of either, blames Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN), Fox News and conservative radio host Neal Boortz. In an update, they listed some incidents of assault against census workers (2).


• Steven Benen at The Washington Monthly starts with "...it's still worth emphasizing that this is an open investigation and additional information is needed before reaching any conclusions" but concludes it "may have been a politically-motivated slaying". For his proof? He links to Faiz Shakir at Think Progress and dutifully blames Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN), Fox News and conservative radio host Neal Boortz (3).


• Andrew Sullivan at The Atlantic says, "But the most worrying possibility - that this is Southern populist terrorism, whipped up by the GOP and its Fox and talk radio cohorts - remains real. We'll see." (4)


• DesmoinesDem at MyDD links to Faiz Shakir, dutifully blaming Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN), Fox News and conservative radio host Neal Boortz and adds in "conservative politicians and opinion leaders". He worries about "mentally unstable individuals" who will commit more acts of violence (5).


• Nicole Belle at Crooks and Liars reminds us the census has been around since 1790 and then goes on a tirade against Republicans. Oh, and blame Bachmann and Fox News and end with a parting shot to the "wingnuts" (6).


• Richard Benjamin at The Huffington Post says it isn't known yet whether Sparkman was killed by a meth dealer or by a person disgruntled with the government, but goes on to "highlight the precarious struggles of the white working class and the brewing storm surrounding the 2010 Census." He ties in Timothy McVeigh and more (7).

Liberals, who are always complaining about conservative vitriol, are the first to spew it. Although conservatives have expressed severe doubts about how the census is carried out, and more importantly, how it the information is used, are not the ones calling names.

====================
1. Associated Press (2009, September 25). "Man Found Census Worker Naked, Gagged Hanging From Tree". The Associated Press.
Retrieved September 28, 2009, from Fox News

2. Shakir, Faiz (2009, September 25). "Flashback: Bachmann Spread Fears Of Scary Stalking Census Workers". Think Progress.
Retrieved September 28, 2009, from ThinkProgress.org

3. Benen, Steve (2009, September 26). "BILL SPARKMAN'S GRUESOME DEATH". The Washington Monthly.
Retrieved September 28, 2009, from The Washington Monthly

4. Sullivan, Andrew (2009). "No Suicide". The Atlantic.
Retrieved September 28, 2009, from The Atlantic

5. Desmoines Dem (2009, September 26). "Conservatives must stop demonizing the census". MyDD.
Retrieved September 28, 2009, from MyDD

6. Belle, Nicole (2009, September 25). "Conservatives' Census Paranoia". Crooks and Liars.
Retrieved September 28, 2009, from Crooks and Liars

7. Benjamin, Richard (2009, September 25). "Sparkman: Casualty of Methland, USA? Or Victim of Anti-Government Bile?". The Huffington Post.
Rerieved September 28, 2009, from The Huffington Post

Instead of Proving ACORN's Innocence, Attack the Conservatives

Eric Alterman at the liberal Center for American Progress weighs in on the ACORN controversy. Instead of trying to prove their innocence, he attacks everyone from James O'Keefe and Hannah Giles to the mainstream media.

He starts off talking about Jon Stewart's show, where Stewart mocked the press for missing the story. Alterman attacks Stewart: "The misdirected animosity toward the 'real reporters' in this instance was a rare misstep for the usually perspicacious press critic/comedian." Misdirected? ACORN endorses human trafficking, teenage sex slaves, tax evasion and more, and the animosity is 'misdirected' if it's pointing at ACORN?

Huh?

He attacks the filmmakers, Fox News, George Stephanopoulos, the Associated Press and ABC News.

But he praises Salon. Oh yeah, there's some objective reporting for you.

You can find his attack piece here.

New Media Study Reveals Public Distrust of News Outlets

As if we didn't already know about the left-leaning bent in most news organizations, a study from Sacred Heart University confirms it.

The study, titled "Trust and Satisfaction with the National News Media," reveals some facts about the trust the average American has for news outlets:

• Those named most frequently as the television news organization most trusted for accurate reporting in 2009 included: Fox News (30.0%), CNN (19.5%), NBC News (7.5%) and ABC News (7.5%). Fox News was also the television news organization trusted least. Just over one-quarter, 26.2%, named Fox News, followed by NBC News (9.9%), MSNBC (9.4%), CNN (8.5%), CBS News (5.3%) and ABC News (3.7%).


• The Daily Show/Colbert Report was viewed, by a six-to-one margin, as mostly or somewhat liberal over mostly or somewhat conservative. By nearly five-to-one margins, respondents see “news media journalists and broadcasters,” the New York Times and MSNBC as mostly or somewhat liberal over those that see them as mostly or somewhat conservative.


• Fox News is viewed as mostly or somewhat conservative over mostly or somewhat liberal by a four-to-one margin. And, by approximately three-to-one margins, CNN and USA Today are viewed as mostly or somewhat liberal over mostly or somewhat conservative. The Wall Street Journal is viewed as more conservative by a two-to-one margin while National Public Radio is viewed as more liberal by the same margin.


• While strong majorities of survey respondents (73.4%) believed the news media (newspapers, radio, TV and the internet) should provide equal time and space for multiple sides of issues, a similar percentage (70.9%) said the same media should be free from government involvement and allow the market to determine programming demand.


• Nearly two-fifths of all respondents, 38.1%, said they are reading newspapers less often than they did five years ago. And, nearly half, 45.0%, agreed that the internet is adequately covering for failing newspapers, while 35.6% disagreed. More than three-quarters, 77.9%, disagreed with a statement suggesting tax dollars be used to prop up failing newspapers.


• Poll results found 83.6% saw national news media organizations as very or somewhat biased while just 14.1% viewed them as somewhat unbiased or not at all biased. Some, 2.4%, were unsure.


• A large majority, 89.3%, suggested the national media played a very or somewhat strong role in helping to elect President Obama. Just 10.0% suggested the national media played little or no role. Further, 69.9% agreed the national news media are intent on promoting the Obama presidency while 26.5% disagreed. Some, 3.6% were unsure.


• Over half of Americans surveyed, 56.4%, said they agreed that the news media are promoting President Obama’s healthcare reform without objective criticism. Another 39.3% disagreed and 4.3% were unsure. Further, a majority, 57.6% of those surveyed agreed that the news media appear to be coordinating efforts to diminish the record of former Alaska Governor, Sarah Palin. One third, 34.6%, disagreed and 7.9% were unsure.


• The poll found that, by a six-to-one margin, Americans would prefer to have their national news media cover the life of 1st Lieutenant Brian Bradshaw who was killed fighting in Afghanistan than that of entertainer Michael Jackson following their deaths on June 25, 2009. Another 14.6% suggested they would have preferred an even balance of coverage and 8.0% were unsure.

The poll, including its methodology and some commentary, can be found here.

John Stossel on the Truth About Media Bias

John Stossel weighs in today on the truth about media bias.

"Every reporter has political beliefs. The difference is that I am upfront about mine."

He discusses health care reform, the stimulus package, economic reforms and more, and how the media shows its bias in their reports.

His letter can be found here.

For his no-nonsense contributions to journalism and fair reporting, I say John Stossel is a Damn Fine American.