Boehner goes nuclear when he finds out that language was illegally inserted into the bill giving the AIG execs big bonuses with our money. This goes all the way back to the language in the failed Stimulus Bill.
This is the speech that Leader Boehner was referencing in the beginning of the video above
ABC’s World News on Wednesday and Good Morning America on Thursday both reported on the revelation that Newt Gingrich received almost $2 million while consulting for Freddie Mac over an eight year span.
Yet, the network ignored the fact that the company (with a Democratic President) is still giving massive bonuses and will now be asking the federal government for an additional $6 billion.
On World News, Jon Karl highlighted only the Gingrich connection, highlighting attacks by Michele Bachmann.
Yet, while ABC focused on this, NBC’s Kelly O’Donnell explained, “So, here’s what set off the latest round of outrage. $13 million in bonuses for the two mortgage giants that had to be bailed out by taxpayers. Now these bonuses come after Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac actually lost $4 billion last quarter.”
So, while NBC’s Andrea Mitchell offered snarky comments, such as insisting that Gingrich is “trying to explain his gold platted, insider status,” at least NBC allowed that the company still had issues, separate from their relation to GOP presidential candidates.
On CBS’s Evening News, Wyatt Andrews noted the “bipartisan anger” from Republicans and Democrats over the latest news.
Speaking of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae CEOs, Andrews added, “Fannie’s Michael Williams and Freddie’s Charles Haldeman, earned $9.3 million and $7.8 million over two years, which gives them, Republican Darrell Issa said, the best taxpayer-financed jobs ever.”
On Thursday’s Early Show, Jan Crawford mentioned the congressional investigation during a Gingrich segment. GMA only focused on the Republican presidential candidate. NBC’s Today did the same.
A transcript of the Evening News segment can be found HERE
[Today we have featured some of the illuminating work by Dan Gainor from the Media Research Center. Be sure to scroll down and read the three part series showing how some in the elite media abuse their positions to behave as Democratic Party operatives. In today’s piece Gainor shows how the problem goes far beyond rank and file journalists. George Soros, who has stated that he wants a new centrally planned economic order, is the single largest contributor to far left political causes. – Editor]
George Soros
Part I: Why Don’t We Hear About Soros’ Ties to Over 30 Major News Organizations?
When liberal investor George Sorosgave $1.8 million to National Public Radio , it became part of the firestorm of controversy that jeopardized NPR’s federal funding. But that gift only hints at the widespread influence the controversial billionaire has on the mainstream media. Soros, who spent $27 million trying to defeat President Bush in 2004, has ties to more than 30 mainstream news outlets – including The New York Times, Washington Post, the Associated Press, NBC and ABC.
Prominent journalists like ABC’s Christiane Amanpour and former Washington Post editor and now Vice President Len Downie serve on boards of operations that take Soros cash. This despite the Society of Professional Journalists’ ethical code stating: “avoid all conflicts real or perceived.”
The investigative reporting start-up ProPublica is a prime example. ProPublica, which recently won its second Pulitzer Prize, initially was given millions of dollars from the Sandler Foundation to “strengthen the progressive infrastructure” – “progressive” being the code word for very liberal. In 2010, it also received a two-year contribution of $125,000 each year from the Open Society Foundations. In case you wonder where that money comes from, the OSF website is www.soros.org. It is a network of more than 30 international foundations, mostly funded by Soros, who has contributed more than $8 billion to those efforts.
The ProPublica stories are thoroughly researched by top-notch staffers who used to work at some of the biggest news outlets in the nation. But the topics are almost laughably left-wing. The site’s proud list of “Our Investigations” includes attacks on oil companies, gas companies, the health care industry, for-profit schools and more. More than 100 stories on the latest lefty cause: opposition to drilling for natural gas by hydraulic fracking. Another 100 on the evils of the foreclosure industry.
Throw in a couple investigations making the military look bad and another about prisoners at Guantanamo Bay and you have almost the perfect journalism fantasy – a huge budget, lots of major media partners and a liberal agenda unconstrained by advertising.
One more thing: a 14-person Journalism Advisory Board, stacked with CNN’s David Gergen and representatives from top newspapers, a former publisher of The Wall Street Journal and the editor-in-chief of Simon & Schuster. Several are working journalists, including:
• Jill Abramson, a managing editor of The New York Times;
• Kerry Smith, the senior vice president for editorial quality of ABC News;
• Cynthia A. Tucker, the editor of the editorial page of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
ProPublica is far from the only Soros-funded organization that is stacked with members of the supposedly neutral press.
The Center for Public Integrity is another great example. Its board of directors is filled with working journalists like Amanpour from ABC, right along side blatant liberal media types like Arianna Huffington, of the Huffington Post and now AOL.
Like ProPublica, the CPI board is a veritable Who’s Who of journalism and top media organizations, including:
• Christiane Amanpour – Anchor of ABC’s Sunday morning political affairs program, “This Week with Christiane Amanpour.” A reliable lefty, she has called tax cuts “giveaways,” the Tea Party “extreme,” and Obama “very Reaganesque.”
• Paula Madison – Executive vice president and chief diversity officer for NBC Universal, who leads NBC Universal’s corporate diversity initiatives, spanning all broadcast television, cable, digital, and film properties.
• Matt Thompson – Editorial product manager at National Public Radio and an adjunct faculty member at the prominent Poynter Institute.
The group’s advisory board features:
• Ben Sherwood, ABC News president and former “Good Morning America” executive producer
Once again, like ProPublica, the Center for Public Integrity’s investigations are mostly liberal – attacks on the coal industry, payday loans and conservatives like Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour. The Center for Public Integrity is also more open about its politics, including a detailed investigation into conservative funders David and Charles Koch and their “web of influence.”According to the center’s own 990 tax forms, the Open Society Institute gave it $651,650 in 2009 alone.
The well-known Center for Investigative Reporting follows the same template – important journalists on the board and a liberal editorial agenda. Both the board of directors and the advisory board contain journalists from major news outlets. The board features:
• Phil Bronstein (President), San Francisco Chronicle;
• David Boardman, The Seattle Times;
• Len Downie, former Executive Editor of the Washington Post, now VP;
• George Osterkamp, CBS News producer.
Readers of the site are greeted with numerous stories on climate change, illegal immigration and the evils of big companies. It counts among its media partners The Washington Post, Salon, CNN and ABC News. CIR received close to $1 million from Open Society from 2003 to 2008.
Why does it all matter? Journalists, we are constantly told, are neutral in their reporting. In almost the same breath, many bemoan the influence of money in politics. It is a maxim of both the left and many in the media that conservatives are bought and paid for by business interests. Yet where are the concerns about where their money comes from?
Fred Brown, who recently revised the book “Journalism Ethics: A Casebook of Professional Conduct for News Media,” argues journalists need to be “transparent” about their connections and “be up front about your relationship” with those who fund you.
Unfortunately, that rarely happens. While the nonprofits list who sits on their boards, the news outlets they work for make little or no effort to connect those dots. Amanpour’s biography page, for instance, talks about her lengthy career, her time at CNN and her many awards. It makes no mention of her affiliation with the Center for Public Integrity.
If journalists were more up front, they would have to admit numerous uncomfortable connections with groups that push a liberal agenda, many of them funded by the stridently liberal George Soros. So don’t expect that transparency any time soon.
Part II: Why Is Soros Spending Over $48 Million Funding Media Organizations?
It’s a scene journalists dream about – a group of coworkers toasting a Pulitzer Prize. For the team at investigative start-up ProPublica, it was the second time their fellow professionals recognized their work for journalism’s top honor.
For George Soros and ProPublica’s other liberal backers, it was again proof that a strategy of funding journalism was a powerful way to influence the American public.
It’s a strategy that Soros has been deploying extensively in media both in the United States and abroad. Since 2003, Soros has spent more than $48 million funding media properties, including the infrastructure of news – journalism schools, investigative journalism and even industry organizations.
And that number is an understatement. It is gleaned from tax forms, news stories and reporting. But Soros funds foundations that fund other foundations in turn, like the Tides Foundation, which then make their own donations. A complete accounting is almost impossible because a media component is part of so many Soros-funded operations.
This information is part of an upcoming report by the Media Research Centers Business & Media Institute which has been looking into George Soros and his influence on the media.
It turns out that Soros’ influence doesn’t just include connections to top mainstream news organizations such as NBC, ABC, The New York Times and Washington Post. It’s bought him connections to the underpinnings of the news business. The Columbia Journalism Review, which bills itself as “a watchdog and a friend of the press in all its forms,” lists several investigative reporting projects funded by one of Soros foundations.
The “News Frontier Database” includes seven different investigative reporting projects funded by Soros’ Open Society Institute. Along with ProPublica, there are the Center for Public Integrity, the Center for Investigative Reporting and New Orleans’ The Lens. The Columbia School of Journalism, which operates CJR, has received at least $600,000 from Soros, as well.
Imagine if conservative media punching bags David and Charles Koch had this many connections to journalists. Even if the Kochs could find journalists willing to support conservative media (doubtful), they would be skewered by the left.
For Soros, it’s news, but it nothing new. According to “Soros: The Life and Times of a Messianic Billionaire,” he has been fascinated by media from when he was a boy where early career interests included “history or journalism or some form of writing.” He served as “editor-in-chief, publisher, and news vendor of” his own paper, “The Lupa News” and wrote a wall newspaper in his native Hungary before leaving, wrote author Michael T. Kaufman, a 40-year New York Times veteran. The Communist Party “encouraged” such papers.
Now as one of the world’s richest men (No. 46 on Forbes’ list), he gets to indulge his dreams. Since those dreams seem to involve controlling media from the ground up, Soros naturally started with Columbia University’s School of Journalism. Columbia is headed by President Lee Bollinger, who also sits on the Pulitzer Prize board and the board of directors of The Washington Post.
Conveniently, Len Downie, the lead author of that piece, is on both the Post’s board and the board of the Center for Investigative Reporting, also funded by Soros.
Soros funds more than just the most famous journalism school in the nation. There are journalism industry associations like:
• The National Federation of Community Broadcasters;
• The National Association of Hispanic Journalists;
• And the Committee to Protect Journalists.
Readers unhappy with Soros’ media influence might be tempted to voice concerns to the Organization of News Ombudsmen – a professional group devoted to “monitoring accuracy, fairness and balance.” Perhaps they might consider a direct complaint to one such as NPR’s Alicia Shepard or PBS’s Michael Getler, both directors of the organization. Unfortunately, that group is also funded by Soros. At the bottom of the Organization of News Ombudsmen’s website front page is the line: “Supported by the Open Society Institute,” a Soros foundation. It is the only organization so listed.
The group’s membership page lists 57 members from around globe and features:
• Deirdre Edgar, readers’ representative of The Los Angeles Times;
• Brent Jones, standards editor, USA Today;
• Kelly McBride, ombudsman, ESPN;
• Patrick Pexton, ombudsman, The Washington Post.
The site doesn’t address whether the OSI money creates a conflict of interest. But then, who could readers complain to anyway?
There’s more. The Open Society Institute is one of several foundations funding the Investigative News Network (INN), a collaboration of 32 non-profit news organizations producing what they claim is “non-partisan investigative news.” The James L. Knight Foundation also backs the network and is possibly the most-well-known journalism foundation. Knight President and CEO Alberto Ibargüen is on the board of directors for ProPublica.
INN includes the Investigative Reporting Workshop at American University, the liberal web start-up MinnPost, National Institute for Computer-Assisted Reporting, National Public Radio, and the Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism. The network had included the liberal Huffington Post investigative operation among its grants, but HuffPo investigations merged with the possibly even more left-wing Center for Public Integrity, on whose boardArianna Huffington sits.
Liberal academic programs, left-wing investigative journalism and even supposedly neutral news organizations all paid for by a man who spends tens of millions of dollars openly attacking the right. George Soros is teaching journalists that their industry has a future as long as he opens his wallet.
Conservatives are crazy. Sometimes they’re stupid, racist or even evil. On creative occasions they’re all four – at least that’s how they’re portrayed by the American media. All that reflects the typical lefty view that right-wingers are “son of bitches” who need to be taken out, as Teamsters President Jimmy Hoffa so sweetly explained. Hoffa envisions a “good fight” because his opponents must be the opposite – evil.
This election season, journalists have partnered fully with the left to depict conservatives in the most vile ways they can muster. While it’s nothing new, the sheer volume of attacks is noteworthy. What’s worse is that many are coming from supposedly legitimate news operations. . (It is fun to note this nasty attack comes just days before Obama pushes his latest “bipartisan” legislative effort.)
Every national conservative politician battles these media characterizations.
Ronald Reagan was crazy or stupid, depending on the lefty arguing it or the phases of the moon. Nancy Reagan was allegedly the power behind the throne, so she was crazy and evil.
President George H.W. Bush once ran the CIA – evil.
His son, President George W. Bush, managed to be crazy, stupid and evil. (Lefties liked to depict him in Nazi regalia or as a chimp, or both. Conservatives who use identical phrasing or images for Obama are, of course, category four – racists.) Vice President Dick Cheney got the Nancy Reagan treatment – crazy and evil.
It’s almost a party game to list the top conservatives and describe how the media and left are depicting them. But it’s no game to candidates. Prominent media outlets are trying to sabotage every viable conservative opponent to Obama.
Rep. Michele Bachman, (R-Wis.), is called crazy for her gas price predictions or for just being her. Newsweek’s Aug. 15 cover story on Bachmann was called “The Queen of Rage,” complete with a cover photo of a crazy-eyed candidate. “In Iowa, where she was raised, Bachmann has become the living embodiment of the Tea Party. She and her allies have been called a maniacal gang of knife-wielding ideologues. That’s hyperbole, of course,” wrote Lois Romano. When reporters write something that vile and follow it with “that’s hyperbole,” what they really mean is “no, it’s not.”
Then there’s ESPN’s L.Z. Granderson, also a CNN contributor, who called Bachmann “crazy.” Granderson said that “the people aren’t going to vote for crazy. And she [Bachmann] still registers as crazy with a lot of independents.” But those attacks were repurposing the lefty theme that has been around for years. Crazy Mother Jones magazine called her “Bachmann (R-Crazy)” in a 2008 headline.
With Bachmann now running for president, Matt Taibbi resurrected that assault in Rolling Stone’s June 22 issue. “Bachmann is a religious zealot whose brain is a raging electrical storm of divine visions and paranoid delusions.” Taibbi summed it up by saying she’s “exactly the right kind of completely batshit crazy. Not medically crazy, not talking-to-herself-on-the-subway crazy, but grandiose crazy, late-stage Kim Jong-Il crazy.”
Then there’s stupid, a subject the old school media know all too well. Politico, the lefty publication that caters to Washington insiders, ran an Aug. 29 cover story with the headline: “Is Rick Perry dumb?” This sterling bit of journalism began with the premise that Perry is “confronting an unavoidable question: is he dumb – or just misunderestimated?” (That last bit is a dig at Bush the Younger, of course.)
This theme has been everywhere for years, enshrined even in T-shirt form as a red-white-and-blue elephant with the slogan: “Never Underestimate the Power of Stupid People in Large Numbers.”
Tune into MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” and there’s co-host Mika Brzezinski bashing the right for not hiking taxes in the debt limit negotiations. “I think the Republicans look stupid and mean. I’m sorry, this is stupid.”
It’s a common theme over at MSNBC: conservatives are stupid. “Sarah Palin Has Proven Herself To Be Profoundly Stupid,” whined “Hardball” host Chris Matthews.
If it’s evil you want, Matthews throws that term around like beads at Mardi Gras. Let’s see: Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck are evil: “These people are evil in what they’re doing.” All because he thinks they’re wrong about climate change. Then Matthews bashed former Speaker Newt Gingrich as “evil” and looking “like the devil.”
The media pile on Perry as the front runner. ABC’s Jim Avila called out conservative Texans as evil, even if you didn’t quite use the word. “Some argue that, deep in the heart of Rick Perry’s Texas, there is little heart.” “Some.” That’s another journalist weasel word, allowing Avila to say what he actually feels without owning up. It’s the same theme over on the left, typically blasting the Koch brothers with the term. A 2010 Gawker headline explained it only a bit tongue-in-cheek: “Republican Billionaires Arrange Secret Meeting to Plot Evil.”
Those attacks are awful, but the scarlet letter attack in today’s world earns the “R” for racism. Matthews is good at that one too, saying Perry “could be Bull Connor with a smile.” Matthews gave the Bull Connor comparison to Perry twice. (Connor was a civil rights era racist who unleashed police dogs and turned fire hoses on protesters. He was also a Democrat.)
If you’re white, even a bogus claim of racism is almost impossible to defend against. It’s the favorite of charlatans and media hounds, and a persistent media theme since Obama first announced for president. Everybody who’s anybody – the Tea Party, Fox, the GOP and more – are all racists for daring to oppose Obama.
Donald Trump’s request to see Obama’s grades? “That’s just code for saying he got into law school because he was black,” explained CBS’s Bob Schieffer.
MSNBC’s lefty religious expert Frank Schaeffer tells viewers about “a racist white bloc in the Republican Party that has come dressed as the Tea Party.”
Even black GOP presidential candidate Herman Cain gets abused as “racist.” TV nutball pundits from foul-mouthed comedian Bill Maher to massively inked, one-time comedienne Janeane Garofalo have criticized his candidacy – supposedly designed to deflect “the racism that is inherent in the Republican Party, the conservative movement, the tea party certainly.” Garofalo actually claimed Cain was being paid to fend off charges of racism against the GOP. Of course, you can’t fend off such disgusting charges. Even a lunatic like Garofalo knows that.
Because such charges get repeated dozens, hundreds or thousands of times. The examples above are just scratching the surface. We could fill newspapers with these outlandish claims, if any bothered to print such truth. Crazy, stupid, evil and racist. The four horsemen of the liberal media apocalypse this election. And every one of them has already been set loose.
Dan Gainor is the Boone Pickens Fellow and the Media Research Center’s Vice President for Business and Culture.
Normally we make it a practice to not republish an entire piece, but this is so important for readers to understand and share in this case we are making an exception. Read carefully.
If you’ve been following the news this week, you’d get the impression that America is a scandal-plagued nation. Scandals to the right of us, scandals to the left of us.
Take your pick. There’s the media assault on GOP presidential candidate Herman Cain, the deadly “Fast and Furious” federal gun-running case, the Solyndra solar loan fiasco, the collapse of MF Global, led by former Democratic N.J. Gov. Jon Corzine and, of course, the deeply disturbing allegations of child sexual abuse at Penn State.
But the real scandal isn’t any one of those. It’s how journalists pick and choose which controversies to play up and which to play down. They are so inconsistent, you’d think they studied ethics at Penn State under Joe Paterno.
Heck, maybe he studied under them.
Take the allegations against Cain. We are watching ABC’s George Stephanopoulos attack Herman Cain on how he deals with women. This is the same George Stephanopoulos who worked for Bill Clinton and did his best to undermine attacks against him. Remember, Clinton was charged with a variety of women-unfriendly incidents including rape. Yes, rape. Not that the networks made a big deal of it at the time.
Here’s Stephanopoulos, on page 267 of his autobiography “All Too Human,” “Most important, I wanted to keep reports of Paula [Jones’] press conference off television … It wasn’t a hard sell.” His book goes on to say how he tried to discredit her. Yes, this openly Democratic operative is a “newsman” now.
Don’t believe it for a second. The different between “journalist” and Democratic Party operative is often non-existent.
It shows in everything they do. We aren’t even two weeks into CainFest 2011 and the broadcast networks have done 117 stories on him. One-hundred and seventeen? That’s more than a small war would get.
Actually, it’s 58 times more than a small war has gotten. Obama ordered troops into Uganda in October, before the Cain allegations came out. CBS and NBC have each mentioned it once since then. ABC hasn’t mentioned it at all.
But the networks don’t care about American soldiers at risk. They are more concerned that Obama’s presidency is at risk.
That’s the only explanation for how they’ve covered, or not covered, the “Fast and Furious” scandal. You’ve had to look hard to find consistent coverage of this corrupt government program that cost the life of at least one law enforcement officer. Allegedly the goal was to track U.S. guns to drug cartels and arrest gun runners.
But the program was poorly run and it cost the life of Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry. A good leader would take responsibility for that. A moral leader would have called the family to talk to them or meet with them in person. Attorney General Eric Holder didn’t do either. All he did do was lie to Congress about it.
According to Holder, the program was furiously “flawed in its concept and flawed in its execution.” That skips any blame for when he told Congress he had heard of the program only weeks before. Now we know that’s just not true. In any other city than Washington, D.C., what Holder did was a boldfaced lie.
Not that you’d know it from most network news. While CBS’s Sharyl Attkisson has shown her top-flight skills as a journalist, and been abused by the Obama administration for it, her competing networks have abandoned their responsibility to their viewers. Both NBC and ABC skipped the House Republican roasting Holder received on Capitol Hill.
It’s been much the same in the Solyndra scandal. There only ABC has shown any semblance of journalistic skill covering Obama’s failed green program. It’s a $500-million scandal involving an Obama fundraiser, a solar panel company that had a dot.com era idea on how to make a profit (none) and it’s gotten nowhere near the media coverage a Republican scandal might have gotten. (Just ask Herman Cain.)
A recent Media Research Center analysis found “just 15 stories mentioning the Solyndra scandal since its August 31 bankruptcy filing.” For those who find math difficult – like many journalists – that’s about one eighth of the stories the Cain controversy has gotten.
But hey, Solyndra wasn’t run by a former governor considered as a possible Treasury Secretary and hailed by news outlets as an economic expert. That would be a real scandal. Or not, if he had the infamous “D” after his name.
The former governor is Jon Corzine, who has the reverse Midas touch. He’s run Goldman Sachs, New Jersey and, most recently, MF Global, which just collapsed amidst a $2-billion bankruptcy. MF Global fell apart in what CNBC’s Andrew Ross Sorkin called a “mini Ponzi scheme.”
But not one story on ABC, CBS or NBC has mentioned that Corzine is a Democrat, was considered an Obama adviser and possible pick for a top spot in his administration.
Every time there’s a controversial story, media types are making these choices. They love the Occupy Wall Street crowd, so they play up the good from those protests, despite rapes, vandalism, arson, assaults on police and more. But they hate the Tea Parties, so everything they do is somehow nefarious.
It’s time the media covered their own scandals. They have plenty.
A textbook example of media bias. The subtext of the story “smart conservatives agree with Obama” and they push that bias by presenting a partisan view as “the expert’s view”
You might be thinking “Now wait a minute, it was fair because they had Jay Sekulow on”. That sounds good but look at the story again. NBC has Jay Sekulow on for the 29 states opposing ObamaCare, but then they have the Maryland politician who advocates the Obama point of view which is that the commerce clause gives the government unlimited power to control our lives, err I mean the economy [because you cannot control the economy with out controlling people /wink wink, nod nod].
So we have one advocate from each side, OK that is fair so far, but then the “expert” is brought in. We know this because NBC put the word “expert” right under Tom Goldstein’s name. Of course Tom Goldstein has experience covering the court, but he is no more of an expert than Jay Sekulow or Mark Levin. What they don’t tell you is that Tom Goldstein was a lawyer for Al Gore.
When NBC or an elite media outfit looks for a talking head they wish to present as “the experts”, they do not pick an expert at random and ask him “What do you think?”. They find a person they can present as an expert who will say exactly what they want said. This is a very common practice in news rooms all across the country.
Of course ObamaCare is unconstitutional. The Maryland politician says that everyone uses health care so the Commerce Clause covers it. Well everyone eats too, and everyone needs shelter, everyone needs clothes. So was it the intent of the Founding Fathers to have a government that is totally unlimited? ObamaCare is unconstitutional because it takes the entire idea of limited government and tosses it right out the window. James Madison, the Father of the Constitution, addressed the idea of reinterpreting a clause in the Constitution to give the federal Government total power.
If Congress can employ money indefinitely to the general welfare, and are the sole and supreme judges of the general welfare, they may take the care of religion into their own hands; they may appoint teachers in every State, county and parish and pay them out of their public treasury; they may take into their own hands the education of children, establishing in like manner schools throughout the Union; they may assume the provision of the poor; they may undertake the regulation of all roads other than post-roads; in short, everything, from the highest object of state legislation down to the most minute object of police, would be thrown under the power of Congress…. Were the power of Congress to be established in the latitude contended for, it would subvert the very foundations, and transmute the very nature of the limited Government established by the people of America.
So where did this crazy idea of a nearly unlimited Commerce Clause come from? Shortly before WWII FDR was not able to advance parts of his socialist progressive plan because the Supreme Court kept striking down laws his party was passing. So FDR threatened to add members to the Supreme Court using Article II of the Constitution to add perhaps a dozen seats to the Supreme Court all filled with cronies. In fear of this the Supreme Court capitulated ” and expanded the Commerce Clause in a way that had never been intended to please FDR. This became known as FDR’s court packing threat.
Where is the outrage? Oh that’s right. I keep forgetting that Herman Cain is a Republican black man so in the eyes of the elite media that makes this double standard OK.
On a 1985 Washington, D.C., dinner with her date, the then single former Sen. Chris Dodd, and dining companion, the late Sen. Ted Kennedy:
“So, having recently graduated completely healed and normal from my first stint in a rehab, and appearing in an almost perfectly respectable piece of work, I found myself driving from Baltimore to Washington, D.C., to have dinner with Chris Dodd, this senator who I knew virtually nothing about. Nor did Senator Dodd — like most people, then, now and always — have any idea who I was in the wide, wide world beyond this cute little actress who’d played Princess Leia.”
“Suddenly, Senator Kennedy, seated directly across from me, looked at me with his alert, aristocratic eyes and asked me a most surprising question. ‘So,’ he said, clearly amused, ‘do you think you’ll be having sex with Chris at the end of your date?’ … To my left, Chris Dodd looked at me with an unusual grin hanging on his very flushed face.”
Her reply: “‘Funnily enough, I won’t be having sex with Chris tonight,’ I said, my face composed and calm. ‘No, that probably won’t happen.’ People blinked. ‘Thanks for asking, though.'”
His retort: “‘Would you have sex with Chris in a hot tub?’ Senator Kennedy asked me, perhaps as a way to say good night? ‘I’m no good in water,’ I told him.”
ABC News recently did a 20/20 special titled “Islam: Questions and Answers,” with Diane Sawyer, Bill Weir, and Lama Hasan. The program drew attention to moderate Muslims who will serve as America’s “first line of defense” against terrorism. Unfortunately, one of the moderate Muslims presented by ABC isn’t so moderate.
[Editor’s Note: Remember that Newsweek knew about Monica Lewinski and decided to try to kill the story so it was leaked to Matt Drudge. In the case of John Edwards many in the elite media knew about the affair, but all of them decided to cover it up until the National Inquirer broke the story.
Remember, the quality of the propaganda (read bullshit) is MUCH higher this election season. That is because it used to be aimed at Independents who started counting yard signs two weeks before an election. New attitude change propaganda is aimed at people sympathetic to the TEA Party which is most Independents. TEA/Independents are more politically informed so the new propaganda is smarter and designed to target conservative sensibilities as well as people’s cynicism about government, so the lies from the hired political communications guns are based on variations of truths you have heard before. It is very effective.]
The video below is a textbook example of how to do an interview and deal with a false accusation. Cain’s reaction over the weekend was to challenge the elite media to name names, who are these anonymous sources?
Notice the elite media’s reaction to an accusation by anonymous sources, buy a known bogus hit piece writer from Politico (Vogel), compared to how they reacted to multiple women who spoke out against Bill Clinton including credible claims of rape (Juanita Brodderick) and sexual harassment/assault (Paula Jones, Dolly Kyle Browning, Kathleen Willey, Elizabeth Ward Gracen and the list goes on) and not to mention multiple affairs (Gennifer Flowers, Monica Lewinski). In the case of Bill Clinton they circled the wagons and attacked the women. The Democrats and the elite media even very personally attacked Linda Tripp who was simply a witness who told the truth about the evidence she had.
After the Clarence Thomas attack there was a surge of bogus sexual harassment suits in the 90’s. Anyone who was a CEO would/could be a target of one. It is called a harassment suit.
Sarah Palin, Michelle Bachmann, Glenn Beck, Rick Perry, Herman Cain. Notice that the attacks came out when each one of these people was at their peak.
Yesterday was Herman Cain’s best fundraising day ever.
UPDATE –
Now the Elite Media is crying “cover up”. The Cain Campiagn are staffed by political noobs whose messaging was muttered for the first daywhile they were trying to figure out from who and where this anonymous allegation came from.
The Cain Campaign has always done this when faced with a new issue or critique. It takes them a few days to get their footing just as it did on his Israel comments, abortion comments, answer to Homosexuality questions, the comments about not having Muslims in his administration etc. No one should be surprised that it was the same way with this curve ball.
The elite media doesn’t want to talk about the allegation because their story is a joke and from an anonymous source. So the elite media watching the story become about the Politico reporters who havce posted made up quotes in hit pieces before about SAarah Palin and others, have decided to move the goal post and interpret Cains messaging problems on a “cover up”.
According to witnesses in the incident Cain is aware of all he did was tell someone that they where about as tall as his wife and brought his hand to his chin, so she filed a harassment suit saying that Cain made a gesture that made her think of oral sex. Some official at the NRA paid her a small sum of money to go away. Harassment suits happen a lot. But here is the rub, since it is an anonymous source with few details Cain can not be sure if this is the incident or not.
Nice catch 22 isn’t it? If it is about this incident than there was no sexual behavior at all and this means nothing, if it is not this incident it is from an anonymous source with next to no details so it still means nothing, in both cases there is nothing to cover up. Like we said, this is just the elite media moving the goal post because if they talk about the allegation the story becomes about the liberal reporter who has a history.
Networks Hype Vague Cain Charges, Ignored Sexual Harassment Claims Against Clinton
The three networks have aggressively covered vague charges of sexual harassment against Herman Cain, but brushed aside far more serious and specific claims against Bill Clinton.
Since the Herman Cain sexual harassment story broke late Sunday night, the broadcast networks have covered it extensively: full stories on Monday’s morning news shows (ABC’s Good Morning America led off their broadcast); full stories on Monday’s evening news shows (the CBS Evening News made it their top item) and ABC’s Nightline; and the top story on all three Tuesday morning shows.
Good Morning America’s George Stephanopoulos on Monday hyped the story as a “bombshell blast” and on Tuesday he derided Cain’s “bizarre series of interviews” on the subject. On Tuesday’s Early Show, Jan Crawford highlighted how Cain has been “trying to shoot down these allegations.” NBC’s Matt Lauer gloated that the Republican was “finding out the hard way about the attention that goes along with being a front-runner.”
Cain’s accusers are still anonymous. Three women publicly accused Bill Clinton of far more serious instances of sexual harassment in the 1990s, but the networks all but ignored them. The coverage that did exist was often skeptical, insulting and hostile, an astonishing double standard.
– Paula Jones, who accused Bill Clinton of exposing himself to her in a hotel room when she was a state employee in Arkansas, held a public press conference in February 1994, CBS and NBC ignored those charges, while ABC devoted just 16 seconds to Jones’ press conference.
As a January 29, 1998 Media Reality Check pointed out, “The rest of the media waited three months, until Jones filed suit, and the networks then did just 21 stories in that month.”
Appearing on the late Tim Russert’s CNBC program, then-Nightly News anchor Tom Brokaw dismissed, “It didn’t seem to most people, entirely relevant to what was going on at the time. These are the kind of charges raised about the President before.”
In the Jones case, the networks were openly disdainful of covering her accusations. “It’s a little tough to figure out who’s being harassed,” NBC Today host Bryant Gumbel smugly asserted (May 10, 1994).
After ABC’s Sam Donaldson interviewed Jones for Prime Time Live in June 1994, anchor Charles Gibson wanted to know: “Why does anyone care what this woman has to say?”
Gibson continued to pile on, adding, “Bottom line, Sam: Is she not trying to capitalize on this, in effect to profit from impugning the President?”
Newsweek editor Evan Thomas, who sometimes appears on the networks to offer analysis, derided Jones as “some sleazy woman with big hair.” (This was on the May 7, 1994 Inside Washington.)
– In the case of Kathleen Willey, who said Bill Clinton groped her in the Oval Office while President, the networks gave minimal coverage to that story when it was broke by Newsweek magazine in late July 1997.
On July 30, 1997, the CBS Evening News aired a story, but managed not to mention Willey by name. Reporter Bill Plante warned, “But unless and until this case is settled, this is only the beginning of attempts by attorneys on both sides to damage the reputations and credibility of everyone involved.”
– In the case of Juanita Broaddrick, who publicly came forward to say Bill Clinton raped her while he was the Arkansas Attorney General and a candidate for Governor, the networks offered weekend coverage in March 1998, when the charge surfaced in a court filing by Paula Jones’ attorneys. NBC interviewed Broaddrick for a Dateline special in January 1999, but the airing was delayed until February 24, 1999, after the end of Clinton’s impeachment trial.
The March 1999 Media Watchpointed out the disparity of coverage of Broaddrick versus Anita Hill:
In the first five days of Hill’s charges (October 6-10,1991), the network evening shows (on ABC, CBS, CNN, NBC, and PBS’s NewsHour) aired 67 stories. (If a count began with Jones’ February press conference, the networks supplied just a single 16-second anchor brief; if the count began with her sexual harassment lawsuit against Clinton in May, the number was 15.)
But in the first five days after Juanita Broaddrick has charged the President with rape in The Wall Street Journal (February 19-23), the number of evening news stories was two. That’s a ratio of 67 to 2.
Is it any coincidence that each conservative candidiate from the last several elections was attacked when they peaked in the polls? Michelle Bachmann, Rick Perry, and now Herman Cain (remember how Sarah Palin was attacked?).
When you look at the history of minorities who ran as Republicans such as Michael Steele, Allen West, etc the Democrats in every case use the worst personal smear tactics against them, including releasing their social security numbers and personal credit information.
Remember Miguel Estrada who was picked by President Bush to be on the DC Circuit Court of Appeals? Democrats said in their leaked Judiciary Committee memo’s that they must smear and defeat him “because he’s Latino“.
And surprise surprise, the attorney for said un-named source is Joel Bennet. Most people do not have any idea Joel Bennet is. He was the head of the DC bar, and a co-chair of the National bar Association. Bennet is a big time power lawyer in DC and was even featured in Super Lawyers magazine. So who do you suppose is bankrolling this guy? You can be sure that it is not a former staffer at the National Restaurant Association.
Please examine this video of Andrea Mitchell more or less trying to interrogate Donald Rumsfeld.
This is a fantastic example of many of the worst aspects of journalism. In this interview Andrea Mitchell displays the most common forms of bias that undermine journalistic ethics and standards. It is rare to find a single clip with so many clear examples of exactly how the ethical and professional journalist should not conduct themselves.
The biggest form of media bias is not a partisan slant to the left, it is the slant everything towards conflict, the more personal and/or salacious the better. As you examine the video you will notice that Mitchell takes every observation and even the slightest critique as an indication of dramatic personal conflict the likes of which one would only see in an epidode of “The West Wing”. In order to create this dramatic and combative narrative in her own mind Mitchell relies on statements and sources from people who were not “in the room” and were three or four levels down.
A journalist must always keep in mind that too many bureaucrats/consultants/staffers wish to see his or her name in the paper or in a book. Others wish to be a ‘secret source”. As is so often the case when stories or rumors come from officials three or four times removed from the President the story gets embellished, sometimes for dramatic effect and sometimes just to fill in the blanks. Through each stage the truth becomes less and less directionally accurate and this is much more so for the “source” that wants to see his name in a book or be “Deep Throat” as they have to keep feeding the journalist in order to keep them coming back for more.
Combine the biases of conflict creation, dramatic theatre, fill in the blanks, and attention whoring with Mitchells clear partisan slant and you can see that she ends up with a narrative in her own mind that she is certain is true, but does not resemble objective reality. Mitchell becomes incredulous while Rumsfeld simply explains to her that she just doesn’t know what she is talking about.
The concentration on conflict and the dramatic at the expense of the historical record is the biggest factor that marginalizes elite media journalism in the eyes of the public. Partisan bias is a significant second.
Journalism students, if you want to be truly respected and trusted the example Andrea Mitchell gave in her “performance” is perhaps the quintessential example of how journalism should not be done.
This shows about how well medical students, (at least in Australia and Britain where the study was done) are being taught ethics. If medical students cannot uphold even the most common sense ethical standards, imagine how bad journalism students are.
AUSTRALIAN medical students are carrying out intrusive procedures on unconscious and anesthetized patients without gaining the patient’s consent.
The unauthorised examinations include genital, rectal and breast exams, and raise serious questions about the ethics of up-and-coming doctors, Madison reports.
The research, soon to be published in international medical journal, Medical Education, describes – among others – a student with “no qualms” about performing an anal examination on a female patient because she didn’t think the woman’s consent was relevant.
Another case outlined in the research describes a man who was subjected to rectal examinations from a “queue” of medical students after he was anaesthetised for surgery.
“I was in theatre, the patient was under a spinal (anaesthetic) as well and there was a screen up and they just had a queue of medical students doing a rectal examination,” a student confessed.
“[H]e wasn’t consented but because … you’re in that situation, you don’t have the confidence to say ‘no’ you just do it.”
The author of the study, Professor Charlotte Rees, voiced concerns about senior medical staff ordering students to perform unauthorised procedures, leaving the students torn between the strong ethics of consent in society and the weak ethics of medical staff.
Of students who were put in this position during the research, 82 per cent obeyed orders.
“We think that it is weakness in the ethical climate of the clinical workplace that ultimately serves to legitimise and reinforce unethical practices in the context of students learning intimate examinations,” writes Prof Rees.
The study consists of 200 students across three unnamed medical schools in Britain and Australia.
This is the kind of press coverage we can expect from the Washington Post and the rest of the crew of profoundly snarky pundits sometimes called the elite media or as some others have called it the “Democrat Media Complex”.
[Flashback November 2010]
You would think that if you are going to lie about someone or an event, perhaps it should be an event that wasn’t witnessed by 7 million people. This is exactly the same nonsense that Media Matters does on a regular basis.
Our pal JohnnyDollar, who has been on a roll lately with his vigilance, captured the video:
Since this film has recently been released on DVD it seemed like a good time to revisit this issue from last December
I wrote about the Plame non-scandal scandal at length in The Preface (an IU student paper) and in a term paper on “attitude change propaganda”. I am gratified that the Washington Post editors did the right thing in their recent editorial, but the Washington Post was as guilty as anyone else in reporting the lies about this issue and The Post repeated them regularly.
At first, The Post (along with the rest of the elite media) would just report the usual lies; that Plame was outed by the White House, that she was undercover and that she lost her career as a secret agent as a result of her exposure. All of this and more was debunked by the official investigations.
But as it became more clear that it was Joe Wilson and Valerie Plame who were liars, the Washington Post did something very interesting which made them the focus of my paper on propaganda. On page one and two the Post would report the usual lies about this story as if they were true, and often on the very same day they would write an editorial that was buried in the paper telling the truth about the matter. This happened repeatedly. Do the editors at the Washington Post actually edit and check the accuracy of their reporters and/or the wire stores they feature prominently, or do they just write a daily column and call it an editorial?
The largest misconception is that Valerie Plame was a secret agent at or near the time the events unfolded. The truth is that Plame was outed many years before by secret documents that were leaked which rendered her a desk jockey at the CIA’s WMD Division at Langley. If anyone doubts that may I remind you that when this unfolded Plame had young twins at home, so unless the CIA is in the habit of sending pregnant moms to be with twins overseas undercover you are just going to have to accept that she was put on desk duty.
Plame was listed in Joe Wilson’s Who’s Who entry. Plame made contributions to Democrats listing a known CIA front business as her place of employment. Her neighbors knew she worked for the CIA (as one intrepid reporter went knocking on doors). She was not anything close to 007 by any objective measure.
The Washington Post continued their peculiar behavior recently as Accuracy in Media points out:
While the paper said [in its editorial] it hoped that George W. Bush’s version of events would be vindicated by historians, the Post’s “Reliable Sources” gossip column had run a big article about the public relations blitz for the movie and its various premiers in Washington, D.C. Plame “is more than happy with ‘Fair Game,’ the movie based on her memoir,” the article said. No kidding.
So the “troubling trend” was in evidence at the Post itself, albeit in a different section of the paper.
Indeed Washington Post, where was the reporters fact check in the story linked? The fact that the film was made from Plame’s memoir and that she is happy with it shows that Plame is not just a proven liar, which the evidence has demonstrated and even the Washington Post admits, but rather she is a continuous and flaming one [not the language we like to use here but unfortunately reality demands it – Editor].
To read both of the excellent pieces from Accuracy in Media you can access them HERE and HERE.
Hollywood myth-making on Valerie Plame controversy
WE’RE NOT in the habit of writing movie reviews. But the recently released film “Fair Game” – which covers a poisonous Washington controversy during the war in Iraq – deserves some editorial page comment, if only because of what its promoters are saying about it. The protagonists portrayed in the movie, former diplomat Joseph C. Wilson IV and former spy Valerie Plame, claim that it tells the true story of their battle with the Bush administration over Iraqi weapons of mass destruction and Ms. Plame’s exposure as a CIA agent. “It’s accurate,” Ms. Plame told The Post. Said Mr. Wilson: “For people who have short memories or don’t read, this is the only way they will remember that period.”
We certainly hope that is not the case. In fact, “Fair Game,” based on books by Mr. Wilson and his wife, is full of distortions – not to mention outright inventions. To start with the most sensational: The movie portrays Ms. Plame as having cultivated a group of Iraqi scientists and arranged for them to leave the country, and it suggests that once her cover was blown, the operation was aborted and the scientists were abandoned. This is simply false. In reality, as The Post’s Walter Pincus and Richard Leiby reported, Ms. Plame did not work directly on the program, and it was not shut down because of her identification. [Translation – she made it up – Editor]
The movie portrays Mr. Wilson as a whistle-blower who debunked a Bush administration claim that Iraq had tried to purchase uranium from the African country of Niger. In fact, an investigation by the Senate intelligence committee[The bi-partisan committee was unanimous in its findings – Editor] found that Mr. Wilson’s reporting did not affect the intelligence community’s view on the matter [In fact Wilson’s report to the CIA bolstered the case that Saddam was trying to obtain more uranium according to that very same Senate Intelligence Committee Report – Editor] , and an official British investigation found that President George W. Bush’s statement in a State of the Union address that Britain believed that Iraq had sought uranium in Niger was well-founded.
“Fair Game” also resells the couple’s story that Ms. Plame’s exposure was the result of a White House conspiracy. A lengthy and wasteful investigation by a special prosecutor found no such conspiracy – but it did confirm that the prime source of a newspaper column identifying Ms. Plame was a State Department official, not a White House political operative. [Think about it, you lie to the newspapers while telling them that the President is a liar; and you expect that the Washington press core won’t track down the fact that it was your wife, Valerie Plame, who sent a memo to her boss recommending that Wilson be sent to Niger? The Senate Intelligence Committee investigators confirmed that as well.Our question still remains, why was Wilson not required to sign a non-disclosure contract? Could it be that the infamous Wilson letter was the goal of the entire affair? – Editor]
Hollywood has a habit of making movies about historical events without regard for the truth; “Fair Game” is just one more example. But the film’s reception illustrates a more troubling trend of political debates in Washington in which established facts are willfully ignored. Mr. Wilson claimed that he had proved that Mr. Bush deliberately twisted the truth about Iraq, and he was eagerly embraced by those who insist the former president lied the country into a war. Though it was long ago established that Mr. Wilson himself was not telling the truth – not about his mission to Niger and not about his wife – the myth endures. We’ll join the former president in hoping that future historians get it right.
[Flashback February 2011. Since our Egypt and Libya policy are ending in disaster with the Muslim Brotherhood taking power in both countries, with Christians being slaughtered and in the case of Egypt, being attacked by government armored vehicles, and the Obama administration selling tanks, choppers, small arms, and missiles to Egypt and other countries in the Islamic world, we thought a second look at the editor’s previous coverage of this category is in order. The category list is on the lower right hand pane of the page. – Editor]
“So Obama is killing civilians in a preemptive, unfunded, undeclared war for oil promoted by the dictators of the Arab League and the UN in support of some unidentified rebels he has never met with, and you are fine with that?”
[Flashback February 2011. Since our Egypt and Libya policy are ending in disaster with the Muslim Brotherhood taking power in both countries, with Christians being slaughtered and in the case of Egypt, being attacked by government armored vehicles, and the Obama administration selling tanks, choppers, small arms, and missiles to Egypt and other countries in the Islamic world, we thought a second look at the editor’s previous coverage of this category is in order. The category list is on the lower right hand pane of the page. – Editor]
Niall Ferguson is the kind of academic that one ideally thinks of when it comes to a first rate academic. He is a Senior Fellow at Harvard, Oxford and Stanford.
Niall Ferguson is brilliant and his credentials are second to none. He has no regard for sacred cows or political correctness. This makes sense because an academic should first be a truth teller who makes every effort to avoid putting on rose colored glasses.
Ferguson plays no favorites. He is happy to write for Newsweek, be a regular on MSNBC, and then feels perfectly comfortable telling accurate history and making analysis for Glenn Beck. No matter who Prof. Furguson is in front of he pulls no punches and tells things as they are to the best of his ability. This is exactly the kind of ethical courage and fortitude that every academic should strive for.
One quality that many good academics have is that they go out of their way to correct ignorance no matter who is spewing it. I understand Ferguson’s frustration with the Obama Administration and the State Department who sit back and get their analysis on Egypt and the Muslim Brotherhood completely wrong. Prof. Ferguson cops a bit of an attitude when it comes to this because anyone who just does a few hours of history homework could tell Mika (or Obama) what Ferguson explains here.
The State Department is on the campus of George Washington University. If one studies far left academia and its myopic culture, one soon understands the State Department.
Prof. Ferguson took Mika to school when she challenged Ferguson saying that she thought Egypt was a success for the President. This is a great example of how far removed the elite media is from reality.
This is a must see video.
Ironically, what Prof. Ferguson says about what the Middle East thinks about the naivety of this administration mirrors what Donald Trump says that hid Chinese government contacts are telling him.
UPDATE – Walid Shoebat agrees with Prof Ferguson – LINK.
Prof. Ferguson has little tolerance for spin and nonsense. I am going to start reading his books.
Special Report. “Rewriting Ronald Reagan: How the Media Have Worked to Distort, Dismantle and Destroy His Legacy”
Below is the Executive Summary for a special report posted today on the MRC’s Web site, “Rewriting Ronald Reagan: How the Media Have Worked to Distort, Dismantle and Destroy His Legacy,” posted with 103 quotes enhanced by 22 videos clips with accompanying audio.
This week the celebrations begin for the “Reagan Centennial.” This report, compiled by Rich Noyes with video rendering help from Kyle Drennen and fresh quotes text and quotes added by Tim Graham, is a reminder about the disdain, disgust and disrespect the news media displayed toward Ronald Reagan in office and in the years since.
The text below includes links to the seven specific sections:
“Reagan the Man,” “The Reaganomics Recovery,” “Reagan and National Defense,” “Reagan and Race,” “The Reagan Legacy” and “Reagan, Slammed by Celebrities.”
Now the Executive Summary for the January 31 report:
Rewriting Ronald Reagan How the Media Have Worked to Distort, Dismantle and Destroy His Legacy
As the nation prepares to pay tribute to former President Ronald Reagan on the 100th anniversary of his birth, it is amazing to consider that his success at turning the U.S. away from 1960s-style liberalism was accomplished in the face of a daily wave of news media hostility. The media’s first draft of history was more myth than reality: that Reagan only brought the nation poverty, ignorance, bankruptcy, and a dangerously imbalanced foreign and defense policy.
The Media Research Center has assembled a report documenting the “objective” national media’s most biased takes on President Reagan, his record and his times, including 22 video clips and matching MP3 audio:
I. Reagan the Man: Reporters often agonized over why the American public liked Reagan, that they couldn’t see through the White House spell and see Reagan in the contemptuous light that the media did. Go to: http://www.mrc.org/specialreports/2011/RewritingReagan/Man.aspx
II. The Reaganomics Recovery: Reagan’s policies caused a dramatic economic turn-around from high inflation and unemployment to steady growth, but the good news was obscured by bad news of trade deficits, greedy excesses of the rich, and supposedly booming homelessness. See: http://www.mrc.org/specialreports/2011/RewritingReagan/Reaganomics.aspx
III. Reagan and National Defense: Ronald Reagan may have won the Cold War, but to the media, the Reagan defense buildup seemed like a plot designed to deny government aid to the poor and hungry, and was somehow the only spending responsible for “bankrupting” the country. Check: http://www.mrc.org/specialreports/2011/RewritingReagan/Defense.aspx
IV. Reagan and Race: Using their definition of “civil rights” — anything which adds government-mandated advantages for racial minorities is “civil rights” progress — liberal journalists suggested that somehow Ronald Reagan was against liberty for minorities. Go to: http://www.mrc.org/specialreports/2011/RewritingReagan/Race.aspx
EXTRA: Reagan, Slammed by Celebrities. Ronald Reagan’s long Hollywood career earned him no credit among celebrities, who ridiculed him and even inserted anti-Reagan jokes into everyday entertainment programming. Check: http://www.mrc.org/specialreports/2011/RewritingReagan/Celebrities.aspx
There are two predominant philosophies of journalism taught in this country. The “Walter Lippmann (so called) ‘objective’ model” and what one of my J-School profs called the “Looking out for the folks” model. The former is usually presented as the preferred model at most universities (especially the Ivy’s)
The Lippmann Objective Model is anything but objective. The Lippmann model says that journalists should associate themselves with an elite technical class of people so that these experts via/with the journalists can give the “proper” information to the public so that they can “vote the right way”.
At first, the Orwellian nature of the Lippmann Model is not so pointedly explained, but as time goes on reporters get it and the coverage of the elite media shows it. [If you doubt me I challenge you to follow this LINK and scroll down to the quote from Dr. Rahe and the excerpt from Lippmann’s book – Editor]
For example, the reporter and/or editor has a point of view he wishes to present. So he opens his rolodex and contacts an “expert” he knows will give him the sound-bite he wants and presents him as just an objective expert who they found at random. Or said reporter will have a man on the street section, but the reporter will call a few people he knows to be on that street, complete with the narrative that the reporter knows will present.
Oh? You think I’m kidding? OK just a few examples:
The “looking out for the folks” model is often quoted by Bill O’Reilly, but Bill, as he will tell you, is more of a commentator than a straight news man. The spirit of the kind of journalism O’Reilly did when he was a straight news man is closer to this model. The “looking out for the folks” model certainly resembles more of the ethical ideal in what people expect from journalism and is what “Lippmann Objective Model” media outlets claim to be to their consumers, but not to each other.
Enough with the preliminary goodies and on to the meat.
Oh the horror! Fox bureau chief told reporters to be ‘skeptical’
By Mark Tapscott
You think the most essential purpose of journalism and the reason the Founders included freedom of the press in the First Amendment was to insure independent reporting about government, politicians, and public policy issues, right?
Well, you must be wrong because Fox News Washington Bureau Chief Bill Sammon is getting a raft of garbage from liberal activists masquerading as journalists at Media Matters, some liberal bloggers and a scattering of real journalists who ought to know better.
A journalist being skeptical? Who would ever have thought such a thing could be. I don’t know, maybe anybody who has heard this (attributed long ago to a crusty desk editor at the illustrious City News Bureau in Chicago): “If your mother tells you she loves you, check it out.”
In other words, we journalists are paid to BE SKEPTICAL.
For the record, here’s what Sammon said in a Dec. 8, 2009, memo to his reporting staff shortly after the Climategate global warming email scandal erupted:
“Given the controversy over the veracity of climate change data, we should refrain from asserting that the planet has warmed (or cooled) in any given period without IMMEDIATELY pointing out that such theories are based upon data that critics have called into question. It is not our place as journalists to assert such notions as facts, especially as this debate intensifies.”
Now I am from out of town and all, but Sammon’s injuction sounds to me exactly like what editors are supposed to tell their charges – report what A claims and what B says about what A claims, but keep your personal views about both A and B out of it.
Note that Sammon includes both those who say the planet has warmed – i.e. global warming advocates – and those who claim the opposite, that the planet has cooled – global warming critics. How much more even-handed – dare I say it, fair and balanced? – can the guy be?
There is also the factual nature of Sammon’s statement that critics question data. Critics DO question the data for a warming planet. He doesn’t demand that his reporters agree with the critics about the data or tell viewers that the critics are right and the global warming advocates are wrong.
Yet, Salon’s headline claims the Fox news executive was “again caught demanding conservative spin.” And the lead that follows makes another false statement, claiming Sammon directed his “anchors and reporters to adopt right-wing spin when discussing the news.”
Are these people so arrogant as to think the rest of us are too stupid to see that Salon totally and completely misrepresented Sammon’s comment?
The back story here, of course, is that Media Matters is doing exactly what billionaire radical liberal financier George Soros paid it $1 million to do, which is to trash Fox News at every opportunity no matter what the facts might be in any given situation.
Watching this campaign unfold, it becomes clear that Fox News drives today’s extremist liberals into the same sort of eye-bulging, irrational, spittle-flying, blind rage that we saw back in the 1950s from the far right whack-jobs in the John Birch Society who claimed Ike was either a fool or a card-carrying commie.
Now, just so everybody reading this knows: Sammon is a former White House reporter for The Examiner. I count him as a friend, a respected colleague and a solid journalist. And Fox News puts me in front of a camera as a talking head once in a while.
So how long you think it will be before Sammon’s critics claim my comments here aren’t credible as a result? The reality is that the left-leaning MSNBC folks sit me down in front of their cameras to bloviate far more frequently than Fox does. Go figure.
So here’s something to ponder when the paid Fox detractors at Media Matters tell you Sammon and I are both former Washington Timesmen and are thus Republican mouthpieces:
I was inducted into the First Amendment Center’s Freedom of Information Hall of Fame a few years ago. I mention this not to boast, but because I was among a bunch of very smart people for whom I have great respect – even though they came predominantly from the liberal side of things.
But I don’t recall seeing anybody from Media Matters among the inductees.
Trump is right about the message Obama sends with his hubris and indifference. Trump is also correct about the overseas oil cartel. Who will get his endorsement?
Editor’s Note – This was a post from just a few months ago and is a little reminder that the “Occupy” protest going on in New York right now was planned in a galaxy not so far away by the same usual suspects.
UPDATE – ‘Occupy Wall Street’ Organizer Is Marketing Analyst Whose LinkedIn Lists Work For Investment Bankers – LINK
Occupy Wall Street ‘Stands In Solidarity’ With Obama Front Group Funded by the Wealthy Financiers and Bankers They are Protesting – LINK
[Editor’s Note – and if these partially misguided protesters get their way the Democrats will pass a tax increase law that will not benefit the students, it will benefit the super rich because, as is the case with all of these “soak the rich” efforts, they either chase wealth out of the country and/or exceptions for those who are politically connected get included in the tax code and it will not be the GE’s and Google’s who pay, it will be the small and medium-sized competition who will get soaked.]
Steve Lerner SEIU
UPDATE –Steven Lerner, the man in the video overtly plotting a new economic crisis, has visited the White House four times as well as the Treasury Department.
CAUGHT ON TAPE: Former SEIU Official Reveals Secret Plan To Destroy JP Morgan, Crash The Stock Market, And Redistribute Wealth In America
A former official of one of the country’s most-powerful unions, SEIU, has a secret plan to “destabilize” the country.
The plan is designed to destroy JP Morgan, nuke the stock market, and weaken Wall Street’s grip on power, thus creating the conditions necessary for a redistribution of wealth and a change in government.
The former SEIU official, Stephen Lerner, spoke in a closed session at a Pace University forum last weekend.
UPDATE I – Glenn Beck: This is a clear case of economic terrorism – LINK.
UPDATE II – SEIU sued under RICO statute (Via The Blaze):
Cockroaches, bugs, mold, and flies. These are just some of the props and rumors allegedly employed by the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) against the American unit of French catering company Sodexo. And the company’s had enough.
Fed up with tactics that include intimidation, extortion, and yes, sabotage that apparently includes plastic cockroaches, Sodexo filed a lawsuit against the SEIU last week under the Racketeering Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act.
“We work constructively with unions every day but the SEIU has crossed the line by breaking the law,” Robert Stern, general counsel for Sodexo USA, said in a statement. “We will not tolerate the SEIU’s tactics any longer.”
SEIU has been fighting to represent 80,000 hourly Sodexo employees, which is above and beyond the 180,000 hourly employees who are already union members. The union regularly stages protests against the company to make its point, like this one last fall on the campus of George Mason University. The video alleges SEIU bused in protesters, who can be heard chanting, among other things, “As long as it takes, whatever it takes, we’ll be in your face!”
Sodexo’s complaint, filed in federal court in Alexandria, VA, alleges acts of SEIU blackmail, vandalism, trespass, harassment, and lobbying law violations designed to steer business away from, and harm, the company.
And just what exactly might those acts look like? Sodexo gives the details:
The complaint alleges that the SEIU, in face to face meetings, threatened Sodexo USA’s executives that it would harm Sodexo USA’s business unless they gave in to the union, and then carried out its threats through egregious behavior, including:
throwing plastic roaches onto food being served by Sodexo USA at a high profile event;
scaring hospital patients by insinuating that Sodexo USA food contained bugs, rat droppings, mold and flies;
lying to interfere with Sodexo USA business and sneaking into elementary schools to avoid security;
violating lobbying laws to steer business away from Sodexo USA, even at the risk of costing Sodexo USA employees their jobs; and
harassing Sodexo USA employees by threatening to accuse them of wrongdoing.
The complaint, filed in federal court in the Eastern District of Virginia, seeks an injunction against the SEIU and its locals and executives, as well as monetary damages to be determined by the court.
UPDATE III – Member of Congress to Attorney General Eric Holder – LINK.
Remember that debt increase deal? Just remember come election time to remember the following…
As far as the budget deal we thought we have a few comments.
1 – We were never in danger of a default. The government brings in almost 200 billion a month in tax dollars which is more than enough to service the debt. Anyone who said that the August 2nd date would result in default is just lying straight up. Judging by how the elite media has been repeating this it furthers my personal observation that journalists are lazy and are, as a collective, the most uninformed people I have ever encountered.
2 – These polls that you here about in the news saying that the people want “republicans to compromise” are polls like the CBS News poll that had a sample which included only 25% Republicans, so the sample was rigged. Notice how the Democrats are not asked to compromise in the press? When the people were stone against Obama Care by a 60% margin where was the press pounding the polls than? Where was the compromise when the Democrats would not allow the GOP into the room and would only see the bill a few hours before a vote?
3 – “Reagan increased the debt limit”… Reagan did not have a House controlled by his own party. During that time we had the 24/7 nuclear triangle operating at the pinnacle of the Cold War and a government shut down at such a time would have undermined our efforts to posture and beat the Soviets.
4 – “We need to raise taxes on the rich”. First of all we have been “raising taxes on the rich” for decades now so why is it that John Kerry paid 12.34% on $5,072,000 worth of income? The dirty little secret is that the tax rate that the Democrats are talking about is the wage earner rate which is paid by high-end wage earners such as doctors and engineers, but it is also the rate paid by most small businesses that have employees. Most of the income that the “rich” bring is defined by the tax code as “unearned income”, so you could raise this tax rate to the moon and the multimillionaires and billionaires will laugh as it will not be they who pay it. For more details on why this is follow this LINK.
Using static models as the CBO likes to use the Democrats proposed tax increase would pay for all of 10 days of deficit spending. Of course since people do not operate in a static universe the result would be an impact on job creators and even less revenue growth to the government. Can anyone name a mainstream economic theorist who said to raise taxes during what appears to be a double dip recession?
4 – As far as spending cuts in the “deal”, we must remember base line budgeting. If we froze spending at current levels Washington would consider that to be a $9.5 trillion dollar “cut”, so all we are talking about here is a small reduction in the typical increases in spending. As far as spending cuts are concerned this is not a serious plan as spending under this deal will continue to skyrocket. Democrats and some leftist journalists are calling these “draconian cuts” and are simply engaging in the most dishonest demagoguery imaginable.
5 – But here is the rub, when we lose our AAA credit rating, which now appears unavoidable as both Moodys and S&P have said that neither the Boehner plan nor the Reid plan are serious about getting spending under control, it will cost us more than $100 billion a year in interest alone; when that is factored in there are no reductions even in the increases in spending. It gets worse. When you add the damage to the economy that loss of AAA will bring it makes all of this worse.
The loss of AAA will impact most unsecured credit, it will impact the value of the dollar (inflation), it will impact those who use short-term credit such as farmers who use seasonal loans and import/export businesses. It is going to damage the economy in such a way that most people will feel it. We did not lose AAA even during the great depression. The “deal” which passed is also easy to demagogue because the left will say that this deal IS the “Boehner Plan” (which is largely isn’t any more do to an almost total cave on spending cuts) and HIS plan caused us to lose AAA.
[Note: The first plans that were introduced by the Tea Party/GOP were much more serious and had a real chance of preventing the loss of AAA. While this is indeed a failure of government, is there any doubt that the Democratic Party is intent on blowing up our credit rating? The first proposals from the House had a chance of preserving AAA and the media/Democrats had a conniption fit calling called it extreme. Think about this folks, preserving AAA is now an extreme position according to much of the elite media and a political party. The Constitution does have limits and the GOP cannot run the government from the House. This is why elections matter.]
6 – The deal also includes a vote on the Balanced Budget Amendment to send it to the states. If this amendment resolution passes the Democrat controlled Senate and gets to the states it will be a great tool to begin to get this spending problem under control. If it looks like it will pass the Senate I expect the Democrat leadership will pull some stunt prevent the vote or prevent its passage. Government has a structural institutional incentive to spend more and more, so the only way to curb that is to make a structural change. Aside from a vote on this Amendment, which I will stress has not happened yet, this was not a tough deal or a Herculean compromise by any stretch.
This is a must see exchange between Marco Rubio and John Kerry on the debt limit debate. Be sure to watch every second as this is invaluable.
Kerry will think twice before trying to posture Marco Rubio again. Notice also, even though Rubio did not join the TEA Party Caucus he defends their position, which is to offer a plan that fixes the problem. Rubio uses a most interesting analogy to show why this is so important.
UPDATE – The latest version of the deal includes $2.1 Trillion in cuts over 10 years with half planned now and the other half planned by a “budget cut committee later”. Keep in mind that cuts in “Washington Speak” are not cuts, but rather a decrease in the increase in spending. So instead of a planned increase in spending over 10 years of $9.5 Trillion they will plan to increase spending by $7.4 trillion. The president gets his debt increase limit extended to well passed the campaign, deficit spending shoots up, no entitlement reform, no plan to balance the budget over the next eight years. There are some actual small cuts in discretionary spending, but entitlement spending that is on autopilot. Of course even this is a fraction of the increase in discretionary spending that has gone up since 2008.
The Carter record is a litany of despair, of broken promises, of sacred trusts abandoned and forgotten. Eight million — eight million out of work. Inflation running at 18 percent in the first quarter of this year. Black unemployment at 14 percent, higher than any single year since the government began keeping separate statistics. Four straight major deficits run up by Carter and his friends in Congress. The highest interest rates since the Civil War, reaching at times close to 20 percent, lately they’re down to more than 11 percent but now they’ve begun to go up again. Productivity falling for six straight quarters among the most productive people in the world.
Through his inflation he has raised taxes on the American people by 30 percent, while their real income has risen only 20 percent. The Lady standing there in the harbor has never betrayed us once. But this Administration in Washington has betrayed the working men and women of this country.
The President promised that he would not increase taxes for the low and middle-income people, the workers of America. Then he imposed on American families the largest single tax increase in our nation’s history. His answer to all this misery? He tries to tell us that we’re “only” in a recession, not a depression, as if definitions, words, relieve our suffering.
Let it show on the record that when the American people cried out for economic help, Jimmy Carter took refuge behind a dictionary. Well if it’s a definition — if it’s a definition he wants, I’ll give him one. A recession is when your neighbor loses his job. A depression is when you lose yours. And recovery is when Jimmy Carter loses his.
Pardon the dopey 15 second introduction before the substance of the video begins (we didn’t edit this piece), but watch this video.
The Chinese have noticed what the rest of the worlds investors pretend not to see: The United States is on a completely unsustainable fiscal course with no apparent political means of self correction…
Have you ever heard one of those sports guys on the radio who can tell you the stats of every football and baseball game since 1940 right off the top of their head? Prof. Niall Ferguson is like that, but with history and the history of economics. Prof Niall Ferguson is accepted by many academics as the most brilliant historian alive and judging by all I have seen in recent years I have only seen one man in my lifetime who is in the same ballpark as far as ability in this area is concerned. Take a look at his bio HERE.
Ferguson said in another interview that only one time in history has a major power emerged from this kind of debt and survived and that was England after the wars of the 1800’s. It doesn’t look good unless we change course now.
The volume is low on some of the videos so you may have to adjust your speaker volume.
I am not going to hold back here. Eugene Robinson is the quintessential example of what is wrong with journalism today. His arguments amount to emotionalism, fear mongering and demagoguery, which he uses to try to hide that fact that he rarely does his homework.
We have talked about the way the far left argues. The first argument is S.I.N. and the last argument is an attempt to paint you as a monster to shut you up. This is all that is in the far left play-book. You can see that Cong. King pummels Robinson with fact after fact while Robinson just sits there and shakes his head. The far left typically ignores most facts that threaten their narrative. You will see this pattern perfectly in this video.
When Joe Lieberman and Snow had similar hearings some years ago why did the left not call Lieberman a McCarthy or a bigot? This is all politics folks and Eugene Robinson once again shows himself to be a naked partisan hit man.
[Editor’s Note – I posted this in March 2010. After repeatedly insisting that ObamaCare would never be able to ration care or ever have death panels and even after the self-proclaimed politifact.com labeled this their “lie of the year”; fast forward to September 2011, now the truth is reported so casually that even Robert Reich and Paul Krugman have admitted that death panel like rationing will be necessary and the ObamaCare “Independent Payment Advisory Board” is common knowledge. Sarah Palin and Newt Gingrich were the first to call this what it was and deserve credit for doing so by stating the obvious: that the words “death panel” do not have to appear in the bill because Congress, by passing the ObamaCare law, has handed such overwhelming regulatory authority over to these faceless bureaucrats that they have the ability create law by regulation at the stroke of a pen.]
Bloomberg News reports about one of the ways health care will be rationed, notice it starts after the upcoming presidential election.
The legislation also creates an Independent Payment Advisory Board to suggest cuts in spending by Medicare, the government health program for the elderly and disabled, that could threaten payments for drug and device-makers. Starting in 2014, the panel’s recommendations would take effect unless federal lawmakers substitute their own reductions.
The president’s own cousin, Dr. Milton Wolf, said that this bill does harm and rations care in multiple ways – LINK:
As one example, consider the implications of Obamacare’s financial penalty aimed at your doctor if he seeks the expert care he has determined you need. If your doctor is in the top 10 percent of primary care physicians who refer patients to specialists most frequently – no matter how valid the reasons – he will face a 5 percent penalty on all their Medicare reimbursements for the entire year. This scheme is specifically designed to deny you the chance to see a specialist. Each year, the insidious nature of that arbitrary 10 percent rule will make things even worse as 100 percent of doctors try to stay off that list. Many doctors will try to avoid the sickest patients, and others will simply refuse to accept Medicare. Already, 42 percent of doctors have chosen that route, and it will get worse. Your mother’s shiny government-issued Medicare health card is meaningless without doctors who will accept it.
Obamacare will further diminish access to health care by lowering reimbursements for medical care without regard to the costs of that care. Price controls have failed spectacularly wherever they’ve been tried. They have turned neighborhoods into slums and have caused supply chains to dry up when producers can no longer profit from providing their goods. Remember the Carter-era gas lines? Medical care is not immune from this economic reality. We cannot hope that our best and brightest will pursue a career in medicine, setting aside years of their lives – for me, 13 years of school and training – to enter a field that might not even pay for the student loans it took to get there.
Of course, when the regulations written by bureaucrats get written how will they be interpreted and enforced? Several of Obama’s Czar’s and advisers have said in no uncertain terms that value judgements about who should get care need to be made, and we have reported those statements right here on this web site.
Ironically, the article blames not enough central control of schools pointing the finger at a, “decentralized education system” that relies on the states, and “market-driven programming.”
The truth, many Western European countries have school choice. What do you expect, this IS Newsweek after all.
They’re the sort of scores that drive high-school history teachers to drink. When NEWSWEEK recently asked 1,000 U.S. citizens to take America’s official citizenship test, 29 percent couldn’t name the vice president. Seventy-three percent couldn’t correctly say why we fought the Cold War. Forty-four percent were unable to define the Bill of Rights. And 6 percent couldn’t even circle Independence Day on a calendar.
To appreciate the risks involved, it’s important to understand where American ignorance comes from. In March 2009, theEuropean Journal of Communication asked citizens of Britain, Denmark, Finland, and the U.S. to answer questions on international affairs. The Europeans clobbered us. Sixty-eight percent of Danes, 75 percent of Brits, and 76 percent of Finns could, for example, identify the Taliban, but only 58 percent of Americans managed to do the same—even though we’ve led the charge in Afghanistan. It was only the latest in a series of polls that have shown us lagging behind our First World peers.
This is why you NEVER do an interview with anyone in the elite media without having your own cameraman take film of the entire interview.
Sarah Palin reads CS Lewis, fine, but serious books about the law, philosophy and the Supreme Court… well we can’t have that as it goes against the narrative ABC wants to propagate so an important substantive fact is left out; namely Palin’s mention of “Liberty and Tyranny” by Mark Levin.
Expectedly MSNBC goes after Palin for mentioning CS Lewis. One of their pundits even said that Lewis is “just a guy who writes kids books”. Of course anyone who is educated knows that C.S. Lewis is considered a great writer on many subjects such as theology, philosophy, government etc. I wonder what other facts ABC edited out this time.
ABC and CBS in the infamous 2008 interviews edited out substantive sections to several of her answers to make it look like she had no substance.
Levin states what he learned in the video below, but I believe that Levin gets it wrong in making it “about him”.
Mark Levin is president of Landmark Legal Foundation. Previously he served as Landmark’s director of legal policy for more than three years. He has worked as an attorney in the private sector and as a top adviser and administrator to several members of President Reagan’s cabinet. Levin served as chief of staff to U.S. Attorney General, Edwin Meese; deputy assistant secretary for elementary and secondary education at the U.S. Department of Education; and deputy solicitor of the U.S. Department of Interior. He holds a B.A. from Temple University, where he graduated Phi Beta Kappa and magna cum laude, and a J.D. from Temple University School of Law.
Mark is a frequent contributor to, The Corner on National Review Online.
Sarah Palin was attacked by a reporter for stating that there is inflation in spite of the denials of the Fed. Palin ended up being correct (and so did we). Now Jim Rodgers weighs in.
(Reuters) – U.S. government inflation data is “a sham” and is causing the Federal Reserve to vastly understate price pressures in the economy, influential U.S. investor Jim Rogers said on Tuesday.
The U.S. central bank uses inflation data that relies too heavily on housing prices, Rogers told the Reuters 2011 Investment Outlook Summit, and he criticized the Fed’s $600 billion bond-buying program.
Rogers, who rose to prominence after co-founding the now defunct Quantum Fund with billionaire investor George Soros some four decades ago, said he was betting against U.S. Treasuries. “I expect interest rates in the U.S. to go much, much, much higher over the next few years,” he said.
The core personal consumption expenditure index, which removes food and energy costs, is the Fed’s favored measure of inflation and was flat in October for the second straight month.
“Everybody in this room knows prices are going up for everything,” Rogers told the Reuters Summit.
The Fed began its $600 billion bond buying program last month, its second round of quantitative easing [this means monetizing the debt – printing more dollars and lowering the value of all of the dollars you have – Editor], to boost a sluggish U.S. economy, citing excessively low inflation and high unemployment.
“If you are not careful, the newspapers will have you hating the people who are being oppressed and loving the people who are doing the oppressing.” – Malcolm X
Political Arena 