Here is the podcast for this week. Hope you enjoy it…
Media Bias
Fox News To Get Front Row Seat in WH Briefing Room
-By Warner Todd Huston
With the too-long-in-coming departure of the despicable Helen Thomas from the White House press room, newsies have been waiting with bated breath to find out who would get the seat she formerly wasted there.
Fox News made its bid, of course, but many assumed that it would never happen. In fact, the leftist group MoveOn.org tried to mount a short-lived campaign to seat NPR there instead of Fox.
But amazingly the White House Correspondents Association voted unanimously to give Fox a front row seat. Fox didn’t get Thomas’ former seat, that went to Liz Sidoti of the Associated Press, but Fox did get the front row seat that the AP moved from to take the spot Thomas had.
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Fox News To Get Front Row Seat in WH Briefing Room”
No Bias Zone: ‘Journalist’ Calls Tea Parties ‘Right-Wing Bloodfeasts’
-By Warner Todd Huston
One of my early blogging assignments was the media bias beat over at Newsbusters, so I became particularly attuned to picking up on how the Old Media toes that “unbiased” journalistic line. Unfortunately, in sometimes subtle ways their rhetoric is geared to smear Republicans in any way possible.
Here is a perfect example. Last week in a a Chicago-based report on Illinois Republican Gubernatorial candidate Bill Brady, NBC Chicago’s Edward McClelland described suburban tea party events as “right-wing bloodfeasts.”
Catch this unbiased reporting:
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No Bias Zone: ‘Journalist’ Calls Tea Parties ‘Right-Wing Bloodfeasts’”
Chuck Todd: Embarrassed By JournoList or Not?
-By Warner Todd Huston
Today two stories have recently appeared reporting NBC Political Director Chuck Todd’s reaction to the revelations of the JournoList, that website were avowed left-wing journalists congregated to talk about their profession and plot to foster a left-wing agenda in their work in the media.
Todd was reported to have found the JournoList revelations to be “very depressing” and said that the story had “kept him up nights” because of the overt leftist bias evinced by the list member’s emails released by Tucker Carlson’s Daily Caller website.
“Journolist was pretty offensive. Those of us who are mainstream journalists got mixed in with journalists with an agenda. Those folks who thought they were improving journalism are destroying the credibility of journalism.”
But later that day another story claiming that Todd was taken out of context emerged that told a slightly different tale. In the afternoon fellow JouronLista Greg Sargent wrote in the Washington Post that Todd was more upset at the conservatives that were using the JournoList controversy to push their agenda and was much less upset that the story revealed a left-wing media conspiracy.
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Chuck Todd: Embarrassed By JournoList or Not?”
BREAKING: Sherrod Says She’ll Sue Andrew Breitbart
-By Warner Todd Huston
New Media mogul Andrew Breitbart faces a lawsuit from former USDA employee Shirley Sherrod over his posting of video of the woman in a seemingly racist outburst at an NAACP meeting.
Sherrod made the announcement at the San Diego convention of the National Association of Black Journalists on Thursday, July 29.
Isn’t it a bit amusing that Sherrod is suing someone for a “racist” attack on her when she is announcing the thing at the “National Association of Black Journalists.” It is an interesting dichotomy, anyway.
Sherrod also once again pushed the lie that Fox News was a culprit in her firing. “It wasn’t all media. It was Fox,” the fired federal employee said to the Old Media.
The FACT is, Fox had precisely nothing to do with her firing as Fox News didn’t start broadcasting the story until after she was fired by the Obama administration.
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BREAKING: Sherrod Says She’ll Sue Andrew Breitbart”
Media Matters Dishonestly Spins Anti-Fox Message Over Sherrod Firing
-By Warner Todd Huston
You really have to hand it to Media Matters for America. I mean, they deserve an Olympic Gold Medal for the gymnastics that they evince while spinning the news to the extreme left-wing of the political spectrum. This whole Fox-didn’t-push-Sherrod story is a perfect example.
Eric “Boomarwrong” Boehlert is shamelessly spinning the story of the firing of USDA employee, Shirley Sherrod, as a Fox attack job with all his little Maoist heart. He is desperate to make Sherrod’s firing a result of a Fox News smear campaign and his reply to the posting at Johnny Dollar’s website proving that FoxNews Channel didn’t really even take up the story until after Sherrod was fired by the White House is a masterpiece of spin.
Starting with, “So many people, all saying the same thing. The same untrue thing,” Johnny Dollar goes on to show the timeline of how Fox News approached the story. Then J$ posted the words of a Fox exec, to wit: “Michael Clemente, senior vice president of news editorial, said the network’s news programs reported the story with caution.”
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Media Matters Dishonestly Spins Anti-Fox Message Over Sherrod Firing”
Top Ten most Left-Biased American Journalists – #1: Helen Thomas, UPI/Independent
-By Warner Todd Huston
We have finally reached the number one, most left-biased journalist in America today on our top ten count down and our most biased journo pick probably won’t surprise any of you. Even though she just “retired” due to her outrageous bias and hatred for Israel, we just have to give the number one most biased slot to the ever-vitriolic Ms. Helen Thomas, long time employee of United Press International (UPI) and later an independent Washington journalist.
Thomas was an over 50-year employee of UPI but in the year 2000 she quit the wire service because it was bought by News World Communications which is affiliated with the Unification Church. She was proud of herself, though, because according to her she was “never, never accused of bias” in her reporting.
“I worked for United Press International for more than fifty years, and I wrote straight copy. I was never, never accused of bias. I did not bow out of the human race. I permitted myself to care, to believe, to think. But I assure you, I assure you that it did not get in my copy.”
But that isn’t what her record says. Bias was epidemic throughout. In May of 2000 the MRC went back and found at least half a dozen instances where Thomas readily revealed her bias. Instances range from Ronald Reagan’s days in office up to the year 2000 when she quit UPI.
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Top Ten most Left-Biased American Journalists – #1: Helen Thomas, UPI/Independent”
Top Ten most Left-Biased American Journalists – #2: Joe Klein, Time Magazine
-By Warner Todd Huston
Second place looms large and it is quite an honorable — or maybe onerous — award on our top ten most left-biased working American journalists list. Amusingly our number two guy even graduated from a school that foretold his future work. From the bowels of New York’s exclusive Hackley School comes our number two most left-biased journo, Time Magazine’s Joe Klein.
Klein is another one of those far left writers that imagines himself to be unconventional in his politics when the truth is he is a left-winger all the way down the line without a scoshe of non-conventional thinking.
For instance, in his book ,The Natural, of his politics Klein wrote, “… the conventions of journalism prevent me from fitting too neatly into one political niche (although as a columnist for the New Yorker and Newsweek my predilections are obvious).” Far from not “fitting too neatly” into the left’s “niche” that niche fits him like a glove. For the better part of thirty years, Klein has been revealing his ill-fitting niche to the reading public and we couldn’t be more grateful for his niche-like, nichieness.
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Top Ten most Left-Biased American Journalists – #2: Joe Klein, Time Magazine“
New Captain America Movie: Dear America, I’m Just Not That Into You
-By Warner Todd Huston
A few months ago I wrote an expose on Marvel’s Captain America comics number 602 in which the writers and artists of the book portrayed Captain America saying that Tea Party groups in America are racist and dangerous. It looks like the makers of next year’s Captain America movie in Hollywood have taken that Cappy-against-America theme for its new movie, too, because according to the film’s director this film will feature a Captain America that is “not a flag-waver.”
Comics fans have been eagerly awaiting the expansion of Marvel’s comics-based films with the ultimate fan dream of having a movie based on “The Avengers” comics — a series that teams Captain America, Iron Man, The Hulk, Thor, and several other heroes into a single fighting force. To get to that ultimate comic movie extravaganza, filmmakers are working up to it by introducing characters in stand-alone movies first. Iron Man was the first step toward that goal, with Thor and Captain America coming next.
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New Captain America Movie: Dear America, I’m Just Not That Into You”
Top Ten most Left-Biased American Journalists – #3: Paul Krugman, The New York Times
-By Warner Todd Huston
Number three on our list almost violates the criteria that I set up in the first piece I wrote for this series. I said then that denizens of the Old Media that are too much a “cartoon of journalism” would not be included on my list. Yet despite my dismissal of such Old Media clowns, in the number four slot on the list you’ll find Paul Krugman of The New York Times.
Given this week’s revelations about the JournoList, we now know Krugman either participated in a media conspiracy to get Obama elected or at least witnessed it first hand and did nothing to stop it. Consider this fact merely the latest insight into a man who’s done more consistently left-biased journalism than nearly anyone in America.
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Top Ten most Left-Biased American Journalists – #3: Paul Krugman, The New York Times“
Flight 93 father: ground zero mosque is the SECOND mosque being built on a 9/11 site
Pamela Geller, who is leading the fight against the ground zero mosque in New York, has posted the following letter from Tom Burnett Senior.
To our fellow 9/11 families and to all who are concerned about the Ground Zero mega-mosque in New York:
We want everyone to know that the Park Service is right now building an even larger Islamic victory mosque atop the Flight 93 crash site. Many of you were outraged in 2005 when the Crescent of Embrace design was unveiled to be a half-mile wide Islamic shaped crescent:
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Flight 93 father: ground zero mosque is the SECOND mosque being built on a 9/11 site”
Top Ten most Left-Biased American Journalists – #4: Chuck Todd, NBC
-By Warner Todd Huston
All week we’ve been exploring America’s ten most left-biased working journalists and now we come to spot number four on the list. And so, for his close attention to pushing the spin and as one of the most active members of the Old Media’s Obama Butt Covering squad, we are pleased to award the number four spot to NBC Political Director Chuck Todd.
Todd is one of those journos that came from Democrat political circles — having worked for Iowa Democrat Senator Tom Harkin’s 1992 presidential run — and then crossed over into the world of “journalism.” With that you just know that he can be as unbiased as the best of them in his reporting. Well, if he can we’ll never know it because so far he has not been. Just the opposite, really.
Todd has done a bang-up job for the left in his journalism career. Likely Todd’s loyalty to the Democrat Party is probably why he felt the need to slam Senator Joe Lieberman last year, for instance. Proving his blindness to real political analysis, Todd claimed that Joe Lieberman was the “polar opposite” of the Senate’s lone socialist Senator Bernie Sanders (officially an “independent”).
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Top Ten most Left-Biased American Journalists – #4: Chuck Todd, NBC“
Top Ten most Left-Biased American Journalists – #5: Cynthia Tucker, Atlanta Journal-Constitution
-By Warner Todd Huston
Welcome once again to our top ten most left-biased working journalist list and now it’s time for number five in the countdown. As we begin our downward slope to the number one most biased, it is fitting that we come to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s Cynthia Tucker as our fifth worst, most biased American journo.
Unlike the other left-wingers that merely hate conservative Americans, Cynthia Tucker seems to hate all of us. That seems true at least if her latest outrageous comment on MSNBC can be taken for granted.
In recent comments made on Chris “Leg Tingle” Matthews’ MSNBC show, Tucker said that, unlike the Cold War days, today’s American enemy is “us.” Naturally The Tingler chipped in with a hearty “exactly.”
Expounding upon her claim that we, each of us, is an enemy to the country, Tucker went on:
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Top Ten most Left-Biased American Journalists – #5: Cynthia Tucker, Atlanta Journal-Constitution“
A Misleading Story on ‘Facts’
-By Warner Todd Huston
On July 11, the Boston Globe featured a story on “facts” and how people just don’t seem to want to hear them when they intersect with closely held political opinions. The story has some interesting points to make, points that seem quite sensible, but there is no escaping the fact that the whole story is not only written from a left-wing perspective but is misleading in a central reality that is wholly ignored by the piece.
For the Globe, writer Joe Keohane laments that people with preconceived political opinions rarely have their minds changed when presented with facts contrary to what they imagine is true. “Facts don’t necessarily have the power to change our minds,” says Koehane. He concludes that “this bodes ill for a democracy” because voters are making decisions based on willful misconceptions.
They already have beliefs, and a set of facts lodged in their minds. The problem is that sometimes the things they think they know are objectively, provably false. And in the presence of the correct information, such people react very, very differently than the merely uninformed. Instead of changing their minds to reflect the correct information, they can entrench themselves even deeper.
Koehane goes on to quote researchers that have found that people don’t like to be confronted with how wrong they are and when facts contrary to their beliefs come up they often dismiss them out of hand whether true or not. In this way people don’t have to face up to truth when they are wrong.
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A Misleading Story on ‘Facts’”
Top Ten most Left-Biased American Journalists – #6: Rick Sanchez, CNN
-By Warner Todd Huston
Continuing with our top ten most left-biased journalists working in America today, at number six we feature the redoubtable… or is it just doubtable… Rick Sanchez of CNN. Let’s face it, no list of Old Media left-wingers could be complete without the Ricker appearing on it somewhere!
Any casual observer would conclude that Sanchez has been a thorough wallower in left-wing bias for decades, even pushing his agenda on college kids.
Back in 2008 during the campaign for the election that gave us President Obama, Sanchez took his CNN cameras on the road to see how “America Votes, 2008.” Apparently, Sanchez thought “America” only cared about the left because that was all he was interested in pushing.
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Top Ten most Left-Biased American Journalists – #6: Rick Sanchez, CNN“
Top Ten most Left-Biased American Journalists – #7: Howard Fineman, Newsweek
-By Warner Todd Huston
As we continue our Summer series of the most left-biased journalists working in the Old Media today it’s time for number seven on the list. We’ve done Cable TV, we’ve done a wire service, and we’ve done a newspaper, so now it’s time to turn our attention to the wonderful world of magazines where we find a worthy candidate in Howard Fineman of Newsweek.
The venerable magazine has been around since 1933, but a bit of its long-time luster has faded of late. Not long ago the news mag tried a revamping under the guiding hand of wunderkind Editor Jon Meacham, but the new take didn’t… take, I mean. For some time Newsweek has been steadily losing readers and money (it lost about $29 million in 2009 alone). Perhaps it is because some of its writers are so hopelessly biased?
Enter Howard Fineman.
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Top Ten most Left-Biased American Journalists – #7: Howard Fineman, Newsweek“
Top Ten most Left-Biased American Journalists – #8: Christiane Amanpour CNN
-By Warner Todd Huston
As we continue with America’s most left-biased, working journalist list we feature a journo that takes herself quite seriously as a non-opinion styled journalist. CNN’s Christiane Amanpour really does think that no one can tell that she is a true-blue left-winger. Sadly, there is that all too human penchant of fooling oneself as much as one tries to fool others with this one. But that doesn’t stop her from making the claim.
In 2008, for instance, Amanpour said of herself, “I stay away from commentary and I stay away from ideology. All this stuff that we have seen marching into the space of fact-based news over the last several years, the highly opinionated, highly ideological [demagoguery] that exists and masquerades as journalism. I draw a line and I stay in the fact-based reality.”
Nice story, that. Reality, though, seems to diverge a bit from Amanopour’s self-serving assessment.
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Top Ten most Left-Biased American Journalists – #8: Christiane Amanpour CNN“
Top Ten most Left-Biased American Journalists – #9: Liz Sidoti, Associated Press
-By Warner Todd Huston
Do you get paid to sleep on the job? The union employees of New York’s Metropolitan Transit Authority apparently do. And if caught sleeping on the job, the punishment seems to be just a slap on the wrist, a wink and a nod, and business as usual afterward. All at $33 dollars an hour of the taxpayer’s money.
The Associated Press has been increasingly disappointing at least since Ron Fournier, one of its former bureau chiefs, decided in 2008 to change the APs editorial policy and allow more emotive language and opinion to become an official part of its newswire copy. Not every AP reporter has taken Fournier’s challenge, but boy has Liz Sidoti claimed that policy as her own.
Liz isn’t the only AP reporter to indulge her inner Olbermann, of course, as there are many AP writers that have been caught using emotive wording, hyperbole, and straight out opinion to damn conservatives and Republicans. But Liz is particularly good at the off-handed sleight and the surreptitious slam.
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Top Ten most Left-Biased American Journalists – #9: Liz Sidoti, Associated Press“
Top Ten most Left-Biased American Journalists: #10 – Neil Steinberg, Chicago Sun-Times
-By Warner Todd Huston
Over the next ten days BigJournalism.com and I will present to you America’s top ten journalists that are most biased to the left. The newest entry will be hosted by BigJournalism.com for a day first and the following day (or so) will appear here.
On this list you will find denizens of the Old Media that just can’t seem to help themselves from delivering the news with a leftward tilt, journalists for whom balance means to condemn all Republicans and conservatives, folks that never met a righty they could like much less agree with or even report upon fairly.
This list will be peopled by journos that, in true Kealian fashion, simply can’t understand those Republicans and/or conservatives. After all, these journalists never met anyone that would support a conservative so they just don’t understand how conservatives could ever stand for truth. These are folks that just don’t “get” that there is any other side to a story but that of their own ideologically leftward political bent.
This list will be restricted to working journalists (or one who just retired in the case of number one), so biased old hacks like Dan Rather, Walter Cronkite or Walter Duranty will be excluded even as we take their leftism for granted. Also you will not find those whose career is but a cartoon of journalism. People such as Keith Olbermann, John Stweart, Rachel Maddow, Maureen Dowd, or Chris Matthews do not belong on a journalist list, even one highlighting left-wing bias. Such people are simply too silly even for a list such as this.
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Top Ten most Left-Biased American Journalists: #10 – Neil Steinberg, Chicago Sun-Times”
What Should Al Gore’s Church Do About the Sexual Accusations?
-By Don Boys, Ph.D.
Al Gore is legally innocent of the accusations of sexual assault brought against him by a masseuse in Oregon. He may be totally innocent of all sexual charges, although he is guilty of being stupid. Why would any thinking, sane person, especially a celebrity, have a female in his room late at night? Why would he register under an assumed name? The accuser says that she has some of his body fluids on her slacks. DNA will confirm or refute that.
So whether or not Gore is guilty he has a further problem: what will his church do about the charges? Some would tell us that it is not a religious or church matter but they are wrong. The New Testament instructs the church to discipline its members who go astray and disgrace the church and the cause of Christ. No church member is exempt from accountability. No one. Not a president or world leader or a former vice-president of the United States. Not even a Nobel Prize winner.
In my adult life traveling across the nation and the world, I know of few cases of church discipline especially when the accused was a “celebrity.” Even Bible-preaching churches have members who booze, lie, gossip, are gluttonous, stay out of church, fornicate, etc., with impunity. Many pastors refuse to deal with those sins for fear of losing members and more importantly, their money. It is also increasingly a legal problem.
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What Should Al Gore’s Church Do About the Sexual Accusations?”
Michael Moore Caught Stealing Others’ Work
-By Warner Todd Huston
Filmmaker Michael Moore, famed for his propagandistic left-slanted portrayals of America in such films as Roger and Me, Bowling for Columbine, and Sicko, is under fire for lifting the work of a writer from the Knoxville News Sentinel and reposting it on his own site in total despite that copyright laws disallow such a practice.
On his site Random Mumblings the News Director of Innovation for the Knoxville News Sentinel, Jack Lail, reported that Michael Moore lifted an entire story and its accompanying video production from his newspaper’s website and reposted it all on MichaelMoore.com. Not only did he lift the whole story (not just excerpts, but the whole thing) and take the video to repost it on his own site, Michael Moore did not add any new content and even re-processed the News Sentinel’s video to remove their logo from the screen.
The article’s original author, the Knoxville News Sentinel’s Frank Munger, alerted Lail to the thievery prompting Lail to contact Moore demanding it all be removed. For several days Lail’s demand was ignored as Moore has been known to thumb his nose at copyright laws and intellectual property rights. Finally, though, by July 12 the Moore website removed the offending pages. (For a screen shot of Moore’s website, see the post at Random Mumblings.)
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Michael Moore Caught Stealing Others’ Work”
Burning Drudge, burning Weigel: A fiery view from the Washington Post
Paul A. Ibbetson
The forced resignation of David Weigel by the Washington Post will probably be forgotten by tomorrow, nothing more than a little blip on the radar of those submersed in the world of the Washington Post. Weigel’s online communications were nabbed and made public to expose the writer as a liberal who thinks Matt Drudge should set himself on fire and that conservatives are inherently doing evil. If you are a conservative you might shake your head, grit your teeth, or even laugh at some of Weigel’s private meanderings about the opposition. What you would not be is surprised. The Washington Post wants you to think that they are awe-struck and amazed, as if their writer were suddenly part of an E-True Hollywood story in which never-before-seen hidden details are suddenly being illuminated. Please.
Howard Klutz reported in the Washington Post that their Executive Editor Marcus Brauchli said, “We can’t have any tolerance for the perception that people are conflicted or bring a bias to their work. . . . There’s abundant room on our website for a wide range of viewpoints, and we should be transparent about everybody’s viewpoint.” This is a vague statement at best, more than a little silly at worst. The fact of the matter is that all writers, even the freest of thinkers, bring at least some bias to the table and editors know this. In fact, beyond their ability to creatively communicate with the public, writers, bloggers, you name it, are sought for their general political leanings. This is where things may have gone south for Weigel. It appears the Washington Post got caught with a “political lefty” writing as a “political righty.” Who placed David Weigel writing the column titled “Right Now – Inside the conservative movement and Republican Party” That’s right, the Washington Post.
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Burning Drudge, burning Weigel: A fiery view from the Washington Post”
Gawker Tastelessly Gawks About Suicide of Fox News Employee
-By Warner Todd Huston
The lurid website Gawker.com recently posted a story about the suicide of a Fox News employee that was entirely empty of any real newsworthiness, but did serve as a platform to throw a dig at Fox News. In fact, it seems the only reason that Gawker posted the story at all is to attack Fox News. Exploiting this poor woman’s death and mental anguish just to get a dig at Fox News is over-the-top even for Gawker, but it is the culture our friends on the left have fostered in America today.
Featuring a giant Fox News logo, the Gawker piece blares in a bold headline that “Former Fox News Producer Committed Suicide, Investigators Say.” From all the hoopla Gawker gave this story one would think that Fox News was central in the story. Nothing could be farther from the truth.
Certainly the suicide of a Fox News employee could be newsworthy. If it had involved a high profile, on-air personality or high executive of Fox, perhaps the news of his suicide might be somewhat newsworthy. But the woman whose death Gawker and its commenters are chortling over is nothing of the kind.
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Gawker Tastelessly Gawks About Suicide of Fox News Employee”
Wash Post Forgets to Mention that Writer Is Obama Operative
-By Warner Todd Huston
Ron Brynaert has a story over at his The Raw Story blog that reveals yet another denizen of the Old Media that is trying to be both a “journalist” and an official operative of Barack Obama’s White House. She is Patricia McGinnis, an unpaid advisor at the White House and also one of the contributors to the Post’s “On Leadership” blog.
Once again we see the Old Media working hand-in-hand with the Obama administration and putting the lie to the idea of the “independent journalist” in traditional media outlets, this time with the Washington Post. Even worse than this collusion, though, is the fact that the Washington Post somehow forgot to mention that its writer is working for both the White House and the Old Media at the same time.
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Wash Post Forgets to Mention that Writer Is Obama Operative”
Another Journo Turned Politico Turned Journo Again
-By Warner Todd Huston
Well we’ve got a case of another journalist that turned into a political operative that now wants to go back to being a journalist. And would you be surprised that the journo/politico/journo redux is a Democrat? I would hope you wouldn’t because the right leaning journo to politico hardly ever happens (though it has been known to).
This time it’s one Bob Reed former Chicago reporter and editor of Crain’s Chicago Business turned mouthpiece for Illinois Democratic Governor Pat Quinn. Reed quit the journalism trade to head up Pat Quinn’s communications office when he was Lt. Gov. and stayed with him when he became Illinois’ accidental governor upon the elimination of Rod Blagojevich from his lofty, bribe riddle heights. Now Reed wants to go back to being a journalist and has resigned from Quinn’s staff to pursue new opportunities.
Interestingly, Reed termed his employ in the guv’s office as just another journalistic “assignment.”
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Another Journo Turned Politico Turned Journo Again”
Wash. Post Cries: White ‘Hate’ Groups Increasing! Says Who?
-By Warner Todd Huston
It’s time once again for some more left-wing hand wringing over the supposed rise of “white militias” in the era of Obama. This time it is the blather of Metro Columnist Courtland Milloy claiming that white-based hate groups have increased substantially because we have a black president. Milloy also rails about the “racial double standard” in evidence because no one is all that upset about this business. If it were black racists increasing their militia activities because of a white president, Milloy gravely writes, why the whole country would be alarmed.
Milloy isn’t the only denizen of the Old Media to make the claim that white hate groups are increasing, though. It has been an occasional claim by a dozen or so journalists since Obama’s inauguration. But is it true? Are white hate groups increasing? And is it because Obama became president? Who says so, anyway?
There is one source that each of these stories relies upon to prove that white militias and hate groups have increased under Obama. That source is the Southern Poverty Law Center. The SPLC claims that hate groups have increased to over 900 under Obama.
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Wash. Post Cries: White ‘Hate’ Groups Increasing! Says Who?”
Palin’s Newest Crime Against Humanity: An Ugly Fence
-By Warner Todd Huston
It must have been a slow news day for the Washington Post’s Adrian Higgins. Either that or someone made him upset that day and he wanted to take some anger out on someone and get paid for it at the same time. Catharsis doesn’t come free from a journalist, you know? So, looking for some payback, Higgins decided a petty attack upon Sarah Palin would be cheaper than a visit to his therapist. Besides, Palin is always the Old Media’s favorite target for venomous attack so he obviously didn’t have to think too hard in the effort.
But, since Sarah hadn’t been in the news over the last several days, Higgins must have had a hard time trying to find a rhetorical hook upon which to hang his venomous pen. Then it hit him. Her fence is ugly. Who cares that the fence story is now months old, eh? Who needs topical when one is going after Sarahcuda?
That’s right, the fence is ugly and that makes Palin an evil, oil-loving, war-mongering, racist, anti-feminist, monster, right? Man, that must have made Higgins feel better. And it saved him from kicking his dog this time, too. Smiles all around.
Of course, there was more to it than just saying the fence was ugly. Higgins also proclaims the Palins as “bad neighbors” because of it. Never mind that the only reason that the thing was even put up is to keep the hack-next-door from acting the peeping Joe on Palin’s young children.
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Palin’s Newest Crime Against Humanity: An Ugly Fence”
Atlanta Journal Columnist Tucker Says USA is ‘The Enemy’
-By Warner Todd Huston
Columnist Cynthia Tucker of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, a 2007 Pulitzer Prize winner, has found the enemy and he is us. During a recent episode of the Chris Matthews show, Tucker decided that because we are “addicted to petroleum” we are our own enemy just as much as communism was our enemy during the Cold War.
Tucker characterizes our “addiction” to oil as an “external threat” — just like communism was — and presents oil as an enemy that we should defeat. Tucker also makes excuses for Obama saying that it’s “harder” for him to call on Americans to sacrifice because of this addiction.
Leave it to a member of the Old Media to construe capitalism, progress, a growing standard of living, and even our own fellow citizens to be as great an enemy as an antithetical foreign system that was sponsored by those that promised to destroy us. Leave it to a member of the Old Media to pinpoint our own system as the enemy.
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Atlanta Journal Columnist Tucker Says USA is ‘The Enemy’”
Those Poor Muslims Forced to Sell Pork Rinds in Chicago
-By Warner Todd Huston
The Chicago Tribune has a long lament of an article bellyaching about how so many wonderful and devout Muslim grocery store owners in Chicago are somehow forced to sell liquor, lottery tickets and pork products in their stores. The article worries over their Muslim souls for having to violate their un-American Shariah codes. Naturally, a group of do-gooders have a solution. Just as naturally it comes in the form of our tax dollars.
For the Tribune, writer Manya A. Brachear tells us of South Side store owner Mazen Materieh who prays five times a day in Muslim fashion behind his cashier’s counter. Mrs Brachear apparently wants us to feel sorry for Materieh because he is somehow forced to sell lottery tickets, pork products like pork rinds, and liquor in his store. “I’m an honest person. I don’t like to be a man of two faces,” Materieh says about doing what he knows is “wrong,” namely selling the “forbidden” products.
Brachear then gravely inform us that this is a “conflict” that is “common” throughout Chicago.
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Those Poor Muslims Forced to Sell Pork Rinds in Chicago”
The AP: Using Emotional Descriptives to Demean the GOP
-By Warner Todd Huston
One of the best ways to cajole a reader into accepting a point of view is to use emotional descriptives in writing. It is the difference between opinion style editorials — like what I write — and straight news — like what a wire service like the Associated Press is supposed to be writing. Unfortunately, the AP has been adding ever larger amounts of emotional language to its news and, not surprisingly, that emotion is used to give support to the American left and to denigrate the right. A recent AP story about the rise of the new conservative movement in Wisconsin is a perfect example of that emotional language used to attack Republicans.
The story, “Wisconsin’s Democrats have got the blues” by Scott Bauer, ostensibly describes how conservatives in Wisconsin are on the rise, finding great success in organizing and fielding candidates. But the main emotional response one comes away with from reading the negative rhetoric of the story is a distaste over the conservative’s success.
The first sentence that casts the right in a negative light is directed against Wisconsin’s Tea Party groups.
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The AP: Using Emotional Descriptives to Demean the GOP”