More Media Hypocrisy - Solyndra vs Enron

Yes, the title is redundant. We should expect to see media hypocrisy when it comes to how they cover Democrat scandals versus Republican scandals. The differing treatment received by John Edwards and Mark Foley should tell us that. But I digress..

I was perusing the Solyndra scandal and a few thoughts came to mind. Remember how the media relentlessly tied Enron to George W. Bush's Administration? Yet most people forget Enron's extensive ties to the Clinton Administration, as well as the undisputed fact that the only government official to openly attempt to secure special treatment for Enron during Enron's troubles was in fact Robert Rubin, a former Clinton official. As the Seattle Times admits in their article,

In late 2001, after revelations about Enron's accounting made headlines, Citigroup and J.P. Morgan sought to arrange the company's sale to rival Dynegy so they could split a $90 million investment banking fee and stave off its likely bankruptcy. The suit said calls by Citigroup Vice Chairman and former Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin and J.P. Morgan Chairman William Harrison to credit-rating firm Moody's Investors Service were attempts to "strong-arm" the firm from downgrading Enron before a sale could be completed.

Now the Bush Administration's ties to Enron were in fact far less than the Obama Administration's ties appear to be with Solyndra. Both companies used political connections to try to get ahead. The situations seem pretty similar. So...Will the Press treat this the same way? I'm not holding my breath...

View From The Porch Gets It Right

After all the hyper-ventilating and thoroughly false information we have had issuing from the American (and most of the world) media about the disaster in Japan that caused the Fukushima Number One nuclear plant to have major problems, it is refreshing to note that while the MSN with their "layers of fact-checkers" (as a senior MSN-er once opined) seemingly have no clue as to the differences between Chernobyl and Fukushima, one blogger - a BLOGGER - gets it absolutely right.

Indianapolis-based blogger Tam of View From The Porch writes,

Remember back in '50s and early '60s, when we set off something like 900 atomic bombs in Nevada? And how we just let the fallout blow wherever and it landed all over the eastern US? And how it wiped out life as we know it and all that was left from Colorado to the Atlantic were six-legged rats battling two-headed cockroaches in the glowing ruins?

Yeah. Exactly. So shut up with the panic already.

All I can say is: Precisely. Thank you Tam! Now, if you vaunted MSN only had half of Tam's common sense and understanding of nuclear design. Oh, wait, they're...JOURNALISTS! They don't need no stinking facts - they have an AGENDA - they must CHANGE THE WORLD and save it from we eeevil humans.

So of course if the facts don't fit the meme, one ignores the facts. It didn't stop them during the Bush Administration, it didn't stop them during Katrina, it certainly didn't stop them during most of the past fifty or so years, so I guess it won't stop them now. Problem is, as the great John Adams once said, "Facts are stubborn things". So maybe the truth will come out. We can hope, anyway. Preferably before we end up like Greece.

The Media Memes

I am sad to say that I have neglected this blog of late and so it feels good to be back in the saddle. I cannot guarantee how often I shall be able to post, but i shall commit to doing better this year than I did last year.

Why am I posting again? Well, I was depressed and concerned after the epic wipeout by the left in the 2008 elections, not to mention the media malfeasance that allowed a woefully unprepared and inexperienced politicians without a single achievement or any experience in much of anything to be elected President of the United States. In the past two years, we have clearly seen how much damage this unqualified President has done. And the voters rightfully paid back the tone-deaf and arrogant leftists who would not listen to their concerns. Can the Republicans do a better job? I am unconvinced, but i am willing to give them a chance. Certainly new Speaker John Boehner seems to understand that his party is governing on a very thin tolerance. We shall see.

However, that is not the main reason for this post. Recently there has been a vicious and well-planned campaign by the Left to blame conservative voices - particularly former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin - for the attempted murder of Arizona Representative Gabrielle Giffords. At this time I shall not engage in dealing that piece of verbal assassination - it has been well-debunked in many other places. However, I would like to remind anyone who stumbles across this blog that the media has a long and sordid history of trying to manipulate public opinion with false and misleading reporting. Walter Cronkite's infamous lie about the Tet Offensive comes to mind fairly quickly, as does Dan Rather and Mary Mapes' failed attempt to use forged documents to swing a Presidential election. Yes, I know I'm linking to a very sympathetic report from NPR, but the point is that even NPR was forced to admit that what Mapes and Rather did was utterly wrong.

More recently, a large group of leftist writers and bloggers put together a well-organized machine for coordinating memes called JournoList. Though JournoList is supposedly dead, I have no doubt that a successor (probably with a slightly smaller membership) still exists.

Just as a reminder, these are the people who tried (and are almost certainly still trying) to shape the news to ensure that their particular agenda gets the best possible coverage. They also engaged in some extremely hateful speech and used far more violent terminology than anything any figure on the political Right has done in the last forty years. In other words, they did exactly what they are accusing the Right of doing in the Loughner case - they incited hate with their rhetoric.

The 150 names on this list come from (The Vail Spot). I haven't confirmed them on my own, so this may not be entirely accurate. Suffice to say that any time you read anything from any one of these would-be propagandists or the media that employs them, I recommend both a hearty dose of skepticism AND a thorough fact-checking. They have proven themselves to be untrustworthy.

The JournoList:

1. Spencer Ackerman - Wired, FireDogLake, Washington Independent, Talking Points Memo, TheAmerican Prospect
2. Thomas Adcock - New York Law Journal
3. Ben Adler - Newsweek, POLITICO
4. Mike Allen - POLITICO
5. Eric Alterman - The Nation, Media Matters for America
6. Marc Ambinder - The Atlantic
7. Greg Anrig - The Century Foundation
8. Ryan Avent - Economist
9. Dean Baker - The American Prospect
10. Nick Baumann - Mother Jones
11. Josh Bearman - LA Weekly
12. Steven Benen - The Carpetbagger Report
13. Ari Berman - The Nation
14. Jared Bernstein - Economic Policy Institute
15. Michael Berube - Crooked Timer, Pennsylvania State University
16. Brian Beutler - The Media Consortium
17. Lindsay Beyerstein - Freelance journalist
18. Joel Bleifuss - In These Times
19. John Blevins - South Texas College of Law
20. Sam Boyd - The American Prospect
21. Ben Brandzel - MoveOn.org, John Edwards Campaign
22. Shannon Brownlee - Author, New America Foundation
23. Will Bunch - Philadelphia Daily News
24. Rich Byrne - Playwright
25. Jonathan Chait - The New Republic
26. Lakshmi Chaudry - In These Times
27. Isaac Chotiner - The New Republic
28. Ta-Nehisi Coates - The Atlantic
29. Michael Cohen - New America Foundation
30. Jonathan Cohn - The New Republic
31. Joe Conason - The New York Observer
32. Lark Corbeil - Public News Service
33. David Corn - Mother Jones
34. Daniel Davies - The Guardian
35. David Dayen - FireDogLake
36. Brad DeLong - The Economists’ Voice, University of California at Berkeley
37. Ryan Donmoyer - Bloomberg News
38. Adam Doster - In These Times
39. Kevin Drum - Washington Monthly
40. Matt Duss - Center for American Progress
41. Gerald Dworkin - UC Davis
42. Eve Fairbanks - The New Republic
43. Henry Farrell - George Washington University
44. Tim Fernholz - American Prospect
45. Dan Froomkin - Huffington Post, Washington Post
46. Jason Furman - Brookings Institution
47. James Galbraith - University of Texas at Austin
48. Kathleen Geier - Talking Points Memo
49. Todd Gitlin - Columbia University
50. Ilan Goldenberg - National Security Network
51. Arthur Goldhammer - Harvard University
52. Dana Goldstein - The Daily Beast
53. Andrew Golis - Talking Points Memo
54. Jaana Goodrich - Blogger
55. Merrill Goozner - Chicago Tribune
56. David Greenberg - Slate
57. Robert Greenwald - Brave New Films
58. Chris Hayes - The Nation
59. Don Hazen - Alternet
60. Jeet Heer - Canadian Journolist
61. Jeff Hauser - Political Action Committee, Dennis Shulman Campaign
62. Michael Hirsh - Newsweek
63. James Johnson - University of Rochester
64. John Judis - The New Republic, The American Prospect
65. Foster Kamer - The Village Voice
66. Michael Kazin - Georgetown University
67. Ed Kilgore - Democratic Strategist
68. Richard Kim - The Nation
69. Charlie Kireker - Air America Media
70. Mark Kleiman - UCLA The Reality Based Community
71. Ezra Klein - Washington Post, Newsweek, The American Prospect
72. Joe Klein - TIME
73. Robert Kuttner - American Prospect, Economic Policy Institute
74. Paul Krugman - The New York Times, Princeton University
75. Lisa Lerer - POLITICO
76. Daniel Levy - Century Foundation
77. Ralph Luker - Cliopatria
78. Annie Lowrey - Washington Independent
79. Robert Mackey - New York Times
80. Mike Madden - Salon
81. Maggie Mahar - The Century Foundation
82. Dylan Matthews - Harvard University
83. Alec McGillis - Washington Post
84. Scott McLemee - Inside Higher Ed
85. Sara Mead - New America Foundation
86. Ari Melber - The Nation
87. David Meyer - University of California at Irvine
88. Seth Michaels - MyDD.com
89. Luke Mitchell - Harper’s Magazine
90. Gautham Nagesh - The Hill, Daily Caller
91. Suzanne Nossel - Human Rights Watch
92. Michael O’Hare - University of California at Berkeley
93. Josh Orton - MyDD.com, Air America Media
94. Rodger Payne - University of Louisville
95. Rick Perlstein - Author, Campaign for America’s Future
96. Nico Pitney - Huffington Post
97. Harold Pollack - University of Chicago
98. Katha Pollitt - The Nation
99. Ari Rabin-Havt - Media Matters
100. Joy-Ann Reid - South Florida Times
101. David Roberts - Grist
102. Lamar Robertson - Partnership for Public Service
103. Sara Robinson - Campaign For America's Future
104. Alyssa Rosenberg - Washingtonian, The Atlantic, Government Executive
105. Alex Rossmiller - National Security Network
106. Michael Roston - Newsbroke
107. Laura Rozen - POLITICO, Mother Jones
108. Felix Salmon - Reuters
109. Greg Sargent - Washington Post
110. Thomas Schaller - Baltimore Sun
111. Noam Scheiber - The New Republic
112. Michael Scherer - TIME
113. Mark Schmitt - American Prospect, The New America Foundation
114. Rinku Sen - ColorLines Magazine
115. Julie Bergman Sender - Balcony Films
116. Adam Serwer - American Prospect
117. Walter Shapiro - PoliticsDaily.com
118. Kate Sheppard - Mother Jones
119. Matthew Shugart - UC San Diego
120. Nate Silver - FiveThirtyEight.com
121. Jesse Singal - The Boston Globe, Washington Monthly
122. Ann-Marie Slaughter - Princeton University
123. Ben Smith - POLITICO
124. Sarah Spitz - KCRW
125. Adele Stan - The Media Consortium
126. Paul Starr - The Atlantic
127. Kate Steadman - Kaiser Health News
128. Jonathan Stein - Mother Jones
129. Sam Stein - Huffington Post
130. Matt Steinglass - Deutsche Presse-Agentur
131. James Surowiecki - The New Yorker
132. Jesse Taylor - Pandagon.net
133. Steven Teles - Yale University
134. Mark Thoma - The Economists' View
135. Michael Tomasky - The Guardian
136. Jeffrey Toobin - CNN, The New Yorker
137. Rebecca Traister - Salon
138. Tracy Van Slyke - The Media Consortium
139. Paul Waldman - Author, American Prospect
140. Dave Weigel - Washington Post, MSNBC, The Washington Independent
141. Moira Whelan - National Security Network
142. Scott Winship - Pew Economic Mobility Project
143. J. Harry Wray - DePaul University
144. D. Brad Wright - University of NC at Chapel Hill
145. Kai Wright - The Root
146. Holly Yeager - Columbia Journalism Review
147. Rich Yeselson - Change to Win
148. Matthew Yglesias - Center for American Progress, The Atlantic Monthly
149. Jonathan Zasloff - UCLA
150. Julian Zelizer - Princeton University
151. Avi Zenilman - POLITICO


The source:
Free Republic Webcache

My Take:
Again, I have not done the legwork to confirm these are really all Journolisters. However, none of these names have so far challenged the accusation of being members. So I think that the odds are pretty good that they really were Journolisters. And if so, then they are folks that have forfeited any trust on the part of the general public. They are no more honest reporters than was the infamous Walter Duranty (Stalin's tool who worked so hard to cover up the man-made famine in 1930s-era Ukraine). Feel free to pass this on to remind people just how dishonest and hypocritical the media really is.

Oh, and one more thing. The next time these self-satisfied hypocritical hatemongers try to call for 'civility', or blame a politician for the acts of a madman, let's remind them of their own words in the privacy of their little community. Remind them too that every single political act of violence since 1960 - with the sole possible exception of Tim McVeigh - has been perpetrated by the Left.

AP Rewrites History for Muslim Sniper John Muhammad

Today's AP article on the Yahoo! News site regarding the impending execution of convicted Virgina sniper John Muhammad is almost breathtaking in its politically correct craven-ness. Muhammad and his accomplice, Lee Boyd Malvo, confessed that they were undertaking a home-grown jihad against Americans in support of their Muslim brethren overseas. In addition, drawings done by Malvo in jail leave no doubt that the two were inspired by Muslim theology.

However, the Associated Press cannot bring itself to admit what is well-known. Instead, in an article on Yahoo! News today, reporter Dena Potter writes,

The motive for the shootings remains murky. Malvo said Muhammad wanted to use the plot to extort $10 million from the government to set up a camp in Canada where homeless children would be trained as terrorists. But Muhammad's ex-wife has said she believes the attacks were a smoke screen for his plan to kill her and regain custody of their three children.

Um, no. Muhammad and Malvo were unrepentant Muslim terrorists. Their aims, as presented in court and reported at the time by the New York Sun newspaper, were to terrorize American cities and ultimately create a force of of like-minded terrorists to spread out and execute similar terror missions in other cities. At no time did either Muhammad or Malvo try to deny that Islamic teachings formed a major part of their inspiration. In fact, in his courtroom testimony, Malvo specifically said that Muhammad had introduced him to the Nation of Islam teachings.

So we must ask ourselves - is Ms Potter ignorant or is she simply following the meme and is unable to think for herself? Based on the AP's track record, I would suspect the latter. Remember - it's only news if it fits the narrative.

The Media - Then and Now

Once upon a time, the American media was an organization that for all its faults, understood that American interests were more valuable than the interests of our enemies. Allow me to share with you a moment from World War II.

The San Francisco Examiner newspaper in 1944 wrote an editorial suggesting that the Marines were operating under incompetent leadership because they were in a bloody and desperate battle for the island known as Iwo Jima. The Examiner strongly suggested that perhaps the Army, under the leadership of the media's favorite general, Douglas MacArthur, could do a far better job. This provoked the San Francisco Chronicle - a that time a paper with some sympathy for American fighting men - to respond as follows:

To slur the United States Marines in one type of operation, however, to draw odious comparisons between theirs and the type of operations conducted by General MacArthur, is to raise a sinister fantasy. To hint that the Marines die fast and move slowly on Iwo Jima because Marine and Naval leadership in that assault is incompetent is an attempt at a damnable swindle of the American people.

The Chronicle does not propose to engage in controversy over the relative merits of our fighting forces in he various theaters of war. But neither does the Chronicle propose to remain mute when United States Marines or any force on the world battle line, is butchered at home to make a Roman holiday.

It is a pity that the media of today, and several of our supposed leaders - yes, John Murtha, Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi and Barack Obama, I mean you - cannot give our armed forces the respect that once was considered their due. It is a greater pity that when elements of our so-called intelligentsia do relapse into cheap attacks on the men and women of our Armed Forces that the Press cannot bring themselves to defend those who have given them the privilege of writing so negatively about that same military. I follow the line proposed by the San Francisco Chronicle before it decided that playing the role of Democratic Party propaganda organ as preferable to reporting news. I wish that more of our so-called elites did as well.

The Chronicle quote was taken from page 169 of Richard F. Newcomb's 1965 book "Iwo Jima", published by Signet.

The Myth of Walmart

Most of the supposed elites and a large part of the political left views the Walmart chain of discount super-stores as something almost as evil as George Lucas' Empire. However, in an attempt to find out the truth about Walmart, Charles Platt, a former senior writer for the magazine Wired (itself not known for its sympathies to Walmart or to anything that Middle American finds attractive) went undercover as an employee at a Walmart in his locale.

Mr. Platt wrote about his experience in the New York Post recently. He was surprised at both how well-treated the Walmart employees he worked with were and at how much autonomy they actually have. And he marvelled, "Here was the unseen, unreported side of the corporate behemoth. Big as it was, it was smart enough to give employees a feeling of autonomy."

Platt then proceeds to take on a few of the standard canards and debunks them thoroughly, saying that the company informs all employees how to report anyone who orders them to do unpaid overtime and that the illegal alien story actually referred to the company Walmart employed as janitors- it was the vendor, not Walmart, who actually employed the illegal aliens.

He also emerged with a new impression of just why Walmart is so reviled among the self-elected elites in thsi country. As Mr. Platt tells it,

You have to wonder, then, why the store has such a terrible reputation, and I have to tell you that so far as I can determine, trade unions have done most of the mudslinging. Web sites that serve as a source for negative stories are often affiliated with unions. Walmartwatch.com, for instance, is partnered with the Service Employees International Union; Wakeupwalmart.com is entirely owned by United Food and Commercial Workers International Union. For years, now, they've campaigned against Wal-Mart, for reasons that may have more to do with money than compassion for the working poor. If more than one million Wal-Mart employees in the United States could be induced to join a union, by my calculation they'd be compelled to pay more than half-billion dollars each year in dues.

Anti-growth activists are the other primary source of anti-Wal-Mart sentiment. In the town where I worked, I was told that activists even opposed a new Barnes & Noble because it was "too big." If they're offended by a large bookstore, you can imagine how they feel about a discount retailer.

And of course, most of those unions are major contributors to the Democratic Party, as most of the mainstream media sources are in need of union money to peddle their propaganda. Since those 'news' organizations and their elected representatives are financially beholden to organizations who desperately want the revenue that the non-unionized Walmart employees could bring to their organizations, it is unlikely that they would actually tell the truth about Walmart.

Mr. Platt, however, has a different view after actually working for Walmart. As he concludes,

Based on my experience (admittedly, only at one location) I reached a conclusion which is utterly opposed to almost everything ever written about Wal-Mart. I came to regard it as one of the all-time enlightened American employers, right up there with IBM in the 1960s. Wal-Mart is not the enemy. It's the best friend we could ask for.

Now if only our media and the Democratic PArty would listen...

A Press Essay

It has long been apparent to any rational observer of the national press corps that their objectivity and fairness is mostly a figment of the press corps' collective imagination. Coupled with the press corps' lack of courage, complete obliviousness to the very real threats facing the United States in the world today and their collaboration with the very enemies who so badly wish to destroy the United States, they have made the final transition into the useful idiots Josef Stalin spoke of during the early phases of the Cold War. And the recent election completed their transformation into a propaganda machine for the Democratic Party.

But the media in the United States was not always this way. Once upon a time, members of the Press had courage, and were willing to delve deeply into corruption to discover truth. once upon a time, the Press was willing to assist their fellow Americans, instead of doing their best to help America's enemies. I speak not of tools like the infamous Walter Duranty, or the the more recent James Risen and Eric Lichtblau, but of brave members of the press like Ernie Pyle, or Edward Steichen. These men, and many others, went into combat with their peers, and were always ready to report honestly. More recently, brave men like Michael Yon have carried out this tradition. But for most members of the national press corps, their own selfish interests take precedence over the interests of their country and their fellow citizens. Only this can explain why most members of the Press are ready to throw open the borders for illegal aliens, but are not ready to help when those same illegal aliens kill citizens or damage property. The press is always ready to write about enemies' rights, though you won't find any mention of how those same enemies treat lawful combatants when they capture them.

And the press is always ready to write in sobbing phrases about perceived crimes committed by Americans, yet for some reason those same crimes committed by a non-American get not a mention or sometimes even a defense. When an American kills an enemy in a firefight, the press is always ready to declare that soldier a criminal, but somehow the barbarians who fight in disguise, who are not brave enough to fight openly and who in their own families torture children and kill women who even look at another man are considered brave freedom fighters.

Today Wesley Pruden, a former editor-in-chief at the Washington Times newspaper, has an editorial about the current status of the American Press. After examining their disgraceful behavior, and how they waited until after the election to admit what everyone already knew- that they were completely in the tank for President-elect Obama- he concludes,

The most discouraging part of the sad state of media affairs is that there's scant sign it will ever get better. All that writhing around together down in the tank has only reinforced the high opinion the correspondents and commentators have of themselves. They imagine they're responsible for electing a president - and maybe they are - and they can't wait to keep on doing it.

To me this says that we the American people should abandon any hope that the media will ever improve. it is time to kill these dinosaurs and build new media to replace them. Nothing is assured in this world, and despite their belief that they are too valuable to die, no media organ has ever done anything deserving of being saved. Let them die and let us find better alternatives. Let us turn off the television, and end our subscriptions to these newspapers. Let us throw rags like Newsweek and Time into the wastebin where they rightfully belong, and search for the source data ourselves.

Are reporters any better trained at finding truth than you or I? Of course not- they merely have better connections. But journalism is famously one of the least demanding disciplines extant. To be a journalist requires no hard study of anything that requires expertise. Do journalists really understand economics, or history, or engineering, or politics? Of course not. They think that because they can write that they automatically are experts, but they are simply the blind leading the ignorant.

The raw source data for any particular story can be found- all we the people have to do is expend the time and effort necessary to find that data. And if each and every one of us does our job to find the truth, then we can dispense with the biased 'news' and false analysis presented by the dinosaurs of our modern-day Pravda. For that is what the media have become- a cheerleader for one party and their ideals. Therefore, they have forfeited any real claim to the moral high ground and we should expect them to play fast and loose with the truth- they have proven just how partisan and false they have become.

It is time for those of us who care about our great country to move in a different direction. There are alternatives to the Pravda group, but we have to be energetic in order for those sources to become the replacement we as a country desperately need. We must nurture them with tough love. When Pajamas Media or NewsBusters is wrong, we must let them know. But we should give them a chance- certainly they cannot do worse than the media we have now.

Gwen Ifill: 'I'm Objective!'

PBS news anchor Gwen Ifill- who will be moderating tonight's Vice-Presidential candidate debate between Democrat and Republican Sarah Palin, has a book scheduled to be released on Inauguration Day. The title? The Breakthrough: Politics and Race in the Age of Obama. Yet despite this, Ifill claims that she will be an objective arbiter of the debate. According to the Associated Press story, Ifill also did not inform the supposedly bipartisan Commission on Presidential Debates- the body that chooses debate moderators- of the upcoming book.

Newsbusters has been all over this story, though of course Ifill seems oblivious to any problem. In fact, Ifill has been dismissing criticism by accusing her critics of racism. According to the AP story, Ifill,

... questions why people assume that her book will be favorable toward Obama.

"Do you think they made the same assumptions about Lou Cannon (who is white) when he wrote his book about Reagan?" said Ifill, who is black. Asked if there were racial motives at play, she said, "I don't know what it is. I find it curious."

Well, considering that the title of Ifill's book is "The Breakthrough: Politics and Race in the Age of Obama", it is pretty plain that Ifill is not exactly a critic of the Obama camnpaign. In addition, the very title clues in the potential reader that Ifill is expecting (and presumable hoping for, since that would increase her sales) an Obama victory in November. I cannot imagine any conservative host who would be allowed by the Democrats to host their debates if said host had a book extolling the virtues of McCain scheduled for publication on Inauguration Day. in addition, the fact that Ifill did not inform the Commission on Presidential Debates that she was planning this book is a big red flag. Journalists, who are responsible for accurately informing the public of the events of the day, have an ethical mandate to reveal conflicts of interest. They are certainly vociferous in exposing any such conflicts in business.

In addition, Ifill's excuse- that the book is posted on the publisher's web site, so people knew about it- does not hold water. I don't think most people check publishers' websites on a regular basis and in any event, it is Ifill's responsibility to come clean about her potential conflict of interest BEFORE accepting the invitation to moderate the debate. And her claim that 'people did not question Lou Cannon's book on REagan' also is a red herring. Cannon was no asked to moderate any Presidential debates, nor did he try to hide his work. As the Power Line crew accurately analyze,

The conflict of interest doesn't arise from her view of Obama; if she favors Obama, she is like countless other journalists including (I suspect) at least some of the whites who will moderate other debates. The conflict arises from Ifill's stake, given the book, in an Obama victory.

Ifill has exposed herself as one more of the army of media types who are desperately hoping for an Obama win in November- and doing everything they can to make that eventuality a reality. She should immediately remove herself from the debate as moderator, if she has any professional ethics. But that would require a conscience- something that few media types seem to have.

Media Names Party- for Republicans

Does the media treat Democrats and Republicans differently when stories of their various peccadillos reach the Press? Well, in actuality, the question is essentially a moot point. There are stories today on the NewsBusters front page testifying to said bias. However, in Yahoo! News' choice of front-page stories today, we can see yet another example of this bias.

It seems that Senator Ted Stevens of Alaska has been indicted on seven counts of making false statements. And where did Associated Press writer Lara Jakes Jordan place the senator's political affiliation? in the very first paragraph, of course. According to the story,

Sen. Ted Stevens, the longest-serving Republican senator and a figure in Alaska politics since before statehood, was indicted Tuesday on seven counts of failing to disclose thousands of dollars in services he received from a company that helped renovate his home.

Of course, this appears to be insufficient for Jordan. She goes on to tar Stevens' fellow Alaskan representative with the same brush, writing,

The investigation has upended Alaska state politics and cast scrutiny on Stevens — who is running for re-election this year — and on his congressional colleague, Rep. Don Young of Alaska, who is also under investigation.

Hmmm. When Congressman William Jefferson of Louisiana was caught with bushels of money stuffed in a freezer, I do not recall Jordan or anyone else writing about the negative prospects for Jefferson's fellow congressmen- some of whom were also under investigation. And I certainly do not recall that the Associated Press was particularly interested in following lobbyist Tony Rezko's money trail when it appeared to be getting close to Obama.

I have no sympathy for Stevens. if he did what he is accused of, he deserves to pay the price. It is things like this that dampen American enthusiasm for politicians. However, I don't recall a similar hue and cry from the AP about serial defaulter Laura Richardson and her sweetheart deal, nor any interest in following the sweetheart deals for California Senator Dianne Feinstein's husband.

If only the Associated Press was as industrious in following up cases like this as they are when the target has an 'R' after his or her name. but that of course would require both objectivity and professionalism- something the AP has proven time and again that they sadly lack. Cross-posted on NewsBusters.

London Times On War- We're Winning!

Contrary to the wishes of much, if not most, of the American media and their fellow believers in the Democratic Party, the United States and its allies are winning the war against Islamic aggression on the battlefields, although our courts and our media seem determined to do their utmost to turn this victory into defeat (see the New York Times coverage and the Supreme Court's decision in Boumediene). Most of the US media has placed its eggs into the basket of American defeat and support for the Islamic barbarians we are facing. So it is as welcome as it is rare to see that the London Times today has a column that points our the indisputable fact that the West is winning.

As The Times reports on the situation in Afghanistan and Iraq, reporter Gerard Baker begins his story by quoting the famous statement by World War I Allied commander Marshal Foch,

"My centre is giving way. My right is in retreat. Situation excellent. I shall attack!”

If only our political leaders and opinion-formers displayed even a hint of the defiant resilience that carried Marshal Foch to victory at the Battle of the Marne. But these days timorous defeatism is on the march. In Britain setbacks in the Afghan war are greeted as harbingers of inevitable defeat. In America, large swaths of the political class continues to insist Iraq is a lost cause. The consensus in much of the West is that the War on Terror is unwinnable.

And yet the evidence is now overwhelming that on all fronts, despite inevitable losses from time to time, it is we who are advancing and the enemy who is in retreat. The current mood on both sides of the Atlantic, in fact, represents a kind of curious inversion of the great French soldier's dictum: “Success against the Taleban. Enemy giving way in Iraq. Al-Qaeda on the run. Situation dire. Let's retreat!”

This is undeniably true. As the Times points out, since the US-led invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, the Islamic forces have been denied their safe home base. And with the removal of Iraq from the ranks of terror-supporting states, the Islamic forces have been handily defeated in engagement after engagement, losing their warriors by the score, as opposed to the much smaller Allied losses. Yet our media has refused to acknowledge this- instead simply reducing coverage as it becomes clear even to the anti-American reporters in the New York Times that the Islamic forces are losing. And the Times does not spare its criticism of the Western media's compliance in allowing the Islamic aggressors to appear far more successful than in fact they are, writing bluntly,

There ought to be no surprise here. It's only their apologists in the Western media who really failed to see the intrinsic evil of Islamists. Those who have had to live with it have never been in much doubt about what it represents. Ask the people of Iran. Or those who fled the horrors of Afghanistan under the Taleban.

It is true- only the pampered, spoiled, partisan and petty denizens of the Press have failed to realize that there is a clear distinction between the Allied forces- including the United States military- and the barbaric tactics of the Islamic forces. The Allies fight in uniform, under a recognizable flag and adhere to long-established laws of war. They do not torture civilians, nor do they run rape centers or target non-combatants. And above all they do not treat their prisoners inhumanely. The deplorable events at Abu Ghraib were an aberration, and one that was swiftly punished by the military. Let us not forget that the Islamic forces raped, tortured and beheaded their captives. Nothing remotely similar has occurred to any captive of the US military. Even Saddam Hussein got his day in court- a day denied to Daniel Pearl and all others captured by the Islamic forces.

I would hope that someday the media would recognize their disgraceful behavior in this situation- from Eason Jordan and CNN's compliance with Iraqi censorship before the US invasion to the mainstream media's quick decision to call the invasion a 'quagmire' (a description quickly made into a laughingstock by the US military's rapid conquest of the country) to their disparaging coverage of the subsequent US governing, to the point of not only encouraging the terrorists but actually allowing the Islamic forces to use their own pages to publish their disgraceful propaganda.

The US media bears great responsibility for the success that the Islamic forces have enjoyed in the thought war, thought their success on the battlefield has not been anywhere close to their success in spreading propaganda. But then, the media has never been very apt at analyzing their own failings- recall how their equally disgraceful coverage of New Orleans has been covered up as much as possible by those who were involved.

I do not expect the media to change- that is something that is beyond their small, petty minds. But it would be nice if just once they would recognize that the enemy we face is a real threat and that we are winning this war, despite the best efforts of our own media. in the meantime, at least the London Times has both recognized the situation and has printed it. And we can hope that some US news organ will pick it up. But I won't hold my breath. Hat tip to Glenn Reynolds. Cross-posted on NewsBusters

More Thoughts on Judges and Congress

Remember the Boumediene decisions? The one where the Supreme Court ignored Congress' orders to strip them of jurisdiction? One of the major issues in this case was the fact that the Court trampled all over Congress' ability to determine the limits of judicial oversight. And virtually no mainstream 'news' organ picked up on that fact- nstead they universally trumpeted how the eeevil Bush Adminstraion had been forced to observe the law'. The LA Times, for example, wrote on their front page,

The Supreme Court on Thursday rejected for the third time President Bush's policy of holding foreign prisoners under exclusive control of the military at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, ruling that the men have a right to seek their freedom before a federal judge.

The justices said the Constitution from the beginning enshrined the "privilege of habeas corpus" -- or the right to go before a judge -- as one of the safeguards of liberty. And that right extends even to foreigners captured in the war on terrorism, the high court said, particularly when they have been held for as long as six years without charges.

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The article admits that Congress stripped jurisdiction from the judiciary in 2006, writing,

After that setback, the administration went to Congress, still under GOP control, and won a law authorizing trials through military commissions. The law also stripped all the foreign "enemy combatants" of their right to go to court via a writ of habeas corpus.

but clearly agreeing with the idea that foreign, unlawful combatants have more rights than lawful prisoners-of-war.

However, the Los Angeles Times today provided a simple clarifier- in the case of the border fence authorized by Congress three years ago. The pertinent language is found approximately halfway through the article, where the Times writes,

Three years ago, Congress gave Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff an unusual power to "waive all legal requirements" that could stand in the way of building the fence.

These requirements included the nation's environmental protection laws. The same congressional action took away the authority of judges to review Chertoff's decisions.

"The same congressional action took away the authority of judges to review Chertoff's decisions." Really? So then is the LA Times admitting Congress DOES have the Constitutional authority to limit judicial influence. Why then did the Court ignore Congress' instructions in Boumediene, and why didn't the LA Times excoriate the judges for this blatant overstepping of their authority? If Congress does indeed have the Constitutional authority (as admitted in this LA Times story), then how can the Court ignore that instruction? Isn't that breaking the Constitution themselves?

As a refresher, here is what the United States Constitution itself has to say about the jurisdiction of the judiciary:

In all the other Cases before mentioned, the supreme Court shall have appellate Jurisdiction, both as to Law and Fact, with such Exceptions, and under such Regulations as the Congress shall make.

This seems pretty explicit- the Court's jurisdiction can be restricted by Congress. And the LA Times has tacitly admitted precisely this in their story on the Court's refusal of the environmental challenges to the border fence. Yet the Press, again in the person of th LA Times, is seemingly agreeable with the Court choosing when it wishes to actually be bound by the Constitution.

I am amazed at how the the LA Times can manage to completely miss the fact that the Court has once again rolled all over the Constitution and infringed on the prerogatives of another branch. I guess that in the realm of the media and the liberals on the Court, all if fair if it embarrasses the Bush Administration, never mind the disastrous results for the nation as a whole and one more judicial over-reach that we will be paying for for years to come. Cross-posted on NewsBusters.

Democrats Finally Notice Media Bias

Democrats have long been used to having an echo chamber of fellow-travelers in the national media. They are so used to it that they expect the blatant favoritism most reporters shower on them during campaign season. Republicans and conservatives, on the other hand, are used to being portrayed as evil, and having their positions mis-stated and their actions painted in the most negative light possible. DEspite this, Democrats have long claimed that the media is 'fair'.

The problem is that Democrats are sso used to this favorable treatment, they aren't sure what to do when they are not its beneficiaries. I can recall the CLintons claiming media fairness, even as the national media did their best to sit on negative Clinton stories, and portray the impeachment as 'just about sex', as opposed to what it actually was- abuse of power and perjury. However, now that Senator Barack Obama is threatening to end the Presidential aspirations of Senator Hillary Clinton, the Clinton campaign's chairman, former Democratic National Committee chair Terry McAuliffe, is complaining that the media are biased in Obama's favor.

According to a story in the TheHill online edition today, McAuliffe says that as much as ninety percent of the national media is blatantly favoring Obama.

“Clearly it has been a biased media, no question about it,” McAuliffe said on Fox News. When asked how much of the mainstream media is “in the tank” for Sen. Barack Obama (Ill.), who leads Clinton in the race for the Democratic nomination, McAuliffe estimated that about 90 percent of the media favor Obama.

“It is what it is. We’re not complaining,” he stated. “We have to deal with the hand we’re dealt with.”

McAuliffe added that “every independent study has said that this is the most biased coverage they’ve ever seen in a presidential campaign.”

I wonder where this realization was during the many times that the media have shilled for Democrats and Democratic causes in recent years. In any event, it is nice that at least some Democrats recognize just how biased the mainstream media is. Now is they could only agree that it is conservatives who mainly get the worst of this bias- Clinton is merely feeling the media's desire to crown Obama as the nominee and end a bloody primary campaign so that Democrats can re-focus on the real enemy- Senator John McCain. If McAuliffe thinks that media bias was bad during this primary campaign, I can only suggest that he observe the general election with open eyes and mind. In the words of Al Jolson "You ain't seen nothing yet."

Islam and Counterfeit Toothpaste

There have been a number of stories on the counterfeit toothpaste and other items like Nike shoes, such as this one on FoxNews.com. However, is this the only aspect to the story?

According to Debbie Schlussel this morning on KSFO radio, apparently not. She reported that police raided a warehouse in her suburb of Detroit, finding a great quantity of the counterfeit items. However, there was a major aspect of the story that somehow didn't make it into the news- the factory's ownership. According to Schlussel, the warehouse was owned by Muslims and was propagating the counterfeit items to Muslim-owned stores all over the United States. Schlussel wrote on her site,

Last night, Detroit's NBC affiliate, WDIV/LLocal 4, reported on the warehouse, but reporter Kevin Dietz left out one detail, which is almost always included--the names of the people who own and operating the warehouse and the stores that sell their counterfeit merchandise. That's because all of them are Arab Muslims. Watch the video--on the middle right side of the link--closely. It's hard, on the small screen, to tell the identity of the owners of the warehouse, but on the big screen, it's quite clear, they are Arabs and they are laughing about their toxic toothpaste . . . all the way to the bank. (The Black man shown is their worker and not an owner of the business.)

What's more, my sources tell me they are Muslim Arabs and are believed to be selling the smuggled counterfeit merchandise for money laundering to terrorists, specifically Hezbollah. But none of that is mentions, even though that's why ICE is involved and it's an "international investigation."

It's well known that Hezbollah has Arab Muslims selling counterfeit Nikes, hip-hop clothing, and other fakes like the toothpaste for profit to fund terrorist operations. I've written about it on this site many times, and it's been documented in the L.A. Times and elsewhere.

This is a huge issue, if Schlussel's report is true- and it appears that it is. And this is not merely a potential threat to our health, but also to our nation. According to Schlussel, much of the profits from this deadly counterfeit material ends up back in the hands of organizations that are dedicated to our destruction. She writes,

There are so many Muslims selling fake hip-hop gear and engaging in the hip-hop lifestyle to respectively fund and pimp their kinship with terrorists that a friend of mine in Dearbornistan calls them Hezbollah's Hip-Hop-bollah.

In those cases, it's fake Nikes and hip-hop clothing, but in the case of the warehouse in my area, it's toxic, counterfeit toothpaste. Many different phony products. Yet the perpetrators are all Muslims, mostly Arabs, and all for the same cause. Yet, you'd never know it if you watched my local newscast.

We have well-documented problems with counterfeit items and the fake toothpaste has indeed been well-discussed. But yet in these discussion, the identity of the sellers of this material, and the results of their profits has been left mostly unmentioned. How did the media manage to miss the connection between the Muslim distributors and sellers and the potentially deadly products they are disseminating to the American public? Isn't one of the media's jobs to inform the public about potential threats? Certainly they seem to have no compunction writing articles with screaming headlines about our supposed loss of civil rights. What about the even more important loss of life- which could indeed occur due to these fake products and the use to which their sellers put their ill-gotten profits? Why are the media seemingly so blind to the dangers here? is it because they are afraid, or because they secretly sympathize with the aims of these cowardly weasels?

I fear that it is the latter, and I can only hope that their willful betrayal of their fellow Americans in this dangerous time will not cost us all our lives and freedom.

About that Global Warming...

Al Gore has made a lot of money and publicity with his crusade against global warming. I have written in the past how this whole crusade seems to be based on a Big Lie, and its real purpose appears more intended to get global government so the rest of the world (ie. the United Nations) can gain control over the United States' many assets without having to go through the awkward exercise of actually getting a their authority recognized by the US Congress.

However, there has been a backlash against the Gore Warming crusade (fueled partly by Gore's own hypocrisy in using large motorcades, private jets and his lavish lifestyle- none of which are designed to show others that he is serious about the entire issue. Not that the press has bothered to do any real reporting- they have fallen in line with Gore's crusade lock, stock and barrel- refusing to report on critics and making statements equating said critics with Nazis and other undesirables. However, the evidence is mounting that Gore and his global warming friends are no more accurate in their claims than Newsweek was in its new ice age campaign in the 1970s.

Recently the critics are becoming more vocal. And today, Fox News is reporting that the founder of the Weather Channel, John Coleman, is preparing to sue Al Gore for fraud. According to the report on FoxNews.com,

John Coleman, who founded the cable network in 1982, suggests suing for fraud proponents of global warming, including Al Gore, and companies that sell carbon credits.

"Is he committing financial fraud? That is the question," Coleman said.

"Since we can't get a debate, I thought perhaps if we had a legal challenge and went into a court of law, where it was our scientists and their scientists, and all the legal proceedings with the discovery and all their documents from both sides and scientific testimony from both sides, we could finally get a good solid debate on the issue," Coleman said. "I'm confident that the advocates of 'no significant effect from carbon dioxide' would win the case."

Throughout the controversy, the press has been consistently against any criticism of the global warming meme, muzzling critics and refusing to present a balanced picture of the issue. Only global warming advocates are allowed air-time to present their views- opponents are tarred as being owned by 'Big Oil' and presented as akin to Holocaust-deniers.

Coleman is a long-time skeptic of the entire global warming campaign. Based on his history, there is no doubt he is far better positioned to understand the idea's truth or falsehood than Al Gore- a man whose money came largely FROM the oil companies. In addition, Gore's massive insincerity has been on display before- remember his claim to have invented the Internet? So if the chips were down, I would believe Coleman before I would place credence in Gore. But the Press obviously believe otherwise.

Today's story was front-page news on Fox News, and was linked to by the Drudge Report. But the other so-called 'mainstream' media have pointedly ignored this. I could find no mention of the story on the main pages of the following news outlets- CNN, ABC News, CBS News, MSNBC or the New York Times.

So, it would seem that the media are ignoring what should be a headline story. The question is whether they are ignoring it due to their invested interest in promoting the global warming meme, their known political bias or pressure from their friends in the environmental movement. Any of these rationales makes a mockery of their claims to be professional and unbiased. But we knew that a long time ago, didn't we? Cross-posted on NewsBusters.

AP Highlights Jobs Cut- Ignores Unemployment Drop

According to an Associated Press report today via Yahoo! News, employers eliminated 63,000 jobs in the month of February- the most in five years. Naturally, the headline at Yahoo! screamed "Employers Slash Jobs by Most in 5 Years". It is in the interests of the national media to make the economic picture seem as bleak as possible- it increases the chances of a Democrat getting elected in November. The reporter, one Jeannine Aversa, writes,

Employers slashed 63,000 jobs in February, the most in five years and the starkest sign yet that the country is heading dangerously toward recession or is in one already.

Unfortunately, for the media, the numbers don't actually play along- unemployment actually dropped despite the job cuts. To Aversa's credit, she included the good unemployment numbers in her second paragraph, thought she seems to feel constrained to paint it in a gloomy manner, writing,

The Labor Department's report, released Friday, also indicated that the nation's unemployment rate dipped to 4.8 percent as hundreds of thousands of people -- perhaps discouraged by their prospects -- left the civilian labor force. The jobless rate was 4.9 percent in January.

Ms. Aversa, this doesn't make sense. If thousands of people left the workforce, how could the unemployment rate drop? If employers cut jobs, one would expect to see the jobless rolls swell. However, this ahas not actually occurred. Therefore, one can reasonably assume that the economy is doing just fine- so fine that it can absorb these job losses without so much as a hiccup.

However, that narrative does not seem to match the national media's preferred scenario. So Aversa continues with the doom-and-gloom pen, writing that,

With the economy losing momentum, fears have grown that the country in on the brink of its first recession since 2001.

Economic growth slowed to a near standstill of just a 0.6 percent pace in the final quarter of last year. Many economists predict growth in the January-to-March quarter will be worse -- around a 0.4 percent pace. Some believe the economy is shrinking now.

Spreading fallout from the housing and credit debacles are the main factors behind the economic slowdown. People and businesses alike are feeling the strains and have turned cautious. Adding to the stresses on pocketbooks, budgets and the economy: skyrocketing energy prices. Oil prices have set a string of record highs in recent days. Gasoline prices have marched higher, too.

To help shore up the economy, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke signaled last week that the central bank is prepared to lower interest rates again. Economists predict another cut on March 18, the Fed's next meeting. The Fed, which has been slicing the rate since September, recently turned more forceful. It slashed the rate by 1.25 percentage points in the course of just eight days in January -- the biggest one-month reduction in a quarter century.

The White House and Congress, meanwhile, speedily enacted an economic relief package, including tax rebates for people and tax breaks for businesses. That -- along with the Fed's rate cuts -- should help give a lift to the economy in the second half of this year, says Bernanke.

Still, unemployment is expected to move higher this year. The Federal Reserve predict the jobless rate will rise to as high as 5.3 percent in 2008. Last year, the unemployment rate averaged 4.6 percent.

All the economy's troubles are putting people in a gloomy mood.

If the press had reported the economy accurately for the past six years, I suspect people might not be in such a gloomy mood. If the press could put the US economy in perspective- for example, comparing our economy with that of say, Germany or France or any other country in Europe, people might realize that things are not as bad as the press wants to paint them. But of course that would require objective reporting, and would lessen the possibility of electing a Democrat in November.

Once again, let's Name That Party!

Once again, the mainstream media displays their party prefernce, as it is another edition of Name That Party! In this instance, as reported by CBS television station KDKA Channel 2, Pennsylvania State Representative Frank LaGrotta stands accused of two criminal counts of conflict of interst. Strangely, though the story discusses LaGrotta's purported transgressions in detail, his party affiliation is somehow neglected!

As KDKA reported on the case,

LaGrotta was arraigned last week in Harrisburg on two criminal counts of conflict of interest.

He is accused by the State Attorney General Tom Corbett of hiring two relatives for his office payroll who allegedly did nothing for their state pay check.

But the real focus has been on whether LaGrotta is helping state investigators finger top legislative leaders whom the Attorney General thinks may have used tax dollars to pay their staff for political work.

KDKA Political Editor Jon Delano asked LaGrotta's attorney to answer that question.

"Certainly he has been cooperative," said LaGrotta's attorney Stephen Colafella. " He's attempted to address not only the issues with his case, but some of the more general questions about things that may have gone on."

Colafella stopped short of saying that LaGrotta's testimony would hurt House Majority Leader Bill DeWeese or former House Whip Mike Veon.

Now the story mentions possible wrongdoing by three elected officials in Pennsylvania. One would think that somewhere in the story, the party affiliation of said elected officials might be mentioned. However, a quick Google search finds that of the three, Frank LaGrotta, Mike Veon and Bill DeWeese, all are members of the Democratic Party.

Hmmm. Interesting that of the three, all are Democrats, and yet the CBS station KDKA managed to completely avoid mentioning the party affiliations of any of the three in this story that ostensiblyt is to discuss an elected official accused of criminal conflict of interest. And in fact, this is a possibility that there is an even bigger corruption story. yet somehow the three eleceted officials named all manage to have their party affiliation ignored by KDKA. I won't waste my time hypothesizing if a Republican who was even marginally linked to such a story would have his party affiliation similarly left out of the resulting story. I think we all know that answer. Hat tip to NewsBusters reader Mike Costarell. Cross-posted at NewsBusters.

CNN Neglects Accused Politician's Party- Again

It's time for yet another edition of Name That Party! Disgraced Newark, New Jersey mayor Sharpe James' trial for abusing his powers for favoritism and corruption began today in federal court. According to the prosecutor the former mayor,

...abused his office by steering discounted city property to a girlfriend who then sold the parcels for large profits, a prosecutor told jurors Monday at James' fraud trial. Former Newark, New Jersey, mayor Sharpe James going on trial for federal corruption charges. "This case is about fraud, favoritism and concealment," Assistant U.S. Attorney Phillip Kwon said in his opening statement. James got romance while co-defendant Tamika Riley made profits by quickly selling the land instead of redeveloping it as required, Kwon said. "The only people who didn't benefit from these land deals were the people of Newark," Kwon told the jury.

Yet in the entirety of the article on CNN's site, the party affiliation of Mayor James was never mentioned. Not once. Surprised? Not when one discovers that James is a Democrat. It seems that for CNN, if an accused person is a Republican, that is news-worthy, but when the principal is a Democrat, the party is something that readers simply don't need to know. Wouldn't it be nice if the media treated parties the same when it came to reporting allegations? However, if they did, they wouldn't be the mainstream media- partisan, subjective and thoroughly untrustworthy. Hat tip to NewsBusters reader grumpybb. Cross-posted at NewsBusters.

LA Times: CNN='Corrupt News Network'

In the wake of the embarrassing and highly slanted CNN-hosted Republican debate on CNN last week, the fallout continues from CNN's attempts to inject its own biases into the Republican debate. Today comes one of the harshest blasts- and it comes not from the blogosphere, which has been relentless in following the story, but from CNN's fellow media dinosaur the Los Angeles Times, in the person of reporter Tim Rutten.

Rutten is not pleased by CNN's performance, and in his article, he pulls no punches in describing his view of CNN's activities. He wrote,

In fact, this most recent debacle masquerading as a presidential debate raises serious questions about whether CNN is ethically or professionally suitable to play the political role the Democratic and Republican parties recently have conceded it.

Selecting a president is, more than ever, a life and death business, and a news organization that consciously injects itself into the process, as CNN did by hosting Wednesday's debate, incurs a special responsibility to conduct itself in a dispassionate and, most of all, disinterested fashion. When one considers CNN's performance, however, the adjectives that leap to mind are corrupt and incompetent.

Rutten went on to define why he thinks that the network is corrupt. Unlike the bloggers, Rutten did not condemn CNN's planted questions, though one wonders how he would react if say, Fox had done the same thing to the Democratic candidates. Since they were too scared of Fox to even appear, we will never know the answer to that one, though I personally doubt that Fox would have stooped to the depths displayed by CNN.

No, Rutten's main complaint was actually with the way that CNN organized the debate, spending roughly the entire first half-hour or so on the illegal immigration issue, which, while it is important to some Republicans, does not appear in the list of top issues concerning Republicans, according to the Pew polls. So why did CNN spend so much time on an issue that may not even be that important to the average Republican? Rutten think he knows, writing,

In other words, CNN intentionally directed the Republicans' debate to advance its own interests. Make immigration a bigger issue and you've made a bigger audience for Dobbs.

That's corruption, and it's why the Republican candidates had to spend more than half an hour "debating" an issue on which their differences are essentially marginal -- and, more important, why GOP voters had to sit and wait, mostly in vain, for the issues that really concern them to be discussed. That's particularly true because that same Pew poll reported findings of particular relevance to Republican voters, the vast majority of whom continue to support the war in Iraq.

I don't know if I would agree with Rutten on the specifics of his charge, as I find a commercial network's desire to pander to a topic that it's most popular host pushes un-threatening. As long as the viewers are informed, they will be aware of what CNN is doing and will probably tune out until the topic changes. I know I would. However, CNN's overall performance, both in this debate and in the Democratic 'talking snowman' debate, has definitely done the network a disservice. And when one considers that this is the same network that has no problem being complicit with dictators in order to keep their Baghdad bureau open, one begins to seriously wonder why anyone takes the network's slanted 'news' seriously at all.

More Press Hubris?

the Washington Post today ran a front-page article by star reporter Howard Kurtz on how the national media is unhappy with their lack of access to Hillary Clinton. As Kurtz wrote,

National correspondents are increasingly frustrated by a lack of access to Clinton. They spend much of their time in rental cars chasing her from one event to the next, because the campaign usually provides no press bus or van. Life on the bus means journalists don't have to worry about luggage or directions or getting left behind, since they are part of the official motorcade. News organizations foot the bill for such transportation, but campaigns have to staff and coordinate the buses -- and deal with the constant presence of their chroniclers.

To me this sounds like more press hubris, closely related to Bobby Calvan, the arrogant press puppy who didn't think the rules applied to him in Iraq and then pulled the 'Don't you know who I am' routine on a busy US soldier.

Exactly what entitles the media to a free ride as 'part of the official cavalcade'? Just because you happen to work for a news outlet doesn't make you special. Are you somehow suggesting that you ought to be given privileges that ordinary citizens are not? it certainly seems that way. Kurtz continues his complaints by writing,

Reporters, meanwhile, were making their way along unmarked back roads, past moose crossings and flocks of geese, to find a home on an isolated cul-de-sac in Goffstown. There, Judy Lanza, a nurse, and her husband, Joe, a retired police officer, hosted Clinton in a small kitchen adorned with pumpkins, apple baskets, a cookie jar and a straw doll affixed to the wall.

For more than an hour, 30 journalists watched from the small, darkened living room as Clinton chatted, awkwardly at first, with the five preselected guests. Her rhetoric against health insurance companies was harsher than might have been expected. They give patients the "runaround," deny care, "slow-walk" the payment of bills, she declared. "This is all part of their business model. This is how they make money. . . . The small-business health-care market is really rigged."

From there, Clinton drifted into special education, meetings she had as first lady on religious tolerance, how she was "deeply involved" in the Northern Ireland peace process, and her plans for a "post-Kyoto agreement" on global warming. But although the meeting was staged for the assembled journalists, there was no chance for follow-up, and the event received virtually no coverage.

As Clinton made her way to the door, she observed: "All this good food -- can we feed the press?" But the press was feeling undernourished.

Oh, my heart bleeds for you poor undernourished members of the press. Of course, since most of the press wouldn't know real undernourishment if it walked up and hit them in the face, I have to take Kurtz's whines with a hearty pinch of salt. However, the fact that these juvenile complaints somehow found their way into the Washington Post says something about the mindset of the media.

Personally, I believe that if we have an informed electorate, one that actually follows the real events without relying on puffed-up, self-important and biased reporters like Kurtz, then we will have a better country., Unfortunately, the press as it exists today seems more concerned with their own prestige as opposed to the quality of the coverage they provide. Kurtz should be wondering about Hillary's mysterious Asian donors- not complaining about the lack of a campaign bus to cart his lazy behind from one place to another. Most of the blogging community, like Captain Ed Morrissey, the Power Line crew and many others in the upper echelon are used to being ordinary citizens. Despite the lack of a campaign bus, they have managed to uncover more of the real news associated with the campaign thsu far than all of the dinosaur media combined. Yet we do not hear them whining about having to actually drive themselves or *gasp* do their own research.

Could it be that bloggers (most of whom are not paid for their efforts) are actually getting the stories because they are interested in the real events, not the agenda that pervades most newsrooms? You won't find a blogger packing a so-called 'debate' with avowed opponents- he or she simply wants answers to questions that interest them. And the candidate needs to answer honestly or he or she will be rightfully skewered in said blogger's next post. If Kurtz and his colleagues in the 'mainstream' media shared that interest in getting the job done right, then maybe they wouldn't be such pariahs and their own trust ratings would be higher. Oh, and one more thing. If they actually put as much effort into finding the truth as the blogosphere, then maybe they wouldn't be hemmorhaging viewers. Just a thought....

NY Times Complains About US Control Of Internet

The New York Times newspaper headlined its article about the recently concluded United Nations-sponsored Internet conference in Brazil as US Control of Internet Remains Issue. However, as is usual with the Times, while the tone of the article was complaining about the fact that the United States maintains control over the core Internet, they offered no evidence that handing over control to a foreign or even worse, a UN-controlled entity would be better. As the Associated Press article used by the Times reports,

A U.N.-sponsored Internet conference ended Thursday with little to show in closing the issue of U.S. control over how people around the world access e-mail and Web sites.

With no concrete recommendations for action, the only certainty going forward is that any resentment about the American influence will only grow as more users from the developing world come online, changing the face of the global network.

Of course, while the AP and the Times reported that 'the only certainty going forward is that any resentment about the American influence will only grow;, they were unable to show that there are actually andy disadvantages to the current system. If thee is indeed 'resentment', neither the AP nor the Times were able to make any arguments to justify the resentment. And the AP and the Times were completely unable to present any evidence showing that forcing the US to give up control would bring any improvements.

The Internet grew out of the ARPANET created by the United States Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, which created the first interlinked network of computer systems and eventually provided the backbone still used by the Internet today. the International Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, headquartered in Marina del Rey, California, is the main control for assigning domain names and Internet Protocol (IP) addresses worldwide. It appears that the simple fact that the United States government holds a veto over ICANN's operations and decisions has made some countries want to end US control and hand it over the to United Nations or some other non-US authority. But the US invented the Internet and to this day hosts some of the root servers. And there is no evidence that the US is doing anything to impede the free flow of information- in fact the United States is one of the few countries that has a consistent history of supporting and advancing freedom of information. As even the AP was forced to admit,

The United States insists that the existing arrangements ensure the Internet's stability and prevent a country from trying to, say, censor Web sites by pulling entries out of the domain name directories.

Supporters of the current system denounced the Russian proposal.

''The Russian proposal seeks to exponentially increase government interference in the ICANN process, introducing a dangerous and destabilizing force into a global Internet addressing system that has been a paragon of stability under the current oversight structure,'' said Steve DelBianco, executive director of NetChoice, a coalition of high-tech leaders like Time Warner Inc.'s AOL, eBay Inc. and Yahoo Inc.

The United States has a vested interest in the free exchange of information, and has a history of working to protect that free exchange. In contrast, the United Nations has a history of helping countries dominated by unelected and repressive governments (such as Venezuela, Hussein's Iraq, China, etc). Therefore, I cannot see that handing over control to the UN or any other non-US agency would bring any improvements. In addition, as the Internet is almost entirely a US creation, why should the US give up its role? The Times and the AP cannot present any answers to this question. Or would the Times and the AP prefer that countries such as China or Russia, neither of whom have a good record of providing free information, gain control of the Internet, as they would surely do if the UN takes control.

This is yet another example of empty-headed reporters, who somehow see the United States as the enemy, despite the patent fact that they would be unable to engage in their favored method of reporting through leaks under a truly repressive government, such as China's, begging for an action that ultimately will not benefit them. I sometimes wonder if most reporters have ever been taught how to perform critical analysis, since there are so many articles such as this generated. I wonder if the Times and the AP have thought through the consequences of forcing the US to give up control of the Internet. But the answer is almost certainly negative. After all, had they been capable of actually thinking the argument though to its logical conclusion, I doubt they would have gone into journalism- a discipline that is not known for its difficulty. Cross-posted on NewsBusters.