NewsBusters Archive

The English-language Al-Jazeera International TV network faces enough hurdles to make Olympic champion Edwin Moses tremble.

It has missed its launch date and won’t set another, has no public commitments by anyone to show it in the United States, saw its closest competitor beat it to the market and is the target of a pressure campaign by a group hoping it never airs here.

Al-Jazeera International’s operators are nonetheless pressing forward with plans to create a worldwide news operation, despite a name that immediately raises hackles in the West.

Two New Jersey state Assemblywomen, Joan Quigley and Linda Stende, want Ann Coulter's new book, "Godless: The Church of Liberalism," banned from all book stores in New Jersey. So much for free speech for opposing views.

Say the Assemblywomen:

"Ann Coulter's criticism of 9-11 widows, whose only desire since the attacks have been to repair their shattered lives and protect other families from the horrors they have experienced, is motivated purely by petty greed and hate," the two Democrats complained.

"Coulter's vicious characterizations and remarks are motivated by greed and her desire to sell books . . . She is a leech trying to turn a profit off perverting the suffering of others."

"No one in New Jersey should buy this book and allow Ann Coulter to profit from her hate-mongering. We are asking New Jersey retailers statewide to stand with us and express their outrage by refusing to carry or sell copies of Coulter's book. Her hate-filled attacks on our 9-11 widows has no place on New Jersey bookshelves."

Talk about you're damned-if-you do moment . . .

What have the Dems and their MSM echo-chamber been clamoring for, nay, demanding, when it comes to Iraq? Why, a troop withdrawal, of course. Yet there was Matt Lauer on this morning's Today, fretting that President Bush might . . . withdraw troops.

Lauer's lament came in the course of his interview of former General Barry McCaffrey, looking ahead to the Iraq summit that Pres. Bush is holding at Camp David beginning today with his top national security advisers.

Said Lauer:

" Do you worry about a political side of this, that the administration may pull a substantial number troops out of Iraq just prior to November's mid-term elections simply to sway public opinion?"

NPR's got a weekly news quiz program called "Wait, Wait, Don't Tell me!" It's actually pretty funny, although like most of NPR's programming, it has a fairly pronouced port-side list.

This week, though, the decidedly unfunny Paula Poundstone (as of this writing, NPR's list of the week's panelists is incorrect) asked, in response to a question about gay marriage:

I don't even know what a gay Republican is. Does that mean they beat themselves up in parking lots?

Which got a predictably hearty laugh from the audience. You can hear it on the first clip listed, the "Who's Carl This Time?" segment.

Without question, one of the most liberally biased journalists and political commentators in the mainstream media today is Newsweek’s Eleanor Clift. Week after week, her columns and her words spoken on “The McLaughlin Group” sound eerily similar to Democrat talking points coming directly from the likes of Howard Dean, Ted Kennedy, and John Kerry.

This is what makes her column on Friday quite shocking, for it not only deviates from the party line that she rarely strays from, but is also written without her normal inflammatory hyperbole for anything right of center. And, even more surprising, Clift actually had negative things to say about her left-leaning brethren.

Clift’s rare moment of sanity was evident right in the first paragraph:

“The death of the top-ranking operative of Al Qaeda in Iraq is a welcome moment of clarity in a war desperately in search of a rationale. Abu Mussab al-Zarqawi personified the face of evil and was controversial even among jihadists for staging large-scale attacks on civilians. The news out of Iraq has been gloomy for so long that Zarqawi’s demise, along with the agreement on the remaining cabinet ministers to fill out the new government, may buy some time with the American public, and give President Bush the breathing space to figure out what to do next when he meets with his advisers at Camp David next week.”

She continued with the importance of Zarqawi's death:

Sometimes I think that if you really want to know what’s going on in the world, you should read The New York Times…and assume the exact opposite is true. Take Saturday’s article “Gathering Highlights Power of the Blog” for example. Author Adam Nagourney visited Las Vegas to attend the meeting of mostly liberal bloggers discussing how they’re going to change the world in an event called “Yearly Kos” not so inconspicuously named after the blogosphere’s liberal mainstay, Daily Kos. Unfortunately, after listing and quoting some Democrat dignitaries in attendance – quotes to follow for your amusement! – Nagourney actually wrote (emphasis mine), “Blogging is nowhere near the force among Republicans as it is among Democrats.”

Really, Adam? And exactly how did you come to this conclusion? Could you provide some statistics to support this assertion, or did you pull this non sequitur out off your…hat?

In reality, the data quite refute Nagourney’s contentions. NewsBusters executive editor Matthew Sheffield recently compiled some statistics on this very subject that quite go counter to this report. Now, to be sure, the two most popular political “blogs” as measured by Alexa are the Huffington Post and Daily Kos. Yet, as the following list demonstrates, ten of the top 20 political blogs are conservative leaning:

Back in December, Brent Bozell warned that group marriage – polygamy – was becoming the rage on television, including this:

What’s next? Non-fictional "group marriage TV" will arrive on the Bravo channel in the spring, with a documentary called Three of Hearts: A Postmodern Family, featuring a New York triple with two gay men, a woman, and two children. Now, reading that last sentence – what was your reaction? Perhaps a bit surprised, maybe somewhat disgusted. But you weren’t shocked, were you? I rest my case.

Well, it’s a little late to qualify as "spring" now, but this film will air on Bravo this month, and it’s now being publicized by Fox News, in their syndicated program "Geraldo at Large." MRC’s Geoff Dickens reported that on Thursday night, Fox anchor Laurie Dhue filed a story for Geraldo on the film with a predictable opening:

Jealous guardians of high standards or just . . . jealous? There was a rare bit of consensus on tonight's Fox News Watch, as pundits from left and right came together to condemn Ann Coulter for what they judged to be money-motivated excesses in her latest opus, 'Godless: The Church of Liberalism'. The focus was Coulter's controversial statements about the Jersey Girls - the 9/11 widows turned harsh Bush administration critics. Highlighted was this excerpt from Ann's book:

"These broads are millionaires, lionized on TV and in articles about them . . . I have never seen people enjoying their husbands' death so much."

MRC's Mike Rule noticed on Friday that CBS "Early Show" co-host Hannah Storm held fast to deeply pessimistic questions in an interview with Sen. John McCain. She began by wondering if Zarqawi's death would have any effect at all:

"Well, even the president, Senator McCain, had a notably cautious response yesterday to the fact that al Zarqawi was dead. He said we can expect terrorists to carry on without him. What's your assessment? Will his death have any impact on the level of violence? Particularly the civil war that's raging in Iraq now?"