Seton Motley's blog

To paraphrase the estimable Yogi Berra - it’s like deja vu all over, and over, and over, and over again.

The Jurassic Press media is enraptured with a certain story.

In their third Presidential debate analysis, the Jurassic Press Media last night and thus far this morning have failed utterly in their role as fact checker and record-corrector - at least when it comes to what President Barack Obama had to say. 

As but one glaring example, there were the President’s absurd assertions regarding the auto bailout and China.

The Jurassic Press have long had a field day puffing up bailed out General Motors (GM) and their electric automotive windmill - the Chevrolet Volt.

When it came to August Volt sales numbers, the Media were Justin Bieber-excited.

The Jurassic Press is in full-on Defend President Barack Obama mode.  But since President Obama’s record is indefensible, that means the Press is also in Eviscerate Mitt Romney mode.

The ideological godfather of the Press is, of course, the New York Times.  Where they lead, the rest of the Jurassic Press follows. 

The Jurassic Press is missing much in their reporting on the $50 billion bailout of General Motors (GM).  The Press is open channeling for President Barack Obama - allowing him to frame the bailout exactly as he wishes in the 2012 Presidential election. 

The President is running in large part on the bailout’s $30+ billion loss, uber-failed “success.”  And the Press is acting as his stenographers.  An epitome of this bailout nightmare mess is the electric absurdity that is the Chevrolet Volt.  The Press is at every turn covering up - rather than covering - the serial failures of President Obama’s signature vehicle.

The Jurassic Press was in full-throated ObamaChorus mode in reporting on General Motors (GM)’s allegedly strong June sales.

Very few failed to receive the sheet music.

The $82 billion auto bailout has been a Crony Socialist nightmare mess. We’re going to lose at least $30 billion on the deal.  And that’s only if the Barack Obama Administration’s math can be trusted - a dicey proposition at best.

The Administration eviscerated two hundred-plus years of bankruptcy law, throwing bond holders over the side to over-reward their United Auto Workers shock force buddies.

General Motors (GM) is cutting undisclosed deals with executives’ wives businesses.And on, and on, and on....Haven’t heard most or all of this?  Not surprising - the Jurassic Press ain’t reporting it.

One thing I’ve learned in the year I have spent tracking General Motors cum Government Motors (GM) - and all its Crony Socialist, green non-energy “energy”, flammable absurdities - is the fact that the car media are every bit the Leftist open-channel steno pool as are the political media.  

And with President Barack Obama running for reelection in large part on the utterly failed “success” of the $85 billion auto bailout, the car and political media have by now achieved fully melded fusion.

The examples are myriad.

The New York Times today has a piece entitled:

Auto Bailout Done, Obama Looks for Payback 

Two problems - with just the headline.  Which the Times either ignorantly doesn’t know - or knows and willfully ignores. The auto bailout isn’t “done.”  

We really shouldn’t get angry with the media for being obstinately silent and/or willfully ignorant when it comes to - amongst many, MANY other things - Democrats and Leftists breaking the law.

It’s like getting upset with a six-month old for behaving badly in public.  It’s what we get - we should not be vexed when we get it.

There's a new speech sheriff in the town of Fresno, California, and they want to silence conservative talk radio.  And they'll say or do whatever it takes to get it done.

New "community group" Citizens for Civility & Accountability in Media (CCAM) is super-peeved at Fresno, California radio station KMJ for having the temerity to broadcast (on their two stations) conservative talk radio hosts to whom people want to listen.

Because, you see, it's "hate speech" - according to CCAM.  And therefore, KMJ should "alter their programming" (read: change their content by silencing conservatives) "in order to curtail practices that we believe to be damaging to our social fabric and to civility in public discourse."

It would seem the residents of Fresno do not believe that Rush Limbaugh, Mark Levin, Sean Hannity, Glenn Beck and others on KMJ are "damaging to our social fabric and to civility in public discourse."  But that could not matter less to CCAM.

This local "community group" has organized a press conference for today at 11AM PT to publicly call on KMJ to dump these conservative hosts, who according to them:

Editor's Note: Video and audio available below the fold.

Los Locos Yet another liberal bemoans the unbridled free speech that resulted from President Ronald Reagan's 1987 call to no longer enforce the so-called "Fairness" Doctrine.

This time it's Phoenix, Arizona Democratic Mayor Phil Gordon.  (He is not the Phil Gordon who plays poker.  The latter seeks to relieve you only of your money, not of your First Amendment rights.)

Mayor Censor participated in a May 14 panel discussion put together by the George Soros-funded, John Podesta-run, Marxist Van Jones permanent job place-holding Center for American Progress entitled "When Federal Government Failure Leads to Local Upheaval-Arizona and Beyond." 

At which Mayor Censor designated the absence of the mis-named "Fairness" Doctrine and the free market radio choices made by the American people that resulted as in part contributing to the passage of Arizona law 1070, which calls on state law enforcement officers to enforce federal immigration laws.

Says Mayor Censor:

Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan wrote in a 1996 article entitled "Private Speech, Public Purpose: The Role of Governmental Motive in First Amendment Doctrine" that "redistribution of speech" is not "itself an illegitimate end" for government. 

As first reported by Matt Cover at the Media Research Center's news wing CNSNews.com, Kagan offers up this gem:

"If there is an ‘overabundance' of an idea in the absence of direct governmental action -- which there well might be when compared with some ideal state of public debate -- then action disfavoring that idea might ‘un-skew,' rather than skew, public discourse."

So if talk radio suffers from an "overabundance" of conservative voices, government action to "un-skew" this particular public discourse is just fine by her. 

Hello so-called "Fairness" Doctrine.  Not to mention Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Diversity Czar Mark Lloyd's liberally "skewed" interpretations of FCC "media diversity" and "localism" rules.

The Media and its Two Faces

UPDATE (below the fold): The Washington Examiner's Byron York just posted a piece - Andrew Breitbart's coin challenge for evidence of the "N" word has been verbally answered by AFL-CIO chief Richard Trumka.

--------

Editor's Note: Video of conservative being beaten down below the fold.

The media and the Left (please pardon the redundancy) continue to insist that TEA Party participants are engaged in racist and violent behavior - at the surreptitious and stealth "hate speech" urging of talk radio hosts and Republicans.

These have almost all been phantom charges.  They are leveled by liberals and Democrats, and the media immediately report them as if they were true.  They rarely bother to look for evidence, which works out because most times there isn't any.

On the weekend that health care passed, Democrat Congressman Andre Carson of Indiana asserted that the "N" word was shouted fifteen times at him and fellow black Congressman John Lewis. 

The media went right to print with it, reporting it as if it were true.  But several videos of the encounter between the Congressmen and the TEA Party-ers surfaced soon after.  And on NONE of them could the word be heard once, let alone fifteen times in the chanted fashion that Carson claimed. 

Internet media mogul Andrew Breitbart offered $10,000 to the United Negro College Fund - and then later upped it to $100,000 - for any evidence that the word was used at all.  He's still got his coin. 

And of course, no correction or apology was forthcoming from the media.  In fact, some are still reporting it as if it actually happened.

Equal Time for Equal Minds

Last Thursday, on his unwatched and unwatchable MSNBC television program, Equine Ed Schultz stepped into his Leftist Wayback Machine for a little retro-censorship. With the intent of bringing it back to the future.

Having first called for a reimposition of the alleged "Fairness" Doctrine the week prior on his unlistened to and unlistenable radio show, Schultz took his censorious intentions to his tens of viewers on the tube. (He is doing all of this after making fun of us in 2008 for concerning ourselves with the Doctrine's return.)

Schultz made his latest call for "fairness" by citing the patently absurd 2007 "report" The Structural Imbalance of Political Talk Radio. Which was co-published by the George Soros-funded Leftist "think" tanks Center for American Progress and (the Marxist-founded) Free Press.

We have in fact dismantled this "report"for its deep-seated and inherent fraudulence. It asserts that talk radio is too conservative - and that we need oppressive government regulations aplenty to remedy the situation.

However, it cooked the books from the outset - excluding uber-liberal National Public Radio (NPR) from their analysis pool and then drawing their fraudulent conclusion.

It was co-authored by the Hugo Chavez-loving, "white people" need to be forced to "step down" "so someone else can have power" asserting Mark Lloyd - who is now the Federal Communications Commission (FCC)'s first ever "Chief Diversity Officer." Just one of the many honest brokers involved in this wholly dishonest endeavor.

Two Useful Idiots and the Man Who's Using Them In light of our recent look at Venezuelan thug dictator Hugo Chavez and the FCC Diversity Czar Lloyds who love him, we now bring you this. 

The intrepid Steve Forbes took last Wednesday to FoxNews.com to analyze Chavez vis a vis a report by the Organization for the American States (OAS).  Forbes writes about:

(A) new and discouraging, but not unsurprising (OAS) report about the troubling anti-democratic trend in Venezuela, as Hugo Chavez continues to crack down on those who oppose him - be they in the judiciary, opposition parties or the media. The OAS's 300 page report by jurists and civil rights activists from Antigua, Argentina, Brazil, Chile and the United States points out the increasing role that violence and murder have played in Chavez's consolidation of his power, including the documented killing of journalists.

Again, Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chief Diversity Officer Mark Lloyd has praised Chavez for taking "very seriously the media in his country." Again we ask, is the above what Lloyd has in mind?

More from Forbes:

Is this what Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chief Diversity Officer Mark Lloyd meant when he said (on camera) Venezuelan thug dictator Hugo Chavez (take that, Sean Penn) had begun "to take very seriously the media in his country"- while praising Chavez's "incredible...democratic revolution?"

The Associated Press (AP) late Friday night reported "Chavez criticizes US as arrests stir concern."  Which plays down the lede in the headline, but gets right into it in the story itself.

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez on Friday defended the arrest of a major TV channel owner, calling him a criminal and denying the government is carrying out an assault on press freedom.

The back-to-back arrests this week of two government opponents - including the owner of Venezuela's only remaining anti-Chavez TV channel - have drawn accusations that Chavez is growing increasingly intolerant and authoritarian as his popular support has slipped.

Opposition leaders and human rights groups condemned Thursday's arrest of Globovision's owner Guillermo Zuloaga, who was detained at an airport and released hours later after a judge issued an order barring him from leaving the country.

Zuloaga is accused of spreading false information and insulting the president at an Inter American Press Association meeting in Aruba last weekend, Attorney General Luisa Ortega said.

As the piece indicates, this is but the latest example of Chavez taking "very seriously the media in his country," in Lloyd parlance.  Which is woefully at odds with freedoms of speech and the press.  Which is fine with Lloyd, because so's he.

They Know Nuh-Think It was the 2008 Talkers magazine New Media Seminar - June 6 and 7 in New York City.  I was there to hob nob with the elite of talk radio. 

And Ed Schultz.

I was there also to curry support for our then latest effort to keep the radio airwaves free from tyrannical and censorious government regulation.  At that time it was against a return of the ridiculously mis-named "Fairness" Doctrine.  Given the talent pool in which I was swimming - those whose livelihoods would be destroyed by it's reinstatement - many were graciously willing to assist.

Not Ed Schultz.  

Word of my efforts made its way to him.  And he sought me out and approached me so as to ridicule us for fighting the good fight.  He rigidly insisted that no Democrat - no one in fact - was seeking a return of the Censorship Doctrine.

"Who talks to Nancy Pelosi more - you or me?" he angrily asked.  I replied "Have you talked to Nancy Pelosi - ever?"  Because if he had, once, ever, he had done so more than me.  (And more's the pity for him.)

He responded "Well I just spoke to her, and no one wants to see (the alleged "Fairness" Doctrine) brought back."

I tried to persuade him that there were plans in the works but he remained, as always, impervious to facts.

UPDATE: Fantastic video analyzing two weeks in the life of Keith Olbermann and his (nearly all white) guests below the fold.  From February 4 through February 18, Keith had 48 guests - and TWO were black.  One, actually - the Washington Post's Eugene Robinson appeared twice.  4% - now THAT'S diverse.  Bravo and kudos to Broliath for said stellar production.

The Place for Race-Baiting

MSNBC hosts Chris Matthews, Rachel Maddow and the egregiously stentorian and officious Keith Olbermann have made their warped interpretation of the conservative and TEA Party movements as racist a staple of their oft-ridiculed and rarely watched television programs.

These three (and other MSNBC hosts) have engaged in this slander with regularity and fervor. 

Reporting on an August 18, 2009 Arizona TEA Party, white host Contessa Brewer fretted "there are questions about whether this has racial overtones....(with) white people showing up with guns" (Arizona is an open-carry state). The only problem was, one of the men they showed packing was black, and they edited out of the video any show of his melanin so as to carry further their fraudulent narrative.

The Dallas (Texas) TEA Party created a video mocking Olbermann (and Company) for these serial assaults, showing people of color attending TEA Parties and contrasting it with the prevailing whiteness of MSNBC's line-up. To which Olbermann responded with a list of black participants in the alleged news making of his network (and that of parent NBC).

Well Olbermann's explanation, and all of the race-baiting "reporting" done by his vile network, apparently wasn't nearly good enough for Congresswomen Sheila Jackson-Lee (D-Texas) and Maxine Waters (D-California), two members of the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC).

UPDATE II: Politico Executive Editor and Co-Founder Jim VandeHei on Monday appeared on Fox News Channel's O'Reilly Factor to defend the indefensible (video at right; audio here).

UPDATE (below the fold): Calderone responds to us in electronic print.

-----------------------------

The Politico's Michael Calderone on Sunday wrote the following headline and first paragraph. With what would appear to have been a straight face.

Fox's Sammon bashes MSM; Todd calls it 'absurd attack'

Fox News Washington managing editor Bill Sammon bashed the media's coverage of the tea party movement with unsubstantiated claims of bias during a panel on "Fox News Sunday."

"Unsubstantiated claims" of media bias against the TEA Party movement? Really? Seriously?

It may be time for Calderone to move off the media beat. He clearly hasn't been paying attention to major details of a major story for nearly a year.

I would offer he could be moved to Obituaries, but that too would entail coverage of the "MSM."

How has Calderone missed completely the now nearly ubiquitous presence of the sexually-explicit, derogatory term used by members of the "MSM" to describe the participants in said Movement? The in-person attacks on Party participants by the likes of CNN's Susan Roesgen (now no longer with the firm)? The over-arching denigrating words and deeds by people throughout the "MSM?"

There is so much "MSM" anti-TEA Party venom to substantiate Sammon's assertion, one hardly knows where to begin. So we will simply list, with links and dates, documentation aplenty below. 

(Cursory glance result: 52 NB stories.)

We hope Calderone avails himself hereof, and repents. In writing. Today.

UPDATE (below the fold): Fox News Channel's Sean Hannity referenced the video from this post on his January 20th show.

-------------------------------

The Word of the Day is: Context.

First, as to the video at right.  Its context is the May 9, 2009 White House Correspondents Association Dinner.  At which White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel uttered the following:

"When you think about the First Amendment...you think it's highly overrated."

Emanuel said this to an unidentified entertainment reporter (I did not toil too strenuously to ascertain his identity).  But said scribe seemed a little bewildered by Emanuel's assertion, despite the obvious mirth in Rahm's face as he delivers the line - at the Correspondents' Dinner.  The irony appears to escape the man with the microphone.

But given how the Administration has gone on to handle all things First Amendment, perhaps this journalist is not humor-addled, but prescient.  Let us now place Emanuel's remark into the proper Administrative context. 

Ken Vogel, the Left Whisperer The Politico's Kenneth P. Vogel was today a poor excuse for a journalist.  He was, however, an excellent excuse for a public relations flack for President Barack Obama and his Administration.

Recall if you will the brouhaha that arose after C-Span Chief Executive Officer Brian Lamb publicly released a letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and Republican Leaders Mitch McConnell and John Boehner asking that the electronic media be allowed access to the health care legislation conference meetings. 

(Currently, they are being conducted behind closed doors with only Democrats allowed to participate - no Republicans, no media.) 

This became a bit of a problem for President Obama as well.  Here we have eight times during the campaign where he pledged on camera to have all health care meetings televised - on C-Span, by name.  Yet he has thus far refused to demand greater openness of or for the health care legislative process. 

Fox News Channel and radio talk show host Glenn Beck has quickly risen to be one the most prominent targets of the Left.  Radio Talk King Rush Limbaugh is Liberal Enemy #1; there's a strong case to be made that Beck is now running second.

One of the myriad feeble way's the Left attempts to deal with Beck - or any conservative - is to dismiss him or her as a liar, without any facts to back up said claim and often in the face of overwhelming evidence provided by the conservative in question.

Beck is spending this week on his FNC show revisiting the copious reams of evidence he compiled over the course of the last year - as he laid waste to one liberal nostrum and public official (Czar, if you will) after another. 

And who did Beck choose to have bat lead off in his "Let's Hammer Home the Truth" week?

Michael Calderone,
Doing it Right

UPDATE #2 - ALSO BELOW THE FOLD.

UPDATE BELOW THE FOLD - THE ESTEEMED MR. CALDERONE RESPONDS.

-------------

CORRECTION: I said the Washington Post was on the hook twice on Calderone's list.  H/t to NBer Dean who pointed out it's three - #s 2, 7 & 10.  A thousand apologies, and thanks to The Man from the People's Republic of Maryland.

Politico's staff reporter Michael Calderone has compiled his list of his top ten Media Blunders of 2009.

I for one think he did a fully fair and more than fairly good job of it. Media Research Center Director of Media Analysis Tim Graham for two thinks so as well.

On his list were the likes of MSNBC's Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow, the New York Times's Maureen Dowd and CNN. And the Washington Post - twice. Targets all for which you'll find a rich environment here on NewsBusters. And he slammed the traditional media in totality for remaining dockside while the Good Ships ACORN and Van Jones set sail on alternative media seas. He hailed the Fox News Channel's Glenn Beck and website mogul Andrew Breitbart by name for captaining those stories when the Jurassic Press stood down.

Calderone clips Fox News for what he calls their "Tea Party Trifecta," but he's hardly bashing meritlessly here either. An FNC producer was caught on tape rallying a Tea Party crowd. That is quite a bit over the top. And Sean Hannity did run B-roll from the wrong rally - a more populous one - and was forced to apologize to the world generally and Jon Stewart particularly.

Though Hannity's probably was an honest mistake. The Pulitzer-winning Dowd's excuse for "borrowing" a paragraph from the liberal website Talking Points Memo - that a "friend" had sent it to her - bends the credibility curve downward quite a bit.

Someone at Politico worn-out horsed (See: Definition #3) Calderone on the photograph composite accompanying his article, however. (Said snapshots appear below the fold.) We don't think Calderone chooses what goes with his pieces. Perhaps he should.

How Do You Know Mark Lloyd is Lying?
Editor's Note: MRC President and NewsBusters.org Publisher Brent Bozell earlier today issued a statement on this. 

Mark Lloyd, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC)'s Chief Diversity Officer, made an appearance outside the confines of the communications Bat Cave yesterday.  He keynoted a morning panel discussion entitled Social Media, Net Neutrality, and Future of Journalism for the liberal group (and FCC "Diversity" Committee member) Media Access Project.

I highlight his emergence because his boss, FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski, has declined to make Lloyd available for interviews, saying he as Chair speaks for the FCC and his staff.  (A position which I think is completely fair and appropriate.)  So it is rare to see him out and about.

Lloyd in fact began his talk by stating "The views I express today are my own. I do not speak for the Federal Communications Commission."  Which is also fine.

What wasn't fine was his deep delving into untruths when he later attempted to defend himself against what he claimed were "exaggerations and distortions" of a wide range of his thoughts, positions and policy prescriptions, from what he called a "right-wing smear campaign."

In old school parlance, Lloyd lied.  Quite a bit.  And how do we know this?

Bill Cathcart, Clearing Away the PC Clutter Bill Cathcart, Vice President and General Manager for CBS affiliate WTOC in Savannah, Georgia, took to the airwaves on November 9th with a blistering video editorial excoriating the hold political correctness (PC) has on our society (video and transcript below the fold).

It is certainly refreshing to hear and see a news executive say these sorts of things, given the prostraters to PC that so thoroughly inhabit his profession.

Cathcart began by speaking of the horrific Fort Hood, Texas murders by Islamist extremist Nidal Malik Hasan, and pointing out how it was political correctness (PC) that cowed everyone from talking to anyone about this obviously dangerous man.

Cathcart rightly points out that this oppressive PC regime dominates not just the Army, but the nation.  "We've become so ridiculous with our political correctness.  So afraid of offending, despite the truth.  So overly tolerant and self-effacing, pandering and apologizing to be liked.  Putting up with absurd challenges to our Constitution, laws, traditions and freedoms, that we've become a nation of enablers for those with evil intent."

Leading the charge on this are, of course, Cathcart's media cohorts.  There are no greater PC enablers and enforcers than the men and women who allegedly deliver us the news. 

Multi-Directional Censorship
(photo courtesy of)

The Wall Street Journal's intrepid and very good Amy Schatz has a piece today updating us on the progress of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC)'s National Broadband Plan. 

With all that we have thus far seen, things look quite grim from a free speech, free market perspective.  The groundwork for government information totalitarianism - favored by people like Hugo Chavez-loving FCC "Diversity Czar" Mark Lloyd and Marxist "media reform"-outfit Free Press founder Robert McChesney - is being laid in the Plan being crafted by FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski.

As we first reported, the Center for American Progress (at which Lloyd was then a Senior Fellow) and McChesney's Free Press co-authored the deeply flawed, anti-conservative and Christian talk radio "report" entitled The Structural Imbalance of Political Talk Radio.

But their shared disdain for free speech and the free market extend way beyond just this.   These "media reformers" seek to eradicate most or all private ownership of all information delivery - be it by radio, television or the internet - thereby leaving the federal government as sole purveyor. 

We wrote Monday of Leftist, George Soros-funded "media reform" outfit Free Press, and their extensive relationships with people currently in power at the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and in the White House - up to and including President Barack Obama.

With current FCC Chief Diversity Officer ("Diversity Czar") Mark Lloyd and the Leftist, George Soros-funded Center for American Progress, Free Press co-authored the 2007 report The Structural Imbalance of Political Talk Radio.  Which calls for the FCC to enforce exceedingly broad (we would say warped) new definitions of the media diversity and localism FCC broadcast license requirements. These new definitions and their enactment are intended to force conservative and Christian talk show hosts off the air, to be replaced by those of a Leftist bent.

Free Press developed then-presidential candidate Obama's communications policies portfolio.  Now-President Obama's FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski hired Free Press Press Secretary Jen Howard to serve in the same capacity for the FCC. And Marxist 9-11 "Truther" Van Jones - who was President Obama's "Green Jobs Czar" until his multi-layered, anti-American and paranoid past came to light, forcing him to resign - was a Free Press Board member until 2008.

We also mentioned Free Press's co-founder, college professor and avowed Marxist Robert McChesney. (Some fairly interesting video quotes from him at right; inordinately interesting print quotes from him below the fold.)  If you have not yet already had enough Marxism and Marxists, please - read on (warning - there's a Reverend Jeremiah Wright on-video sighting beneath as well).