Dan Gainor's blog

The gay marriage debate went to the Supreme Court on Tuesday and all three network evening news shows spun the argument in support of gay marriage.

While audio from the court gave ABC, CBS and NBC the ability to deliver balanced portrayals of the actual debate inside, each show put its own twist on the day’s events –against traditional marriage.

CBS “Evening News” was the most overt. Anchor Scott Pelley led into the report asking “how all this got started in California?” Reporter John Blackstone’s report was filled with images of gay couples and included at least 12 separate video or photo clips of gay weddings. That story dwelt heavily on how gays wanted things their way, profiling a lesbian couple that wants to get married, and quoting two other pro-gay voices. It included only one supporter of traditional marriage.

Liberals always say they don’t want to take away guns. But give them an awful tragedy like the Newtown, Conn. shooting and they get bolder and more honest. MSNBC host Ed Schultz showed a rare bout of such honesty during a brief Twitter exchange Saturday. Schultz asked “Why should anyone own an assault rifle ?” and followed it up by saying “it's the confiscation of these types of weapons that counts and will have an impact.”

“The Ed Show” host wasn’t done his attack on gun rights. “The NRA needs to state the case why assault weapons are needed by anyone,” he claimed. And after that, he told one poster that “a Glock pistol qualifies as an assault weapon.” That last bit is surely a surprise to both gun owners and Congress which didn’t include handguns in its previous assault weapons ban.

Israel was attacked by more than 200 rockets on Nov. 15 by a known terror organization – known by everyone but ABC, CBS and NBC.

Hamas, which runs the Gaza Strip, was declared a “foreign terrorist organization” more than 15 years ago by the United States. But not one rocket attack story on the network morning or evening news shows called the terrorists anything other than “militants.”

In 61 percent of the stories (8 out of 13) in 2012, the three networks wemt to great pains to avoid calling Hamas terrorists. Instead, they were “militants” with “militant Islamic leaders”

Journalists have been reeling from the realities of new media. No longer can they pretend their actual reporting lacks bias. Spun news stories, bogus video editing, lies and false statistics all make up the daily news diet.

But author Christopher C. Horner is proving that journalists out themselves long before a story even gets written. Horner, whose upcoming book “The Liberal War on Transparency: Confessions of a Freedom of Information 'Criminal'” comes out in the fall, just skewered New York Times’ lefty climate “reporter” Justin Gillis in a new piece for the DC Examiner.

ABC News senior correspondent Jim Avila has a new target for his “pink slime” crusade – a mother whose 6-year-old son died from E coli. Avila, whose coverage has targeted Beef Products, Inc., went after the company’s supporters at an Iowa press conference.

At the same time, one beef maker has had to file for bankruptcy protection as a result of the media assault. “AFA Foods, a company that produces beef products, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection today and announced it’s selling some assets because of a decrease in demand attributed to the recent media coverage of ‘pink slime.’” The company employs 850 people, adding to the 650 already furloughed thanks to the news media.

Some journalists aren’t content with covering the news; they have to make it, too. That’s been ABC’s strategy as the network has led the charge against USDA-approved beef. That agenda has put at least 600 jobs in jeopardy as the targeted company suspended operations in three separate plants.

ABC’s Jim Avila has been out in front of the issue, repeatedly calling the beef “pink slime,” a term a former USDA employee coined. In all, ABC used the term “pink slime” 52 times in just a two-week span.

Radical anti-life groups have decided to destroy the Susan G. Komen foundation for daring to challenge the abortionists of Planned Parenthood. The so-called “pro-choice” community targeted the group’s fund-raising and even hacked the Komen website, adding a slogan for the “Race for the Cure,” urging readers to “help us run over poor women on the way to the bank.”

Both left-wing organizations and traditional news outlets are helping them do it. Soros-funded radical groups like Moveon.org urged its supporters to “stand with groups that don’t screw over Planned Parenthood,” it too funded by Soros millions. They called on Susan G. Komen to restore its relationship with the abortionists.

Only the politically correct media could think a film about the dangers of radical Islam would be controversial … in New York City, the city of the World Trade Center attack by radical Islamists.

But that's exactly the case, as The New York Times has written seven separate pieces - including an op-ed and an editorial - on the ''firestorm'' over the movie ''The Third Jihad.'' The editorial, headlined ''Hate Film,'' criticized the New York Police Department's ''decision to show a hate-filled film about Muslims to more than 1,400 city police officers.''

Occupy Wall Street isn’t just seizing city squares or the Brooklyn Bridge. The socialist/communist/anarchist revolutionary movement has also seized an incredible amount of coverage from the adoring media.

In the nation’s two most well-known liberal newspapers – The New York Times and Washington Post – the amount of space devoted to Occupy Wall Street has taken on epic proportions. In the nearly six weeks since the Sept. 17 launch of the left-wing movement, the two papers have written a book-load of stories mentioning OWS totalling more than 180,000 words. That comes to 224 stories and opinion pieces, not counting letters to the editor.

As the Occupy Everything crowd marches in dozens of cities nationwide, it’s obvious their goal is nothing less than “global revolution.” It’s the phrase that headlines the live video feed. It’s the sentiment that flows through their entire series of events – from signs to guest speakers. Egyptian speaker Mohammed Ezzeldin encouraged the crowd with comments such as “We have nothing to lose but our chains,” and “Long live revolution.” One-time comedienne Roseanne Barr simply called for bankers to be “beheaded.”

But anarchists, socialists, anti-capitalists and Hollywood idiots chanting “Vive la revolution” isn’t big news. What is news is that the news industry is behind them. This isn’t simply the case of select individuals in journalism supporting the protests. They always do. The Washington Post ran four separate pro-Occupier op-eds in the Sunday Oct. 9, paper. And that’s just on one day. CNN’s Roland Martin called the protesters “American patriots.” The big news here is that two separate news unions, including the newspaper guild, the recognized union for many print and online journalists, and the Writers Guild of America, East (WGAE) are fully behind the radical message of Occupy Wall Street.

Occupy Wall Street might not just be for smelly hippies any more. Major unions and some high-priced Hollywood stars and starlets are throwing their support to the protest. But that’s not enough.

During the live video feed of the protest Thursday afternoon, a woman who identified herself as “Beth Bogart,” stopped by the media table and expressed concern they would get “overwhelmed.” She offered her aid as a former “journalist” and experienced media expert to deal with the media inquiries. Could it be the same Beth Bogart who worked for decades handling lefty PR at Fenton Communications?

John Lennon once wrote "all you need is love." If that's the case, then GOP unknown Jon Huntsman will be the next president of the United States.

The quasi-Republican former ambassador to China is finding the media environment filled with love. Huntsman, who was also the governor of Utah, is trying to position himself as "electable" because liberals, gays and the media love him. (Yes, sometimes those three groups aren't identical.)

They love him because he's the kind of Republican they could vote for if they held their noses and someone forced them to choose a GOP candidate. (Actually, they wouldn't, but it makes a convenient fiction.) After all, they claim, he's a "moderate Republican." Remember when we had "liberal Republicans?" According to Nexis, that term hasn't been used on ABC, CBS or NBC all year.

What else do you call a pro-gay Republican who not only worked for Obama and called him a "remarkable leader," but still has "respect" for the president after Obamacare and a host of other Big Government fiascos. Throw in Huntsman's lefty views on climate and what the Club for Growth calls "inexcusable" spending as governor, and you have an ideal media candidate.

NBC has unquestionably committed an act of religious bigotry designed to offend Christians. Removing ‘under God’ from the Pledge of Allegiance in a piece they aired yesterday during the U.S. Open – not once, but twice – was absolutely not accidental.

It was brazenly deliberate.

Third of Four Parts

Books, newspapers, radio stations, TV stations, websites and cutting edge videos. The pieces of the George Soros media empire are as diverse as the nations of the world and just as widespread. From nakedly partisan left-wing media like Think Progress, the blog for the Center for American Progress, and a TV show on MSNBC, to the supposedly impartial National Public Radio, Soros has impact on the flow of information worldwide.

It gives him incredible influence. Every month, reporters, writers and bloggers at the many outlets he funds easily reach more than 330 million people around the globe. The U.S. Census estimates the population of the entire United States to be just less than 310 million.

That's roughly the entire population of the United States with the population of Australia thrown in for good measure - every single month.

This information is part of an upcoming report by the Media Research Center's Business & Media Institute which has been looking into George Soros and his influence on the media.

Just counting 13 prominent operations of the 180 media organizations he has funded equals 332 million people each month. Included in that total are big players like NPR, which received $1.8 million from Soros, as well as the little known Project Syndicate and Public News Service, both of which also claim to reach millions of readers.

Second of Four Parts

It's a scene journalists dream about - a group of coworkers toasting a Pulitzer Prize. For the team at investigative start-up ProPublica, it was the second time their fellow professionals recognized their work for journalism's top honor.

First of Four Parts

When liberal investor George Soros gave $1.8 million to National Public Radio, it became part of the firestorm of controversy that jeopardized NPR's federal funding. But that gift only hints at the widespread influence the controversial billionaire has on the mainstream media. Soros, who spent $27 million trying to defeat President Bush in 2004, has ties to more than 30 mainstream news outlets - including The New York Times, Washington Post, the Associated Press, NBC and ABC.

Prominent journalists like ABC's Christiane Amanpour and former Washington Post editor and now Vice President Len Downie serve on boards of operations that take Soros cash. This despite the Society of Professional Journalist's ethical code stating: "avoid all conflicts real or perceived.

Apparently, megalomaniacs need schedulers.

Just ask George Soros. The left-wing billionaire is helping fund two major conferences that start on the same day, in two different locations just a three hours apart by car. Two liberal events packed into one long weekend. God created the world in six days. Apparently, Soros, who sees himself as “some kind of god,”needs just a long weekend to start remaking today's world in his image.

The emphasis of both conferences is a familiar one to American voters – change. Soros wants to begin changing the global economy in one event. In the other, his flunkies want to “Change the world. Change the media.”

Now that is change you can believe in. Sadly, those who actually report the news must believe in it because they sure as heck aren’t reporting on Soros or either event. And that’s even though staffers or even executives from Reuters, the Financial Times, NPR, PBS, The Washington Post and other major media outlets are speaking at one event or the other.

The first gathering in Bretton Woods, N.H., is an economic conference Soros once described as “a grand bargain that rearranges the entire financial order.” In October 2009, Soros committed $50 million to the Institute for New Economic Thinking (INET). A week later, the glib lefty investor wrote a column calling for a new Bretton Woods event, to recreate the one that helped design the post-WWII economy. Only he wants this one to knock America down a peg or three.

Where have all the war protesters gone, long time passing?

They’re mostly backing Obama’s attack on Libya or at least keeping quiet so they don’t aid those evil conservatives intent on criticizing the president. More moderate lefties had once promised a third way. Now we find out that was a typo. It’s not a third way, it’s a third war.

President Obama, who was swept in on a tide of anti-war sentiment and anger over GOP spending, is now running yet another unpopular war and spending more than any president in history. If the GOP tried this, the news media would beat them with their microphones. But because it’s the president with journalists in his back pocket, there is little controversy.

It wasn’t so long ago that Code Pinkers were the darlings of journalism. You could find them across the media landscape. The Washington Post had lovingly huge features on them titled “Protesting for Peace With a Vivid Hue and Cry; Code Pink's Tactics: Often Theatrical, Always Colorful.” “Bring the troops home,” that 2007 story ended. Four years later, we know no one on the left really wanted to send the troops home. They just wanted to send Bush home.

Or there was the Code Pink protester confronting Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice during a Capitol Hill hearing. As The Post described it, “an antiwar protester shouted ‘War criminal!’ and waved blood-colored hands in her face.” Who hasn’t seen that picture? The news ran that so often it was like they got royalties. (News outlets are desperate for cash these days.)

Two years ago, George Soros said he wanted to reorganize the entire global economic system. In two short weeks, he is going to start – and no one seems to have noticed.

On April 8, a group he’s funded with $50 million is holding a major economic conference and Soros’s goal for such an event is to “establish new international rules” and “reform the currency system.” It’s all according to a plan laid out in a Nov. 4, 2009, Soros op-ed calling for “a grand bargain that rearranges the entire financial order.”

The event is bringing together “more than 200 academic, business and government policy thought leaders” to repeat the famed 1944 Bretton Woods gathering that helped create the World Bank and International Monetary Fund. Soros wants a new “multilateral system,” or an economic system where America isn’t so dominant.

More than two-thirds of the slated speakers have direct ties to Soros. The billionaire who thinks “the main enemy of the open society, I believe, is no longer the communist but the capitalist threat” is taking no chances.

Just a few years ago, double-digit unemployment seemed like a crazy idea. But when the economy began to stumble, it was fear of high unemployment and a promise to prevent it that the Obama administration used to usher in the $787 billion stimulus package. As The New York Times reported on Oct. 22, 2009, "The Obama administration's forecast at the start of the year, which predicted that unemployment would not climb much above 8 percent."

A big promise to be sure and a claim that proved false as unemployment climbed higher and higher reaching 10.2 percent at its peak. Yet, ABC, CBS, and NBC referenced this promise just nine times in two years in stimulus stories mentioning unemployment.

Unemployment still exceeds the Obama-guaranteed 8 percent unemployment rate two years after the bill's passage. In the same time period, network news barely reported that the stimulus failed to halt the sharp rise in unemployment. ABC 'World News,' CBS 'Evening News' and NBC 'Nightly News' all paid plenty of attention to the stimulus and its accomplishments, but more than 98 percent of those evening broadcast stories skipped over the administration's failed prediction.

Arianna Huffington's crazy left-wing, pro-Democrat website gets bought out by AOL for $315 million. Professional Angry Man Keith Olbermann follows up by joining Al Gore's deservedly unknown Current TV effort. Before that, decrepit Newsweek was absorbed by one of the lesser liberal lights of the blogosphere - Tina Brown's Daily Beast.

To journalists desperate for a direction - any direction - turning left seems an easy way to go. Forget MSNBC's brief propaganda attempt to "lean forward." That is going nowhere.

Old-style, supposedly neutral journalism is collapsing. Out of the rubble, we are seeing more and more journalists declare themselves to be what we've always known they were - liberal, left-wing, progressive or even "socialist," as MSNBC's Lawrence O'Donnell admitted late last year.

Faster than a congressman can take off his shirt, journalists have proven every complaint about media bias conservatives have leveled for decades. Yes, journalists are liberal. Yes, they blatantly spin stories to benefit both liberals and Democrats. Yes, hosts like Chris Matthews play "Hardball" with conservatives and play a thrill-ing game of slo-pitch softball with their Democrat buddies.

 

More than nine out of 10 Americans celebrate Christmas - even atheists, agnostics or believers in other faiths, according to surveys by LifeWay Research and USA TODAY/Gallup. They might be roasting chestnuts over an open fire, decking the halls with boughs of holly or trying to get the Chipmunks Christmas song out of their heads, but they are celebrating.

Imagine the year is 1942 and the German government runs a news bureau in Washington, D.C. collecting government secrets. Even FDR would have laughed at claims they were actual journalists, locked them up and thrown away the key.

He would have been right. There's a huge difference between an individual or an organization reporting abuses in government or business one at a time and the same people stealing enough classified material to run a spy agency.

But sleazy Julian Assange and his spy agency WikiLeaks are trying to pretend they are journalists. He even calls himself 'editor-in-chief,' sort of like Mata Hari calling herself H.L. Mencken or the Rosenbergs claiming to be Woodward and Bernstein. Assange even argued in a recent column that 'WikiLeaks coined a new type of journalism: scientific journalism.' As a sign just how far that profession has fallen, many in the media are agreeing with the spin.

This week's news quiz is a toughie. If you blame Sarah Palin for the GOP's failure to take the Senate, have 'always loved NPR,' oppose Arizona's immigration law as "unacceptable and un-American' and called Republican candidate Sharron Angle a 'mental patient,' then you must be:

A) Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, B) Lefty loon and entrepreneur Arianna Huffington, C) An MSNBC host or D) An elitist who 'will help headline the launch next month of a new national group dedicated to restoring civility in politics.'

Spinning the Numbers When Conservatives in Charge: During the year leading up to the 2005-06 mid-term elections, the economy was strong and unemployment never went above 5 percent. That wasn’t how the media reported it. Negative reports and stories spun negatively accounted for 58 percent of the stories (38 out of 65).

Spinning the Numbers When Left in Charge: Despite the near 10 percent unemployment throughout the year leading to the 2009-10 elections, positive reports and stories spun positively accounted for 52 percent of the stories (46 out of 88).

Just days before the mid-term elections and jobs remain the major campaign issue. Unemployment stands at 9.6 percent with nearly 15 million people out of work. Gallup’s analysis argues things are even worse, with unemployment hitting 10 percent again – a number voters wouldn’t see until the Friday after the election. As Gallup explained, it’s “up sharply from 9.4% in mid-September and 9.3% at the end of August.” That means heartache and struggle across the United States.

That’s not the story being told this election. What voters are left with are false impressions from the broadcast news shows – that somehow the worst unemployment in 25 years is not that bad. CNBC’s Steve Liesman called it “self-sustaining job growth,” on NBC’s April 2, 2010 “Nightly News.”That’s also exactly the opposite of how those same networks handled low unemployment during the last mid-term election. Then, with a Republican in the White House, journalists worked hard at undermining the positive news with the possibility that bad things might occur.

Steroids are back in the news with the arrest of a Canadian doctor charged with providing performance-enhancing drugs to top athletes. It’s a major issue in the sports world, raising the question whether some of today’s most-well-known sports stars violated rules to boost their performance. At the same time, the ethics of how The New York Times handled the investigation also raises serious questions.

At the Times, steroids scandals are big news. Since December 2009, the Times has run at least 42 stories and briefs linking the latest scandal to at least 12 major athletes including golfer Tiger Woods, and baseball players Alex Rodriguez, Jose Reyes and Carlos Beltran. Every one of them was analyzed for his connection to Dr. Anthony Galea, who the Times described as “a sports medicine specialist who has treated hundreds of professional athletes across many sports.”

But it’s not the names that were included in the stories that matter. It’s the names that weren’t. In 40 percent of the stories (17 out of 42), reporters refused to disclose who was leaking them information. The very first story included this nebulous sentence: “He is suspected of providing athletes with performance-enhancing drugs, according to several people who have been briefed on the investigation.”

Imagine the furor if a televangelist went on a major TV network and told viewers Christianity would conquer the world and that the flag of Christianity would fly over the White House.

Network reporters, Hollywood celebrities and the pundit class likely would seize the moment as an example of the evils of America's supposed Christian theocracy. The story might be tied to the dangers of evangelical religion and likely even to the Tea Parties. Across the oceans, radical Islamists would likely do as they did during the Koran burning episode or after the Danish cartoons were published. They would riot. Cars, businesses and maybe even embassies might  burn. People might die.

Thankfully, that didn't happen. What did happen is far scarier.

ABC News held a townhall meeting, bringing on experts from left and right to ask the question: "Should Americans fear Islam?"

Thanks to ABC, we know the answer. Americans absolutely should. One of the network's "experts" was Muslim cleric Anjem Choudary, who Britain's Sunday Times called "the leader of the now-outlawed extremist group Islam4UK." His comments on "This Week" bore out everything conservatives criticize about radical Islam. "We do believe as Muslims the East and the West will be governed by the Sharia," Choudray said. "Indeed we believe that one day the flag of Islam will fly over the White House."

Nine years and it still seems like we just woke from a nightmare. September 11, 2001, is seared into the national consciousness like Pearl Harbor 60 years before - only worse because we watched it on television as it happened. A nation was transfixed while 3,000 of our friends, our neighbors, our co-workers, our classmates and our family members perished in violence and fire.

They were killed in the Twin Towers, in a field in Pennsylvania and at the Pentagon itself. Police officers and fire fighters fell by the hundreds trying to save as many as they could. All were victims of the kind of terror Americans had grown used to hearing about elsewhere. But not here.

A grieving America turned to images of the Statue of Liberty to find solace. Artists from around the world depicted the statue as sad or proud or a mother defending her child. Our nation rallied under the motto: "United We Stand."

Now we know we were never all that united. Soon after fire fighters raised a flag in the ruins of New York, the fingerpointing began. George Bush was to blame, though he only recently had taken office. America was to blame because of its longstanding friendship with Israel. Everyone was to blame it seemed, except the monsters driven by hate to harm the innocent.

Not long after the Twin Towers fell, the crazy conspiracies rose in their place. The attack was an inside job we were told as the 9/11 truther industry spread like the plague it is. By 2004, "half (49.3%) of New York City residents and 41% of New York citizens overall say that some of our leaders ‘knew in advance that attacks were planned on or around September 11, 2001, and that they consciously failed to act,'" according to a Zogby International poll.