Michael Chapman's blog

The Media Research Center, parent organization of NewsBusters, rented five large billboards in Times Square over the weekend as part of our new“Stop Censoring the News” campaign to educate the public about how certain media outlets apparently are spinning their coverage or simply censoring news critical of the Obama administration to protect and promote a liberal agenda.

The five billboards are clustered together in Times Square and face in different directions, covering 3,800 square feet. Two of the signs read, “It’s Time the Liberal Media Stop Censoring the News!” and two others read, “Start Telling the Truth!” above an image of three monkeys, labeled ABC, CBS, and NBC, who are depicted as the  three mystic apes that see no evil, speak no evil, and hear no evil.

Grunge and hippie-folk rocker Neil Young, who opposes President Bush's war in Iraq and released an album last year "Living with War" with a song called "Let's Impeach the President," nonetheless came to Bush's defense recently, saying he's a "leader" with perseverance. As Reuters reported (http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080213/ap_en_mu/film_neil_young), in a conversation at the Sundance Film Festival, former band mate David Crosby said there should be a law that persons who can't pronounce the word "nuclear" shouldn't have control over nuclear weapons. Neil Young promptly disagreed. As reported: "A lot of people have problems pronouncing words and spelling things correctly. It doesn't mean that they're not intelligent," Young tells Crosby. "You've got to give the guy credit. Do I agree with him? No. Do I think he's stupid? No. Do I think he's a leader? Yes. He led. He took this country where he wanted to take it. And he steadfastly stuck with it all the way."

Michael Medved, author, film critic, and talk-radio host, argues in one of his latest columns--"Why TV Addiction Links to Liberalism"--that excessive TV viewing may lead some people to embrace "distinctly liberal attitudes on a range of crucial issues, placing them well to the left" of people with lighter TV viewing habits. Medved bases his views on the new study by the MRC's Culture and Media Institute, entitled The Media Assault on American Values.

"The isolation associated with hours and hours in front of the tube leads to liberal values and viewpoints," says Medved.

Actor Robin Williams riffed on Catholic priests as pedophiles on NBC's June 18 Tonight Show with Jay Leno, proving that anti-Catholic bigotry is alive and well and condoned among Hollywood's elite, and apparently among the liberal media as well. Williams essentially smeared all priests,  ignoring the fact that 81 percent of the victims in the Catholic Church were males abused by priests and that more than 40 percent of these victims were males aged 11 to 14. The majority of the victims, according to the official reports on the cases, involved people who were past puberty, i.e., young teenagers.

On the show, Williams pretended to play a game where the pedophile is hidden under a cap (hat tip to the Catholic League). Said Williams: "Here we go. Find the priest, find the pedophile. Find the priest, find the pedophile. Here you go right now. Move 'em around, move 'em around. Oh, you found the pedophile." 

The liberal media love to talk about "victims," particularly victims of alleged economic or social oppression, such as illegal immigrants, children without enough Head Start funding, the homeless, the transgendered, detainees at Gitmo, and so on. But when it comes to victims of left-wing ideology--i.e., Communism--the liberal media don't say too much. And this is evident in the minimal (in my view) coverage given to the dedication of the Memorial to the Victims of Communism in Washington, D.C. on June 12, an event where President Bush spoke and where some of the world's leading experts on communism's atrocities--more than 100 million victims--spoke as well.

From yesterday's dedication of the memorial, there has been some print coverage, yet most of the stories have been buried inside the papers. For instance, Los Angeles Times, p. 15; Chicago Tribune, p. 3; Miami Herald, p. 17; and the Washington Post (registration required) placed the story in its Style section but did run a page 1 story in its free "express" newspaper, distributed around D.C. Good for The Post. But, so far, I have not seen any network news coverage and only one mention on MSNBC in a Financial Times article on the MSNBC Web site. You'd think a memorial dedication to the 100 million victims of the greatest evil in modern times would get a little more attention from the dominant liberal media---but perhaps the "victim" Paris Hilton is more important to them.

Update: Links to other blogger reactions at bottom of post.

Bernard Shaw, the former CNN reporter and Washington, D.C. anchor, told WTTW Channel 11 in Chicago that he's "very, very disappointed with the way news management" at CNN "has gone," reports TVSpy.com. He further complained that Fox News Channel is "the ratings leader ... and what Fox puts on the air is not news." Fox, in Shaw's view, is "commentary, personal analysis."

"I don't want to hear an anchor's personal opinion about anything. Just report the news," said Shaw. "But CNN continues to ape many of the on-air mannerisms of the Fox News Network, and I don't like that." This doesn't match his record. More on that in a moment.

Sen. Barack Obama's new Web site geared to his presidential bid, faith.barackobama.com, includes official endorsements from notorious clergymen known for making fantastic, racially inflammatory claims---yet the liberal media aren't saying much about these endorsements or the controversial clergymen who Sen. Obama has officially embraced. It is doubtful the liberal media would be as silent if such people were publicly endorsing a Republican or conservative political candidate.

Rev. Jeremiah A Wright Jr. is Sen. Obama's pastor. Concerning 9/11, Rev. Wright, says, "White America got their wake-up call after 9-11. White America and the Western world came to realize people of color had not gone away, faded in the woodwork, or just disappeared as the Great White West kept on its merry way of ignoring black concerns.” Wright also calls America "this racist United States of America." Another Obama-endorser is Rev. J. Alfred Smith Sr., who was honored by the violent Black Panther Party and given a community award by the anti-Semitic Nation of Islam (hat-tip to Catholic League). The liberal media's near-silence about all this actually says a lot about their political agenda.

In the new 40th Anniversary Edition of Rolling Stone magazine, Editor Jann Wenner asks rocker-icon Bob Dylan, "Do you worry about global warming?" and Dylan responds: "Where's the global warming? It's freezing here." 

The point is that Dylan was half-serious and questioning Wenner's liberal assumptions, as were a number of other 1960s rock icons who gave some startlingly sober answers to the hyper-idealized drivel regurgitated by Wenner and other questioners. (Hat tip to Cincinnati.com.) When asked his views about the 1960s, Director Steven Spielberg replied, "Just narcissism, a collective and personal narcissism." 

It never ceases to amaze me to see how ignorant The Washington Post is about Catholic teaching---the latest example being staff writer Peter Slevin's liberally biased slam against Abp. Raymond Burke on p. A2 of the May 29 edition. The ignorance (or anti-Catholicism?) is clear in the very first sentence, which is false, in the first paragraph. "When it comes to expressing his views of church values, Roman Catholic Archbishop Raymond Burke has a habit of making headlines, not always to the satisfaction of his flock," writes Slevin. These are not, of course, "his views." They are the views and stipulations of the Catholic Catechism, the Code of Canon Law, and numerous papal encyclicals that often teach definitively on certain matters. Slevin apparently never cracked the Catechism, and he apparently never Googled it because it is online, as is the Vatican, with all the relevant documents.

Abp. Burke has spoken out against abortion; against politicians who support abortion; against entertainers who support anti-Catholic teachings but also want to perform at Catholic functions; against using embryonic stem cells for research; and so on. And this is what apparently ticks Slevin and his editors off: A Catholic Bishop who actually tells his flock the Truth about Catholic teaching and how Catholics must strive to seek holiness and save their souls.

Rosie O'Donnell's top writer, Janette Barber, was allegedly caught defacing and "drawing moustaches on photographs" of co-host Elisabeth Hasselbeck "that hang in The View studios," reports The New York Post. Read here. ABC has confirmed that photos in the studios were defaced and that the matter is under investigation.

Barber, says The Post, is an "old friend" of Rosie's and worked with her on The Rosie O'Donnell Show. Rosie tore into Hasselbeck on Wednesday, May 23, in a spat over Rosie's comments comparing U.S. troops with terrorists. Rosie, a notorious leftist, did not appear on Thursday's edition of The View, which is co-produced and co-hosted by Barbara Walters.

Bill Maher, host of HBO's "Real Time", tore into Jerry Falwell on the May 18 edition of his show, saying, with a photo of Falwell in the background, such things as, “... death isn’t always sad." The worst comments from Maher came from his argument for turning homosexuality into a religion, with references to the Mass as gay oral sex and reception of Holy Communion as gay oral sex. Here is the clip. WARNING: the material is very offensive.

The MRC's TimesWatch division has an excellent analysis of the NYT's grossly shoddy and biased coverage of the Duke lacrosse "rape" case. In this latest item, the student newspaper at Duke, The Chronicle, actually went out and interviewed former NYT reporters and critics and asked their opinion about the paper's coverage of the Duke case. The Chronicle -- a student paper! -- did what the so-called professional media should have done long ago. Concerning the NYT's coverage of the Duke case, "it showed everything that's wrong with American journalism," said Daniel Okrent, a former public editor of the NYT. For more, click here

Ralph de Toledano, long-time conservative commentator and author died Saturday, Feb. 3, at the age of 90. See The Washington Times article here. For the young conservatives out there, go get Mr. De Toledano's books and read them! They are filled with excellent, detailed information about many of the major issues that have dominated the conservative movement, U.S. and world politics, and the media.

Mr. De Toledano's book, "Seeds of Treason," is an excellent primer on the Alger Hiss-Whittaker Chambers case, which in many ways helped to define the conservative movement in post World War II America. Other excellent books by Mr. De Toledano include: The Greatest Plot in History; J. Edgar Hoover: The Man in His Time; Spies, Dupes and Diplomats; RFK: the Man Who Would Be President; Notes from the Underground; and Nixon.

The Sunday Style section, July 10, of the Washington Post ran a nearly balanced feature on a former convict in D.C. who is straightening his life out through hard work, self-discipline, and ... Christian faith (including regular church attendance). See story: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/07/09/AR200507... While the feature does throw in many of the liberal nostrums about crime in D.C., etc., it does not shy away from the religious angle and the self-reliance angle. This provided some balance to a topic that the Post usually throws into the liberal fix-it box.