Blogs

Believe it or not, "climate change" and the "perilous state of the polar bear" is being used to justify a global giant’s campaign to help market an upcoming movie.

Coca-Cola is among the many corporations that is participating in a promotional partnership with Time Warner to market the upcoming movie 'The Golden Compass,' which is based on the first of Philip Pullman's 'God-killing' trilogy of novels, 'His Dark Materials.'

Author Rick Kephart wrote Coca-Cola, telling them that group of villians in the novels is called 'The Magisterium,' which is the name of the Catholic Church's teaching authority. The response Kephart received from Coca-Cola tried to change the subject to the "hot topics" of climate change and polar bears, of all things.

CNN is defending its job in vetting questions for last night's debate, reports Politico's Kenneth Vogel:

The retired general who quizzed Republican presidential candidates about gays and lesbians in the military was not the only person linked to a Democratic presidential candidate who got to ask a question at Wednesday’s CNN/YouTube debate.

CNN also aired questions from supporters of Democratic candidates John Edwards and Barack Obama.

And that’s fine by the network, which is standing by its question selection process and lashing out at critics who say the debate demonstrated CNN’s liberal bias.

“We’re focused on the questions, not the questioners,” said Sam Feist, CNN’s political director.

There might be something to that approach. As our own Brad Wilmouth reported, the questions largely pressed the Republican field from the right.:

As we at NewsBusters have noticed, the media often pass off professional or semi-professional liberal activists as average Joes and Janes. The effect, of course, is to give a feel of authenticity to the problems, real or perceived, that these folks are struggling with, and often demand government intervention for.

So it's not surprising that the "undecided voters" in the recent Democratic debate in Vegas were often liberal activists. Bryan Preston of Hot Air looked into it. You can check out his blog entry here, or watch the embedded video posted above. (h/t Michelle Malkin)

In the free-for-all that followed Tavis Smiley’s hostile GOP presidential debate in August, Michael Fauntroy was featured by Smiley’s show and several other liberal media outlets as an instant pundit on the subject, author of the book plainly titled Republicans and the Black Vote. But Sunday night on the Huffington Post, Fauntroy slammed a not-so-new documentary on blacks and the GOP as pathetic propaganda:

In arguing that the Dems were racist and that the GOP has been miscast by the liberal media as the enemy of Black people, Emancipation, Revelation, and Revolution completely overlooks the role of ideology in policymaking. Conservatives have long opposed Black progress. Conservatives opposed Reconstruction and civil rights. Conservatives pushed the "Lily-White" movement that purged Blacks from leadership of state Republican parties throughout the South. Conservatives have pushed for the maintenance of a racial status quo that held down Blacks and then blamed them for the lots in life.

Shouldn't the media cover the debunking of an event which stirred violent anti-Israel sentiment and even became a talking point for Osama Bin Ladin? Instead, the media ignored a French judge's investigation into whether France2's 2000 report that claimed Israel shot and killed a 12-year-old Palestinian boy is “a hoax.”

The famous picture of a terrified Mohammed al-Dura hiding behind his father enraged millions of Muslims and became such an iconic image of Palestinian martyrdom and Israeli occupation that it caused violent rioting, inspired some UK Muslims to commit to radical Islam and was even used in suicide bomber propaganda.

It took a defamation case to get France2 to fork over the raw footage, but Media Backspin reported portions are missing (bold mine throughout):

TVNewser has an item today about MSNBC's David Shuster blasting Rudy Giuliani and Fox News brass while announcing a lawsuit involving the rival news channel (h/t Ian Schwartz):

This is how MSNBC's David Shuster, who once worked for FNC, reported the story in the 9amET hour:

"This is bad news, perhaps not just for Rudy Giuliani, but also for Fox News Channel. Roger Ailes who is in charge of Fox News, a close friend of Rupert Murdoch, he's been close friends with Rudy Giuliani for 20 years. Fox News commentator Sean Hannity led a Giuliani fund-raiser."

"Here you have a $100 million lawsuit in which Judith Regan is alleging that there was a smear campaign against her to protect the political agenda of Fox News of News Corp. and that that political agenda was to protect Rudy Giuliani"

Video (3:36): Real (2.64) or Windows (2.21 MB) and MP3 audio (1.64 MB).

It seems appropriate that the person who wrote the following will now be writing for Newsweek (HT to NB's John Stephenson, who posted on this Tuesday evening):

Yes, Markos Moulitsas Zuniga ("Kos") apologized the next day; you can decide for yourself whether it suffices.

In an Andy Rooneyesque rant about how his latest movie-going experience "left much to be desired," CBS White House correspondent Mark Knoller hinted he wouldn't mind seeing liberal consumers groups tackle hefty snack prices at the nation's movie theaters. He even suggested the short titles for two bills Congress could draft on that front.

From Knoller's November 12 Couric & Co. blog post (emphasis mine):

The fact is, most movie theaters are glorified snack bars. On average, they keep only 50% or less of the ticket price, far less for blockbusters in their opening weeks. Much of a theater’s profit comes from the concession stand.

Regal, one of the nation’s largest multiplex chains, reported the 3rd quarter profit margin at its snack bars exceeded 86%.

And the markup – especially on popcorn – is eye-popping. The Los Angeles Times last year calculated that just $30 of raw popcorn can translate into as much as $3,000 in sales at the snack bar.

That sounds like a markup that would make the oil industry blush.

[...]

Oh the exquisitely delicious irony.

On Thursday, Karl Rove gave a speech about politics and the Internet at the Willard Intercontinental Hotel, and, as reported by the Washington Times, commented about the frequent incidence of vulgarity at liberal blogs:

Mr. Rove cited the results of a study that found that writers and commenters on liberal blogs such as DailyKos.com cursed far more than writers and commenters on conservative Web sites such as FreeRepublic.com.

"My point is not that liberals swear publicly more often than conservatives. That may be true, but that's not my point," Mr. Rove said. "It is that the netroots often argue from anger rather than reason, and too often, their object is personal release, not political persuasion."

Our friend at Gateway Pundit observed this hysterical albeit predictable Netroots response (vulgarity present after the break, h/t Glenn Reynolds):

The Center for American Progress's Think Progress blog attacked a Noel Sheppard post on NewsBusters and a handful of other conservative blogs today. Their crime? Citing climate change comments uttered by a weatherman.

Think Progress said:

The conservative blogosphere is pushing Coleman's junk science today. Matt Drudge links to NewsBusters' "marvelous" take on Coleman this morning. Red State [sic], Qando [sic], Sister Toldjah, and the Free Republic also join in by approvingly linking to Coleman's piece.

The right wing should check Coleman's credentials before touting his "scientific" work. As Coleman admits, his "expertise" is in weather - not climate change science. In fact, he "has been a TV weatherman since he was a freshman in college in 1953."

Think Progress doesn't believe a mere "weatherman" should speak his mind on climate, but...

As the mainstream media often accentuate the negative in the Iraq War -- see Newsweek's latest photo essay -- independent journalist Michael Yon's latest photograph (pictured at right) is highly unlikely to grace the cover of any major liberally-biased newsmagazine.

Yet the picture of Muslim and Christian Iraqis working together to affix a cross atop St. John's Church in Baghdad is creating buzz throughout the blogosphere on sites such as Captain's Quarters, Michelle Malkin, and the Anchoress as a sign of everyday progress -- not just militarily but in the battle for the "hearts and minds" of the Iraqi people.

Here are some of the Anchoress's thoughts on the matter:

It’s one of those photographs that takes the breath - there is a feeling of cognitive dissonance. Some of us on one side - who perhaps have never understood why we went to Iraq in the first place - may look at this picture and say, “but…but…Iraq is a hell-hole, an unmanageable, unwinnable, place of civil strife, death and occupied people who hate us!”

Some of us on the other side, who - overwhelmed with images of burned flags and screaming mobs - may have forgotten the humanity of the Iraqi people (people we let down once before, and who had reason to distrust us and our commitment) may see these Muslims and Christians raising a cross together, in a language of brotherhood and gratitude, and say, “but…but…all those people are bad people…”

I'm sure as a concerned social observer, CBS "Evening News" anchor Katie Couric may genuinely think we as a society are too addicted to TV. That said, I can't help but feel that her persistent third-place status in the broadcast evening news race is part and parcel of her Andy Rooney-Lite rant against the boob tube. Here's the November 7 page from Katie Couric's "Notebook" (see video here):

This week in Newsweek, writer Allison Wood complains about seeing television everywhere, and I think we're on the same wavelength.

It's in your living room, the kitchen, the bedroom. Leave home and hail a taxi, it's there too. A lot of cabs now have little TV screens bombarding you with news and weather as you head to wherever you're going.

It's arguably not as explosive as rigging trucks to explode in vintage "Dateline NBC" fashion but it seems ABC News may be using phony gay couples to gin up an incendiary story that plays on the media's preconceived storyline about intolerance and "homophobia" in conservative parts of America, particularly the South. Here's an excerpt from Michelle Malkin:

When you don’t feel like covering the news, you manfacture it. Remember the story I broke last spring about NBC News engineering a sting at NASCAR to try and expose fans as anti-Muslim bigots? Well, it looks like the dinosaur networks haven’t learned from the embarrassing backlash to that pathetic episode. Or Rathergate. Or Shattered Glass. Or Janet Cooke. Or Scott Thomas Beauchamp. Etc. etc. etc.

Now, according to the local Fox affiliate in Birmingham, Alabama, it looks like ABC News is engaging in media stage management and Theater of Journalism to expose anti-homosexual bigotry in the South:

Helen Thomas is a "stalwart of the White House press corps who wields candor like a weapon of mass instruction," gushed Seattle Post-Intelligencer managing editor David McCumber in a November 2 post at his paper's Big Blog.

In a short video of her Friday appearance, Thomas regales the P-I newsroom audience with her tired left-wing ravings about how the Bush administration lied to get the United States into war with Iraq, and how President Bush must have been utterly amazed at how sheep-like the media were in the lead-up to war. McCumber was so enchanted by her presence that he included what he considered to be a pearl of wisdom from the reporter-turned-front-row-Bush-basher:

Ann Coulter's been a naughty girl! She has to go sit a time out in the corner, according to Chris Matthews, who's withdrawing the distinct and high honor of inviting the columnist on "Hardball" as punishment for the Donny Deutsch row, which was hyped by the liberal smear machine Media Matters for America.

And I thought that was only reserved for attractive business reporters who didn't lean into the camera.

Here's how Gail Shister of TVNewser reported the matter today:

Looks like Hardball is playing hardball with Ann Coulter.

MSNBC's Chris Matthews says it will be "a while" before the incendiary conservative pundit is invited back to the show.

New York Times reporter Michael Luo posted Sunday morning on "The Caucus" blog on his days at the recent Values Voters Summit in Washington, D.C., sponsored by the social conservative lobbying group Focus on the Family, where his Times credentials didn't exactly open doors of welcome.

Cadging about for interviews, Luo discovered once again that not everyone loves the Times.

"When I first met Mrs. Crowe, she had been wary after I identified myself as a reporter from The Times. She confessed her suspicions, saying she watched Bill O'Reilly and harbored serious reservations about The Times. I had, in fact, experienced this kind of wariness, sometimes outright hostility, from nearly every person I stopped to interview at the summit. It had gotten to the point that I was even a bit nervous of approaching anyone for fear of rejection.

In a Tuesday online posting on the New York Times website, Katharine Seelye enthused about "Campaign Coverage That Is Raw and Fresh" from two new journalism sites -- staffed almost exclusively by liberals.

"We're taking a look today at two new Web ventures that could help change how politics is covered. One, OffTheBus.net, is all of three months old, which these days makes it practically establishment. The other, Scoop08.com, is so new it hasn't even started yet. It's a national daily online newspaper by and for college and high school students and is preparing to go live on Sunday. That makes it the newest entry in the field and therefore the one with most of its ideals still intact."

But the two sites are staffed almost exclusively by liberal and Democratic activists -- what kind of change is that?

Here's the first clue of the political slant of the new ventures:

UPDATE -- SHUSTER APOLOGIZES: At 6:44 PM EDT, MSNBC broke into the Tucker Carlson show to air a terse apology from Shuster. See "My Take" below.

View video of Shuster apology here.

Here follows the text of Shuster apology.

DAVID SHUSTER: On Monday evening while guest-hosting the 6 p.m. evening hour, I conducted an interview with Tennessee Republican Marsha Blackburn. The congresswoman spoke at length about a newspaper ad that criticized General Petraeus. In what I believed was an effort to examine Representative Blackburn's priorities, I then asked her to name the last soldier from her congressional district killed in Iraq.

She responded "the name of the last soldier killed in Iraq from my district, I do not know." After that response, I identified who I believed to be that fallen soldier, a Tennessean killed in Iraq last month. But according to Pentagon documents, that young man came from a town inside a neighboring congressional district, not from Representative Blackburn's, and for that, I apologize for that mistake.

Read past the jump for the rest of the story..

Candidate Fred Thompson is the butt of media jokes, once again. This time it is due to the reporting by the New York Daily News of Thompson's comments in Sioux City, Iowa over the weekend. Thompson's claim that an al Qaeda enforced smoking ban in Iraq led to many Iraqi citizens joining the U.S. side in the attempt to rid the country of the foreign terror network was reported to the misinformed media's amusement, becoming an excuse to make fun of the candidate. But, as is the case with most "reporting" by the MSM, Thompson turns out to be right in his assertions and the MSM has egg on their faces, once again. It seems more and more that the media has decided to do their level best to destroy Fred Thompson's bid for the White House. I wonder what that says of their fear of him?

The NYDNews reported Thompson's comments on Saturday.

Andrew at Biased BBC has an excellent take on the British news agency's flawed reporting on the recent release of some South Korean aid workers. For starters, the original headline glossed over the brutal murder of two hostages. Andrew also noted that contrary to BBC's own style guide, the news agency characterized the murdered missionaries as having been "executed," which implies a legal penalty governed by due process of law.

Here's an excerpt:

Whether senator Larry Craig (R-Idaho) was outed for political purposes remains a subject of pure speculation one thing, however, is clear: There is a very dedicated group of left-wing gay activists out there who have made it their goal to drag gay Republicans' sex lives out into the public eye unless they toe the line politically.

Regardless of whether you think the Republican party should be more accepting of homosexuality, this tactic of invading people's private lives and exposing them to the public is nothing short of blackmail. Instead of condemning it, however, the liberal press celebrates such efforts as Patterico points out in a blog entry debunking a fawning Washington Post profile of gay blogger Mike Rogers:

In San Francisco's liberal Ninth Circuit Court today, a three- judge panel heard arguments in the strange case of Al-Haramain v. Bush. And the members of the media gathered in San Francisco showed their ideological colors afterwards.

To those who may not be familiar with the case, this is essentially a test case as to whether the United States government has the legal authority to perform secret surveillance on anyone. The plaintiff is a Muslim organization called Al-Haramain that has been linked to a variety of Muslim terrorist organizations and has been shuttered in many countires for its unabashed laundering of money to said terrorists. Even the United Nations has placed Al-Haramain on its list of banned organizations.

It's not a scientific survey, but a recent poll of Chicago Tribune readers showed an overwhelming majority of readers support the arrest and deportation of illegal immigrant and Social Security fraudster Elvira Arellano. You'll recall I wrote about the Trib's bias on Monday.

The results of the four poll questions were published in an August 21 post at Eric Zorn's "Change of Subject" blog:

We asked chicagotribune.com readers for their views on the Elvira Arellano case. Here are the results after approximately 23,900 votes were registered:

Whether it’s comparisons between the United States and the Soviet Union or George Bush and Saddam Hussein, the far left has always specialized in false moral equivalence.

In the latest example of this, Daily Kos proprietor Markos Moulitsas has been trying to shift the spotlight that’s now being shined on the numerous vulgar and hateful remarks for which his site is famous over to conservative sites, implying that the right is just as full of hate as his followers.

Trouble is, that’s just not the case. As NewsBusters pointed out earlier, left-wing blogs and their commenters are much more likely to use profanity than conservative blogs.

Brushing aside those pesky facts, Moulitsas launched a false attack on Maine senator Susan Collins today implying that “Arthur Frain,” a commenter on Maine Web Report, a site run by her online communications director was speaking for Republicans when he/she wrote the following:

A recurring feature on her "Couric & Co." blog is the "10 Questions" interview, usually posed to a think tank official or politician on a major political issue. In the past, I've blogged about how the interviews have generally skewed leftward, but I was pleasantly surprised with the CBS anchor's mostly neutral agenda of questions in her August 9 interview with Robert Moffitt of the conservative Heritage Foundation.

Generally speaking, the questions sought to elicit Moffitt's perspective on tackling health care without pressing him with loaded questions. I was annoyed at question #4, but Moffitt immediately pointed out that foreigners seeking treatment in America are fleeing inefficient, shoddy socialized medicine in their home countries.

Here are Couric's questions. For Moffitt's answers, check here.:

This is still developing apparently, but Ed Morrissey of Captain's Quarters is all over what appears to be a hare-brained smear of presumptive GOP presidential candidate and former Tennessee senator Fred Thompson. Here's an excerpt:

It doesn't take long for provocateurs to crawl out of the woodwork to attack candidates, especially in stealth attacks. With Fred Thompson, they've apparently started before he officially enters the race -- and in one case, race is the operative word. Apparently hoping to confuse web surfers looking for Fred's website at www.imwithfred.com, a new site has appeared at www.imwithfred2008.com -- only this site welcomes people to the Ku Klux Klan, "Bringing a Message of Hope and Deliverance to White Christian America!" It includes links to a variety of disgusting racist sites.

Who would post something like this as a smear on Fred Thompson? Someone a little too stupid to cover his tracks, possibly? A DNS search gives us an answer. The domain name, registered through GoDaddy (no great shock there), belongs to:

Former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney (R) recently told an Illinois woman that while his grown sons have never served in the military, they are displaying their patriotism by campaigning heavily for their father's nomination for the presidency.

The Politico and USA Today have picked up on the item. USA Today's "On Politics" blog noted in an entry posted at 11:45 Eastern that:

The questioner, 41-year-old Rachel Griffiths of Milan, Ill., told Susan later that she is not a Republican and is in fact a member of a "Progressive Action for the Common Good."

Asked if she was satisfied by Romney's answer, Griffiths said:

I've been on a roll lately with stories about the media not getting religion, so I might as well get another amen from the choir in the comments threads.

Christianity Today's Ted Olsen explained yesterday at his magazine's "Liveblog" why he doesn't rely on Reuters for that ol' time religion (reporting):

Today's nonsensical headline from Reuters: "New evangelist leader plans to avoid politics"

Jim Treacher at DailyGut.com has an excellent slam of how loopy and left-wing Fox's "24" is becoming with its carbon-neutral push for Season 7.

Six Ways Jack Bauer Will Fight Global Warming:

1. Travel from one end of LA to another in 15 minutes on a bicycle.
2. Replace power-sucking PDA with pad of Post-Its and No. 2 pencil. ("Chloe, send it to my sticky note.")
3. Yelling releases excess carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Interrogations will be conducted via sign language and harsh glaring.
4. After torturing terrorist with plugged-in lamp cord, buy carbon offsets to make up for wasted electricity.
5. All explosions will be rendered South Park-style with red, yellow, and orange construction paper (recycled).
6. Cancel the show because it sucks now anyway.

(I'm doing my part by recycling this post!)

My working theory is that the show's creators have been cowed into making penance to the Left for hanging out with conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh. Thoughts?