Online Media

Why would Rosie O'Donnell, a woman known for her wild-eyed rants against firearms, the war on terror, and the military, dress her child in a camo shirt, camo bandana and a bandolier of bullets and then post that picture on her own website? I certainly can't answer that stunner and neither can the denizens of her nutroots website who seem shocked and utterly unable to assist me in finding out what is going on with this business.

Yet, there it is, for all to see on her Web site; exactly the photo described above.

Myra Langerhas of "Snarking Dawg" had this pointed take on those vaunted "campaign finance reform" champions at the liberal New York Times that I thought I'd share with you:

Typical editorial from every litterbox's paper of record. Boil it down to bones - 'Bong hits 4 Jesus' banner by a high school student during class hours demands 1st Amendment protection, but an ad from a private group that asks Senators to vote on judicial nominees needs to be censored by the Federal Gubmint.

Wow, and the 'smart guys' read this fodder.

Our very own Clay Waters scoops out that litterbox regularly. You can track his record of the Times' droppings at TimesWatch.org.

 

Ubergizmo.com, a “trendy web magazine dedicated to consumer electronics news and reviews,” such as a $2,650 Fujitsu Tablet PC and a “Wiener Dog Accent Lamp,” had a puzzling entry last week that discussed an amazing new sleeping tent, then surprisingly slammed the free-market system by whining about glorifying “the excesses of capitalism.“ Basically, the Water Shelter tent is an easily portable tent that also collects rainwater and can even be dropped in by air, which would be a lifesaver for flood refugees.

At the end of the blurb, the author threw in a comment that is strange for a site that is filled with small articles designed to highlight and promote capitalist goods. Was this an unclear joke or yet another anti-capitalist dig from an unlikely source?

Here's the whole blurb:

CBS legal analyst Andrew Cohen found the rulings from the Supreme Court today to be a boon for conservatives, but he couldn't resist hinting about his personal opinions about those cases. He didn't seem to agree with any of them. (emphasis mine):

Conservatives go 4-4 today at the Supreme Court

Let's stay with our baseball theme today.

Legal and political conservatives hit for the cycle Monday morning when they "won" four long-awaited rulings from the United States Supreme Court. The Justices further chipped away at the wall that separates church and state, took some of the steam out of the McCain-Feingold campaign finance law, neutered federal regulators in environmental cases to the benefit of developers and slammed a high school kid who had the temerity to put up a silly sign near his high school.

Just when you think the loony left can't get any more deranged and hateful toward George W. Bush, someone comes along and further lowers the bar.

Former Washington Post sportswriter, "Seinfeld" writer and executive co-producer Peter Mehlman did just that today in a Huffington Post article (h/t Ace) which said that President Bush is actually worse than Hitler because at least the German dictator meant well when he was trying to exterminate Jewish people.

Yahoo has a copy which I reproduce here in full just in case someone yanks it from both sites. As is often the case with liberals, Mehlman is incapable of expressing himself without using profanity:

Today the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that it was unconstitutional to ban interest groups from running issue ads close to an election. The McCain-Feingold Act bans any issue ads by interest groups that mention a candidate running for reelection from airing within 60 days of a general election (and 30 days before a primary), even if the ad does not expressly advocate voting for or against the named candidate.

The way Ariane de Vogue of ABCNews.com reports it, the ruling is not a victory for free speech and political participation, but a blow to "reform." (emphasis mine):

Reigniting the debate over campaign finance regulation, the Supreme Court struck down a part of the 2002 Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act on Monday.

That legislation, also known as the McCain-Feingold law, restricts corporations and labor unions from broadcasting ads at election time using general funds. Proponents of campaign finance reform fear Monday's ruling will create a major loophole in the legislation and cause an influx of so-called "sham issue" ads that McCain-Feingold was created in part to combat.

Earlier today, NewsBusters contributor Pam Meister picked up on the MSNBC investigation into journalists' political contributions. Nearly 87 percent of the journalists gave exclusively to Democratic candidates.

Now some journos are reacting, and it seems the ones at Time magazine don't see the big deal.

Aside from Time.com Washington editor Ana Marie Cox's dismissive blog entry entitled, "OMG OMG TEH BIAS TEH BIAS," there's this gem from the magazine's James Poniewozik:

I haven't myself made any political donations since I've been with Time, as far as I remember, owing mostly to being a cheap bastard. (Time's policy allows political donations, although according to MSNBC's list, only one staffer has taken advantage of that, so I'm guessing most of my co-workers are as tightfisted as I am.) Scratch that: I did attend a fundraiser for John Kerry in 2004, which I believe Mrs. Tuned In paid for, that consisted of a $20-a-ticket concert in a friend's backyard by children's folk-rock musician Dan Zanes. There is probably no more yuppie-Brooklyn phenomenon than a Toddlers Against Bush concert.

ABCNews.com's The Blotter has an update on their exclusive story of the recent Taliban "graduation ceremony":

The Taliban military commander [Mansoor Dadullah] who led the "graduation ceremony" for 300 suicide bombers was one of five men released from an Afghanistan prison earlier this year in exchange for a kidnapped Italian journalist.

[...]

Journalist Daniel Mastrogiacomo was kidnapped along with his interpreter and driver by Taliban fighters in early March.

A hostage trade was negotiated, in part by an Italian-run hospital organization, for his release in exchange for the release of five senior Taliban commanders that were in the custody of the Afghan federal government.

I have been a huge fan of Michael Yon for years. He risks life and limb as an embedded reporter to report the news in Iraq from the soldiers' point of view and he is honest in his assessment. That honesty has often been met with scorn and resistance by some decision makers in the military who in my assessment have been their own worst enemy when it comes to getting the word out about progress as well as the hardships endured by our fine fighting men and women overseas.

But Michael knows the importance of giving a voice to the voiceless heroes that protect our shores so that we at home may tuck our children in to sleep peacefully at night. For this reason Michael provides us an alternative, more rounded message; a beacon in the darkness of the mainstream media's one sided narrative.

Arianna Huffington isn't happy with the sort of political coverage in which reporters act as "stenographer[s] to the campaign[s]" and "the conventional wisdom gets passed around like a joint at a Grateful Dead concert." As a result, she and her lefty blog site, the Huffington Post, are collaborating with liberal NYU professor Jay Rosen on Off the Bus.net, which Arianna describes as an "exciting new citizen journalism project" that will look at the '08 presidential campaign "from a wide range of different angles and perspectives."

That nod to diversity aside, it's almost certain that OTB will lean left, as the recent hiring of Amanda Michel to run the project would seem to indicate. During the 2004 presidential campaign, Michel worked for Howard Dean and then for John Kerry.

There's nothing biased here, just some industry news. Politico and Media Bistro's fishbowlDC are reporting that it looks like NBC/MSNBC will be giving up their Capitol Hill cubby hole digs and moving most if not all of their DC bureau operation out to Nebraska. Avenue that is.

For those unfamiliar with Washington, the NBC offices on Nebraska are considerably farther from Capitol Hill than the stone's throw from the Senate that NBC now enjoys.

The bottom line: this could make it harder to get congressmen and senators who need to stay close to the Hill for legislative votes to appear on camera on MSNBC.

As we've documented at NewsBusters, last year the media, particularly the Washington Post, raked then-Sen. George Allen (R-Va.) over the coals for his infamous "macaca" insult, and his ensuing profuse apologies for same. We've also documented that Democratic politicians' jokes about India and Indian-Americans have been largely ignored (see below the jump).

The latest racial incident kicking up dust on the 2008 campaign trail is yet another Democratic gaffe, dubbed by some, "Punjab-gate," after an Obama presidential campaign research memo cheekily described rival Hillary Clinton as a Democrat from Punjab, a province in India.

Of course, as the oppo memo itself notes, and as John McCormick of the Chicago Tribune reported in the Trib's "The Swamp" blog, Obama's staff were referring to another "lame attempt at humor" (my emphasis, see below jump) by the junior senator from the Empire State about her electoral chances were she to decide to relocate to India:

If you think that America, our strategic and tactical mistakes aside, still clearly holds the moral high ground in the war on terror, well, think again, contends Gary Kamiya in the leftist online magazine Salon.

Kamiya believes that in the "war on terror" -- his quotation marks, not mine -- we're actually like one Mafia family that's fighting a turf battle with another, and that this "moral ambiguity" explains in part the popularity of HBO's The Sopranos, the last episode of which ran this past Sunday night.

Oh, and another thing: George W. Bush is driving us crazy. "Quiet violence and repressed mayhem," Kamiya writes, "haunt our own oh-so-respectable lives," and 

After the Massachusetts Legislature voted to crush the marriage amendment ballot measure yesterday, the networks largely ignored the story. But ABC’s Web site carried this headline:

Gay Marriage Safe in Massachusetts: A Vote to Redefine Marriage as a Union Between a Man and a Woman Was Defeated

To ABCNews.com, defining marriage the traditional way is a radical “redefinition” of the institution. Is it any wonder that a majority of the American people, according to the National Cultural Values Survey, believe the news media are a major factor in America’s moral decline? (hat tip to Matt Barber at Concerned Women for America)

I know what you're thinking after reading Tim's earlier post on Joe Klein. How delusional can this guy get?

Well, try this on for size.

According to the Time reporter and "Swampland" blogger, "George W. Bush is no moderate. He has governed as a radical, and we'll be paying the price for his thoughtless extremism for years to come."

Of course, this is the same president that spawned conservative frustration over:

Updates below. (Close look at whiteboard in video calls Ann Coulter a "whore," etc.)

By now you may have heard about "Obama Girl," an attractive young woman dancing and singing a tune about having a "crush" on the Democratic presidential hopeful. It's all the rage on the cable news nets this afternoon. Doing some digging around the Internet, however, I was unable to find who exactly is behind the viral video phenomenon, but I did find it was registered through GoDaddy.com, the Web site registrar made a household name for its racy TV ads.

At any rate, "Obama Girl" Leah Kauffman (see update) doesn't appear to be a random young woman with a camcorder and Internet savvy. Her video "I Got a Crush on Obama" serves as the inaugural media stunt for BarelyPolitical.com, a Web site created on May 30 that has a skimpy "about us" section:

Our friends at Investor's Business Daily are taking a seven-part look at the media's incompetence in reporting market:

Media bias has been detected in other studies, but this series raises an additional possibility – media incompetence in analyzing and explaining how the economy and financial markets work.

Installments will cover how the media report on subjects like tax cuts, deficits, trade and stocks, creating myths – and unwarranted fear -- as they go along.

I got this in my Facebook inbox a few minutes ago from FreedomWorks staffer Brendan Steinhauser. The YouTube video (slight content warning for coarse language) is appended below the fold:

We were protesting Gore's appearance at George Washington University when one of his supporters decided he didn't like what we were saying. What did he do? Watch!

Our friends at Townhall.com and Human Events have some good posts on this the 20th anniversary of the "Tear Down This Wall" speech.

Stephen Bird takes a look at "What the press saw at the Brandenburg Gate" while Human Events write Michelle Oddis recalls watching the Wall fall on TV as a child, and looking back on it with a deeper appreciation for its significance in her post "Tear Down This Wall."

For a flavor of each piece, check the excerpts below the fold.

Twenty years ago, on June 12, 1987, President Ronald Reagan, standing on the west side of Berlin’s Brandenburg Gate, gave a speech that many believe signaled the beginning of the end of the Cold War.

In this extraordinary moment in history, President Reagan challenged the Soviet Union’s Mikhail Gorbachev:

General Secretary Gorbachev, if you seek peace, if you seek prosperity for the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, if you seek liberalization: Come here to this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!

Entire video of this fabulous speech is available here courtesy of Young America's Foundation with YouTube excerpt below the fold; the entire transcript follows:

So, what is CNN?

THIS is CNN in 1998; the link is to a story debunking the network's Peter Arnett and April Oliver, who accused Vietnam soldiers of war crimes in Operation Tailwind.

This is from 2003. The network's Eason Jordan confessed that the network twisted the news out of Saddam Hussein's Iraq, thereby giving false impressions of the regime to the world so that it could maintain its access to the country (the article is posted at the author's web host for fair use and discussion purposes).

Then there's this from 2005. Eason Jordan accused the US military in Iraq of targeting journalists, and ultimately resigned in the wake of the outcry. "Somehow" the actual video footage of Jordan's accusations, made at the World Economic Forum in Davos, never surfaced.

Next, there's this incredible episode from 2006, where the network showed videos of enemy snipers killing American soldiers in Iraq. Even more incredibly, the videos were marketed on corporate affiliate Time Warner Cable as an On Demand offering.

Now there's this -- paying to have a story staged (bolds are mine):

Update: Regardless of your religious views, the point of my post here is to lampoon the silly false choice posed by the poorly-worded question. I think I know what Quinn and Meacham are getting at. Allow me to be their oracle as to what they meant to ask: "In obtaining salvation, in your faith perspective, which is more important, faith or good works?" That wasn't so hard, now was it?

I know the media don't get religion, but this is ridiculous. Newsweek's "On Faith" discussion question for the week: "What's more important from a faith perspective? Being saved? Or doing good works?"

Time magazine's "Swampland" blog last week gave former Rep. Majority Leader Dick Armey (R-Tex.) a platform as guest blogger and left-wing readers quickly pounced with all the juvenile invective they could muster. One commenter to Armey's valedictory post wished that Armey would eat sh*t and die, albeit saying so with more flowery language: "May you engage in coprophagy, then shuffle off this mortal coil."

Perhaps seeking to establish balance in the guest roster, this week "Swampland" invited John Edwards staffer David "Mudcat" Saunders into the electronic quagmire. Saunders is most notable for his role in guiding Mark Warner (D-Va.) to victory in the Old Dominion governor's race in 2001.

But the reception for Saunders is hardly any warmer than that of Armey, even though Saunders is far to the left of the former congressman's laissez faire economic preferences that were much-maligned by Joe Klein and company last week.

Although Saunders is an advocate of class warfare, the radically left-wing readers of "Swampland" aren't buying Saunders as a true liberal. In fact, crude and unfair stereotypes of Saunders and other white Southerners are frequently cropping up in the comments fields for today's posts:

All I can say is Rosie O’Donnell’s mask is slipping. Rosie was so motivated by an article in the Gay City News written by contributing writer Brendan Keane, that on June 4, she cross-posted it on her own site. By posting the article, Rosie at least tacitly approved of its content, and thus Keane’s anti-military stance gives some insight into who Rosie really believes are the terrorists as well as what she thinks about the military she claimed to love while on “The View.” She didn’t condemn or correct any of the negative comments about the US armed forces, like this one, which indicate that she was indeed questioning the military’s morality (emphasis mine throughout):

O’Donnell’s pacifism is ridiculed when it questions the morality of the American military and of the decision-makers that send young people to kill and die in America’s name.

Thanks for finally admitting it, Rosie. I’m sure if she disagreed with any of this article, she would have said so, instead of proudly posting it on her website and thanking the person who pointed it out to her. As for the “decision-makers that send young people to kill and die in America’s name,” Rosie and Keane must really hate Franklin D. Roosevelt, the OG of evil fascist warmongers.

More headline editorializing, this time on Yahoo. A June 5 Reuters article titled, “Bush bashes Putin on democracy on eve of G8 summit” sounds like Bush attacked Russian president Vladimir Putin, but the body of the article clearly did not support that view.

The headline told a very different story than the article. Editors not reporters are generally responsible for headlines, and they can greatly influence opinions about the news. The importance of a bias-free headline is that most people don’t read every word of every article; they often just skim the headlines. That meant the people who read just the headline got a very different impression from those who read the entire article (emphasis mine throughout):

"Russia is not our enemy," Bush said after meeting Czech leaders on a visit aimed at highlighting the country's emergence from Soviet domination.

He said he would urge Putin at the summit to cooperate with the U.S. plan to deploy a radar system in the Czech Republic and interceptor missiles in Poland, but later in a speech took a dig at Moscow's record on democracy.

"In Russia reforms that once promised to empower citizens have been derailed, with troubling implications for democratic development," Bush said.

Update added below fold

The Secretary of Defense has decided to recommend a new chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, rather than re-nominate General Peter Pace. Reporting this development, this CBS/AP story noted that the Pentagon personnel move by Secretary Robert Gates was done to avoid a contentious Senate circus, more so than with dissatisfaction with Pace's performance.

"It would be a backward looking and very contentious process," the AP quoted Gates, noting that Gates insisted the personnel move had "nothing to do" with Pace's performance.

So why this teaser photo illustration on the CBSNews.com front page, done in a grainy black-and-white and preparing the Web site reader for a negative take on the outgoing 40-year Marine veteran? (picture below jump)

You know, it seems pretty cut-and-dried to me. Stuffing secret documents down your pants and removing them from a secure room in a federal facility, that constitutes stealing.

USA Today's "On Deadline" blog isn't sure, though. (bold/italics are USA Today's):

Sandy Berger, the national security adviser under former President Clinton, was disbarred yesterday in the District of Columbia.

The Washington Post says Berger agreed last month to give up his law license in order to avoid a prolonged investigation that grew out of his conviction in 2005 of removing classified documents from the National Archives.

Joshua Levy and Micah L. Sifry have a June 4 article at techPresident noting that among the major presidential candidates, only Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) has taken advantage of new software on the Facebook social networking site to broaden his Web presence. (Portions in bold are my emphasis):

TechPresident’s Alan Rosenblatt took an early look at the new feature and the Obama application, which allows Facebook members to see new videos and messages from the campaign and share them with their Facebook friends, on the day it went public, and he was impressed. As Rick Klau of Feedburner pointed out in a contemporaneous post, the app adds a significant amount of value to the Obama campaign. “If you’re interested in exposing your network of friends to info about Barack, the campaign is making it a one-click affair that greatly simplifies the redistribution of campaign info,” he wrote.

But when Platform launched, Obama was the only candidate with an application. Why didn’t John Edwards, Hillary Clinton, John McCain, Ron Paul, or anyone else get in on the possibility of reaching 20 million or more Facebook users and potential voters? [...]

The mainstream media can't get enough of the sectarian violence between the Shiites, the Sunnis, and the Kurds in Iraq. But one kind of sectarian violence that has consistently been under-reported since the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 is the persecution of Iraq's native Christian population. A Catholic News Agency story from June 6th reported:

According to the AINA news agency, two churches were attacked in the Baghdad district of Dora. At St. John the Baptist's in Hay Al-Athoriyeen, several security guards who protect the church were killed, and St. Jacob's in Hay al Asya was vandalized and forcibly turned into a mosque. St. Jacob's had previously been attacked in October of 2004.

The raids on the two churches coincided with a funeral Mass for a priest and three deacons that were assassinated in Mosul on June 3rd. A Google News search revealed that there were only 4 articles about the raids, none of them from mainstream media sources . Besides the assassinations and the raids, a Chaldean Catholic priest in Baghdad was abducted on June 6th and Shiite terrorists occupied a Chaldean Catholic convent in Baghdad on May 31st.