Online Media

...both shall fall into the Deitch.

You gotta love network blogs, if for nothing more they bring out those hidden gems of bias you otherwise wouldn't get from the people behind the camera. Like Ed Deitch, one of the men behind the curtain as it were.

Deitch, a senior producer for the NBC "Nightly News" expressed bemusement recently on the NBC News "Daily Nightly" blog at the notion that there's opposition to a Bangor, Maine, ban on smoking in cars with children.

I wrote more about that here at MRC's BusinessandMedia.org Web site. Deitch also expressed concern about the so-called obesity epidemic in a prior blog posting.

If the timing came as a bit of surprise, nothing could have been less unexpected than Hillary's "I'm In" announcement of today.

But have a look at the video of her announcement. Rather than her "let's chat" rap, please focus on the background. Look out the door. Presumably the announcement was shot in one of Hillary's homes: Chappaqua or Georgetown. Now I know it's been a mild winter, but even so, surely the leaves are gone from the trees and bushes in either spot. And check out the yellow spot in the bushes. At first I thought it was just a warm dapple of sunshine. But freeze the frame when, about 1/4 of the way through, Hillary says "how to end the deficits that threaten Social Security." That's not sunshine -- those are flowers in bloom.

The AP has published a story today about the grand opening of the first McDonald's outlet with a drive-through window in China. It opened yesterday in Beijing to rave reviews from its first customers.

Apparently, the fast food chain is growing by leaps and bounds in the communist enslaved nation. McDonald's China CEO, Jeffery Schwartz is quoted in the AP piece about the company's growth in the Red Nation. "It's huge. It's a real priority for the global company because of the potential growth in China...We think drive-throughs are a big part of this."

And, when you read the AP's story everything seems upbeat and glowing about McDonald's growth and future opportunities in China." It's all good", as they say. And, it is no surprise that the AP's business writer, amusingly named Joe McDonald -- no I am serious, that IS his name-- was so aglow over the heightened business opportunities for the McDonald's chain.

She practically blamed Mel Gibson* for why diet supplements are not regulated as drugs by the FDA and attempted to scare viewers with the extreme case of a woman's nose falling off, but Sharyn Alfonsi's hit pieces on nutrition supplement makers weren't biased enough for CBS's in-house blogger-cum-media critic Brian Montopoli.:

 

"The real problem is that any topical product such as the one described in this section of Mr. Hurley's book is not a dietary supplement, and cannot be legally sold as one in the United States. By law such products are drugs. If either Mr. Hurley or his editors had bothered to look at the Federal Food Drug and Cosmetic Act, they could have avoided this fundamental mistake," wrote Marc S.Ullman, a New York attorney who represents clients "in the dietary supplement/natural products industry."

"The 'Evening News' gave us two sides of the argument, but it didn't tell us which one was right," complained PublicEye blog Editor Brian Montopoli, formerly of the Columbia Journalism Review.

Those not fortunate enough to live in the San Francisco Bay Area might find it hard to believe that this liberal community sports an extremely conservative radio station. Conceivably less shocking is that in recent weeks, it has come under attack from liberal bloggers unhappy with its content.

For those unfamiliar, KSFO is a Northern California broadcaster of radio programs hosted by Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Dr. Laura, and Mark Levin. In the Netroots’ crosshairs are local conservative personalities such as Melanie Morgan (who should be familiar to Fox News watchers), Lee Rodgers, and Tom Benner (AKA Officer Vic), all of the drive-time “Morning Show.” Also under attack is Brian Sussman, a former local weatherman turned radio host.

(Update: The New York Times published its own take on this issue Monday.)

The Vinyl Frontier

The troubles for KSFO began in 2006 when a fifth-tier liberal blogger from San Francisco, hiding behind the pseudonym “Spocko’s Brain,” started sending the station’s advertisers complaint letters. Such correspondence included cherry-picked audio clips and mini-transcripts from previous broadcasts. One such letter, as posted by Daily Kos contributor Mike Stark on January 3, began:

Is it not outrageous that Senator Barbara Boxer (Dem, Cal) verbally attacked Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice for not having children as Rice appeared before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Thursday to discuss the Administrations position on Bush's Iraq military "surge" plans? Is this an acceptable criticism of a political official? Is the fact that an official might not have children reason to doubt their capacity for policy making or ability to advise an administration?

Is this the Democrat's new era of niceness, their less rancorous way of governing?

I was shocked to see this intemperate verbal assault by Boxer in the New York Post, but I became curious to see how other MSM sources treated the outrageous comments of the unbalanced Boxer. So, I did a little search of the reactions of the press.

(Full excerpts of the sections in each story that detailed Boxer's outrageous behavior follows)

• CBS News- *AP report (Lawmakers Grill Rice Over the Iraq War )

Assume for a second that a high-ranking Republican member of Congress published an article at a popular conservative website like National Review Online, Rush Limbaugh.com, or even NewsBusters asking readers for their opinions on the major issues of the day. Think this would generate some outrage from the liberal media?

Well, Tuesday morning, Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Illinois), the new Majority Whip, posted a message at the ultraliberal Daily Kos (hat tip to Larwyn) asking readers, “Help me set the Senate's agenda”:

Today, a new Democratic Congress is working to make America's hopes for a better tomorrow a reality. Here in the Senate, much like Speaker Pelosi's 100-hour plan in the House, our Democratic caucus has already unveiled an ambitious agenda to provide a new direction for America.  But there is a lot of work to be done -- so today I'm asking for your input.

Durbin’s appeal continued:

Last week, a Federal Appeals Court upheld Indiana's Voter ID law (HT Volokh):

Appeals court upholds voter ID law

INDIANAPOLIS - Indiana's law that requires voters to show photo identification at the polls is not too burdensome, the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago said Thursday in a 2-1 ruling that upholds the 2005 law.

..... The 7th U.S. Circuit Court questioned arguments that Indiana's rule is unfair to poor, elderly, minority and disabled voters, and pointed out that opponents could not find anyone unable to cast a ballot under the new law.

..... Indiana Secretary of State Todd Rokita, who pushed for the voter ID law, said the ruling was a victory for election reform.

"The seventh circuit affirmed what we have seen from four successful elections in Indiana under the photo ID law - this is a common-sense way to protect honest voters and to improve voter confidence," he said.

Judge Terence T. Evans dissented with the majority opinion, which affirms an earlier decision of U.S. District Court Judge Sarah Evans Barker. Evans said there was no evidence of voter fraud in Indiana that could be avoided with the photo ID law.

"Let's not beat around the bush," Evans wrote. "The Indiana voter photo ID law is a not-too-thinly-veiled attempt to discourage election-day turnout by certain folks believed to skew Democratic."

The AP isn't the only one going ga-ga over the ascension of Nancy Pelosi to become the "first Female Speaker of the House". We are seeing the fawning on just about every news outlet out there. And it is, indeed, quite an historic change from the long line of gentlemen that have taken the Speaker's gavel.

First female House speaker, Nancy Pelosi basks in historic day

WASHINGTON (AP) - San Francisco's Nancy Pelosi made history today by becoming the first female Speaker of the House in U.S. history.

Standing on the House floor with her six grandchildren, Pelosi said her election marked a historic moment for women in U.S. history.

The story of James Kim, who died of hypothermia in a remote part of Oregon after setting out on foot to seek help for his stranded family, was a sad capper to the year 2006 for many. A lot of things went wrong for the Kims as they started out for a holiday trip only to have it end in disaster.

Spencer H. Kim, James Kim's Father, has today a plea appearing in the Washington Post titled The Lessons In My Son's Death. It is a message to Oregon's emergency services community to help stop another tragedy such as befell his son from happening to anyone else.

Words fail (direct image link):

Cross-posted at BizzyBlog.com.

Ya gotta love the twisted headline from this CNNMoney.com report by Chris Isidore (bolds are mine):

New homes sales: Back from the dead?
New home sales rise more than expected and prices post gains despite continued rise in completed new homes on the market.
December 27 2006: 11:11 AM EST

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- New home sales and prices both showed surprising strength in November, according to a government report Wednesday.

New homes sold at an annual pace of 1.05 million, up from the revised annual rate of 1.01 million in October. Economists surveyed by Briefing.com had forecast that home sales would rebound to a 1.02 million pace.

The ink is barely dry on the Iraq Study Group's report and the mainstream media has already decided that the "bipartisan consensus" is gospel.

Just in case any neanderthals who might question this august group haven't gotten the message, MSNBC has created a stunningly blatant online push poll to get them in line.

Yahoo News and Reuters want regular people to send them photos from their personal devices. This way, terrorists don't have to merely give propaganda to journalists in Iraq, they can send it directly to the editors back home. Reports the New York Times:

Hoping to turn the millions of people with digital cameras and camera phones into photojournalists, Yahoo and Reuters are introducing an effort to showcase photographs and video of news events submitted by the public.

Starting Tuesday, the photos and videos submitted will be placed throughout Reuters.com and Yahoo News, the most popular news Web site in the United States, according to comScore MediaMetrix.

Reuters said it would also start to distribute some of the submissions next year to the thousands of print, online and broadcast media outlets that subscribe to its news service. Reuters said it hoped to develop a service devoted entirely to user-submitted photographs and video.

No opinion pieces having particularly incited my ire at my normal haunts of the NY Times, LA Times or Boston Globe this morning, I ventured over to the Huffington Post, and found this beauty by Cliff Schecter, "Are You Psychotic? Because Empirically That Makes You Susceptible To Being A Republican."

It in turn touted a study by a social work master’s student at Southern Connecticut State University purporting to find that there exists "a direct link between mental illness and support for President Bush."

Christmas came early to the Sheppard residence this year. A Daily Kos diarist wrote a blog post on the day before Thanksgiving about some articles I penned over the summer. This precipitated a flood of glorious tidings to my inbox from strangers across the fruited plain the entire holiday weekend.

We Diss You a Merry Christmas

Certainly, one of the greatest honors bestowed upon a writer is to be recognized by a colleague, especially one from the opposite side of the political aisle. This is even more fulfilling when the articles being discussed are not recently published, as it indicates one’s work is surviving in perpetuity.

The outpouring of love and affection that this diarist’s review spawned was quite humbling, especially as the sentiments came from people of a different political persuasion. This was made even more fabulous given the recent drubbing such folks gave to Republicans in the midterm elections.

The absence of gloating, vulgarity, and animus present in the blog piece and all the e-mail messages evoked by it was a fine example of how our nation comes together during the holidays; for this, we should all be profoundly grateful.

First Coast News in Jacksonville, Florida, did a fabulous piece Tuesday on how terrorists are using websites like YouTube and MySpace to recruit, train, and send messages to their cadre (hat tip to our friend Joe Myers). Some of the transcript was posted at FirstCoastNews.com, and the absolutely must-see video is here:

It's a video showing a room full of children sharing their dreams. They are not excited about being doctors, lawyers or teachers. Instead, the children shout, "We are the nation of Hezbollah. I shall sacrifice my life for Allah."

A group of children in training to be a mujahideen, or holy warrior.

Online there are videos of those warriors. One suicide bomber announces he is readying himself to blow up a group of American soldiers.

The article continued:

Now that the Democrats have picked their Majority Leader in the House the outcome gives us (and her) the first hint that Speaker Pelosi is not the powerhouse she thought she was. Her man, Murtha, lost in a landslide: 149 to 86... a thumpin' to say the least.

In my last report on how the MSM covered this little inter Dem fight I pointed out that they were ignoring how distant were the two positions on pulling out of Iraq that is held by the erstwhile candidates for Majority Leader.

I noted how they refused to portray Murtha's position as "extreme", even as he supports pulling out of Iraq immediately to Hoyer's, who does not. I noted that the MSM did not waste much breath contrasting Murtha's position with the far less volatile position held by Hoyer.

It seems strangely inconsistent that the MSM ignored the Iraq war issue in their stories since they made the entire recent election all about Iraq and how it is a mess and that our soldiers should come home. Yet, a guy who does not want an immediate pull out defeated Murtha and this fact went uncommented upon.

Despite the fact that former Vice President Al Gore invented the information superhighway, Market Wire reported Wednesday that more Republicans use the Internet than Democrats (hat tip to Drudge): “Nielsen//NetRatings (NASDAQ: NTRT), a global leader in Internet media and market research, announced today that 36.6 percent of U.S. adults online are Republicans, 30.8 percent are Democrats and 17.3 percent are Independents. With campaign Web sites becoming increasingly important to reaching the electorate, candidates need to keep their fingers on the political pulse of the Internet.”

The article continued:

The following analysis by author and former Bush 43 White House speechwriter David Frum, which he posted Thursday in his blog on National Review Online under the title "The Cry Baby Party," may express what plenty of NewsBusters readers have sensed during this election campaign (bold-type emphasis has been added):

Let me see if I understand the rules of American politics in 2006:

It's in bounds to write a deliberately deceptive voter initiative to try to inscribe embryo-killing research into a state's law.

It's in bounds for a likeable and suffering celebrity to suggest that such research is poised to deliver a cure that will help him - despite the utter absence of evidence for any such claim.

Camille Paglia, cultural scholar and maverick liberal Democrat, has given a politically themed interview to the left-wing online magazine Salon in which she touches on some media issues. (HT: National Review Online's Hot Links.)

Previously, Paglia has readily acknowledged that liberal media bias exists, and that it's hardly a new phenomenon; she's said that Barry Goldwater was the target of a "vicious media assault" during the 1964 presidential campaign.

In the Salon interview, Paglia argues that the media and Democrats were guilty of "gargantuan overkill" in their treatment of the Mark Foley matter, but that the excessive coverage actually wound up being a "tremendous boon" to President Bush because it distracted the public from the Iraq war.

Just in time for the holidays, the gang over at YouTube has added a new flag to their videos to assist their “community” in determining “inappropriate” content. Our friend at Ms Underestimated has created the following capture of the new screen being put into effect:

Frankly, this is every liberal YouTuber’s dream:

Has another Internet giant gotten the Liberal Bias Virus? Well, the Associated Press is reporting that Yahoo is extending its relationship with CBS to offer more of its news clips beginning Tuesday:

Yahoo already shows national and international news from CBS' "60 Minutes" as well as Walt Disney Co.'s ABC and Time Warner Inc.'s CNN.

The latest deal will allow Yahoo to post 10 to 20 local news clips from each of the CBS-owned TV stations covered in the exclusive arrangement. The stations encompass the nation's largest metropolitan markets.

I bet you didn't know that Yahoo was already showing "60 Minutes" and CNN clips. Isn't that special? Of course, not everybody is happy about this:

The following is a collaboration with Marc Sheppard originally posted at The American Thinker.

Five months ago, the Internet’s top search engine Google was accused of banning conservative websites from its news crawl. Last week, the e-behemoth offered to purchase YouTube, the preeminent provider of videos over the Web that has recently been implicated in censorship of its own. With their pending merger, serious questions arise about the future of the most powerful telecommunications medium on the landscape, and who if anyone is trying to control its content.

On the very day YouTube's disproportionate censorship of conservative videos was splashed over the pages of the Drudge Report, the web site deleted another conservative blogger's video, Gateway Pundit tells how a 17-second clip he made of an AP video was deleted from YouTube for supposed copyright infringement.

Update 9:06. Some commenters are wondering with whom, if anyone, lies the fault. I would place it primarily on the AP for a) lodging a copyright complaint against a 17-second clip, which if that were consistently followed would essentially destroy almost all non-original video on the internet, and b) excercising a double-standard going after Jim Hoft and not the thousands of others who have "stolen" its material on YouTube and elsewhere.

Traditional or "mainstream" media outlets continue to wither away in the face of never ending charges of liberal bias and attempts to indoctrinate America with the agenda of the left.

As these strong and meaningful changes are taking place opinion writers and pundits search for answers that will explain away the audience abandonment across the entire spectrum of traditional news outlets. Huge audience losses are being logged for network television news. Major newspaper and news magazine publications show significant decline in circulation numbers. Talk radio formats for the counter position to conservative talk have failed.

The only bright light on the news horizon seems to be The Fox News Channel...and it is the latest entry into cable news. Today, while celebrating its tenth year on the air, Fox News rightfully boasts it is the Number One cable news network. According to Glenn Garvin, writing for McClatchy Newspapers it has held this ranking...”for the past 58 months with an audience almost as big as its two main competitors combined. It took Fox News just five years to surpass MSNBC, with its powerful corporate backers, and CNN with its 16 year head start.” Garvin goes on to say that Fox News reached the 90 million-subscriber mark faster than any cable channel in history.

In today's DC Examiner, Olbermann Watch blogger Bob Cox sounds the alarm against what he (correctly) perceives as the conservative movement's failure to sufficiently become involved in creating the next generation of the internet. Now that the web has become a commodity, most conservatives have given up trying to be technology leaders, effectively allowing the left to create and control all of the major "web 2.0" resources like Technorati, Wikipedia, YouTube, and others.

The failure of the Dean campaign has led too many conservatives to dismiss technology leadership as an overhyped part of a political campaign. But that's only half the story. In truth, superb technology can never compensate for a bad candidate, but it can sure do wonders for one. And as part of a larger overall popular movement, technology is vital. For too long, conservatives have stood outside society's institutions clamoring for change. Isn't it about time that we went in?

An excerpt from this must-read editorial:

In the waning days of Howard Dean’s abortive presidential campaign, I met many of the talented folks who played a role in turning the Dean Web site into a powerful fundraising tool that propelled an unknown candidate into the national spotlight. At various blogging conferences since, I have had the opportunity to observe many of these bright minds strategizing on how to best leverage the emerging world of blogs and other “social networking” services known as “Web 2.0” to advance their liberal political agenda and win elections.

Their common refrain: “We need to own the Internet the way the right owns talk radio.”

They got me wondering whether the online “conservative elite” was aware of what the left had in mind and, if so, whether they were concerned.

It’s fascinating that this decision came on September 19 and virtually went unreported up until now, but a Florida woman has been awarded a startling $11.3 million in her “Internet defamation” lawsuit. Without question, this decision has startling ramifications for Internet denizens, bloggers, and message board posters, as it makes it quite clear that folks can’t just write whatever they want regardless of facts with total impunity. As reported by WebWire (emphasis mine throughout):

It is not often a person is awarded $11.3 million dollars from a jury of their peers. But in the case of Sue Scheff and her organization Parent’s Universal Resource Experts, Inc. (PURE) v. Carey Bock, the jury felt compelled to send a very strong message – which they have. Included in their $11.3 million dollar verdict, they awarded Sue Scheff and PURE $5 million in punitive damages. “The punitive damages speak volumes,” says Scheff, “it was set to punish the defendant for what she did to my children and me. Just because you don’t like someone or what they do, it does not give you carte blanche to post false statements about a person on the Internet.”

The article continued, documenting threatening Internet exchanges that are altogether too common to those that spend a lot of time at message boards or comment sections:

The video sharing site YouTube, just recently purchased by Google, has once again allowed a band of determined users to censor something they don't like.

The latest casualty is a a controversial spoof political ad by a Republican filmmaker David Zucker (producer of such films as "Scary Movie 4," "Airplane," among others) which depicts former secretary of state Madeline Albright, a Democrat who served in the Clinton administration, acting as a maid, servant and cheerleader for Islamic terrorists and North Korean leader Kim Jong Il. After the Republican party declined to run with it, the ad was sent to Matt Drudge who splashed it worldwide by embedding it in a page on his site.

The story doesn't end there, though. After Drudge picked it up, Democratic YouTube viewers used the site's software to "flag" the video as "inappropriate," a designation usually reserved for extremely violent or sexually explicit video clips. There is nothing even remotely sexual or violent in the clip. The closest thing to an explicit image in the ad is a scene in which "Albright" bends over and her skirt tears a bit in the seat, hardly the stuff that sets FCC commissioners' hearts aflutter.

While you can still view the video if you watch it embedded on another web site, if you try to watch it on YouTube, you'll be greeted with the message: