YouTube

Scott Pelley deserves grudging credit for recognizing something obvious at a Friday luncheon in New York. Readers tempted to go beyond that point would be advised to visit the archive of Pelley-related posts at NewsBusters on his brand of so-called journalism, a few of which will be identified later in this post.

At said luncheon, Pelley received the 20th annual Fred Friendly First Amendment Award from the School of Communications at Quinnipiac University. In his acceptance speech (full YouTube; excerpt here; HT Weekly Standard), Pelley spoke of journalistic failures during the past few months. He wants to believe that the past few months have been extraordinarily bad to a supposedly unprecedented extent.

Perhaps hoping that readers wouldn't scroll down to peruse what followed, a Tuesday evening Detroit Free Press report by David Jesse and Lori Higgins carried at USA Today featured a video taking up my entire computer screen which consisted entirely of union protesters chanting slogans for 49 seconds.

The pair's actual report carries a misleading headline ("Mich. governor signs anti-union bills after protests") directly contradicted in their dispatch's content ("The right-to-work legislation ... makes it illegal to require financial support of a labor union as a condition of employment"). But it's their description of Tuesday's incident involving Steven Crowder and Americans for Prosperity which is the report's biggest flaw (HT Instapundit):

Actor and comedian Steve Martin is a wild and crazy guy so it is no surprise that he would make a bizarre political endorsement. In this case the endorsement was for Bob Kerrey who is running for the senate seat from Nebraska. However, Steve Martin does not once mention Bob Kerrey or anything political in the "endorsement." Instead, Martin in the guise of a home crafts expert shows us how to make a wad of paper.

Your humble correspondent found the advice on how to make a wad of paper quite useful. In fact, for years I have struggled to achieve this but always fell short of my goal. But now thanks to Steve Martin's very informative video (below the not-paper fold) I can now expertly make the wad of paper of my dreams. The only downside to the video is the hand holding signs of support for Bob Kerrey that kept blocking my view.

Note:  This post has been revised to reflect the Times's 2012 coverage. The original version erroneously linked to a 2010 article. I sincerely regret the error.

The New York Times's coverage of year's annual Muslim Day parade in Manhattan appears to have consisted of a photo at This Week in Pictures and another at the City Room blog.

At the end of the parade, in news not relayed by the Times, at least one speaker called for suppression and criminalization of free speech and another seemed to revel in violence-based rhetoric. One can hardly argue that these presentations weren't related to the parade, since invited political dignitaries were on hand, including one gentleman, Democrat New York State Senator Tony Avello, who walked out after hearing calls for punishment speech seen to commit "blasphemy" against Muslim prophet Muhammed.

New York Times technology correspondent Somini Sengupta wrote a depressing article for the Sunday Review suggesting free speech could be limited by corporations (at the behest of government) in the interest of not offending the sensibilities of violent radical Muslims -- "Free Speech in the Age of YouTube."

Sengupta also seemed to sign on to the false notion that the anti-American violence in Egypt and Libya was tied to the shoddy old anti-Muhammad clip posted on YouTube, when in fact the violence on the anniversary of 9-11 had been long planned and the clip a pretext at best. (Meanwhile, Times editorial board member Lincoln Caplan was also disturbingly ambivalent on "absolutist" free speech on the domestic front.)

Acting on the premise that the trailer for the low-budget film "Innocence of Muslims" was one of the causes of rioting and anti-American protests across the Middle East this week, the Obama Administration has asked YouTube to "review" whether the two-minute preview "violates the Website's terms of service," a phrase that usually means the government wants the "offending" item deleted.

That move led the blogger at the conservative Ace of Spades Website to charge that the federal government is "now acting as the censorship arm of Islamists."

Matt Lewis over at the Daily Caller just reported that a Romney campaign ad featuring President Obama singing Al Green's "Let's Stay Together" has been pulled by YouTube for copyright reasons.

Oddly enough, videos like this one from the Associated Press of Obama singing the same song on January 20 are still available at YouTube:

YouTube has reversed its decision to censor the views of a pro-traditional marriage organization after attention was drawn to its removal of a video last week produced by Christian preacher and hard rock drummer Bradlee Dean.

Last week, YouTube – owned by Google, whose corporate motto used to be “Don't Be Evil” -- removed the video, which spotlights how gay rights extremists are using laws in Canada to censor those who disagree with their perspective.

In a victory for gay rights extremists, YouTube has agreed to remove a video critical of Canadian laws concerning homosexuality from its website, even though the video discusses policy issues and does not use any derogatory language about gays and does not advocate violence against them.

The video created May 16 by preacher and hard rock drummer Bradlee Dean to accompany his weekly column published by WorldNet Daily and other news outlets, exposes facts about the hatred and oppression directed at conservative Christians and opponents of gay marriage in Canada by the radical Left toward people of faith, those who hold to traditional marriage. The video also details a solemn warning to American’s to get vocal on the issue or prepare for the cultural overhaul under way in Canada.

In the 7 a.m. et hour of Tuesday's NBC Today, news anchor Natalie Morales fawned over Michelle Obama's appearance on The Late Show With David Letterman: "She...talked about her late-night chats with the President, and joked that he's always upbeat, especially about the notoriously deadlocked Congress. I guess you got to keep your sense of humor about you."

Later, in the 8 a.m. et hour, Morales was equally thrilled by a YouTube video mocking Republican front-runner Mitt Romney: "And will the real Mitt Romney please stand up? This video parody of Eminem's famous rap hit is going viral and being shared across Facebook."

Private Joker! What is your major malfunction?

That is what I felt like yelling at Matthew Modine aka Private Joker after watching a bizarre video he produced in support of the Occupy Wall Street movement. Rather than shed any light on the subject of OWS, all Modine seemed to accomplish was to make the viewer as confused as Lou Costello trying to make sense of what Bud Abbott was attempting to explain about Who's on first, What's on second, and I Don't Know on third. Watch Private Joker's OWS propaganda video below the fold and see if you can make any sense of four people named Everybody, Somebody, Anybody, and Nobody.

You Tube is launching a series of nearly 100 new channels. The set of new channels is laden with liberal voices and controversial material, and is practically devoid of conservative and Christian voices.

Liberal-leaning channels include offerings from sources such as Slate, The Chopra Well (with Deepak Chopra, a New Age guru and Huffington Post contributor), and Take Part TV (makers of Al Gore's 2006 global warming scare documentary ''An Inconvenient Truth'').

In an effort to counteract tactics that some Republicans fear could cost the GOP electoral victories in 2012, Rep. Paul Ryan lays out the facts behind his proposed budget, which he calls the "Path to Prosperity," in a follow-up to his first video on the plan. Check out the new one after the break, and let us know what you think.

In a Monday article, Rachel Zoll of the Associated Press played up the efforts of Catholic "theological conservatives" online who "say the church isn't Catholic enough" and are "unsettling the church." Zoll even quoted from a Vatican analyst for a heterodox Catholic publication who dubbed the phenomenon "Taliban Catholicism," with the slight caveat that "liberals can fit the mindset too." The writer, however, focused most of her attention on the conservatives.

Zoll, who berated conservative Southern Baptists as "vicious" zealots embarked on trying to "wipe out" every last liberal or moderate from their church in a January 29, 2008 article, wasted little time in her latest article, "Catholic bloggers aim to purge dissenters," in zeroing-in on her conservative targets: "Pressure is on to change the Roman Catholic Church in America, but it's not coming from the usual liberal suspects. A new breed of theological conservatives has taken to blogs and YouTube to say the church isn't Catholic enough. Enraged by dissent that they believe has gone unchecked for decades, and unafraid to say so in the starkest language, these activists are naming names and unsettling the church."

He may be playing hide-and-seek from drone missiles in the caves of Yemen, but Al Qaeda cleric Anwar Al-Awlaki is still attempting to poison the minds of young Muslim Americans through the use of YouTube and other social media.

The extent of Al-Awlaki's reach on the internet is outlined in a new report released by the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) on Aug. 28. The report describes the millions of views garnered by Al-Awlaki's YouTube video clips and the online networking of his rabid fan base.

A former imam at the Dar al-Hijrah mosque in Virginia, the American-born Al-Awlaki has increasingly been using social media as a recruiting method for would-be jihadists, leading terrorist watchers to dub him the "[Osama] bin Laden of the internet" and the "sheikh of YouTube." Al-Awlaki has been tied to the Sept. 11 hijackers, the Christmas Day bomber and the Fort Hood shooter. This past spring, President Obama ordered that the cleric be killed on sight, but the American Civil Liberties Union filed suit on Aug. 30 to prevent the military from targeting the U.S. citizen without a trial.

According to MEMRI, after Al-Awlaki's personal website was shuttered in 2009, YouTube became the "largest clearinghouse of his online videos."

Wednesday evening, Brent Baker at NewsBusters noted that two of the Big Three television networks failed to tag Dan Rostenkowsi, the former long-time congressman from Chicago who was ousted from his seat in 1994 over corruption charges and ended doing prison time, as a Democrat. Rostenkowski (RIP), who was 82, died yesterday.

At the five major wire services whose reports I reviewed -- The Associated Press, Reuters, UPI, AFP, and the business-oriented Bloomberg News -- Rosty's Democratic affiliation made at least one appearance. But the prominence and directness of those appearances varied widely.

Not surprisingly, the Associated Press and writer Don Babwin did the worst job of identifying Rosty's party, waiting until the eleventh paragraph to directly tag him (the eighth paragraph contains a generic reference to the "Chicago Democratic machine"), and poured it on the thickest when referring to the supposedly beloved bygone days of bipartisanship:

The last thing I was worrying about was that The Other Guys would be too preachy. Sure, Will Ferrell has a long history of deep, thought-provoking critiques of society and culture, so that should have been my big concern. Also subtitles. And having the last shot of the film be the word "Fin" superimposed over the freeze-framed image of a crying child alone on a beach symbolizing death or something.

You know, sometimes you just want to go, have a drink or two, or three, or ten, and then sit in a movie theater and tune out the seemingly endless parades of nimrods, pinkos and sanctimonious deadbeats who make up so much of our society today. You just want some guys to come on the screen and to do and say some funny stuff. Maybe you want an explosion or two, perhaps a gratuitous shower scene - strike that, as shower scenes are never gratuitous. Unless it's a dude. Or Kathy Bates.

The point is the last thing you want after a Dos XX prep and handing over $11.75 each for yourself and your life partner/designated driver is for a bunch of Hollywood half-wits to stop the fun to give you a PowerPoint briefing on their insights into modern politics - without even the PowerPoint. And it appears that this is exactly what The Other Guys intends to do.

A speaker leads students in a creepy chant of "I am an Obama Scholar!" at Lincoln Bassett Middle School in New Haven, Connecticut. The chant is part of an educational program called the "Obama Initiative."

(h/t Cassy Fiano; video below fold):

In a video celebrating the five-year anniversary of YouTube, CBS Evening News anchor Katie Couric listed what she thought were the top five examples of "citizen journalism" on the video sharing website, including "the famous 'Macaca moment'" of Virginia Senator George Allen, which "put politicians from both sides of the aisle on notice....there's always a microphone near by." (h/t TVNewser)

Couric began the three minute video by touting how YouTube has been "Raising awareness of human rights abuses and providing first hand accounts of conflicts and catastrophes moments after they strike." She explained: "I picked five videos that demonstrate for me the power of the medium and how a simple video upload can be a catalyst for change."

Like many in the media, the first "catalyst for change" video that came to Couric's mind was Allen's 2006 remark: "...before the age of YouTube it might have been just a local news spot at most, but it went viral online and badly hurt his chances for re-election."

On the May 17 broadcast of NBC's Today, marking YouTube's 5th anniversary also included Allen's "Macaca moment," with co-host Meredith Vieira noting how web videos have "sunk" the careers of some.  On CNN's Reliable Sources on Sunday, host Howard Kurtz observed how the website "soon became a political tool. When Virginia Senate candidate George Allen referred to an Indian-American as 'Macaca,' the videotape went viral."   

While mainstream media reporters are generally pretty supportive of the Obama administration, they bristle, and rightly so, at incidents where the administration is less than transparent or actively seeks to impede journalists from working.

Last week it was liberal Post columnist Dana Milbank snarking about how the nuclear summit was closed off to press scrutiny. Today it's Politico's Ben Smith, who shared with readers in a snarkily-headlined post "Most transparent White House ever," how (emphasis mine):

Police chased reporters away from the White House and closed Lafayette Park today in response to a gay rights protest in which several service members in full uniform handcuffed themselves to the White House gate to protest "Don't Ask, Don't Tell."

People who have covered the White House for years tell me that's an extremely unusual thing to do in an area that regularly features protests.

A reporter can be seen in the YouTube video above calling the move "outrageous" and "ridiculous."

Ouch!

This video of Russian ex-President (now Prime Minister) Vladimir Putin's response to a question about terrorism at a G-8 summit press conference was posted in early 2008. However, his answer is worth noting now in light of  Barack Obama's rather dispassionate first response to the Nigerian Christmas Day bomb plot terrorist which came off as sounding like a tepid legalistic statement from a deputy district attorney. Here is a transcipt of the question from a French journalist and the blunt response from Putin which stunned  the press conference to silence:

FRENCH JOURNALIST:  ...Don't you think that by trying to eradicate terrorism in Chechnya you are going to eradicate the civilian population of Chechnya?

VLADIMIR PUTIN: If you want to become an Islamic fundamentalist and be circumcised, come to Moscow. We are multiconfessional. We have very good specialists. I can recommend one for the operation. He'll make sure nothing grows back.

On Wednesday’s Situation Room, CNN correspondent Jeanne Moos exposed some of the left-wing rage being directed at Senator Joe Lieberman, especially on the Internet. Moos’s examples of “liberal hate” at the Connecticut politician ranged from fantasy Hanukkah gifts, such as a muzzle, to a YouTube video of a woman having her cats attack a string which stood in for the senator [Moos's full report is available here].

The correspondent’s latest light report for CNN highlighted Liberman’s “new low among liberals.” Along with the multiple examples of leftists mocking the senator on YouTube.com, Moos noted the strong reactions from “progressive radio hosts,” such as Mike Malloy, and attacks on liberal blogs like The Huffington Post and Daily Kos:

As if we needed more proof that Christians are the only group left in America that it’s safe to make fun of. A popular YouTube video purports to be an ad for a Wii-like game system called “Mass: We Pray,” which will be available at Easter 2010. In reality, the anti-religious video is a commercial for a new video game.

In it, viewers see a family at home as a saccharine-voiced narrator reminiscent of the one from the old “Mr. Bill” skit on “Saturday Night Live,” says, “A family shouldn't have to wait until Sunday to worship the Lord. Now you can go to church every day without leaving your home.”

The family’s two children are then shown pantomiming the movements of priests and congregants during mass, using “the wireless cross controller,” a large white plastic cross with a rosary bead strap. “Every twist of the hand and nuance of a blessing is recreated onscreen,” says the narrator. The point, he explains, is to collect “grace points,” and move a number of pews toward the altar. “Then trade in your Grace points to unlock the Holy Mysteries. Add the kneeler accessory, and get off the couch and into the action.” Players can download the “seven sacraments and holy rituals expansion pack.”

The Associated Press took to the streets of Washington, D.C. and Chicago this morning for reaction from everyday citizens about President Obama's Nobel Prize win. All but one of the featured interviewees expressed at least some skepticism about the president's worthiness to receive the award. And no, it seems none of these men (and woman) on the street are rabid right-wingers.

The video has received front-page treatment on Google News, headlined, "Video: Public Seems Skeptical of Obama's Nobel Win."

You can see the embedded YouTube video below the page break:

(UPDATE: Baron Hill claimed he didn't allow taping of his town hall meetings. However the local newspaper was allowed to record all of this meeting although they failed to report in print on the blowup. More details at update following story.)

A congressman from the Indiana 9th district named Baron Hill had a major league arrogant temper tantrum on camera last Wednesday which has become a big hit in the blogosphere with over 100,000 viewers on YouTube. So one would figure that the local Bloomington newspaper, the Herald Times, would cover it, right? Wrong. Amazingly the most interesting thing that has happened in Bloomington in at least a year has been studiously avoided by that newspaper.

Here is the scene as described by the American Thinker:

It is not just the career safe seat members of Congress and the Senate who are vulnerable to getting caught up in the arrogance and elitism of power.  Relative back bencher Baron Hill from Indiana's 9th District might well have surged into the lead in the contest to see which member of congress had the most out of touch and arrogant attitude during the town hall meetings.

You have to watch this video to believe it. It starts right after he has announced that there will be no videos allowed and goes into question and answer.  The first question is from a school student trying to fulfill a class assignment.  

Economists can argue back and forth in the media about the effect of big government programs such as the stimulus package and Obamacare but few things have illustrated government waste as effectively as this disturbing YouTube video in which a well running Volvo engine was destroyed as part of the Cash for Clunkers program. This video is currently going viral on the Web and has sparked outraged comments from many people whom I suspect have previously remained somewhat uninterested in the often elusive topic of economics. However, the wasteful destruction of this car seems to have awakened an economic sense of revulsion to an extent rarely seen before.

Here is a sampling of their YouTube comments which are in sharp contrast to the glowing praise of the Cash for Clunkers program prevalent in the MSM: