Online Media

Radio host and blogger Brian Maloney has an excellent takedown of liberal bloggers who accused Bill O'Reilly of recently lying about the New York Times's coverage of the JFK Airport terror plot.

[NewsBusters sister publication TimesWatch.org dealt with the Times downplaying the terror plot here and here.]

Below is the relevant excerpt from Maloney's blog, "Radio Equalizer," portions in bold are my emphasis:

After Rush Limbaugh, Bill O'Reilly and other hosts lambasted the Sunday New York Times for burying news of the JFK terror plot bust, Think Progress, News Hounds and other lefties accused them of lying.

By claiming the story actually was covered on page one and even asserting that O'Reilly intentionally misled viewers by showing only the top part of the page on camera, these smear sites were truly pulling a fast one.

In the spirit of Noel Sheppard's earlier D-Day remembrance post, I thought I'd share with you some kind words a Marine stationed in Iraq sent me via Facebook*:

I've really enjoyed NB over the last couple of months while stuck in Iraq. I've gotten a couple of laughs at the idiots in the MSM and those laughs go a long way to make the time behind this desk pass quickly. Pass my thanks along to the rest of the NB crew? God bless and Semper Fi.

I should also mention the writer, Cpl. Marcus Penn, blogs over at A Soldier's Perspective.

Check out his blog when you get the chance, his byline is "Cpl M."

*Corporal Penn is also a member of our Facebook group, "NewsBusters.org Readers."

Here's a new T-W-I-S-T on the Spelling Bee story we blogged about here last Friday. You'll recall that the MRC Culture and Media Institute director Robert Knight noted that many news outlets ignored champion Evan O'Dorney's homeschooled status.

Now, Andrew Coulson of Cato Institute informs us, Sara Mead, an education issues blogger at "The Quick and the ED" is suggesting characterizations of O'Dorney as homeschooled are false, "because he is registered with a public school independent study program."

Yet, "As I point out [in my post], even the O'Dorney's liaison at the Venture alternative public school refers to him as a homeschooler -- I called and asked," Coulson told NewsBusters in an e-mail.

Here's an excerpt from his blog entry "Bee Sensible" posted today at "Cato-at-Liberty":

Update (15:40 EDT): Ana Marie Cox helpfully corrects/excuses Klein's error re: Kucinich.

Well, that didn't take long. Just a few hours after former Rep. Dick Armey's (R-Tex.) first guest blog post to Time's "Swampland," liberal journalist and author Joe Klein slammed Armey for "red-baiting" the audience on the Democrats' stances on issues like health care.

Socialized medicine is a right-wing scare trope. None of the Democrats is proposing that. None of them is even proposing a "single-payer" plan, like Canada, where the government collects the premiums and people get to choose private providers. And now that we're at a point where much of corporate America is hoping for some relief from the burden of providing health insurance, ain't this kind of red-baiting getting a little old?

But Klein is dead wrong. Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio) is precisely pushing a single-payer universal coverage plan that the liberal Center for American Progress labels as "Medicare for All."

From Kucinich.us, the Ohio Democrat's campaign Web site (PDF file):

In April, NewsBusters contributor Dan Gainor criticized how the Washington Post puffed up a liberal secessionist movement in the state of Vermont. You know, the state that now has two very liberal independent senators, socialist professor Bernie Sanders and Patrick Leahy (D), and previously gave the nation RINO-turned-independent Jim Jeffords. [UPDATE: See "Little Green Footballs" for more on just how liberal the secessionist movement's leaders are]

Well, now the Associated Press is running with the story, and outlets like CBSNews.com are peddling the piece to readers. In CBS's case this morning, on the Web site's front page (see screencap at right).

Nowhere in the story does the AP describe the key players behind the secession movement as liberal or even as "progressive," (not to mention conspiracy nutjobs-- see bottom of post) nor is any pundit brought in to chalk up their rumblings about secession as hysteria driven by Bush Derangement Syndrome.

What's more, the AP doesn't address the unconstitutionality of secession until late in the article and even then in a misleading fashion:

I've documented on NewsBusters numerous occasions where Time magazine's political news-oriented "Swampland" blog has skewed to the left, including when the blog allowed veteran liberal columnist/pundit Michael Kinsley to guest blog at the site in March.

But this week, readers should have a real treat with the pro-free market, conservative insights of former House Majority Leader Dick Armey (R-Tex.).

In his first post, Armey tells readers that his primary concern is battling the growth of government under the watch of both Democrats and Republicans:

For those who read this column, you probably most know me as a an architect of the Contract with America, House Majority Leader from 1994-2003, and more recently as Chairman grassroots powerhouse FreedomWorks.

In all of these endeavors I have been guided by my highest political value: freedom. This is a good place for me to start. While tyrannies work only for those at the top, the American tradition demonstrates that all people are better off when their political and economic freedoms are protected. Government can only expand its scope of power and authority at the expense of the citizen. Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan knew this.

[...]

Update at bottom:

Maybe Michael Moore should listen to people who actually have socialized medicine—at least those who are allowed to disagree with their government’s policies. Singer Elton John’s partner David Furnish slammed Michael Moore and his latest docuganda “Sicko” for misrepresenting the quality of the US health care system. On June 02, Furnish stated, ”[America] was the only place to get good treatment”(emphasis mine):

Not that this is a competition or anything, but I think I've got Tim beat here.

At the very, very least, it's an odd juxtaposition:

A picture of a smiling Dr. Jack Kevorkian being released from prison, next to a tease of a Politico.com story about former Gov. Mitt Romney (R-Mass.) having a "quick mind and smooth delivery" but a "lack of warmth."

As Conan O'Brien might say, "a whaaaa?!"

Here's the screencap from CBSNews.com from shortly after 15:30 EDT:

(14:50 EDT) Video of Tim Russert misspelling "Iraq" at bottom of post.

When California homeschooler Evan O’Dorney, 13, won the National Spelling Bee on Thursday night, the nation’s press reacted with a yawn.

Instead of focusing on the winner, The New York Times ran a story about an immigrant from India who lost in the second round of the competition. That boy, Kunal Sah, 12, who is living in Utah, had hoped a victory would secure his family’s legal status in the United States. Thus, the Times managed to use the National Spelling Bee as one more forum for pushing the plight of immigrants.

Not until the middle of the story did The Times get around to announcing the winner, noting only his name and hometown and the fact that the AP reported his victory.

It's generally bad for business to have a flippant employee who insults your loyal customers. Now if someone could just give that newsflash to the Associated Press.

The AP today picked up on the plight of one David Noordeweir, who was fired in late February from a Michigan Wal-Mart for an entry on his MySpace page that insulted the intelligence of Wal-Mart shoppers. Here's the lede.:

A former Wal-Mart cashier says he was fired for joking on his MySpace page that the average IQ would increase if a bomb were dropped on the company's stores.

Gee, nothing insulting or inflammatory there.

The AP story stocked up reader's shopping cart with Noordeweir's fine whine:

Castro's censors like CNN in Spanish. That's one of the nuggets that makes today's "Public Eye" interview with Havana-based CBS producer Portia Siegelbaum a worthwhile read. It's particularly timely in light of dictator Fidel Castro's comrades in ideology running roughshod over the free press in Venezuela, Ecuador, and Bolivia.

[Update/related MRC study: Rich Noyes reminded me of his 2002 study of CNN's favorable coverage of the Cuban regime.]

My only complaint with Siegelbaum is her describing the Cuban state media as an "information service," that pedals "information" handed it by the Castro regime. When many biased, liberal journalists skeptically eye anything coming from the White House or Pentagon as "spin," it becomes all the more annoying that Cuban state media are seen as relaying "information."

Here's the relevant excerpt from the interview:

A funny thing happened during the search for gun control.

Entering the keywords “gun control” at the search engine Dogpile returned the warning: “You've entered a Web search term that is likely to contain adult content.” From there, you have two choices: click on the link which allows you to “View Unfiltered Dogpile Web results with Adult Content” or select the link with “No Adult Content”.1

An examination of “adult content” results does bring up a message at the top of the page: “View adult results provided by DestinationXXX.com.”2 The search also returned 76 links on May 28, 2007, none of which, besides this reference to Destination XXX, were adult content. An inquiry to Dogpile resulted in this response:

Actor and former Tennessee senator Fred Thompson is close to forming a presidential exploratory committee, according to numerous media outlets, citing people close to the TV star. Reporting that news, CBSNews.com ran with a less-than-flattering AP photo of Thompson, pictured at right.

"Former Sen. Fred Thompson attends the Prescott Bush Awards Dinner in Stamford Conn., on May 24, 2007," read the caption.

By contrast, ABCNews.com ran an AP photo that features a stern-looking Thompson. With skyscrapers in the background, it evokes his current TV character incarnation, New York County District Attorney Arthur Branch on NBC's long-running court drama "Law & Order." You can see that screen cap pictured below:

Update posted below w/link to NRO's Bench Memos.

"Over Ginsburg's Dissent, Court Limits Bias Suits," blared the May 30 front page headline by the Washington Post Supreme Court reporter Robert Barnes. While the 5-4 ruling in Ledbetter v. Goodyear Tire and Rubber Co. hinged on a plain and simple application of a 1964 federal law, Barnes front-loaded his article with the dissent of liberal Associate Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, buried the majority's rationale deep in the article after pro-Ginsburg feminist talking points, failed to include comment from Goodyear Tire, and gave readers an unbalanced portrait of the ruling focused on feminist reaction.

Let's take a look at how Barnes's bias unfolded, starting with the lede and second paragraph:

Update from Baghdad at bottom 14:17: EST:

Update II 05/28 13:45 EST:

May 24, the Washington Post wrote an article describing a “theater-wide delay in food shortage," “especially for (f)resh fruits and salad bar items” which quoted a “memo” reportedly issued by an official Green-Zone organization. It is identical in wording to a “memo” posted on a blog belonging to harsh anti-war critic and former CIA and State Department employee Larry Johnson, who is known for claiming in July 2001 that “terrorism is not the biggest security challenge confronting the United States, and it should not be portrayed that way.”

The memo was posted in a PDF on Johnson’s blog, No Quarter, and according to Ace of Spades, used a Lenox china flag-cluthing eagle collectible figurine  on tan emblem for the header's graphics. Little Green Footballs also questioned its veracity, stating it was “not a scan of a printed original,” but typed directly from Microsoft Word “two days after the date on the so-called ‘memo.’ ” I noticed a lack of any official identifiers like group affiliation, phone numbers, job titles or logos. Even Johnson now admits in an update that a “journalist buddy” said a US military Public Affairs Officer in Baghdad called it a fake (more after jump).   

Video update below- 11:52 EST:

 “Entertainment Weekly's” online site, EW.com, is usually politics-free, but not this week. Who would have thought that EW's “Lost” blogger could inject a little Bush Derangement Syndrome into a review of the show's May 23 season finale? Somehow, writer Jeff Jensen managed to find a way (spoilers ahead).  

In case you aren’t a “Lost” viewer, here’s what you need to know to help explain this article about the show's season closer entitled “Through The Looking Glass.” Ben, the leader of the Others, intercepted the retreating Losties to negotiate with their leader Jack. Three Losties stayed behind to attack the Others’ but were taken hostage in the process. Ben threatened to have them killed by their captors if Jack didn’t follow his demands. So, now that the scene is set up, here is the BDS in full glory (emphasis mine):

The Digg community is notorious for instantly burying stories by conservatives or about conservative-themed issues. Digg seems to be doing something that might help a little; they are banning users who bury stories (as well as those who Digg) without taking the time to read them.  (hat tip Hot Air)

An Australian tech blogger named Dan posted a letter on his blog TheWrongAdvices.com from Digg notifying him that his account had been banned for Digging or burying too quickly. Strangely, Dan’s blog account has been suspended and his site is inaccessible, and so, the Righty blogger Weasel Zippers now seems to be the only source to read the email.  

Here is the email as posted on Weasel Zippers:

We reported yesterday about the evolving headline for an AP story on a poll showing a quarter of American Muslim males think that terrorism is sometimes justifiable.

Well now Ace of Spades took it a step further, taking a wider look at how other news agencies are similarly downplaying the alarming statistic with headlines that spin the results positively.

It's worth the read, although I have noticed that at least one headline has changed since Ace's post:

Okay, I don't really get this, but apparently Stone Phillips, the just-laid-off "Dateline NBC" anchor, tops the list at "Google Trends" today.

You don't believe me?! I thought you wouldn't. See screencaps below the fold. By comparison, the late Jerry Falwell, whose funeral was today, came in at only #10.

Keep in mind the trend doesn't mean Phillips is the hottest search on the Web, just the "fastest-rising." According to Google:

With Hot Trends, you can see a snapshot of what's on the public's collective mind by viewing the fastest-rising searches for different points of time. You can see a list of the current top 100 fastest rising search queries in the U.S.

Here's another example of how blogs can be a great outlet for objective reporting, even if the outlet in question is traditionally biased to the Left.

[Update (18:26 EDT): NewsBusters' own Warner Todd Huston wrote about congressional travel expenses 10 days ago.]

At the "Anderson Cooper 360" blog, CNN correspondent Drew Griffin took a look at "Spring break travel... Congress-style.":

Flying in military jets is especially important when our leaders need to go to Iraq, or remote parts of Africa, Afghanistan -- places that are hard to get to or dangerous to visit.

But the Virgin Islands, Trinidad, London? At $10,000 a flight hour, those places are where some of your representatives took these military planes over spring break.

Update/Related (17:38 EDT): The Wall Street Journal's Law Blog started an open thread on Thomas's lack of questions during oral arguments here.

USA Today's "On Deadline" blog this morning picked up on a 5-day old McClatchy Newspapers item that showed Justice Clarence Thomas spoke exactly zero words during Supreme Court oral arguments since February. The original article it referred to seemed to take subtle swipes at the 58-year old George H.W. Bush-appointed jurist.

The May 16 item by reporter Michael Doyle began:

Mum's the word for Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. Very, very mum.

Taking reticence to new heights, Thomas zips his lip during the robust intellectual combat known as the oral argument. While his eight colleagues joke, thrust, parry and probe, Thomas leans back in silence. And that's how he stays.

Yet rather than leaving Thomas's silence to his quiet demeanor or personality, Doyle went on to suggest to readers that the taciturn Thomas was not intellectually engaged in his work (emphasis mine):

Politico's Mike Allen gave readers a peek at excerpts of "The Reagan Diaries," set to hit bookstore shelves on Tuesday, May 22.

Well before the Media Research Center was conceived in 1987, the Gipper was watching the media's liberal biases and recording his "frustration with the press," Allen noted:

One of the dominant themes is his frustration with the press.

April 22, 1982: “Last night CBS did a special 1 hour documentary (Bill Moyers) on 4 cases of poverty and illness they laid to our ec. program. It was a thoroughly dishonest, demagogic, cheap shot.”

March 11, 1983: “Lou Cannon’s story in the Washington Post. It was a vicious series of falsehoods and I was mad as h—l.” (The lead of the front-page story, written with David Hoffman, was: “The resignation of Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Anne M. Burford was carefully orchestrated by White House and other administration officials who had to persuade a ‘stubborn and defiant’ President Reagan, as well as Burford, that her departure was politically essential, administration sources said yesterday.”)

Oct. 30, 1983: “Watched the Sunday talk shows – subject Lebanon & Grenada. The press is trying to give this the Vietnam treatment but I don’t think the people will buy it. They’re still whining because we didn’t take them on a guided tour the 1st day we were on Grenada. No mention of the fact that we’ve flown 180 of them onto the Island today.”

The “Weekly Standard” profiled libertarian-leaning conservative and political commentator turned documentarian Evan Coyne Maloney, whose new documentary about the leftist ideological indoctrination and pervasive political correctness in the US higher education system is called “Indoctrinate U”. Saturday May 19, CSPAN ran a segment about his film on the network’s “Washington Journal”, but CSPAN posts footage of the shows online (when they have it up, I'll post it. His spot is at the two-hour mark). You can see a clip of his film on YouTube as well as the film's website, Indoctrinate-U.com.

“Indoctrinate U” focuses on the pervasive trampling of free speech and thought on college campuses and traces the modern history of free expression on campuses from the ‘60s through today. The doc covers personal stories like “the Kafka-esque nightmare faced by Steve Hinkle, a student at California Polytechnic, who the school attempted to sanction for placing a flier in the university's multicultural center announcing a speech by conservative African-American author, Mason Weaver.” It also features a professor who “excitedly tells the camera ‘whiteness is a form of racial oppression…treason to whiteness is loyalty to humanity’.”

The “Weekly Standard” highlighted what the documentary covers (my emphasis throughout):

Blogging at the "Couric & Co." blog, CBS producer Ward Sloane admitted that many journalists who covered the Gipper were wrong about the 40th President's political and policy acumen. Noting a new book that reveals entries from Reagan's journal, Sloane made it sound like the media were only echoing a large swath of the American electorate:

The fact is that many Americans and -- not surprisingly to some of you reading this blog -- many members of the mainstream press believed that Ronald Reagan was aloof and disconnected from the events that marked his presidency. Historian Douglas Brinkley, who edited the diaries at the invitation of Nancy Reagan, says they show Reagan to be exactly the opposite.

If the AP didn’t write about it, it didn’t happen, right? In an article about a topic I blogged earlier in the week here at Newsbusters, the AP also reported it, but with a different angle. The Primary Source, a conservative newspaper at Boston’s Tufts University was charged with harassment and creating a hostile environment on campus by publishing what the paper called political parody; they were found guilty of the charges by a disciplinary panel. The catch is, the AP worded it in a way that only reported half the story and ignored the paper's other harassment complaint that the panel was judging-at the same time-a fact-based satire of Islam.

CBS News producer/blogger Greg Kandra opened the e-mailbag today to relay to "Couric & Co." readers some negative reaction to the network's coverage of Rev. Jerry Falwell's death. In particular, Kandra quoted from a female Liberty University graduate and vascular surgeon who took issue with historian/guest pundit Douglas Brinkley's assessment of Falwell's views on women.

In an appearance on the May 15 "Evening News," Brinkley dismissed Falwell as a reactionary who (emphasis mine) was "opposed to some of the progressive liberal high watermarks of the 1960s, and certainly he wanted--his returning to family values was returning to women being in the kitchen, in many ways."

That unfair assessment is shared by CBS ombudsblogger Brian Montopoli, who in a May 16 "PublicEye" post agreed that Brinkley's statement was "a pretty fair characterization."

[A quick aside, Montopoli has previously described himself as a "secular humanist" in the online networking forum, Facebook.com]

The only trouble is its an unfair, inaccurate cheap shot against Falwell. Noted Dr. Amy Lipscomb in a letter to CBS News (emphasis mine):

Time.com Washington Editor Ana Marie Cox directed "Swampland" blog readers to a compendium of Mitt Romney gaffes in a post entitled "Gaffe-a-Minute Mitt," calling it "The missing sidebar to Karen's cover story on the Mittster." Cox was referring to Karen Tumulty's May 10 article, "What Romney Believes."

The link takes the reader to a Cox-compiled "top ten" list of the former Massachusetts governor's gaffes. "Mitt Romney may be leading the underwhelming Republican presidential field in fundraising, but he also has a less dubious distinction —he leads the pack in committing professional-grade gaffes," Cox opened her special report.

Of course, former Gov. Tommy Thompson (R-Wisc.) has also had his fair share of gaffes in the past few weeks, as has Democratic contender, Sen. Barack Obama. For instance, shortly after the Virginia Tech mass murder, Obama gave a rambling speech about violence that made little sense. More famously, on May 8, Obama said that 10,000 people perished in the Greensburg, Kansas, tornado when in fact that number was considerably smaller.

My review of the Time "Swampland" blog postings from on and around April 16 and May 8 revealed nothing by Cox snarking about either incident.

What does it say when porn-peddler and sex-shop owner Larry Flynt treated Jerry Falwell’s death with more class than CNN? As Newsbusters reported  yesterday,  during “Anderson Cooper 360,” CNN used a still from an old protest video that had a large illustration of Jerry Falwell next to a large illustration of Hitler.

Despite being courtroom and media adversaries that was kicked into overdrive when Flynt ran a fake ad in “Hustler,” which claimed that Falwell’s first sexual experience was with his mother in an outhouse and resulted in a lawsuit producing a landmark First Amendment ruling by the US Supreme Court, allowing the parody of public figures, Flynt issued this surprisingly generous and thoughtful statement to "Access Hollywood" on May 15 (emphasis mine):

Update/Related (16:44 | May 17) P.J. Gladnick of "DUmmie FUnnies" (also an NB blogger) has a blog entry about Democratic Underground worrying about commenter bile over Falwell damaging their "cause."

Update (10:14 EDT | May 17): WikipediaReview.com picked up on this post. The discussion board's slogan: "Now with 100 percent better judgment, care, and sensitivity than Wikipedia itself." Check them out.

(Content warning: Inappropriate, crass comments from left-wing nutjobs excerpted below)

Joking that an elderly religious man died from suffocating on a penis is not my idea of anything "comical." It is to the George Carlin wannabes at Wonkette though, reporting on a vandalized Jerry Falwell page on Wikipedia:

Something happened to somebody famous, so guess what happened on Wikipedia … that’s right, the person’s page was comically vandalized! Nobody ever gets tired of a really good joke.

Accompanying that post was a screenshot of a Wikipedia page (it has since been cleaned up) which read: "Jerry Falwell choked on Pat Robertson's cock to death. THE END wootah."

You'll recall that in March, MRC's Brent Bozell wrote about Wikipedia's bias against conservatives, but this is ridiculous.

On Wonkette's part, posting such an item served only to provide another comment thread for wingunuts to spew hatred about Falwell and religious conservatives, such as this dirge by commenter "choirboy":

Updates at bottom: 

I want my MTV! Somewhere a soldier or sailor in Iraq or Afghanistan is probably thinking that today. According to the AP, on May 14, the Department of Defense blocked “worldwide” the US troops who use its networks and computers from accessing 12 popular websites that include, YouTube, MTV, MySpace, Blackplanet and Photobucket. The Defense Deparmene which the DoD said“take up a large amount of bandwidth, and others that can open up department computers to hackers and viruses.” (emphasis mine throughout)

US Forces Korea Commander (USFK) Gen. B.B. Bell explained in a memo sent out Friday that the new policy will not impact the military's ability to send and receive email, but the “Department of Defense has a growing concern regarding our unclassified DoD Internet, known as the NIPRNET. The Commander of DoD's Joint Task Force, Global Network Operations has noted a significant increase in the use of DoD network resources tied up by individuals visiting certain recreational Internet sites.”

The AP delved into some of the issues involved: