Corporate Liberalism

There was a fascinating exchange last week between Melissa Cohlmia, spokesman for Koch Industries, and New York Times public editor (or ombudsman) Arthur Brisbane. Koch Industries, which engages in arts philanthropy and conservative-libertarian causes, is a target of obsession and hostility both by left-wingers and reporters and writers for the New York Times, as Times Watch has shown.

While Brisbane mostly defended the Times’s news coverage and its right to deliver anti-Koch opinions in op-eds and art critics, he admitted the paper’s overwhelming left-ward slant in its opinionizing made for “predictable and sometimes very dull reading,” “and there can be little doubt that the Times ownership and editorial page ascribe to a liberal perspective.”

In a surprise announcement, Bill Keller is resigning as New York Times executive editor as of September 6. He will be replaced by Jill Abramson, the paper’s managing editor, Jeremy Peters reported on nytimes.com Thursday morning.

Keller will still write for the paper: "As for Mr. Keller’s plans, he said he was still working out the details of a column he will write for the paper’s new Sunday opinion section, which will be introduced later this month."

Abramson will be the first woman to run the Times newsroom in the paper’s 160-year history. For Abramson, the Times is holy writ:

Friday’s lead New York Times story by Stephanie Strom focused on an I.R.S. crackdown on politically motivated non-profits established by wealthy investors like the libertarian Koch brothers, and the left-wing George Soros: "I.R.S. Sets Sights On Donors Gifts That Push Policy - Says Tax May Be Owed – Advocacy Groups Draw Scrutiny – A Rare Use of a Provision."

Strom focused mainly on the Koch brothers of the right, and an accompanying photo caption claimed that while David Koch gave to libertarian causes, the left-wing Soros merely "donated millions to other causes."

Big donors like David H. Koch and George Soros could owe taxes on their millions of dollars in contributions to nonprofit advocacy groups that are playing an increasing role in American politics.

BuzzMedia.com bills itself as "pop culture amplified." It recently acquired a former Turner Broadcasting site called "The Frisky."

BuzzMedia's press release announcing the acquisition said that "The Frisky has struck a major chord with female audiences for its authentic voice and fierce sense of humor."

Last Tuesday, The Frisky "Guys" section contributor and Julie Gerstein, whose occupation per her profile is Style Editor, criticized another web site's 25 Hot Guys under 25 list. You see, Ms. Gerstein fiercely believes that Crushable.com's Number 13, Denver Broncos quarterback Tim Tebow, should not have been on the list because -- and only because -- he is pro-life:

A recent report from American University communications professor Matthew Nisbet examined the apparent decline of the environmental movement in recent years. For all the questions raised by the report over what happened to the moment, it does answer a pair surrounding the debate as it pertains to bias in the media.

First, the media was a force for, not against, liberal environmental policies. That will likely shock no NB reader, but many on the left are still convinced that the media is a force for conservatism, or at the very least against leftist political change (stop laughing). The AU report undercuts those claims, at least as they pertain to the environmental movement.

"[T]he major national news organizations overwhelmingly reflected the consensus view on the reality and causes of climate change," Nisbet concluded in his analysis of media coverage. The "consensus view," in this context, refers to the view that climate change is occurring and that human activity is responsible for it.

The latest installment of New York Times Executive Editor Bill Keller’s Sunday Magazine column, “Among the Guerrillas -- What role do the mainstream media play in an environment beset by Assanges and O’Keefes?” likened conservative guerrilla film-maker James O’Keefe, who brought down ACORN and the executive suite at National Public Radio with his hoaxes, to Julian Assange, the anti-American anarchist who spilled secret diplomatic cables with the intent of harming U.S. interests.

Intriguingly, Keller went further than he usually does to meet his critics, confessing that his paper could be rightfully accused of a liberal outlook in a cultural sense, though he managed to make this particular brand of urban cultural liberalism sound appealing: “[Former Public Editor Daniel] Okrent went on to explain that The Times’s outlook, steeped in the mores of a big, rambunctious city, tends to be culturally liberal: open-minded, skeptical of dogma, secular, cosmopolitan....Okrent rightly scolded us for sometimes seeming to look down our urban noses at the churchgoing, the gun-owning and the unlettered.”

This Christmas, give the gift of...secret diplomatic cables?

There were several surprisingly slanted articles in the Holiday edition of “T,” the New York Times style magazine published 15 Sundays a year and put together by writers and reporters from outside the paper. Most newsworthy (if almost as shallow as the other pieces) was British writer Misha Glenny’s profile of Wikileaks founder Julian Assange (arrested in a sex inquiry in London Tuesday morning), presenting his damaging, illegal leaks of secret diplomatic cables as a Christmas gift, treating the controversial figure as just another one of the hip icons celebrated in T Magazine in a story with the galling title “The Gift of Information.”

If MSNBC were consistent, Keith Olbermann would not have been the only on-air personality disciplined for making political contributions.

For those who don't watch his "Countdown" program (which would be most of the country), Olbermann was suspended "indefinitely" after it was learned he donated money without approval from management to three Democratic congressional candidates. The problem for MSNBC was not only Olbermann's failure to get permission, but that he anchored part of the network's Election Night coverage. Apparently at MSNBC, the chair you sit in matters more than the content of your journalistic character.

Just days after MSNBC President Phil Griffin claimed his cable network does not use air-time to support Democratic candidates and liberal causes, evening host Lawrence O'Donnell yielded over two minutes of his eponymous program to feature MoveOn.org's latest anti-Republican advertisement in its entirety.

O'Donnell introduced the partisan attack ad as a get-out-the-vote push: "Sometimes you have to take unusual steps to get out the vote. MoveOn.org, with the help of actors Olivia Wilde from 'House' and Romany Malco from 'Weeds,' has produced a warning from the future to show you what could happen if Republicans win this election because you didn't vote."

After playing the entire ad uninterrupted, which urged voters to "STOP THE REPUBLICAN TAKEOVER!!" and predicted that if the GOP takes back control of Congress in November because liberals don't go to the polls, Republicans will merge with "the big corporations that fund them to create RepubliCorp," the MSNBC host immediately cut to a commercial break.

Instead of analyzing the attack ad on its merits, O'Donnell gave MoveOn.org free ad time.

If Juan Williams knew at 9:45 p.m. yesterday that he was out of a job, he sure didn't show it.

The same night he was fired by NPR, Williams appeared on Sean Hannity's "Great American panel" segment in an ostensibly cheerful mood, exchanging playful banter with the host and panelists.

"I love the sartorial splendor of his mutton chops," quipped Williams, referring to New York gubernatorial candidate Jimmy McMillian's facial hair. "And I'm thinking what would you look like with this? A little bit of that deputy dog look. You know what I'm talking about? You would look marvelous, my friend. That would be you as more liberal. That was a hip, younger Sean."

"You calling me fat, old Sean?" retorted Hannity.

Not that there was any doubt, but we now have confirmation that the new MSNBC "Lean Forward" series of promos is all about . . .  promoting the election of Democrats.

On his MSNBC show this evening, Ed Schultz used the "lean forward" phrase in urging "base Democrats" to go to the polls to defeat Republicans and support President Obama's agenda.

You know, Mr. President, if things don't work out in 2012, we could open a slot for you on MSNBC at 8 PM . . .

It apparently wasn't enough for NBC Universal, little more than a month before the elections, to grant Pres. Obama a half-hour across all its networks to talk about education—while encouraging him to get rougher with Republicans.

There I was this morning, innocently watching Morning Joe, when suddenly an NBC promo popped up, starring—you guessed it—the prez.  It would have been bad enough if this had been a government PSA.  But this was a promo for an NBC Universal initiative called "The More You Know," dedicated, its website informs us, to providing "critical" health messages. [You can be sure one thing it won't be "critical" of is . . . ObamaCare.]

On Saturday's CBS Early Show, correspondent Jim Axelrod reported on the death of former CBS correspondent Daniel Schorr, declaring that he "was an old-school broadcast journalist, he was the last working reporter who'd been one of Edward R. Morrow's boys." An on-screen headline read: "Celebrating Daniel Schorr; Legendary Journalist Dead at 93."

Axelrod touted Schorr's reporting from CBS's Washington bureau, "ending up on Richard Nixon's enemies list during Watergate, which he always called his greatest achievement." He briefly noted Schorr being fired from CBS after reporting a leaked classified CIA report, and described the reporter's time at CNN and NPR in later years. Axelrod quoted one NPR colleague of Schorr, Scott Simon: "'Dan Schorr was around from the Russian Revolution to the digital revolution.'" Axelrod remarked: "Simon could have added 'and we were all better informed for it.'" He never used the word liberal to describe Schorr.

As NewsBusters' Brent Baker earlier reported, one way in which Schorr infamously "informed" viewers while at CBS was to compare Republican presidential nominee Barry Goldwater to the neo-Nazi movement in Germany: "It looks as though Senator Goldwater, if nominated, will be starting his campaign here in Bavaria, center of Germany's right wing....Hitler's one-time stomping ground....there are signs that the American and German right wings are joining up."

It seems that the vast majority of journalists who bemoan unaccountable, unabashedly opinionated digital reporting are the same ones who have, without challenge, pushed a liberal perspective through their own reporting.

The latest such journalist, Newsweek's Howard Fineman, is concerned that "nobody is cross-examining" the "position papers" that supposedly comprise a critical mass of new media journalism. Of course without new media, Fineman's position papers would be virtually immune from meaningful cross examination.

His position is common among the media's old guard: accountability for thee, but not for me. This view stems both from a sort of meta-double standard: Fineman and his ilk extrapolate a few bad apples among the new media crowd into a larger trend of malfeasance, while treating instances of journalistic malpractice among old media reporters as isolated incidents that have no real bearing on Old Media's accountability (or lack thereof).

A far-left Democratic congressman is accusing conservative commentators of improperly -- perhaps illegally -- conspiring with advertisers to shill for their products under the guise of political opinion. The accusers, however, conveniently ignore liberal commentators that do virtually the same thing, only on a far larger scale.

Rep. Anthony Weiner released a report yesterday alleging that Goldline "has formed an unholy alliance with conservative pundits to drive a false narrative and play off public fears in order to sell its products," according to a release. Under "conservative pundits," read the Fox News Channel, and specifically Glenn Beck.

Weiner has this far neglected to criticize Fox's cable news competitor MSNBC and its parent network, which consistently shill for policies that would dramatically enrich their parent company, General Electric. GE's communications arm consistently further's Weiner's own political agenda, so a double standard seems to be afoot in his failure to call NBC out on its colossal conflict on interest.

Update: The well-publicized announcement that Editor & Publisher was going to "cease operations" last December and that was stated as a given in the original version of this post was apparently premature, as it's still there on the web. E&P is also covering the circulation news (daily; Sunday; HT to a BizzyBlog commenter).

Advertising Age (AA) had the unenviable task (given that it's supposed to stay on its vendors' and customers' good sides) of figuring out a way to cast yet another dreadful newspaper circulation report in a non-negative light. The educated guess here is that most newspaper execs are not going to be wearing the button pictured at the top right very frequently during the foreseeable future.

Here are the figures cited by AA as overall newspaper circulation declines during the past five six-month ABC reporting periods (percentages represent declines from the same six-month period of the previous year) --

March 31, 2010: - 8.7% daily, -6.5% Sunday
September 30, 2009: -10.6% daily, -7.5% Sunday
March 31, 2009: - 7.1% daily, -5.4% Sunday
September 30, 2008: -4.6% daily, -4.9% Sunday
March 31, 2008: - 3.6% daily, -4.6% Sunday

Given the results, here is AA's headline, sub-headline, and "hey, it's not really that bad" first sentence:

The Pentagon rescinded the invitation of evangelist Franklin Graham to speak at its May 6 National Day of Prayer event because of complaints about his previous comments about Islam.

The Military Religious Freedom Foundation expressed its concern over Graham's involvement with the event in an April 19 letter sent to Secretary of Defense Robert Gates. MRFF's complaint about Graham, the son of Rev. Billy Graham, focused on remarks he made after 9/11 in which he called Islam "wicked" and "evil" and his lack of apology for those words.

Col. Tom Collins, an Army spokesman, told ABC News on April 22, "This Army honors all faiths and tries to inculcate our soldiers and work force with an appreciation of all faiths and his past comments just were not appropriate for this venue."

In honor of Earth Day 2010, the Washington Post dedicated eight tree-killing pages to a special advertising supplement titled "Environmental Leadership." (Unavailable online).

Although it was woefully short on actual ads, the advertising supplement featured thirteen columns that sponsored, championed, and moralized the environmental catastrophe sure to result if Americans - and sometimes others - don't dramatically overhaul the economy and lifestyles. It predictably featured loud calls for more and more government while consciously downplaying the costs to the American economy.

Sources for the special "Environmental Leadership" supplement include:

• Sources for the special "Environmental Leadership" supplement include:
• New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg urging Congress to adopt the Green Taxis Act requiring all taxi owners to buy hybrids when retiring old vehicles.
• Greensburg, Kansas Mayor Bob Dixson recommending every city emulate Greensburg's environmental standards for buildings.
• Lisa P. Jackson, Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency showing environmentalism and economic growth aren't mutually exclusive

Surprise: NBC finally found a business it likes - even a business decision it likes: companies that help homeowners who decide to walk away from their mortgages.

"New figures show foreclosures in the U.S. are up about 35-percent from a year ago," Matt Lauer kicked off an April 20 segment of "Today" that encouraged homeowners - even those financially comfortable - to simply walk away. "And a growing reason why are people who simply choose to walk away from their mortgage even when they can afford it."

"Experian, the credit-monitoring service, says 588,000 borrowers - or 18-percent of those who have defaulted on their mortgages in the past year - did it for strategic reasons and not because they're broke," NBC's George Lewis reported. "It's called a strategic default, walking away from a home and enduring foreclosure out of frustration with a bad investment."

On the scene with the Schreur family in Folsom, California, Mr. Schreur acknowledged in an interview that although his family was not in any financial distress, a sharp decline in house value incited the family to default, as any other option "made no sense."   

Originally published yesterday at Big Hollywood. For a related blog post, click here.

Must be nice being a leftie and NEVER having to worry about some childish television creator taking a gratuitous shot — from completely out of nowhere — at what you believe in. Not so for we righties. When all we want after a hard day of gay bashing, cross burning and kitten punting is to get lost in mindless entertainment, we always have to worry about stuff like this (see video embed at right).

This is why I stopped watching television over a decade ago. Tired of being insulted. Tired of being disappointed. And you can practically feel the people behind the childish political shot laughing at your Charlie Brown as they once again pull the football away.

“Glee” spent all of last season building up buzz and an audience, and as soon as they get one: POW!

Screw you, righties. We don’t like you and we think you’re stupid for liking Palin.

But it’s more than that. This stuff matters.

Petula Dvorark, Washington Post's designated church-basher, commemorated the closure of a Virginian "pro-life" pharmacy with snide glee in her April 13 column.

"The Divine Mercy Care Pharmacy in Chantilly proudly and purposefully limited what it would stock on its shelves. But it turns out that no birth control pills, no condoms, no porn, no tobacco and even no makeup added up to one thing: No customers," Dvorak wrote.

"John T. Bruchalski, president of Divine Mercy Care and the doctor who opened the pharmacy, then had to close it, said he wanted a place where pharmacists ‘could bring their conscience into the store, rather than hang it up at the door when they entered,'" she continued.

"Shoppers in Northern Virginia apparently weren't clamoring for a place to pick up cough medicine that also didn't sell porn, cigs and mascara. Selections of these wicked products (especially mascara - have you seen the array recently? Glittery! Lengthening! Stiletto lashes! Such naughtiness!) are available in just about every supermarket and big-box store across the country."

The co-founder of progressive blog The Huffington Post, Arianna Huffington, has attributed the West Virginia mining disaster, along with virtually every other accident under the sun, as a direct result of  small-government and corporate greed in the April 13 Huffpo column "The West Virginia Mining Disaster and the Financial Crisis Have the Same Root Cause."

"Officials say it's too soon to pinpoint the exact cause of the tragic explosion at the Upper Big Branch mine in West Virginia that took the lives of 29 miners, but we certainly know enough to identify the root cause," Huffington began. "It's the same cause that led to the 2006 Sago mine disaster in West Virginia that killed 12 miners. And it's also the same cause that led to the Lehman Brothers disaster, the Citigroup disaster, the bursting of the housing bubble, and the implosion of our financial system: a badly broken regulatory system."

"The economic collapse has not killed people, but it has gradually destroyed millions of lives. Both calamities occurred because elected officials who should have been creating a regulatory system that protects working families instead created a system that protects the corporations it was meant to watch over."

Huffington predictably mouthed the response from the left and the mainstream media whenever something goes wrong in a business or industry: Massey Energy's Don Blankenship and other evil CEOs who put profit ahead of people.

Everyone knows Fox isn't "the most trusted name in news," so who is? You guessed it - and at least one media tycoon agrees. Speaking at the University of Missouri as a guest-lecture, Craig Newmark - Craigslist founder and informal Obama technology-advisor - argued that Comedy Central is the most trustworthy news source.

Invited to discuss the future of journalism - where individuals virtually have an endless amount of resources in today's era of new media - Newark stressed how trust and credibility was paramount, emphasizing the exemplary dedication Comedy Central shows have for investigative reporting and fact-checking.

"[R]ight now I think the most trusted news show in the U.S. is the one that does the best investigative reporting and the most trustworthy reporting - and that's ‘The Daily Show,'" Newark said - and he wasn't joking. "Sounds like a joke - isn't."

David Shuster may be on his way to CNN, and the cable network may be realizing that it needs the likes of David Shuster -- a hyper-partisan liberal -- if it wants to compete with MSNBC.

The New York Observer reported today that CNN shot a pilot for a new show co-anchored by Shuster, at right in a file photo, and Michel Martin, an NPR reporter with a lower profile, but a noteworthy history of liberal bias.

I wrote a post on Wednesday noting that cable news generally caters to a more political audience. I posited that CNN's supposed attempts to cater to the "center" were not only inconsistent with the network's routinely liberal reporting, but in fact self-destructive, as they try to carve out a market that really isn't there. Apparently CNN got the memo.

Michael Moore: crusader and "common-man" - with a net-worth in the range of $25-50 million, appeared on "Countdown with Keith Olbermann" with fill-in Lawrence O'Donnell March 15, continuing to fight the good fight against capitalism and health insurance companies.

Moore predicted the Democrats' ObamaCare will pass, "But this bill, as good as many of the thing are in the bill, you know - young people can stay on their parent's insurance until 26, that's a great thing - it's a death sentence for literally tens of thousands of people who are going to get sick, or have been sick, and because of their preexisting conditions."

To Moore, the current health care reform proposal does not go nearly far enough. He favors a universal single-payer system that would effectively be a government take-over of one-sixth the economy.

Howell Raines was executive editor of the New York Times for 21 turbulent months before being forced out in June 2003, felled by the journalistic malpractice committed by a young reporter he supported, Jayson Blair, and his personal callousness and autocratic management style, as well as launching a feminist crusade against the Augusta National Golf Club (home of the Masters golf tournament) that embarrassed even fellow liberal journalists.

In retirement, the admitted "liberal to radical" Raines has settled into a Captain Ahab role against his sworn enemy, that two-headed white whale in charge of Fox News: news chief Roger Ailes and the network's owner, News Corp. founder Rupert Murdoch.

Back on February 1, Raines made his first appearance in the Times since leaving with a column ostensibly about the Greensboro, NC civil rights sit-in, but also about the deviltry that is Fox News.

Today, however, there's no denying that traditional reportage of political and social trends seems almost as out of date as segregation. Surely the civil rights movement would have been hampered by the politicized, oppositional journalism that flows from Fox News and the cable talk shows. Luckily for the South, that kind of butchered news was left mostly to a few extremist newspapers in Virginia and Mississippi and to local AM radio talk shows that specialized in segregationist rants.

You'd think the money man behind an array of left wing organizations wouldn't need CNN to get out his message about the death and "bankruptcy" of free-market capitalism, but there was left-wing billionaire and financier George Soros on "GPS" Feb.18

Interviewed by Fareed Zakaria, Soros said he disagreed with President Obama's decision to bail out the banks. Soros would have nationalized them. Soros also advocated for capping CEO pay, and imposing additional taxes on financial transactions and for banks based on size. 

Zakaria offered praise for Obama, saying "You can look at any (issue) all by itself, but I think he's done pretty well and in some ways hasn't gotten the credit for it because the crisis was averted. So now the Republicans can say ‘there was no problem, we didn't need to spend all this money."

Toyota is facing harsh scrutiny from the media and lawmakers - perhaps with justification. But there could be consequences for the U.S. economy.

And as Toyota (NYSE:TM) executives have endured two days of congressional hearings on the issues surrounding their potentially widespread defective products, the most aggressive questioners have been lawmakers from Michigan, home of the Big 3 automakers. A fact that led CNBC "Squawk Box" co-host Becky Quick to question if the federal government, with a huge stake in General Motors and Chrysler, are being a little unfair with Toyota on her Feb. 24 broadcast.

"We've heard from some congressmen, especially those later on in the show about the people and Congress people who are questioning Toyota at this point saying, they are doing this because the government has this big stake in GM?" Quick said. "To me, that seems a little crazy."

More Video Below Fold

Since Tea Party protests became an influential movement on the national scene last year, the left in general and the liberal media in particular have tried (unsuccessfully) to render it irrelevant in the eyes of the American people. By throwing around accusations of racism and dire warnings of impending violence, these pundits have tried, unsuccessfully to undermine the movement.

University of Virginia Professor Gerard Alexander explored this trend more generally in yesterday's Washington Post poses the question, pondering, "Why Are Liberals So Condescending?" In his column, Alexander details four types of condescension widespread among the far-left and omnipresent in its talking points. Perhaps unsurprisingly, all four have been employed by left-leaning journalists to bash the Tea Party movement.

"American liberals, to a degree far surpassing conservatives," Alexander writes, "appear committed to the proposition that their views are correct, self-evident, and based on fact and reason, while conservative positions are not just wrong but illegitimate, ideological and unworthy of serious consideration."