Crashing the Tea Party: A Step-by-Step Media Guide on How to Discredit
Over the past year since its inception, the media have worked hard to discredit and denigrate the tea party movement. News organizations employed various strategies, from dismissing the protests as astroturf, to using derogatory nicknames for participants, and finally labeling it as a violent extremist fringe. In their futile attempt to get something to stick, the media have become increasingly…
After Obsessing Over Enron's Political Friends, Media Mostly Ignore Mu
President Obama has extensive ties to Goldman Sachs. Yet even given record-breaking financial contributions and sketchy relationships between Goldman executives and Obama officials at the highest level, the mainstream media will not afford Obama the same scrutiny it gave to George W. Bush during the collapse of Enron.Obama's inflation-adjusted $1,007,370.85 in contributions from Goldman employees…
Big Three Nets' Evening News Ratings Crater to Summer 2009 Levels Two
Two weeks ago (noted at NewsBusters; at BizzyBlog), the combined audience for the Big Three Networks' Evening News shows for the week of March 29 fell to just below 20 million. That audience was about 5% less than what Matt Drudge in the summer of 2006 headlined as "TV's Lowest Week." The Big Three's combined audience crawled back above 20 million during the week of April 5. But Chris Ariens of…
NBC: Screw Your Neighbors -- Walking Away from Your Mortgage is 'Ethic
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…
Sticking to His Guns: Sedition Charges and the Journalistic Ethics of
One of the things taught in journalism schools, at least when it comes crime reporting, is that when someone charged with a crime, you carefully craft your rhetoric because in the United States, you're presumed innocent until proven guilty. But what if you're journalist and you're making accusations of crime where there's not even a charge? On NBC's April 18 "The Chris Matthews Show," Time…
CNN's Rick Sanchez Goes After 'Cheap Shot' From NewsBusters
CNN's Rick Sanchez named me and NewsBusters to "the very top" of his daily 'List That U Don't Want 2 Be On' on his Rick's List show on Monday. Sanchez criticized me for apparently not being able to tell he was "joking" during a segment on April 15 where he stated that "you think it's too cold to have a volcano" in Iceland [audio available here].I have been monitoring the anchor since September…
Obama Lied, Jobs Died: AP Report on Economy Out of Twinsburg, OH 'Forg
On the surface, it's one of the Associated Press's better dispatches from the real world on the state of the economy as people are experiencing it. Datelined in Twinsburg, Ohio, Megan Barr's Monday morning report, "Recession is ending? Some Americans don't buy it," does a good job of mixing macro and micro elements, painting a picture of a struggling town, a non-improving state economy (now…
Massa Saga 'Just Heating Up'? Don't Hold Your Breath for Media Obsessi
The "Eric Massa saga [is] just heating up," promises the headline for Jonathan Allen's April 19 Politico story about the latest development in the swift demise of the tickle-happy freshman Democrat:For nearly a year, the allegations of scandalous activity in former Rep. Eric Massa’s office were kept quiet — by the congressman, by male aides who accuse him of sexually harassing them and by other…
On Fox News, Jim Pinkerton, Judy Miller Cite MRC, Eyeblast
James Pinkerton of the New America Foundation and Fox News contributor Judy Miller both gave kudos to the Media Research Center and Eyeblast.tv on Saturday's Fox News Watch. Pinkerton applauded Eyeblast for hosting a clip of NBC's Kelly O'Donnell questioning of black tea partyer and his "best answer." (See the Friday NB post, “White NBC Reporter Confronts Black Man at Tea Party Rally: 'Have You…
Terse AP Report Avoids Cynical Politics Behind Prop 8 Repeal Failure
In one of those "I guess we have to mention it, but we'll get it out of the way quickly" reports, the Associated Press on Monday, April 12 tersely told its readers the following about the failure of an attempt in California to repeal California's Proposition 8 (reproduced in full for fair use and discussion purposes): What AP chose to avoid telling the rest of the nation is why "more…
Time’s Klein: Beck, Palin Potentially Committing Sedition against U
Liberals are all too often eager to charge conservative personalities of using hyperbole to gain a political advantage, especially when it contradicts their world view - whether it's suggesting the Obama administration is taking the country down the path of socialism, fascism or any other -ism. However, it could be argued there's a different set of standards for those same people when they want…
AP Report Gives Waxman Cover for Cancelled Hearings on Corporate Obama
Talk about running interference. On Wednesday, Congressman Henry Waxman cancelled hearings, or what Michelle Malkin referred to as "show trials" in her Friday syndicated column, designed to put the spotlight on companies that dared to do what they legally had to do in response to the passage of ObamaCare: tell the public the estimated impact on their bottom lines relating to a specific tax law…
MSNBC's Schultz: Conservative Own 90% of Media; TEA Partiers Are 'Low
"Ninety percent of the electronic media in this country is owned, operated, programmed and controlled by conservatives," MSNBC's Ed Schultz told the audience of a recent National Action Network panel discussion. And just how did this happen? According to Schultz, conservatives, "made a concerted effort during and before the Reagan years that they were going to get the microphone." The Fairness…
AP Silent on Motive of Killer Who 'Needed to Take His Family Back to A
Why is the legacy media so reluctant to note the possibility of a radical Muslim faith leading to violence? On numerous occasions, the mainstream press has refused to note even a potential connection.The latest such example concerns a recent quadruple homicide in Chicago. A Wisconsin man, James Larry, allegedly shot and killed his pregnant wife, his 7-month-old son, and his two nieces. Why? Well…
