The Untold Story of Astroturf: Corporate-Sponsored Environmentalism

Media often criticize Tea Party activism for being promoted from top down, while green movement openly backed by major corporations.
Jeff Poor

On NBC, Vieira Sputters at Laura Ingraham's Charge That Kagan Was 'Ant

NBC’s Today offered a conservative counterpoint on the Elena Kagan nomination on Wednesday: conservative radio talker and author Laura Ingraham. Co-host Meredith Vieira suggested Republicans were hypocrites to suggest Kagan was inexperienced. The top Republican on the Judiciary Committee, Alabama Senator Jeff Sessions, has said that her lack of experience to him is troubling. Yet when Harriet…
Tim Graham

Lead Prosecutor Chris Matthews Indicts Dick Cheney for Oil Spill

Chris Matthews simply can't get Dick Cheney out of his mind. On Tuesday's Hardball, the MSNBC host once again attempted to pin the blame of the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico on the former vice president, a theory he first broached last week, as he sinisterly questioned "What role did Dick Cheney play in all of this?" Matthews, going after one of his favorite punching bags, brought on Democratic…
Geoffrey Dickens

Under Painting of Lincoln Peering Down at Obama, USA Today Explores Ob

“Will doing 'big things' wind up costing Obama?” a Wednesday USA Today front page article worried, accompanied by a photo of contemplative President Barack Obama with Abraham Lincoln in a painting peering down at him. The caption: “History book bound?” The subhead for the story by Susan Page and Mimi Hall: “Voters' anxiety clouds his historic successes.” The effusive lead presumed Obama deserves…
Brent Baker

Deficit Comes In Just Below CBO Estimate; Economists' Predictions Were

It doesn't seem like this exercise should be that tough. The government issues Daily Treasury Statements telling everybody what went in and out on a given business day. At the end of the month, the last Daily Treasury Statement has a record (admittedly jumbled and larded with lots of bureaucratic excess) of all receipts and disbursements for the month. The folks at the Congressional Budget…
Tom Blumer

Britain Moves Right, CBS Sees Cameron as Just Another Liberal

On Wednesday's CBS Early Show, correspondent Elizabeth Palmer reported on Conservative Party leader David Cameron becoming the new British prime minister, but downplayed the political shift: "Cameron is a conservative in the British sense. In favor of gay rights, a green agenda, and the welfare state." While in American conservative terms Cameron would certainly be considered a moderate, for…
Kyle Drennen

Increasingly Opaque White House Insulates Kagan From Press Corps

In the latest example of a pattern of opacity, the White House has cut off the press's access to Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan. Kagan has extensive ties to journalists, which only serves as a testament to this administration's determination to control the message on its major initiatives, including Kagan's nomination."Tell her we're deeply frustrated," one reporter told White House press…
Lachlan Markay

The Untold Story of Astroturf: Corporate Sponsored Environmentalism

BMI Staff

The Media's Untold Story of Astroturf: Corporate Sponsored Environment

It's the American way, right? It is patriotic to exercise the 1st Amendment by petitioning the government for a redress of grievances - unless of course your effort has a tie to some corporation or lobbying interest. Then regardless of its size, it's phony baloney Astroturf activism. While groups like the George Soros-funded MoveOn.org have managed to elude the "Astroturf" moniker, from its…
Jeff Poor

Detroit News Finds Example of 'Workers Choosing Jobless Pay' Over Work

While it is often an unpopular viewpoint, many economists realize unemployment insurance can actually promote unemployment. Business & Media Institute adviser Prof. Gary Wolfram explained this in an op-ed on March 17, 2010, as the media attacked Sen. Jim Bunning for filibustering a bill including an extension of the ability to file for federal unemployment benefits. Wolfram wrote, "…
Julia A. Seymour

Newsweek Notes Evangelical Leaders Pushing for Immigration Amnesty

The mainstream media often have little use for religious folks, except, of course, when they sing from the same hymnal on an issue dear to liberals.We've seen it before with how the media bash the Catholic Church as behind the times when compared to its American laity who are decidedly less conservative on sexual mores, abortion, and women or married persons in the priesthood. Yet when Catholic…
Ken Shepherd

Is God Pro-Gay? Chris Matthews, Lesbian Country Singer Say Yes

Liberals are circulating the idea the God is pro-gay. Near the end of Monday night's Hardball, after a segment on gays, Chris Matthews tossed in his not-so-Catholic two cents: "I don't think your orientation is a choice, by the way. God has a lot to do with this.  Anyway, Michelle Goldberg, thank you. Charles Moran, sir, I love your organization." That group would be the Log Cabin Republicans.…
Tim Graham

CNN's Kyra Phillips: Racism a Problem Only Among Whites

On Wednesday's Newsroom, CNN's Kyra Phillips hinted that racists only come in a shade of white when she highlighted how "there's still racism in this country- KKK members, white supremacists, and less radical racists." Phillips, commenting on the controversy over a recent blacks-only field trip at a Michigan school, later expressed her approval that the segregated field trip program was being…
Matthew Balan

CBS's Rodriguez Urges John Kerry to Denounce Offshore Oil Drilling

In an interview with Senator John Kerry on Wednesday's CBS Early Show on the Gulf Coast oil spill, co-host Maggie Rodriguez hit from the left on new energy legislation proposed by the Massachusetts Democrat: "correct me if I'm wrong, your legislation calls for expanding offshore drilling at a time when polls show most Americans no longer support it. Why do you believe it's necessary to do that?"A…
Kyle Drennen