Recently in Media Category

I couldn't resist posting just one more item about Governor Christie. Or in this case another video of him explaining to a media pinhead about his "confrontational tone" with the entrenched interests infesting the Garden State.


'Nuff said.

Watching the national news (specifically ABC News), one would think we're in the midst of a string of record breaking summers, with hot and humid temperatures across most of the US. They've attributed it to global warming all while ignoring a number of cyclical weather patterns (El Niño and La Niña) that are far more likely to be the cause of this summer's weather. We here in New England have managed to avoid much of what the rest of the nation has been dealing with (it's been warm but with mostly low humidity), but that doesn't mean we haven't noticed what's been going on. We've seen the reports from all over the nation about the never ending heat waves. But we've also been hearing about the Southern Hemisphere, which has been dealing with record cold temperatures.

This summer's weather has caused a bit of amnesia about the previous two summers, where the weather was mostly cooler and wetter than normal. During those summers, here in the northeast we didn't really experience summer weather until August. June and July were cold and very wet, seriously affecting the farm industry and the tourist trade. On the farms, crops ran late and some were drowned out altogether. And who wants to go to the beach or go hiking or boating or hit the tourist spots when it's in the 60's, cloudy, and damp?

If we have a string of summers like the one we've been experiencing this year, then we might be able to attribute it to global warming. But if it's just this summer, and the following summers are 'normal' then wouldn't we have to say it was just weather and not climate? If you're like most folks, I'd say the answer would be yes. But knowing the It's-All-The-Fault-Of-The-Evil-Humans global warming folks they will ignore the normal summer pattern and focus intently on this summer as proof of AGW. Never mind there's been a decade long cooling trend.

And then of course, there's this. But let's not let facts get in the way of our opinions, right?

It seems Nicholas Kristof is confused about health care reform, thinking it's all about making sure everyone has access to health care. Obviously he has not been paying attention to the debate or the proposed legislation.

Poor Nicholas. Apparently he can't tell the difference between access to health care and health insurance.

Everyone in America has had access to health care by law since the the 1980's. No one needing care can be turned away, even if they can't pay for it. ObamaCare has nothing to do with access, at least not directly.

According to the Democrats ObamaCare is all about is health insurance, something entirely different. Of course once everyone has insurance there will be an effect on health care access, just not the one they expected - there will be less of it. Doctors will be unwilling or unable to take on new patients, just like in Massachusetts under RomneyCare. So even if you have insurance there's absolutely no guarantee you'll be able to find a doctor to take you as a patient.

See the difference now, Nicholas?

They did scoop the entire media on John Edwards's bastard illegitimate or "love" child.

At first I couldn't believe it.

ABC World News was going to do a story about ClimateGate.

I thought, "Gee, at least someone other than Fox is paying attention." But that thought faded away as I watched the report, a piece that covered the hacked files and the so-called "smoking gun". Call it a CBS-Lite version of the scandal.

The only part of ClimateGate they covered were the incriminating e-mails, something they tried to explain away. No mention was made about the FORTRAN source code used to create results the CRU crew wanted to see, or the Read Me text file accompanying the computer code. No mention was made of destroyed data nor machinations to prevent skeptics from being able to question CRU's conclusions or publish dissenting articles. Nor did they say anything about Jones stepping down as head of CRU or of the UK government investigating the affair. There was also no mention of Penn State University investigating another member of the CRU cabal, Michael Mann, he of the discredited Mann "hockey stick" graph.

Instead they tried to make AGW skeptics seem deranged, even more than the AlGoristas have tried to do.

From comments made to the ABC News blog post about the report, it appears few are buying ABC's attempt to minimize the story.

The White House war against Fox News has made it quite apparent the Obama Administration is channeling the late Richard Nixon.

Well now, these are strange times. However, I can't say I've ever come across anything quite like this...

Fox News is "operating basically as talk radio," President Obama suggested in an interview airing today.

So, he's saying now that Fox News isn't a news station? It's "operating as a talk radio", but not news? Last I knew, most of talk radio dealt directly with news and commentary on said news. Well now... Let's see if we can't dig a bit deeper into this interesting idea...

"I think what our advisers have simply said is that we are going to take media as it comes," Obama told NBC's Savannah Guthrie. "And if media is operating basically as a talk radio format then that's one thing, and if it's operating as a news outlet that's another but it's not something I'm losing sleep over."

The folks over at COTErack have gathered a number of videos of Anita Dunn confessing to Obama's control and manipulation of the Lame Stream Media during his Presidential campaign, her disdain of Fox News, and her abiding love for "philosopher" Mao Zedong. (Scroll down)

I know I'm a bit late piling on to Ms. Dunn, but she hasn't received anywhere near the abuse she deserves.

It's been just shy of a year since the 2008 elections, Barack Obama has been in office for a little over nine months, and what are those on the Left and the Right talking about?

Sarah Palin.

For someone part of the losing presidential ticket last year, she's been getting a lot of attention.

The Left is still apoplectic about her, wishing nothing more that she'd go away and fade into obscurity. Their hatred of her is almost pathological, with so many of them trying their best to destroy her, as Bill Whittle sums up most eloquently is one of his latest video op-ed pieces:



For someone the Left sees as "stupid", "out of her depth", and a "Wasilla hillbilly", they're spending a lot of effort to crush her. If their characterizations were true, why would they need to expend so much time and energy to do so?

Because they fear her, seeing her as a threat to their Messiah, the Narcissist/Teleprompter/Apologist-In-Chief.

He's an empty suit. Sarah Palin is the real deal, someone just about everyone (except the elite in both parties) can relate to.

It doesn't matter that she doesn't speak eloquently. There are plenty of poseurs capable of doing that, including President Obama. But she gets to the heart of the matter, speaking plainly, something Obama seems to be incapable of doing. Instead, he speaks in broad, general terms, dancing around the issue, implying much but not actually saying anything. His followers hear what they want to hear, not what it is he actually said. With Sarah Palin you pretty well know she means what she says and says exactly what she means.

Despite the Left's machinations, Palin has survived manufactured scandal, personal attacks against her, personal attacks against her family, bogus ethics complaints (everyone was found to be without merit), disparaging remarks about her education (she didn't graduate from an Ivy League school, but at least her transcripts are open to the public), lack of experience (How many states did Obama run before he became President?), and an endless list of complaints from a number of less than honorable leftist organizations because she's not a neo-fascist feminist, baby-aborting, agnostic/atheist, hire-the-nanny-to-raise-the-kids, career comes first modern woman.

Palin's survival has frustrated the Left (and the inside-the-Beltway Right) to no end. It is a subtle form of revenge for her, for she is going forward, outlasting her enemies and living better than they are, which is one form of revenge most of us can relate to. She's been willing to make decisions most politicians would be afraid to even think about.

Well, just who is looking out of touch and foolish now? Hint: It isn't the Killa from Wasilla.

What is the real story here is that given a set of singularly difficult circumstances, Governor Palin made a counter-intuitive and gutsy decision that has already proven right for all parties involved. We call that brilliance. We call that effective leadership.

Perhaps inside the beltway, those measures of wisdom and intelligence and instinctive leadership are out of date. All too often in that world, decisions are made by what is the safe play and by what will play well with the pundits. Damn the consequences to others, just pull that focus group report and make sure we look good to the media.

That was not how Palin measured her decision. She was willing to look outside the box for a possibility, and when she found an idea that worked for everyone she grabbed it. Quickly. And she never looked back. Why Dan Rather might call that "...courage..."

She has that in spades, far more than a lot of other our so-called leaders could even dare to show.

Freed from the specious and endless ethics complaints being filed by a small but well supported group of Democrat activists in Alaska, she can now move about and speak freely about topics local, national, and international. Should she ever gain the White House (she hasn't announced or even hinted about any future political ambitions), she would be far better prepared to fill that office than the present occupant could ever dream of being.

That scares the hell out of the Left.

Too bad.

I've ceased to be amazed at how vicious the Left can be when it comes to Sarah Palin. In this piece by John Fund he explains why he believes she stepped down as governor of Alaska.

Contrary to most reports, her decision had been in the works for months, accelerating recently as it became clear that controversies and endless ethics investigations were threatening to overshadow her legislative agenda. "Attacks inside Alaska and largely invisible to the national media had paralyzed her administration," someone close to the governor told me. "She was fully aware she would be branded a 'quitter.' She did not want to disappoint her constituents, but she was no longer able to do the job she had been elected to do. Essentially, the taxpayers were paying for Sarah to go to work every day and defend herself."

Many of the more negative comments to the piece did little more than label her a weakling, a hack, stupid, corrupt, and so on. It was merely a continuation of the hatchet job perpetrated by lefty blogger/reporter Shannon Moore. Others called her a lightweight because she didn't "tough it out." But almost all of them missed the point. The endless and frivolous ethics complaints made it impossible for her to govern, which was exactly the reason why the flood of complaints were filed. They couldn't get her at the ballot box (she's still quite popular in Alaska) so they used innuendo and a blizzard of paperwork instead.

One commenter, Kent Lyon, gives us an even more ominous view about who he thinks is behind it all.

One can only speculate how much of the vicious and frivolous attacks on Palin via the Alaska ethics laws were orchestrated out of the White House and the national Democratic party. This bears the finger-prints of a Chicago mob political hit job, just as much as the St. Valentine's Day massacre did those of the Chicago gangsters. This is gangster politics at its worst, and reflects a completely rotten political system. This smells of the kind of tactics Obama used in his Illinois State Senate campaign and his US senate campaign, e.g., destroy your opponent. Palin resonates with the heartland of America. The problem is that the attacks on her are perceived personally by a vast swath of the American Heartland. We see the message from the political elites, of both parties, that ordinary, decent, hard-working, honest, altruistic, talented, and dedicated Americans are not wanted in politics--leave it to the corrupt, crooked, prevaricating insiders who will govern us, against our wishes. The hostility of the political class toward ordinary Americans today, and their disdain for them, is far worse than the attitude of the French Aristocracy toward the peasants in 1789. The political class pursues these attack strategies at their peril. I don't believe the American people will tolerate their exclusion from governance, and the suppression of their interests to the political elite, who are extreme, incompetent, and in it for themselves and their cronies, forever.

If there are any investigations to be launched, perhaps they should be directed at those behind such an unethical and, in the end, an anti-democratic attack on an elected official.

I expect the attacks to continue on Sarah Plain over the next three years just to make sure the threat she apparently represents to the present occupant of the White House is minimized or eliminated. That is the kind of tactics I would expect, knowing the President is a firm believer (and beneficiary) of 'The Chicago Way' of politics.

Heaven help us all.

I knew the Left had a hatred of Sarah Palin the surpassed that of George W. Bush, but I didn't know it went so far that leftist bloggers as well as certain members of the MSM made knowingly false allegations that she was the subject of a federal embezzlement investigation and that her resignation was to head off some law enforcement actions.

The allegations were made by Alaskan reporter and sometimes blogger Shanon Moore on Bradblog. Her post also made it to Huffington Post, and from there the allegations spread to DailyKos, then to FireDogLake, and then spread like wildfire to other leftist blogs, eventually ending up being reported on MSNBC.

How do we know the allegations are false? Because the FBI says so.

A day after Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin resigned, a federal official in her home state dismissed one potential explanation for her sudden and unexpected resignation: a rumored FBI investigation into the former Wasilla mayor on public corruption charges.

"There is absolutely no truth to those rumors that we're investigating her or getting ready to indict her," Special Agent Eric Gonzalez said in a phone interview Saturday. "It's just not true." He added that there was "no wiggle room" in his comments for any kind of inquiry.

Sarah Palin isn't taking this lying down, having her attorney issue a warning and letting the responsible parties know she's on the warpath.

"This is to provide notice to Ms. Moore, and those who republish the defamation, such as Huffington Post, MSNBC, The New York Times and The Washington Post, that the Palins will not allow them to propagate defamatory material without answering to this in a court of law," Van Flein warned, citing Alaska liberal blogger Shannyn Moore.

"Just as power abhors a vacuum, modern journalism apparently abhors any type of due diligence and fact checking before scurrilous allegations are repeated as fact," the Anchorage attorney wrote.

It's time the Left realize that "words mean something."

Does this really surprise anyone?

Poll: 77% of Americans Blame the media for making the economic crisis worse.

How many times in the past have we seen media coverage make a marginally bad situation worse by hyping it to death? Quite a few, in my memory.

Does anyone remember Senator Chuck Schumer's declaration last year that West Coast bank Indy Mac was in trouble and was likely to fail? If the media hadn't played this up as they did, Indy Mac would likely have survived. But because the media gave it a full court press, customers of Indy Mac panicked and withdrew $1.8 billion (that's billion with a 'b') in cash, leaving the bank with little or no liquidity. The bank failed. Chuck Schumer and the media created a bank run that destroyed an otherwise healthy bank. If the media had been more responsible, Chuck's words would never have made it into the papers or on the air, the bank run would never have happened, and Indy Mac would have been just fine.

Of course the media always plays the old "The people have a right to know" card, even if that 'knowledge' is harmful, misleading, or even worse, false. They use it as a shield to deflect accusations that they themselves are the guilty party. The people may have a right to know, but who says they have to know right now? It seems that over the last couple of decades or so the media's need to be the first to break a story has replaced the need to be accurate, to check their facts, and not to report hearsay or second/third hand information as gospel.

Some of that push to be first may be blamed upon the advent of electronic news gathering, making breaking stories available instantly. The time available for fact checking and background has shrunk to almost nothing, meaning far too many reports are aired or put onto news websites before all the facts are available. This has lead to an increasing incidents of erroneous reporting.

But to get back to the main subject, it appears the media revels in the impending doom of economic downturns, massive job losses, and hardships brought to American families. Panic sells, and the media is very good at selling panic. Economic problems are the easiest to sell since they can affect everyone, rich and poor.

For the past two or three years they media has been trying to sell a recession, even though until recently there wasn't one, nor were there signs of one. But they kept making the claim, and eventually people started believing them. And once that happened, and the people started acting as if there was indeed a recession by cutting back on expenditures, lo and behold, a recession arrived. Why? Because people started cutting back on expenditures, which dropped sales, which in turn caused a cut back in orders from manufacturers, which in turn led to layoffs, which caused more people to cut back on expenditures. It was self-fulfilling prophecy made by the media.

Some may claim it was the meltdown of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac that led us to this point, but they were but one more symptom of the problem, not necessarily the problem itself. The media was also one of those in the cheering section for those supporting more loans to low-income families wanting to buy their own homes. But when those families started defaulting on the loans because they really couldn't afford them, the media acted surprised.

Is it any wonder most Americans don't trust the media and blame them for the economic problems we now face?

I used to have a lot of respect for ABC's Charlie Gibson, believing him to be one of the more level headed and impartial newscasters out there. But after his heavily edited interview with Sarah Palin aired, and transcripts if the entire interview became public, it showed him (or his editors) worked very hard to paint a picture of Sarah Palin that fit the narrative of the Democratic Party. They did not create an impartial vehicle as they should have. It will be very difficult for ABC to claim they didn't change the meaning of any of her responses with their editing.

It is "gotcha" interviews like this one that made Glenn Reynolds suggest to anyone being interviewed by the media , and specifically politicians or wannabe politicians, to bring their own camera. If nothing else it will keep the media honest because it will be possible to refute any creative editing they may perform. Out of context quotes will be able to be put back into context with the release of the interviewees own video.

More on the bring-your-own-camera meme at Instapundit.

New Hampshire Republican activist Ray Chadwick offers us a guide to cut through the media bias he sees in regards to Democrats versus Republicans and the upcoming elections. A few examples:

Communicating one's beliefs: Republicans are "pandering to their base"; Democrats are "articulating their vision."

Sticking to one's beliefs: Republicans are "inflexible"; Democrats are "principled."

Changing one's mind: Republicans "flip-flop"; Democrats "evolve" and "adopt a more nuanced position."

Scandals: Republicans "must resign (for the good of their party)"; Democrats "engage in private behavior" that "doesn't affect job performance."

I have a small issue with the third one, though. To quote John Maynard Keynes, "When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?" Though it seems to me that too many Democrats are the ones unwilling to change their minds when exposed to the facts of one situation or another. Is that really what it means to "adopt a more nuanced position"?

The double standard becomes quite apparent when looking at these few examples. There are plenty more to be seen in Chadwick's op-ed piece and well worth reading.