Media  Bias

Introduction:

Many people complain about political bias and incompetence in the electronic media, and many other people think there's no basis for such complaints.  For a long time I resisted the idea of producing a page like this because I thought it was too obvious.  Some of you still can't see it, so some of the evidence is presented below.

This page includes several subtopics, many of which have moved to their own pages.  Splitting them up makes everything load faster.  After all, not everyone has fast internet service.  (More importantly, if all the sub-topics were on this page, it would be ridiculously large.)

Political bias may be impossible to avoid in today's style of fast-paced 24-hour news coverage.  News programs today are apparently designed to retain the attention of hyperactive and impatient viewers — people with dozens of other channels from which to choose, and a remote control always nearby.  (Forty years ago, when you had to get up and walk across the room to change the channel, people generally stuck with a program for its duration.)  You'll rarely see a news story these days, especially during ratings periods, in which a single camera shot lasts more than three seconds.  On a normal day, almost every story is told in less than two minutes.  This results in a great loss of detail, and that's where the TV reporter's personal bias comes into play:  he or she decides what parts of a story to include or omit.

As many people have pointed out, broadcast news is dangerous, not because of what's reported, but because of what is not reported.  This applies equally to both television and radio.  Fortunately the internet is becoming a more reliable source of daily news, and it helps fill in the gaps.  Personally, I haven't owned a TV since 1980, so the internet really comes in handy.  If you're looking for current national news, you can gather more information in five minutes on the internet than you can get in an hour of watching television.

As media bias becomes more widespread, it becomes self-perpetuating, just like big government.  The "legacy" news media are now controlled by Democrats, so now when a Republican runs for President, he or she must run against the Democrat Party candidate and against the news media.



The following subtopics are on pages of their own
... although some are further down this page.

Bias in general, as it relates to news media  (Scroll down.)
Specific examples of biased news coverage
Media bias in Joe Biden's favor
News Media vs Covington Catholic High School
Bias in favor of Hillary Clinton
Bias in favor of Barack H. Obama
JournoList - Evidence of an actual conspiracy to bias the news.
Specific people and organizations often mentioned in the debate over media bias.
Bias related to gun control issues
Coverage of the "War on Terrorism"
Biased coverage of environmental issues
   ... including the media campaign against bottled water.
Biased coverage of economic issues
Biased news coverage of "tea parties"
Bias related to social issues:  Race relations, feminism, "diversity", homosexuality.
Cultural and political bias in motion pictures
The use of polls as propaganda
The National Endowment for the Arts
Cultural and political bias on television
    The V-chip:  An ineffective substitute for parental supervision.
Pro-Islam bias in the media
Pro-Islam bias at Google
Sensationalism vs Journalism
Dishonesty, not just bias
News media bias in the case of George Zimmerman and Trayvon Martin
Incompetence
    Newsroom Clichés
    Obsolescent Media — declining newspaper sales and TV ratings.
Suppressed news — examples of "spiked" stories
    Bias and censorship on social media
    Terrorist attacks reported as "isolated incidents"
    Un(der)-reported news stories about the war in Iraq
    The Secret Superhighway and the Homogenization of North America
News media critics
National Public Radio
The Fairness Doctrine
The Public Broadcasting Service
The New York Times
Dan Rather
Rathergate:  The CBS Memo Controversy of September 2004
Junk science, dubious statistics and rash presuppositions
Environmental Propaganda Movie Reviews
Bernard Goldberg's New Book, "Bias"
Links to other internet resources
Overflow section!  There's more material in the Spillway.
The Technology and Politics of Broadcasting,
    including the transition to digital TV, the V-Chip, closed captioning, and other topics.
Radio Broadcasting and the so-called Fairness Doctrine.



News media bias in general

Here's another web site you should visit:
Media Bias dot com.  Exposing the bias in mainstream journalism.

Overview articles:

(Scroll down for current news articles, or click here.)


Divide & Conquer:  The Government's Propaganda of Fear & Fake News.  [T]he political scene in the United States has devolved over the years into a carefully calibrated exercise in how to manipulate, polarize, propagandize and control a population. [...] As long as we are distracted, entertained, occasionally outraged, always polarized but largely uninvolved and content to remain in the viewer's seat, we'll never manage to present a unified front against tyranny (or government corruption and ineptitude) in any form.  Studies suggest that the more reality TV people watch — and I would posit that it's all reality TV, entertainment news included — the more difficult it becomes to distinguish between what is real and what is carefully crafted farce.  "We the people" are watching a lot of TV.  On average, Americans spend five hours a day watching television.  By the time we reach age 65, we're watching more than 50 hours of television a week, and that number increases as we get older.  And reality TV programming consistently captures the largest percentage of TV watchers every season by an almost 2-1 ratio.

All Republicans have to know about the leftist media.  All Republicans need to know is that the last time NYT endorsed a Republican for president, it was Eisenhower in the 1950s.  The WaPo has never endorsed a Republican for President.  And it really doesn't matter who the Democrat is.  He can be as corrupt as Hillary and Biden, and they will endorse them.  They also don't care how much any Democrat abuses his power.  The Constitution and separation of powers are not important to them.  They also don't care if Democrats support violent riots when their chosen one doesn't win elections.  They don't care if Biden doesn't enforce immigration laws that he is required to enforce.  And they don't care how many wars start under Democrat presidents.  Results don't matter.  The truth doesn't matter about the climate, COVID, or anything else.  All that matters to most of the media and other Democrats as they campaign for them is power over the American people.

The Media-Democratic Fusion.  If one were to listen during the last few years to NBC, ABC, CBS, NPR, PBS, MSNBC, or CNN, or read the New York Times, The Washington Post, The Chicago Tribune, or the Los Angeles Times, then one would have believed the following:  A) Donald Trump worked with the Russians to throw and win the 2016 election.  As part of that skullduggery, frolicking amid prostitutes he urinated on a Moscow hotel bed to spite Barack Obama.  B) He was mentally incapacitated as president and should have been removed under the 25th Amendment.  C) In 2020, his campaign once more worked with the Russians to create an exact replica of Hunter Biden's laptop, replete with dozens of lurid fake photos and hundreds of cleverly doctored emails to smear the Biden family and aid his own reelection effort.  D) Trump as chief conspirator preplanned a violent and armed insurrection that sought to storm and permanently occupy the government, violently hijacking the balloting and seizing the presidency — resulting in the murder of a Capitol police officer and the subsequent deaths of other traumatized officers.  E) For the last eight years, none of Trump's political opponents have ever destroyed subpoenaed evidence, conspired to hire foreign nationals to compile false and lurid files on him to subvert his political campaigns, or used their political offices to help solicit foreign money for family lobbyists.  F) Trump is the first major candidate and politician who allegedly overvalued his real assets to obtain a loan that he repaid; the first to have concluded non-disclosure agreements with potential embarrassing liaisons; the first ex-president to remove sensitive files to his personal residence; and the first to phone a state official to whine about the integrity of the vote count.  G) He is the first losing presidential candidate or major politician to question an election result or to seek redress through government agencies to rectify the purported corruption of the balloting.

A brief, sad history of bias in the news.  There's a slight difference between the business models of print and broadcasting.  Should advertisers want to purchase increasing amounts of newspaper or magazine space — or vice-versa — the publisher can adjust the page count accordingly.  Broadcasters, however, are saddled with a 24-hour day regardless of the demand for advertising time.  They have to adjust the amount of content in their programming to compensate for fluctuations in the number of paid commercials.  News production of any type has always contained at least some degree of bias because reporters are human.  In recent years, however, indoctrination has replaced profit as the main reason for many news sources to broadcast or publish.  Bottom lines have been damaged as a result, and broad-based "news" agencies, such as Reuters and the Associated Press, have replaced much of the in-house staff at various outlets.  The internet has also had a huge impact by opening a completely independent universe of information dissemination.

Propaganda and Disinformation in the Information Age.  [Scroll down]  In the U.S., the political left has a near monopoly on the news and entertainment channels that shape people's attitudes.  Some call this Information Dominance.  Information Dominance goes farther than just the news.  It also uses TV shows, movies, comedians, advertisements, classrooms, and cartoons to guide people to the conclusions the operators want them to have.

7 Insane Things I Just Learned About How U.S. Elections Are 'Rigged'.  The extent to which corporate media rigs elections for Democrats has been rigorously documented since at least Tim Groseclose's 2012 book, "Left Turn." In that book, the political scientist concluded through data-driven analysis that media bias on average shifts the electorate 20 points to the left on a 100-point political worldview scale.  Without media bias, he argued, the average American state would be as Republican-leaning as Texas or Kentucky, and those two states would be even more conservative.  Media bias was highly visible even before Rush Limbaugh made it a regular feature of his top-rated radio show that became nationally syndicated in 1988. As the Trump era dawned, however, media coverage moved from biased to outright propaganda.  Corporate media went from picking left-friendly frames and omitting facts that reinforced right-leaning views about public affairs, as Groseclose documented in 2012, to outright mass hoaxing of voters by 2016.

Is America Heading Towards Authoritarianism?  [Scroll down]  Currently the mainstream media functions as an arm of the Democrat party.  There is no difference between the Democrats in the media and Democrat politicians.  On certain occasions, the Democrats in the media lead, and the Democrats on Capitol Hill follow and on other occasions vice versa.  There is perfect synchronicity.  When the Biden administration finds itself in perpetual disarray they merely look the other way.  A perfect example is three of the five prominent Sunday morning newscasts avoided the explosive New York Times report about the botched U.S. drone strike the Pentagon finally admitted killed.  They covered the Afghanistan fiasco initially but have drastically reduced coverage in the past few weeks.  They fill the vacuum with the irrelevant and the trivial that help the Democrats.  They were initially hesitant about the COVID vaccine because it has happened under President Trump, but are dogmatic about it now because Biden is ordering the mandate.  They fanatically cover climate change, spreading paranoia.  They feverishly cover 'domestic terror' and white supremacy, which is another excuse to demonize and silence whom they consider their opponents.  There is no variety of opinions among the editorials, anchors, and panelists.  They speak in unison with even employ identical catchphrases on any given day.

Are We Really That Much Better Than Countries with State-Controlled Media?  [Scroll down]  Again, it's absolutely true that, here in America, every narrative put forth by media outlet A can be challenged by media outlet B.  At the same time, if the dominant media outlets only report one narrative, suppressing or censoring or dismissing out of hand all counter-narratives, isn't the brainwashing effect all the same for those who rely on those dominant outlets?  This, then, is reinforced when the dominant media outlets effectively demonize other news outlets.  As a result, those who follow the dominant media will never even think of checking out the other news outlets.  Talk about an effective propaganda campaign.  Taking this one step further, if the social media and search engine giants further collude in advancing one narrative while suppressing or removing other narratives, the cycle of brainwashing is now virtually complete.  You think you have access to a wide array of viewpoints.  You think you are hearing (or reading or viewing or finding) all the news that's fit to hear (or read or view or find).  Instead, you are hearing (or reading or viewing or finding) the news that the dominant (and leftist!) media leaders want you to hear (or read or view or find).

Radio Free America — Rush's Legacy.  For decades — before the internet and satellite TV — news in America was controlled by a select few entities, all of which were closely aligned with the Democrat party.  ABC, NBC, CBS, and CNN controlled television and radio news.  The New York Times, Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, Boston Globe, and Los Angeles Times set the tone for printed news.  The media and leftist politicians they supported were creating narratives to shape public opinion.  They crafted their narratives by being selective in what news they presented, or by outright distortion of facts. [...]
  •   Walter Cronkite told us the Vietnam war was lost after the Tet Offensive.  In fact, Tet was a devastating loss for the North Vietnamese.
  •   We were told that socialism was superior to capitalism.  It just needed to be implemented correctly.
  •   We were told that Ronald Reagan was a fool and a dangerous warmonger.  Yet he won the Cold War without firing a shot.
  •   We were told that Cuba was a workingman's paradise with free education and medical care.  Yet people were fleeing the island on anything that would float.
We knew what we observed didn't quite fit the narrative being presented, but we weren't sure why.  We began to question our worldview.  We were being gaslighted.

The Unapologetic Bias of the American Left.  Some yearn for the ancient monopolistic days of network news, the adolescent years of public radio and TV, and the still reputable New York Times — when once upon a time the Left at least tried to mask their progressivism in sober and judicious liberal façades.  An avuncular Walter Cronkite, John Chancellor, Jim Lehrer, or Abe Rosenthal at least went through the motions of reporting news that was awkward or even embarrassing to the Left.  Their agenda was 1960s-vintage Great Society liberalism, seen as the natural evolution from the New Deal and post-war internationalism.  Edward R. Murrow, the ACLU of old, and Free Speech Movement at Berkeley — these were their liberal referents.  Those days are gone.  Yet even during the Obama years, when studies showed the president had received the most slanted media honeymoon in news history, overt media bias was, at least, as hotly denied as it intensified. [...] But even that thin pretense is over now, too.

The Mainstream Media Is at the Point of No Return.  [Scroll down]  No entity in the United States was more devastatingly affected by the 9.0 magnitude political earthquake that took place on November 8, 2016 than the mainstream media.  Not only had they contributed mightily to the election of Donald Trump, a man they loathed, but they had willingly allowed him to make them the target of national derision and contempt.  After the election, the anger and single-minded determination of the mainstream media to seek revenge and prove they could still remove or destroy a President was palpable. [...] The electorate has been privy to innumerable "fake news" stories about Trump, his family as well as his Administration, which continue to this day after virtually hundreds of stories over the past three-plus years have been disproven.  It is now an unquestioned fact that the mainstream media, throwing away any pretense of objectivity, has overtly and unabashedly allied itself with the Democrat party and its dominant wing, the radical Marxists/socialists.

The Washington Post (CIA) is Very Worried About The Big Russia Lie Being Exposed.  The media PR firm for the FBI and DOJ objectives is the New York Times.  The media PR firm for the State Department is CNN.  The media PR firm for the CIA is The Washington Post.  This pattern has existed for several years.  The Washington Post is very concerned about a growing possibility the investigation into the origin of intelligence community work may expose the fraudulent nature of the entire 'Russian Election Interference Collusion-Conspiracy' narrative.  Very concerned.  The WaPo/CIA express concern by stating that President Trump is attempting to "rewrite history"; disingenuously skipping the part where Trump isn't attempting anything.  For more than three years President Trump has simply pointed out the obvious.  It is is the media and the intelligence apparatus that set up a fictitious narrative for political needs.

Rat-Catchers: The True Function of a Free Press.  [Scroll down]  A watchdog within the government structure will sooner or later be corrupted.  So the framers set up a free and independent press to sniff out scandal.  Nothing sells papers like scandal, and scandalous behavior of those in power is the juiciest scandal of all. [...] And it worked fairly well for more than a century.  Then the press decided to pick an ideology.  In the early twentieth century the free press in America, decided to shackle itself to progressivism.  Now the media lean so far left that it resembles a sinking cruise ship with a heavy list to port.  Honestly, if reporters want to be leftists, that really is their own business — as long as they do their jobs.  Unfortunately, the job isn't getting done anymore, at least not all of it.

The Source of the Media's Post-Truth Analysis.  What has happened to the news?  Not so long ago, the big voices in the media at least made some effort to maintain an appearance of objectivity.  But it has been evident for some time that most people in the news business today have dispensed with all pretense of fairness.  The advent of Barack Obama largely put an end to the pretense.  His coming was too much for them to continue the charade.  They sacrificed their claim to objectivity in order to pursue their love affair with Obama.  And their hysterically negative coverage of Donald Trump is simply the reverse side of the same coin.  The fake news people openly advocate progressivism and leftism.  They attack anyone — especially Trump — who threatens the progressive Left's project of "fundamentally transforming" America.

Inside the media's relentless crusade to destroy President Trump.  Yes, the mainstream media is liberal and biased.  But at least in the past, that bias was largely a function of insularity.  Most reporters weren't even fully aware they were prejudiced politically; everyone they worked and socialized with held the same left-of-center views.  That's changed in the age of Trump.  The press has embraced its bias, joined the Resistance and declared its allegiance to one side of a partisan war.  It now openly declares those who offer any fair defense of this administration as Trump "enablers."  It writes off those who question the FBI or Department of Justice actions in 2016 as "conspiracy" theorists.  It acts as willing scribes for Democrats and former Obama officials; peddles evidence-free accusations; sources stories from people with clear political axes to grind; and closes its eyes to clear evidence of government abuse.  This media war is extraordinary, overt and increasingly damaging to the country.

If Anyone Should Be Impeached, It's the Liberal Media.  For decades now, in violation of the public trust, liberals in the American mainstream media — including the news, information, and entertainment media — have willfully corrupted the values and institutions that made the United States of America into the greatest nation in the history of humanity.  Their lies and immorality have wrought havoc on families, churches, schools, businesses, corporations, governments, and so on.  Contrary to their sacred duty to provide what is truthful, they have willfully presented false and misleading information to the public at large concerning, but not limited to, the following:  [#1] The election of Democrats over Republicans. [...] [#2] The role of good government — especially in most every fiscal matter. [...] [#3] The nature and details concerning radical Islam and Islam in general. [...] [#4] The nature and details of the burning of fossil fuels as it relates to global climate change — specifically what is often referred to as "global warming."

Feel manipulated by cable TV and social media?  You are.  Rational human beings can no longer regard the vile output from today's phony media mavens as "news."  So what is it, then?  What's their product?  Answer:  Pure entertainment.  At least if you're an under-40, college indoctrinated pretend socialist whose knowledge of politics and history dates from the dark days of the hateful Reagan Administration.  And if you like hearing, 24/7, what you already claim to know.  You may not feel manipulated.  But you are.  Today's Cable TV news channels and entertainment channels along with social media platforms make sure of this.  Today's "news" is, in fact, pure entertainment for today's rising, under-informed rising generations.  It's the end product of an insidious left-wing movement that started in the late 1960s.  Radicals quietly but relentlessly demoted real, objective reporting in favor of personality based entertainment shows masquerading as news.  News with an inevitable left-wing twist, however.

The Media Wounded.  There still exists a physical media in the sense of airing current events.  But it is not journalism as we once understood the disinterested reporting of the news.  Journalism is now dead.  The media lives on.  Reporters today believe that their coverage serves higher agendas of social justice, identity politics, "equality," and diversity.  To the degree a news account is expanded or ignored, praised or blasted, depends on its supposed utility to the effort to fundamentally transform the country into something unlike its founding.

One-Sided Journalism Is Bad For The Country.  Whether the Left is in the right or wrong (spoiler alert: they're totally wrong), it is bad for the country to have a one-sided leftist press.  Surely, just by the laws of human nature, neither those individuals who support bigger government nor those who promote greater liberty are immune from the normal sinfulness and corruption of our fallen kind.  So how can a journalist presume to do his job if he sees only one side — the Right — as continually in the wrong, and the other side, the Left, as a model of probity?  Life simply doesn't work that way, and reporting on it as if it does divides and frustrates and deceives the audience.  It is a disservice to the nation.

The demise of media objectivity.  American media have come full circle.  Newspapers, among the only media in Colonial times, were highly partisan, and truth was not a priority.  Today, newspaper and TV media have returned to that point. [...] There were 1,749 American newspapers in 1945.  By the end of 2014, the number had shrunk to 1,331, according to the Brookings Institution.  The peak was around 1970, and there was a steep plunge from 2006 to date as the internet blossomed and robbed papers of classified and display ads.  Most papers now concentrate on their digital editions, and printed papers are almost an afterthought.  In the meantime, objectivity steadily had lost ground, which unquestionably was a contributing factor.  In 2016, the media dropped all pretense of it, for the most part, and have been on a rampage since then.

Smirking media bias against GOP couldn't be clearer.  Every newsroom in the country used to have what was called the "AP Stylebook" to use in writing news stories.  Now you need two AP stylebooks, one for Democrats, about whom seldom is heard a discouraging word, and a second for the GOP, with a hundred different pejoratives.  Two parties, two vocabularies.  One positive, one negative — very bad, evil in fact. [...] To prevent the release of embarrassing information, Democrats' lawyers negotiate NDA's — nondisclosure agreements.  Republican fixers' NDAs are "hush money," or "bribes."  Hillary Clinton paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to Democrat operatives who then bought or made up false Russian dirt on Trump — that was opposition research.  Republicans, on the other hand, "collude!"  Republicans lie, Democrats misspeak.  Democrats plan, Republicans scheme.  Republicans hire lobbyists, Democrats use advocates.  Republicans employ operatives or hired guns, Democrats prefer community activists.  If a Democrat changes his or her position on an issue, they have evolved ... grown.  Republicans "flip-flop."

The Credible Press:  An Autopsy.  In mere decades the American press have devolved from semi-sober watchdogs to fanatical foot soldiers fighting on behalf of the Democratic Party's constantly shifting agenda.  The same networks that helped to elect an anti-gay marriage Barack Obama also helped to elect a pro-gay marriage Barack Obama, just as they once mocked newfound liberal savior Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez for her insane economic views yet recently bestowed upon her the esteem of a sit-down interview on 60 Minutes.  Anyone who reads the papers and watches a wide spectrum of TV news knows the truth:  we're not getting information, we're getting all agenda, all the time.  Estimates of newsroom political imbalance vary, but all tilt heavily liberal; one study showed that liberal financial journalists at major papers outnumbered their conservative counterparts 13-to-1.  The media landscape is so littered with partisan misinformation that an entire genre of "fact checking" websites have sprung up to do the media's job for them.  Sadly, however, these sites have succumbed to the same bias that necessitated their creation.

Journalism Isn't Dead; It's Undead.  The national media routinely parroted President Barack Obama's lies knowing they were lies (Obamacare, Benghazi, the Iran deal) and, to this day, do not insist that he release information to the public that he refuses to (like his academic records).  In perhaps the press's most embarrassing display of bias, it propped up Hillary Clinton's abysmally bad presidential campaign in 2016:  It downplayed her many lies; inflated the small crowds she drew; ignored her obviously poor health, her manipulation of the primary process and her financial strangulation of the Democratic National Committee.  The press's deceit may not be worse today; it's just more overt.

The Only Cure for Media Malpractice.  According to Gallup, the public now has less confidence in the news media than in banks, big business, organized religion, the medical system, the military, public schools, the presidency, the police, etc.  This is true for all news sources, including television, newspapers, and the internet.  Moreover, because the erosion of public confidence in the media has been a consistent, decades-long process, it cannot credibly be blamed on "attacks" by President Trump.  The erosion became noticeable during the Clinton era and it has continued unabated until the present.

We're well past the point of urging the press to do better.  Something is seriously wrong.  The news media in the United States is horribly, perhaps irrevocably, broken.  In the past 72 hours, there have been two major, all-consuming news cycles based on either inaccurate or outright false allegations.  Equally distressing as the fact that the press promoted these stories despite obvious red flags is that some reporters continue to cling to the original bogus narratives.  Because when it comes to accusations leveled against President Trump and conservatives, many in the nation's largest and most powerful newsrooms are less arbiters of the truth and more active participants in the toxic, hyper-partisan culture wars.

Opinion Journalism vs.  Objective News Reporting.  The rise of opinion journalism, not just among cable and the newer media but elements of the legacy media as well, magnifies the problem of the dearth of objective news reporting.  About five years ago even the Associated Press announced a turn toward opinion, euphemistically referred to as "accountability journalism," while the Washington Post and the New York Times have for years now been foundering in the stuff.  Makes one wonder where to turn (outside, perhaps, of the business and financial journals) for investigative and feature news that is not in service to some political party, ideology, or special interest.

The News Media:  A Hazardous Product With No Warning Label.  Reporting is so bollixed up with comment that it's hard to distinguish between what is happening and what is being said about what is happening.  A large percent of sentences that issue from the mouths of TV anchors contain inferences that don't even follow from the presented facts.  With disturbing regularity I have found myself asking, "Where did he (she) get that from?"  The answer is, straight from the editors' bias.  You can bet that they read the doctored script to remain on the payroll.

The Media's Credibility Is Dead.  It's common knowledge that distrust in media is at an all-time high.  Despite attempts by anti-Trump pundits to blame these figures on President Trump for popularizing the term "fake news," the media will soon have to reconcile how they have been complicit in their own faltering credibility.  According to the last media survey from McLaughlin & Associates, voters who see anti-Trump bias in the news media outnumber voters who don't at about a 5-to-1 clip.  In 2018, the mainstream media aren't even attempting to camouflage their hyper-progressive bias.  There was a time when news entities worked hard to remain bipartisan, and even if they weren't, they at least attempted to conceal their biases.  Bias is inevitable in today's media climate, but we've reached a point where the media's desire to feed their bias has become mutually exclusive with reality itself.

'Smug denial is no longer an option': Recent media studies show 'pretty much all of journalism now leans left'.  Recent polls are revealing what many conservatives have contended for a while: that the media is decidedly liberal. [...] Questions were put to 462 financial journalists from the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, Washington Post, Associated Press and other newspapers around the country by researchers from Arizona State University and Texas A&M University.  Another 18 additional interviews were conducted as a follow up with the final results surprising researchers.  From the total pool of 462 journalists, 17.63 percent called themselves "very liberal," and 40.84 percent saw themselves as "somewhat liberal."  The conclusion then is that 58.47 percent consider themselves left of center while another 37.12 percent claim to be "moderate."

Journalism Should Own Its Liberalism.  The mainstream press is liberal.  Once, before 1965, reporters were a mix of the working stiffs leavened by ne'er-do-well college grads unfit for corporate headquarters or divinity school.  Since the civil rights and women's movements, the culture wars and Watergate, the press corps at such institutions as The Washington Post, ABC-NBC-CBS News, the NYT, The Wall Street Journal, Time, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, The Boston Globe, etc. is composed in large part of "new" or "creative" class members of the liberal elite — well-educated men and women who tend to favor abortion rights, women's rights, civil rights, and gay rights.  In the main, they find such figures as Bill O'Reilly, Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity, Pat Robertson, or Jerry Falwell beneath contempt.  In a UCLA study of media bias, reporters were found to be substantially more liberal and more Democratic than the public at large.

The Mainstream Media Is Not Independent.  If you want to know where media bias resides, simply look at who the media isn't questioning. [...] The fact that six multinational corporations own the majority of major news outlets indicates that there is an editorial bias toward protecting the interests of many of these firms.  There are always examples that run counter to this claim — but those instances are the exception that proves the rule.  Frankly, if there was nothing to be gained by owning these news organizations, most billionaires and their international conglomerates would not purchase them.  The point of owning such respected news entities is to disseminate a globalist worldview (no, that is not a racist dog-whistle), in order to prevent resistance on the part of consumers and voters alike to the agendas of the major corporations. [...] On paper, corporate leaders would say their goal is to perpetuate international integration through trade, multilateral institutions, and worldwide communication.  Unfortunately, it's baser than that: the agenda is about simple greed — and fear; a fear of losing one's elite status in society; a worry that, after having made it to such financial heights, it could all be taken away by angry farmers holding pitchforks.  At the end of the day, no matter how the postmodern elites will dress it up, their objective is an understandable desire to play Keep-Away from their perceived enemies in the lower classes (even though I suspect that this is a largely unfounded fear).

10 American Treasures:  A Very Personal and Subjective list.  [#5] Fox News:  During my years in professional journalism with the Associated Press, a serious journalist was obligated to report or tell a story as objectively as possible while exposing dishonesty, fraud and corruption as appropriate.  Television has changed a lot of that with on-camera grandstanding, posturing or outright misrepresentation more often than not taking the place of serious reporting or journalism.  The American public is poorly served.  The situation is so dire that the president of the United States can justifiably call some of what is reported, "fake news" and those reporters rightfully so "enemies of the people."  Fox is far from perfect in this regard, but it's leagues more objective than CNN, MSNBC and the primary three-letter networks.

The Mainstream Media Fraud.  The conjoined Democratic Party and mainstream media's despicable character assassination of Judge Brett Kavanaugh combined with the two-year single-minded determination to destroy the Trump presidency by any means possible has irretrievably awakened a preponderance of the citizenry.  In a recent poll, 70% of all Americans and 90% of Republicans have lost faith in the self-styled mainstream media.  They are imploding due to the self-inflicted destruction of their credibility and integrity, which has exposed the fraud this cabal has carried out over the past 85 years.  The damage done to this nation and its citizenry is incalculable.

Media bias chart
Media Bias:  A New Chart.  Please note that outlets on left and right sometimes publish material that's on the opposite side of the political spectrum, or that has no political leaning at all.  The placement is based on perceived overall tone and audience.  Position on the chart doesn't necessarily imply credibility or lack thereof.  Sources on far right and far left have, in many instances, produced excellent, factually correct information at times.  I have loosely placed more traditional information sources in the top half of the chart working down toward aggregators, fact-checkers, opinion sites and less news-related sources.  (This posed some position challenges since most of traditional information sources are left-leaning.)  I did not attempt to place individual programs or broadcasts.  Compiling such a chart is obviously difficult for many reasons, some of them having to do with space.  The spacing should be considered relative and not an indicator of absolute position.  A number of the information sources technically belong on top of one another.


The Zombie Media.  For the sake of our own mental clarity, we have to delete the phrase "liberal bias" from our vocabulary.  A "bias" is a tendency, sometimes even an unconscious tendency, to favor one thing over another.  A "biased journalist" is a person who has some deeply held beliefs that tend to color his assessment of the world.  Such people may lean in one direction, but they still imagine that they are looking for and reporting the truth.  The idyllic days of biased journalism are over.  This isn't the 1980s.  This, my friends, is a brave new world.  To say CNN is still trying to report the truth but leans a little to the left is like saying the serial killer John Wayne Gacy cared a lot about young people but just got a little overly enthusiastic at times.  The liberal media are not engaged in journalism, except on those rare occasions when they cannot find some angle of a natural disaster on which to grind their political axes.  They want to destroy both Trump and his supporters — period.  They will incite, inflame, obfuscate, and outright lie in the pursuit of that goal.

Americans see media bias everywhere, and they're angry.  Here, for a change, is a Friday bad-news dump for our country's news media:  Americans don't believe you anymore.  In fact, they're pretty sure you knowingly publish inaccurate news, distort it and even make stuff up to suit your political bias and agenda. [...] Now, come the Knight Foundation and Gallup Polls dissecting Americans' thoughts about media.  In general, Americans overall estimate that of the news they're exposed to via radio, TV and print, nearly two-thirds of it is biased (62 percent).  They believe that nearly half the news they see is inaccurate (44 percent).  And they're sure that more than a third of the news moving through those media conduits is misinformation, that is, wrong or fake but distributed as if true.  They also believe that 64 percent of news carried by social media is inaccurate.  And — maybe you've felt this way too — more than 80 percent of adult Americans report feeling angry or bothered by detecting such false reports.  They believe that 65 percent of such news is misinformation and a whopping 80 percent is biased.

Mainstream Media's Credibility Problem Is Of Their Own Making.  The mainstream media has completely betrayed the trust of the American people.  ABC, CBS, NBC, and CNN aren't even feigning objectivity anymore.  Instead of being the guardians of a free nation, they've become nothing but agenda-driven shills for leftist ideology.  They are propogandists worthy of comparison to Nazi Joseph Goebbels or Pravda when it was an arm of the Soviet Central Committee.

Establishment Media Is One Big Spook Operation.  After getting their hands caught in the proverbial "we were illegally spying on the Trump campaign" cookie jar the Deep State was quick to organize a coordinated media response that is now trying to convince Americans it wasn't spying but merely the Deep State trying to "protect" Mr. Trump and his campaign from Russian influence.  One of those media reports was authored by Asha Rangappa.  Guess what?  She's Deep State.  Yup.  Besides Alternative Media there is no real and honest reporting in the United States.  It's all propaganda.

Devin Nunes: 'The media is dead...90% far left wing'.  The chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, frustrated with the slanted coverage of his panel's probe into the 2016 election, said that truthful media "no longer exists" and that 90 percent takes a left wing angle because that's what their liberal owners demand.  In an extensive interview on conservative media mogul Mark Levin's popular new Fox News Channel Sunday show Life, Liberty & Levin, Rep. Devin Nunes called the media "a pile of something," and added that it is "part of the Democratic Party's network."

Understanding the California Mind.  The postmodern 21st-century state media in its various manifestations is committed to social justice, not necessarily to disinterested reporting.  Few read about environmental lawsuits over the planned pathway of a disruptive high-speed rail project; not so in the case of planned state nullification of offshore drilling.  In many news accounts, the race and ethnicity of a violent criminal are deduced in the cynical (and often quite illiberal) reader comments that follow.  Is the newspaper deliberately suppressing news information to incite readership, who, in turn, through their commentaries flesh out the news that is not reported and simultaneously spike online viewership by their lurid outrage?  Folk wisdom in California translates into something along the following lines:  an unidentified "suspect" in a drunk driving accident that leaves two dead on the side of the road can for some time remains unidentified; a local accountant of the wrong profile who is indicted by the IRS has his name and picture blared.

How the MSM and Russian Trolls Are Destroying the Democratic Party.  In what feels like the 27th year of the Trump-Russia-Collusion Investigation, what we have most recently learned is that a lawyer no one ever heard of may have made a false statement to the FBI and even erased a few emails concerning events that happened years before the election and have something to do with Ukraine.  We have further learned that a group of Russians in St. Petersburg have been trolling us since at least 2014 (what took them so long?), playing both sides against the middle and even going so far as to organize a post-election demonstration in front of Trump Tower featuring Michael Moore assuring us that "he's not my president!" while being cheered on by some extraordinarily credulous women with microphones from CNN.  Forget going from the sublime to the ridiculous.  This has gone from the ludicrous to the harebrained.  The fact that anyone could be taking this nonsense seriously anymore boggles the proverbial mind, but they do — [...]

Confidence in the press
A Comparative and Longitudinal Analysis of Public Trust in the Press.  For some time, at least in the United States, trust in the press has been weak.  According to the General Social Survey, fewer than 20% of Americans have reported "a great deal of confidence" in the press in every year the survey has been run since 1988.  Worse, as illustrated in the graph below, the increase in people reporting they have "hardly any" confidence in the press has sharply increased over the same time.


Fake News and Toxic Media Bias Are Nothing New — Just Worse.  Notwithstanding the orders from on high that may be dictating how the media spin their political coverage, the vast majority of working journalists today are hardcore progressives and leftists who vote en masse for Democrats.  One need look no farther than a study by the non-partisan Center for Public Integrity highlighted in an article in the Columbia Journalism Review, published on October 17, 2016, titled "Journalists shower Hillary Clinton with campaign cash." [...] Ninety-six percent of journalists' contributions went to Clinton, four percent to Trump.  These percentages parallel almost exactly the percentage of negative stories about President Trump that were published or broadcast during his first nine months in office.

Do the media know what horrors they have wrought?  The head honchos in the hardened bunkered war rooms of MSNBC, CBS, CNN, ABC, NPR, PBS, the NYT, the Washington Post, the Boston Globe, The Chicago Tribune, and on and on are not uniformed, nor do they wear military eagles or stars on their jackets, yet they are the orchestrators of the battle plan and the campaigners to defeat and bring down the administration of President Trump.  Sadly, these members of the media, the Fourth Estate, those who are still guaranteed their freedom of speech, to write their opinions without fear of being shut down by the government, are committing suicide by joining with the likes of the street mobs clamoring to destroy the Constitution.  Apparently, unbeknownst to them, they are supporting the demagogues such as George Soros and Barack Obama, who are now invisibly leading the forces of chaos and revolt throughout the land.

Just listen to all the booing when Trump brings up the media!  [Video clip]

America's Media Meltdown.  When Obama announced his candidacy for president in 2007, the media relinquished pretenses of objectivity.  The progressive Obama, who had the most partisan record in the U.S. Senate after less than four years in office, appeared to progressive journalists to have come from central casting: glib and charismatic, an Ivy-League pedigree, mixed racial ancestry, a power marriage to a Harvard-trained black lawyer, and an exotic name resonant of multicultural fides. [...] In the 2008 campaign, reporters ignored the close and disturbing relationships between the mostly unknown Obama and a cast of unsavory characters: his racist and anti-Semitic pastor Rev. Jeremiah Wright, the neighborhood confidant and former terrorist Bill Ayers, and the wheeler-dealer and soon-to-be felon Tony Rezko.  Instead, journalists quickly started worshipping candidate Obama in a manner never quite seen before, not even in the days of the iconic liberal presidents like Franklin Delano Roosevelt and John F. Kennedy.

The Downfall of CNN.  It has been made perfectly clear by now that the mainstream media can't be trusted.  The main agenda has been changed from giving the people the news and both sides of a subject to becoming progressive/socialist robots that the universities indoctrinate them to be.  Not able to think for themselves that push their way onto the pedestals that they make for themselves and consider themselves to be the elite.  It has been made abundantly clear that they have lost the ability of any critical thinking since the Trump inauguration.  Deeming themselves intellectually superior to those beneath them, they use their smug faces to attempt to explain to his hicks what we should think, what we should say, and what we must do.

Trump's revenge and how Woodward/Bernstein ruined journalism.  Trump's self-made video parody that shows him wrestling down CNN has all the self-righteous pundits in an uproar, but it puts the heat where it belongs... on CNN and the rest of them that round-the-clock give him no peace, no mercy, no fairness, no slack. [...] On top of that the obscenities coming from our TV news and talk shows are so violent that there is no choice but to say that we are past media bias and deep into media depravity.

The Media Is The Greatest Enemy Of A Free Press.  [T]he only people entitled to practice the First Amendment, according to the media, own the media.  They don't need to know basic grammar.  They don't need to have their facts right.  They just need to be part of huge media conglomerates with left-wing politics whose mission is attacking conservatives.

The Media Doesn't Know Its Viewers.  In the 1990s, the "new media" emerged (think Rush Limbaugh, Drudge, and Fox News Channel) and started challenging the monopoly of traditional news services.  In the context of business, this was nothing new:  a healthy free market system allows for competition between businesses.  After all, competition is how we as consumers get the best product.  In the news business, though, the legacy media ignored their new challengers and, insofar as they did recognize the competition, the legacy media wrote it off as ridiculous, propagandistic, unprofessional, and absurd.  More damagingly, the mainstream media mocked the viewers who did take an interest in the new media. [...] It's akin to a restaurant forcing its patrons to eat the same consistently bad entrée rather than admit that the chef, not the patrons, is the problem.  At some point, people will stop showing up if all that you offer is the same terrible product, in the same tired and boring way.

Most Americans (on all sides) now agree bias infects media.  [A] very large majority of Americans sees the nation's fourth estate as "subject to partisan agendas."  Translated from YouGov.com pollese, that means 70% of the general public on both sides of the political spectrum sees news media as biased, usually toward the other side.

Trump Is Beating the Media at Its Own Game.  Once asked by an aide to respond to a letter to the editor from one of his critics, Vladimir Lenin refused, saying:  "Why should we bother to reply to Kautsky?  He would reply to us, and we would have to reply to his reply.  There's no end to that.  It will be quite enough for us to announce that Kautsky is a traitor to the working class, and everyone will understand everything."  That has been the modus operandi of the left for decades.  It doesn't respond to arguments with arguments but with stigmatizing names designed to end debate.  As the communications arm of the left, the media conforms perfectly to Lenin's method.  Instead of rebutting the arguments of conservatives, it has found it easier to brand them as "enemies" of science, women, minorities, the poor, and so on.

Our Crude News Network.  Progressive media bias is now a given.  The present generation of journalists and reporters tends to believe that just conveying the news no longer offers ample venue for their unappreciated talents, celebrity status, and deserved political influence.  As a result, they often massage coverage to find relevance as makers, not mere deliverers, of news.  Like many academics, writers, and intellectuals of our bicoastal elite landscapes, they are naturally self-described idealists and left-of-center both politically and culturally.  Yet Donald Trump's election as president has redefined the American media by stripping nearly all pretenses off its once carefully sculpted disinterested veneer.  In other words, never before in American presidential history — not even during the dark days of Watergate — have the media so despised a sitting president.

The Media's Ominous Ambitions.  The media have decided that reporting the news is no longer sufficient for them.  They've decided they want to participate rather than just observe and report the passing scene.  For example, they have taken upon themselves the negating of the results of the 2016 presidential election.  They've arrogantly concluded they're entitled to greater responsibilities and influence.  In the past most conservatives considered the mainstream media to be part of the support system for the Democratic Party, its public relations department or marketing division.  Recently the direction of control in that relationship has reversed.  It's becoming increasingly obvious that it's the media, not the Democratic Party, who are driving the bus.  Does it make any difference if it's the media or the Party that's in control?  Even though the philosophies and objectives of the two are indistinguishable, one important difference is that the Democratic Party's leaders are elected by voters and are at least somewhat subject to constitutional limits.  The political parties are supposed to be governing.  That's their historic role.  Although imperfect, public officials are constrained by a system of checks and balances.  The media are not.

The Need for a Middle America News Network.  Consider a neutral and fair political site like RealClearPolitics.  It is not uncommon to have one third of the stories from New York media outlets and one third of the stories from Washington media outlets and the rest from national outlets without a particular geographical designation but situated in the Beltway.  On those rare instances in which another city's media has stories in RealClearPolitics, the city is usually Boston or Los Angeles.  What that means is that the vast majority of Americans are utterly disenfranchised politically in the only area that really counts in a nation as large and media-driven as America.

Who's Telling the Truth in Washington?  Anyone?  It's well known that, with a few salient exceptions, the media tilt heavily to the left.  That tilt shows up in decisions about what subjects merit scrutiny, how much scrutiny they deserve, and the tone of that scrutiny.  Some of the decisions are conscious, some less so.  (Nobody ever issued a newsroom memo stipulating that stories should sometimes call the NRA "the gun lobby" but must never call NARAL "the abortion lobby."  It just happens.)  But even if you set political slant aside, the media sometimes get stories badly wrong.  Think of Dan Rather's "fake but accurate" memos about George W. Bush's service in the National Guard.  Or Rolling Stone's retracted cover story about a rape at U.Va.  Or CNN's retracted story about how the U.S. military used sarin gas against defectors.  Or The New York Times' reporting on Saddam Hussein's purported weapons of mass destruction — reporting The Times eventually recanted.  Partly.  Sort of.  With qualifications and so on.  That combination of ideological slant and human fallibility gives Republicans reason to be skeptical of the press.

10 Crazy Conspiracy Theories That Became Conspiracy Facts.  [#7] Mainstream media is the propaganda branch of the State Department:  People have long accused the media of being a proxy branch of the State Department, a highly sophisticated and well-produced form of manufactured consensus and controlled opposition all rolled into one.  In ostensibly democratic nations, a free and independent press is of paramount importance.  But in the U.S., we find a cohesion of the state and corporate news networks that do not constitute 'state-run media' in the traditional sense — but it's close.  Our first solid documentation that the media is an echo chamber for the government came with the disclosure of what has come to be called Operation Mockingbird.

Washington Post Creates Fake News Timed-Release Story Intended to Capture Evening News Lede.  Always remember the basic rule that has been proven accurate 100% of the time:
  •   When the CIA wants to leak a damaging story they coordinate with the Washington Post and ABC.  (and vice-versa).
  •   When the State Dept. or FBI/DOJ wants to leak a damaging story they coordinate with CNN and the New York Times.  (and vice-versa)
This consistent pattern has NEVER been broken.

The News Is Propaganda.  Non-stop distractions are deliberately used by those in power as instruments of policy for the purpose of preventing people from paying attention to reality.  Propaganda is used by those in power to manipulate language, thought, and opinion in a way that causes the progression from thought to action artificially.  When the public is reduced to a state where people no longer care about the truth and are unaware of what that truth even is, propaganda takes hold and shows them what to do. [...] Under the conditions in which we find ourselves living crisis to crisis, there can be no thought as the steady stream of propaganda is fed to us in the form of "news" that never strays from a certain narrative.

The Media's Bias Can't Be Ignored.  Journalists who campaigned against President Trump both before and after the election questioned the need for the White House Correspondents' Dinner this year.  Trump helped burn the script by refusing to attend and TBS' theoretical comedian held a counter event the elite flocked to.  NBC said Bee's "Not The White House Correspondents Dinner" "upstaged" the traditional event.  That was easy.  "Nerd prom," as it is called inside the Beltway, became a minor event on its own night.  It headlined two ancient news icons who helped take down a president more than 40 years ago.  The comic host devoted most of his stand-up to attacking the president, who was elsewhere and making a series of Nazi, Holocaust and N-word jokes that were more hate than humor.

The 'Establishment' Media Are Finding Themselves on Shaky Ground.  ABC is owned by the Walt Disney Co., which has spent over $70 million lobbying the federal government since 1998. During the 2016 election cycle, individuals and PACs associated with the company contributed $1.6 million to Democrats and $250,000 to Republicans.  NBC is owned by Comcast Corp.  In 2014, Comcast spent $17 million in lobbying and hired 128 lobbyists.  When it came to the 2016 election cycle, contributions were almost evenly distributed between the two political parties, with Democrats receiving $3.5 million and Republicans $3.3 million.  However, if you look at the contributions related specifically to NBC properties, the vast majority of contributions were to Democrats.  The only outlier was NBC Sports.  CBS is owned by CBS Corp., which spent $4,470,000 in lobbying in 2016.  CNN is owned by Time Warner Inc.  In 2016, individuals and PACs related to the company gave 87 percent of contributions to Democrats and 11 percent to Republicans.

Want to Fix Journalism?  Start by Bringing Diversity of Thought to Newsrooms.  During my more than three decades as a journalist, I have sat through my share of diversity training sessions.  I have been handed memo after memo and read study after study about how we needed to make our newsrooms look more like the communities we serve.  The key word there is "look."  These sessions and memos and studies typically focused on the need to hire and promote more women and people of color.  And they worked.  While there is always more that can be done, newsrooms much more closely reflect the gender and ethnic demographics of America than they once did.  But never did I get a memo or sit through a training session in which we were urged to recruit, hire, and promote newsroom staff who think more like the communities we serve.  And so newsrooms are now populated by much more diverse-looking staffs than in the past — staffs that largely share a common set of progressive values, a monochrome worldview centered on left-wing notions of how America should behave in the world, and an elitist culture unalterably convinced of its own moral superiority.

Reporters' Political Biases Should Be Clear.  Anyone who has spent a moment around elite reporters or studied their output knows that they tend to be left of center.  In 1981, S. Robert Lichter and Stanley Rothman surveyed 240 leading journalists and found that 94 percent of them voted for Lyndon Johnson in 1964, 81 percent voted for George McGovern in 1972, and 81 percent voted for Jimmy Carter in 1976.  Only 19 percent placed themselves on the right side of the political spectrum.  Does anyone think the media have become less liberal since then?  None of this means liberals — or conservatives — can't be good reporters, but the idea that media bias is nonexistent is ludicrous.

'Media has devolved into a publicity department for the Democratic Party'.  There's been plenty of talk about "fake news" since the election.  In fact, some people in politics and media have even suggested that fake news contributed to Hillary Clinton's stunning loss.  But what about the supposedly legitimate media.  Aren't they to blame as well?  In his newest Firewall video, Bill Whittle puts it all in perspective.  [Video clip]

The Media Must Be Dismantled In Order For Freedom To Survive.  News has always been biased, but the American media exists for one reason and one reason only in 2016 — to further the agenda of the corporate-government complex a.k.a. the globalists. [...] You will never get any truth from the media when it comes to politics and many other issues. [...] I have personally not watched television in over a year since leaving the news industry, and my mind is more focused than it has ever been in my life.  I will likely never own another television in my life.

When does the postmortem for the media begin?  It was the media spokesmodels who took it upon themselves to tell Trump supporters not only that they had no chance, but then went on in great detail to tell them why their cause was hopeless.  They were terrible people, probably fully deserving of the title, basket of deporables.  Trump was terrible so that segment of the audience was obviously supporting a terrible person who voters of good intent and pure souls would soundly reject on election day.  Worse than that, thanks to Wikileaks we've been treated to one revelation after another of journalists — including debate moderators — who were working behind the scene to help the Clinton campaign in every way possible.  Some resorted to cheating by leaking debate questions.  The occasional analysis of how much time, both positive and negative, was devoted to each candidate spoke volumes.  Trump's negative coverage was an ocean compared to Clinton's puddle.

Is the System Rigged?  You Betcha.  In what sense is the system rigged?  Consider Big Media — the elite columnists and commentators, the dominant national press, and the national and cable networks, save FOX.  Not in this writer's lifetime has there been such blanket hatred and hostility of a presidential candidate of a major party.  "So what?" They reply.  "We have a free press!"  But in this election, Big Media have burst out of the closet as an adjunct of the regime and the attack arm of the Clinton campaign, aiming to bring Trump down.  Half a century ago, Theodore White wrote of the power and bias of the "adversary press" that sought to bring down Richard Nixon.  "The power of the press in America," wrote Teddy, "is a primordial one.  It sets the agenda of public discussion; and this sweeping power is unrestrained by any law.  It determines what people will talk about and think about — an authority that in other nations is reserved for tyrants, priests, parties and mandarins."

Laughing at the Self-Destruction of the Media Gatekeepers.  [W]e normals have grown tired of the media elite's lies, and today's technology allows us to ignore the people who would presume to tell us what we can and cannot know.

The Democrat Media Complex.  [Scroll down]  What [Andrew] Breitbart was alluding to was the reality of the press in America as the press acts as a piano on which the government plays the public in whichever direction it desires.  The objective of the press today is not merely to inform, but to instruct the millions of impressionable American minds on what to believe, who to believe, and how to believe.  The content is so rigidly controlled today that in a way the fourth estate has now become nothing more than an institution of the government restricted to publishing and advancing White House directives and Democrat policy agendas.  The role that the press plays is to make clear to the American people what the Obama adminstration [sic] is doing, why the adminstration is doing it, and why it is forced to act in a certain way.

America Plagued with Fake News and Fake TV Experts.  It must be pointed out that the popularity of alternative foreign news sources for the American public came after the "dumbing down" of U.S. news consumers by a "infotainment" industry, headquartered in Los Angeles and New York, that dished massive amounts of "phony news" to America on a 24 by 7 basis.  When Russia Today (RT), China's CCTV, Al Jazeera, Latin America's Telesur, and Iran's Press TV happened upon the scene in the United States, they became instantly popular for providing actual news instead of incessant pabulum about maladjusted Hollywood celebrities.

Operation Mockingbird: The Subversion Of The Corporate Media By The CIA.  As terrible as it is to live in a nation where the press in known to be controlled by the government, at least one has the advantage of knowing the bias is present, and to adjust for it.  In the United States of America, we are taught from birth that our press is free from such government meddling.  This is an insidious lie about the very nature of the news institution in this country.  One that allows the government to lie to us while denying the very fact of the lie itself.

The Mass Media Cult Goes Pathological.  If these people weren't so malignant, I'd feel sorry for them.  This is a kind of death anxiety for the American ruling class, which is also why they constantly fantasize about killing Donald Trump.  For psychiatrists, it's an interesting mental disorder, and it's too bad that millions of Americans still depend on Mass Cult for their daily news.  This is not a college textbook; it's America today. [...] Most people don't realize that "media concentration" — a functional news monopoly, day after day — has the same effect as cult indoctrination.  It doesn't matter if Disney Corp. has a different name from the New York Times.  It matters only that they tell the same "news" story every day.  For a mental mass monopoly, you don't need to violate anti-trust law.  All you need is mass media that make up the "news" by consensus, not by empirical reality.

Time magazine bias
The Common Complaint of Bias in the Media (True).  Ann Coulter, "New York Times best-selling author and conservative columnist" said today [8/29/2018] at Breitbart that she just wants President Trump to "destroy the media" — even if nothing else is accomplished by his administration.  She was specifically offended by the media's "distaste" that the president tweeted about the killing of white farmers occurring in South Africa (not to be mentioned), and she added I want him to expose where the Democratic Party is going with things like their chant "No borders, no wall, no USA at all," Gov Cuomo saying America was never great, or the New York Times hiring Sara Jeong who just tweets hatred and venom towards white men.  Well, I can't disagree with Ann all that much.  A former editor for the New York Times, David Leonhardt, claimed that American racism is the only reason Americans care about the death of Molly Tibbits at the hands of an illegal alien.  (No it's not racism, it's the ILLEGAL part.)  We don't like 20 year old college students being brutally murdered.  The only reason Democrats try to stick the Republicans with the racism tag, is because Democrats have such a long and dreadful history of their own racism.  They thought electing the first black president would finally absolve them of their history.  But they haven't changed their behavior.



Timely news and commentary:


Too Many Democrats Still Operate In the Old Way and It Highlights How Abusive They've Been.  There are a number of things that sank the Democrats in 2024, some of which are very obvious, and some that aren't widely talked about.  You'll often find there's not a lot of discussion around some of these things because the media refuses to address them.  At this point in human history, it's pretty clear to most that the media is an untrustworthy entity that tends to lean so far left it falls over.  I don't have to tell you how much it blatantly lied about Donald Trump and any of his allies over the course of the last eight years, pushing people into frenzies that literally resulted in two separate assassination attempts.  But the Democrats have counted on this obedient and complicit media for decades.  They know that it can be counted on to carry messages and narratives to the people, and for those decades that the two worked in tandem, they were able to pass off whatever lie and false narrative they wanted to with impunity.  But then the internet happened, social media was invented, and a man named Elon Musk purchased one of these websites and called it "X."  Everything changed at that point.

Another scandal rocks Kamala Harris's failed presidential campaign.  [Scroll down]  This is exactly what the current Democrat party and all those who claim to be Marxists or Socialists are all about.  They are deceptive and mendacious hypocrites who perpetually con their working-class voters.  They have the propaganda wing that masquerades as mainstream media to push their myriad hoaxes.  It is likely that Sharpton isn't the only one who made considerable pecuniary gains off the Democrats.  These monetary deals are why the bond between the media and the Democrats is unbreakable.  They are not true believers, they are like paid assassins.  What makes this unforgivable is the hate, negativity, and ugly cynicism they constantly peddle in the name of news.  It is either a smear campaign or fear campaign against Republicans or peddling of victimhood for whom they deem as minority groups.  They cannot address the real issues such as inflation, poverty, crime, etc, because their bosses the Democrats are responsible for it.  The result of their contestant hate and cynicism is that they spread despondency among people.  This makes the mainstream media the equivalent of assassins of the spirit of their supporters.

Are Americans finally noticing media bias and propaganda?  Looks as though the bias in mass media has caught up with them.  They overplayed their hand.  According to a recent Gallup poll, only 52% of Democrats, 27% of independents and 12% of Republicans trust mass media.  Younger people trust mass media less than older.  Don't allow yourself to become upset with the talking heads in mass media.  Feel sorry for them.  They are truly lost.  And the vast majority don't believe their biases masked as news.

How media fails.  Of all the institutions that have failed us in past years, none has been worse than the media.  I am specifically referring to the news organizations and not those who clearly identify themselves as opinion journalism.  I have no issue with a Morning Joe, Rachel Maddow, Sean Hannity, or Laura Ingraham who are at least honestly bringing their points of view to their programming.  I am, however, faulting the traditional news stations (ABC, CBS, NBC) and folks like Jake Tapper and Wolf Blitzer who pretend to be objective.  These organizations are guilty of acts of omission as well as commission.

Why Do We Even Have Elections?  Why Don't We Just Let The Media Choose?  Some years ago, while at the University of California, Los Angeles, economics professor Timothy Groseclose wrote a book that showed Democratic candidates start their campaigns with significant leads over their GOP candidates due to media preference. [...] The media are so invested in Democrats, through their votes and their campaign donations, and through their hard-left ideology, that they don't want voters to determine the outcomes of elections.  They want to be the power brokers who coronate the kings and queens of our executive and legislative bodies.  The partisanship is obvious, and it goes beyond the opinion pages and the unprincipled pundits who continuously screech on television.  What is supposed to be straight news is so laced with fabrication and half-truths meant to mislead, that it is, as New York Post columnist Michael Goodwin has noted, "indistinguishable from propaganda."  If the news gatherers and disseminators were to come out and admit their bias and declare the press a wing of the Democratic Party, it would be acceptable.  But they continue to lie, to portray themselves as objective arbiters.  This is a clear violation of ethics and a breach of the public trust.  It's election interference.

Has the Media Tipped Its Hand?  [Scroll down]  Until relatively recently, we assumed that media bias was merely an occasional bug, not a systemic, overriding feature.  Now we know the opposite is true.  Media bias isn't a weird little hiccup, but an intrinsic part of their DNA: They cannot change because this is who they are.  Before, conservatives would grumble and moan about it, but at the end of the day [shrugs shoulders], what can ya do?  There are only three TV stations and two papers in our city, so I guess we gotta live with it.  Where else are ya gonna go?  Not anymore.  It hasn't been that way since the talk-radio revolution led to the Internet explosion, which led to social media and podcasts.  One of the lasting legacies of Rush Limbaugh — and his colleagues in talk radio — was exposing and ridiculing media bias.  Their voices changed everything.  Suddenly, it was okay for candidates to fight back.

America Isn't Free As Long As Its Press Is Subservient To The Democrat Party.  For most honest Americans, truth and lie are fairly easy to differentiate.  But to our nation's propaganda media, the terms are completely subjective.  Case in point:  the media's unhinged response to Donald Trump's Thursday critique of Liz Cheney's obsession with military adventurism.  While speaking with Tucker Carlson in Arizona, the former president rebuked Cheney for her foreign policy and the threat it poses to the U.S. and its service members.  "[Liz Cheney] always wanted to go to war with people.  I didn't want to go to war.  She wanted to stay in Syria; I took them out.  She wanted to stay in Iraq; I took them out.  I mean, if it were up to her, we'd be in 50 different countries," Trump said.  "[N]umber one, it's really dangerous; number two, a lot of people get killed; and number three..., it's very, very expensive.  That's why we owe $36 trillion."  Later in the conversation, Trump followed up with comments that have since been hijacked by corporate media: [...]

Will the media accept the outcome of the election if Donald Trump wins?  It's far from a foregone conclusion that they will.  There's a strong argument they didn't the last time Trump won.  Why should anyone expect them to accept it this time around?  It's a question these homely nerds are inclined to ask every elected Republican in the shallowest way possible — some variation of, "Will you accept the outcome of this election no matter what?"  (I think every restaurant server from now on should ask Jake Tapper the moment he's seated, "Will you accept the way your food comes out no matter what?  It's a yes or no question.")  After the appalling behavior they displayed last week, now is a very crucial time to ask them the same thing.  If they were this hysterical over management at The Washington Post and Los Angeles Times deciding there would be no endorsement of Kamala Harris this campaign cycle — the type of endorsement that hasn't mattered for decades — how can they be expected to acknowledge a Trump victory?  And if they won't, what will it mean to the people who are still influenced by them?  They will have essentially been told their elections and their government are invalid.  These are the things civil wars are made of.  As silly as the media have made themselves look, they're dead serious.

Meanwhile, Back at the Mounting Nervous Breakdown.  This election isn't just about a set of policy preferences or issues where reasonable people can disagree.  The facts are out there and the tragedy is that a large portion of the American electorate has been fooled, propagandized and manipulated.  This is because the American people are for the most part politically unsophisticated and are easily manipulated to believe things that are not true.  Democracy, by design, is messy and the politically ill-informed have the same number of votes as the politically savvy and engaged. [...] Streams of lies are not just lies to be fact-checked, but an accelerant that impacts people's brains, causing moral disengagement, allowing people to abandon their own decision-making and obey.  This is what the left thrives on.  It's what the media feed on.

The Three Layers of Culpability.  [Scroll down]  Third Layer: the news media.  The motives of these birds are the flimsiest: social status and professional stature.  They operate within a self-referential reward bubble that provides psychological nourishment as long as they go along with the mumurations of their flock.  They will be easiest to turn around as the national mood turns (and is now turning, sharply).  A year from now, don't be surprised if they treat Mr. Trump as a revered hero who saved the country from the malignant blob — and pretend that they never thought otherwise.  By then, it will be too late for some, of course, and actual figures such as Lawrence O'Donnell and Rachel Maddow of MSNBC, Maggie Haberman of The New York Times, NBC's Nicolle Wallace, will be drowning in their own slime trails.

One Simple Way to Tell That the Dems Are Full of It Regarding FEMA Money.  We have spent a lot of time over the years discussing the never ending awfulness of the people in the mainstream media who call themselves journalists.  Bias for the Democrats has been a problem since I have been politically aware, which has been quite some time.  Of course, they've all gotten worse since Donald Trump rose to power in the Republican Party.  Now they are running interference for the worst people to ever be in charge of the Executive Branch of the United States government.  It's really ugly out there, especially in this most contentious of election years.

Heroes and Zeroes.  I didn't watch the debate and like the great Iowahawk (David Burge) I consider this one of the worst lies told concerning them, "here is our panel of undecided voters."  If you are undecided at this stage, you are a moron and shouldn't vote, or a liar.  The second lie about them is that the moderators are informed and neutral and will keep their promise not to "fact check" the Republican or stack the questions to promote the Democrats' agenda rather than exploring the issues voters in survey after survey indicate are their priorities.  Paul Sperry, to take one example, reveals that CBS moderator Margaret Brennan, who was rude to J.D. Vance, had been a strategic advisor to the anti-Trump Lincoln Project.  Her husband, Yado Yakub, donated to the project, and was a foreign policy adviser to Biden in 2000 and 2001.

Why Debate 'Moderators' Prove That The Media Is The True Enemy Of The American People.  For all the differences between the presidential and vice presidential debates, there was one glaring similarity: the moderators weren't able to keep their mouths shut.  In the first debate, the rules allowed the moderators to "fact-check," whatever that means exactly.  In the second debate, the rules didn't allow "fact-checking."  But in both cases, the moderators couldn't help themselves.  They weighed in, over and over again.  And every single time, they interjected to help whatever Democrat was standing at the podium.  And the format of these "fact-checks" was always the same, too.  The moderators would wait for Donald Trump or JD Vance to stop speaking.  Then they'd hastily recite a rehearsed, one-line "correction."  And then they'd immediately try to change the subject so that Trump or Vance couldn't respond.  This would be disgraceful even if these moderators were telling the truth.  The whole point of a debate is to hear from the candidates, not the moderators.

Looking for moderators who want to moderate.  Two debates and one conclusion.  We have too many moderators who want to save the world from Trump.  Furthermore, too many moderators obsessed with climate change, January 6th, and abortion.  By now, it should be clear to the GOP that too many of the current crop of debate moderators spend too much talking to each other rather than listening to the people who live in the U.S. [...] So why play ball with umpires who are in the tank for the other team?  Why have moderators who write questions to give the Democrats the edge?  It makes no sense and the time has arrived to pull the plug.  First, stop letting one network do presidential debates.  Second, invite reporters, print and electronic, without a partisan reputation.  For example, Major Garrett of CBS, Bret Beier of FOX, et al.  From now on, the GOP should dictate the rules and let the chip fall where they may.

Seriously, no one trusts the media.  Do you find yourself despising the nation's socialist media even more than usual? [...] The benefit of hindsight helps us understand that the last-minute un-democratic coup and the sudden changing of Komrade Kamala for Biden were the obvious plan.  Thus, the shortened campaign sprint is a feature, not a bug in that it helps the nation's socialist media hide her from the people.  The outlines of the plan are clear enough when you look back over the events of the past few months, with the media playing a key role in the fraud. [...] This could explain why this race still seems to be "close."  Oliver Wiseman of the Free Press wrote that "Trump Should Be Beating Harris by a Mile," and he chalks up part of the reason for the opposite to the Trump campaign making mistakes.  It's a fair point, but the fact is that the media are massively distorting the press environment.  Studies have shown that whereas coverage of Donald Trump has been almost entirely negative, Komrade Kamala has been enjoying [positive coverage].

Uncovering the Coverage.  [Scroll down]  I became less interested in accuracy and more interested in what the writer was trying to get me to believe.  Who were the people behind the reporters?  What was their agenda?  Who was getting paid?  And for what?  Why now?  How is it they are all saying the same thing at once?  Why does the message change so often?  Am I supposed to just forget what they told me five minutes ago?  Yesterday, Kamala Harris was against fracking, against ICE, against the police, against private health insurance.  Today she is in favor of all these wonderful things.  Remember the Green New Deal?  Well, you shouldn't.  Do you like Trump's policies?  No problem.  They are now the policies of his opponents.  Yesterday the Democrats slammed Trump as a threat to democracy.  But after a thoroughly undemocratic backroom deal to anoint Harris, they are now all about "brat" and "joy" and "moving forward."  At least for the moment.  The Democrats are not running on policy.  They are running on memes that roll across your eyes momentarily like a Tik-Tok video, but never sink into your consciousness, images that change faster than the voters can comprehend.

ABC Is a Collapsing House of Cards.  The latest information about ABC News is that moderator Linsey Davis admits the fact checking was aimed at Donald Trump.  This is totally nuts.  It's not acceptable for news agencies protected by the Constitution to do anything like this.  The whistleblower is a hero and we should stand by him.  As reported earlier, moderator Linsey Davis admits fact-checking was only for Trump: [...] ABC News has to get back to reporting the news and abandon activism or they have to stop pretending they are a news service.

More evidence they're not even trying to hide their bias.  [Scroll down]  Think about the story about Haitian immigrants eating people's pets in Springfield, Ohio.  There are a lot of stories about it and many in the media claim it's all a hoax.  And that's when they don't claim it's a racist hoax.  I honestly don't know if it's a thing or not.  But I've seen interviews with folks who live there that claim it's happening.  There are videos here and there that, in and of themselves might not mean much but taken as a whole suggest there might be something going on.  Meanwhile, the media is saying it's false, and their only evidence is local officials denying it.  I'm sorry, but I'm inclined to believe it's real simply because of the media's [poor] job in covering anything over the last little while, especially over the last eight years.  If they said the sky was blue, I'd have to verify it either through my own observations or from someone I can actually trust.  The bias is so bad, and they're not even really trying to hide it anymore, but they won't admit it so we know when to ignore them.

Starve the collapsing corporate media of their sham debates.  I very much doubt that any of what transpired last night moved the needle in any particular direction, and political pundits are often very disconnected from the general public.  So instead of wasting time on more highlights, it's better to consider what can be done to avoid the absolute lunacy we witnessed last night from ABC.  This should be the last election cycle with legacy media debates.  Ever.  No more excuses, GOP.  Just stop accommodating this madness and being complicit in it.  Last night was much more an interrogation of Donald Trump than anything resembling a debate.  "Why won't you recognize the 2020 election?  Do you wish you had done more on Jan 6? Why are you so racist, sir?  Why are you attacking our climate hoax?"  How is any of that considered a debate?  It was the worst debate production of all time and the American people are the biggest losers here.  I don't recall a single question of importance.  It was full clownworld from beginning to end.

Democracy Truly Does Die in Darkness.  Media bias has morphed into downright communist-style propaganda.  Democrats are so desperate to remain in power that they're partnering with the media, to indoctrinate the electorate to believe that the same woman who they've been calling the worst vice president in the history of America is now not only qualified to hold the highest office in the land, but has been all along.  From lies about inflation (no it was not 9% when Biden entered office), the border (yes, Harris was the border czar who left it wide open for over three years while gang-members, criminals, terrorists, and fentanyl flooded in), crime rates (horrifically high in blue state cities), threats to free speech (it's the Biden/Harris administration working arm-in-arm with social media companies to suppress the truth and perpetuate fantasies), energy (Harris favors banning fracking and wishes to implement an E.V. mandate), and so on, the media is aiding and abetting the remaking of an otherwise incompetent and wholly unremarkable and unlikeable woman into the savior of the day.

Saving Journalism from the Journalists.  Almost all practicing journalists these days are creatures of the left.  Fabian socialists, Marxist ideologues, or Democrat partisans — however else they might self-identify, they all view themselves as romantic figures destined to influence history.  Who, What, When, Where, and Why are for the schlubs.  They are here to engineer narratives, and they take their jobs quite seriously.  "Narrative engineer" is such a perfect sobriquet for today's reporters.  It appeals to their special brand of vanity.  Most would love to be known for their literary talents but lack the skill to tell good stories.  Most wish others would see them as having the kind of brainpower associated with engineers, but alas, they struggle with basic geometry.  Thinking of themselves as master builders of human events allows journalists to carve out a privileged caste for themselves that lies somewhere between that of the academic and the priest.

Media: The Enemy of the People.  The word 'bias' is inadequate to describe what the mainstream media has devolved into.  Bias means an inclination, leaning, or preference, but nothing beyond that. [...] The members of the media don't prefer the Democrats, they are Democrats.  They must be seen as a department within the party whose job is to glorify everything the party does and denigrate anyone who stands against it.  Those who claim to cover the news must stop referring to themselves as the media.  Because the media, by its very definition, is supposed to be a channel that transmits i.e. depicts the occurrences as accurately as possible.

Mainstream media misinformation, mendacity at PBS.  Russian collusion?  Hunter's laptop is a fake, bearing all the hallmarks of a Russian disinformation campaign?  The COVID vaccines are safe and prevent transmission and contraction of the coronavirus?  President Biden is in tip-top shape, mentally and physically?  And he is just a nice, normal man?  Kamala Harris is now a female Messiah?  Republicans want to despoil the planet and throw your grandma off a cliff?  Not to mention these claims from ten and 12 years ago or more:  due to global warming, we only have ten or 12 years left to save the planet?  There is no way you can hate the mainstream media enough.  There is no way you can disdain them, despise them, detest them to the degree they so richly deserve.  They are all lies, all biasness, all hypocrisy, all [nonsense] ... all the time.  They care not who gets hurt, cancelled, or killed because of their fanatical adherence to a tyrannical agenda.

Trump Was Right about the Size of the Crowd on January 6, 2021.  Despite polls indicating that just 7% of Americans have a great deal of trust in the media, the denizens of the newsrooms among the legacy media outlets are apparently determined to see if they can drive that woeful number down even further.  Not only are they continuing to prostitute themselves to the Democrat Party, unabashedly lionize a vacuous Kamala Harris, and willfully obfuscate her and Tim Walz's records, but their childishness when it comes to covering Donald Trump continues to sink to kindergarten levels.

The Media Still Turn Tricks For The Democrat Party.  There's a good reason I wrote about the media's prostitutes a few years ago, actually, seven years ago, with a preface that apologized to legitimate prostitutes who made an honest living.  What I reported then was based on the formidable work of ace journalist Ashley Lutz, who scrupulously documented her findings in a Business Insider report.  Lutz reported that in 1983, there were 50 media companies, but early in this century, as well as today, only six organizations are responsible for 90 percent or more of all the "news" we read, watch, and listen to!  [GE, NewsCorp, Disney, Viacom, Time Warner, CBS]

Newsweek descends deeper into the gutter of vile propaganda.  In reality, the media is the propaganda arm of the Democrats.  There is no difference between the utterances of the press and the Democrats.  If you want to know what the Democrat leadership is thinking, just follow in the mainstream media.  The late great Rush Limbaugh often played a montage of utterances from media pundits about any given event.  Not only did the 'experts' have identical opinions, they also used identical keywords.  Words such as 'insurrection' or 'collusion' didn't become the de facto term for describing the events of January 6th or the Trump-Russia hoax by accident.  These terms were provided by adept wordsmiths in the Democrat party, and the media lapdogs followed the diktat faithfully.  They repeated the terms until even those against whom the hoax was perpetrated accepted the premise and used them while defending themselves.  We must therefore think of the media as a department within the Democrat party.

Media distrust
These Are America's 'Most Trustworthy' News Organizations In 2024.  America's trust in the media has plateaued over the last few years with only around one-in-three Americans saying they trust the news.  Visual Capitalist's Marcus Lu visualizes the percentage of Americans who trust (or distrust) various news organizations.  Importantly, this is not an exhaustive list of media brands.

The Editor says...
No, it's not an exhaustive list.  It doesn't even include NBC or the Associated Press.

The Legacy Media Has Passed the Point of No Return.  A massive poll of 20,000 participants undertaken by the Knight Foundation and Gallup found that Americans' hope for and trust in an objective media was all but lost by 2020.  They saw not only an ever-growing partisanship in news reporting but a determination by the legacy media to push a political agenda instead of honestly disseminating the news.  This poll was one of the most devastating indictments of the media in polling history.  Some highlights:
  84% of surveyed Americans laid either a moderate or a great deal of the blame for partisan hostility at the feet of the media.
  Further, 82% believed news outlets are either deliberately "misrepresenting the facts" or are "making them up entirely".
  This is further amplified as 79% of those surveyed said media outlets are trying to persuade people to adopt a certain opinion about an issue or an individual.
  Similarly, while the respondents in the poll believed that the media is "critical" or "very important" to democracy, 86% say they have witnessed either a fair amount or a great deal of bias in news reporting.

'Media Reporting' Is Now Just More Censorship And Suppression Of Information.  As the left-wing Media Matters for America buckles under the weight of a delightfully crushing defamation lawsuit brought by Elon Musk — hope he wins! — it's probably a good time for that trash outlet's deep-pocket donors to consider spending their money elsewhere; not just because MMFA is a satanic organization that employs a bunch of otherwise unskilled dopes, but because so much of what was formerly known as "media reporting" is now simply more censorship and suppression of right-wingers, which is exactly what MMFA does.

Newt Gingrich:  The Trump Trial Is 'The Most Dishonest, Corrupt Trial Of Any Political Figure In American History'.  [Scroll down]  Newt went on to suggest that leftist news organizations and their fake news are also dangerous.  He cited the book, The Making of the President 1968 by Theodore H. White.  In it, he said, there's "an entire chapter on how dishonest and biased the news media has become and how much they all fell in line, repeating the same stories and deliberately attacking conservatives.  [It began in] 1968.  It just got steadily worse from there on and today it is, an incestuous, totally dishonest system in which if you were to try to stand for conservatism, you'd be driven out of the newsroom almost overnight.  That's happened at the New York Times and it's happened at National Public Radio.  We've seen, senior people who were forced out because they violated the hardline, left-wing anti American norm that now defines the culture of the newsroom.  And the newsroom has become a key part of the establishment."  And, he noted, it was a network consisting of the FBI, the CIA, the Democratic Party, the New York Times, the Washington Post, that came together in 2016 to try to destroy Trump, and they've been at it ever since."

Newsgate: Reporters Caught Coordinating With Political Hacks.  Compromised reporting has always existed as a result of covert collaborations between reporters and political interests — Democrats and Republicans alike.  Some of the most exemplary hard evidence available happens to be heavy on reporters with Democrat ties.  Much of it came during the scandal-ridden 2016 presidential campaign when candidate Donald Trump upended politics and ran against Hillary Clinton, who was also running against Bernie Sanders for the Democrat nomination.  As you'll see, much of the political establishment and establishment media seemed to be working on Team Hillary.  It can be argued that some individual accounts provided here can be rationalized and are not serious breaches of ethics.  But taken as a whole, it's easy to see how we as journalists have done a poor job protecting ourselves from being co-opted by organized interests, often ones that are paid and politically-motivated.  Whether we realize it or not, they've figured out how to exploit the media and use us to publish their propaganda.

Vast Majority of Americans Distrust News Media on Every Level — Report.  While some say that Americans are more polarized than ever, there are certainly still points that the country is relatively united on.  One such topic is a distrust of our news media.  A poll released Wednesday conducted by the American Press Institute and The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research found that over half of Americans (53 percent) are extremely or very concerned about news organizations reporting inaccurate information during the election.  Another 30 percent of U.S. adults said it is an issue they are somewhat concerned about.  And as to having actual confidence in the information, the number is even worse.

The Mass Propaganda Media Is Bleeding Out — Therefore the Left Has Begun Testing the Concept of Taxpayer-Funded Media.  The state of the conservative movement is such that Soros can take over some of the largest radio networks in the country and Dems can begin building a massive taxpayer-subsidized media in plain sight, yet stories on these subjects will get a fraction of the attention of the latest influencer feuds and assorted nonsense. [...] Faced with an economic apocalypse in the media, especially local media, Dems are working to turn the whole enterprise into one big taxpayer-subsidized monstrosity.  And they're doing it while Republicans are sleeping or playing along.  I've been writing about this for nearly a decade and despite the fact that the transformation of the media into nonprofits is a game changer, there's very little interest in the subject.  And there'll be very little interest in it until it's far enough along that there's nothing left to do but complain about it.  The media will become a taxpayer-subsidized state propaganda enterprise.

Ellul Redux:  Propaganda.  Jacques Ellul argues even the most intelligent and educated individuals are susceptible to falling for and propagating propaganda due to:  [#1] Intellectual laziness:  Ellul suggests that intellectuals and experts often become complacent and intellectually lazy, relying too heavily on established beliefs and assumptions without critically examining them.  This makes them vulnerable to confirmation bias.  [#2] Desire for prestige and recognition:  According to Ellul, many intellectuals and specialists seek prestige, recognition and social status within their respective fields.  Propagandists can exploit this desire by offering intellectuals a platform or a sense of importance, leading them to spread desired narratives.  [#3] Specialization and compartmentalization:  Ellul argues that modern intellectuals are highly specialized and compartmentalized in their areas of expertise, lacking a broader, interdisciplinary perspective.

The Expansion of Taxpayer-Subsidized "Journalism".  There's virtually no such thing as independent journalism anymore and when Democrats say "protecting democracy", they mean promoting party propaganda while smearing political opponents.  It's understandable why Democrats would want to put party propagandists on the public payroll.  Once again though small businesses, struggling to stay afloat, are being betrayed by politicians stealing money to fund their own election messaging.

Popular Nullification of the State's Propaganda.  [Scroll down]  The news industry exploits a related phenomenon:  intellectual insecurity.  The primary target in this manipulation is news reporters themselves.  You have surely noticed that a lot of well known pundits aren't that smart.  That's intentional.  The people who control public narratives don't want celebrity thinkers; they want eager repeaters — people who mindlessly mimic whatever they're told.  At the same time, most news repeaters have big egos.  That's intentional, too.  People whose egos are larger than they merit are particularly susceptible to manipulation.  They fall victim to what you might call the "lone genius effect."  In any gathering of people, if one person sounds convincingly more intelligent than everyone else, the surrounding group will accord that person with some measure of authority.  What's important is not whether the "lone genius" is telling the truth or even an actual genius, but rather that the group perceives the person to be intellectually superior.  In the news industry, oversized egos are vulnerable to the propaganda of the "lone genius."  Because their psychological health depends upon a self-image of being smarter than they really are, they gravitate toward any individual who appears to be the real deal.  Reporters' intellectual insecurity makes them easy targets.

The expected upcoming election chaos caused by the left's hatred of any opposition.  I don't remember anyone complaining when NBC hired Chuck Todd, who hosted fund-raising events for Hillary Clinton and whose wife is a major leftist strategist who did campaign work for Bernie Sanders.  Nor did anyone complain when ABC hired George Stephanopoulos, a longtime Democratic Party campaign worker who was a major player in Bill Clinton's campaign.  Nor did any of these so-called journalists complain about these hires:
  Jen Psaki / Biden Press Secretary
  Symone Sanders / spokesperson for Kamala Harris
  David Plouffe / Barack Obama campaign manager
  Laura Jarrett / daughter of Obama administration official Valerie Jarrett
  Alicia Menendez / daughter of Dem.  Senator Bob Menendez
  Former Democratic Senator Claire McCaskill
What these complaints reveal however is the utterly close[d]-minded intolerant approach to politics of the political class running the Democratic Party.  This intolerance is not new.  Anyone willing to simply look could have seen it a decade ago, and very clearly in 2016 when Trump first ran for office.

NBC News Officially Bans Republicans From Working There.  For the longest time, the media played this game of pretending that it doesn't consist entirely of a bunch of leftist activists who exist to promote their political agenda and attack those of their political opponents.  The pretense is wearing thin.  And who knew that Ronna McDaniel of all people would be the breaking point?  But it's kind of like the way that the media's attacks on dishwater liberals like McCain and Romney, portraying them as Hitler 2.0 just because they posed a threat to Obama, helped kill the media's credibility.  The attacks on McCain and Romney made it clear that it wasn't about "conservatives" or "right-wingers", the media was out to destroy anyone running as a Republican and would tell the same lies about them.  Now NBC News has officially banned Republicans, even ones like Ronna McDaniel, from working there.  Ceasar Conde, the Chair of NBCUniversal News, issued a statement purging Ronna McDaniel while declaring that, "no organization, particularly a newsroom, can succeed unless it is cohesive and aligned."

The Editor says...
There is one kind of diversity that the news media can't tolerate, and that is a diversity of ideas.

Enemies Of The People.  When we started this site, exposing mainstream media bias was a big part of our mission.  Using the then-new internet, we and many others held liberal outlets (i.e., virtually all of them) accountable in a way that hadn't happened before.  The effect of that effort was not that the liberal press became more accurate or more objective.  Rather, they came out of the closet.  For the most part, they no longer make any serious pretense of neutrality.  Whether that is an improvement or not is debatable.  But, in any event, it no longer makes sense to criticize, say, the New York Times or the Washington Post for being biased.  That would be like, if you were a soldier in World War II and a Panzer division was approaching, you were to say, "Those Germans are biased against us!"  It isn't a question of bias.  They are just the enemy.

You Can't Make This [Stuff] Up.  The CBC — Canada's government propaganda machine pretending to be a "news" outlet — is warning people in Calgary that an effort to recall the Mayor isn't what it seems to be.  Rather, it is a conservative plot!  Beware!  Conservatives are organizing to win political offices because they disagree with progressives!  This used to be called "freedom," but these days it amounts to a subversive plot to overthrow the dictatorship of the proletariate.  The Kulaks must be hunted down and eliminated. [...] There is nothing shocking about a politician slinging mud at others who oppose her; there is something more than a bit disturbing about state-run broadcasters pushing dark conspiracy theories in order to slander the opposition.  It smells of Pravda.  Which, of course, it really is.  Almost all the news media in the Anglosphere these days are an adjunct to the leftists in charge.

George Stephanopoulos:  A Cast Study in America's Psychological Warfare.  Many Americans are paying attention to daily news events.  But more need to see beyond the daily events to the larger plot.  Part of that larger plot involves understanding that we're now living in an environment of psychological warfare. [...] Certain peeks behind certain curtains can offer glimpses into dynamics that are usually hidden beneath the surface.  Enough peeks can transform suckers into seers.  This isn't easy to do but a recent incident can help make it clear.  Anyone interested in learning the evil magician's tricks could study the encounter between George Stephanopoulos and Nancy Mace on March 9th.  First, a quick aside:  Stephanopoulos once worked as press secretary for Bill Clinton.  He was paid to manage narratives to help achieve Democrat/communist political agendas.  From there, he became Chief Anchor at ABC News.  This fact alone should have alarmed us long ago — a blinking red warning sign that there's something profoundly off about journalism and media today.  It's absurd.  In a media system that is what it pretends to be, Stephanopoulos — a Democratic operative pretending to be a journalist — and the executives who hired him would have been fired long ago, and ABC would have been discredited as a news organization for even trying.

Ten years on, BBC bias is worse than ever.  As recently as late last summer, sources at the highest levels within the Culture Department were still saying that such reforms were under active consideration.  But it was not to be.  The MTR [BBC's Mid-Term Review] has turned out to be — like every alleged BBC reform before it — worse than useless.  The blunt truth is that the BBC remains in charge of complaints handling.  It is the fox with the keys to the hen house.  In the entire Charter period (since 2017), only 147 complaints of almost two million received have been upheld by the BBC's Editorial Complaints Unit.  The MTR supposedly beefed up the complaints process by suggesting that Ofcom should become more rigorous about BBC bias.  The reality is that since 2017 Ofcom has seen fit to investigate only a handful of BBC complaints.  Most of its Content Board have strong BBC connections and instead focus their energies on attacking GB News.  Thus, nothing is happening to halt the 'progressive' agenda embraced by everyone at the BBC from the Director General downwards.  All anyone can now do to resist BBC bias is to stop watching.

The Editor says...
If there's nothing else you can do, stop watching already.  You're not obligated to watch television.  If everybody in the country turned off their TV sets and (more importantly) stopped paying for a TV viewing license, the idea of which is absurd in the US, the BBC would get the message, along with the rest of the government.  Going without television for a few years won't hurt you at all, but it will put pressure on the BBC.

Why do Democrats hate white rural America so much?  It would be a grave understatement to suggest that the mainstream media are biased in favor of the Democrats.  It implies that the Democrats and the media are separate entities and that somehow the Democrats are influencing the media.  In reality, the mainstream media are a P.R. wing for the Democrats.  They are like a department within the party.  Hence, there is no difference between the utterances of a Democrat politician and a mainstream media "pundit."  As Rush Limbaugh frequently observed, on any given day, the "experts" across media outlets use identical phraseology to describe any given event.  Words such as "collusion" and "insurrection" didn't become the de facto terminology by coincidence.  An adept wordsmith among the Democrats supplied these terms, and the media obediently repeated them.  Among the worst offenders in the mainstream media is MSNBC.  The channel is not even propaganda, because propaganda requires finesse.  Good propaganda is subtle.  But MSNBC is nakedly partisan and proud of it.

BBC's Clive Myrie:  I don't like the term 'impartial'.  Clive Myrie has said he dislikes the term "impartial" and does not believe the BBC must provide balance on every topic.  The BBC News presenter said he would be happy to state that Donald Trump has issues with race because that is a fact, rather than an opinion.  On other subjects, such as the causes of climate change, Myrie said there was no need to represent both sides of the argument equally because the vast majority of scientists agreed that it was man-made.  Interviewed by Craig Oliver, the former Downing Street communications director, for the Desperately Seeking Wisdom podcast, Myrie was asked about balancing his own strong opinions with the requirements of working for "an organisation that wants you to be impartial".  Myrie replied: "There's a fundamental flaw in what you've just said.  The BBC wants me to be fair.  I don't like the word 'impartial' because that can suggest ... 50:50, on the one hand or the other.  That's wishy-washy."

Protection Racket:  Why The Censorship Industry Needs to Bail Out The Media.  Recent layoffs in the establishment media, in particular the 100-plus employee downsizing at the Los Angeles Times, as well as tumbling traffic rates for mainstream news websites, has led to a public debate on the future of journalism.  The establishment media has also taken the opportunity to renew calls for Congress to revive a narrowly-blocked bill to bail our the industry, one that is fully backed by the censorship industry:  the Journalism Competition and Preservation Act (JCPA).  Much like the Online News Act in Canada, and the News Media Bargaining Code in Australia, the JCPA would open up a state-mandated funnel of advertising revenue from Silicon Valley to the nation's largest media conglomerates.  The JCPA accomplishes this by establishing a corporate media cartel, which can collectively bargain for payouts from Silicon Valley companies.  The latter would not have a choice in the matter:  the bill allows for agreements to be forced on them through arbitration.  Like the Canadian and Australian bills, the JCPA creates a stream of income for establishment media companies that is virtually guaranteed.

Why People Hate The Media.  With layoffs left and left across America's newsrooms, there's lots of hand-wringing over the state of newspapers and "journalism" these days.  Notably absent from these laments are any mention of leftism, wokeness, or the naked contempt today's MSM journalists display again and again for ordinary Americans.  [Video clip] [...] Journalism runs on trust, and nobody trusts them.  The other problem besides wokeness is over-saturation.  "The media business has never been wider than it is right now, but it's also never been more shallow."  It's not limited to America.  The BBC has the same woke narrative problem.  [Video clip]

BBC staff told not to hire candidates who are 'dismissive' of diversity.  BBC staff are being told not to hire candidates who are "dismissive" of diversity and inclusion, The Telegraph can disclose.  A recruitment policy document says applicants should be asked to "explain what diversity and inclusion means to you and, should you be successful, what opportunities do you see for you to promote, celebrate or encourage diversity and inclusion in your role?"  The guidelines, used in a major non-editorial department of the BBC, tell recruiters:  "Don't hire [candidates who are] unsuited to the organisation" if they are "dismissive or derisory of diversity and inclusion and surrounding topics".  Managers are also directed not to offer jobs to candidates who show a "lack of interest in learning more where no evidence of education and understanding of diversity and inclusion was given".

2,681 'Journalists' Lost Their Jobs in Joe Biden's Economy.  "An estimated 2,681 news industry jobs were lost through the end of November," reports the far-left Associated Press. [...] I'll bet good money that over 90 percent of those who lost their jobs voted for His Fraudulency Joe Biden.  So what we have here is another case of people getting what they voted for.  Boo hoo.  Those 2,681 jobs lost over the first 11 months of 2023 added up to "more than the full years of 2022 and 2021," the employment firm of Challenger, Gray, and Christmas told the AP.

Today's Journalists Seek Power, Not Truth.  [I]t still amazes me how desperately today's "journalists" desire for the government to tell them what they can and cannot do.  The United States of America has been around for two and a half centuries.  During that time, tens of thousands of federal laws, rules, regulations, and executive orders have been created to squash and squeeze Americans' natural liberties into smaller and smaller sanctioned containers suitable for TSA inspection.  It would be interesting to know just how many more decades of legislating and how many thousands of additional recorded laws it would take before the masochists at The New York Times finally feel as if they have been sufficiently governed!

The Problem with Lies.  Nowadays, we have a plethora of lies that are told knowingly and openly and without shame. [... For example,] Our media is free, fair and impartial.  Okay, stop laughing.  When Peter Jennings said that 90% of the media is left wing, including him, you should have believed him.  If you wish to believe they don't tilt the news to the Left, wake up.  The examples are enormous.  Just one?  President Barack Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder cooked up a plan to force U.S. gun sellers to provide guns to Mexican criminals, so that they could blame the NRA and gun owners.  They were caught red-handed and then stonewalled the investigation.  Holder refused to even testify.  He had every chance to disprove the facts, he declined and the media dropped the subject.

Let's Stop Using the Words: 'Trump Tried to Overturn the 2020 Election'.  After almost three years — and as Democrats in Colorado and Maine ban Donald Trump from the Centennial State's ballot — it is beyond time for the media to stop "reporting" that "Trump tried to overturn a presidential election" and to quit referring matter-of-factly: to "the election that Trump lost"; to "Trump's defeat" and his "baseless" "false claims"; and to "Trump is challenging the results" of "Biden's victory (in, say, Georgia)" and to "swing the election in his favor."  It is equally time for news organizations to stop "reporting" that the four (who's counting?) indictments are nothing more than valid or understandable (if ill-timed) reactions to punish Trump for his ("criminal") attempts to "disenfranchise voters" and thus "subvert democracy."  This is not a neutral, objective, and non-partisan view of of the facts of the 2020 election.  Far from it.  No.  It is the (self-serving) DNC version.  It is akin to asking "When did you stop beating your wife?"  Phrases like "baseless fraud claims," "sham election investigations," and "false claims of election fraud" come straight from the Democrat party.

The Corruption of Everything.  [Scroll down]  Media have been corrupted.  Most so-called mainstream media are arms of the Democrat party, flooded with leftists of the most extreme kind.  Every "news" show is not news — it's opinion about what horrific things Trump would do if elected.  "News" programs have become an arm of the Education Department, flooding the zone with far-left goofiness or worse, all of a piece in reshaping America into a communist nation.

Only 3.4 Percent of American Journalists Are Republicans:  Study.  The worst-kept secret in America has been revealed — or at least quantified.  A new study published by the Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University found that only 3.4 percent of journalists identified as Republicans.  Those results — as well as others that help explain them — came from an online survey of 1,600 U.S. journalists conducted in early 2022.

[The] Biden administration [is] paying [and] coercing media outlets to toe the liberal line.  Conservative media outlet The Blaze, via a FOIA request, discovered that the Biden administration paid numerous major media outlets to promote the COVID vaccines. The Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, NBC, CNN, Fox News, and several other news organizations were targeted. [...] This is tantamount to bribery.  Do we now believe it is perfectly O.K. for the federal government to use taxpayer dollars to coerce media outlets to do its — and Big Pharma's — bidding?  Didn't the outlets get enough money from Pfizer, Moderna, and Johnson & Johnson themselves?  This is akin to a union's repulsive usage of the mandatory union dues of its members to donate to the Democrat party and its attendant Super PACs and causes.  You're a conservative Republican?  So sorry, bub!  Hand over the cash!  What other causes will the government surreptitiously pay private "free press" outlets to promote?

In the name of 'fake news,' NewsGuard extorts sites to follow the government narrative.  Half a century ago, George Orwell, writing on literary censorship, wrote that "unpopular ideas can be silenced, and inconvenient facts kept dark, without the need for any official ban."  That dynamic now broadly extends to an opaque network of government agencies and self-proclaimed anti-misinformation groups that have repressed online speech.  There's no official ban on discussing the efficacy of COVID-19 vaccines or criticizing American involvement in the Ukraine-Russia war, but editors and journalists have realized that writing on such topics can come at a cost.  News publishers have been demonetized and shadow-banned for reporting dissenting views and the bureaucratic means for enforcing this form of control are under increasing scrutiny.  NewsGuard, a for-profit company that scores news websites on trust and works closely with government agencies and major corporate advertisers, exemplifies the problem.

Watching Media Outlets Die.  Journalism is dead; the media is absolutely horrible and it can't die fast enough.  Thankfully, it is dying.  Each year there are fewer newspapers and news websites out there, as the market speaks and people flee these left-wing propaganda machines and wither on the vine.  Don't get me wrong, if these outlets did what they're supposed to do — actually report the news honestly and without bias — I wouldn't celebrate their demise. [...] The shame is journalism is needed and wildly important, as a concept anyway.  We need to know what [...] our government and elected officials are doing.  We need to know what corporations are up to.  We need to know what's happening in our world so we can avoid disasters.  But disasters are power now — never wanting a good crisis to go to waste is a marketing strategy, not the shame-worthy act it once was and still should be.

Which Journalists Are the 'Professionals'? Just the Liberals?  Washington Post media reporter Paul Farhi is the most recent example of a journalist who sounds like his own colleagues are the "professionals" and the writers without the classic Old Media branding are the "non-pros," people who don't have standards. [...] Mollie Hemingway at The Federalist pulled out the big "Ahem" on this notion:  the latest Gallup poll illustrates that almost 40 percent have zero trust in the fairness and accuracy of "professional journalists." [...] The great divide in this debate isn't really between professionals and amateurs.  It's between leftist media outlets and conservative media outlets.  It's often assumed on the Left that the "professionals" are the "progressives," and the conservatives are a motley collection of partisan hacks.  From my experience with Farhi, that's not his point.  But that's where the fight is.

The Washington Post's Paul Farhi Shows Why 'Professional' Journalism Can't Be Salvaged.  Corporate media have gotten every single major story of the last decade wrong, in big and little ways.  Whether it's the 2016 election, the Russia-collusion scam, the threats posed by Covid and response to the same, the effort to destroy Brett Kavanaugh's life and family, accurate discussion of the Biden family business, immigration, abortion, crime, racism, guns, hate crime hoaxes, the economy, inflation, education, the relationship between the sexes, the radical trans agenda, or a thousand other stories, the media haven't just been bad.  They have been absolutely irredeemably awful.  A record-high percentage of Americans (39 percent) have literally no — as in none, zilch, nada — trust in corporate media to "report the news in a full, fair and accurate way," according to Gallup.  Another large percentage (29 percent) has "not very much" trust in the media to get the story right.  Only 11 percent of Republicans trust the media, compared to nearly 60 percent of Democrats.  The gap between the parties is because corporate media overwhelmingly shape news and information to support Democrats and their policy goals.

How about some hearings on human disinformation and electoral interference instead of so-called AI disinformation?  The media routinely uses adjectives like extreme and controversial to describe Republican policies while calling Democrat policies progressive.  The words are meant to influence voters instead of informing them.  A good journalist would just say what the policies are and let the voters decide instead of using the adjectives.

The Gaza Hospital Fiasco Offers A Vivid Example Of Journalism's Rot.  When news broke yesterday that Israel had bombed Al-Ahli Arab Hospital in Gaza, killing patients, children, and staff, every "anti-Zionist," "critic of Israel," and most big American journalism outfits ran with the horrible story.  The tale incited worldwide condemnation and recrimination.  But it wasn't true.  Israel did not hit the hospital.  The Islamic Jihad did.  Hundreds of people did not die.  The missile landed in a parking lot.  It was Hamas disinformation.  The media's disastrous failure on the Gaza hospital bombing story is one of the most vivid and instructive examples of the structural and inherent problems plaguing contemporary journalism.  It mirrors many other fiascos of the past decade.  It is clear at this point that journalism schools are producing closed-minded, credulous ideologues who will believe anything that comports with their worldview.  It's either that, or we have a bunch of closed-minded ideologues who are willing accomplices in spreading propaganda.  Functionally speaking, it doesn't really matter.  In either case, their sympathies lie with Hamas.

Gaza Hospital Misinformation Further Undermines Public Trust in Media.  Most people trust the mainstream news media far more than social media.  The percentage of people in the United States who say they have "some or a lot" of trust in the information they get from social media is just 36% among those between the age of 30 and 49, 25% among those between the age of 50 and 64, and 20% among those 65 and older, according to a new poll from Pew.  But younger people trust social media significantly more than their elders.  Fifty-percent of 18- to 29-year-olds surveyed told Pew that they have some or a lot of trust in from social media sites.  That's almost the same share as the 56% who say they have some or a lot of trust from national news organizations.  And given that young people are, by definition the future, it suggests the social media revolution, is still just beginning.

NewsGuard 2.0: 'Media Bias' Tracker 'Ad Fontes' Overwhelmingly Favors Leftist Media.  Ad Fontes, a company that purports to rank the bias and trustworthiness of news source, is itself overwhelmingly biased in favor of leftist media, per analysis from the Media Research Center (MRC).  Over the past several years, a number of "media rating" agencies have sprung up which purport to rank the accuracy and bias of news companies.  Virtually all of them, like the Global Disinformation Index (GDI) end up functioning as blacklists, used to advise advertisers and tech companies which news outlets to demonetize and suppress.  Now, the spotlight is on another such company:  Ad Fontes.  Founded in 2018 at the height of the "disinformation" panic, Ad Fontes maintains a regularly-updated list of media outlets, ranked by their levels of "bias" and "reliability."  The Media Research Center conducted a deep dive into Ad Fontes' list and the methodology behind it, finding extensive evidence of bias.

Corrupt Media Worse Than Crooked Senators.  For the Framers [of the Constitution], the survival of the republic depended on a free press that would tell the voters the truth about their elected officials without fear or favor.  As Thomas Jefferson succinctly put it, "Our liberty depends on the freedom of the press, and that cannot be limited without being lost."  In Jefferson's era, the press was made up of myriad independent publications that espoused a wide range of editorial viewpoints and competed with one another for readers.  Thus, it would have been difficult to limit press freedom without an overt and heavy-handed government crackdown on disfavored publications.  The dramatic transformation of the media landscape in our era has, however, made it much easier to censor content.

Left-Wing Organizations [intend] to Spend Over $500 Million in [a] Campaign to Influence Local Media.  On Thursday, a group of 22 left-wing organizations announced the formation of a coalition that vows to spend over $500 million in a campaign to influence local media outlets.  As the Daily Caller reports, the new coalition, "Press Forward," claims to be "independent of ideology" despite the overwhelmingly left-wing biases in many of the groups.  The coalition pledges to "close longstanding inequities in journalism coverage and practice," according to a statement from the group.  Pointing to recent declines in local media, such as the shuttering of roughly 2,500 newspapers since 2005, Press Forward plans to put the $500 million into grants that will support local media outlets, provide them with resources, and assist in developing collaborative efforts such as legal support groups and membership programs.

Associated Press Coverage of Courts [and] Climate [is being] Bankrolled by Dozens of Left-Wing Foundations.  The Associated Press, the country's top wire service, is now bankrolled in part by millions of dollars from left-wing foundations, including one founded by "1619 Project" author Nikole Hannah-Jones.  The news organization last year announced a series of "partnerships" to subsidize reporters covering climate change, race, and democracy.  A review of the donor roster shows that the vast majority fund left-wing political causes, while none are supporters of conservative initiatives.  The Ida B. Wells Society, founded by "1619 Project" lightning rod Hannah-Jones, has teamed up with filmmaker Steven Spielberg's Hearthland Foundation, for example, to foster "more inclusive storytelling" at the Associated Press.

Independent Journalists, the Frontline Workers in the War on Truth.  The American press has been an institution, and there is a widely held belief that journalists aren't supposed to lie, distort the truth, or engage in actions designed to subvert the essential mission of journalism, which is to report the facts without bias.  With the introduction of "spin" (also known as propaganda), now the dominant form of reporting, reporters have become just another opinion or, more aptly, propagandists.  Journalists still want you to believe they are purveyors of truth; not misdirectors, or outright liars.  Legacy media is staffed by biased news directors who decide what is newsworthy and what is not.  This is the state of modern journalism in America today.

The sad demise of mainstream political reporting.  Picture this:  You're a budding journalist, fresh out of college, ready to change the world with your pen.  You've studied the greats, internalized the importance of truth, and promised yourself that you'd never back down from a good story.  But then, reality knocks on your door in the form of newsroom politics, corporate and political pressures, and perhaps even some well-placed incentives.  You find yourself caught in the gears of an industry that is more focused on sensationalism and narrative-building than on unbiased truth-telling. [...] And then there's the Hunter Biden laptop story.  Ah, the delicate dance between doing your job as a reporter and the promotion of the deep state's narrative.  You see, you tell yourself, sometimes a story feels so outlandish that it must surely be a Russian disinformation campaign and a nefarious attempt to influence an election.  It's your duty, as a responsible journalist, to verify sources, weigh credibility and report the truth without fear nor favor.  Yet, in doing so, you risk alienating the left-wing readership, causing them doubt about your loyalty to the cause, and, heaven forbid, damaging your career prospects.

The Democrats are Certain They Will Never be Held Accountable for the Trump Indictments and Biden Cover-Up.  The unprecedented hubris of the Democrats is undergirded by their all-encompassing alliance with the legacy and social media.  These allies willingly attack the Democrats' political adversaries but, more importantly, censor and deliberately suppress any negative news that might affect the party, it's hierarchy or their candidates, most notably, Joe Biden and a corrupt Justice Department.  As the past eight years have confirmed, the onslaught directed at Donald Trump from this cabal has been withering, unrelenting and frequently misleading.  Unfortunately, these tactics have oftentimes been successful in affecting the mindset of a sizable percentage of the American people.  With this media behemoth unequivocally supporting them, it is little wonder that the Democrats are so shameless in persecuting Trump and protecting Biden.

Brett Baier must not moderate the Republican debate.  Brett Baier is not qualified to moderate the Republican debate on August 23 in Milwaukee.  Mr. Baier had a much-publicised interview with President Trump a month ago.  This interview amply demonstrated Baier's antipathy towards the President.  Most of the time he appeared to be cordial towards the President, however, when Trump brought up the topic of the stolen election, Baier became abusively hostile and interrupted his guest incessantly and would not let the President talk.  Right after the election the charges of fraud surfaced, and at every opportunity, the Republicans were asked by the media and Democrats if the election was stolen and derided anyone who agreed that it was and demanded a denunciation of that charge.  Many Republicans who were sceptical of an honest election caved and denied any electoral chicanery.  "This was the most honest election ever," became the media mantra.  Later we learned there was plenty of interference.

The Trump Indictment and 2024.  Over the past sixty years while America slept and the citizenry reveled in unprecedented peace and prosperity, the Marxist/socialist movement, after decades of living in the shadows, has successfully infiltrated many of the nation's vital institutions while promoting creeping immorality and societal corruption.  The institutions targeted by the American Marxists were those in the fields of education, entertainment, and the media. [...] The media, including social media, is so dominated by the American Marxists that in 2020 90% of their individual and corporate political contributions went to Democrat party candidates.  The sole function of the legacy and much of social media today is to regurgitate the utterances and promote the policies of the Democrat Party hierarchy.

America and the Common Characteristics of Authoritarian Regimes.  [#2] Media Control:  In authoritarian countries, the media is the propaganda wing of the regime.  Every syllable that appears is approved by the regime.  There may be a variety of news outlets, but all of them follow the groupthink assiduously.  Violators are dismissed from the mainstream.  The regime always works toward hounding and dismantling adversarial media.  When PM Indira Gandhi suspended democracy in India from 1971 to 1977, restricting media freedoms was one of her first actions.

Did Mike Pence Just End His Presidential Candidacy?  Before Tucker Carlson had an epiphany, the media establishment was a comfortable place. [...] The Democrats went to every left-leaning channel and attacked the right.  The Republicans appeared on Fox News and attacked the left.  But nobody on Fox News ever challenged Republicans from the right — i.e., nobody ever asked them about open borders or amnesty to illegals or the lack of action on abortion.

Media Attacks on the Supreme Court Cross a Different Line.  Unsteady politics breeds ugly innovations, and this year, those innovations are striking at the heart of America's constitutional order.  In the last half-week alone, three negative stories about Supreme Court justices have appeared in major outlets, on top of multiple stories since January.  None of these stories covers the law; all of them suggest ethical improprieties but stop just short of alleging them; and cumulatively, they push against the freedom of association of the justices and their staff.  At no point in our history have Americans seen an entire media, academic, and political apparatus line up to indiscriminately attack one of our branches of government.  But, in the face of a conservative Supreme Court determined to rein in national power, we're seeing that now.

Things the media and other Democrats care about and don't care about.  The media and other Democrats have little interest in whether Joe Biden and his family lined their pockets with millions from China, a human rights abuser, and other countries.  They didn't have much interest in Hillary lining the pockets of her family and her foundation no matter where the money came from.  Where are the hearings on companies like Apple, Microsoft, Google, Facebook and others that have billions in sales to China, Saudi Arabia, and other human rights abusing countries? [...] Have media outlets turned down advertising from Saudi Arabia and China?  I don't think so, but the executives haven't been called before Congress to explain their actions.  But if golfers openly do a deal with Saudi Arabia where they are paid millions, there is massive outrage.  Selective outrage is not outrage at all.  It is fake to make the public think they care.  I believe that a president and secretary of state taking millions in kickbacks for their family, including from adversaries, is much more dangerous to America than golfers getting rich with Saudi Arabian money.

Pretending the Media 'Works Almost Entirely' for the Right.  In the Trump era — and in the media, it's still the Trump era — there is no need to strain a mental muscle to prove journalists have a liberal bias.  We find it everywhere.  But there are still leftists who channel the spirit of Eric's "What Liberal Media?" Alterman and claim reporters tilt inescapably to the right.  Claiming a liberal bias is somehow silly nonsense.  Michael Tomasky — who not too long ago was a reporter for Newsweek — is now editor of The New Republic, and he claimed there's an appalling double standard in the political press.  Media coverage of President Joe Biden is inherently unfair.  Our media culture "has been shaped and defined by the political right, and it works almost entirely to their advantage."

New Republic: the media is biased against liberals.  Did you know that conservatives set the cultural standards of our society, and that is the reason why the media is so unfair to Democrats?  I didn't, but after reading this brilliant and convincing article by Michael Tomasky of The New Republic, I am convinced.  Despite being nearly perfect in every way, the media obsesses over every little foible of Democrats and holds them to a much higher standard than Republicans. [...] Sounds about right.  The media goes easy on Republicans every day.  They were famously easy on Trump, dismissing obviously true stories of him coordinating with the Russians, being a decades-long Russian asset, and hiring hookers to pee on Obama's bed.  Biden, who works every day to make sure the law is evenly applied, saved the American economy from total collapse, and who loves his family dearly, gets criticized relentlessly.

The press just can't stop propping up Democrats.  I bet no one can recall when the media tried to help George Bush's and Donald Trump's poll numbers.  Nope, they continued their efforts to push them down because they always campaign for Democrats.

Biden requests stay of ruling barring administration officials from contacting social media companies.  The Justice Department filed a motion to pause the effects of a federal court ruling that prohibits Biden administration officials from communicating with social media companies about certain content.  In a memorandum sent Thursday evening to the District Court for the Western District of Louisiana, attorneys argued the defendants "will suffer irreparable harm absent a stay of the preliminary injunction," requesting a stay pending appeal, which would halt the commencement of sentencing while an appeal is in process.  The order is part of a lawsuit launched by two Republicans, Lousiana Attorney General Jeff Landry and Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey, against the Biden administration in 2022.  It claimed officials violated the First Amendment because they "significantly encouraged" and "coerced" social media platforms to conceal protected free speech posted on platforms.

Federal Judge Finds a 'Massive Attack' on Free Speech in Government Censorship Efforts.  "The most massive attack against free speech in United States history."  Those words by Chief U.S. District Judge Terry A. Doughty are part of a 155-page opinion granting a temporary injunction, requested by Louisiana and Missouri, to prevent White House officials from meeting with tech companies about social media censorship.  The July 4 decision came six months after I testified before Congress that the Biden administration used social media companies for "censorship by surrogate."  Despite furious attacks by congressional Democrats in that and later hearings, a court has now found that the evidence overwhelmingly shows systemic violation of the First Amendment by the Biden administration.  Judge Doughty found that the two states "are likely to succeed on the merits in establishing that the government has used its power to silence the opposition."

The genius of Judge Terry Doughty's decision yesterday in the Missouri v Biden social media censorship case.  Imagine if we learned Biden Administration officials had secretly jawboned the New York Times on trans issues.  Or told baseball teams they should fly pride flags — or face antitrust hearings.  Or complained to the History Channel over a documentary depicting the discovery of crude oil positively.  The First Amendment concerns would be obvious.  We'd all wonder why government officials thought they could tell private companies what opinions and news to carry.  The American government is hugely powerful.  Not even the biggest company can ignore a call from the White House.  If the executive branch has something to say, it should do so with press conferences and open advertising — not secretly threaten the media to carry its water.  Yet when it comes to social media companies, the left has forgotten this simple fact.  Instead it claims a new age of information warfare demands that the Constitution be set aside - as if propaganda campaigns haven't always been a feature of mass media.

Preaching in the News: An Old Tradition.  Today's "preachers" in the news enter every household electronically, wearing nice clothes and disarming smiles.  The ingratiating airs and facial expressions of some of the reporters help spread today's Gospel more effectively than the printed word ever could.  These nice people, well-trained in the mission of shaping how you and I think and behave, serve a captive audience.  If their directors were members of a priestly class, paragons of virtue and wisdom, we should still be insulted by their presumption to "teach" the rest of us how to think and behave.  Is it odd that I do not sense any wisdom in today's mainstream news anchors and superstars of media?  Virtually every item of information from them smells of party propaganda.

Meet the 11 "journalists" who decide what you can see online.  [Thread reader]  The global cabal of "fact-checkers" do not appear to be the benevolent truth-seekers they say.  They appear to be highly ideological activists, affiliated through the Poynter network, backed by the same money to say the same thing.  Their claim of independence is farcical.  Independent means free from the influence of others.  But as we will see, all fact checkers claim the credential of IFCN, a Poynter-backed organization that gives them their 'legitimacy' to influence content moderation online.

Fact Check: Nearly 100 Percent of Political Contributions From Fact Checkers Go to Democrats.  Nearly 100 percent of political donations from self-identified fact checkers — including those whose employers claim journalistic neutrality — go to Democrats, a Washington Free Beacon analysis of federal campaign finance disclosures found.  The Free Beacon reviewed political donations over the past four election cycles from those who identified their occupation as "fact checker."  $22,580 of the $22,683 in political donations that came from self-identified fact checkers during that time — a whopping 99.5 percent — went to Democrats and liberal groups.  Only three of the fact checker donations made during that period went to Republicans.  Top recipients include socialist Vermont senator Bernie Sanders, who during the seven-year period received ten times more fact checker money than every Republican combined.

Big Picture Explanation of What Happened in the Past 15 Years.  In the 50 years that preceded 2008, those same groups had an approach of distrust toward government, and the media apparatus had a very distinct supportive and cynical outlook, favorable to the leftist anti-government perspective.  Now, all of that has reversed — seemingly flipped.  In the 50 years that preceded 2008, media pushed a one-way narrative in defense of those who were "targeted" by the institutions and mechanisms of government.  As the activists railed against the regime, the media framed narratives to excuse the transparently guilty.  Now, that entire dynamic has reversed.  Now we see the media pushing a narrative in support of weaponized government targeting, and — here's the kicker — framing the transparently innocent.  The activists went from accusing government of wrongdoing and defending the transparently guilty — to aligning with government, excusing government wrongdoing, and helping to attack the transparently innocent.

What do search engines want to show you?  Pictures are worth a thousand words.  If you want a visual of what Big Tech thinks of white people, black people, or any people, do an image search on your preferred engine of the following terms.  You will be unsurprised at the results.  I don't like to promote companies that hate me, so I will just say that the search engine I used rhymes with "luck, luck, no."  First, I typed "shoplifter."  The image search shows white people stealing — white hands stuffing things into purses, a white thug in a hoodie looking shady in a store aisle, old white people stealing medicine, young white people stealing makeup.  It took quite a bit of scrolling to find a non-white person shoplifting... then it was an Asian woman.  Next I typed "rioter."  Apparently there has been only one riot ever in all of human history.  You know which one.

Fetterman Staffer Caught Sharing List of 'Puppet' Journalists.  Fetterman special assistant Luke Borwegan cites MSNBC anchor Joe Scarborough, "Pod Save America" hosts and former New York Times reporter Kara Swisher as his "puppets."  [The next paragraph is omitted for brevity, and also because it's full of F-bombs.]  "I only pick reporters who we know will paint the narrative the way we want," he continued.  "So it's like, when John checks himself in for depression, we tell one reporter in particular because they will hit the facts that we want them to."  "They're just like puppets, though," Borwegan said.  And if that wasn't bad enough, Borwegan shares that Fetterman supports "overturning the Second Amendment."

Harris-Harvard poll: liberal corporate media is radically out of touch with the views of Americans.  It's not just that corporate media rejects Americans' views.  They don't permit those views to be heard.  To start:  Majorities of Americans say it's *false* that Trump colluded with Russia.  The the Steele Dossier is also "false."  In other words, they view the story the US media aggressively centered for 3 years as a hoax and a fraud, yet NBC and CNN won't even air this view.  Americans also believe that the materials on the Hunter Biden laptop are real, and are not and never were "Russian disinformation."  So again, Americans view the claim that the US corporate media and CIA spread for weeks before the 2020 election — to help Biden win — as a fraud.  Majorties of Americans also believe:
  •   Hunter Biden engaged in criminal influence peddling using his father's name.
  •   The FBI is not investigating these crimes.
  •   Joe Biden participated in Hunter's illegal influence peddling and profiteering schemes.

Moscow on the Potomac.  Picture living in the Soviet Union circa 1980.  You wake up and turn on state-run radio.  The great war in Afghanistan is going exceptionally well.  You know that story is a lie, as your neighbors just buried their son, and your cousin tells of the horrors of fighting the Mujahideen in the frozen mountains.  The next story speaks of the great economic success of the most recent Five Year Plan.  You know that it's also a lie, as there has been no meat in the local stores for weeks, and the lines outside of bakeries are only getting longer. [...] Now, let's move to the present-day US. You get up and turn on any of the morning programs with the presenters who do not know how to stop smiling.  They tell us that the war in Ukraine is so successful that the US and its allies will be sending a few billion dollars more in weaponry shortly.  Next, you learn that inflation is actually good for you, as it is proof of a successful economy.  You see that many items that you used to buy are too expensive, but hey, but now you know it's a good thing.  And forget about baby formula.

An Appeal to the Thinkers Left Politically Abandoned.  [Scroll down]  No matter your political beliefs, you likely align yourself with one of these three broad philosophies [Conservatism, Progressivism, Independent].  News stories would make you think the nation is ideologically split down the middle though, between right and left.  However, 25% identify as Liberal or Progressive, while 73% of Americans identify as conservative or moderate.  You wouldn't be aware of this if you relied on Democrat messaging and a breathless press that constantly "informs" you otherwise.  Moderates historically defect from conservative thought when mainstream outlets do not report important news, or slant events unfavorably.

Puppy Dog Republicans [are] Afraid to Act.  BLM and Antifa riot, destroy private property and kill innocent bystanders, and the liberal mainstream media portray them as victim-heroes, while top Democrat leaders defend them, justify their actions and never prosecute them for any crimes.  The police are characterized as racist vigilantes, more interested in violating the civil rights of minorities for sport than they are in protecting the public's safety.  But let one Republican politician say something questionable and they're pilloried mercilessly in the public square as if it was the crime of the century.  Hillary Clinton famously described one-half of the country she was vying to lead as a "basket of deplorables," and there was not one iota of criticism from the liberal media, any Democrat politician, or any rank-and-file Democrat partisan.

The media have no clothes.  There is zero chance that anything you see in the legacy news media is true, fair, accurate, and unbiased.  Period.  The MSM is nought but the propaganda arm of the Democratic Socialist Party, comprising utterly shameless, morally bankrupt, intellectually stunted, virtue-signaling charlatans who cannot tolerate dissenting opinion.  They are worse than useless to the majority of us on Main Street, as they are still quite useful to the elites who disdain us — and to their globalist agenda — by preying on the ignorant, gullible, and naïve.  When Republicans control the government, the Fourth Estate loudly touts its sacred mission: "to speak truth to power" and hold our public servants accountable.  When Democrats are in power, the media immediately become sycophantic lapdogs, eager to help them hide any wrongdoing — and willing to obfuscate, deceive, lie, and even help "hide the bodies" if necessary.

Most of the media doesn't care about anything unless the story fits their radical leftist agenda.  Most of the media care as much about Tara Reade's credible accusations against Trump as they did about all women that Bill and Hillary physically and mentally abused.  The media also has never seemed to care about all the young girls that Jeffrey Epstein abused, or the men that enjoyed hanging around with Epstein.  The Me-too movement was fake.  The number of supposed news stories that are fake, false, or intentionally misleading the public is massive.  Here is a small sample:  Every day we hear that there have been hundreds of mass shootings in the U.S this year yet we see the details on only a few.  Why don't we ever see the details of all the mass shootings in Chicago and elsewhere that involve black gang members shooting other blacks?  Why don't we see the names of the victims, the records of the shooters, and the motives?  The answer is it doesn't fit the agenda.

How Liars Wreck a Country.  Last year, Forbes concluded that "only 16% of adults in the U.S. say they have a great deal or quite a lot of confidence in newspapers, and just 11% said the same for television news."  Anyone confronting these stats must conclude that our media are deeply incompetent or crooked or both.  The New York Times announced a few years ago that defeating Trump was the important thing.  They gave themselves a free pass to lie all they want.  How can they now reclaim their honor or their usefulness? [...] Unfortunately, our liberal journalists do not care about true or false.  When they hear an assertion, they try to determine whether it will help their agenda... their narrative.  If it won't help, they know they must attack the assertion, typically by declaring it debunked, fake news, or misinformation.

American Despotism.  Six firms control 90 percent of media, down from 50 in 1983.  Kleptocrats choose headlines and argue for "fact-checking" the news to silence dissenting media.  Google blackouts conservative websites from searches. [...] The media manufactures crises and sham opinion polls, and Netflix and YouTube fixate viewers' attention to monopolize their perceptions of reality and eliminate competing stimuli so that they ignore reality all around them.  For a growing and increasingly degraded, ignorant, and dependent class, the kleptocracy peddles democratic socialism:  leaving monopolies intact while socializing consumption for peasants — EBT cards, free clean needles, and pornography for their stupefaction and sterilization.

Associated Press Poll Finds More Than Half of Americans Don't Trust Media.  A new poll from the Associated Press has found that more than half of the country doesn't trust the media and three-fourths of Americans believe the media is dividing the country.  The only people who will be surprised by this are people who work in media.  They see themselves as heroes.  Anyone who has been paying attention, sees the media as mostly made up of propagandists who do nothing but attack Republicans and try to advance the Democrat agenda.

Talking Heads and the Matrix.  The verbal gymnastics of the talking heads that have proliferated with the multiplication of TV channels, with the creation of social media, and with communications connecting us with countries around the world has opened the door to mass hypnosis.  There are too many articulate, pretty, handsome, and charming persons talking with apparent intelligence for the viewers to be able to discriminate who and to what extent each is telling the truth.  Historical facts or the foundational analysis behind the talking heads' opinions are rarely discussed and, as Marshall McLuhan noted decades ago — albeit with more than a little obscurantism — the "medium is the message."  We all become passive sluggards listening for those words that "sound right" to our often uninformed, and sometimes intoxicated brains. [...] It is a media and electronic generated chaos in which we are only too happy to "take sides."  But insofar as every "side" (expressed point of view) is driven by the speaker's desire to get viewers and thereby increase revenues and get fame and riches for oneself, that side is distorted.

On Tucker Carlson.  [Scroll down]  He was more a part of the Establishment than most people you see these days because he was born into it and remained totally embedded within it his entire life.  Over the past few years, though, and at an increasing rate, Tucker has concluded that the Establishment is not simply flawed, but an actual agent of evil. [...] We are not in the midst of political or policy disputes in the United States.  We are in a battle between good and evil.  The Establishment has picked the side of evil.

Want to see how state-sponsored media can lie?  The CBC is in a huff about being labeled government-funded media, despite being... government-funded media.  It's a replay of NPR's and the BBC's complaints that Twitter is stating truths about their ties to the government.  "We have integrity!," they declare while proving the opposite by trying to deny a manifest truth.  You would think that denying an easily demonstrated fact would be proof that they have no integrity at all, but plenty of liberals share their outrage.  Well, let me give a simple example of how the CBC in particular lies with a straight face about their finances. [...] The point, actually, is to lie to you without technically doing so.  Just as they are doing with the label "government funded."  They complain not because it implies anything that isn't 100% true, but because it reminds people of a fact that the CBC doesn't want you to think about.

Time Is Running Out To Speak Freely About Free Speech In America.  Donald Trump's rise, his successful use of social media, and new media's refusal to join the crusade against Trump caused a fatal case of Stockholm Syndrome, with Big Tech and legacy media outlets welcoming government requests for censorship.  With support from both for-profit and nonprofit organizations and academic institutions, a Censorship Complex emerged, embracing the government's definition of "truth" and seeking to silence any who challenged it, whether it be new media or individual Americans — even experts.  The search for truth suffered as a result, and Americans were deprived of valuable information necessary for self-governance.  We know this because notwithstanding the massive efforts to silence speech, a ragtag group of muckrakers persisted and exposed several official dictates as lies: The Hunter Biden laptop was not Russian disinformation, Covid very well may have escaped from a Wuhan lab, and Trump did not collude with Putin.  But if the Censorship Complex succeeds and silences the few journalists and outlets still willing to challenge the government, Americans will no longer have the means to learn the truth.

Politico isn't quite sure about the Constitution anymore.  The state of journalism is such that an editor at one of the premier publications covering the federal government apparently doesn't know that the United States is, in fact, a Republic.  A representative democracy that is built upon federal principles where sovereignty is divided among various levels of government with different roles and responsibilities.  Some powers are reserved to the various levels, and with a national legislative branch where both the people as a whole and the states themselves as separate sovereign entities have representation.  There's a handy guide to how this works, and it is called the Constitution of the United States.  There is also an instruction manual called the Federalist Papers, after which the Federalist Society is named.

Legacy Media Ignored Voting Irregularities in 2020 Election.  The lawsuit filed against Fox News by Dominion Voting Services, set to go to trial on April 17, may turn out to be a seminal case in First Amendment jurisprudence, with effects that reach well beyond Fox.  In a nutshell, Dominion charges that Fox defamed them by putting on air people who claimed that Dominion's voting machines yielded incorrect results, to the benefit of Joe Biden.  More than this, the plaintiffs have secured, through depositions, evidence that Fox News hosts and news executives themselves disbelieved the claims their on-air guests were making.  For all that, the irony surrounding this case abounds.  If Americans have learned anything during the past six years, it is that they can't look with confidence on the news presented (and not presented) by the nation's so-called elite media.  From "Russiagate" to the origin of COVID; from Hunter Biden's laptop to the efficacy of masks; and from Critical Race Theory "only being taught in law schools" to the "security" of our southern border, everyone now knows (including those who know but aren't unhappy about it) that the media have devolved, on issues with a political dimension, into propagandists for Democrats and the woke.

Peculiar Case of George Santos Exhibits the Media Double-Standard.  [Scroll down]  For some mysterious reason, perhaps related to that big "R" behind his name, the Democrat News-media Colluders (hereafter, the DNC) are suddenly obsessed with the danger posed by an obscure, newly-elected Republican congressman with almost no power, who has told a series of embarrassing lies during his political campaign.  By contrast, for some related mysterious reason, perhaps related to that big "D" behind his name, the DNC does not, at least recently, appear to be much concerned with the many decades of silly transparent lies and exaggerations by the bumbling confused commander-in-chief with his finger on the nuclear button and a reckless desire to put his thumb in Vladimir Putin's nuclear-armed eye, apparently confusing him with the elusive Corn Pop.  It's good domestic policy to have an external enemy, no wonder they are so happy again — they have their latest diversion.  Thankfully, the DNC has already made clear their real reason for wanting Santos to resign: "If he does resign or is expelled, that would set up a special election in a Long Island swing district and chip away at the House GOP's razor-thin majority."

Dominion Lawsuit Showcases Paul Ryan's Influence over Fox News Channel's Editorial Control.  Dominion Voting Systems' $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit against Fox News highlights former House Speaker Paul Ryan's alleged influence over Fox News Channel's (FNC) editorial control, reportedly urging the network to move away from former President Donald Trump.  Dominion filed the lawsuit months after the 2020 presidential election, asserting that FNC essentially suggested that Dominion rigged the voting systems, contributing to Trump's loss.

So when is the FEC going to fine the media outlets that bury stories or post false ones to influence elections?  The National Enquirer was fined $187,500 by the Federal Election commission for squelching a story about Donald Trump because they said it was a prohibited in-kind contribution to influence an election. [...] What about fining all the news outlets that continuously published fake news stories about Russian collusion?  Those were obviously in-kind contributions seeking to destroy Trump and influence elections, too.  The fines should be huge for all the media outlets that caught and killed the true Hunter Biden abandoned laptop story showing the corruption of the Biden family before the 2020 election.  They are still killing the story.  They are also killing all the information out of Twitter that shows how corrupt the media has been as they colluded to elect Democrats.  How many years did the media catch and kill stories about the Clintons' serial mental and physical abuse of women in their attempt to influence elections?  Did ABC News bury the Jeffrey Epstein story to protect Bill Clinton and others?

Most media abandoned standards of fairness in a stampede to defeat Donald Trump.  Rather than perform the journalists' duty of informing the public of news, many of today's reporters and editors concoct narratives about events that consistently align with the agenda of the Democratic Party.  This overt embrace of partisanship is a major factor in two developments roiling the nation.  The first is a hardening of polarization that deeply divides voters and leaves government unable to agree on solutions to even basic problems.  The second is that mistrust of the media is proving contagious, with Americans losing faith in most institutions, including those in the private sector as well as government.  Even the military, which long stood above the political fray, suffers from declining public trust, adding to fears that America is headed toward a second civil war and is more vulnerable to foreign adversaries.

An Open Window on Activist Journalism.  It's rare when a national newspaper openly flaunts its woke-activist journalism.  But that is exactly what USA Today has done.  In a subscriber-only print section, entitled "Impact Report: A look back at stories that led to change in 2022," USA Today informs us of its work in the service of cultural change.  This special section is essentially twelve pages of self-congratulation.  But importantly, it is a revealing look at the Gannett organization's editorial principles and priorities.  Recall that USA Today's introduction in 1982 was controversial for several reasons — such as a catchy design catering to the eye, the liberal use of color in an era of mainly black and white, and most notorious, its compact reporting, with the typical article maybe a few hundred words in total length, and short on depth.  They liked to think of their reporting as concise, but a charitable description might be superficial.  It earned the newspaper the nickname "McPaper."  USA Today rather quickly claimed to be the number one newspaper in the USA.  Its free distribution in numerous hotel chains around the country — rather like CNN in airports — may have had something to do with that.  Copies distributed does not equal copies read.

Media Liberals Aren't Even Trying to Hide Their Bias Anymore.  Few professions love themselves as much as journalists do, and none but Hollywood give themselves more awards.  If you are a journalist who doesn't have a wall of plaques or shelves full of laser-etched glass blocks masquerading as accomplishments honoring some dead leftist with a byline, you either [are incompetent] or are a conservative.  Of course, if you are a conservative you have either been fired or live in fear of being discovered, because "celebrate diversity" isn't a request, it's an order... on everything except thought, where the concept is forbidden. [...] What they're saying is that concept of being objective is racist because it was instituted by white guys.  The [Washington] Post writes, "increasingly, reporters, editors and media critics argue that the concept of journalistic objectivity is a distortion of reality.  They point out that the standard was dictated over decades by male editors in predominantly White newsrooms and reinforced their own view of the world."  White people also created movable type and newspapers, among the billions of other things all people engage in and use every single day.  Will these leftists give up those things?

Newsrooms Are Now Officially Democrats' Newsletter Operations.  The media's leftward bias has been obvious for decades even as "journalists" denied their alignment with the Democratic Party.  No honest person took Chris Cillizza's 2016 claim that "reporters don't root for a side.  Period" to be true.  All we've ever asked for is an admission from the media that it worked for the Democrats.  We're a little closer to that today.  Tuesday's headline in the Daily Caller brought the light: "Major News Outlets Say They're Ditching Objectivity In The Name Of 'Diversity.'"  The story beneath the headline tells us that, after interviewing more than 75 "media leaders to gauge how the industry views the concept of 'objectivity,'" a couple of big names in the press offered some guidelines for their colleagues.  The pair argued, said the Daily Caller, "that journalists should include their own beliefs, biases, and experiences to convey truth, and that journalistic objectivity was either unrealistic or undesirable."

The Associated Press Says It's 'Dehumanizing' to Use 'the' in Descriptions — Such as 'the French'.  Are you among the group of Americans who use the word "the"?  Are you part of the people who employ it in the act of description?  If so, you've been told to stop — by The AP.  The Associated Press Stylebook has long been considered an authority on ways in which to format the printed word.  Many media outlets conform to its standards, and the latest one is quite a stunner.

George Soros tied to at least 54 influential media figures through groups funded by liberal billionaire: study.  Liberal billionaire George Soros is tied to some of the most influential media figures in the United States and abroad through cash he provides to groups affiliated with them, according to a new study conducted by MRC Business.  "The over $32 billion that leftist billionaire George Soros poured into his organizations to spread his radical 'open society' agenda on abortion, Marxist economics, anti-Americanism, defunding the police, environmental extremism and LGBT fanaticism around the globe has paid dividends," MRC Business analysts Joseph Vazquez and Daniel Schneider wrote.

The most revolting people of 2022.  [#7]  The News Media:  The claim that the U.S. mainstream media has a Democrat bias is erroneous in that it presupposes that the media and the Democrats are separate entities and the Democrats are somehow influencing the media.  The fact is that the news media functions as a propaganda wing of the Democrats and hence must regard as a department within the Democrat party organization.  Their organizations may have different names, but they report to the Democrat party leadership.  2022 was no different, there was perfect synchronicity between their utterances and narratives.

George Soros has an enormous, dangerous reach in the American media.  George Soros, billionaire financier, leftist activist, and influencer, has extensive financial connections with global media, as shown in a Media Research Center study — with the unavoidable result that these outlets promote socialist ideological agendas.  According to a report that Joseph Vazques and Dan Schneider wrote for the Media Research Center ("MRC"), Soros has connections with 253 global media organizations.  That report, published in early December, may already be out of date because it does not seem to include the money he poured into a hard-left group that is on the verge of purchasing 18 Spanish-language radio stations across 10 different markets, giving them "access to one-third of the Hispanic population."  MRC asserts that Soros can "mold public opinion on practically every continent" because of his donations and contributions, money that he claims advances his "open society agenda," an agenda that is radical Marxist Socialist.  Open Society advocates for abortion, Marxist economics, defunding the police, lax law enforcement, open borders, aggressive (even violent) environmentalism, and LGBT activism.  The report also correctly observes that Soros gets favorable treatment from those global media organizations and their journalists/reporters who know who their Daddy Warbucks is.

The merging of the Propaganda State and the police state.  The Propaganda State in the USA envelops government, institutions, and the mainstream media.  What do they all have in common?  Their funding and wealth derive directly or indirectly from government.  Legislation created the broadcast industry that now allows six companies to own and control 90 percent of the media in America.  The recent revelations of Twitter working with the FBI and other government departments and agencies to censor Americans is an extension of the Propaganda State becoming a police state.  Like mushrooms sprouting in the dark, the police state has emerged in the Unites States without the mainstream media reporting it.  The "Twitter Files" make clear that censorship flourished on Twitter to promote only authorized information from government.  A new political age has erupted with coordination by Big Media, Big Tech, and Big Government to control the flow of information and censor all contradictory information.  This coordination does not occur overnight.  It takes decades of hiring like-minded people and avoiding well qualified or better qualified people who do not share their political views.  The authoritarian state is here, and the institutions have been massaged for particular outcomes and political agendas to support the overwhelmingly dominant political force.

CNN boss: "So much of what passes for news is name-calling, half-truths and desperation".  Chris Licht, the former Executive Producer of Stephen Colbert's "Late Show" and the man who created MSNBC's "Morning Joe," has been red-pilled.  Licht inherited a mess when he was named Chairman and CEO of CNN earlier this year.  The news channel was bleeding cash and about to launch a wildly expensive and doomed-to-fail streaming channel.  You know the story — Chris Wallace left his plum gig at Fox News to become the star of a channel that never was.  One of Licht's first moves was to cauterize that wound, and he has been forced to make other painful changes to the network.  Licht's strategy for reviving CNN is pretty simple:  slash expenses and move the channel to the political center in order to appeal to a wider audience.

The AP: Don't say 'late-term abortion'.  The Associated Press (AP) recently updated the abortion topical guide in its AP Stylebook to urge that "late-term abortion" be scrapped in favor of "abortion later in pregnancy."  In a Twitter post referencing the updated guidance, the AP stated:  "Do not use the term 'late-term abortion,'" citing a clinical definition from the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG).  Of course, the AP Stylebook also suggests using "pregnant people" instead of "mothers" and encourages referring to pro-life pregnancy centers in a negative fashion.  The ACOG has also preposterously claimed on its website that unborn children do not feel pain until 24 weeks' gestation, which is exceedingly odd, given that most progressives claim that fish, ants, plants — and most other living things — can feel pain and/or experience stress, worry, and loneliness.

How Corrupt is a Corrupt Media?  The current "media" — loosely defined as the old major newspapers like the New York Times and Washington Post, the network news channels, MSNBC and CNN, PBS and NPR, the online news aggregators like Google, Apple, and Yahoo, and the social media giants like the old Twitter and Facebook — are corrupt.  They have adopted in their news coverage a utilitarian view that noble progressive ends justify almost any unethical means to obtain them.  The media is unapologetically fused with the Democratic Party, the bicoastal liberal elite, and the progressive agenda.  The result is that the public cannot trust that the news it hears or reads is either accurate or true.  The news as presented by these outlets has been carefully filtered to suppress narratives deemed inconvenient or antithetical to the political objectives of these entities, while inflating themes deemed useful.  This bias now accompanies increasing (and increasingly obvious) journalistic incompetence.

Let the Credits Roll.  I wrote about Matt Ofalea's brilliant four-and-a-half video below in "The playbook on the laptop."  The video compiles clips — mostly of news anchors and reporters — opining on air with mind-numbing certainty and Hive-like unanimity that the New York Post's reportage on Hunter Biden's laptop was "a lie," "altered or fake," "pure distractions," and of course, "RUSSIAN DISINFORMATION."  I have posted the video once again below.  [Video clip]

I broke up with Stuart Varney today.  Stuart Varney's show on Fox Business has been a staple for me in the mornings for a very long time.  I liked him — his story, his style and the way he brings along others to build their careers.  He has always maintained his dignity and been civil to his guests.  Now, however, he has a full-blown case of Trump derangement syndrome and is blowing a long career for it.  He doesn't like Trump.  Okay, I get it.  Since just before the election, however, he has become an activist and an unfair one at that.  He has a segment called "my take" where he clearly states his opinions.  The entire program is now "my take." [...] If Varney, or anyone at Fox for that matter, wants to stick their neck out, how about mentioning the elephant in the room that no one will touch — rampant and now institutionalized election fraud?  We just saw it play out in slow motion in Arizona.  Cat got your tongue, Stuart?

Media Propagandists Will Never Play Fair, No Matter How Quality The GOP Candidate Or Lousy The Democrat.  Donald Trump is neither a kingmaker nor the palace's HR director charged with hiring the next court jester.  He didn't make the Republican Party, and he didn't destroy her fortunes.  And Trump did not downgrade the red tsunami to a splash.  The schizophrenic election results that included both Trump-endorsed winners and losers show that.  Like all else in politics, the truth lies somewhere in the middle.  But no matter where that line falls, conservatives need to accept the reality that the Democrat Party, Fetterman loyals, faux Republicans, and the corrupt corporate media don't care:  They aren't going to like us, they won't represent us fairly, and they aren't going to vote Republican.  A Democrat Party that props up an elderly man with obvious signs of mental decay to run as the party's presidential candidate cares only about power.  And voters casting their ballots for the same man, or the even more cognitively challenged Democrat candidate who just won the Pennsylvania U.S. Senate seat, see only one thing:  the "D" next to the candidate's name.

The media's coverage of Kari Lake takes bias to new extremes.  When it comes to Kari Lake, the mainstream, drive-by, leftist media is in pants-wetting mode. [...] Until 2021, Lake was best known in the Phoenix area, where she worked for 22 years as a television news anchor at KSAZ-TV.  Her political identity was kind of all over the place.  She was originally a Republican, a registration she kept until 2006.  That was when, because she was dismayed by George Dubya's wars (which saw her voting for John Kerry in 2004), she switched to Independent.  Then, in 2008, clearly dazzled by Obama, she registered as a Democrat and donated to several Democrat campaigns.  However, in 2021, she launched her gubernatorial campaign as a Republican.  Despite being substantially outspent during the Republican primary, Lake won handily.  Perhaps it was because she didn't let Democrats bully her into hiding her suspicions that something was deeply wrong with the 2020 election results. [...] The media, of course, know an enemy when they see one.  That's why their coverage of Lake is venomous in the extreme.  While their coverage of most Republicans averages 87% negative, their coverage of Lake is 100% negative[.]

Media propagandists become more brazen as the midterms approach.  [Scroll down] It seems Miguel Almaguer's report on NBC News could have disturbed the campaign narrative of Republicans being behind the attack, rather than what it was, which was an attack by a leftist drug-addict, so the report was summarily removed.  This has been done before when the Democrat narrative was challenged.  A report from CBS News revealed that of the billions in aid that the U.S. dispatches to Ukraine, only 30% of it reaches its intended target.  Once again this is a violation of the Democrat narrative of the U.S. helping Ukrainians in need.  Hence, CBS deleted its report and tweets linked to the report.  So what does one make of these retractions?  Does the mainstream media have a Democrat bias?  Alleging bias assumes that the mainstream media and the Democrats are separate entities and the Democrats are influencing the media.  But this is not true.  For ages, the mainstream media has functioned as a propaganda wing of the Democrats.  Despite not being officially employed by the DNC, the media is like a department within the Democrat party organization.  There is perfect synchronicity between their utterances.  They even use identical terminology while covering any given occurrence.  Loaded words such as 'collusion' or 'insurrection' didn't catch on miraculously.  An adept Democrat wordsmith supplied these terms and the media propagandists assiduously repeated them till they became de facto terminology.  This is an echo chamber where only synchronous chimes are permitted.  Doubts, deviations, or questions are forbidden, especially now when the media is campaigning for the Democrats.  These propagandists no longer care to even pretend to be objective or fair.

The media is becoming powerless.  As the Democrats on the beach are mesmerized by the red tsunami rushing in to wipe them out, one question above others will run through their minds: how did we lose control of the Narrative™?  It's no secret that Democrats basically own the minds and souls of everybody in the media and entertainment complex.  As much as the Left screams about Fox News, only about 1% of the country actually watches it.  It's hard to see how that one tiny slice of the media landscape could become so influential that it could turn the country against the Democrats so decisively.  ABC, CBS, NBC, MSNBC, CNBC, all the comedy channels, news outlets, Hollywood, the music industry... no matter where you turn one is inundated by messages that Republicans are Mega-evil MAGA election denying racist sexist homophobic trans-killing maniacs armed to the teeth.  Our president trots out the possibility of using F-15s to hold back the hordes of AR-15 wielding rednecks who go out on lynching parties to prevent children from reading books or something.  Republicans oppose all that is right and good and true and compassionate.  They hate children and puppies, and want to kill grandma after taking away her Social Security.  It sometimes seems as if electronic media was invented to slander Republicans.

Six Reasons Corporate Media Failed to Frame MAGA for Paul Pelosi Incident.  Watching the overpaid, blow-dried hoaxsters who run the corporate media haplessly attempt to frame Republicans for whatever happened to Paul Pelosi last week is like watching Lou Costello parallel park. [...] Outside of losing their moral authority and influence, the corporate media are becoming more incompetent by the day.  Fifteen years ago, with billions of corporate dollars backing their lies and a near-monopoly on public information, this frame-up would have worked like a charm.  But the execution would not have been as ham-handed as this one.  These people are not just fascist and corrupt; they're idiots.  So here are the six reasons why the media's attempt to frame us for whatever happened to Paul Pelosi has so spectacularly failed. [...]

WaPo, NYT, CNN ignore DHS social-media censorship exposé.  These days, the mainstream media has largely if not entirely aligned itself with Democrats and the Biden administration.  Yesterday, The Intercept's Ken Klippenstein and Lee Fang reported that the Department of Homeland Security and the FBI had actively attempted to "shape" online discussions as part of a partly classified effort to contain "disinformation." [...] When mainstream media outlets begin to cover Joe Biden and Democrats with the same level of scrutiny as they do Republicans, perhaps I'll change my mind.  But as they proved so far, today is not that day.

Pelosi Got Hammered.  [Scroll down] What is absolutely certain is that neither the U.S. federal government nor its media propaganda organs give a fig about crime or political violence unless it can be used to slander MAGA Republicans.  Pro-life organizations and churches are firebombed, and the FBI does nothing.  Conservative volunteers and Republican campaign workers are brutally beaten and shot on the street, and the corporate news is silent.  A cowardly neighbor severely wounds Senator Rand Paul in a sneak attack, and Democrats (including Nancy Pelosi's daughter) cry with laughter and jubilation.  A Democrat stalwart, brainwashed by the endless corporate news promoting the lie that Russia stole the 2016 election from Hillary, nearly succeeds in assassinating an entire baseball team of Republican senators and representatives (again including Rand Paul), and the Democrat-Media Complex hides behind calls for unity, while simultaneously casting blame on the victims.  Some commie nutjob gets into the Pelosis' fortified complex, though, and somehow it's all Trump's fault!

The MSM Threatens Democracy.  For our form of self-governance to work, we need a robust news industry.  Its role is to hold authority accountable and allow an informed public to make well-reasoned decisions.  That's why a free and independent press is protected by the Constitution.  But our MSM has run wildly off the rails.  The MSM is no longer a purveyor of truth, but rather a developer of narratives — and they're shameless about it, calling such narratives "fake but accurate."  The facts may be wrong, but the story supports the chosen narrative.  They no longer inform the public.  Instead they mislead it to satisfy ideological objectives.  The MSM has become an industry of propagandists — no longer facilitating self-governance, but undermining it. [...] Over the years the MSM's commitment to social engineering has grown, and its fidelity to the truth has waned.  Propaganda only works as long as people think they're receiving the truth.  It fails when people know it's propaganda.  Ironically, the MSM's overzealous pursuit of influence has cost them their influence.

Lee Smith Nails a Key Point, The Fourth Branch of Government and Media Operate Together.  Lee Smith makes an important point in this brief podcast excerpt.  We have outlined his point on these pages for several years.  Essentially, the point Lee Smith drives home is how the U.S. Corporate Media, and the Big Tech monopolies, are the front force of the new national security and intelligence state.  It is a relationship that extends far beyond the customary leanings of media, and now covers a full synergistic relationship.  [Video clip]

Huge percentage of Americans have 'no trust' in newspapers, TV, radio.  According to Gallup, nearly 4 in 10 Americans (38%) have "no trust" in America's media, including newspapers, TV and radio.  The political divide is stark.  Only 14% of Republicans and 27% of independents trust the media, but 70% of Democrats, whose agenda largely has been adopted by reporters and publishers, trust the media.  Overall, 34% of respondents trust the mass media to report the news "fully, accurately and fairly."  But "Just 7% of Americans have 'a great deal' of trust and confidence in the media, and 27% have 'a fair amount,'" the poll said.  At the other end of the scale, 28% say they do not have very much confidence and 38% say they have "none at all."

The War for Internet Freedom Has Just Begun.  I have heard it said many times over the years that President Bill Clinton and his inner circle were apprehensive about the rise of the internet right from its infancy.  While university clubs and lonely tech pioneers were generating public excitement by connecting people all over the planet, Clinton and his crew feared the internet for what it signified: an end to the government's monopoly over information.  If just any old citizen could broadcast news to the world over cyberspace, none of the government's traditional methods for regulating knowledge would continue to work.  Having a White House press corps, after all, has always had little to do with keeping government power in check and an awful lot to do with keeping potentially damaging information in house, supervised, and under control.

Dem Operatives Behind Network Of Fake News Pop-Up Sites In Battleground States: Report.  Democratic operatives are flooding battleground states with more than 50 supposedly local media outlets that are really designed to promote liberal candidates, according to a bombshell investigation by Axios.  One man linked to the scheme is David Brock, the one-time conservative journalist who did a 180-degree turn and founded Media Matters For America, the controversial nonprofit that attacks conservative news sites.  Axios' investigative reporters Lachlan Markay and Thomas Wheatley say the operation uses a "patina of independent local news content designed to put a sheen of original reporting on partisan messaging."  The 51 pop-up sites have names such as the Milwaukee Metro Times, Macomb Digest, Mecklenburg Herald, and the Tri-City Record, and are aimed at key swing states Arizona, Colorado, Georgia, Michigan, New Hampshire, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Wisconsin, according to the report.

Gavin Newsom's laughable gripe about conservative media bias.  You have to admire the chutzpah of California Gov. Gavin Newsom, who ludicrously claimed last weekend that Democrats were at a disadvantage because conservative media controls the story.  Really!  "These guys are ruthless on the other side.  Ruthless on the other side," Newsom said. "That prime-time lineup by Fox, they are ruthless.  They dominate the most important thing in American politics today, and that's the narrative.  Facts become secondary to narrative.  They dominate with illusion.  We are getting crushed."  It's the ultimate in projection.  On story after story, the media follow Democratic talking points to the letter.  Asking for young children not to be taught about sex becomes "Don't say gay."  Crime-ridden Democratic cities?  They're not that bad, the press says.  As Post columnist Michael Goodwin pointed out on Sunday, nowhere is this more true than with immigration.  The media have ignored or minimized the flood of illegal migrants, and ask no hard questions on President Biden's open-border policies.

Sources say the media don't care what you think.  America's institutions are failing her.  This! This opening sentence is a fun example of said failure:  A journalist with the Associated Press would not have been allowed to write it.  He would've had to rewrite it to omit the use of the word "her," relying instead on a clunky, sexless alternative.  Since the 1970s, the Associated Press has instructed staffers via its Stylebook to avoid using the pronoun "her" when used in reference to "nations, storms or ships."  "Use 'it' instead," the Stylebook recommends.  America's institutions are failing it.  The wording is inelegant.  It's ugly.  It fails to do what good, clear writing does best:  convey simple ideas coherently.  Whom (or what), exactly, does the Associated Press's style guidance serve?  Not the English language — that is for certain.  And certainly not the average reader, without whom the Associated Press would have no reason to exist.

CNN Is Making All the Right People Upset by Attempting to Report the News Without Bias.  Lately, CNN anchors and correspondents have been tweeting their real opinion about Joe Biden, Hunter, and the Biden administration; however, many people seem upset about the direction that CNN is headed.  When Chris Licht took over as CNN's new CEO, his goal was to bring CNN back to the center of the political spectrum and make it the go-to news network again.  Whether you are a fan of CNN or not, the network needs to return to the way things were before — straight news and informing the public of the important stories that took place.

To regain trust, ditch the editorial page.  A month ago, Axios reported, "Trust in news collapses to historic low."  Trust in newspapers was at 16%.  Trust in TV news was at 11%.  Both mediums lost trust by having too much opinion and not enough facts.  People do not trust the facts given by opinionators, especially opinionators with whom they disagree.  That loss of trust leads to drops in circulation and viewership.  I am not saying they are the cause of those audiences, but they certainly don't help. [...] The quickest way to salvation — to convincing people that you are a trustworthy source of news — is to get rid of the opinions.

The Editor says...
The Editorial Page is the best indication of the kind of bias you'll see in the rest of the newspaper.

Gov. Ron DeSantis gives the perfect rebuff to ABC's The View.  One of the things Republicans are finally figuring out, in large part thanks to Donald Trump, is that the media are their enemies.  This is not hyperbole.  Since Kennedy's presidency, the media have put their weight behind Democrats while consistently undermining Republicans. [...] ABC's The View (which really means Disney's The View) is a weekly daytime show.  Whoopi Goldberg, Joy Behar, Sara Haines, and Sunny Hostin, with periodic help from Ana Navarro, sit around a table and talk about politics and social issues.  They are a hardcore mix of ignorance and leftism.  For reasons that will forever remain unclear to me, they have managed to hold an audience for 25 years, and their loudly stated opinions affect people's thinking about important issues.

Gallup: Only 11% Have 'Great Deal' of Confidence in TV News, Only 16% in Newspapers.  A new survey shows that only 11% of American adults have a "great deal" or "quite a lot" of confidence in TV news, and only 16% have such confidence in newspapers.  These are "all-time low points," according to Gallup.  In the June poll of U.S. adults, Gallup asked, "Please tell me how much confidence you, yourself, have in each one — a great deal, quite a lot, some or very little?"  For newspapers, only 16% of adults said they had "a great deal/quite a lot" of confidence.  For TV news, only 11% said they had a "a great deal/quite a lot" of confidence in the product.

How the Media Polarized Us.  Public trust in the media has hit an all-time low.  Common explanations for this crisis of credibility include bias, polarization, and fake news, but these causes are themselves effects of the tectonic, and generally overlooked, shift in the media's business model.  Throughout the twentieth century, journalism relied for its funding predominantly on advertising.  In the early 2010s, as ad money fled the industry, publications sought to earn revenue through subscriptions instead of advertising.  In the process, they became dependent on digital audiences — especially their most vocal representatives.  The shift from advertising to digital subscriptions invalidated old standards of journalism and led to the emergence of post-journalism.

Gallup Poll:  Trust In News Outlets Hits a Historic Low.  The American people's trust in news outlets has hit a historic low, according to Gallup's annual survey on confidence in major U.S. institutions.  It's like they've discovered that "straight news" isn't their primary goal.  Both newspapers and television news have seen another drop in confidence over the past year, with each losing an average five percent of people who said they had a "great deal" of trust in such institutions.  Gallup has been measuring "confidence in institutions" since 1973, and annually since 1993.  Television news is now considered the second least-trusted institution in America, after Congress, with just 11 percent of respondents telling Gallup they have "quite a lot" of trust in television news.  Newspapers aren't much better at 16 percent.

Protests, Theirs and Ours.  The Left has a rather schizophrenic attitude toward protests and demonstrations.  Some are wonderful, like the George Floyd riots, which were not, in fact, protests at all.  Or like arson and other destruction committed at pro-life facilities.  Others are detestable, like the Dutch farmers' protests, or the French "yellow vests," or the Canadian truckers.  Some protests, too, can only be ignored, like when hundreds of thousands of pro-life citizens show up for their annual march in Washington.

Investigation Reveals White House Press Corps Is 12 To 1 Democrat.  Research for a new book out next week reveals an implicit bias present throughout the White House press corps:  Reporters attending in-person briefings rank 12:1 Democrat to Republican.  In "Suppression, Deception, Snobbery, and Bias:  Why the Press Gets So Much Wrong — And Just Doesn't Care," Fox News Contributor and former Bush White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer unearths the political affiliations of those present at a White House briefing on June 7, 2021.  "Every seat was filled for the first time in over a year as the social distancing rules resulting from the COVID pandemic were relaxed," Fleischer wrote in an excerpt shared exclusively with The Federalist.  "By a ratio of 12:1, the seats were occupied by Democrats!"  Fleischer drew upon research solicited by the D.C.-based investigative firm Delve, which combed through publicly available data.

Media no longer trying to deny hostility toward Republicans.  Mainstream media bloviators have increasingly begun to state that Republicans do not deserve equal coverage alongside their Democratic counterparts.  These figures often falsely claim that Republicans seek to "end our democracy" and that they routinely traffic in falsehoods.  Ergo, there's no need to be fair and balanced.  For example, on a recent edition of MSNBC's "The ReidOut," Joy Reid and her guest, political analyst Mathew Dowd (Bush-Cheney 2004 chief strategist turned Democrat), preposterously asserted that media outlets in general were too neutral in their reporting on the Republican Party and should instead ramp up the hostility.  Reid also urged reporters to "tell voters" that the GOP was a "threat" to freedom.  Remarkably, Reid queried Dowd on how the media might "get out" of this ill-advised "'both sides' trajectory."  Dowd replied that the media should start acting like they were living in a society that wasn't free — and treat Republicans accordingly.

Survey Shows America Has Least-Trusted Media on Planet Earth.  According to a massive survey that looked at the state of media all across the world, America has the least-trusted media on Planet Earth. [...] To be fair, the corporate media have been very, very helpful in imploding their own credibility.  In fact we couldn't have done it without them.  But New Media deserves credit for pushing the corporate media into the corner that turned them into desperate and audaciously transparent liars they all are.  New Media forced the corporate media out of the closet.  Because we were so effective at exposing their biases and lies with facts and morality, the corporate media was left with two options:  do their jobs honestly or throw their credibility on a grenade for The Cause.

CNN, NBC, MSNBC journalists say Republicans can't be covered equally with Democrats.  Figures on liberal media networks CNN, NBC and MSNBC have pushed the narrative that Republicans do not deserve equal coverage alongside their Democratic counterparts, often claiming Republicans stand for anti-Democratic values and are more likely to push falsehoods.  On MSNBC's "The ReidOut" Monday night, Joy Reid and her guest, left-wing political analyst Mathew Dowd, suggested the media were too neutral in their reporting on the Republican Party, and thus needed to ramp up the hostility.  She added that both sides were "not the same," and also urged fellow reporters to "tell voters" the GOP was a "threat" to freedom.  She wondered to Dowd how the media could "get out" of this "'both sides' trajectory," to which he advised the media to act as though they were living in a society that wasn't free and treat Republicans accordingly.

A few years too late.
America's largest newspaper chain Gannett orders USA Today and other publications to roll back op-eds after 'repelling readers' with biased articles.  America's largest newspaper chain Gannett has instructed its newsrooms to scale back opinion pieces which are 'repelling readers' who do not want to be told what to do.  The newspaper chain owns the USA Today network which takes in hundreds of local newspapers in almost every state across the country.  At a recent editors committee meeting in April, editors said in a presentation:  "Readers don't want us to tell them what to think.["]

9 Big Things We Learned From The Michael Sussmann Prosecution.  [#8] The Legacy Media Swims in the Swamp:  The Sussmann prosecution also proved that the legacy media swims in the swamp.  Emails exchanged between Fusion GPS's co-founders Glenn Simpson and Peter Fritsch exposed the symbiotic relationship between the Clinton campaign and reporters working for the New York Times, the Washington Post, Yahoo!  News, ABC News, Reuters, and more.  While anyone paying attention already knew the media was in on the Russia-collusion hoax, seeing the tag-team effort to destroy Trump in the black-and-white of emails provided indisputable proof of the corruption of the supposed standard-bearers of journalism.  If those emails weren't enough, the corrupt media's failure to cover the Sussmann trial until his acquittal provides a repeat of the lesson, teaching Americans that journalistic integrity no longer exists at major corporate outlets.

Americans [are] Pretty Much Disgusted With The Big Media.  Among major American institutions, the media have had a particularly rough ride over the past year.  Public trust in the media's integrity and performance has soured significantly in recent months, with big media credibility continuing to sink, the latest I&I/TIPP Poll shows.

Report: Newsrooms Warn Journalists to Keep Abortion Views Private.  It appears that newsroom managers have warned reporters against voicing their personal views on abortion as the Supreme Court potentially stands on the cusp of overturning Roe v. Wade.  According to a recent Vanity Fair report, certain news outlets have taken a markedly different tone than the one they employed during the Black Lives Matter protests over the death of George Floyd.  For instance, during the height of the protests/riots of 2020, Axios chief executive Jim VandeHei told employees in a company-wide memo that they were encouraged to exercise their "rights to free speech, press, and protest."  In recent days, however, the company has been singing a different tune to its employees.  Earlier this week, a memo circulated among the Axios staff urged journalists to keep their opinions secret.

Media try to incite another subway shooter following act of terrorism in New York City by racist hater of whites.  The large national legacy media in America have long ceased to be tools used to inform the public and keep pressure on our elected officials, as it was founded to do.  Instead, USA Today, The New York Times, the Washington Post, CNN, NBC, ABC, CBS, and others are little more than propaganda outlets for the left-wing deep state.  What's more, they have actually become weapons of societal destruction, as evidenced by the response to the recent subway shooting in New York City, which police have correctly described as an act of domestic terrorism (and one not committed by an 'angry white Trump supporter').

Jen Psaki Has Been Completely Consumed by the Delusions of Washington.  Jen Psaki isn't long for her job at the White House.  Having reportedly accepted a job with MSNBC that will include a primetime show, Biden's press secretary will make one of the easiest transitions in politics.  There is essentially no daylight between being a liberal cable news host and an official for a Democrat administration.  That's a dynamic that never ceases to amaze, given how loudly liberals complain when Republicans end up on Fox News, but I digress.  Psaki has been on a media tour of sorts the last few weeks, and as RedState reported, things got really awkward when she was asked about Florida's Parental Rights in Education law.

MSNBC Blast From The Past:  It's Our Job To Control How People Think... Not Elon Musk's.  While it is obvious to many why the mainstream media — and all things leaning left — are so utterly incensed at the richest man in the world's decision to offer to buy Twitter, a brief blast from the MSNBC past serves as an important reminder of just how the media and their overlords see their roles in modern society.  As hours of coverage and an avalanche of op-eds are unleashed to explain to the masses why they should grab their pitchforks as Elon Musk offers to buy a social media platform at a significant premium for shareholders, this brief MSNBC clip from 2017 perfectly summarizes where the real panic lies.

RNC Votes To Withdraw From 'Biased' Presidential Debates.  The Republican National Committee (RNC) unanimously voted Thursday to withdraw from the Commission on Presidential Debates (CPD) and is pledging to find another venue to hold debates.  CPD has hosted general presidential election debates since 1988 and was originally a joint venture of the Republican and Democratic Parties.  However, in recent years, Republican candidates and their allies have complained that the commission is biased towards Democrats.  They have cited the campaign donations and personal ties of members of the commission, as well as the treatment of GOP nominees.  "Debates are an important part of the democratic process, and the RNC is committed to free and fair debates.  The Commission on Presidential Debates is biased and has refused to enact simple and common sense reforms to help ensure fair debates including hosting debates before voting begins and selecting moderators who have never worked for candidates on the debate stage," RNC chairwoman Ronna McDaniel said in a statement.

Yes, the Media Bury the Race of Murderers — If They're Not White.  Frank James, the man arrested for Tuesday's New York City subway shooting, is a black nationalist and outspoken racist who railed against whites, Jews, and Hispanics.  A careful reader of the New York Times could be forgiven for overlooking that.  In a nearly 2,000-word article on the attack, James's race is not mentioned.  The same is true for the coverage offered up by Reuters; the Washington Post only mentioned James's race in relation to his condemnation of training programs for "low-income Black youths."  Media critics on the right say that the conspicuous omission of James's race from these news reports illustrates a trend among prestige papers, which deemphasize or omit the race of non-white criminals while playing up the race of white offenders.  But is it a real pattern?  Yes.  A Washington Free Beacon review of hundreds of articles published by major papers over a span of two years finds that papers downplay the race of non-white offenders, mentioning their race much later in articles than they do for white offenders.  These papers are also three to four times more likely to mention an offender's race at all if he is white, a disparity that grew in the wake of George Floyd's death in 2020 and the protests that followed.

Ten Steps to Totalitarianism.  Does anybody still think totalitarianism can't happen here?  Ask yourself how many of these steps we've already galloped past. [... #4] Control over Communication:  There is a reason Western governments have begun aggressively attacking free speech as "misinformation" or "disinformation": the power to communicate ideas to the broader public threatens governments' monopoly over "official" truths.  Traditional forms of mass communication — newspapers, radio broadcasts, and television shows — are operated by so few corporations that the State has no problem influencing, if not outright controlling, the information disseminated to the public.  In contrast, social media platforms and independent publishing sites permit citizens (in theory) to bypass State censors, regulators, and other information gatekeepers to communicate directly with large numbers of other citizens.  See why governments spend so much time targeting free speech as "hate speech" or "harmful information" that must be banned?

"Disinformation" conference proves Trump is right, the media is the enemy of the people.  Last year, in his farewell column, longtime Chicago journalist Phil Kadner spoke of his praises, and he indeed deserved his own pats on the back.  Kadner mostly covered the generally overlooked, but corrupt, south suburbs of Chicago.  I grew up there, they are a rat-hole of graft.  A creature of the left, who called for President Trump's impeachment in 2019, Kadner discussed in that final column, his anger after Trump said the media was "the enemy of the people."  Is Kadner an enemy of the people?  No.  But with a few exceptions, most of the media is.  The latest example of why that is true took place at the University of Chicago, which hosted along with the Atlantic, the Disinformation and the Erosion of Democracy conference.  A quick look at the speakers at the event betrays what kind of conference it was, there were no conservative panelists.  Only the self-appointed "cool kids" are allowed in the tree house.

Has Biden become expendable?  Why are the media suddenly attacking the president when they supported many of his policies during the 2020 primaries? [...] The corrupt media called President Trump's border fence "racist" while praising Biden's promise to provide free health care for anyone crossing the southern border illegally.  With such a generous and rewarding immigration policy, the media knew that the southern border would see an explosion of illegal crossings — and so there was.  As illegal entries hit record levels, murder, drug crimes, and sex crimes skyrocketed in the border states.  Suddenly, Biden's border policy was being criticized by the propaganda media.  They were all in until things started collapsing.

Suddenly The Media Desperately Wants You To Know The Hunter Biden Laptop Story Is Real.  After calling it a fake Russian disinformation plot or just ignoring it altogether for over a year, the media is suddenly desperate for Americans to know that the Hunter Biden laptop from hell story is totally real.  Why?  The Washington Post covered the story, admitting that documents which were first reported on by The New York Post in October 2020 "illustrate the ways in which his family profited from relationships built over Joe Biden's decades in public service."  [Tweet]  At the time, the Post's 'fact checkers' dismissed the revelations as disinformation, calling it "laptop stuff."  The New York Times has also done a complete about face, admitting that the story is real and not disinformation.  [Tweet]

Media Bias Works:  Ketanji Brown Jackson Is Widely Popular.  Gallup on Wednesday published a new poll showing that Americans just love Ketanji Brown Jackson and want her on the Supreme Court right away:  she is supposedly broadly popular, more so than anyone who has been nominated to the court since the 1980s.  The far-Left news aggregator BoingBoing is thrilled, gushing about "the first black woman nominated to the Supreme Court and the most popular Supreme Court nominee in modern history," but Gallup's poll is really less about Ketanji Brown Jackson, whom nobody had ever heard of before Old Joe Biden nominated her to the Supreme Court, than it is about the lingering power of the establishment media.  The Democrat party propaganda organs that masquerade as news organizations still wield considerable persuasive power, and that's not good news.

You might be a moron if you fell for this.  [Scroll down]  The dumbing down of Americans really came to fruition after the 1990's when deluded voters decided that the mainstream media was composed of real journalists.  In reality it was dominated by the Marxist dominated left wing.  Although I never voted for Richard Nixon, there was something unhinged about the entire Watergate scandal.  It made cultural heroes out of reporters and demonized the government's intelligence system in place.  Suddenly, we had to know everything that was classified, which meant to me that our enemies would know all as well.  Reporters became more interested in 'gotcha' news than doing their jobs.  It also became very clear that most reporters were liberal Democrats which meant that they would be overlooking proper vetting of Democrat candidates and strip searching the GOP.

Legitimate Journalists Used To Cover McGovern And Nixon, Today's Clowns Lie About Joe Rogan.  [Scroll down]  Back in the day, it was the "triangle" approach to news that was dominant, with the first paragraph ideally bringing in the who, what, where, when, why, and if possible how, of a story.  I still recall the turn when journalists all thought they were Tom Wolfe or Hunter Thompson, and the news writing of the day turned into what was called the "new journalism."  "New journalism" was an attempt to adopt novelistic techniques in order to enhance a story, to give it an emotional tone and a point of view.  The trouble is it also allows huge dollops of bias to become a part of the journalistic narrative. [...] Today, opinions and bias are all throughout news stories.

CEO of CNN's new owner calls network 'leader in news to the left'.  The boss of CNN's new parent company said on Friday the network was "the leader in news to the left" — but his communications team soon scrambled to walk back the frank admission, insisting he wasn't talking about politics.  Discovery CEO David Zaslav, whose media giant is set to close its merger with CNN's owner WarnerMedia this spring, made the surprise remark during a discussion about the network's future — days after the abrupt resignation of the network's president, Jeff Zucker.  "We have this great entertainment menu, which should keep people in the home, from the kids to the grandparents.  Why would they go anywhere else?  And then we're the leader in news to the left," Zaslav told CNBC on Friday.  Zaslav's comment drew a surprised response from CNBC host Joe Kernan, who wondered aloud if it was a reference to CNN's ideological bent.

I&I/TIPP Poll:  Trust In Media Collapse Continues As 2022 Begins.  For the major media, 2022 didn't bring much good news after a rough 2021.  Americans' trust in both the traditional media and alternative media continued to decline in the new year, the latest I&I/TIPP Poll shows.  The I&I/TIPP Media Trust Indexes show continued weakening in early January in the public's perception of the media, continuing a disturbing recent trend.

When the people stop believing the government and the media.  Arguably the USSR crumbled because everybody was lying to everybody else, so that nothing could be believed, including (especially) economic transactions.  With the Biden Administration, the US has entered this same territory.  Anyone paying attention can see that the occupant of the White House lapses into dementia on a regular and accelerating basis.  In moments of crisis, he is quietly sent out to have some ice cream and go shopping while the hidden hands that make the real decisions (and make them badly) take over. [...] Our media are now owned by half a dozen transnationals, with the practical effect that they all collude in their "narratives," leaving us surrounded by lies.

Zuckerberg's 'Report for America' Is a Media Take Over Dressed Up as Philanthropy.  "First, let's stipulate to an undeniable truth of history," writes talk host, Steve Deace in a series of Twitter messages about the media, "whoever has control over the flow of information in any society ultimately has control."  And it's why Mark Zuckerberg and his cronies want to have a bigger stake in local news.  During the last couple of days, PJ Media has highlighted an effort by the Facebook (now Meta) founder and other moneyed interests and foundations to save local newspapers and local news sources.  Their idea has been to spend millions of dollars to embed reporters, in a program called Report for America (RFA), in America's newspapers and public radio stations.  Their stated objective is to tell "under-covered" stories in those cities, hamlets, and burgs out of the goodness of their hearts.  RFA reporters, called "corps members," in the paramilitary parlance the Left so often labels its foot soldiers, will tell these stories which have been circumscribed for them by the publications and the RFA.

How wokeness has spread through the media in a very short time.  Wokeness has taken over the newsroom to the point where people who are legitimately pretty far left in their politics are left shaking their heads at how quickly the new dogma makes them sound like hardened conservatives.  For instance [Tara] Henley notes that, "pop culture radio show's coverage of the Dave Chappelle Netflix special failed to include any of the legions of fans, or comics, that did not find it offensive."  Like other heterodox writers who don't fit in, she has has moved to Substack to be an independent voice.  Also this week, Christopher Rufo wrote about a former Reuters data scientist who was fired after he criticized some of the company's Black Lives Matter boosterism.

In 2021, Media Did More to Erode Trust Than to Repair It.  It's obvious that the media's hatred for Donald Trump colored nearly everything they wrote or said during his presidency.  But one hoped that after he left the White House, the media might recover a little objectivity.  Sadly, a review of 2021 shows that in many cases, it simply did not happen.

How much more powerful are the media than you?  There are 32,000 full-time journalists in America — an army of thought-police — and they have a microphone the size of Mount Everest. [...] Let's say you disagree with the constant pressure to be gay.  Let's say you think the gay lifestyle is a corrupt way to live, as it has been seen throughout most of human history.  But you don't have the media power to oppose the message of the elites.  They will brand you as a homophobe, and you are powerless to oppose it.  They will use their massive media might to drown out your message.  If you continue to oppose the elites and the political correctness they spew at you, you risk losing your job, your career, and your livelihood.

What Should We Teach in Journalism Schools?  There's something rotten in American journalism schools.  From a tendency toward bias to outright activism, journalism in higher education is not what it should be: a place to guide young writers through a liberal education that teaches them how to think, report, and write clearly.  The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill's attempted hiring of Nikole Hannah-Jones this year is the latest in a line of incidents that show how far journalism schools have drifted away from what they should be.  In 1904, famed editor and newspaper magnate Joseph Pulitzer published an essay in The North American Review defending his dream to create a college of journalism.  His idea was not initially well-received, and the school he envisioned didn't open until 1912.

The Whitewashing of Black Crime.  Selectively reporting or downright ignoring crime based upon race is a dangerous gambit in the hands of a partisan media with a political ax to grind.  The Associated Press Stylebook cautions journalists against identifying race in crime reporting once a suspect is found or apprehended; however, there is an escape clause that suggests that race can be injected into a story if a reporter believes it plays a part in a particular demonstration or criminal act.  That opens the door to gaslighting and editorializing upon the factual circumstances of an event for political purposes.

Fox News Finally Rids Itself of Chris Wallace.  Fox News must be thrilled to finally be rid of Chris Wallace, the only recognizable name at Fox regularly murdered by the competition.  On Sunday, Wallace announced he was going to work for CNN.  Oops, I mean CNN+, which will be CNN's soon-to-be-failed streaming service.  Well, let's first point out Chris Wallace has always been working for CNN.  So with this humiliating career demotion, all he's doing now is making it official.

Chris Wallace Is Out at Fox News, Plugs 'New Adventure'.  Wallace has been a fish-out-of-water at Fox News for at least the past several years, and I don't mean that as a compliment.  Like many in the media, Donald Trump appeared to break him, with Wallace going from "ah shucks" middle-of-the-road Democrat to a consistent purveyor of leftwing talking points.  Who can forget his disgraceful 2020 debate performance, where he continually sought to protect Joe Biden while completely absconding from topical discussions that would have benefited Trump?  The examples don't stop there, though.  Over just the past year, Wallace has managed to go on the far-left Stephen Colbert show to bash Republicans and he's praised congenital liar Jen Psaki as one of the best press secretaries ever.  In one of his more absurd moments, Wallace also tried to accuse Republicans of defunding the police, parroting a White House talking point that was being pushed at the time.  In late 2020, when John Brennan lied to his face about the Steele Dossier, stalwart newsman Wallace just nodded along.

Chris Wallace raises the IQ level of two networks.  It looks as though the CNN plan to make itself less of a less of a joke by replacing its circus clowns is moving into action.  The network has new owners and has signaled that it intends to return to a straight news organization as it once was, back when it was popular.  Here's their first affirmation of it.

Swamp Gatekeeper Chris Wallace Leaving Fox News Effective Immediately for New Position at CNN.  It was always Chris Wallace's job to protect the DC interests by tamping down any sunlight upon corrupt UniParty politics.  That's the reason why CTH called Wallace the deep swamp 'gatekeeper' for a decade.  Wallace, the top player amid many such players at Fox News, was always a narrative platform provider to distribute media points that supported the institutional administrative state in DC.  However, thanks to the rise of pragmatic conservatism, a movement created by Donald Trump and commonly identified as MAGA, in recent years more people have caught on to how this insufferable media game is played.  Chris Wallace was increasingly becoming naked to his audience, and as a direct outcome, increasingly useless for propaganda distribution.  Today [12/12/2021], the functionally obsolescent gatekeeper announced, effective immediately, he was leaving Fox News.

Here Are The 11 Dumbest, Most Slanted Questions Asked By Chris Wallace.  Chris Wallace received negative marks for his constant interruptions of President Donald Trump, and for his poor time management, but the worst thing about his moderation of the first presidential debate on Tuesday were the questions he asked.

The Left-Wing Legacy of the Mainstream Media.  As broadcast oligopolies and metropolitan newspaper monopolies advanced in the last century, the management of the leading newspapers, magazines, and broadcast networks found it necessary to initiate the mantra that their profession was the epitome of credibility and integrity.  This began when they were unabashedly promoting Franklin Roosevelt and his big government agenda, and accelerated dramatically during World War II when they eagerly embraced a partnership with the deferral government to advance the war effort.  The marked the beginning of eight decades of cozy relationship between the media, totalitarian causes, and the Democrat party.  But during the early years of oligopolistic consolidation, the dominant players in the media willingly became de facto accomplices with not only the Roosevelt administration but the despots in Europe, whom FDR refused to criticize or condemn.  During the 1930's numerous puff pieces on Mussolini, Hitler and Stalin were published or aired by the mainstream media, even after the Communists and Nazis revealed themselves to be who they were.

The Infrastructure Bill Is Joe Biden's 'Shovel-Ready Jobs' Moment.  [Scroll down]  There is a reason that the media acts like this, and it goes beyond "They are leftist partisan hacks."  There is a reason they didn't want to touch any of this.  It's all because these people know who butters their bread.  News executives, account managers, and editors know that the goal in journalism isn't journalism.  The goal is to do it in a way that gets eyes on the advertisements of the people who pay them big bucks to get their ads on television and in print.  As I mentioned yesterday, when Jeff Zucker came to CNN, he brought with him a background in the entertainment industry.  That brought a new set of eyes to the audience and helped the network grow.  But a lot of Zucker's audience-building was aimed at people who are naturally more progressive.  To keep them, the programming had to get more progressive.

New "Report" on COVID-19 Origins Is a Laughable Disaster of Chinese Influence.  A new report on COVID-19 origins suggests that SARS-CoV-2, the virus responsible for the COVID-19 infection, likely originated at a Wuhan Wet Market, despite the questionable source of the information used to compile the report.  When I say you've got to read until the end, you've got to read until the end.  This one should let you know just how bad things are when it comes to the COVID-19 origins investigations. [...] All the data in this entire study is over a year old and from the very sources that have the most to lose if a lab leak is confirmed.  This is just a regurgitation of Chinese propaganda.  "First Known COVID Case Was Vendor at Wuhan Market, Scientist Says," reads the New York Times.  No.  That's not what the report says.  The vendor herself pointed to COVID cases at numerous clinics around Wuhan suggesting there are more patients before her.  How can patient zero be aware of previously hospitalized patients?  Would that not justify further investigation?  Yet, Worobey simply calls this patient zero and moves on.

A Brief Guide to Leftist Destruction.  Journalists were once highly respected.  Unless a piece was listed as "opinion," people generally believed they were getting, to the best of a journalist's ability, as truthful a report as possible — "just the facts."  Today, on virtually any controversial issue, they are getting opinion, not truth.  The purpose of nearly every major newspaper and other "news" outlet is the same purpose Pravda had in the Soviet Union:  to transmit the party line.

Why don't we see progressive commentators doing this?  [Scroll down]  Why are there never any respected progressive voices taking the honorable route, demonstrating a commitment to principles over profit, and telling the left-wing networks to take a hike until they get their kooky conspiracy houses in order?  Why doesn't Jake Tapper tell CNN they can find someplace else to send his paycheck if they want to continue being the network that platforms Don Lemon to lie about Ivermectin and Joe Rogan, or that allowed Chris Cuomo to use his position to shield corrupt family members in power?  Why didn't Chris Hayes tell MSNBC he wouldn't be associated with any network that would hire a man everyone knew had broken the public trust by making up asinine, exaggerated accounts of personal drama while sitting in the coveted Nightly News anchor chair?

Media Calls for 'Rules' Treating Republicans as Not 'Normal'.  While we see media going to all kinds of Orwellian lengths to defend the failures of Joe Biden, the opposite side of the coin is how much media will spin reality to attack Republicans.  Now, we've seen bias when it comes to media.  But the Washington Post's Jen Rubin exceeds bias and moves right into outright lunacy with this mad rant at Republicans.  First, she falsely claims that the Republican Party has been endorsing violence.  But then she gets to the meat of what she wants to say — that the media has to have "rules" for how they treat Republicans.

The Continued American Awakening of The FBI as an Official Enforcement Mechanism of The Fourth Branch of Government.  More people are awakening to the uncomfortable reality that the FBI is a domestic enforcement mechanism for the Fourth Branch of Government.  The most recent awakening is being driven by the brazen FBI raid on Project Veritas founder James O'Keefe with the intent to leak the information to their allies at the New York Times.  Make no mistake, this is one long continuum of FBI activity that is only growing increasingly more obvious as they consider themselves unaccountable to anyone except their own ideological interests.  Who is the check in the U.S. justice system to provide oversight over the FBI?  The uncomfortable answer is no one.  Remember, the oft reported relationships surrounding the divisions within the Fourth Branch:
  •   The CIA uses The Washington Post.
  •   The State Dept uses CNN, and
  •   the FBI uses The New York Times.

The Establishment Media Wants Us Out of the Way So They Can Get to You.  RedState and right-of-center sites like ours are constantly under the highest scrutiny.  "Fact-checking" sites like AP and Politifact are constantly breathing down our necks and there are consequences to not appeasing them.  As Van Laar highlighted, we don't tend to cave and this impacts our revenue since getting flags attached to our site, which then triggers a revenue drop.  These rules don't seem to apply to any mainstream or left-of-center sites.  If they did, they'd stop blatantly lying or misrepresenting facts, which they don't.  Here's the thing.  It's not about us, it's about you.

A Banner Week for Journalistic Integrity.  A Gallup survey published last Thursday found that just 36 percent of Americans have at least "a fair amount" of trust in the media, the second-lowest figure in recorded history.  As if on cue, America's élite journalists proceeded to validate the public's skepticism.  The same day the survey was published, the New York Times issued a lengthy correction to a story that had vastly overstated the number of U.S. children hospitalized with COVID-19, among other inaccuracies: [...] Apoorva Mandavilli, the reporter who wrote the story, earlier this year took charge of the paper's COVID-19 coverage after its senior science reporter, Donald McNeil, was pushed out for offending a rich teenager the Times had forced him to chaperone on a trip to Peru.  Mandavilli, on the other hand, was not forced to resign after she suggested it was racist to believe that COVID-19 may have leaked from a Chinese lab.  Over the weekend, CNN senior media correspondent Brian Stelter performed a dramatic monologue in which he attempted to spin the atrocious Gallup figures into a diatribe against Fox News.

Massive $3.5 trillion spending bill contains a billion taxpayer dollars for pathetic media that lies about everything.  House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Joe Biden have both said that the gargantuan $3.5 trillion spending bill they are trying to cajole all of their members into supporting is vitally necessary for the future of America.  In reality, it is a pork-ridden behemoth that will serve primarily as a payoff to key Democrat constituencies so as to buy off their loyalty for years to come.  That includes the garbage "mainstream media" too, apparently.  Tucked inside the bill, which is several thousand pages long (legislation should never be that lengthy and complex) is a provision that would provide more than a billion dollars to media outlets, ostensibly as part of COVID 'relief.'

American fascism?  [A] broad working definition of fascism can be found by going to the source — Benito Mussolini, the father of 20th-century fascism.  Mussolini said:  "Fascism should more appropriately be called corporatism because it is a merger of state and corporate power."  Looking out over the American landscape, isn't this almost exactly what we see today, an unholy marriage between the state and big business?  To understand the scope of this, understand that the state is far more than just elected officials.  It also includes the massive unelected and mostly unaccountable government bureaucracies which are permanently in place.  As for corporations, it includes the mainstream media which could properly be called the corporate media.  In the U.S. today, six media behemoths control a whopping 90% of what Americans read, watch, and listen to.  They are GE, News-Corp, Disney, Viacom, Timer-Warner, and CBS.

Gallup: Trust In The Media Sinks to 36 Percent, Second Lowest Ever.  Can the mistrust of the media get much greater?  Gallup pollsters reported on Thursday [10/7/2021] that American trust in the media "to report the news fully, accurately and fairly has edged down four percentage points since last year to 36 percent, making this year's reading the second lowest in Gallup's trend."  Overall, just seven percent of U.S. adults say they have "a great deal" and 29 percent "a fair amount" of trust and confidence in newspapers, television and radio news reporting — which, combined, is four points above the 32 percent record low in 2016, during the Donald Trump vs.  Hillary Clinton battle.  More than half of respondents sound fed up:  29 percent of the public currently registers "not very much" trust and 34 percent say they have "none at all."

All Our Problems Are Built On Us-Vs-Them Propaganda.  Today's world is dominated by a unipolar power structure loosely centralized around the United States government.  It is comprised of many nations which are ostensibly independent, but, since they move in near-complete alignment with each other on all international issues of major importance, this power structure can effectively be called an empire.  This empire sets the economic, environmental and military policies which are causing all the ecocide, war and nuclear brinkmanship we see driving humanity toward its destruction today.  The empire's greatest weapon is not its military but its propaganda machine.  There's simply never been anything like the global narrative control provided by the western news media, Silicon Valley, and Hollywood.  The military fights wars; the propaganda machine wins them long before they even start.  When you use the military to eliminate opposition, everyone knows it happened.  When you use propaganda to eliminate opposition, people aren't even aware you did it.

Media Hides Secret in $3.5 Trillion Spending Bill.  There's one piece of the $3.5 trillion spending bill that the media is unlikely to tell you about — their bailout.  The massive, bloated $3.5 billion spending bill has so much pork that fiscal hawks could eat it for weeks.  One piece that hasn't received much attention yet is a special journalism "tax credit" equal to 50% of the salary of each journalist — up to $50,000 per journalist annually.  Yes, that's correct, your tax dollars would be paying 50% of the salary of many journalists, whether you like their reporting or not.  Think of it as a way to turn every news outlet in America into a version of NPR.  Let's be clear:  "Saving" the media would destroy the media.  How could we ever trust journalists to accurately cover the elected officials who voted against their funding?  How can you "speak truth to power" when you're also pleading with that power for cash?  Which news outlets would get the funding, and which would be snubbed?  Any pretense of objectivity would be destroyed once the media is on the federal payroll.

The Hidden Gift for Media Dems Put in Their Spending Bill Effectively Turns Every Outlet Into NPR.  If you think the establishment media doesn't like the Democrats enough already, wait until the federal government is subsidizing it.  There's plenty of objectionable waste in the $3.5 trillion spending bill the Democratic Party is pushing on Capitol Hill, but few giveaways hidden in the 881-page document are so blatant as a tax credit for "local news" outlets.  According to the Washington Times, the credit would allow the outlets to receive a quarterly tax credit "equal to 50%" of a journalist's salary up to $12,500 a quarter.

White House Treats Media With Well-Earned Disdain.  A recent Gallup survey found that only 21 percent of the public expressed "a great deal" of confidence in newspapers.  Television news fared even worse.  This distrust of the media isn't merely due to dishonest "reporting," it is also tied to collusion between journalists and the politicians they are meant to keep honest.  The White House press pool, for example, is little more than a Greek Chorus that recites Biden administration talking points.  In exchange for this tawdry performance, they expect occasional access to the President.  But Biden's handlers have no more respect for the media than does the public.

The Media Coaches Democrats, Trashes Republicans.  There is a tone when Democrats are in the White House and hold a majority in Congress, however narrow.  Anchors, pundits, and correspondents have a tendency to talk about how Democrats succeed.  It's not unlike, say, the local sports channels on a Washington football team show:  How does our team win?  What do they need to improve on?  In this case, how can they pass some "landmark" legislation and look "historic"?  They fawn over Democrats, favor them, coach them and only fault them when the polls falter.  These networks cheered along and gave free publicity to Texas Democratic state legislators when they flew to D.C. to lobby quite hopelessly for Congress to pass the "For the People Act" federalizing election laws.  Almost every strategy that Democrats attempt — even the quixotic ones — are promoted and explained by a pliant press.  Obviously, in the Trump years, these TV pundits and correspondents didn't ask, "How do Trump and the Republicans succeed?"

Media folks agree that theirs is the finest profession in America.  The American leftist media establishment is, without a doubt, extraordinarily powerful.  It can shape reality in ways that are always deleterious for America and for ordinary Americans.  It diminishes Republicans and elevates Democrats.  Now, according to several journalists, we learn that the only thing that held America together immediately after 9/11 was the media talking heads.  It wasn't President Bush, Mayor Giuliani, or America's shared horror and values.  It was Tom Brokaw, Peter Jennings, and Dan Rather.  And no, I'm not reading between the lines.  AP, to honor 9/11, decided that the best way was to elevate the status of its own profession — and certainly, it is true that, in those pre-"everybody is on the internet" days, the television was the only way for people to see what was happening.

Are Woke Media Deepening America's Divisions?  When it comes to the media, Americans' overall trust has been waning for some time, as numerous surveys show.  But the decline isn't uniform among all groups.  Even before the recent crisis in Afghanistan, which brought renewed criticism to the media, a clear split over the trustworthiness of the U.S. media emerged, data from our latest I&I/TIPP Poll confirms.  That includes a wide divergence of opinion by gender, race, region, political ideology, schooling, and even income, showing a nation divided not just by its politics and ideology, but by how it views its basic news and opinion sources.

New York magazine's shocking revelation:  The liberal media are biased!  In defending President Joe Biden's debacle in Afghanistan, New York magazine's Eric Levitz has come to an earth-shaking revelation.  You ready?  The liberal media are biased.  They "manufactured" the crisis.  Levitz is shocked, shocked to discover that "straight news" stories in The New York Times are laden with judgmental adjectives and the writers' own opinions.  He takes particular aim at Roger Cohen, the Times Paris bureau chief, saying that in stories, "he is presenting editorial judgments as factual ones."  Cohen uses the phrase "reinforces the impression," to which Levitz says, "This is, of course, a thin scrim for concealing outright advocacy.  Impressions are inherently subjective."  You don't say.  Welcome to the awakened, Eric.  The Times (and CNN and The Washington Post and the list goes on) regularly presents opinion as news.  It's not just those vague "impressions."  How about "sources are saying," "part of the conversation," "observers wonder" and countless other phrases that scream, "This is what I think."

Sometimes there really is a conspiracy to theorize about.  Consider the following questions:  Is it really more plausible that the media are acting separately but identically or that they are colluding among themselves and with the Democrats and the Deep State?  That their simultaneous and identical takes on everything are just due to similar viewpoints and not highly coordinated messages of the day?  Is it possible that the media have maintained and expanded their editorial bias over time without firm top-directed orders?  Or would an uncontrolled system be expected to act like a pendulum, swinging back and forth?

Why Liberals Hate Hungary's Viktor Orban So Much.  "The right's entrancement with [Hungarian President Viktor] Orban has emerged fitfully over the last decade.  One could find defenses of the Hungarian regime in places like the New York Post, the Federalist, the Heritage Foundation, and National Review.  Yet, until recently, open support for Orban's Hungary was an idiosyncratic minority position on the American right," writes Jonathan Chait in one of his two articles last week on the topic, citing yours truly.  In the last couple of days, the leftist Twittersphere had a total meltdown over Hungary.  The immediate cause was Fox News host Tucker Carlson's visit to Hungary to shoot a documentary and take part in a conference. [...] Leftists have a curious obsession with Hungary.  Orban is routinely called "far-right" by a section of the American journalist and pundit class who may never have heard of Jobbik nor have any idea of what the real far-right in Europe can mean or even look like.

Why Have Advocacy Journalism When You Can Have Just Advocacy?  It was perhaps inevitable that the embrace of advocacy journalism (and rejection of objectivity in journalism) would eventually dispense with the pretense of the journalism part.  The point was reached by National Public Radio which took the controversial step this week to announce that its journalists can engage in protests and advocacy — the abandonment of a long-standing rule for reporters to avoid such causes or demonstrations.  The announcement comes on the heels of the Justice reporter for the New York Times calling all Trump supporters "enemies of the state."  New York Times reporter Nikole Hanna-Jones recently declared "all journalism is advocacy."  So that simplifies matters wonderfully for the woke.  After all, why have advocacy journalism when you can simply have advocacy?

A Day in the Life of a Low-Information Voter.  The low-information voter begins his or her day largely unaware that any snippets of news they consume are likely to be spun leftward.  Many don't know any better, but some, with guarded comprehension, don't want to know any better.  They've subsisted on a diet of mainstream and Big Tech news for so long that biased reportage has become their media comfort zone.  A glance at Zuckerberg's feed.  Yahoo News.  They may prepare for work with the montage of a major network morning show as background:  cookbook authors and studies that show transgenderism in rhesus monkeys.  The LIV's sources are completely devoid of solid conservative content.  At their midmorning break they get another dose of fake news they don't know any better than to believe in.

Chuck Todd:  There is no liberal media bias.  NBC's Chuck Todd gave a lengthy interview to the Verge in which he was asked about media bias.  Specifically, the discussion started with whether or not Todd would allow Sen. Ted Cruz to appear on Meet the Press.  Todd said he wasn't sure he would because Cruz isn't credible and may just be there to gaslight viewers.  That led to a broader points about objectivity and fairness.  According to Todd, the GOP has repeated claims of media bias to the point where even some liberals believe it.

Admitted It!  This Politician Says 'We Have Everyone Else' in Media (Except Fox).  Sometimes people just come out and say what we all know to be true, even if some still pretend otherwise.  Nikki Fried, a Democratic politician who is running for Florida governor and hopes to challenge Republican Ron DeSantis, tweeted this on Thursday:  "Ron DeSantis has Fox News, but we have everyone else.  Florida will be blue in 2022."  There it is.  "We have everyone else."  Here's a screen shot of the tweet in case it gets deleted.  [Tweet]

Democratic Politician Accidentally Tells the Truth About Media Bias.  Don't you just love it when they accidentally let things slip?  Nikki Fried, who serves as Florida's agriculture commissioner, accidentally made a stunning admission about the nature of the activist media and its role as the Democratic Party's Ministry of Propaganda.  On Thursday [7/22/2021], Fried, who is also running for governor, posted a tweet predicting that the Sunshine State would go to Democrats in 2022.  She wrote:  "Ron DeSantis has Fox News, but we have everyone else.  Florida will be blue in 2022."

Social-ist Media.  The mainstream media has proven that Americans can no longer rely on them for unbiased news.  Having always leaned left, reporters abandoned all pretense of objectivity following President Trump's election, turning their outlets into unabashed organs of the anti-Trump movement and every associated leftwing cause.  This was amply demonstrated by the years-long Russia collusion hoax, in which every mainstream outlet scrapped journalistic norms on sourcing, anonymity, fact-checking, and other longstanding practices in order to advance the false narrative that Trump colluded with Russians to hack the 2016 election.  Increasingly, however, Americans are no longer accessing news reports through physical newspapers and magazines but through social media.  In theory, social media is a democratizing force — people no longer need to own a media company or write for the New York Times in order to reach a potential audience of millions.  But it's now clear that the tech giants who control the digital infrastructure are not providing a neutral platform for all points of view.  Instead, they have weaponized their platforms to help the Democrats.

Gallup Poll:  Only 21 Percent of Americans Trust Newspapers.  We have been discussing the rapid decline of American journalism.  As news organizations adopt echo and advocacy journalism as models, the public has lost faith in the media as a source of information.  This is coming at a time when journalism professors are arguing for the abandonment of objectivity as the touchstone of the journalism.  The result is the death of American journalism as reporters frame the news to reaffirm their own views or that of insular groups.  That decline is reflected in chilling detail in a new Gallup poll.

Operation Mockingbird:
Why Is Nobody Talking About This?  The open-secret media is afraid to speak about.  This is why all media sound the same on issues the Deep State — CIA support.  Left and Right media all attacked Trump for daring to claim voter fraud that we all now know is 100% true.  Same for attacks like Syria, all media attacked Trump for NOT attacking if you remember.  Making all of us look puzzled.  Now you know what it is all about.  [Video clip]

The CIA's Operation Mockingbird Manipulated Media.  Operation Mockingbird was a CIA program that made a mockery of free press in the US. The existence of this program which spread CIA propaganda through the media was flatly denied until it was uncovered in Senate hearings in the mid-1970s.  The CIA's claims that it shut the program down in 1976 are undoubtedly a further deception.  They simply shifted the operation to other parts of the agency as they had been caught red-handed.  Before the US Senate Church Committee revelations, the media and CIA colluded overtly in their media propaganda campaigns, as you will read below.  As the public was quite incensed with these revelations, afterwards the collusion became covert and much more sophisticated.  Nowadays media executives or journalists are very careful keep their CIA connections secret, yet there is plenty of evidence the techniques developed and used under Operation Mockingbird continue to be common practice.

Operation Mockingbird:  Deep State Control of the Media | CIA Media Manipulation.  Ever notice most of the news channels are saying the same thing at the exact same time?  Operation Mockingbird was created by the CIA, to weaponize news outlets against the general public.  You are being programmed.  Further proof the lamestream media is controlled by one entity, and can't be trusted as a reliable source.  Question everything.  Operation Mockingbird indicates the CIA's involvement in the manipulation of the news published in the United States and across the world.  Today, one can identify such manipulation with fake news.  Operation Mockingbird commonly refers to the CIA's involvement in journalism during the 1970s.  The CIA bribed students as well as established journalists and reporters to write a CIA version of the events.

10 Dark Conspiracy Theories That Actually Turned Out To Be True.  Throughout history, the world — particularly the the United States — has seen its fair share of conspiracy theories come and go.  From reptilians disguised as humans to chemtrails, it's fair to say that most of these theories are entirely absurd.From time to time, though, a conspiracy theory that many thought to be ridiculous is shown, in fact, to be correct.  In such cases, the truth can prove to be much more terrifying than fiction. [...] Operation Mockingbird was a 1950s program in which the CIA recruited and propped up various media organizations to influence public opinion.  In April 1976, the Church Committee, a US senate task force, conducted an investigation into the CIA's influence over both foreign and national news organizations and stated that the CIA maintained a huge global network that provided intel for the organization and "at times" attempted to influence opinion through the use of covert propaganda.

The Atlantic Is Hemorrhaging Money Post-Trump.  After the 2016 election, a flurry of reports noted Donald Trump's election was breathing new life into our decaying media industry now that they had important work to do, in a quest to save America from tangerine-tinged fascism.  Via NBC News, here's an update on how that's working out at one of America's prestige publications:  ["]Nicholas Thompson, the chief executive of The Atlantic, gave a presentation to employees last month in which he disclosed some uncomfortable truths about the state of the magazine.  Subscription growth, which had skyrocketed in 2020 thanks to the Covid-19 pandemic and the presidential election, had come back down to earth.  For the first time, the number of subscribers had plateaued and started to slightly decline.  And even with last year's substantial surge, the magazine had lost more than $20 million and was on track to lose another $10 million this year, according to slides of the presentation shared with NBC News.["]  Left unsaid, of course, is how foregoing all sense of ethics, propriety, restraint, and good judgment possibly hurt their business model.

Nearly 60% Of Americans Believe Media Is The "Enemy Of The People".  Increasingly, Americans are trusting the media sources less and less that they used to rely on unquestionably to keep them informed but that is the fault of those same media outlets, not the people who distrust them.  Americans, and especially conservatives, already had their doubts about the veracity of many in the "mainstream media" after eight years of sycophantic treatment of Barack Obama.  But after four years of Donald Trump, a wide majority of Americans now see the media for what it is:  A dishonest gaggle of partisan Democrats who serve as that party's propaganda wing.

A Far-Left Journalist Admits What We Already Know About Democrat Politicians.  For all the fawning that the mainstream media does over Democrats, there's a dirty little secret that's rarely spoken of within the news industry.  Julia Ioffe, a far-left journalist, decided to go ahead and say the quiet part out loud on that front.  Ioffe, who spun wild conspiracy theories about Russia and championed Fox News being de-platformed, is certainly no friend of Republicans.  She also once accused Donald Trump of incest — because that's just what journalists do.  Yet, in her newsletter, she expressed her frustration with how Democrats are expected to be treated by the press. [...] One of the most under-reported aspects of the relationship between Democrats and the press is how dysfunctional that relationship is.  That really shouldn't be surprising.  When journalists show themselves to be willing to do or say just about anything to protect Democrats, is it any wonder that those same Democrats take that devotion for granted and demand more and more subservience?

Trump Says One Of His Greatest Accomplishments Was Exposing The 'Fake News Media'.  Former President Donald Trump spoke at a rally in Sarasota, Florida, Saturday where he said one of his greatest accomplishments was exposing the "fake news media."  "I think one of my greatest achievements is explaining to people that the media in this country is corrupt," Trump said.  "Their credibility is at an all-time low.  Did I have anything to do with that?  I think so."  Trump stated, in reference to national news networks comparing President Biden to President Franklin D. Roosevelt, the 34th President of the United States.

Media Malpractice in 2021.  We are living through several social experiments running at the same time.  Unfortunately for us, the outcome is uncertain.  We went from 3 TV channels and 4 radio stations to hundreds of media channels running 24 hours a day and seven days a week.  In theory, the news media was supposed to inform us so we could be responsible members of a democracy.  In fact, the media delivers click-bait sensationalism and 20+ minutes of commercials each hour.  On top of that, we have a world of information in our pocket.  That was supposed to leave us better informed.  Instead, we're fed corporate propaganda and told what we "need" to buy.  I've watched the media create the false impression that gun owners in the United States are dangerous.  Those media inconsistencies are easy to find.

The Media's Collapsing Trust.  If someone inside the American media elite were tapped to deliver a State of the Media address in front of a distinguished audience, they would not be able to claim that their position is strong, stronger than ever.  Sadly, a new survey by the Reuters Institute found the United States ranks last in media trust — at 29 percent — among 92,000 news consumers surveyed in 46 countries.  There are several easy answers for why this is true.  But the most obvious one is the media's dramatic tilt to one side of the political argument.  For many years, the Republicans attempted to reply with polite rebuttals, never failing to concede the Old Media's role as a referee of the democratic system.  Then in 1996, the Fox News Channel challenged the dominance of the liberal establishment.  It made the press look more liberal, and less authoritative.  They've never stopped hating Fox for that.  The media's overt celebration of the Clintons and then, even more fervently, the Obamas made it apparent that any notion of fairness and balance had been shredded and burned.

Report: United States Ranks Last In Media Trust.  For years, we have been discussing the decline of journalism values with the rise of open bias in the media.  Now, a newly released report from the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism at Oxford has found something that would have been unthinkable just a few years ago.  The United States ranked dead last in media trust among 49 countries with just 29% saying that they trusted the media.  The most tragic aspect is that it does not matter.  The media has embraced the advocacy journalism and anyone questioning that trend risks instant cancellation.  The result is a type of state media where journalists are bound to the government by ideology rather than law.  The plunging level of trust reflects the loss of the premier news organizations to a type of woke journalism.  We have have been discussing how writers, editors, commentators, and academics have embraced rising calls for censorship and speech controls, including President-elect Joe Biden and his key advisers.

A Storm Is Brewing:  Project Veritas, Another Reporter Speaks Out Against Their Network.  Last week Project Veritas had a reporter, Ivory Hecker, declare during a live hit that she was being suppressed by her network from telling the audience the truth.  Hecker was a reporter for the Fox News affiliate, Fox 26, in Houston, Texas and told her audience that she was instructed to lie to her viewers.  Hecker claims that the General Manager and the CEO's opinions were more important than delivering honest reporting to the people of Houston. [...] Today another reporter is standing up against their network, this time CBS 62.  April Moss is speaking out about the discrimination she faces at the CBS affiliate and will be giving an exclusive sit-down interview to Project Veritas.  Moss has been with the Detroit, MI station since 2012 as a member of the weather team, and is currently anchoring the weather report on the weekends.

Second reporter goes rogue, announces on live TV [she] will be blowing the whistle on network 'discrimination'.  For the second time in a week, a local reporter announced during a live broadcast that they will be speaking with conservative watchdog group Project Veritas about conditions they face in their employment.  CBS 62 weather reporter April Moss made the surprise announcement in the middle of the weather forecast on Sunday [6/20/2021].  "Speaking of a brand new week, I will be sitting down this week with Project Veritas to discuss the discrimination that CBS is enforcing on its employees," she said.  "Tune in to Project Veritas for my full story."

The Editor says...
[#1] Comments like this get on the air easily, because nobody listens that closely to the weather announcer unless the weather is bad.  On a nice day, the weather is just filler material between commercial breaks, of which there are many.  Even the crew at the TV station isn't paying much attention to the unscripted weather girl, because everybody's busy preparing for the rest of the hour or the rest of the day.  [#2] An announcement of this sort, executed in this manner, leads immediately to the end of one's career in broadcasting.  No other broadcaster will hire someone who does something like this on the air, after being placed in a position of trust.  [#3] If your job at the TV station is like working in a Dilbert cartoon (minus the humor), nobody cares.  You might expose poor working conditions or selective reporting with a stunt like this, but that's not news.  Good luck with your new job at the car dealership.

Tucker Carlson Criticizes Media For Being Guardians Of The Powerful, Instead Of Challenging Them.  Fox News host Tucker Carlson appeared on the "Ruthless" podcast Thursday [6/17/2021] and criticized the media for defending people in power instead of challenging them.  Carlson, the former co-founder of the Daily Caller, said that the reason journalists are protected under the First Amendment is that they are meant to challenge those in power.  He went on to call out the media defending powerful people as "immoral."  "More broadly is that these are people who are reflexive defenders of the regime, the establishment, the people who already have power and don't need defending," Carlson said on the show.  "And I just find that a grotesque orientation for journalists.  I mean, the whole point, the reason we exist is to push back on behalf of people who have no power against people who do.  Period."  "Their view is anyone who challenges the people in power must be crushed," Carlson continued.

Sunday Talks, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis Discusses the Number Two Threat to The United States.  The three top threats to the United States are:  (1) The corrupt United States Intelligence Community, (2) Big Tech's ideological manipulation of information, and (3) corporate U.S. media as a propaganda tool; in that order.  There are other big issues, but those three create the ripple effect that is destroying our Constitutional Republic.  In this interview Florida Governor Ron DeSantis discusses a variety of current events, issues of importance and his positions.  However, the primary focus of the interview is the #2 threat from Big Tech and what DeSantis is doing in Florida to confront the dangers of ideological manipulation, censorship and deplatforming.

The 'Woke' Media Smear Campaign Against Sidney Powell.  Sidney Powell is a former federal prosecutor and leading critic of the 2020 presidential election.  The mainstream media recently sent us two messages about her.  They illustrate how "woke" reporters attack public figures they dislike.  One message was that Powell now admits no reasonable person would believe her claims about manipulated voting machines.  The other was that she thinks President Joe Biden will be forced to step aside to make way for Donald Trump.  Both messages seriously distort Powell's positions in ways intended to demean and marginalize her.  I have never met Powell and have no particular attitude toward her, positive or negative.  But professional journalists should treat everyone fairly.  By not treating Powell fairly, journalists impugn their own professionalism.

The Notorious London Spy School Churning Out Many of the World's Top Journalists.  In a previous investigation, MintPress News explored how one university department, the Department of War Studies at King's College London, functions as a school for spooks.  Its teaching posts are filled with current or former NATO officials, army officers and intelligence operatives to churn out the next generation of spies and intelligence officers.  However, we can now reveal an even more troubling product the department produces: journalists.  An inordinate number of the world's most influential reporters, producers and presenters, representing many of the most well-known and respected outlets — including The New York Times, CNN and the BBC — learned their craft in the classrooms of this London department, raising serious questions about the links between the fourth estate and the national security state.

Republicans are Finally Taking Action To Stop Doing Presidential Debates With Biased Moderators Like Chris Wallace.  Every four years, conservative voters across the country watch with frustration as presidential debates are moderated by liberal journalists who clearly hate Republicans.  The Republican candidate often ends up debating with the moderator as much as their Democrat opponent.  It makes people on the right angry but no one ever does anything about it.  Until now.

The New Secession Crisis: The Democrats have already left the Union.  The Democrats have already seceded from America's historic conception of nationhood in many respects: [...] THEY have turned the media into a propaganda arm of the ruling political party, using their media proxies to engage in a full-time war against Trump's policies and any policy they oppose.  Journalists have abandoned all pretenses of fairness and balance.  During the election campaign, they censored or refused to report on stories, such as Hunter Biden's possible involvement with his father in corrupt dealings with the Chinese government, that would negatively affect Democrats.  This was done in conjunction with the coordinated demonization of the opposition candidate.

The American Media Loves Chinese Money More Than Their Own Country.  Corporate media outlets have accepted millions of dollars from the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to push its propaganda in advertising space — and some of them actively disparaged their own country while doing so.  [Paywall]

Reporters Say Wuhan Lab Leak Theory Was Disregarded Because It Came From GOP.  A number of reporters from mainstream media outlets have recently admitted that the Wuhan "lab leak" theory was originally dismissed because it came from Republicans.  Jonathan Karl, ABC News Washington correspondent admitted to ABC's "This Week" host on Sunday [5/30/2021] that the lab leak theory was not taken seriously because it came from the Trump administration but, "now serious people are saying it needs a serious inquiry."  "Yes, I think a lot of people have egg on their face," Karl said.  "This was an idea that was first put forward by Mike Pompeo, secretary of state, Donald Trump, and look, some things may be true even if Donald Trump said them.  Because Trump was saying so much else that was just out of control ... he said flatly this came from that lab, and it was widely dismissed ... but now serious people are saying it needs a serious inquiry."  Besides Trump and Pompeo, Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) argued that the origin of the virus should be investigated because it does not appear to have come from the animal market, as claimed by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

The Media Aggressively 'Others' Trump Voters.  While the Democrats continue to pursue an endless lawfare campaign against former President Trump, their confederates in the corporate media are calling for the excommunication of Republicans from American politics.  Indeed, they insist that the party of Lincoln now consists primarily of delusional members of the "Trump cult" whose continuing presence in the public square constitutes a clear and present danger to the republic.  As MSNBC's Lawrence O'Donnell expressed it Wednesday evening [5/26/2021], "53 percent of Republicans fail a basic mental competency test question, who is the president of the United States."  O'Donnell's view is metastasizing in the media.

Fawning NYT, WaPo Reports Portray Biden as a Child in Need of Guidance and 'Treats'.  My entry into the world of writing about conservative politics more than twenty years ago was prompted by a most righteous indignation about liberal media bias.  If a time when that bias wasn't awful existed, no one alive today is old enough to remember it.  One of Trump's greatest of the many gifts he gave to the American people is that we no longer have to listen to liberals insisting that the media isn't biased and that it's all just a figment of the collective conservative imagination.  They were helpless under his power, and he made them parade their awfulness in front of the public every day that he was in office.  They knew it too, which is why none of them even feign objectivity anymore.

Amazon Agitprop and American Ambivalence.  It's become chic to express ambivalence towards America and all things patriotic.  Near daily op-eds from legacy media types result in handwringing over how the Left should interact with primitive Americana — should a righteous progressive choose to debase himself by doing so.  Wildly biased stories from places like CNN or the Huffington Post might confuse readers into believing that America is a Third-World cesspool and not a bastion of freedom for the very people who decry having no freedoms.  Don't waste too much time worrying about it, though.  It's all been said before — patriotic Americans are racist.  In fact, patriotism is "code" for racism.

Chinese Communist Party Shelled Out Millions for Propaganda in American Newspapers.  As more and more Americans allow themselves to accept that this pandemic finally might be ending, as we start to see "the light at the end of the tunnel" that the oldest POTUS in American history keeps yammering about, a lot of stuff that's been in the back of our minds over the last 15 months is starting to tiptoe to the front.  We've all got persistent little questions like:  How did all this happen, anyway?  Who's responsible?  How much of what we've been told about the origin and spread of COVID-19 is true, and who benefits from the lies?  And sooner or later, those questions all end up having the same answer:  the Chinese Communist Party.

Major media outlets continue to receive millions from Chinese propaganda front.  A Chinese Communist Party-controlled news outlet paid major newspapers and magazines over $1.95 million between November and April to run advertisements stylized as news stories, according to a Justice Department disclosure filed Monday [5/24/2021].  Time Magazine received $700,000 from the outlet, China Daily, for "advertisement expenses" during the six-month time period, the filing revealed.  The Chinese propaganda outlet also paid a combined $1.26 million for advertisements in The Los Angeles Times, Foreign Policy, The Globe and Mail and the Financial Times during the timeframe, according to the filing.

How American Journalism Became A Mouthpiece Of The Deep State.  Reporters joke that the easiest job in Washington is CIA spokesman.  You need only listen carefully to questions, say, "No comment," and head to happy hour.  The joke, however, is on us.  The reporters pretend to see only one side of the CIA, the passive hiding of information.  They meanwhile profit from the other side of the equation, active information operations designed to influence events in America.  It is 2021 and the CIA is running an op against the American people.  Leon Panetta, once director of CIA, explained bluntly that the agency influenced foreign media outlets ahead of elections in order to "change attitudes within the country."  The method was to "acquire media within a country or within a region that could very well be used for being able to deliver a specific message or work to influence those that may own elements of the media to be able to cooperate, work with you in delivering that message."  The CIA has been running such ops to influence foreign elections continuously since the end of WWII.

Let's Talk About Reporting in War Zones.  The AP reporters certainly knew they had Hamas neighbors. [...] Terror groups use human shields, and the press apparently volunteers to shield them.  Here's the thing:  There's nothing surprising about Western press organizations making arrangements with terror regimes.  It happens all the time in the Middle East.  CNN refrained from reporting on Saddam Hussein's atrocities in Iraq in order to keep its office in Baghdad open.  The New York Times famously led a tour group to the Islamic Republic of Iran.  This situation is even more overt and obvious in Gaza.  The only reason a press outfit like the AP has to open a bureau there is to cover Hamas, but it's never been interested in reporting on how the group stores missiles in homes, schools, and hospitals, or on how little of the money it receives from Tehran goes to building civilian infrastructure or responsible governance.  That's because the only story Hamas wants coming out of Gaza is about the fundamental evil of the Zionist entity.

Lara Logan:  Propagandists and 'Political Assassins' Have Infected the Media.  The state of the media in the United States has shifted over the years to the extent that the industry is no longer recognizable, former correspondent for CBS's "60 Minutes" Lara Logan told The Epoch Times.  "Our profession today is unrecognizable," investigative journalist Logan said during an interview for "American Thought Leaders," noting that since she started out in the industry nearly three decades ago, it has changed "dramatically," and in many ways, "not for the better."  Logan, now the host of Fox Nation's "Lara Logan Has No Agenda," has been at the frontlines for years, reporting on everything from war zones to gang warfare to the Benghazi scandal.

Former police chief:  If we lose the rule of law, we are going to lose America — and we're just about there.  Time was our country was a nation of laws.  Look no further than the Watergate scandal which brought down the Nixon administration.  Back then, you could count on the media to act as watchdogs for the American people, counted on to keep the political class in line.  Sadly, that no longer appears to be the case.  Instead now we see the mainstream media acting as a public relations arm for the Democratic Party, totally disinterested in anything which doesn't fit a leftist political agenda.  The Washington Post, the paper that brought down Nixon, is one of the biggest offenders in looking the other way.

Analysis: How Readers Rated the Media Bias of AP, BBC and The Epoch Times, and More.  In September, we released the findings of our August 2020 Blind Bias Survey, in which over 2,000 people across the political spectrum rated the media bias of five different news outlets blindly, seeing only their content and story choice but not the name of the news publication.  Below are visualizations of the data we collected.  In a Blind Bias Survey, we ask people to self-report their own political bias (Left, Lean Left, Center, Lean Right, or Right) and then present them with content from media outlets.  We show them numerous front page headlines and the first few paragraphs from two articles from a given media outlet, stripping them of any identifying information, and ask respondents to rate the outlet's bias.  While our Blind Bias Surveys are a uniquely powerful and fair way to rate the bias of news sources without giving more weight to one group over another, they alone do not always capture the full picture.  They are essentially snap shots of the top stories on one day.  That misses the bias that may show itself in other stories, in pictures, and on other days.

Politico Reporter on Morning Joe:  I'll Get 'In Trouble' For Saying FL Election Law Not So Bad.  "The big lie" is perhaps the liberal media's favorite phrase nowadays.  Shorthand, of course, for saying it's a lie to claim that the 2020 presidential election was tainted by fraud.  So if the MSM hates lies, you'd think they'd welcome the truth.  But seems like they only want "truth" that fits their liberal narrative.  Speaking inconvenient truths can get you "in trouble."  Take Florida-based Politico reporter Marc Caputo, appearing on today's [5/7/2021] Morning Joe to discuss the election law that Gov. Ron DeSantis signed yesterday. [...] Caputo knew that saying that the Florida law was anything less than horrific would earn him the ire of liberals in the media and elected office.  It tells you everything you need to know about the MSM:  they are all about propagandizing for the left.  Any facts that don't comport with that mission are unwelcome, and can land the person who speaks them "in trouble."

Biden received less negative media coverage than any president on record while Trump received most: study.  A new study shows President Joe Biden has received less negative coverage from U.S. media than any president in the last 30 years.  The study found that about 19% of the coverage of Biden's [first] 60 days days has been negative [...], which ranked best among presidents of the last three decades.  Former Presidents Bill Clinton (28%), George W. Bush (28%), Barack Obama (20%), and Donald Trump (62%) all saw more negative coverage than Biden.  "While the media landscape has changed dramatically since Clinton's presidential inauguration, the Center has been able to conduct a long-term comparison for each of the recent administrations across a smaller subset of outlets and variables," Pew Research Center wrote of its findings.

'There's No Liberal Bias': Joy Behar Claims News Outlets Are 'Basically Balanced' Except For Fox And MSNBC.  Joy Behar claimed Wednesday that most news outlets — with the exceptions of Fox News and MSNBC — are "basically balanced."  Behar joined a discussion on ABC's "The View" about recent corrections on Fox News — on reports of Vice President Kamala Harris' book being distributed at the U.S.-Mexico border and that President Joe Biden planned to limit red meat consumption — and argued that because there were both liberals and conservatives on all of the major outlets, they were effectively balanced.

Where to get straight news.  There can be no doubt that the drive-by media are pure propagandists.  "Orange Man Bad" was just the latest installment in the slander campaign against patriots by those who have mostly achieved little, built little, and hate those who actually work to build better lives.  Their campaign began as early as Woodrow Wilson's tenure, with early (1913) moves to concentrate power in D.C. through the income tax and in big banks with the Federal Reserve.  This profound opposition became obvious after the departure of Dwight Eisenhower.  With each succeeding Republican, new language was employed. [...] Along the way, various "news" outlets such as the New York Times, the Washington Post, CNN, MSNBC, and others dropped any pretense of being purveyors of news.  As Project Veritas has shown on multiple occasions, these entities are literally propagandists — comrades of the Democratic Party.  This leaves us with a problem.  How are concerned Americans to get their hands and eyes on the truth of what's happening?

To Save The Republic, Destroy The Media.  People need to know what is happening in their world.  But what we have now is not journalism, it's something else, something beyond propaganda.  It can't be reformed, the core isn't rotten, it's deliberately corrupt and hell bent on the destruction of our way of life.  Journalism has always had bias, but they at least used to try to hide it.  They'd report some truth, leaving out other, inconvenient parts on the cutting room floor.  Now they make it up.  They make it up for the express purpose of manipulating people, herding people into groups, then turning those groups against one another.  All in service to the Democrat Party.

Named & Shamed:  The "Journalists" Who Went On Chinese Communist Party Junkets, Then Delivered "Favorable Coverage".  Unearthed documents from one of the leading Chinese Communist Party propaganda groups reveal the names of "mainstream" U.S. journalists taking junkets from the group in exchange for favorable coverage, The National Pulse can exclusively reveal.  The trips often came just before opinion editorials and news reports excusing Chinese Communist Party crimes, or opposing trade showdowns with the nation.  The China-United States Exchange Foundation (CUSEF) was founded by the Vice-Chairman of the "highest-ranking entity overseeing" Chinese Communist Party's United Front Department, an effort which aims to "co-opt and neutralize sources of potential opposition to the policies and authority" of the Chinese government.

Media Pants on Fire.  Media trust is at an all-time low, a majority of Americans believing that, "Most news organizations are more concerned with supporting an ideology or political position than with informing the public."  An Axios commissioned survey found that only 46 percent of Americans trusted traditional media, the lowest number ever recorded in the 20 years of this survey.  Gallup found similar distrust of the media, with only 40 percent of Americans having "a great deal" or even "a fair amount" of confidence that the media reports the news "fully accurately, and fairly".  The low point was a 32 percent level of trust in 2016 when Donald Trump was elected president and he correctly labeled the media as "fake news".  20 years ago, media trust was much higher, in the mid 50 percent range, despite Dan Rather at that time, a major network news anchor, lying about George W Bush's National Guard service.  In other words, the media is lying to us and we are catching on to the lies.

The Puppy Dog Media.  [Scroll down]  Their corruption and double standards are real, irrefutably demonstrable, and incredibly influential on the casually attentive swing voters who are so central to determining close elections.  Note that, in recent years, the term "liberal (or mainstream) media" has come to mean far more than just the traditional print and broadcast outlets like the New York Times, Washington Post, CBS, NBC, ABC, PBS, NPR, etc.  A few years ago, it expanded to include the website affiliates of those sources and now, undeniably, it also includes the most popular and oft-used social sites like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and others.  This is common knowledge, and it's disastrous for conservatives.  More and more every day, the communication landscape is stacked in a lopsided manner in favor of the radical progressive viewpoint.  The question is, of course, can anything be done about it?

Coordinated propaganda:
Major News Outlets Pledge to Begin Calling 'Climate Change' a 'Climate Emergency'.  A number of major news organizations worldwide, ranging from Scientific American and The Columbia Journalism Review to The Guardian and Al Jazeera, have signed a pledge to begin referring to "climate change" as a "climate emergency" in their reporting.  "Scientific American has agreed with major news outlets worldwide to start using the term 'climate emergency' in its coverage of climate change," the publication announced Monday in a tweet to its 3.9 million followers touting "the impact we hope it can have throughout the media landscape."  "We Are Living in a Climate Emergency, and We're Going to Say So," the headline of a Scientific American commentary published Monday declares.  Claiming that that climate change is "the biggest environmental emergency to beset the earth in millennia," the piece announces the name change:  "Given the circumstances, Scientific American has agreed with major news outlets worldwide to start using the term 'climate emergency' in its coverage of climate change."

You're Not An Antiracist If You Hide Crimes Because Of The Perpetrators' Race.  In the wake of a follower of black nationalist leader Louis Farrakhan murdering a Capitol Police officer this month, corporate media outlets are declining to connect his actions to his extremist beliefs.  This appears to be becoming the standard for such cases.  A look at the deeper ecosystem of media and narrative construction helps explain why.

The Left Doesn't Want You to Believe in DeSantis Claus.  Is the race for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination already over?  "60 Minutes" seems to think so.  They did a dishonest hatchet job on one governor, leaving all the others jealous that the media doesn't think enough of them to try and destroy them before they become Joe Biden's nemesis.  That governor is Ron DeSantis of Florida.  "60 Minutes" didn't attack Greg Abbott of Texas.  They didn't attack Kristi Noem of South Dakota.  They didn't attack Doug Ducey of Arizona, or even Brian Kemp of Georgia. "60 Minutes" admitted which Republican fuels its nightmares by attacking Florida Man Ron DeSantis.  Governor Ron DeSantis is just 42 years old.  He may only be 5-feet-9-inches, but Florida's 46th governor is currently America's wise giant.  He's the most popular and the most successful governor in the land.  DeSantis is the governor who is calling the shots for all the others. [...] The state's media have been trying to hit him just about every day.  They're not targeting him because he's bad.  They're targeting him because he's right and he terrifies them and the Democrats.

Brit Hume Gives Lester Holt a Journalism 101 Lesson After NBC News Anchor Claimed 'Fairness Is Overrated'.  My colleague Mike Miller reported Thursday [4/1/2021] on an eye-opening moment that happened earlier this week when NBC News anchor Lester Holt accepted the Edward R. Murrow Lifetime Achievement Award during the 45th Murrow Symposium, which was virtual this year due to the pandemic.  As he gave his speech, Holt told Washington State University's College of Communications that "fairness" in journalism "is overrated," proclaiming that some arguments were objectively true and that their counterarguments did not deserve equal time.

NBC News Anchor: 'Fairness Is Overrated'.  NBC Nightly News anchor Lester Holt says "fairness is overrated" and the news media no longer needs to present both sides of a given story.  Holt, who was this week awarded the Edward R. Murrow Lifetime Achievement Award in Journalism from Washington State University, waxed poetic on the news media, at one point declaring that "it's become clearer that fairness is over-rated."  "Before you run off and tweet that headline, let me explain a bit," he said.  "The idea that we should always give two sides equal weight and merit does not reflect the world we find ourselves in.  That the sun sets in the west is a fact.  Any contrary view does not deserve our time or attention."  Holt said "you won't have to look far to find more current and relevant examples," noting misinformation about the 2020 presidential election and COVID-19.  And the anchor said there's no longer any need for a journalist to give both sides of a story equal weight.

Today's journalists are often little more than left-wing thugs.  Old-time reporters were scrappy, working-class men and women who used their bully pulpit to inveigh against wealth and power.  They were patriots, but they felt that their job was to keep a gimlet eye on the government to ensure that the Constitution and laws of the United States applied to all.  Today, journalists are graduates of pricey schools.  They're not scrappy, working-class people.  Instead, they're whiny, entitled, privileged, and anti-American.  They believe that their bully pulpit is to be used to advance a neo-socialist ideology that puts their rarefied, college-educated middleclass cohorts in charge of America for the good of all the little black and brown people and the punishment of all those blue collar white people who still think they're entitled to a piece of the American pie.

Media companies bill is bait and switch to strangle conservative outlets.  The Journalism Competition and Preservation Act (JPCA) is a bait-and-switch attempt that claims to help conservative news sources but would instead purge them from the marketplace of ideas.  Congress should reject it for the freedom-killer it is.  JCPA would give media companies — broadcast and print — an exemption from federal antitrust laws, so they can operate in a coordinated fashion to negotiate prices that social media companies like Facebook would have to pay them to carry their content.  It would ensure that these tech billionaires would have to direct some of their riches into content providers.  But that's a Big Boys' game, where the major players could decide whom to let into their club.  Smaller outlets would be left out in the cold, and the market would suffer.  This is because almost all of the Big Boys are liberal.  For print, there are the New York Times and the Washington Post.  For video content providers, you have the networks, CNN, and MSNBC.  The twin star performers owned by News Corp — Fox News Channel and the Wall Street Journal — are some of the only ones to the right of the 50-yard line.

H.R. 1 is Emblematic of the Crisis of American Democracy.  There is no evidence at all after 60 days of the new administration, of any disposition to collaborate with moderate Republicans in a centrist response to the many policy challenges the administration faces. [...] There is no possibility that properly apprised of the contents of H.R. 1, the American people would approve of it.  Shameful, corrupt, and worthless though much of the American political media now is; contemptible as are virtually all of the political commentators on networks like CNN, MSNBC, and most of the traditional over-the-air telecasters; hopeless and almost self-destructively dishonest as the New York Times and the Washington Post usually are, most Americans remain sensible and patriotic and a great many journalists retain some accessible notion of professionalism and integrity.  All of these traits and resources must now be mobilized.

Are the Courts Moving to Require a More Responsible Press?  In 1964, the U.S. Supreme Court issued its decision in the case of Sullivan v. the New York Times, a landmark opinion regarding libel law and a gift to irresponsible and inaccurate journalists across the land.  Issued during the civil-rights era — a time when many constitutional protections were unthinkingly tossed aside in the name of a higher good — Sullivan essentially gave carte blanche for media companies to attack public figures with legal impunity. [...] Hitherto, libel law had been fairly straightforward.  Opinion was protected by the First Amendment but factual accuracy was required; the burden of proof regarding a contentious statement lay with the defendant and to that end, the Times and other responsible journalistic organizations employed fact-checkers, not only in the news columns but the in ads as well.

Federal Judge Accuses New York Times, Washington Post of 'Shocking' Bias Against Republicans.  Judge Laurence Silberman accused the New York Times and Washington Post of being "Democratic Party broadsheets" in a dissenting opinion on Friday [3/19/2021].  Washington, DC, federal appellate judge Laurence Silberman accused the New York Times and Washington Post, and to some extent the Wall Street Journal, of being mouthpieces for "rather shocking" bias against the Republican Party in a written opinion on Friday.

Federal judge pens dissent slamming decades-old press protections.  A federal appeals court judge issued an extraordinary opinion Friday [3/19/2021] attacking partisan bias in the news media, lamenting the treatment of conservatives in American society and calling for the Supreme Court to overturn a landmark legal precedent that protects news outlets from lawsuits over reports about public figures.  D.C. Circuit Senior Judge Laurence Silberman's diatribe, contained in his dissent in a libel case, amounted to a withering, frontal assault on the 1964 Supreme Court decision that set the framework for modern defamation law — New York Times v. Sullivan.

Federal judge accuses NY Times, WaPo of being 'Democratic Party broadsheets'.  A federal appeals court judge in his dissenting opinion in a defamation case on Friday [3/19/2021] accused The New York Times and The Washington Post of being "Democratic Party broadsheets."  Washington, D.C., Circuit Senior Judge Laurence Silberman, who was appointed by former President Reagan, argued in his opinion that the news industry at large is dominated with a "bias against the Republican Party" that he wrote was "rather shocking."  While the case did not specifically relate to either paper, the judge used his opinion to argue that the Times and Post served largely as mouthpieces for the Democratic Party, adding "the news section of The Wall Street Journal leans in the same direction."

Federal judge issues scathing dissent accusing the media of liberal bias and being a 'Democratic Party trumpet'.  A federal appeals court judge in Washington, D.C. has penned a scathing dissent accusing the media of being a 'trumpet' for the Democratic Party, while calling on his colleagues to overturn a Supreme Court landmark decision protecting the press.  Senior Circuit Judge Laurence Silberman lamented that conservatives are being oppressed by overwhelmingly liberal news media, academia and tech companies creating 'a frighteningly orthodox media culture.'  The judge responded to a decision on Friday to toss a libel suit filed by two former Liberian officials against human rights group Global Witness, over a report implying they had accepted bribes from an oil company.

Stating the obvious:
There can be no American democracy without a free press.  There's a reason we need a free press, despite its faults and foibles:  Democracy won't work without it.  The grand experiment in self-governance that is the United States is rooted in trust and confidence we all will work toward the greater good.  But the nation's founders had experience with a king and his expected benevolence — and what could happen when things didn't work out.  So, they provided for three branches of government to balance each other, along with periodic elections and the rights for us to assemble and seek change when we think things have gone astray.  All fine, but also relatively long-term solutions.  How do we know what our government is doing, how well it is operating[,] or whether our elected officials are up to the job?

Wall Street Journal Bans Reporters from Using the Term 'Illegal Immigrant'.  The Wall Street Journal, owned by billionaire Rupert Murdoch's News Corp., is banning its reporters from using the term "illegal immigrant" and "illegal" to refer to illegal aliens living in the United States.  This week, in an update its style guide, the Journal states that while it will allow reporters to continue using the term "illegal immigration" to describe the process of illegal aliens arriving and staying in the U.S., it will no longer permit reporters to describe individuals as "illegal" or "illegal immigrant" in an effort to stop "labeling people."

Fox10 Top Rated News Anchor Resigns, "I don't like the way the media is going".  Fox10 News Anchor Kari Lake has reflected on the trend-line for U.S. media and decided she can no longer participate in an industry that has devolved to a system of narrative engineering.  Ms. Lake speaks directly to the issue of manipulated news feed script and she is no longer willing to participate in this activity.

The Editor says...
There's something peculiar about this story.  Anyone who would object to the constant left-wing bias on local TV news programs would not be likely to major in journalism or look for an on-air job at a TV station.  In other words, the news reader in this story should have figured out years ago that the news shows on TV are tilted to the left.

The Sound Behind You Is Reality Catching Up (and It's Carrying a Gun).  What value is there in a newspaper that ignores or subverts the truth in the service of some fashionable agenda? [...] It should be obvious to anyone not ideologically blinkered that the Los Angeles Times has wed itself to the social justice cause, so inextricably so that no one at the paper seems cognizant of the fact that social justice, with its appeals for compassion for criminals, comes at the expense of actual justice and the welfare of crime victims.  The Los Angeles Times is hardly alone in its descent into woke activism.  Indeed, the entire mainstream media complex seems to have abandoned its pretense of objectivity (and it has long been just a pretense) in favor of open left-wing activism.  Nowhere is this more evident than in the reporting on issues relating to crime.

Lying About Obama.  Jack Cashill has written over a dozen books, including two about the mysterious 1996 explosion of TWA Flight 800, one about the Trayvon Martin case, and two — now three — about Barack Obama.  His new book, Unmasking Obama:  The Fight to Tell the True Story of a Failed Presidency, is a definitive account not only of Obama's eight years in office but also of the transformation of most mainstream American political journalists, largely during the Obama era, from relatively objective reporters of the facts — emphasis on "relatively" — to dedicated partisans of the left, ready and eager at every turn to cover up unpleasant truths (however important) about Democrats and to promote outrageous lies (however destructive) about Republicans.  Fortunately, in the age of the Internet, the mainstream media have competition.

The media crusade against Ron DeSantis will backfire.  The media are working hard to make Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis the national coronavirus villain.  In doing so, they just might make him the 2024 GOP nominee.  DeSantis has been the target of criticism since the early days of the pandemic for reopening Florida earlier than the experts would have liked.  They predicted his reluctance to lock down the state and implement coronavirus restrictions would result in widespread deaths and overwhelmed hospitals.  DeSantis proved them wrong:  Florida's death rate is half of New York's and far below most other states', including Mississippi's, South Dakota's, Michigan's, Illinois's, and so on.  But the media have not stopped.  Now, they're attacking DeSantis over his vaccination strategy, which is to prioritize elderly residents first.  NBC News ran a piece over the weekend suggesting DeSantis was only prioritizing senior citizens because they might be Republican voters — to say nothing of the fact that senior citizens are also the most at-risk group.

Fake News Wannabes.  We had a pretty good snowstorm the other day.  I switched on the local news when I got up, naively imagining that they would give me a little useful information in between their usual dire warnings not to leave my home.  For the first time that I can remember they weren't much interested in ice or snow.  They were concerned, instead, that the weather not deter me from going to my local vaccination center.  They wanted to educate me, too, that today was the first day of Black History Month, that blacks die at three times the rate of whites from COVID-19, and that the black vote was suppressed in the recent election.  You remember that election?  The same one that the same station had declared, with smug satisfaction, that Joe Biden and Kamala Harris won easily.  On the following day, a glutton for punishment, I watched these journalistic titans show a teaser for their upcoming investigative report — on the topic of the rise of extremism in America.  I didn't need to actually watch to know that they would not be talking about Antifa or Black Lives Matter.  Their extremists are my friends and neighbors.  The American middle class.  You know — that majority far-right fringe.

The Truth About the Nature of Our Mainstream Media.  Many people fundamentally misunderstand, not just the media's intent, but what it is altogether.  People forget that corporations like CNN, MSNBC, CBS, NBC, and more are all businesses.  They're not the public service they present themselves to be at all.  What they really are is something far more sinister and far more untrustworthy.  [Video clip]

Slowing Killing The American Frog.  [Scroll down]  We thought the Democrat actors in Congress were evil fools but watched in horror as they got away with every outrageous ploy.  We will never see indictments for the plotters.  We learned not to trust anyone in power.  Attorneys General, White House Chiefs of Staff, the FBI, the CIA, and the Justice Department were impotent at best.  Without the media's complicity, none of it could have happened.  In my last article, I called it cooperative existentialism — basically, the concept that if a tree falls in the forest, and journalists agree they won't see it or talk about it on TV, it can never be proven to have happened.  Add in the tech giants and their censorship, and we've had the perfect start of a repressive regime where propaganda rules, and reality is what they dictate.  The biggest effect of this was to set friend against friend, and family members against one another.  Those few who simply paid attention to their own lives, because of the media blackout, missed the whole show.  Democrats banked on that happening.

Media trust hits new low.  For the first time ever, fewer than half of all Americans have trust in traditional media, according to data from Edelman's annual trust barometer shared exclusively with Axios.  Trust in social media has hit an all-time low of 27%.  56% of Americans agree with the statement that "Journalists and reporters are purposely trying to mislead people by saying things they know are false or gross exaggerations."  58% think that "most news organizations are more concerned with supporting an ideology or political position than with informing the public."  When Edelman re-polled Americans after the election, the figures had deteriorated even further, with 57% of Democrats trusting the media and only 18% of Republicans.

Trust In Media At All Time Low:  Majority Believe Reporters Purposefully Trying To Mislead People.  Each year, the American people seem to trust the media less and less.  This year's annual survey from Edelman shows trust in traditional media and social media are at all-time lows.  The annual trust barometer, shared exclusively with Axios, found fewer than half of Americans trust traditional media for the first time since the survey began.

How Media Bias Hurts the Country.  Today, there are concerns about the degree of truthfulness, objectivity, and impartiality of the press, about the lack of clear distinction between news reports and opinion, about suppressing essential information or distortion of facts, and even fake news.  In general it is useful to outline what may be considered some of the categories of media bias:  disproportionate coverage, reporting particular events over others and omitting others, misleading definitions, lack of transparency, the manner and tone of presentation of story, drawing inaccurate conclusions, or favoring a particular political party, advertisers, corporate owners of the media, stressing the exceptional rather than the ordinary, presenting a false balance despite evidence to the contrary, analysis or opinion rather than content, reducing events and ideas to a few passages that have a partisan point of view.  Evidence shows that the U.S. mainstream media have a leftist bias.  Since 1989, the number of Americans stating there is a great deal of bias in U.S. news coverage has nearly doubled.

In today's America, the wise person willfully suspends belief.  Twenty years ago, I believed most of what came over the nation's airwaves.  Ten years ago, I was becoming quite the skeptic.  Today, after years of unrelenting attacks on the President, I don't believe any of it.  It's all lies, half-truths, and misinformation, designed to influence elections and steer the collective mentality toward accepting the loss of freedom, the loss of constitutional rights and, eventually, to embrace communist ideas and authoritarian policies.  I'm not sure when it all went south, but I think it was probably long before I first became aware that there was a problem.

It's Breathtaking to Observe What's Going on in Our Country.  We got Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez now saying that she wants the social media companies to censor all conservative media.  We gotta clean up media by getting rid of conservative media.  We gotta clean up America by getting rid of conservatism, and she's asking that the media be the people responsible for making this all this all happen.  Which is not a surprise.  The media is no different than a Democrat, is no different than anywhere else you find a leftist. [...] Look at the record of achievement for Donald Trump in the first three years before the pandemic hit.  The economy alone, and they're destroying the guy, and they have to because they've got to destroy that legacy.  They've gotta destroy that record 'cause it's in direct contradiction to what the Democrats and Biden and all of them in the media are now promoting.

Do Not Believe These People.  Got anything that will harm or embarrass a Republican and they'll have the satellite truck parked on your lawn in 20 minutes.  Have anything casting a shadow of doubt on the character of a Democrat and you might as well dump your own body in the bay.  There hasn't been a rumor unworthy of reporting about Donald Trump and Republicans, no matter how disconnected from the possibility of knowing their "anonymous source" may be.  But when it comes to verified stories that, to put it mildly, reflect poorly on Democrats, any Democrat, no amount of information is enough to warrant informing the public.

Twenty-First Century Rules for Revolutionaries.  #3: The revolution must get control over mass media and the education system.  Truth is defined by whatever the revolution says it is, and anyone who dares speak out is immediately silenced.  Only information advancing the revolutionary cause may be heard and taught.  Once the revolution gains control over mass media, it controls all the information that is disseminated, and once the revolution gains control over the education system, it controls the future.

Was the Capitol storming America's Reichstag fire?  It remains to be seen whether the incursion into the Capitol (Jan. 6, 2021) was the act solely of Trump-supporters or whether there was some involvement by Antifa agents provocateurs.  Given the propagandist character of the major news organizations, the facts may never be honestly sorted out. [...] If the incursion into the Capitol was a false flag attack, it will be a ready-made pretext for draconian suppression of dissent.  The United States today is, as often has been noted, more severely divided than at any point in the lifetime of most American citizens.  People no longer merely disagree on ideology; they positively detest each other, both topically and personally.  In such an atmosphere, the art of discussion suffers, and the practice of civilized debate has all but disappeared.  Even Fox News, once venerated as "fair and balanced," aborts live interviews with invited guests (such as Newt Gingrich) the moment the guest strays from the "party line."  The other networks are even worse.  Only the "correct" views are to be tolerated, not only on live television, but on pervasive social media platforms.

Job cuts in media topped 30,000 in 2020.  The media industry was racked by a record 30,711 job cuts in 2020 — a stunning increase of 201 percent from the year earlier when 10,201 jobs were lost.  The figures, which were rolled out Thursday by outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas, included jobs data from the news industry, advertising, television and movie production.  Last year's dismal results topped the previous all-time record of 28,802 jobs lost in 2008 at the height of the Great Recession.  And cutbacks in newsrooms, whether broadcast, digital or print, accounted for more than half the losses, or some 16,180 cuts.  Newsrooms from Buzzfeed to Vice began cutting back in droves when the pandemic hit in March and dried up advertising revenue.  While some of those publications, like Conde Nast and Meredith, have since reversed pay cuts unveiled earlier this year, not everyone has been able to do so.  A steep 23-percent pay cut at the National Enquirer parent company A360 Media remains in place, for example.

Anti-America Americans are Synergizing Again.  [Scroll down]  Few people knew how bad the reporting was in the '60s and '70s, since the hacks still feigned being truthful.  Their stilted propaganda was subtle, but effective — regurgitate bile repeatedly until others swallow it.  That's still true today; reporters just don't fake honesty anymore.  The mainstream was bad in the Vietnam era, but it's worse now.

Chuck Todd melts down on air when his bias is challenged, then makes it worse.  A bully has more than met his match, and — like most bullies — has disgraced himself when challenged.  Chuck Todd is a bully in possession of a huge weapon, NBC News, of which he is political director, and his perch as host of its premier program, Meet the Press.  But all it took was a challenge from normally mild-mannered Senator Ron Johnson to have Todd shaking in his chair, his voice cracking, and abruptly ending his interview on Meet the Press.  Todd must have been expecting another Republican patsy when he framed the interview as about "the Republican effort to delegitimize Joe Biden's election," claiming "there was no widespread fraud," there is "no chance of overturning the election," and "it looks like it is being done to curry favor with President Trump."  [Video clip]

Defenders of Civilization?  The media has proven deadly but not serious.  Few believed in the "Russian collusion" yarn; all assumed its weaponizing of the original Christopher Steele/Hillary Clinton/Fusion GPS mythography was to paralyze the Trump Administration.  All knew that Trump was far harder on Russia than his predecessor.  And none cared.  The Ukrainian hysteria that led to impeachment — like the Brett Kavanaugh hit and like the news blackout of Biden Inc. — did the country terrible damage, but again was so farcical that even the purveyors of the lies knew that their charges were not serious.  Now after they have destroyed their credibility and lost the trust of the American people, what is next for the media?  We are left with a bad version of a Ministry of Truth, as supposed muckrakers and young Zolas vie with each other to find out what color socks or which flavor milkshake "President-elect" Biden prefers.  Like Pravda that often translated Leonid Brezhnev's incoherent mutterings into truth speak, so too after January we will be reminded that an often incoherent Biden is really Cicero.

One of Trump's greatest triumphs was exposing media's rotten underbelly of unrelenting bias.  President Donald Trump's exposure of the liberal media's bias will go down as one of his "biggest services" to the country, according to political analyst Jeffrey Lord.  The columnist and contributing editor at The American Spectator told Fox News that Trump has helped "out" the hypocritical media figures who have dropped the masks on their biased attempts at so-called journalism and damaged their own reputations in attacking the president for four years.

How to Steal an Election in Four Steps.  [Scroll down]  The media and social media considered the Hunter Biden story so politically devastating to Joe Biden that they censored it.  The American free press banned a true, well-documented, relevant news story because it harmed their candidate politically, something a totalitarian government does.  In the days preceding the election, that same media tried to make it seem as if covid was getting much worse, quickly, and that we needed to mandate closures nationwide: we needed to elect Biden.  Dr. Fauci and the CDC implied the virus could be a problem for years.  Two days after the election they announced that a vaccine had been discovered, which actually had been found weeks or months earlier since a number of researchers and Trump himself had made references to it in tweets, but the news — and the vaccine — had been withheld from the public because it could've helped Trump politically.

Five things CNN might have been thinking when they unexpectedly called out a sleazy Jon Ossoff lie.  Atlanta-headquartered CNN has taken an unexpected role in the upcoming Georgia runoff, which is that of fact-checker ... on Democrat Jon Ossoff. [...] With an election this close and this pivotal, and everyone knowing which side CNN is on, it's natural to wonder what's going on.  Offhand, five theories can be put forward:  First, the ever-shriveling network knows it's shot its credibility wad with listeners as the Democrats' jellyfish ally, everyone knowing that they manipulate the news for leftists.  That may be the result of recent undercover footage by James O'Keefe showing them slanting the news, and packaging it according to the left's "narrative."  Could be a move to regain respectability, which for them is a long climb up.

The Trump-Hating Media Prepare For A Long Nap Under Biden.  [Scroll down]  The national media are, by virtually any recognized metric, now collectively far to the left on the political spectrum.  They hate Trump, capitalism, America's history and culture, and all the blue-collar, hard-working, tax-paying schlubs out there who make it all possible.  The media began the year in COVID-19 denial, pretending, along with leading Democrats, that the fast-spreading virus was nothing to worry about.  They quickly did an about-face after realizing that virus could be weaponized politically against Trump.  Since then, Americans have been subjected to non-stop propaganda on everything from vaccines and hydroxychloroquine to lockdowns and mandatory masks.  The goal:  weaken Trump, and turn Americans into terrified "yes" people, subservient to bureaucrat-scientists such as Anthony Fauci.  That's what's also behind the media campaign to blame Trump, not the communist Chinese, for the novel coronavirus.  No sooner had the virus emerged than the media were reporting that Trump had "slashed" Centers for Disease Control spending, implying he had left us vulnerable.  Wrong.  His budgets increased CDC spending every year.

All Major Western Media Outlets Take 'Private Dinners', 'Sponsored Trips' from Chinese Communist Propaganda Front.  A host of corporate media outlets including CNN, The New York Times, The Washington Post, and MSNBC have participated in private dinners and sponsored trips with the China-United States Exchange Foundation, a Chinese Communist Party-funded group seeking to garner "favorable coverage" and "disseminate positive messages" regarding China, The National Pulse can reveal.  Other outlets involved in the propaganda operation include Forbes, the Financial Times, Newsweek, Bloomberg, Reuters, ABC News, the Economist, the Wall Street Journal, AFP, TIME magazine, LA Times, The Hill, BBC, and The Atlantic.  The relationship is revealed in the Department of Justice's Foreign Agent Registration Act (FARA) filings, which reveal a relationship spanning over a decade between establishment media outlets and the China-United States Exchange Foundation (CUSEF).

Soviet-Style Media Propaganda in America.  Over there in The Wall Street Journal as we travel through the Christmas holiday season, was this very perceptive piece by one David Satter.  Mr. Satter is identified as the "author of Age of Delirium: the Decline and Fall of the Soviet Union and a member of the academic advisory board of the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation."  At one stage in his earlier life he was the Moscow correspondent for The Financial Times of London, arriving in the Soviet capital in 1976.  He went on to work for The Wall Street Journal as a special correspondent covering Soviet affairs.  Suffice to say, he knows well how a state-run media runs. [...] Mr. Satter has hit the nail on the head.  To read or watch the American mainstream media today is to read or watch the American version of Pravda — "Truth" — as it was during its long incarnation as the official newspaper of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.  From the lies of Trump-Russia collusion to the theme that the President is an authoritarian, one untruth after another has been spread repeatedly by the mainstream American media, in exactly the style of the Soviet Union propagandists.

Media heap praise upon themselves as 'heroes' of 2020.  Ace, at Ace of Spades, has uncovered a yucky little trend — the press seems to be intent on praising itself as the heroes of 2020. [...] Never have journalistic standards been lower.  From CBS's once-formidable 60 Minutes dismissing the Hunter Biden story as "not news" to Big Media's complicity with Big Social Media to cover up and in the case of the New York Post, literally censor its news, never has the press disgraced itself.  They promoted the lies of Russia collusion, then the lies of impeachment, then the lies of COVID, and finally, covered up for Joe Biden's corruption, opting instead to ask him about his ordered ice cream flavor, not his record of growing rich while in public office, or the computer evidence of Chinese and Russian influence peddling.  As Ace notes, few lost their jobs, which is an ironic thing, given that few did their jobs.  They impressed no one.  After all, if you have to praise yourself to get any praise, maybe there's a reason for ... not getting the praise.

Why an Editor's Open Letter to Journalists Got Totally Wrecked in a Single Twitter Thread.  If you want to find a way to jack up your blood pressure, just read this tweet from the news director of WHAS11 News.  Her open letter to journalists is almost as bad as MSNBC's Katy Tur referring to those in her profession as first responders.  They're not.  You all know that.  I'm no firefighter, neither is Tur, or any person who writes for a living.  There are very few in this field who put themselves in actual physical danger.  Our own Julio Rosas is part of that elite group, covering the various leftist riots.  I would put war correspondents in there as well of course, but a local news reporter, the White House press corps, and the vast majority of these folks have it easy. [...] Journalists were rightfully mocked for the last four years for being outright terrible at their jobs.

The Editor says...
[#1] Most so-called journalists are really left-wing activists.  [#2] Most college students who major in journalism do so for one of two reasons:  either because they want to "make a difference" (which is activism), or because journalism is one of the easiest majors (along with education and sociology).

Washington Post Vies to Become Official State Media.  The Washington Post recently announced that it's adding more than 150 new jobs to its newsroom, bringing the total number to more than 1,000, the largest staff in the paper's nearly 150-year history.  In the wake of recent layoffs at Vox, Vice, BuzzFeed, Gannett, and the Los Angeles Times, does the Post's good news signal a turnaround for a media industry that was anticipating more belt-tightening measures in the post-Trump era?  No, it just means owner Jeff Bezos is making a run at the paper's main rival The New York Times.  But neither are competing to own the market on hard-hitting reporting and sharp opinion, for they are unlikely to cover a Joe Biden administration any more critically than they reported on Barack Obama's two terms.  That metric is especially relevant after Obama all but admitted recently to television celebrity Stephen Colbert that Biden is simply an avatar for his third term.  And that's where Bezos sees an opportunity.

China, Spies, And Sexual Harassment: 3 Bombshell Stories The Legacy Media Are Hiding From You.  In the weeks leading up to November 3rd's election, one unfortunate truth became abundantly clear:  the legacy media are the Democratic party's propaganda wing.  To the Left — and some in the middle — this will sound like lazy conservative hyperbole, where the media is presented as the "enemy of the people," pushers of "fake news."  The truth is, however, that the "good old days" of subtle subjectivity or mild bias in the field of journalism are long gone.  Instead, the legacy media have ushered in a new age of blatant and shameless narrative control with the expressed goal of achieving partisan political objectives.

Stop Obsessing Over the Media.  [Scroll down]  Of course, mainstream media publications and networks have a liberal bias.  They always have.  But have you followed the trends in newspaper circulation?  Have you compared, say, Fox News' ratings to mainstream networks?  Conservative talk-show hosts fill the airwaves.  Liberal radio shows are so scarce it's hard to make any meaningful listenership comparisons.  This is an amazing turnaround in only 25 years.  There are indeed serious problems in this wide-open, conservative-friendly new media world.  In the past, there were too many gatekeepers to limit discourse.  Now, almost anything goes in this vast marketplace of ideas.

The Editor says...
It is true that "Conservative talk-show hosts fill the airwaves" if you only listen to the radio — especially shortwave or the nearly-defunct AM band.  Television "airwaves" are replete with left-wing propaganda, in the "news", in the mid-day talk shows, and especially in the commercials.  Conservatives are nowhere to be seen, unless they buy 30 seconds of TV time.

Who's Attacking Democrat Process?  Sean Hannity has said that journalism is dead in America, and so I would think he would say that it is written by dead journalists.  I would agree with that except that dead journalists cannot write.  So what has the newspaper's staff evolved into?  Propagandists?  Possibly.  Advertising hacks?  That takes talent.  I think this weekend I hit upon precisely what the Washington Post has evolved into.  It is the newspaper of the American Federation of Teachers.  It is a newspaper edited and written by schoolmarms.  It is intent on teaching its childlike readership something elevated every time its writers are let loose on a topic.  Is Tom Sietsema writing on restaurants today?  He will turn his piece into a lecture on obesity.  Is Kevin B. Blackistone writing on sports?  He will turn it into a lecture on how to be a good loser.  And if the subject is politics, there is a swarm of writers at the Post who will, of a sudden, be haranguing for Good Government, and they do not mind lying a bit.

A Post-Trump Media Landscape.  Over the past five or so years, the media has shifted its business model to focus on making virtually every story about Donald Trump.  From local news stories to every conceivable national scenario, Trump has been the feature. [...] But now, he is on his way out and Joe Biden will be in the White House.  The mainstream, left-leaning outlets are already slipping back into old habits, like running features on Biden's incoming "all-star" administration.  They are writing these glowing pieces about how Biden will make things better.  All because he is Not Trump.  There is no evidence that Biden will make things better, but that's what the mainstream media believes.

Time To Heel.  President-Select, Trojan dementia patient, Joe Biden, has been attempting to utter the words his handlers put on his teleprompter on the rare occasions when they let him out of the basement. "Time to Heal" has been the slogan his PR flunkies have told him to yammer about regarding their fake plan to reunite the country after surviving four years of bad orange man.  The propaganda machine media gush with praise for all Biden's Deep State apparatchik cabinet selections as Biden's handlers attempt to engineer a 3rd Obama term.  Biden is the clueless "nice guy" dupe who mouths words of reconciliation, unity and healing, while his fabricating financier fascist controllers implement their Great Reset plan in conjunction with their global elite co-conspirators.  CNN conducts an "interview" with 3rd grade level questions, designed to comfort the ignorant masses.  Not one challenging question about his bagman Hunter or how he got 80 million votes without campaigning, putting forth his agenda or leaving his basement.  CNN and the rest of the propaganda corporate media are just a division of the Democrat party, along with Facebook, Twitter, Google, Soros, Bloomberg, CIA, FBI, and the rest of the Deep State empire.

Media Bias Is Killing People.  For more than the past decade, and likely longer, the mainstream media has tried (poorly) to profit off the practice of bashing conservatives and conservative thought.  While some would argue that the media has always had a liberal bias, a vast majority of media members today (most can't honestly be called journalists), don't even try to hide their disdain for conservatives.  They list their pronouns in their profiles, they socialize with one another and liberal politicians and activists, and they use their platform to attack conservatives at every possible turn.  This level of conservative opposition reached a fever pitch with President Trump. [...] A September 30, 2020 Gallup poll reports that nearly ninety percent of self-identified Republicans do not trust the media very much or do not trust the media at all.  So does it come as a surprise to anyone that in "red states" there has been widespread rejection of public health messages pushed by the media?

Fox News' Media Suicide.  Sadly, the unprecedented goalpost-shifting and manipulation by the Left, bolstered by the usual obsequious accommodation by the Right, has created a national humiliation that will fester for a long time to come, no matter who gets inaugurated in January.  Should that be Biden, I shall leave it to more expert political analysts to dissect the cause and effects of such a disaster, while I'll focus on the cultural, media, and artistic ramifications.  And I'll start with the most astonishing example of media suicide in my lifetime — that of the Fox News Corporation (FNC). [...] The visionary Roger Ailes and Rupert Murdoch built FNC as the singular center-right alternative to the mainstream vortex, an oasis for discouraged conservatives.  The creation paid off when Fox won higher ratings and greater profit than its cable news rivals combined.  All they had to do this year to stay on top was fairly cover the president, unlike the competition, and they couldn't manage that.

Who Will Be the Fraud Deniers?  Election fraud at the industrial scale perpetrated in the 2020 election is a crime most Americans will remember all their lives.  Books and movies will come out.  Retired math PhDs exiled to the basement by their spouses will continue to find statistical patterns that simply do not happen in straight data sets.  Like all great crimes, the 2020 election fraud will have a diffusion curve with early believers and early deniers, later adopters and fewer deniers and finally, only the ideologically blind will deny.  Diffusion curves happen in nature, in technology, in disease spread, in the understanding of any popular idea.  In early stages only the really committed dig in.  Over time, a realization makes its way into popular culture and eventually most have generally seen the data.  We are departing the early adopter stage of 2020 election fraud understanding.  The all-in media is double timing to convince the later adopters there is nothing to see here.  It isn't working.  Too much stuff is coming out from too many places and there are just too many alternative web sites publishing fraud examples on such a scale it cannot be denied by any but the willful.

Setting the Stage for Revolution.  This is what makes current events in America both interesting and dangerous.  The various pieces of the puzzle that is liberal democracy are not working.  The media, for example, is nothing more than the public relations department for the narrow cabal that is currently running the empire.  The people who used to claim that "democracy dies in darkness" are now demanding censorship and speech laws.  Both political parties now compete with each other for the love of Wall Street, Silicon Valley, and global interests.  Democrats, for example, are promising to amnesty tens of millions of illegal aliens, while the Republicans promise to give unlimited helot labor to the tech oligarchs.  Exactly no one voting in either party wants any of this, but it does not matter as the issue will never be put to the voters anyway.  Of course, what is put before the voters does not matter, as no one now has any trust in the election system.

Honest Journalism, We Hardly Knew You.  [Scroll down]  The pre-internet media really abandoned any pretense of objectivity during the Clinton Administration, although there was still enough shreds of old school journalism left then to let the public see into Whitewater, the White House travel office, Vince Foster's "suicide," and myriad other scandals.  But as impeachment loomed, the media reported tilted decidedly Left; lampooning New Gingrich, vilifying Ken Starr, and portraying Bill and Hillary Clinton as innocent victims of a right-wing smear job.  It was during the 90s that I watched everything I'd be taught about the Fourth Estate being the objective reports of truth thrown to the four winds in the quest of partisan one-upmanship.

The Left-Wing Media Fell for China's COVID Lies.  This week, CNN aired an "exclusive" report about a "vast trove of leaked documents" showing "China underreported Covid-19 numbers, took weeks to diagnose new cases and didn't disclose a December flu spike in Hubei."  Well, yes.  Anyone willing to be honest about the longtime antics of the Chinese Communist Party concluded this in January. [...] When the White House Coronavirus Taskforce was officially launched on January 29, 2020, newsrooms in Washington, D.C., missed an enormous opportunity to deliver crucial information to the American people.  Editors and executives could have swapped out political reporters in the White House Press Corps for healthcare reporters.  This way, there would have been a higher chance legitimate questions about the disease would have been asked.  Instead, they chose to keep their partisan, anti-Trump reporters in the room and focused on President Trump's (accurate) language rather than the details of the disease, lockdowns, hospital preparation and more.

One of the Last Honest Reporters Speaks OutSlanted is the third book by Sharyl Attkisson, and as with her other two, it is a refreshing read.  It is nice to know that there are still independent journalists who put fact over opinion, and she is one of those.  To no one's surprise, she talks about the shift in the news, from a focus on reporting the facts to more on trying to push a narrative on the American people.  Attkisson begins Slanted by talking about George Orwell's book 1984.  Attkisson tells the story of "the hapless protagonist, Winston Smith, a government records editor at the Ministry of Truth — which is a job that's all about lies.  The modern media have also discovered how to carefully filter information on the front end to make sure that only the 'correct' view is presented in the first place.  That way, the story never has to change."  She directly told American Thinker, "We in the media have, to a frightening degree, gotten on board with the efforts to convince the public that they do not need or deserve access to all information, only that which powerful interests see fit for them to have."

Joe Biden:  Unity, Fraud, and Power.  Biden's lickspittles in the legacy corporate media have no power to anoint him president-elect.  For him to accept such a designation, much less draw up a fraudulent "office" bearing that name, promotes disunity, not unity.  If Joe Biden truly wished to unify the country, he would wait until the vetting process played itself out in the six disputed states where widespread, substantiated allegations of vote fraud have been made.  Only then, if Joe Biden were interested in unity rather than his own political power, would he take that step.

In Exclusive Interview, Sharyl Attkisson Chronicles Decline and Fall of MediaSlanted is the third book by Sharyl Attkisson.  As with her other two, it is a refreshing read.  It is nice to know that there are still independent journalists who put fact over opinion, and she is one of those.  To no one's surprise, she talks about the shift in the news, from a focus on reporting the facts to pushing a narrative on the American people. [...] Another chapter is about CNN, "The Cable Narrative Network."  Attkisson feels that the network has transformed from "a relatively unbiased news source into the notoriously slanted vehicle."  She sees that the people running CNN are not content to report the news; instead, "their goal is to tell readers and viewers what to think.  And to punish those who refuse to toe the line by ridiculing their work, leveling personal attacks on them, and even censoring their objectionable views and opinions."

Is the Democrats' Election Heist 'Too Big to Fail'?  President Trump and Fox News enjoyed a mutually beneficial relationship, until, loyalty already fraying, Fox betrayed Trump on election evening by prematurely calling Arizona for Biden.  Only stalwart reporters such as Mark Levin, Judge Jeanine Pirro, Lou Dobbs, and Sean Hannity remain by Trump's side.  Republican elected officials who retained power are mostly mute.  Although the predicted Blue Wave never materialized as Republicans flipped House seats and Senate control is so close it will only be decided after the results of a Georgia runoff election are known, feckless state governors and attorneys general overseeing election preparations stood idly by as Democrats set up the apparatus for the big election steal.  Republicans in the commonwealth of Pennsylvania were the exception.  Resisting the illegal power grab the Democrats had implemented by a massive mail-in-ballot scheme and extending, by three days, the deadline to vote, Republican state officials appealed to the Supreme Court.

Reality and the Narrative.  [Scroll down]  We're all assumed to know how it ended.  Joe Biden won.  Any demurral on that score is put down to feigned ignorance, attempted cleverness, or petulant perversity.  After all, the Associated Press called the election for Joe Biden a couple of weeks ago.  Other news agencies, from the Wall Street Journal and Fox News to CNN, the New Woke Times, and the Washington Post were right there on cue, hailing him the winner.  Time, the former news weekly, devoted its cover to Joe Biden, "46th President of the United States."  Twitter was on the case, adding little warning messages to tweets about the election it didn't like, suspending the accounts of people whose opinions it disagreed with, throttling the ability of those who dissented to broadcast their dissent.  Who knows what Google and Facebook are doing with their search results.  Some secrets are too deep for the light of day.  And that is my point.  The strongest argument for Biden's victory is not the vote tally.  It is the monolithic narrative, pumped up like one of those inflatable play castles at a child's birthday party.  With every passing day, that narrative becomes more boisterous, more assertive, more uncompromising.

Media's suppression of key stories likely gave Biden election win, study finds.  Democratic candidate Joe Biden likely won the presidency not based on any particular policies but because the media refused to cover several key stories and issues, according to a new analysis.  A survey of 1,750 Biden voters in Arizona, Michigan, Georgia, Nevada, Wisconsin, North Carolina, and Pennsylvania — all but one, North Carolina, called for the former vice president — conducted on behalf of the Media Research Center asked respondents what they knew about eight issues or stories MRC believes were not sufficiently covered by the press.  Of those surveyed, 17 percent said they would not have cast their ballot for Biden if they had known about at least one of the underrepresented stories.

'Reporter' Takes a Moment to Give a Joe Biden Fashion Update.  Not that it wasn't crystal clear before Election Day, but in the weeks since, the mainstream media has dropped any lingering pretense of objectivity in their "reporting."  We've seen examples galore of what state-run TV is likely to look like under a possible Biden-Harris administration from media performance artists like PBS NewsHour's Yamiche Alcindor to CNN's Brian Stelter and his colleague Jake Tapper, just to name a few.  Though there's obviously [...] a lot going on in this country right now, like the Wuhan virus pandemic, the heated debate over draconian lockdowns, President Trump's legal challenges on the election results and Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden's prospective cabinet picks, some "reporters" are taking a moment to give us the even more crucial updates on Joe Biden and his cabinet choices.

There's More Than One Way to Steal an Election.  The evidence is strong that the Democratic Party press swung this year's election to Biden by its selective non-coverage of critically important news stories that reflected well on President Trump or poorly on Biden.  The Media Research Center has conducted extensive polling in seven key swing states.  The MRC asked Biden voters whether they were aware of certain facts or news stories, and if they were not, whether awareness of those facts or issues would have caused them to change their vote away from Biden. [...] You might think that Democratic voters simply don't care about the facts.  But that isn't what respondents said in this survey.  MRC asked whether, if the respondent had known a particular fact, he would nevertheless have voted for Joe Biden, voted for President Trump, voted for a third-party candidate, or not voted at all.  It turns out that all of these under-reported stories had the potential to swing significant numbers of voters away from Joe Biden.

Poll: One In Six Biden Voters Would Have Changed Their Vote If They Had Known About Scandals Suppressed By Media.  A new report from the Media Research Center shows that the media's lack of coverage and big tech's suppression of certain issues and scandals surrounding Democratic Presidential Nominee Joe Biden could have cost President Donald Trump the election.  The survey results report that 17 percent of Biden voters would not have voted for the Biden-Harris presidential ticket if they had known about at least one of the eight news stories that were suppressed by big tech and mainstream media outlets.  "This is not happenstance.  This is not coincidence.  This is not oversight and this is not just a mistake," president and founder of Media Research Center Brent Bozell said at a press conference Tuesday.  "These were deliberate decisions that were made thousands of times, literally thousands of times, to either twist or to not cover it at all, which we found in this case."

The media are complicit in the fraud we see today.  The Founding Fathers always worried that American democracy — which was a grand experiment — could be corrupted from the inside.  They were right to be worried.  In the past four years, we've witnessed America's enemies trying to rig democracy.  Those efforts came to fruition with the recent election.  There are innumerable signs showing this rigging.  Some of the most common signs come from the media, which ignore blatant evidence that justifies indicting, arresting, or, at minimum, questioning Democrat elected officials.  The media's been doing this all year, especially with regarding to Biden. [...] The media choosing sides breeds corruption.  The media, with help from the tech giants, has also hidden past election fraud.  For example, famed attorney Lin Wood says that the voter fraud scheme in 2020 got trial runs in 2016 and 2018.  However, Google and YouTube make it almost impossible to find links to information about either fraud or Lin Wood's statement.  These entities are setting and driving the narrative.

Tucker takes on how the election was really stolen.  [Scroll down]  [W]hat the media have done for the past four years is inane, shallow, vulgar, and mean-spirited to the point of evil, but the steady drumbeat works.  Although it's hard to remember, before Trump came along, the media would at least occasionally report rather objectively about actual news, both foreign and domestic.  Nowadays, the news is blatantly slanted in whatever direction benefits Democrats.  Black Lives Matter riots are racial freedom fests while the people who protest being locked in their homes and losing their livelihoods are white nationalist haters.  Nor do the media ever report Trump's accomplishments.

A Time of Chaos Upon Chaos Atop Chaos.  America will weather its current hysterias.  But the tensions and furor are reminiscent of the last generations of the Roman Republic.  In its last century, Romans began to adjudicate politics by obsequious partisan town criers (their version of our media), mass demonstrations, and freelance street gangs.  Looters, arsonists, and demonstrators did pretty much as they pleased in the streets of Rome without fear of legal consequences.  In our time, the media has now vanished — kaput, no more, ended.  Within a few hours, it goes from a Ministry-of-Truth love session with Joe Biden to a steaming verbal assault on the president's press secretary — without a shred of awareness how ridiculous they appear in their passive-aggressive schizophrenia.  The only constant is that reporters unapologetically seem to jettison their principles and professionalism to calibrate what they say and do by whose politics they support.  They would prefer to be entirely discredited under a Biden presidency than be real journalists during a Trump Administration.

Why is challenging suspicious election results 'a threat to our democracy'?  On Thursday, President Trump's legal team presented many pieces of information about the election that deserve to be investigated.  But the media have no interest in that.  Instead, they essentially black out the news and ask Trump to concede so they can crown their chosen king.  Worst of all, they continue to falsely claim there is no evidence of fraud.  The New York Times and others have written about the potential fraud on universal mail-in ballots in the past, as have other outlets, but now they call Trump a liar.  The media outlets know that rules were changed to make verification of mail-in ballots less verifiable, but they don't care.

News reporters should not be partisan tweeters.  Journalism as an occupation has transmuted from a profession to report the news, into political advocates who spin it, usually in one direction.  Journalism professors are overwhelmingly hard left, and like many on the left they believe that outcomes are more important than ethics.  Financial pressures on media companies have produced a race to the bottom as they pander to people who don't really want news, but simply want their feelings reinforced.  Indeed, many people actually get their news entirely from social media, where they read what "friends" have posted.  Social media companies themselves learned long ago to customize that "news" to appeal to each individual customer.  That's fine for a company selling clothes, but not so fine for a company selling news.

Establishment Media's Real Concern: How Did Trump Manage to Do So Well?  The establishment media's preferred answer to how the polls failed to detect millions of Trump voters is that the error was stupid, not sinister.  "Whoops, we just missed them" — despite this being pollsters' business, their assurance that they had "fixed" their polls' problems from 2016, and the mistake being of incredible size.  As results show, 2020's error is greater than 2016's.  The establishment media has readily blamed the pollsters, essentially exonerating itself by saying that it was just reporting what it was told.  Yet neglected is the fact that the polls' results were confirming the establishment media's own bias.  This bias has been repeatedly cited for decades and has never been clearer than over the last four years.

The Agenda of Fox News Many Have Forgotten and Perhaps Many More Do Not Know.  [Scroll down]  It was in 2014 when writer Mickey Kaus was chastised by Tucker Carlson, then a Fox contributor and now prime-time show host, for writing an article in the Daily Caller outlining the relationship between Rupert Murdoch, his company Fox News, the talking heads under his control and authority, and Murdoch's request for pro-amnesty propaganda to be broadcast on the network.  Tucker Carlson took down the article from the Daily Caller, and subsequently Mickey Kaus quit in disgust over the agenda-driven editorial decision.  Apparently some things are just too sensitive for sunlight and exposure.  However, what Mickey Kaus outlined was a pattern within Fox to push immigration reform and included a first person excerpt between David Axelrod and Rupert Murdoch: [...]

Fox Tries to Appease Viewers With a Statement From Sandra Smith, But It Doesn't End Well.  Fox News has hit a crossroads with a lot of their viewers after their election coverage where they not only called Arizona early for Joe Biden, but also claimed that the Democrats were projected to have picked up a five seat gain in the House when in fact, so far, 12 seats have flipped to Republican winners.  Fox also antagonized the viewers when Neil Cavuto cut off Kayleigh McEnany when she started to talk about fraud in the election and when Sandra Smith was caught on hot mic appearing to mock a guest, Cleta Mitchell, who was also questioning the election results.  [Video clip]

Electile Dysfunction.  American TV pundits are smug trained seals with too much makeup and blow-dry, and they all sound the same with their rehearsed stentorian voices.  Brian Williams, or the hero of Iraq as I call him after he got caught lying about a missile attack on the chopper he was riding — he was safely on the ground and trembling — sounded somber announcing that South Dakota had been called for The Donald.  These so-called anchors no longer even pretend to be objective, and they had long faces when the predicted Biden landslide was gone with the dawn.

We Are All Southerners Now.  When I was growing up in Ohio, the South began at the banks of the Ohio river.  Below that muddy line, everyone knew, there lived a different breed of backward and uneducated people with lazy minds and even lazier language skills.  You could have contempt for them, a privilege I indulged from time to time.  I personally learned this contempt from two main sources.  The first was from the television.  Any discerning youngster could see that denigrating Southerners was the daily fare of the national news.  Nothing very good was ever said about that corner of America.  TV reporters were more polite then than they are now, but even back in the day, there was something both explicitly and implicitly New York-ish about the evening news.  New York was where the networks lived.  The South was a place reporters visited after they had prepared themselves by reporting from a war zone or a third-world country for a while.

Mainstream Media United in Forcing 'President-Elect' Biden Down Your Throat.  Some skepticism is called for when the mainstream media are so uniformly in agreement about anything, let alone about a hotly disputed presidential election.  "President-elect" is the legal term for the person with 270 or more votes cast in the Electoral College, which doesn't even meet this year to cast those votes until Dec. 14, a month in the future.  Then, and only then, will we have a "president-elect."  And maybe not even then if the investigations of corruption in several states haven't concluded and hold up certifying state election results.  So, at least until then, the correct term for Joe Biden is not "president-elect," despite the mainstream media gratuitously hanging that title on him.

We'd planned to live here our whole life.  Thanks to Democrat policies, we're moving.  I came to Minneapolis in 1972, lived in the western burbs until I married in 1991, and bought a house in a small but growing suburb northwest of town.  We have been very happy here.  We like the place and the people.  It was our intent to spend the rest of our days here.  Then the Chicoms sent us a little biological warfare experiment.  If anybody else had done that, we would have called it an act of war.  The Dems and the Beltway swamp-dwellers had tried everything in the book and not in any book to put down the administration of the duly elected president.  Nothing worked until we got that little bio-gift from the Chicoms.  The "free press" ran with it.  They ramped up the fear, counted the cases, counted the deaths, counted everything and made the counts look as bad as they could.  If a foreign country had done that, we would have considered it an act of war.  But since our own "free press" spread the fear, it was just news. [...] It was not much more of an epidemic than other bad flu strains of the past.  It mostly kills people who were about to die anyway.  But with help from the "free press," we have made this epidemic into a panic and thus a pandemic.

Media Disgrace Themselves in Calling Election Still Being Contested.  The electoral waters are being muddied by a number of arbitrary decisions taken by Trump's unrelenting enemies in the media.  It was clear enough late on election night that Trump had carried North Carolina and Alaska, yet those states haven't yet been allocated to him by any of the media companies.  Arizona was awarded to Joe Biden by Fox News relatively early on election night, in what appeared to be a dramatic signal that that organization was ending its comparatively favorable treatment of the administration, and getting onside with its likely replacement.  In truth, Biden is ahead in Arizona but his lead is steadily dwindling and by any normal criteria, Arizona remains an undecided state.  So does Georgia.  If Alaska, North Carolina, Arizona, and Georgia are added to Trump's column, he has 259 electoral votes, 11 short of the 270 required for election.  The 20 electoral votes of Pennsylvania are being discussed before the U.S. Supreme Court this week.  The requirement of Pennsylvania legislation that observers of both major parties be allowed to inspect all ballots has been widely ignored.  Since the Constitution assigns responsibility for the administration of federal elections to the legislatures of the states, the three-day extension for the acceptance of mailed ballots granted by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court is beyond the legal power of that court.  That extension is the principal apparent basis for Biden's very late and very small lead in that state.

Jill Biden sees glowing coverage from media, praised for ability to 'redefine role of first lady'.  Throughout the 2020 presidential election, Jill Biden was never far from the side of her 77-year-old husband, Joe Biden, and with the same corrupt media establishment that carried the former vice president across the finish line having rushed to call the race in his favor, they have shifted to a new strategy of moving on from an election that remains in flux.  And part of that campaign centers on casting Mrs. Biden as the incoming first lady, but The Hill may have been a little too eager in that endeavor when they ran with the headline, "Jill Biden set to redefine role of first lady."  Amid vocal concerns during the campaign about Biden's mental capacity, which he did little to dispel with slurred words and frequent flubs, critics often noted that Jill Biden seemed to be the architect behind her husband's run, often sitting with him in interviews — she was even seen uttering President Trump's name under her breath when candidate Joe couldn't seem to recall who he was running against.

Foxed Up Beyond All Recognition.  New, but not improved, Fox News has chosen to present its election coverage with a strong pro-Joe Biden bias, calling Arizona early (it is still in question eight days after Election Day), predicting Democrats would pick up five seats in the House of Representatives (Republicans appear to have picked up as many as a dozen), calling the election prematurely (Biden is not the "president-elect"), and suppressing news on election fraud and related litigation (it's real and ongoing).  This is the story of the rise and fall of Fox News, and the rise of Newsmax and One America News.

Fox News Moves Left and a New PR Firm is Only Part of the Reason Behind the Shift.  On Saturday around noon Fox News anchor Brett Baier posted an innocuous tweet, urging people to tune in and watch him, and longtime on-air partner Martha MacCallum, as they provided coverage of the ongoing election developments.  Baier was met with almost universal contempt for this post.  The thousands of comments were filled almost exclusively with those declaring how they were done with Fox News, a rather notable shift in tone from the audience. [...] Over the past week or so Fox News has made some brash decisions that not only have gone noticed but literally repelled their own audience.  These moves reflect a desire on the corporate side to alter the thrust of the #1 news network, which is not only foolhardy but is already affecting their audience share.

Fox News' betrayal - there's a question hanging in the air.  Now that millions of Fox News viewers have awakened to the network's betrayal of their loyal viewers, what are we to think about those hosts we have let into our homes all these years?  We've long thought that these anchors we relied upon for actual news were on the same political page as their viewers — reverence for the Constitution, law enforcement, our military, freedom, belief in American greatness, etc.  While it was clear some were not all-in Trump fans, Fox viewers assumed they shared their values.  So have they been faking all these years?  Have they gone home and made fun of Fox watchers and voted Democrat?  Or have they now been ordered by Rupert Murdoch's son to move left, to mimic CNN and MSNBC?

Big Media Revealed As Corrupt, Venal And Biased — So What Else Is New?  [Scroll down]  Just in recent days, the examples of the media's (including social media) stunning irresponsibility, outright mendacity and pro-Joe Biden bias are legion:  [Numerous examples]  Now, let us again underscore the fact that these all happened just within recent days.  We are not including other recent media outrages, such as blatantly ignoring evidence that Joe Biden and his son Hunter have been taking money from unfriendly nations for years; or that the Communist-controlled China Daily has paid major U.S. newspapers millions to print propaganda; or that Twitter, Facebook and YouTube give foreign extreme-left propaganda sources a pass while shutting down Trump and conservatives here in the U.S.; or that, in newsrooms across America, anyone daring to deviate from far-left orthodoxy can now find themselves "canceled," both professionally and personally, in what one foreign newspaper candidly calls the "death of free speech."

The Media Should Not Have 'Called' This Election.  Joe Biden has made it clear that he will do his best to "unify" the country following an election in which more than 71 million Americans — nearly half the electorate — voted for Donald Trump.  It is an admirable goal.  But any chance of that happening depends on the American people having confidence that the election outcome resulted from a fair and honest process.  Though never perfect, our electoral system has generally instilled confidence for the past 231 years, which is why it has worked so well.  Under the contentious circumstances of this election, the traditional media's decision to declare a victor before the official process had run its course has diminished the confidence of Trump voters in the announced result.  Even if the declaration of a Biden victory is found to be accurate, the call was premature, and it will make the effort to unify our nation far more difficult.

There Has Been a Revolution Against Red State America, Not an Election.  There are many credible reports of organized vote fraud committed by Democrats.  The only question is whether the Republican establishment will support challenging the documented fraud or whether Trump will be pressured to concede in order to protect the undeserved reputation of American Democracy.  For those influenced by a partisan media that is denying the massive fraud that occurred, here is an overview of the elements of the fraud and the legal remedies. [Link]

Of Color Revolutions:  Foreign and Domestic? (The First 72 Hours.).  In a further attempt to circumvent the intelligence of the voter, the American media machine has, this past Saturday, Nov 7, 2020, arbitrarily declared Joe Biden president.  There are many problems with this report being accurate.  The largest problem is that of the media itself.  In declaring Biden the winner, this media ignores very credible accusations of Biden campaign election fraud, substantiated problems with the mail-in ballots, successful legal challenges and, more importantly, that at least three of the states in question will be available to Trump, by state law, to perform a recount.  When these recounts do occur, they will likely be under court order and also allow all Republican vote watchers to view the millions of mail-in ballots of which thousands are already in question.  To begin this presentation of the first 72 hours since election night Nov 3, it would serve the voter well to remember:  This is same media which first spent more than two years championing, like Biden himself, the utterly debunked Russia Gate allegations and next the Democrat's very flawed and deliberately tepid Impeachment attempt against incumbent Trump.  More to the point, as of Election Day of this past Tuesday, that media had worked a blanket media censorship of the very credible allegations of a Biden family influence-peddling operation while their candidate was, then, Vice President.

Bret Baier Deletes Tweet that Exposed Exploding Backlash Against Fox News.  The Fox News Channel's Bret Baier has deleted a tweet that proved the backlash against the disgraced cable news network has exploded.  On Saturday, yours truly wrote about how the backlash against Fox News hit Defcon 1.  To backfill my case, I specifically focused on the withering responses to an innocuous tweet posted by Fox's Special Report anchor Bret Baier. [...] All Baier did, as I pointed out Saturday, was ask people to tune in — as anodyne a tweet that was ever tweeted, and yet, the replies, tens of thousands of them, were (according to my good faith look) withering, brutal, and by a margin of around 100-to-1, if not higher.  Here are a few examples of what was going on in Baier's replies...

Rough Seas Indeed.  Let me set something straight right from the start.  No way do I believe that America just had (is having) an election.  What we are witnessing is an attempted coup by an elite globalist/fascist/communist cabal, aided and abetted by their idiot minions.  We the People elected Donald Trump president for a second term.  Period; end of story.  Attempts to steal the election from us must not be allowed to stand. [...] After the pathetic showing by "Fox News" on election day I have taken my TV viewing elsewhere.  There are some great alternatives out there:  Blaze TV and OAN for example.  Personally, I've taken to watching "Newsmax TV" — what a breath of fresh air.  I had forgotten what honest journalism is like.

Fox News ratings tumble after declaring Biden prez; 'off air' clip of Sandra Smith's reaction to guest not winning anyone back.  Ratings for Fox News have tumbled significantly over the past week since the network called Arizona for Democrat Joe Biden on Election Night and has since joined other outlets in declaring him the winner of the 2020 presidential election.  "Fox News's audience plummeted yesterday after Biden became president-elect.  During the Biden/Harris speeches, Fox had three million viewers, the lowest total of any network," wrote Michael Grynbaum in an "Updates" column in The New York Times.

Anger Grows Among Fans Of FOX News Over Network's Coverage Of 2020 Election.  One of the things that has been amazing to watch in this election cycle, is the presentation on FOX News and the way people are reacting to it.  People who consider themselves fans of the network are not happy with the direction it's headed it, and are making themselves heard on social media.

Keep Fighting in the Courts, and Start Fighting the Libertarian Party.  Through it all, the media ran interference for Biden and the Democrats.  Biden is a lifelong racist, with the most remarkable of blatantly racist comments reflecting racist beliefs.  Yet he was portrayed as an opponent of "systemic racism" — itself a bogus fraud in a country where all races have an equal opportunity to succeed and flourish.  He is a public liar and has lied brazenly for half a century, even about his own biography.  Whole swaths of his family are engaged in massive financial corruption.  Yet the media protected him, buried the news of his and their evil, and portrayed him as a smiling Uncle Joe.  He was able to hide for so long in his basement because he had CNN, MSNBC, ABC, NBC, CBS, PBS, the New York Times, and the Washington Post doing his campaigning for him.

Anger Grows Among Fans Of FOX News Over Network's Coverage Of 2020 Election.  One of the things that has been amazing to watch in this election cycle, is the presentation on FOX News and the way people are reacting to it.  People who consider themselves fans of the network are not happy with the direction it's headed it, and are making themselves heard on social media.

Thoughts on Where We Stand Now.  [#1] My guess is that in a perfect world, where only legal voters vote, and everyone votes only once, President Trump won the election.  The problem is that, while there is ample evidence of many instances of voter fraud as well as innocent mistakes, there is no time to investigate them thoroughly and "prove" — as the press keeps demanding — that fraud or error swayed the election in a particular state.  This is an inherent problem that can be solved only by better electoral procedures, which the Democrats will fight to the bitter end.  [#2] Investigative journalism no longer exists, so the press outlets demanding that President Trump prove the prevalence of voter fraud will themselves do absolutely nothing to investigate whether the election was honestly decided. 

When Establishment Republicans Tell You This Election Was on the Level, Do You Believe Them?  I saw the major news networks cut away from live remarks by the president of the United States because he was questioning how his leads in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Georgia, and Michigan could disappear in the middle of the night with unexplained vote dumps for his opponent.  The same media establishment that has spent four years calling the 2016 election stolen and illegitimate is worried that Americans might believe that the 2020 election is stolen and illegitimate.  Nothing strange about that.  It's the media's job to decide what we hear and how we think, and I certainly have no right to consider conflicting opinions from the elected president.  Mika Brzezinski told me that once.  Television journalists are like brave firefighters running into burning buildings on our behalf, so whatever evidence they choose to burn in the process should totally be left to their discretion.  They may be Democrats, and they may have all fallen for the Democrats' Russia disinformation hoax for four solid years, but they definitely don't take sides.  They've said so.

The Media's Warped Narrative:  Normalize Violent Protests, Marginalize Peaceful Ones.  In the wake of this convoluted election, Americans who support President Donald Trump have chosen to gather and peacefully protest in the various states that are still in the midst of their count.  Arizona appeared to be the legacy media's focal point on Wednesday, and they have lost their collective hive minds over it; the coverage reflects that.  MSNBC's Rachel Maddow talked with NBC correspondent Gadi Schwartz as he covered the peaceful #StopTheSteal demonstration at the Maricopa County Elections Center.  The video would be laughable if it wasn't so sad.

The Other Winners and Losers.  [For example,] Fox News: [...] Conservatives are furious with Fox.  Livid.  I see it in social media and in communications from readers.  It's real, and it's serious.  As a group used to being sold out by people and institutions they trusted, conservatives are hyper-sensitive to anything that hints of betrayal, and they feel betrayed.  Silencing Newt about Soros, Chris Wallace's debate performance, the terrible polls, and the awful calls by the Democrat hired to run the decision desk are all high on the list of complaints by former fans.  This is a serious issue and gives me no pleasure, but the anger is real.  Tucker's great ratings are great because he welcomes conservatives; frankly, many conservatives now believe the majority of people associated with the network holds them in contempt.  Fox needs to carefully rethink its direction and reach out to its loyal audience or go the way of Drudge.

The Beginning of the End for Fox:  The Normies Have Noticed.  I'm not calling Glenn Reynolds a "normie."  He's more engaged than a true political "normie."  Nonetheless, he has not, I think, previously slammed Fox for the neoliberal MSNBC-in-Drag that it became two years ago.  Now he is.  And his correspondents are writing to him about it.  We've all noticed.  It is no longer ignorable.  And we've changed channels to Newsmax, and have been pleased with the product.

Fox News Circles The Wagons and Fails — Guy Benson Accidentally Exposes Scheme:  Contracted Fox News Pollster is also Fox News Decision Desk Narrator.  Fox News is currently engaged in full damage control after they exposed themselves with manipulative election coverage and destroyed their credibility in the most brutal fashion imaginable.  That said, CTH has written about the Fox Agenda for years, but even we didn't know the details of the scheme construct until this tweet from Guy Benson: [...] The pollster paid by Fox News to predict election outcomes, is a key part of the crew that calls the results on election night.  Think about that.  Think about the conflict, the purposeful and brutally obvious conflict, that would exist in using the same person to predict elections and then report on the results of that election.  Obviously a person performing both tasks, predicting & reporting on outcomes, is going to have a self-interest in affirming their predictions; after all, that's how they are paid.  If you wonder why these manipulative Fox News operations are so fundamentally flawed; and/or you wonder why Fox News would have a vested interest in affirming their predictions before the actual outcomes are even clear (see Arizona); well, there's the answer.

Meet the Jewish Democrat at Fox News' 'decision desk,' the man who called Arizona for Biden early.  Fox News' "decision desk" team, which makes the network's election night calls, was the first to call Arizona for Joe Biden Tuesday night.  Fox's call came so early, in fact, that the network's anchors seemed surprised.  President Trump was reportedly furious with his favorite network, and he criticized the decision in an early morning White House appearance, specifically dismissing "the gentleman who called it."  That gentleman was Arnon Mishkin — a Jewish registered Democrat from New York who is the leader and face of the Fox numbers team.

The news media is not the final authority on the outcome of an election.
Report: Joe Biden Plans to Assume Role of President-Elect if Media Declares Him Winner — Even Amid Trump's Legal Challenges.  Joe Biden is planning to strike a pose as the president-elect on election night if the corporate media decides that he has an insurmountable lead, even as President Trump challenges late mail-in ballots in court.  Democrats say they have "learned the lesson" of the contested 2000 election, when they say George W. Bush declared victory and "acted like the winner" while votes were still being counted and his Democrat opponent Al Gore "hung back."  In reality, Gore, then the vice president, didn't hang back at all.  Although the networks initially called the race for Gore while the polls were still open in the heavily Republican panhandle, (costing Bush untold numbers of votes), Bush was declared the winner by a narrow margin in the wee hours of the following morning.

The Movement against Elites.  [Scroll down]  Glenn Greenwald, writing about his resignation from the Intercept and, more broadly, about the media's incompetence, points out the "undeniable truth that journalists with national outlets based in New York, Washington and West Coast cities overwhelmingly not just favor Joe Biden but are desperate to see Donald Trump defeated."  Many journalists do not try to hide their bias; instead, they "make little secret of their eagerness to help Biden win."  The same can be said of Twitter, which joined legacy media in suppressing the Hunter Biden story by locking the New York Post's account after the paper published it in the first place.

The American media is failing you.  American journalism has lost its bearings, and we are all paying the price.  For the past four years, egged on by President Trump, mainstream news swiftly descended past the first circle of hell — subtle partisanship — and reached a far darker, hotter one: blatant favoritism, stories killed for purely partisan reasons and occasional propaganda masquerading as solid news.  Journalism's decline mirrors that of other American institutions, but it has compounded the social damage.  A thriving democracy depends on free and open debate and informed debate depends on trustworthy news.  For most Americans, that trust has evaporated.  The Washington Post is exactly right when it says, 'Democracy dies in darkness.'  It is ironic, then, that the Post is part of the problem, not the solution.  It is the reliable mouthpiece for Washington's entrenched establishment when the country is angrily debating how well that establishment has served them.  The Washington Post, like the New York Times and other major news organizations, is not a neutral observer in that debate.  It is a protagonist on a mission.

The mainstream media is up to something big ahead of the election.  Now that we are just four days away from election day, the mainstream media is about to take things to a new level.  It's no secret that they have been protecting and serving at the will of Joe Biden since he became the presumptive nominee.  As many have said, the mainstream media is essentially running Biden's campaign for him.  They have inflated the polling data, which the campaign said was not true.  They know that Biden is not ahead by double digits.  It's just more of the mainstream media forcing a narrative.  They have ignored the mental decline of Joe Biden, as he continues to make mistake after mistake in his appearances.  They have ignored the Hunter Biden e-mails and the obvious corruption that took place when Joe Biden was the Vice President.  While all of this is bad, trust me, over the weekend, it will get worse.

Yes, [the] Media Are Rigging [the] Election Against Half The Country.  Here's How.  Even if Donald Trump had lost the 2016 election, instead of [winning] it in a surprise, the media's coverage of his campaign and supporters would have been a horrific failure.  They presented that race as unwinnable for Trump and as if his support was inexplicable.  Their response to their 2016 failures has been not to improve their journalism in any way, shape, or form, but to decide that they didn't do enough to bias that election in their preferred direction.  Their nearly four-year temper tantrum has resulted in far worse 2020 campaign coverage than even the depths of their 2016 coverage.  It's as if they looked to the Candy Crowley debate in 2012, when she went out of her way to back Barack Obama when he said something false, and viewed it as a model, not an embarrassment.  Once again, regardless of the outcome next week, Big Media is actively at war with half of the American people and are desperately working to rig an election against them.

We Soon Learn Whether Most Americans Are Any Different From the Masses Who Fell in Line With Hitler and Stalin.  Brutal, merciless, and murderous repression was central to the continuation of Nazism and Communism once the systems were adopted.  But the glue that helped give these systems of deadly repression their start and that persuaded masses to continue living with their horrible initial mistakes was the two Communist daily rags:  Izvestia (which means "News") and Pravda (which means "Truth").  Alas, there never was pravda in Izvestia, and there never was izvestia in Pravda.  The people living there never got the truth or the real news.  Their media were censored.  Their entertainment followed government-approved orthodoxy.  No one was allowed to think outside the box.  Even artists were barred from painting in methods that veered creatively from strict reality.  Now it is our turn in history to see what the great, vaunted "American people" do after four years of Pravda, Izvestia, and Der Stürmer — quality journalism.  Fake news.  Hidden news.  Lies.  Stories that have no root in reality.  Real stories that never see the light of day.  Censorship.  The conscious placement of some stories on page one above the fold, with others relegated to page 17 in a lower corner.  The conscious strategy of which sources to contact for quotes and which sources' quotes to toss in the trash, their press releases and media statements shredded without a glance.  Which photos to run.  Which adjectives to use.  Which allegations to pursue, which to ignore.

Bezos, Who Owns Amazon And WaPo, Might Buy CNN, Report Says.  According to FOX Business, bankers are speculating that the world's richest man, Jeff Bezos, who owns Amazon.com and the Washington Post, may be interested in purchasing CNN.  Although such a purchase would cost a reported $10 billion, Bezos is worth an estimated $193 billion, so he can afford it.  A person close to Bezos denied the rumor, telling The Daily Mail, "There has been zero talk on this."

How Decades of Media and Faculty Bias Have Pushed America to the Left.  It's been clear for decades that national news organizations such as CNN and the New York Times tend to be biased in favor of social democracy (i.e., "progressivism") and what we would generally call a "left-wing" ideology.  Journalists, for instance, identify as Democrats in far higher numbers than any other partisan group.  And political donations by members of the media overwhelmingly go to Democratic candidates.  This is why even as far back as the 1940s, libertarian and conservative groups felt the need to found their own news sources, publishing houses, and other outlets for the distribution of information.

'Economist' Failed to Disclose Lucrative Beijing Ties.  The Economist provided sympathetic coverage of a Chinese tech giant widely considered a national security risk without disclosing the publication's lucrative business relationship with the firm that spanned nearly a decade.  Huawei Technologies commissioned the Economist's business consulting division to advance its policy agendas and deflect cybersecurity concerns raised by Western governments.  The influential British magazine produced reports on a wide range of subjects — including a report on broadband access in the United Kingdom that Huawei credits to have influenced British policy.  The publication has also run numerous Huawei advertisements, and its editors have cohosted several global forums with the company, helping the tech firm boost its public image as it faced growing scrutiny from the developed world for its close ties with the Chinese government.

'Truth' Over Facts.  [Scroll down]  To see how this works, go back to the 2016 election.  The strong female lead was not just running for personal gain, but to change the world for those who would follow her.  Hillary Clinton was the feminist Mary Sue, praised by everyone, but handed everything she wanted, because girl power is real and you go girl.  The script said she would win a massive victory, humbling the terrible white male antagonist and thus confirming second-wave feminism.  When she lost, we immediately got a new narrative.  This one was focused on the nefarious forces that vanquished the strong female lead in the first episode.  The Russian collusion story, which was always nonsense, was driven entirely by the left's need to believe.  That's important.  It's why they could consume all sorts of ridiculous plot devices like the Mueller investigation.  Since the plot demanded a dramatic investigation of the villain, one was written into the script.  The Russian collusion story was a big hit, but the sequel, the Ukrainian impeachment story, was like most sequels in that it should never have been made.

The Legacy of Obama and Biden:  Weaponizing Federal Agencies.  For most of our history, the press has served as a Democracy's child, willing to tell the truth about situations as they unfold.  Then, Barack Obama and Joe Biden were elected.  Either because Obama was the first African American president, or the mainstream media was so steeped in their own ideology, they abdicated their position for eight years running, and since then.  With Bush/Cheney, the mainstream media covered every infraction, error, and misspoken word and then magnified the issue endlessly.  With Trump/Pence, the constant dissection and distortion, 24/7/365, has risen to unimaginable heights.  For the first five years after Obama/Biden took office, the mainstream press treated them with kid gloves and did not pursue anything controversial, at least not for long.

The media promised to do better after Trump's 2016 win — instead, they got worse.  They could not conceive of a Donald Trump victory, and so they portrayed this event as a near-impossibility.  To their credit, they admitted it, and they vowed to do better next time. [...] It sounded promising.  But what did the media do after the dust settled and Trump geared up for reelection?  Like a guy who comes out of rehab and heads straight for the nearest martini lounge, they relapsed.  They couldn't help themselves.  They went back to putting 99 percent of their efforts into telling themselves a story they all believed:  that Donald Trump was not just a horrible Republican president — aren't they all? — but an actual threat to the Republic:  Fifth Avenue Hitler, Benito Trumpolini, Orange-White nationalist.  Virtually every national story they told the public ignored heartland concerns and came straight from the point of view of liberal Manhattan — Fantasy Island.  To the media, Russia collusion is just about to be proven after four years of trying, Trump's tweets matter more than Trump's economy, and a pandemic that hit harder in Western Europe is all his fault.

The mainstream media is losing control.  Just a little over a week away from the election and the mainstream media's narrative is beginning to fall apart.  It's been four years in the making, but it seems that things are unraveling.  In the four years, they have been on the anti-Trump bandwagon, we have dealt with a Russia hoax, a wasteful Mueller investigation, and an impeachment debacle.  In each instance, Democrats and the mainstream media have failed to produce any evidence of wrongdoing.  Despite thousands of articles and millions of dollars spent, there is very little to show for it.  It has not stopped them as they continue to fight against President Trump, attempting to influence the election any way they possibly can.  They continue to refuse to cover anything that is against Joe Biden, even though the evidence is mounting.

Are We Approaching the Real-Life World of Orwell's 1984?  [Scroll down]  A first step in the loss of freedom is the voluntary loss of privacy.  In 1984, the populace of Oceania is constantly monitored by the Party via omnipresent telescreens.  Today's smartphones are the counterparts of these invasive telescreens, tracking every user's location, consumer preferences, and personal habits.  Orwell's protagonist, Winston Smith, represents humanity's last hope of regaining this lost freedom.  Smith works as a clerk in the Ministry of Truth, where he forges historical documents to reconcile the Party's ever changing platform — obliterating all contradictory government policies and blundered predictions in a contraption called a memory hole.  Today, technology allows mainstream media to seamlessly rewrite stories or instantaneously alter TV chyrons, creating an endless stream of fake news.

The Media Officially Becomes the Communications Department for Joe Biden.  [Scroll down]  All of this would, in a normal world, prompt the media to ask Biden about the emails.  Instead, the media have halfheartedly questioned Biden, who has promptly dismissed all questions, calling them a "smear campaign" and even suggesting that a CBS reporter was biased against him.  The New York Times' Maggie Haberman was ripped up and down for even tweeting a link to the Post story; Politico's Jake Sherman abjectly apologized for having tweeted the story.  Other media members have overtly made the case that the story shouldn't be taken seriously.  NBC News' Andrea Mitchell reported that the email scandal could be Russian disinformation; Politico reported that 50 former intelligence officials posited that the story was indeed Russian disinformation. [...] Meanwhile, Biden has deployed his campaign surrogates to television to insist that the reports are "unconfirmed."  Not one surrogate denied that the emails were authentic or bothered to explain them.

No More Debate Moderators.  A Knight Foundation survey on trust in the media taken earlier this year found that 86 percent of Americans — including 94 percent of Republicans and 88 percent of Independents — see "a great deal" or "a fair amount" of political bias in news coverage, compared with 62 percent in 2017.  Further, Americans perceive inaccurate news to be intentional, either because the reporter is misrepresenting the facts (54 percent) or making them up entirely (28 percent).  [...] Media bias isn't new, but in this election cycle, the press has taken agenda-driven coverage to a new level, effectively building a wall around their preferred candidate, Joe Biden. [...] The result of this nakedly partisan news coverage is that Americans will go to the polls well versed on matters such as Trump's ill-advised tweets over the years but with no sense of where candidate Biden stands on many important issues.

Facebook's Lead Executive on Election Policy Was Vice-President Joe Biden's Advisor to Ukraine.  Anna Makanju is the Facebook executive in charge of "election integrity on the platform"; and guess what her job was before that position.  "Previously, she was the special policy adviser for Europe and Eurasia to former US Vice President Joe Biden". [...] That's right folks, the Facebook executive currently blocking all of the negative evidence of Hunter and Joe Biden's corrupt activity in Ukraine is the same person who was coordinating the corrupt activity between the Biden family payoffs and Ukraine.

Social media backlash resurrected over Biden's transition team's ties to Facebook and Twitter.  The Biden campaign is facing renewed criticism over its deep connections with Big Tech after both Twitter and Facebook censored a story from The New York Post detailing allegedly corrupt business deals by Joe Biden's son Hunter Biden.  The move prompted fresh criticism on social media over the Biden transition team's hiring of top Facebook executive Jessica Hertz, which reportedly came days after the 2020 Democrat's campaign penned a letter to the social media giant urging them to censor President Trump's posts.  Twitter's suppression of the Hunter Biden revelations also came days after the company's director of public policy, Carlos Monje, reportedly left his post to work for the Biden transition team.

Social Media Acts Like a Cartel.  It Should Be Treated as One.  Social media had spent four years training for this moment.  Democrats had spent four years arguing that the media paying attention to Hillary's emails and social media allowing them traction on their services elected Trump.  And Big Tech had defined its election role as preventing history from repeating itself.  Everything else is a haze of excuses and meaningless buzzwords like "disinformation", not to mention newfound standards that just arrived last week.  The bottom line is that there's a coordinated campaign to suppress material damaging to Biden before the election.  And, unlike the media, social media is a Big Tech cartel.  Facebook, whose Democrat spokesman made a point of expressing his disgust with the story and announcing that it was being throttled, controls 80% of social media.  Google, which controls 80% of search, buries the original Post story under media "explainers" dismissing it.  There's a coordinated political program here [...]

Kamala spokesman, Democrat PAC staffer now hold top comms posts at Twitter, Facebook.  Twitter's efforts to suppress a New York Post article about Democrat presidential nominee Joe Biden and his son Hunter come with renewed interest over the political biases of its top officials, including a communications officer who previously worked for Biden's running mate, Sen. Kamala Harris.  The ongoing debate over free speech on social media took on new urgency Wednesday when Twitter flagged as "potentially harmful" a report in the Post about emails indicating that Hunter Biden introduced his father, then the Vice President of the United States, to Vadym Pozharskyi, a top adviser to the board of Ukrainian energy company Burisma, less than a year before the elder Biden openly pressured the Ukrainian government to fire a prosecutor tasked with investigating the company.

Media risks malpractice by dismissing alleged anti-Biden bombshell.  The New York Post story alleging additional nefarious doings among the Biden family and Ukrainian entities put nearly as great an onus on the establishment media as it does on the Bidens.  Yes, let's stipulate that the involvement of President Trump's political henchman Rudy Giuliani in the provenance of the Post's story makes the anti-Biden report immediately suspect.  Still, the simple reality is that there's ample reason, both internal to the alleged emails in question and regarding other things we know about the Bidens' practices, that make the story plausible.  Because of that plausibility, every major media outlet in the country should now rush to follow up on the story with neutral, open minds and no agenda pro or con, so as to shed more light on its level of accuracy.  The actions of leftist social-media giants Facebook and Twitter to spike the story make it more imperative that real news outlets do even more reporting for the public's benefit.

90% of campaign contributions from Twitter and Facebook went to Democrats:  Study.  Both Facebook and Twitter have come under scrutiny for their campaign contributions in a new study by Joseph Vazquez, an analyst with the Media Research Center, a conservative press watchdog.  Mr. Vazquez reviewed the current political donation records of both social media giants on Open Secrets, an independent nonprofit which tracks federal campaign donations and lobbying data.  The report was released Thursday [10/15/2020].  "Open Secrets records revealed that for 'all federal candidates,' both Facebook and Twitter gave over 90% of their political contributions to Democrats for the 2020 cycle so far," Mr. Vazquez wrote.

Ten Lessons from a Tumultuous 2020.  [#7] While the citizenry has long been aware of the left-wing political bias in the bulk of the mainstream media, they are now mindful that the denizens of mainstream media of 2020 are woefully ignorant when it comes to economics, statistics, science, the Constitution, and American history.  They mindlessly report what fits the left's preferred narrative and ignore or belittle everyone with a different view or a factual contradiction.

AP Forced to Issue Correction For Using Democrat Language on Court-Packing.  Last week, the AP Stylebook was amended to discourage the use of the word "riot" to describe violent protests.  Because, you know, they were "mostly peaceful protests."  Or something.  And now, this:  Although at least this time, they were forced to retract their biased shenanigans.

AP called out for adopting Democrat language on court-packing.  The Associated Press was forced to add an editor's note to a recent story about the Supreme Court on Saturday, in which the outlet made it seem as if the Democratic strategy to pack the high court would "depoliticize" the bench.  The article, written by Iris Samuels, centered on a debate between Sen. Steve Daines, R-Mont., and Gov. Steve Bullock, his Democratic opponent in the upcoming election.  The AP's original post reportedly read, "Bullock said that if Coney Barrett was confirmed, he would be open to measures to depoliticize the court, including adding judges to the bench, a practice critics have dubbed packing the courts."  The report referred to President Trump's Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett.

Associated Press goes full Orwell, calling 'packing' of SCOTUS 'court reform'.  It is obvious from Joe Biden telling voters that they don't deserve to know if he plans to pack the Supreme Court that he and his handlers are terrified of a negative voter reaction to the plan.  Biden's remarkably stupid comment came in response to a reporter's question at an interview where no teleprompter guidance was feasible. [...]

'Americans aren't idiots!' The AP's use of 'Democrats' language' to explain 'packing the court' doesn't go well.  Since the Associated Press considers itself "an independent global news organization dedicated to factual reporting," it would be problematic for an AP article to contain commentary packaged as news and facts.  Real Clear Politics co-founder and president Tom Bevan captured the following excerpt from an AP story.  ["]With lightning speed, the Associated Press adopts Democrats' language on SCOTUS: adding members is now 'depoliticizing' the court, only 'critics' refer to it as 'packing.'["] [...] To call increasing the number of Supreme Court justices "depoliticizing" would be an egregious political overstatement if made by a Democrat politician, much less a news organization.

Associated Press stylebook revisions sugarcoat rioting and looting.  The stylebook published by the Associated Press was virtually the bible for journalistic writing until the past several years, an authoritative guide as to which terms to use and which to avoid in order to present the news fairly, without biasing readers one way or another.  But that memory is fading fast now that the capture of journalism by the left is a fait accompli.  Instead of eliminating bias, the AP Stylebook is being revised along the lines George Orwell laid out in 1984 — as a tool for indoctrination.

AP Issues New Guidance for Reporters to Cover Up Leftist Violence.  Mobs of violent left-wing kooks have been roaming the streets of American cities for months terrorizing residents, murdering Trump supporters, beating people to a pulp, shooting police officers, and assaulting people in their vehicles.  But you wouldn't know any of this if you consumed news exclusively from the mainstream media because the mainstream media doesn't want you to know about it.  The Associated Press (AP) issues guidelines, closely adhered to by many journalists, dictating what words are politically correct at the time and what words to avoid.  The AP issued new guidance on Wednesday telling journalists to avoid using the word "riot" when covering leftwing events and refrain from reporting on property destruction because, according to the AP, such reporting has been used in the past as a way to stigmatize protests against lynching and racial injustice.  To the AP, it's not the job of journalists to report the news.  It's the job of journalists to advance a left-wing narrative.

The Progressive Medusa.  The new globalized media promised us real-time coverage of breaking news from around the world, spiced with televised graphics and supposedly learned insight — all part of their mission to keep a democratic populace informed and thus capable of self-governance.  But while always liberal, the media at least once knew that half the population turned on the news or read the papers not to be swayed, lectured, or insulted, but simply to get facts, occasional opinion editorials from both Left and Right, and enough information to draw their own conclusions.  Yet journalists always dreamed of becoming more than just reporters, in the sense of evolving into activist movers and shakers of politics, culture, and society.  And now they, too, have gotten their wish as pop ideology replaced meritocracy.  The most boringly woke journalist is deemed the most successful, and the result is that Americans are going elsewhere for their daily information.

Our "Non-Partisan" Media At Work.  Trump hasn't even named his pick to succeed Ruth Bader Ginsburg on the Supreme Court, and already the media is stepping up to fulfill its role as the propaganda adjunct for the Democratic Party and its leftward-most pressure groups. [...] It's really easy to be a reporter in the mainstream media when all you do is rewrite the press releases from leftist interest groups.

Why Are They Capitalizing 'Black'?  A few months ago, I noticed that my published column spelled "black" "Black."  As I had submitted the column with "black" spelled with a lower case "b," I contacted my editor to find out why what I had written was changed.  She responded that the syndicate was following the Associated Press' rules of style, a common practice in journalism and book writing.  On July 20, 2020, the AP published "Explaining AP style on Black and white," in which it explained:  "AP's style is now to capitalize Black in a racial, ethnic or cultural sense, conveying an essential and shared sense of history, identity and community among people who identify as Black, including those in the African diaspora and within Africa.  The lowercase black is a color, not a person.  AP style will continue to lowercase the term white in racial, ethnic and cultural senses."  The AP explanation is drivel.  There is no "shared sense of history, identity and community among people who identify as Black, including those in the African diaspora and within Africa."

The Ghost Media.  [Scroll down]  There are few things more spooky than the modern journalists who live inside the abandoned structures and pretensions of a once respectable profession.  They can embrace a position for or against any set of circumstances.  The New York Times made this the establishment view 40 years ago.  The people running that paper announced that there is no objective reality, only a reporter's feelings and prejudices.  Nothing is real but the reporter's unreality. [...] Journalism's formula used to be factual:  who, what, when, where, and why.  Now reporting is different.  You fabricate.  You tell what George Soros wants you to tell.  You create alternative realities, not even knowing that this is what you do.  Once upon a time, a reporter needed to know history, geography, and science.  Now those things only get in the way.

Biden, 'The Great and Powerful'.  Media bias is not new.  In addition to the Russian collusion hoax and the phone-call impeachment farce, who can forget the marquee media toadies of JournoList and the release of John Podesta's email trove?  Or the moderator Donna Brazile's primary debate questions, leaked through CNN, or Candy Crowley's hijacking of a debate as moderator-turned-real-time-hack "fact-checker"?  Nothing then is new to the media's fusion and collusion with the "progressive party."  Yet never in American history have mainstream journalists not merely promoted a candidate but actively fused with his political candidacy to the point of warping, fabricating, and Trotskyizing the news and indeed history itself.

Journalism prof calls for an end to objectivity:  Argues it restricts reporters who must pursue 'social justice'.  A highly acclaimed Stanford University journalism professor says it's time for reporters to abandon objectivity and become warriors for "social justice."  "Journalists need to be overt and candid advocates for social justice, and it's hard to do that under the constraints of objectivity," Ted Glasser, professor emeritus in the Department of Communication at Stanford, told the Stanford Daily.  Journalism, he said in the Aug. 20 interview, should "free itself from this notion of objectivity to develop a sense of social justice."

Who Will Tell the Truth About Joe Biden?  The inability of the mainstream media to accurately cover any of Joe Biden's foibles is truly astonishing.  If it was not already obvious by now, there is simply nothing Biden can say or do, no matter how incoherent, offensive, or alarming that would cause the current crop of "objective journalists" in the mainstream media, to even consider asking whether or not he has the mental capacity to be president of the United States.  It is not a stretch to say that Biden has received the most favorable press coverage of any modern presidential candidate in history, and it's not even close.  Even the warm treatment that Barack Obama received during his presidential run in 2008 from his pals in the media pales in comparison.

Video montage shows how media take it easy on Biden.  A new video montage from The Washington Free Beacon shows how easy the questions Joe Biden receives from the media truly are.  Free Beacon senior writer and "video guy" David Rutz put together a sampling of the rather simplistic line of questioning the Democratic candidate has received in recent weeks.  "Really, your strength is in traveling around the country and connecting with people... you can't do any of that right now.  Mr. Vice President, does that worry you?" CNN anchor Brooke Baldwin is seen asking Biden at the beginning of the interview.  The video featured multiple journalists who asked softball questions at last week's rare Biden press conference.

The Hyperbolic, Hyperpartisan Atlantic Magazine.  Let's list some additional evidence that The Atlantic is a hyperpartisan outlet.  [#1] Laurene Powell Jobs, the multi-billionaire widow of Apple founder Steve Jobs who bought a majority share in The Atlantic in 2017, celebrated Hillary Clinton in Time magazine in 2015 as a "revolutionary" figure and "one of America's greatest modern creations."  In 2016, Mrs. Jobs donated $2 million to her Priorities USA super PAC via her nonprofit and hosted a $200,000-a-plate fundraiser that raised more than $4 million.  [#2] In the 2020 cycle, Mrs. Jobs donated the individual maximum contribution of $2,800 to eight different Democrat presidential contenders, not just Joe Biden, but Michael Bennet, Cory Booker, Pete Buttigieg, Kamala Harris, Amy Klobuchar, Tom Steyer, and Andrew Yang.  Since Biden became the nominee, she has donated $600,000 toward Biden.  In June, she donated $70,800 to the Democratic Senate Campaign Committee.  [#3] Atlantic Media Company owner and chairman David Bradley also donated the maximum to Bennet and Klobuchar.  In this cycle, he's donated thousands to Democrat Senators Ed Markey, Tina Smith, and Mark Warner.  Neither of these owners gave to Republicans.

Left-Wing Media Have Jumped the Shark.  It is easier to discover an intelligent statement from Joe Biden than it is to find a real journalist in America today.  In the Trump era, American journalism has moved from trying to hide its hardcore left-wing agenda to openly advocating for the Democratic Party.  For decades, the American news media have been liberal.  Studies showed consistent and overwhelming support among the news media for Democratic candidates for president.  Even a landslide loser such as 1972 Democratic presidential candidate George McGovern was the runaway favorite among American journalists.  Previously, the liberal media made a minimal effort to hide their true objectives; however, today, there is no disguising their extreme hatred for President Donald Trump.  Their purpose is clear, not to give fair and accurate reporting, but to advocate for the defeat of President Donald Trump and the election of former Vice President Joe Biden.  At the president's frequent news conferences, he is subjected to insulting, mean-spirited attacks masquerading as questions.  Never has the media treated a president so rudely.

50+ Questions No Reporter Dares Ask Joe Biden And His Campaign.  On Media:  Why do you perpetually fail to take questions from reporters at your minimal number of press conferences?  Does your administration have any plans to address the censorship by big tech companies of conservative media and voices?

Reporters Don't Give Biden Questions in Advance?  You Be the Judge.  [Joe] Biden spoke in Wilmington, Delaware on Friday [9/4/2020] to rebut the very good news contained in the August jobs report.  He also used the opportunity to express his outrage and disappointment over 2018 remarks attributed to President Trump by highly dubious reporting in The Atlantic.  When Trump answers reporters' questions, he calls on individual reporters himself.  But not so for Biden or his campaign.  Here you can see the candidate turning to his handler to start calling from a predetermined list of reporters, saying, "I guess ... are you calling on people?  I don't have a list."  Joe!  You're not supposed to admit to following a list!  This led to Biden's first question, in which an Atlantic reporter read a pathetically soft question from his cell phone:  "When you hear these remarks" attributed to Trump by The Atlantic's editor, Jeffrey Goldberg, "what does it tell you about President Trump's soul?"  Biden then cast his eyes to the lectern, briefly studying.  After using the word, "deplorable" twice in his answer, Biden looked down at the lectern a second time.  At 22:37, one can clearly see him turn up the corner of a page of notes as he studies them before continuing his answer.

Time to Bury the Corpse.  Journalism died years ago, not long after publishers sold the soul of the front page for a few dollars.  "Journalists" now violate virtually every previous standard and principle once held dear.  From anonymous sources who may or not exist, to outright deceptive coverage, journalists' goals are now self-serving and focused only on the goals determined by the masters who control them.  In their hasty pursuit of money, influence, and power, they never bothered to bury the body.

Reporters blasted for 'shamefully embarrassing' softball questions at rare Biden press conference.  Reporters who were able to ask questions at Joe Biden's press conference Friday [9/4/2020] were torn apart by critics for failing to properly grill the Democratic presidential candidate. [...] The less-than-rigorous lines of questioning left critics enraged.  "The media are simply the PR wing for the Biden campaign at this point," Ben Shapiro reacted.  Conservative commentator Stephen Miller singled out Lee for criticism, tweeting "Watch this question and how it's framed.  She essentially gives Biden the answer in her question.  She's making a statement and asking Biden to basically just reply to her."  RealClearInvestigations senior writer Mark Hemingway wrote, "A text from a friend watching the press conference: 'Who are asking Biden these questions??  It's like watching someone make sure a 3 year old wins CandyLand.'"

Wikipedia Is Badly Biased.  Wikipedia's "NPOV" is dead.  The original policy long since forgotten, Wikipedia no longer has an effective neutrality policy.  There is a rewritten policy, but it endorses the utterly bankrupt canard that journalists should avoid what they call "false balance."  The notion that we should avoid "false balance" is directly contradictory to the original neutrality policy.  As a result, even as journalists turn to opinion and activism, Wikipedia now touts controversial points of view on politics, religion, and science.  Here are some examples from each of these subjects, which were easy to find, no hunting around.  Many, many more could be given. [...]

How Bill Gates Bought the Media.  Linking and quoting the Columbia Journalism Review in a positive sense isn't my usual practice, but this is a well researched story that touches not only on the usual suspects, NPR, which is happy to trade coverage for cash, but also Poynter and the fact checking industry, as well as the broader media, through the Bill Gates lens.

Kamala Has Already Struck Out.  Even before the Democrat presidential candidate, Joe Biden, named his choice for vice president, a group of Democrat Party activists released an unprecedented document outlining their "rules" for how the media could address issues surrounding the woman Biden ultimately chose.  These guidelines made it abundantly clear that the media were "required" to handle Biden's choice with kid gloves.  Questions were not to be probing; instead, this veep candidate, unlike the vicious coverage Sarah Palin endured years ago, was to be above questioning.  With astounding hubris, the Democrats actually warned the media that they would "monitor coverage" of the female veep candidate and that anything even slightly critical would be condemned as "racist and sexist."  Hollywood celebrities and the usual line-up of leftist women's groups (NARAL, Planned Parenthood, etc.) have promised Kamala, "We've got your back."  Bottom line:  Biden is in hiding; Kamala is untouchable.  This mafia-style intimidation cannot be allowed to stand.

Beige Page Is Becoming a "Go To" Conservative News Source.  The secret has been out a while now.  With conservatives becoming increasingly disenchanted with a daily deluge of anti-Trump content, panic-inducing headlines about COVID-19 and protests, and tabloid-type stories — even on sites once considered hubs for conservative news — several websites have emerged to fill the gap for the tens of millions of conservatives that have felt abandoned by modern news outlets.  But one is beginning to stand out from among the rest — Beige Page.

Good News:  Dr. Scott Atlas Added to Coronavirus Task Force.  It looks like Sweden is over the COVID-19 circumstance.  And if that's the case, then it portends good news for the rest of the world.  Scott Atlas is now part of the coronavirus task force meeting with the president.  And he is countering Fauci.  I have to tell you something, folks, just to show you how pervasive this is.  You know, I read tech blogs.  It's my hobby.  There are a couple of them that literally treat Fauci as a deity.  Whatever Fauci says is the lead item, and it's never questioned.  It is always amplified.  It is always reported as though there can be no question about it.  These are young kids in their late twenties, early thirties, that populate these blogs and do most of the writing.  And it's scary how sycophantic they are.  And it's not just Fauci.  It's anybody in government.  Any official government representative who is not affiliated with the Republicans is automatically correct, never wrong, never questioned, never doubted.

The Mainstream Media Has Betrayed Its Constitutional Privilege.  I have had several conversations with people in the past few days who are completely unaware of just how bad things have gotten in Portland.  Many of these people do pay a fair amount of attention to the news, but they've still missed the Portland stuff.  Because it's not in the news.  It is perhaps the biggest news in the country, but it isn't being reported.  Portland doesn't fit the narrative.  In fact, it destroys the narrative.  Were we to believe the media, what's happening in Portland is merely some mild unrest being acted out by some restless kids.  What's actually happening is such a nightmare that the cops there want to quit their jobs and peace out.  The mainstream media in America is not just irresponsible, it is absolutely delusional at times.  Yesterday [8/9/2020] we witnessed one of the most remarkably out-of-touch moments in modern mainstream media history when CNN's Brian Stelter wondered aloud if any anti-Trump media existed on the left.  It was a truly stunning question, one that I believe Stelter genuinely doesn't know the answer to because he is so ideologically isolated.

MSNBC producer pens open letter on why she quit:  Trump-obsessed network puts politics before science, stokes racial division.  Citing the "ratings scheme" and an obsession with Trump, among other things, an MSNBC producer who recently resigned from the network, penned an open letter on her personal website explaining her reasoning.  "July 24th was my last day at MSNBC.  I don't know what I'm going to do next exactly but I simply couldn't stay there anymore," Ariana Pekary wrote.  "My colleagues are very smart people with good intentions.  The problem is the job itself.  It forces skilled journalists to make bad decisions on a daily basis."  Citing her background in public radio, Pekary said she had not encountered decisions being predicated on how a topic or guest would rate before joining the network — she was a member of the MSNBC show "The Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell."

MSNBC Producer Quits: 'This Cancer Stokes National Division,' Facts 'Too Cumbersome' For Audience.  The letter was written by Ariana Pekary, who Fox News noted described herself as an "integral member" of MSNBC's "The Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell."  [...] Pekary said that at MSNBC it was "practically baked in to the editorial process" that decisions on what and who give coverage to were based on what would generate the most ratings for the network.  She said that behind closed doors "industry leaders will admit the damage that's being done."  A high profile TV veteran reportedly told her, "We are a cancer and there is no cure.  But if you could find a cure, it would change the world."  "As it is, this cancer stokes national division, even in the middle of a civil rights crisis," Pekary said.  "The model blocks diversity of thought and content because the networks have incentive to amplify fringe voices and events, at the expense of others... all because it pumps up the ratings."  "Context and factual data are often considered too cumbersome for the audience," Pekary later added.

Why is "All Lives Matter" A Racist Statement?  In our crazy, upside down environment when the term "racist" is used to describe someone with opposite or opposing views, we have the dichotomy that if you proclaim "All Lives Matter", you are considered a racist.  The term "Black Lives Matter" is being promoted as that black lives are being systematically oppressed and, in too many cases, killed by brutal police tactics.  The facts don't back up those claims as the statistics by the FBI and by author Heather MacDonald seem to prove.  The false claims that police are killing unarmed blacks at an alarming rate doesn't meet the standards of proper reporting.

Longtime New York Magazine writer excoriates publication for its bias in resignation.  Whether you agree with him or not, Andrew Sullivan is surely one of American journalism's most influential voices.  Like a Rorschach test, he has provided both sides reasons to alternatively cheer and jeer at points over his long public career.  But now he is making a statement that will likely garner Sullivan more cheers from the right.  He recently announced that he was leaving New York magazine to restart his personal blog.  Sullivan maintained that he was leaving of his own accord, not being "canceled," and that he had a good working relationship with other staffers, to whom he was "deeply grateful for their extraordinary talent, skill, and compassion."  But Sullivan made clear that the current climate is insufferable.

California Caves to the Mob.  "The publisher will cave to the mob, the editor will get fired or reassigned, and you'll be hung out to dry," wrote Bari Weiss on her way out the door at the New York Times.  On the other coast, caving to the mob is also in fashion.  Consider, for example, a recent proclamation by Sacramento Bee editor and president Lauren Gustus.  "The Bee has taken several recent steps to work against long-standing stereotypes.  We have largely banned the use of the word "looting" — a term rooted in racism — and have sought to elevate the voices of emerging writers from communities we have long underserved."  Ryan Lillis, author of the July 9 piece, provides further enlightenment.  The Bee "will limit the publication of police booking photos, surveillance photos and videos of alleged crimes, and composite sketches of suspects provided by law enforcement agencies.  Publishing these photographs and videos disproportionately harms people of color and those with mental illness, while also perpetuating stereotypes about who commits crime in our community."

The Editor says...
Stereotypes don't just pop up out of nowhere.  They are plausible because they have some basis in fact.

Wall Street Journal Editors Resist the Cancel Culture.  Hundreds of woke employees at the Wall Street Journal signed a letter to the paper's publisher complaining about the Journal's op-ed page.  The employees protested what they claim is the spread of "misinformation" in the Journal's opinion section.  One of the complaints focused on the publication of a column by Heather Mac Donald.  The letter noted that "employees of color publicly spoke out about the pain [Mac Donald's] Opinion piece caused them during company-held discussions surrounding diversity initiatives."  Poor babies.  In response to the letter, the editors have published a note to readers. [...]

Wall Street Journal Editorial Board Blames 'Progressive Cancel Culture' for Employee-Signed Letter Calling Out Opinion Section.  The Wall Street Journal editorial board blamed "progressive cancel culture" for a letter signed by 280 of its reporters calling out the paper's opinion section for spreading misinformation.  In a note to its readers published on Thursday night, the editorial board said it wouldn't respond to the original letter which called for better fact-checking, more transparency, and a clearer divide between news and opinion divisions, according to a draft of it obtained by Mediaite on Tuesday [7/21/2020].

WSJ Editorial Board says it won't 'wilt under cancel-culture pressure' after staffers criticize coverage.  The Wall Street Journal Editorial Board responded Friday to pushback from staffers about the paper's opinion section and diversity in their newsroom, declaring that "we are not the New York Times" and that it will not succumb to "cancel culture."  In a note to readers, the editorial board sought to reassure readers that "these pages won't wilt under cancel-culture pressure," noting the "outpouring of support" from readers for the opinion pages.  "It was probably inevitable that the wave of progressive cancel culture would arrive at the Journal, as it has at nearly every other cultural, business, academic, and journalistic institution.  But we are not the New York Times.  Most Journal reporters attempt to cover the news fairly and down the middle, and our opinion pages offer an alternative to the uniform progressive views that dominate nearly all of today's media," the note stated.

Basement Joe.  The media are so one-sided.  They deified Obama and Holder.  They play down that Bernie is a millionaire who owns three houses and that Elizabeth Warren is even richer and more corrupt.  But the same media gang crucify Trump with every tool they have.  Such bias.  Democrats walk on water with the media, and Republicans cannot get a break unless, like Mitt Romney, they bleat like sheep in a Democrat herd. [...] And, frustratingly, it is that same biased media — truly the enemies of the people — who have made Independents unsure about Trump, imagining that the alternative, Joe Biden, can do better.  It really is unfathomable.  Was Biden ever really presidential material?  Democrat voters in primaries repeatedly have answered no, one decade after another.

B At Last, B At Last....  George Floyd did not die in vain.  Oh sure, in the wake of his death there have been hundreds of businesses burned to the ground, dozens of monuments defaced, tens of millions of dollars in property damage, multiple murders, a skyrocketing increase in crime, and greater racial animosity dividing the nation than we've seen in half a century.  But it's all been worth it, because the Associated Press has announced that they have changed their internal style guide and will now always capitalize the word "Black" when used in the context of race and culture.  The AP did not comment on whether capitalization will apply when "black" is used in the context of historic plagues.  Interestingly, the AP has also announced that they won't be doing the same for the word "white," [...]

Checking newspapers' tortured explanations for capitalizing 'black'.  With little fanfare, The New Yorker followed suit with other periodicals and adopted a new capital-letter convention:  plumping the lower-case "b" in "blacks" to "Blacks."  The style change was implemented in the hebdomadal journal's July 20, 2020 issue.  It was not evident in the previous issue, a doublized special dated for July 6 and 13.  Unlike other papers and newsweeklies, The New Yorker didn't announce the change in a cloying justification, slavering for a smidgeon of approval from sensitive Black Lives Matter-supporters.  Most publications did:  "We believe this style best conveys elements of shared history and identity, and reflects our goal to be respectful of all the people and communities we cover," said New York Times executive editor Dean Banquet.  "These changes align with long-standing capitalization of other racial and ethnic identifiers such as Latino, Asian American and Native American," wrote John Daniszewski, vice president for standards at the Associated Press.  "When people are offended by how we describe their community, we have to listen," pleaded Cristina Silva, relaying the move on behalf of USA Today.  The common thread among all these expositions is appeasement, not appeals to grammar, consistent style, linguistics, elucidation, or plain understanding of language.  Put another way, it's a normative prescription — this alteration is a mark of moral standing.  Abide, or be a bigot.

AP says it will capitalize Black but not white.  After changing its usage rules last month to capitalize the word "Black" when used in the context of race and culture, The Associated Press on Monday [7/20/2020] said it would not do the same for "white."  The AP said white people, in general, have much less shared history and culture and don't have the experience of being discriminated against because of skin color.  Protests following the death of George Floyd, which led to discussions of policing and Confederate symbols, also prompted many news organizations to examine their own practices and staffing.  The Associated Press, whose Stylebook is widely influential in the industry, announced June 19 it would make Black uppercase.

The Age of Conspiracy.  I have no doubt that we live in the Age of Conspiracy, as attested by most of what we read, see and hear in the press, the social media and the big digital platforms.  "Fake news," which accounts for the bulk of contemporary journalism, is plainly conspiratorial, intended to create that impression that what is not the case is the case.  The irony is that it is itself a conspiracy mounted against the truth.  The same motive applies to most academic discourse and institutional literature, as any sentient observer is aware.  But of course, when we get right down to it, the Left in all its manifestations is itself the greatest political conspiracy ever generated against the truth of human affairs, the facts of human nature and the well-being of men and women everywhere, whatever their race, creed or gender.  And we are now in the midst of a renewed and powerful socialist conspiracy to place a competitive and prosperous free-market society under hegemonic state control.

Andrew Sullivan on his ousting from New York Magazine:  Staff believed my columns were 'physically harming' them.  Andrew Sullivan penned his last op-ed in New York Magazine on Friday [7/17/2020] after previously announcing that he would no longer be a columnist for the outlet.  Sullivan began the column by stressing that the magazine "has every right to hire and fire anyone it wants when it comes to the content of what it wants to publish," but also indicated "the quality of my work does not appear to be the problem."

Cancel Culture is a Mighty Tool of Fascism's Advance.  When all opposition is silenced, certainly totalitarianism will prevail.  Every day The Mainstream Media (MSM) and the tech giants (Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, Google, et al.) abet or conceal what "cancel culture" does.  In fact, they are the perpetrators of many of the cancel culture's manifestations.  They, MSM and the tech giants, are our rulers now, but they are only placeholders for the rulers they hope will come:  A Grand Socialist State Paradise.  This GSSP would, of course, be led by Democrats.  It is laughingly ironic that the MSM and the tech giants don't realize that the crocodile will eat them, too, for there is no free press under totalitarianism!

CNN's Jeff Zucker Announces 'New and Expanded Race Team'.  CNN's Jeff Zucker on Monday [7/13/2020] sent out a memo announcing a "new and expanded race team" as part of the network's broader effort to ensure race coverage remains a "permanent part of our journalism."  The CNN Worldwide president sent a memo to staff on Monday detailing the "new and expanded" race team, which he said will ensure that race coverage continues to be a permanent part of their newsroom.

Panicdemic! Record Number of Coronavirus Cases Hyped — But Deaths, Recoveries Downplayed.  [Scroll down]  Now, I want to share with you a tweet from the former New York Times reporter Alex Berenson.  You know who this guy is.  Alex Berenson is former New York Times.  They have no desire to have him working for them anymore because he's one of these guys that just instinctively violates conventional wisdom.  He stays outside it.  He doesn't conform to it.  That still amazes me that so many people in the media want to sound exactly like everybody else.  Whatever happened to individuality?  Whatever happened to staking your own claim on smart and aware and thoughtful ideas?  Why does everybody want to sound the same?  You know the answer?  'Cause that's what it takes to move the agenda forward.  You replace the individual with the collective and you move the agenda forward.  But in order to do that everybody has to sacrifice their own individuality and conform to whatever is demanded by the leaders.

Press Now Plumbs Its Own Depths Of Depravity.  With few exceptions, the United States is now served by a national political media that is incapable of reporting about the president accurately, that baits him at press briefings with disgusting insolence, and that is extraordinarily negligent in ignoring or downplaying anything that reflects poorly on the president's other enemies, the media's allies in the war against the president.  The hideous permutation of the legitimate protests following the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis on May 25 — protests the president endorsed — into widespread arson, pillage, vandalism, and assault resulting in more than 20 deaths in many cities across the country was largely ignored or deemphasized by the media.

Know Your Enemy:  Undeniable Truths About the Left.  [Scroll down]  A final truth is that the left is aided by sycophantic media.  The left seems powerful only because the media portrays them that way.  The media never challenges Democrats and rarely publish any negative stories about them unless there is some sort of political calculation in doing so.  This is a double-edged sword.  Such reporting is inherently dishonest at its core and spares the left from hearing honest and un-filtered truths about the failures of their policies and actions.

The Source of BLM's Super-power.  The short answer to the source of BLM's super-power is fake news media.  Fake news medias' bogus reporting has corporations and politicians believing a majority of Americans are filled with white guilt and therefore support BLM and their absurd demands.  Consequently, whatever BLM wants, BLM gets.  Supportive and fearful corporations have given BLM $400 million to bludgeon mainstream America into surrendering to BLM's mission to transform America into a socialist/communist nation.

Journalists Work to Divide, Not Inform.  As a young journalist starting out many years ago, I was proud to join a profession where so many men and women had distinguished themselves through honest, thorough investigations, entertaining features, and excellence in writing.  But for a long while, I've been depressed to see much of the press openly working as political operatives.  Objectivity in reporting was always impossible, but at least it used to be discussed as a goal.  Now journalists boast of their advocacy journalism for an increasingly leftist agenda.

False Accusations Of Racism Are Destroying The Media.  [Scroll down]  Taibbi made clear in his piece and in the interview with the Hill that he sees the Fang incident as just one example of a more widespread change taking place in journalism.  He said the new "style of thought" had originated on college campuses but was now finding a home in many newsrooms.  "It's bullying in tone, it's accusatory, it uses shaming tactics and it doesn't particularly believe in civil liberties.  It's very illiberal in its conception of the world." [...] The leftist insurgents in these newsrooms are working to shut down space for what is considered acceptable debate and lots of regular people are following their lead.

Media organizations pressured to capitalize 'b' in black when describing people.  As journalists grapple with massive protests and sweeping changes in the aftermath of George Floyd's death, U.S. newsrooms are debating an important style change: whether to capitalize the "b" in black when describing people.  The Los Angeles Times, USA Today and NBC News last week changed their practices to do that, and the National Association of Black Journalists urged other news organizations to follow.

Chris Wallace:  Many Reporters Becoming 'Anti-Trump Advocates' Instead Of Calling 'Balls And Strikes'.  Fox News anchor Chris Wallace said many reporters are becoming "anti-Trump advocates" instead of calling "balls and strikes" as they cover President Donald Trump's administration.  Speaking to "MediaBuzz" anchor Howard Kurtz on Sunday, Wallace agreed with his colleague's assessment that "many journalists" long ago "decided they would toss out the old rule book of standards and fairness because they deemed Donald Trump to be such a threat to the country."

Media and the leftist code.  The print media operate with what playwright David Mamet calls a "code."  The left's code, which has subsumed hard reportage, is holistic: all information, every angle, every thought, every utterance, every word, every sentence construction, revolves around dissipating the right's legitimacy.  "The committed liberal, leftist," Mamet explains, "ha[s] devoted so much time, energy, and treasure to the creation of a code that no evidence could convince them that it has been broken and so must be replaced."  The sacked editors who challenged their young colleagues never got the coded memo.  Though liberal in persuasion, they thought their ideas could win the day in open combat.  The newsy upstarts don't view intellectual competition as helpful — only a form of legitimation.  So conservative views must be crushed and shunted from public view.

I Guess I Am Supposed To Be Sad About The Dying Media.  The media took the easy path of following its feels, rejecting the hard path of objectivity.  In doing so, it alienated the half of America that fell on the wrong side of the media's preferences.  With technology changing everything, was ticking off half of the audience really a smart decision? [...] Objectivity, fairness and stuff — they are easy when it's someone you dig who you are reporting on, or even when someone you sort of dislike.  But these things are hard — and they are really necessary — when it's someone you are reporting on who you despise.  And they really despise Trump.  So, instead of doing the hard thing and doing their job, the media chose to indulgence its feelings.

The Media's Riot Defenders.  As Jews were beaten and killed in the 1991 Crown Heights riots, New York Times columnist and erstwhile executive editor A.M. Rosenthal penned a thundering denunciation of the violence and its cheerleaders.  "Using grievances real or imagined as an excuse for violence will not be tolerated — not by black society or white, not by the press, not by City Hall, not now, not ever," Rosenthal wrote.  He was wrong.  As similar scenes play out across America today, with rioters shooting police officers, innocent bystanders dying, and businesses being destroyed, the news media has adopted a different attitude. [...] The Times now publishes calls for defunding police nationwide.  The editorial board on which Rosenthal once sat cannot muster a denunciation free of qualifiers and compromise.  In place of clear-eyed condemnations comes the incessant refrain that rioting and looting are lamentable, but the result of legitimate grievance.  Those same grievances, they argue, can only be addressed through aggressive federal investigations, the stripping of legal protections for cops and, of course, voting for Democrats.

TV Journalists Defend, Excuse Five Nights of Riots.  From the start, TV news media have done their darnedest to paint the riots happening across the country in a positive light.  While many journalists have glossed over the widespread violence by relying on misleading characterizations like "mostly peaceful," others have outright defended and justified the rioting.  Some of the these attempts to sanitize the rioting have bordered on parody.  For a sampling of the media's most desperate damage control, watch the video below:  [Video clip]

D.C. media is now focused on confrontational coverage and approved narratives.  Speaking from some decades of personal experience, in bygone times, each individual story was generally constructed to recount the who, what, when, where and why of the subject at hand, including select background as necessary.  It was a stand-alone story.  No longer.  Today, there is a narrative, a story template that each report must fit into.  Those that don't fit, like your high school jersey, get dismissed or ignored.  Oh, and narratives prefer actors, not reporters.  We've witnessed numerous confrontational performances by journalists, who could gain lucrative book contracts from such virtuous notoriety.  Professional journalists should be adversaries questioning, challenging authority, not antagonists.  Truth be told, in an Age of Outrage that assesses little consequence for incorrect, incomplete or even fictitious "news," confrontational coverage does produce more profitable clicks and viewers.  That was reflected in last week's media layoffs, deleting some more of the few surviving play-it-straight journalists.

Democrats' Chickens Come Home to Roost.  Conservatives have been warning about the dangers of Antifa and other left-wing groups for years.  No one in the Democrat media listened.  More than that, they cheered them on; defended them.  Why not?  After all, they were chanting the right things and targeting the right people, from the left's perspective.  No progressive group would condemn them:  Black Lives Matter didn't, the Women's March didn't, CNN didn't.  They were helpful in beefing up numbers and energy at protests and marches Democrats deemed helpful.  What did it matter if they threw a few rocks or Molotov cocktails?  They were throwing them at police, a group those silent partner groups had declared the enemy[.]

Andy Ngo:  Liberal media 'has many sympathies' toward Antifa, conservatives didn't take threats seriously.  Portland-based independent journalist Andy Ngo has extensively reported on the far-left extremist group called Antifa and long cautioned that violent acts that have occurred in some sections of America could be easily replicated, but he says media on both sides of the political spectrum failed to take him seriously.  "The left-wing media, liberal media, establishment media, legacy media, has many sympathies toward the Antifa goal.  The superficial resistance against the Trump administration, against conservatism, against the GOP, they have that in common with them," Ngo told Fox News.  "Liberal ignorance of what and who Antifa actually are and their history."

Ex-CBS News President Skewers 'Decidedly Liberal' Media.  Former CBS News President Van Gordon Sauter says hidden left-wing bias is a growing problem in the media and is threatening "social cohesion" in the United States.  In an op-ed published by The Wall Street Journal Monday, Sauter, who led CBS from 1982-83 and in 1986, slammed news outlets that maintain a veneer of objectivity and fairness while pushing reporting biased in favor of left-wing politics.  Sauter began by recalling a conversation from 35 years ago when he insisted that the media at large was only tilted to the left and "could be corrected."  He goes on to say that his prediction was wrong and instead of the media correcting toward the center, it has driven farther left, especially under President Trump.

If you're stuck in your house, you're probably watching television.  Therefore...
The Media Wants America to Stay Closed Forever.  CNN doubled its audience in April, while MSNBC hit its best total-day ratings.  Network news programs rose 39% since last year, gaining over 8 million viewers for their best numbers in over a decade.  Cable news networks have become the most watched channels on cable and network news has been beating prime time programming.  The pandemic is the next best thing to Walter Cronkite rising from the dead.  The New York Times is up to 6 million subscribers with an increase of 587,000 digital subscriptions that it attributes to "widespread interest in news of the coronavirus pandemic".  Last year the paper was struggling to make it to 5 million subscribers.  Digital subscriptions are up across the industry.  Digital subscriptions rose 29% at the Dallas Morning News, 17% at the Honolulu Star-Advertiser, and the Poynter-FactCheck's Tampa Bay Times boasted of tripling the rate of digital subscriptions.

Four Years After Promising To Improve, Media Got Better At Being Worse.  After getting rolled by Donald Trump and his supporters in the 2016 election, the chortling and elitist snobs in the legacy media promised our nation that they'd figure out where they went wrong and do better for our country in the future.  Since that time the only real change the honest among us have seen is a not at all subtle shift from doing a bad job feigning impartiality to doing an excellent job not even trying to hide their bias and dishonesty. [...] Not only did they spend these last four years trying to undo the 2016 election with their incessant attempts to crybully Democrats into removing President Trump from office and disrupt his ability to govern, but we're right back where we started as yet another presidential election approaches and the media's flagrant failings are on full display for all to see as if we went back in time 4 years and just swapped out Hillary for Joe.

America's Dangerous & Divisive Media Must Be Dealt With Once & For All.  The U.S. political news media's years-long cold war against the United States must no longer be ignored or enabled.  They have spent decades doing everything they can to divide and destroy our nation on behalf of the anti-American, pro-Leftist interests and ideals that they've been conditioned to embrace academically, socially and professionally.  I get tremendous pushback from my own side for this assessment, but it's one I've always stood by regardless:  they are well-intended.  They do mean well.  They truly believe what they're doing is noble and just.  They think the Americans whose backs they put targets on for ridicule, hatred and violence truly are lower order life forms who — too stupid to celebrate the media and Left's genius and value — must ultimately be wiped off the face of the earth with as much deference to pity as there is motivation for progress.

It's time for media to say 'We're sorry' to Ron DeSantis.  When the coronavirus first appeared in Florida, the media's predictions were dire.  Many expected the state to experience a crisis similar to New York's since thousands of New Yorkers fled their home state for Florida in the early days of the pandemic.  Others claimed Florida's outbreak would be just as bad, if not worse, than Italy's, given that Florida is a huge tourist destination with a major international city and that it has a sizable elderly population.  Health officials echoed these warnings, arguing that Florida's hospitals would be overwhelmed and that the state's open beaches would become breeding grounds for the virus.  Not one of these predictions proved true.

The American Media Has Betrayed America.  [Scroll down]  The media has always been powerful.  With the advent of social media, today they are more powerful than ever.  And they don't care about Americans.  They don't care about America.  They do the bidding of a global elite that wants to stamp out populist dissent around the world.  It wants to consolidate economic power in the hands of billionaires and corporations.  It wants to erase borders and nationalities.  It wants to drive billions of people out of rural areas and into megacities.  For these elites, the Chinese coronavirus pandemic is a golden opportunity.  It's not a conspiracy, though.  It's just the conventional wisdom of the super-rich.  The media, if they cared, now more than ever would do their historic job, questioning this conventional wisdom.  Instead, they are tools.  It is unforgivable.

The BBC - A Propaganda Arm Of The Permanent Government.  [Video clip]

How The FBI Used 'News Hooks' To Advance The Trump-Russia Probe.  A common theme that has emerged from the FBI's Crossfire Hurricane investigation is bureau officials' use of media reports and leaks to advance aspects of the bureau's probe of the Trump campaign's possible ties to Russia.  In at least five instances, FBI officials capitalized on the so-called news hooks — also called news pegs, in journalistic jargon — as justification to open up new areas of the investigation.  James Comey, Andrew McCabe and Peter Strzok all took advantage of media reports to push the investigation forward.  And in one case, Comey orchestrated a leak of his own to spur the appointment of a special counsel.  Prominent media outlets played a key role in advancing the now-debunked theory that the Trump campaign colluded with the Russian government.  Much of that media manipulation centered around the infamous Steele dossier, which the Clinton campaign and DNC funded.

Feeling the heat, media 'fact'-checkers are becoming increasingly silly.  The media this weekend offered two excellent examples of how so-called "fact-checking" has become an excuse to write straw men and then, using vehement opinion and banal facts as their weapons, to strike those straw men down.  The stupidity of their arguments indicates that their brains are shutting down with fear as Attorney General Bill Barr and his lead investigator, U.S. attorney John Durham, close in on the truth behind the attempted takedown of the Trump presidency, a joint Deep State and media enterprise.

Media Must Report Truth Of Anti-Trump Spy Operation Before It's Too Late For Them.  As new details emerge about the Obama administration's broad spying-and-leaking campaign against the incoming Trump administration, reporters have a choice to make about whether to cover this story honestly, at long last.  There is a brief window of time afforded the media to get the story right.  They should take advantage of it.  Journalist Lee Smith already noted the seriousness of the problem facing legacy media after the implosion of the Russia collusion conspiracy theory they peddled. [...] Many of our supposedly smart media elites are dinosaurs who are completely unaware of the asteroid headed right to them.  Instead, they are doing their part in an all-hands-on-deck effort to continue pushing out Democratic talking points that got them into the mess.  This week, that meant they regurgitated the Democratic claim that the Obama administration's spying and leaking was "normal" and that to be concerned about it is nothing more than a "distraction."

Resisting A U.S. News Media That Hates Half Of The Country They Cover
No original thinking: The media's echo chamber in 2020 is like a laboratory and when one of them invents a narrative that the rest agree will help promote their clearly partisan agenda, they all latch on to it.  The result is the antithesis of good journalism: entirely uncritical acceptance and blanket assertion of language, thinking and reporting that is expressed virtually verbatim across all of their newspapers and networks.
No substance: The heft of their narratives is typically weighted in hopeful conjecture and unproven allegations that typify the smear campaigns they're constantly engaged in.  It's a lot of things.  But "substantive" isn't one of them.
No intellectual honesty: Rather than reporting news that might actually help or matter to Americans, the media select only those stories that they believe will support their social and political agenda.  And they characterize those stories every time in ways that target their opponents with the worst possible construction at every turn as the "story" emerges.  Their goal isn't to service audiences with good faith reporting that follows facts regardless of where they lead.  Their goal is to prove social and political narratives they've already established.  And there's simply no room for intellectual honesty or fairness when your standard operating procedure is so aggressively partisan.  From there the media are able to chase their audiences into corners where any dissent from the preferred narrative is labeled nefarious or conspiratorial.

Andrew Cuomo Flacks for the Chinese Communist Party, Repeatedly Calling Wuhan Virus "The European Virus".  It's not racist to blame Europeans for things, I guess! [...] The leftwing media is a junior partner of the Chinese Communist Party, and of course the Democrat Wall Street/corporate types are fleecing the country by selling out to China.  CNBC is even publishing Chinese Communist Party propaganda as "news"!

AP revises its stylebook to outlaw the use of the word 'mistress.' Hilarity ensues.  When it comes to dictating how the news shall be presented to the American public, the Associated Press stylebook plays a key role, and has for many decades.  Among other functions, it tells reporters and their editors which terms are to be preferred and which are verboten in describing phenomena. [...] On Friday [5/8/2020], the AP suddenly announced that the word "mistress" is doubleplusungood.

MSNBC: Americans are so 'freedom obsessed,' they are blinded to threats like virus or climate change.  An MSNBC contributor called out "freedom-obsessed" Americans and their aversion to big government amid the coronavirus pandemic.  Former New York Times columnist Anand Giridharadas blamed Americans obsessed with the idea of freedom for creating a vulnerability in the country to threats like climate change, speaking in the topic during an appearance on MSNBC's "Morning Joe" on Wednesday [5/6/2020].

Amid Plague, Press Takes a Powder On Religious Liberty.  A Worcester, Massachusetts, pastor, Kristopher Casey, will be punished with a $300 civil fine for convening more than 10 people at his Sunday church service.  If he does it again, the fine will increase to $500, and he could face criminal charges, Masslive.com reports.  Where has the press been in the face of what seems, on its face, to be an egregious violation of the First Amendment's protections of peaceable assembly and the free exercise of religion?  The newspapers have been basically cheering it on.

Facebook is Spending Millions to Plant Radical Activists in Local Newspapers.  When the Alliance Defending Freedom helped a local church sue Chattanooga for banning its drive-in prayer service, the article in the Chattanooga Times Free Press repeated the Southern Poverty Law Center's smear of the religious civil rights organization as a hate group.  But the reporter who wrote the article was no ordinary employee.  Wyatt Massey was one of the 225 members of Report for America's 'corps' who are planted in local newsrooms to promote the radical agendas of the left-wing group.  "Will Trump's new public charge rule close door on immigrants' hope of the American dream?" Manuel Obed asked at The Dallas News.  Obed has been with the RFA 'corps' pushing out pro-illegal stories.  In 1976, William Garrison, along with two other thugs, broke into a home in Detroit, killed a man, and shot two other people.  When Garrison recently died of coronavirus, the Detroit Free Press article treating him like a victim was written by Angie Jackson, another 'corps' member.  Jackson's beat, according to Report for America, is "formerly incarcerated citizens re-entering the community."

Do the Media Even Exist?  [Scroll down]  The crisis instead is that they are now almost always wrong, and predictably wrong because they are lazy and biased — and they deny it to the point of self-delusion.  The result is that, for all practical purposes, journalists no longer exist for the general public as sources of news.  More than half the country now assumes that the New York Times, Washington Post, NPR, the networks, and the cable news outlets are culpable not of merely failing to tell the truth but of being incapable of telling the truth.  Even if they wished to, or had the skills to report empirically and dispassionately, they simply cannot, given their investments in the progressive agenda, and its investments in them.  In other words, they are owned — creatures of that agenda.

A Rant against the Media.  The media are a collection of well-funded outlets that set the agenda, narrative, tone, and focus of coverage while conspiring with a major political party.  Reporters don't openly collude with Democrats (well, most of the time they don't), they merely share the same objectives and set of values. [...] When I worked at a relatively large newspaper, I watched teams of reporters take on year-long inquiries that would often generate significant stories. (Sometimes, as is also the case in journalism, they led nowhere.)  These pieces predictably focused on issues that animate left-wingers.  My experience taught me that the biggest source of political bias isn't necessarily the left-wing framing of stories and issues, but the focus and types of stories that editors assign writers.  Our national conversation is often centered on the whims of editors who see the world through the prism of their own left-wing ideology and urban experiences.

Remember the Hong Kong flu?  An I'm-so-cute-and-clever reporter recently asked the president if he deserves to be re-elected, given the number of deaths from the coronavirus, noting that the number is greater than American fatalities from the Vietnam war. [...] Times have changed since 1968.  Big tech overlords are wielding incredible power, the hostile media are pure propaganda, the left will stop at nothing as it adheres to the edict by "any means necessary."  These past couple of months, leftists have proven that they're rather fond of totalitarian rule.

A Little Something for Everyone... to Hate.  In the meantime, everyone should turn off cable news.  All of it.  At least a few days per week.  If the shows were reruns, most people wouldn't notice.  With rare exception, they're recycled monologues, repetitive questions posed to the same guests; you'll actually come away dumber.  Honestly, have you seen a show in the last month where you didn't know exactly what was going to be said, no matter which cast member they turned to "for reaction"?

The Strange Story of a Las Vegas Radio Station Co-Opted by China.  At first glance, Las Vegas Public Radio (LVPR) looks like any other local FM radio station.  It has local community sponsors, vaguely right-wing talk show hosts, and a website begging for a makeover.  But there's a disclaimer on the bottom of that website noting that, contrary to the name, the station is not an NPR affiliate.  That disclaimer makes no mention of the fact that LVPR, the self-proclaimed "People's Voice of Las Vegas," is registered to lobby for Huawei Technologies, a Chinese company widely considered a national security threat to the United States.  Funded in part by Nevada taxpayers, according to its founder, LVPR has also developed close ties with Chinese officials and, under the guise of a local American radio station, it has become a voice for a Chinese technology giant that the Trump administration and other national security experts have identified as a threat to the global communications network.

If the Mainstream Media Were Actually the Enemy of the People, What Would They Be Doing Differently?  The preponderance of the legacy media, and many in right-wing media as well, insist on the importance of outlets like The New York Times, CNN, and NPR. We are constantly told that they play a vital role in our society, one whose absence would cause our entire system to collapse into tyranny.  But is that assumption reality?  I'm growing more and more skeptical every day.  I've previously been one to shy away from President Trump's "enemy of the people" language, but perhaps I've been too kind?  Every single day, multiple new examples of the media slandering their political enemies and lying about issues are brought to the forefront.  It's gotten to the point where you can't go more than a few hours without yet another "journalist" spreading something that's clearly false or disingenuously attacking someone they deem politically inferior.

Silver Lining.  [Scroll down]  It would be easier to feel sorry for journalists and their employers if they hadn't brought the crisis on themselves.  For years, polls have shown that the press is one of the least trusted institutions, if not the least trusted, in the U.S. This is because everyone knows that biased, agenda-driven journalism has become the rule, not the exception, while reliable investigative reporting has become virtually a lost art, outside of a few independent operators like Sharyl Attkisson.

Over 400 Media Outlets Join Project to Prioritize Global Warming Over Coronavirus Coverage.  The Columbia Journalism Review is asking more than 400 media outlets to join in on a project that seeks to prioritize coverage of alleged "global warming" instead of the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, as reported by the Daily Caller.  The project is referred to as "Covering Climate Now," and among its extensive network of outlets are Reuters, Bloomberg, and the Daily Beast.  Although originally founded in 2019, one of the project's founders, Mark Hertsgard, recently released a statement declaring that the project and "global warming" should receive more coverage than the pandemic that has killed over 100,000 people worldwide, and brought the global economy and international travel to a complete standstill.

A free nation cannot long survive if its press takes sides.  When the coronavirus outbreak hit the news in January, mainstream journalists routinely referred to it as the "Wuhan coronavirus" or the "Chinese coronavirus."  When they noticed Trump was using the same descriptions, and sensing a chance to cripple him politically, they abruptly stopped using those terms, and are now accusing him of being a xenophobic racist for calling the virus what they themselves called it until they sensed a chance to bleed him.  Ten days after the first confirmed coronavirus case in this country, Trump took decisive action by restricting flights into the U.S. from China.  Rather than applaud the decision, or merely question it, the mainstream media called him a xenophobic racist for that too.

Mainstream media in America truly is an enemy of the people.  I submit, for your reading pleasure, the notion that perhaps the greatest enemy facing the American public today is a mainstream media and press that has become corrupt beyond belief.  The broad media in America is always trying to divide us.  They delight in keeping people at each other's throats, and scaring us.  They figure that's the best way to have the Great Public Eyeball continuing to return to their print pages or their broadcast screens.  The American mainstream media is the world's greatest player of the "Gotcha" blame-game.  This is how the broadcast MSM, in particular, has polarized America in their continuing search to find fault and blame.  Many reporters' questions to Donald Trump, for example, are not designed to illuminate an issue, the intent is to undermine the President.  "Journalists" do not understand that sometimes circumstances are unpredictable, causing errors or disasters, and that some group or some political party or some individual is not to blame.  Instead, commentators feast on destroying reputations and personal credibility.

Suppose Trump Had Acted Earlier Against the Wuhan Virus.  Petulant propagandists, disguised as journalists, have a new talking point. [...] Their new narrative is that Trump could have and should have acted sooner and if he had, all would be normal in the world.  This is the latest chapter in the book of Orange Man Bad, previous chapters including the Ukraine phone call, Russian collusion, Mueller, Stormy, Avenatti, Omarosa, and Manafort, just to name a few.  Say what you want about the Fake News media, but they are persistent and determined, even if they remain "an enemy of the people" as characterized by Trump.  Too bad their energies are always directed against Trump, rather than subjects given only a brief glance, such as Benghazi, Hillary Clinton's emails, the Steele/Brennan dossier, and real election interference.  The New York Times, briefly distracted by rewriting their tweets describing Joe Biden being credibly accused of sexual assault, took up the role of drum major in the media's Get Trump jihad.

Trump Exposes Phony Journalists with Video Montage.  [Scroll down]  But he had to do that yesterday, folks.  And it was great because it was nothing but their words.  It was nothing but video clips of the media themselves lying and getting things wrong and purposely distorting things.  He just zapped 'em.  I mean, just exposed them to the world.  This is the kind of thing that needs to happen constantly.  The American people who aren't aware need to be made aware what the media is. [...] And while their job title category might be journalists, this is not what they are practicing.  What they are practicing is opposition.  Whatever Trump is for, they guaranteed to be against it.  Whatever Trump is against, they are guaranteed to be for it.  Why are they for or against anything?  They are media.  Their pretense is that they are objective and fair and all of that.  It isn't the case.

Brutal Trump-de-Force at the Coronavirus Hearing Leaves Media Screaming 'Pull the Plug!'  Donald Trump absolutely lit up his own Coronavirus Task Force press briefing with a more than six-minute, tour-de-force media takedown that had CNN and MSNBC sputtering and reaching for the plug.  Trump said hello and turned the media briefing over to the NIH's Dr. Anthony Fauci to clarify his words uttered on CNN on shutting down the country earlier to prevent more deaths.  Then, Trump took over and it was ON.  He listed the timeline of his response to the coronavirus and presented a video of incorrect statements by the press on COVID-19.

The Media Controls the 'Crisis'.  The media's power is enormous, and unmitigated by constitutional checks and balances.  And it's in the service of a party — the Democrats — not the government or the people.  Yet the media's actions are entirely legal, and constitutionally protected, making it effectively unstoppable.  The founding fathers in their wisdom anticipated all manner of shenanigans that could undermine republican government, but it's probably safe to say they did not see this one coming.  Underlying all the media generated hysteria over COVID-19 is the determination to undermine and if possible unseat President Trump, part and parcel of a campaign that's been ongoing for three years.  If bringing the country to its knees is the price of removing Trump, the media and their Democrat patrons are all in.  Will the American people put up with it? [...] The media has the ability to effectively hamstring the country whenever it wants in service of its social and political ends.

Media Will Sabotage America's Reopening; Here's How Trump Can Stop Them.  The go-forward strategy for America has to be that we get back to work and knock out COVID-19 by using nature's vaccine (herd immunity), but doing so ensures a 24x7 media meltdown during which President Trump will be blamed for literally every death that follows.  And say what you correctly will about the media being a joke and having lost all credibility:  If we reopen the nation and let the virus spreads like wildfire (because all indications are that it will), it will be very easy for the media to incite a national panic attack while blaming President Trump for the hundreds of negative stories they fabricate and manufacture.  It's a tough spot for the president and our nation to be in.  Of course it would be great if we had an intellectually honest and fair media that we could rely on during crises, but that's just not the America we live in today.

In Coronavirus Era, the Media Plays God.  To the media, we'd all be better off if the public treated the experts and their anointed messengers in the media with a devotion owed to all-knowing, supernatural authorities.  A world where Americans are living in terror, listening dutifully for instructions from distant bureaucrats on TV, is their dream scenario.  Of course, it's worth listening to what scientists have to say, but nobody, not even the experts, can predict the future.  With churches shuttered during Holy Week, as Americans are ordered to stay home and listen assiduously to people in lab coats, it's worth asking where this scenario leads.  The media are the scribes of the powerful.  A crisis like this is good for their ratings, obviously, but it also enables them to control and indoctrinate people.  The media don't use "experts" to keep the public informed but to tell the public what to think.

One Script?  Ever Hear Of Operation Mockingbird?  Operation Mockingbird indicates the CIA's involvement in the manipulation of the news published in the United States and across the world.  Today, one can identify such manipulation with fake news.  The idea of a large organisation controlling the minds and thoughts of individuals, pushing them towards a specific ideology and certain life choices, may seem like science fiction, or as an absurd conspiracy that can be found in books and movies.  However, for some, it is certainly not a new surprising discovery that corporations, organizations, and politicians, manipulate public opinion in order to fit certain agendas.  These, are in their turn manipulated by even bigger and more powerful organizations, such as the government itself.  [Video clip]

Ted Cruz:  Mainstream Media Are 'Rooting for This Pandemic to Be Worse and Worse'.  Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) took a few jabs at the press during a Monday appearance on Fox News for its handling of coronavirus coverage.  According to the Texas Republican U.S. Senator, the mainstream media were rooting for "disaster," given they believe it would be a mark against President Donald Trump.  Cruz cited an example of a tweet from The Washington Post's Glenn Kessler, who he challenged days earlier for questioning Trump's remarks about unemployment at the State of the Union address last month.

US media parrot Chinese propaganda, talk of censoring White House briefings.  Why do members of the free press keep parroting Chinese agitprop, including the preposterous and totally unverified claim that China has had not a single new coronavirus death since January?  "U.S. reports 1,264 coronavirus deaths in over 24 hours," NBC News recited this week.  "Meanwhile in China, where the pandemic broke out, not a single new coronavirus death was reported."  Chinese officials concede they have new infection cases, but they also allege those cases were imported into China by dirty foreigners.  This is the level on which the Chinese Communist Party has long operated — a sort of ultranationalism that seeks to blame outsiders for its nation's problems.  Yet our media are accepting its dubious (even just from a math perspective) claims at face value.

A Sick Media.  The other day Chris Hayes of MSNBC was pouting about the media's coverage of Donald Trump's press briefings.  He called the airing of them "crazy."  He particularly didn't like MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell using one of them to talk about "reading the Bible."  Hayes' pouting captures the arrogance and secularist prejudice of the media perfectly.  The media sees its role not as a reporter of news but as a propagandistic arbiter — a Big Brother that will tell the public what it can and cannot take seriously. [...] The more propagandistic the media becomes, the more it insists that its coverage is "factual."  But no one takes that seriously.  As Trump once told the media, "You guys have a real problem.  No one believes you anymore."  The media has become all opinion, all the time.  All the journalistic rigors of yesteryear have disappeared.

Does America need Journalists?  I generally believed the national press corps had hit rock bottom somewhere between Russian Roulette, Brett Kavanaugh, and the Ukrainian Money Club.  But that was before COVID-19.  They have since dug through the rock bottom to new depths.  These aren't journalists on display.  They are vile anti-American partisan activists, or to put it in terms CNN might understand, an apple is never a banana.

Greg Gutfeld warns of media's 'incurable bias': 'Best to keep your distance permanently'.  Greg Gutfeld called out the media Saturday night, slamming their "incurable bias" regarding the coronavirus pandemic, including efforts to limit coverage of President Trump's daily news briefings.  "So now this funhouse media mirror has networks justifying not carrying the daily coronavirus briefings because, you know, Trump happens to be in them.  He is president, but since he's not their guy it's not that important," the host said on "The Greg Gutfeld Show." [...] "They haven't yet bothered to investigate how the Chinese covered up their outbreak, causing a delay in information that cost lives," Gutfeld said.  "Instead, the press lauded the Chinese for their quick government response."  Gutfeld said that Americans understand what Trump is saying when he talks about opening the economy by Easter but that doesn't fit the media's narrative.

Gallup Poll:  Majority Of Americans Disapprove Of News Media Handling Of Wuhan Coronavirus.  Of nine leaders and institutions rated by Americans in a new poll on their response to the novel Wuhan Coronavirus, the media fared the worst, and it's not even close.  According to a new Gallup poll released Wednesday, the media was the only institution that scored a negative approval rating among the public with only 44 percent of Americans approving of the way the media has covered the virus.  Fifty-five percent disapprove making for a -11 percent rating.  Gallup also gathered approval ratings for U.S. hospitals, schools and daycares, state governments, employers, government health agencies such as the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), Vice President Mike Pence, President Donald Trump, and Congress.

The Political Media Are Failing America.  [Scroll down]  The institutional bias at the Washington Post and the New York Times certainly isn't new.  But there used to be a corresponding level of professional gravitas that engendered reader trust.  Some of that trust has been corroded over years of Obama adulation, echo chambers, conspiracy mongering, and knee-jerk partisanship.  Some of that trust has also been corroded by the litany of Trump-slaying "bombshells" that have fizzled over the past years.  I don't know how many times I've recently heard people affix "if it turns out to be true" to a breaking news story.

COVID-19 Probably Won't Destroy Society, but the Government's Reaction Might.  [Scroll down]  Let's momentarily not raise a fuss about having no reason to trust the model's underlying algorithm or whatever unknown assumptions about the virus generated its scary predictions.  We'll also ignore that there's no chance the Washington Post or any other major media outlet would present a balanced picture by informing us of any expert opinions or data not supporting the paper's dire take.  Furthermore, let's just forget that there even are experts who think the media-generated panic about COVID-19 is a bigger problem than the virus itself.  We'll also entirely ignore the media's generally appalling track record concerning "expert" projections of hypothetical disasters.  In fact, we'll ignore their altogether abysmal record of spreading misinformation when it matters most.  Pretend they never created a completely unjustified panic over the prospect of massive Y2K technology failures.  Nor remember they've been serially predicting we have only ten years 'til the Earth becomes uninhabitable from environmental damage for at least the last 50.  The preposterous and poisonous story that Donald Trump entered the White House as a Russian mole?  Ignore it.  The completely bogus "hands up, don't shoot" narrative about Michael Brown that directly caused mass rioting and the assassination of at least a dozen cops?  Never happened.  We're also going to have to forget that they utterly trivialized the very mortal threat posed by COVID-19 they're hyping.

Latest Coronavirus Mutation:  My New Ways to Hate the Media.  As the world has descended into coronavirus panic, the scum masquerading as journalists in this country have been working overtime to plumb new depths of irresponsibility.  Rather than accurately share information with a nervous public during a rapidly-growing pandemic, the American MSM has decided that any lack of veracity in the name of discrediting President Trump is justified.  They've been lying about virtually every aspect of President Trump's and his administration's response to the crisis. [...] While the Democrats were holding the American people hostage over the weekend to turn a crisis relief bill into a progressive pork fest, The New York Times decided to blame Republicans. [...] The First Amendment is being perverted by these cretins.  There is always something at stake when they're being irresponsible, this time it's people's lives.  They don't care.  Their power and their ideology are all that matter to them.

Ted Cruz slaps down NBC reporter pushing obvious Chinese anti-US propaganda.  In a bizarre report from NBC, reporter Keir Simmons finishes their video by literally saying that China did a great job containing the definitely-not-Chinese-Wuhan-Chinese-coronavirus, and that the U.S. is now threatening the world with re-infection. [...] It's amazing just how eager the media is to ape the propaganda coming out of a communist government, but we see more and more examples every day.

From Kung Flu to Bat Virus, The Corrupt Media Beclowns Itself One More Time.  The President and his team hold press conferences at least once every day, often twice or even more, as a part of this effort.  During a time like this, any patriotic American who cares about this country and our fellow citizens would hope that people who hold themselves out to be "news reporters" would focus their questioning on actual news-related stuff, and do their best to leave their leftist political correctness and active grudges against the President secured away in the enormous fanny packs in which all their rage-filled grudges are stored.  Well, you can hope that, but you would be disappointed if you did.  Take the raging nitwit below as a prime example of a corrupt reporter using yesterday's televised press conference as an excuse to grandstand her own grudge against President Trump and his ongoing, 100% accurate use of the term "Chinese virus" to describe what he is fighting:  [Video clip]

The American press's entire energy is bent towards destroying Trump.  The mainstream American media have abandoned journalism's formerly-prized ethos of "who, what, where, why, when."  There is no pretense anymore that they serve a purpose other than maligning Donald Trump in the hope of destroying his presidency. [...] The media are currently outraged that Republicans are less panicked by the coronavirus than Democrats are.  Part of that may be because Democrats are ruled more by emotion than by reason.  A lot of it, though, is because Republicans have no reason to trust the media.  If members of the media believe that saying something will hurt Trump, they'll say it — and that's true whether what they're saying is honest or not.  If the media hysterically use coronavirus to attack Trump, Republicans instinctively assume (a) that coronavirus isn't that bad and (b) that Trump's doing an excellent job of handling it.

We're Paying The Price For The Death Of Journalism.  That journalism is dead has been a punchline for so long that we've forgotten how that fact has real world consequences.  We're now paying the price for the failure of that profession to hold itself to any semblance of standards.  As worry and straight-up panic sweep large swaths of the country, causing irrational toilet paper hoarding and runs on canned goods, there is no outlet and no journalist worthy of trust when it comes to conveying truthful information to the public or to hold anyone in power accountable.  Eight years of sycophantic, throne sniffing coverage under President Barack Obama gave way to four years of nitpicking, hostility, and conspiracy theories.  There are no standards anymore; if someone on TV hates President Trump, there is no outrageous, medically dubious statement they can make on CNN or MSNBC that will be challenged and if they love him, there is nothing that will be challenged on Fox.  The opposite is true on those networks if you replace "President Trump" with any Democrat.

How a Soros Trojan Horse Took Down Chris Matthews and Is Poised to Bully Others into Submission.  With hundreds of millions of dollars from billionaire financier George Soros and dozens of his comrades-in-arms at the "Democracy Alliance," the progressive network of labor unions, activist investment firms, social justice organizations, and ideological media outlets is the tip of the spear in "cancel" culture. [...] These groups and outlets, working in concert, orchestrated the downfall of Fox News host Bill O'Reilly, targeted Breitbart, and attempted to knock Laura Ingraham off the air through advertiser boycotts.  Ultraviolet, in particular, led the anti-Kavanaugh protests — projecting "Kavanaugh is a sexual predator" onto the D.C. Court of Appeals where he sat before joining the highest court, running TV ads, and having their paid staff confront then-Senator Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) in a Senate elevator to convince him to oppose Kavanaugh.  Armed with unending funds from the Democracy Alliance donors, Ultraviolet's press releases are often re-packaged and published as "news" by Huffington Post writers, including Bassett.  Bassett also received awards from the neo-Malthusian and Democracy Alliance-funded Population Institute and Planned Parenthood for her pro-abortion reporting.

How Would The Media Cover Biden Versus Trump?  Joe Biden is not the media's preferred Democratic candidate.  He never has been.  But he's still a Democrat candidate, which means the press prefers him to Donald Trump.  If Super Tuesday were a primary of corporate newsrooms, Democrats' nominee would be Beto O'Rourke.  (Or Harry Potter.)  Should Biden's over-performance on Tuesday clear a plausible path to his nomination, the media will be in something of a bind.  Thankfully, they're relatively shameless.

Joe Biden's Big Night Won't Be Enough To Solve Democrats' Bernie Sanders Problem.  With a sweep of the south and key victories in Minnesota and Massachusetts, the media narrative today will be all about how Joe Biden is the comeback kid, back from the dead, risen like a Phoenix from the ashes.  That sort of thing.  It's the kind of story the media loves.  They love it so much it doesn't matter whether it's true, or whether the media was writing Biden off less than a week ago.  The surprise comeback, vindicated frontrunner narrative is going to be pushed so hard by the mainstream press and the Democratic establishment in the coming days, you'll think Biden's nomination is pretty much a done deal.

Big Tech's Civilization-busting Bias.  Roughly speaking, approximately 35 percent of the electorate will vote Democrat and 35 percent Republican regardless.  It's the 30 percent in-between who'll "decide" the election.  Capturing a majority of them will likely win you the day.  Now, these are people who, like so many others, often make emotion-based voting decisions.  They have no firm party allegiances and choose who they perceive is the best candidate.  So, if you alter their perception, you alter their vote.  This is what big Tech does.  By exposing voters to just the right news at just the right time, they manipulate opinion.

Poll Shows Trump Earns More than Twice as Much Trust as Media.  Morning Consult did an extensive, in-depth poll looking at trust, and it found that trust in President Trump is more than twice that of the news media.  The question is, Do you trust X-Brand "a lot to do the right thing."  The media ranked a dismal 16 out of 20, with just eight percent saying they trust media "a lot to do the right thing."

WaPo writer urges anti Trump media to abandon all neutrality, but spin it better.  In a shockingly oblivious show of sanctimony and self-delusion, a Washington Post blogger urged everyone in the media to be even harsher in their coverage of President Trump and to push their anti-Trump opinions as objective news.  Fox News analyst Brit Hume — a frequent Trump critic — was shocked at WaPo "media columnist" Margaret Sullivan and her call to "abandon neutrality" when covering Trump.  Why?  Because the media were never "neutral" in covering the President to begin with.  Hume called Sullivan's exhortation to "abandon neutrality" a "complete misnomer."  Hume explained:  "This is simply an argument for opinion masquerading as 'news' coverage.  It begins with journalists' opinion as to which views have merit and which have not.  Shouldn't it be left to readers and viewers to decide that?"

Liberal Bias 'Accelerating Wedge In Our Society,' Began With 'Love Affair' for Obama.  At a forum in California recently aired by C-SPAN, two news media veterans admitted — what all too many of their colleagues still deny — that liberal bias and overt hostility to Donald Trump is hurting the country and threatening to destroy the relevance of journalism.  "I think a liberal bias is increasingly embedded in the journalism as a result of the Trump experience and it's accelerating and deepening the wedge in our society between the left and the right," declared Van Gordon Sauter, president of CBS News for two stints in the 1980s.  He blamed universities for the lack of an ideological mix in newsrooms:  "Our colleges, which are dominated by liberals, liberal professors, are churning out these students who never hear another opinion."

NBC's Chuck Todd Was Amy Klobuchar's Landlord In Arlington.  NBC's Chuck Todd, who moderated Wednesday night's Las Vegas debate, was Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar's landlord in Arlington, Virginia, according to six sources who spoke to Page Six.  Klobuchar, with her husband attorney John Bessler, rented a three-bedroom house owned by Todd.  Page Six reports Klobuchar and her husband began renting the Virginia real estate in 2008 but are no longer living there as a second residence.  It is unknown when the couple relocated.

Fake News from Neil Cavuto.  Anti-Trump Fox News analyst Neil Cavuto, [...] took umbrage at Trump's reaction to an A.B. Stoddard interview with Cavuto in which she falsely stated, in defending Michael Bloomberg's Hindenburgesque Nevada debate performance, that Trump consistently lost his 2016 debates with "cringewortthy" and "disastrous" performances. [...] Trump has watched, as have we all, as Fox News veered slowly to the left with is addition of the likes of Richard Fowler, Marie "Jobs for ISIS" Harf, and Jessica Tarlov, and certainly nothing says "fair and balanced," a phrase Fox curiously dropped from its advertising, like former DNC Chair Donna Brazile.  Trump watched as Judge Andrew Napolitano was paraded out repeatedly to agree with Rep. Adam Schiff that Trump's Ukraine call was an impeachable offense and that Trump was guilty of at least four separate articles that could be filed.  Legal analyst and former U.S. Atty.  Joe Digenova was effectively banished from Fox commentary for saying on Tucker Carlson's show that Napolitano was foolish.

Study: Most journalists are to the left of Bernie Sanders (but don't worry they're totally fair).  An academic study by a trio of professors claims to have proven there is no such thing as media bias despite the fact that the same study found most journalists are much father left than the average Twitter user.  In fact, a majority of journalists, based on their Twitter interactions, are somewhere to the left of Bernie Sanders.

Study Finds Most Journalists Are Further Left Politically Than Bernie Sanders.  The vast majority of people who work in media are on the left.  Anyone who has watched their coverage of Trump over the last few years knows this.  They are not even trying to hide it anymore.  But the truth is more shocking than you know.  Most of these people are further left than Bernie Sanders, the most far left political figure of our time.

Why the 2020 presidential campaign polls are misleading.  [Scroll down]  It is obvious that the vast majority of Democrats simply want to know who the best person for that job is, but through very little fault of their own, they are not being given the proper information with which to make that critical determination.  Part of the blame goes to a gutless and compromised news media that, for various reasons, has no self-interest in harshly vetting candidates like Bernie Sanders (he has a cult who will be [angry] at them), Pete Buttigieg (he is gay and, therefore, it is not in the DNA of the liberal elements of the news media to be able to criticize him unless there is no other choice), and Mike Bloomberg (he is literally paying their salaries right now by spending millions in media advertising).  But I mostly blame the pollsters who have been remarkably unimaginative and, frankly, overly politically correct in their methods, which have provided voters with mostly meaningless and deceiving data.

It was Obama, not Trump, who weaponized government against political opponents.  The media frequently buries stories that might hurt political candidates or policies they support and will continually run false stories against political candidates and policies they oppose.  How else can it explain the years of fake stories on Russian collusion, seeking to destroy white Christian boys for wearing MAGA hats, trying to destroy Supreme Court Justice nominee Brett Kavanaugh with no evidence, the false "Hands up, don't shoot" narrative?  How else do you explain the burying of stories about all the mental and sexual abuse of women by the Clintons and the burying of stories or the lack of investigation into the clear corruption and kickbacks of the Clintons and Bidens if not pure bias?  How many people are the media willing to destroy in order to get power back for the Democrats?

The Internet atomizes media.  No matter how diligent The Other Guys have been about making sure no Republicans have found employment in a particular media outlet, we can start another outlet that fast and go around them.  And there are no physical distribution issues; The Washington Post and Joe Blow's blog are both one click away.  They can't shut us up.  Our vision, the Constrained Vision, has led us to use the Internet to expand our reach, to make more friends, and to defeat any attempt at censorship with a work-around.  We have used it to make serious dents in The Other Guys' carefully-crafted cultural hegemony.  As we look at the Democrats' failed impeachment effort, we see that they were unable to drive support past the 50% point.  We now drive the other 50%.  This is new.  And it is huge.  And it isn't going away.

After Three Years of Hate, the Dems Have Lost It.  Historically, when a party or politician went off the deep end, there was a vibrant press to point it out, mock it, and return things to semblance of rationality.  That has not been the case in America for a generation or two now, with the mainstream media having lost most all semblance of objectivity to become the Democrats' great enabler.  And indeed, the mandarins of the modern media are, if anything, even more Trump-afflicted than the party that they supposedly cover.

Trump's Presidency Reveals 7 Undeniable Facts About The Swamp.  Be assured the deception, illusions, and political chicanery utilized by The Swamp would NOT be possible without the complicity of the handful of corporations that comprise the Orwellian Media.  Not only does the Mainstream Media misinform the public, but it blatantly deceives the entire world.  Truly, the election of Donald Trump has exposed the activist media to all but the most moronic of the morons stumbling around in the bubble.  Undeniably, The Swamp could be drained if not for the endless propagandic spin spewed forth by the modern-day purveyors of bubblevision. [...] The Orwellian Media's mission is NOT to inform the public, but, instead, its purpose is to propagandize the people.  Its false narratives are undeniably designed to expedite the downfall of the republic.

The Subversive Intentions of Our Mainstream Media.  Many media observers will recall the New York Times' response to Donald Trump's unexpected victory in 2016.  In their subtle, tacit admission that the paper had covered the election with some bias, publisher Arthur Sulzberger, Jr. and editor Dean Baquet promised to "rededicate" themselves to the fundamental mission of the Times and to bring "fairness" to their coverage.  Other mainstream news outlets and journalists issued similar mea culpas.  Just about all of them had treated Trump's campaign and supporters with an attitude of spiteful hilarity.  The great irony in the media's hatred, of course, is that his rise would not have been possible without them and their vain attempt to hijack the Republican presidential primary process to ensure Hillary Clinton had the weakest opponent possible. [...] Audiences who are sympathetic to conservative perspectives in American life cannot afford to brush media bias off as a mere annoyance.  It must be understood as a threat.

Hillary Clinton:  Democrats Don't Have Enough Control Of Media To 'Influence Americans' Thinking'.  Hillary Clinton thinks Democrats lack power in media.  She envies the right's alleged "long game" success at "really influenc[ing] the thinking of Americans."  This is a delusion far beyond what a public figure of her stature should be capable of conjuring.  Clinton's assertion comes to us a courtesy of a new Hollywood Reporter interview set to promote Hulu's forthcoming documentary, "Hillary."  Note that we've already encountered two ironies, in that Clinton is bemoaning the left's lack of influence in media to a liberal publication, while promoting a hagiography from a liberal streaming outlet.

In the Trump era, news too has become predictably partisan.  Once upon a time, news in these United States was, well, new.  And people wanted to know the latest happenings.  Now, however, much of the nation's news and the people in it — even what they end up saying during these events — are pretty predictable.  That's in large part because so many Americans have fallen into ruts of partisan thinking that aren't really thinking at all, just safe recitations of talking points that require no listening or manners.

Should You Hate the Media?  The cold truth is that the men who preside over The New York Times and The Washington Post, and they are all men, believe THEY should be running the United States, not Donald Trump who is a vulgarian in their eyes.  These men well know the Democratic Party will blindly follow their editorial lead as will TV news executives at CNN, NBC, ABC, and CBS.  Thus, the so called "free press" in America has become an industry that now seeks power over Americans.  The far left vision these operations usually champion cannot be realized at the ballot box, the bosses know that.  So it must be imposed by destroying progressive opposition, which the media does with enthusiasm.  Just ask Brett Kavanaugh.

CNN's bias is now beyond laughable.  As Sen. Martha McSally (R-Ariz.) walked through the hallways of the Senate Thursday, CNN senior congressional correspondent Manu Raju asked her if the Senate should consider "new evidence as part of the impeachment trial."  McSally shot back:  "Manu, you're a liberal hack.  I'm not talking to you."  "You're not going to comment about this?" a dazed Raju asked.  "You're a liberal hack, buddy," McSally replied as she walked away.  Predictably, conservatives cheered, while mainstream media decried McSally's move as unbecoming.  Whatever your take, the interaction reflects three years of mounting frustration with an overtly partisan media, exemplified by CNN, which has dropped any pretense of fairness and become an organ of the Democratic Party.  The problem isn't that Raju asked the question — that's his job, after all.  It's that virtually all questions posed by political reporters these days are framed to support the narratives and assumptions of one political party, the Democrats.

HBO Teams with CNN's Brian Stelter for Documentary About the Rise of Fake News.  Just a week after news broke about CNN settling a massive lawsuit over its fake news coverage of Covington Catholic High School student Nick Sandmann, WarnerMedia announced Wednesday [1/15/2020] that CNN's Reliable Sources host Brian Stelter is making a documentary about the rise of fake news that will debut in March on HBO.

MSNBC Legal Expert Donated Cash to Dem Congresswoman Who Voted for Impeachment.  It's no question MSNBC has been begging for President Donald Trump's impeachment.  So, how does MSNBC legal analyst Jill Wine-Banks handle the issue of impeachment?  By giving money to a Democratic Party House member who would later vote for impeachment.  FEC records revealed that MSNBC Legal Analyst Jill Wine-Banks gave $500 to Democratic Rep. Lauren Underwood (D-IL.) on May 13, 2019.  Underwood voted for Trump's impeachment in December, though she represents a district in Illinois that backed Trump in 2016.

Credibility.  Bob Martin, in his Dec. 31 letter, declared how grateful he is for "fact-based journalism" and how concerned he is for those getting their news from "from sources that just make stuff up."  What is not clear is how he knows when he is receiving fact-based journalistic news and when he is not.  Assuming a "journalist" is someone who has earned a degree in journalism or something similar, can we also assume that everything presented by journalists is fact-based?  Mr. Martin provided three examples of individuals he said do not provide "fact-based journalism": John Solomon, Dan Bongino and Mark Levin. [...] I'm guessing that the key to understanding why we are being told that these three educated and experienced gentlemen of the media do not provide "fact-based journalistic news" is because all three are conservatives.  One can only conclude that the message here is that if the news is not providing a left-wing message it is not "fact-based journalism."

Our Unpatriotic Press Coddles Dictators.  [Scroll down]  This has been going on for decades.  In 2003, Dan Rather was thrilled to get a sit-down interview with Saddam Hussein.  He respectfully addressed him as "Mr. President" and sat cooperatively as that thug declared that he had won 100% of the last election.  "One hundred percent," Rather repeated, with a tone that sounded like "You don't say?"  He begged Hussein to say some words in English and asked him whether that might be the last time they would meet.  If our press were truly patriotic, they would question our tyrannical enemies at least as skeptically as they question our own elected leaders.  Instead, they're so hungry for access, for a big "get," that they sound like butlers and maids of the world's worst thugs.

A crime still in progressCrime in Progress is, inadvertently, the cruelest book ever written about the American media.  Its authors, Glenn Simpson and Peter Fritsch, are the two former Wall Street Journal reporters who founded the DC-based consultancy Fusion GPS.  In 2016, the Hillary Clinton campaign paid them to use their former media colleagues to push a conspiracy theory smearing her Republican opponent, Donald Trump.  The crime is still in progress.  To help top-notch journalists market the fantasy that one of the world's most familiar faces was a secret Russian spy, Fusion GPS co-ordinated with the FBI to forge a series of 'intelligence reports'.  They attributed these lurid memos to a down-on-his-luck Brit, a former spy named Christopher Steele.  The interested punters included some of the biggest names in the business:  the New York Times, the Washington Post, CNN, the New Yorker, even Yahoo!  News.  Eventually, they all endorsed Steele's 'dossier'.

A Decade of Declining Trust in the Media.  During a recent CNN interview, New Yorker editor David Remnick expressed consternation with the public's refusal to accept at face value what the news media report about President Trump.  Our intransigence, it seems, is a source of considerable frustration for the Fourth Estate: [...] Nor does Remnick seem to realize that the erosion of public confidence in media began decades ago and continued apace during the past ten years.  According to Gallup, the percentage of Americans who express "very little confidence" in television news increased from 31 percent in July of 2009 to 45 percent in June of 2019.  Nearly half of the nation regards what they see on network and cable newscasts as biased or simply untrue.  Newspapers and other media also lost considerable credibility during the past ten years.

Who Will Protect Us From The Press?  We have been told since the birth of this great nation about the importance of the "fourth estate" in the functioning of a free and fair democracy. [...] And, yet, from the inception of this witch hunt the majority of the so-called "mainstream" media outlets have exercised no true journalistic function whatsoever.  Staffed by individuals ideologically aligned with Hillary Clinton and the liberal wing of the Democratic Party they have simply lapped up every bizarre claim and accusation and repeated them into a megaphone without any attempt whatsoever to vet the information they were printing or broadcasting.

Corrupt Democrats Pushing America toward the Abyss.  If America had an even remotely responsible media establishment, preferably one that does not tweet out something like "Merry Impeachmas from the WaPo team," corrupt intelligence leaders would not have the latitude to plan a coup.  Democracy truly does die in darkness, and the Washington Post and its hopelessly corrupt media colleagues are committed to bringing that darkness.  No Republican would be so bold.  The media would violently and endlessly scream bloody murder if Republicans tried to impeach President Obama for any number of his very real acts of corruption and failed leadership until Republicans backed down in shame.  The two parties traditionally operated under a form of political deterrence and were able to work effectively together within that system.  That ended when Democrat accountability disappeared under the corrupting influence of their rise in cultural and media power, stoked mercilessly by the Obama administration.

China Violates Disclosure Law to Publish Propaganda in NY Times, WaPo.  China routinely broke federal law by not disclosing how much it spent to publish regime propaganda in the New York Times, the Washington Post, and other newspapers, an expert review of foreign agent registration filings concluded.  China Daily, an official mouthpiece of the Chinese Communist Party, has published hundreds of propaganda articles designed to look like ordinary news stories in some of America's most influential newspapers.  While foreign agents may place ads in the United States, the propaganda outlet has repeatedly violated the Foreign Agent Registration Act (FARA) by failing to provide full disclosures about its purchases.

Journalism is Dead — Government Propaganda Rules.  Former Newsweek reporter Tareq Haddad has finally clearly stated what logical human beings have known for quite some time:  Stories that challenge the establishment's official narratives go unreported because the media has been co-opted by the United States government.  Which means this country is no better than China or any other dictatorship with state-sponsored media that pushed propaganda designed to keep the establishment in power.

Media Watchdog Exposes 'Fake News' With Citizen Activism, Investigative Journalism.  Accuracy in Media recently celebrated its 50th anniversary.  Founded in 1969 by Reed Irvine to combat liberal media bias, the organization has a new leader.  Adam Guillette spoke to The Daily Signal about his plans for Accuracy in Media, the threat of "fake news," and the media's relentless attacks on President Donald Trump.

Incoming NBC Universal Boss Executive Gave $30,600 to Democrats.  In the latest example of corporate media leftism, the parent company of NBC News — NBCUniversal ("NBCU") — is set to place NBCU executive Jeff Shell as CEO of the entire company.  Shell has given at least $30,600 exclusively to Democrats this election cycle.  The Hollywood Reporter wrote Dec. 16, that Shell "will take over as CEO of NBCUniversal from Steve Burke."  Shell, according to Federal Election Commission records, has contributed at least $30,600 spread among two Democratic presidential candidates, two Democratic Party leadership PACs and two Democratic committees between Jan. 28, 2019 [and] Oct. 29, 2019.  Shell gave the maximum amounts ($2,800) to Democratic Party presidential candidates Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA) (she dropped out earlier in December) and Sen. Michael Bennet (D-CO), clearly indicating a liberal political bias.  He also contributed $10,000 to the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee and $5,000 to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, which both assist to help Democrats gain majorities in both houses of Congress respectively.

Buckle Up, America.  So many elements of the ruling class who do not appear to have any conscious role as perpetrators of this meddling and this coup — especially the dimwitted MSM reporters and assorted pundits who aided and abetted it all out of political sympathy — still do not have the honest reaction of shame.  They do not have anger at being played.  They do not have — in the case of just about every Democrat — the individual integrity to step beyond ideological loyalty and denounce this outrageous behavior.  In the absence of shame and apology, the stark reality becomes clear:  the American people are in a war against a ruling class willing to deny the existence of truth and to defy the moral consequences of propping up untruth.  America's history and heartland values suggest that such a ruling class is not going to remain the ruling class much longer.

Tom Brokaw:  Journalists Used to Be Trusted, But Social Media Ruined That.  Longtime NBC News anchor Tom Brokaw came on CBS's The Late Show Monday [12/9/2019] to talk about his new Watergate book and compare the impeachment inquiry of Richard Nixon to the current impeachment of President Trump.  While he was there, he also boasted how journalists in his day could be counted on to report accurately; but today, people got their news from social media which couldn't be trusted.

Our Stupid Media:  An Update.  Fiction writing usually demands that you eschew "punch in the face" irony as too unsubtle to deploy.  Life itself heeds no such constraints. [...] The Democratic Media Complex is shedding jobs because they collectively decided that supporting the far left wing of the Democratic Party was far more important than objectively reporting the truth.

Democrats Want to Manage, Not Represent, the People.  The trivial nonsense that populates the mainstream media on most days has little relevance to the life of the average person.  The elite media is a sounding board for the anxiety, narcissism, and jealousy of rulers afraid of losing their prestige, as if all Americans shared or should share their fears.  Pro-establishment propaganda is repackaged in shrill, misplaced, childish rhetoric about the Constitution (a document for which they have previously had little regard) and what the Founding Fathers (men they are otherwise pleased to call racists beyond contempt) would have done about the Orange Menace.

'Watergate' Doesn't Mean What the Press Thinks It Means.  I was reflecting this week on my brief stint, many years ago, as a newspaperman.  It was a job I loved.  I signed on not too many years after the Watergate scandal, and journalists were still flush with heroic ideas about themselves. [...] I look back now and the whole thing seems a sham, a self-congratulatory illusion created by leftists in both the news media and in Hollywood.

Here Are The Obama-Era Operatives and Former Journos Behind a Covert Propaganda Outfit.  A small cadre of former journalists and Obama-era operatives is creating a Russian-style propaganda outfit designed to mimic real local news and activate left-leaning voters ahead of the 2020 election.  Tara McGowan, a digital producer for Obama for America in 2011, is raising $25 million from wealthy liberals to create a media company called Courier Newsroom that is designed to deliver information favorable to Democrats.  Courier is rolling out newspapers in swing states to counter what McGowan believes is right-wing spin on Facebook and across the digital domain.  Courier Newsroom does not alerts readers that the publication is actually a liberal project.

NYT Columnist, CBS News Political Analyst Joins Secretive Dem Donor ConferenceNew York Times columnist and CBS News political analyst Jamelle Bouie addressed a closed-door gathering of the Democratic Party's top donors last week in potential violation of the paper's ethical guidelines, which prohibit paid speeches to political groups and urge staff members to be "especially sensitive to the appearance of partiality when they address groups that might figure in coverage they provide."  The Democratic establishment, its donor class, and the party's strategy has been a regular subject of Bouie's columns and of his political analysis on CBS News, where he is a frequent guest on the network's flagship Sunday program Face the Nation.

Here's How Impeachment Helps Democrats Even If They Fail.  Today's Democrat Party is a joke that would cease to exist if not for the unwavering support of the massively powerful corporate media.  Long before this revelation, it always amused me when people like Resistance Jake Tapper or others in the media would claim:  "We don't choose the stories.  The stories choose us.  All we're doing is reporting what's going on in the world.  That's our job."  It amused me because they literally write the headlines.  They choose exactly what stories to cover.  As has become painfully obvious to anyone with a pulse, they also choose the narratives attached to those stories and how every twist and turn is characterized throughout the 24/7 news cycle.  If you couple those realities — that the media are nothing more than Democrats' marketing arm, and that they're responsible for deciding what we talk about and how it's characterized — it becomes really hard to take "the news" seriously.

A Seditious Conspiracy — Lt. Col. Vindman, CIA "Whistleblower" Source #1, Shaped False Summary of April Trump-Zelensky Phone Call.  Amid increased calls from House Republicans to force the testimony of the CIA "whistleblower", today the Washington Post, the primary outlet for CIA misinformation and public relations, began shaping the "whistle-blower" as a hero.  Because the overall effort involves multiple parts of the deep state apparatus, to see through the construction it is important to note which media outlet holds equity for agency talking points within the coup.  The Washington Post is primary PR for the CIA and IC writ large.  The New York Times is primary PR for the FBI; and CNN is primary PR for the State Dept.  This pattern has been consistent throughout.

How Journalists Became Fahrenheit 451-Style 'Firemen'.  A week ago James O'Keefe's Project Veritas released a hot mic rant by ABC's Amy Robach lamenting her network's deep-sixing of the Jeffery Epstein saga three years prior. [...] Not too long ago, ambitious journalists, local and national, prided themselves on gathering information, and their editors prided themselves on publishing it.  About 50 or so years ago, however, progressives started to seize control of universities, J-schools included, and newsrooms shifted leftwards with each new graduating class.  By 2016, even major newsrooms had become firehouses.  Their goal was not to report information but to manage it.  In February 2017, MSNBC's Mika Brzezinski unwittingly admitted as much.  Said Brzezinski of President Trump, "He could have undermined the messaging so much that he can actually control exactly what people think.  And that is our job."  Yes, sadly, that is their job.

ABC video leaker accuses network of 'seek-and-destroy' mission.  The person who leaked a video of an ABC anchor lamenting that her network killed her story exposing pedophile Jeffrey Epstein and the Bill Clinton connection is sounding off on the controversy in a letter.  "I sit right here with you all in complete shock," said the letter posted by Project Veritas, which published the video this week.  "I, like many, are at a loss for words on how this has been handled.  Instead of addressing this head-on like the company has in the past, it has spun into a mission of seek-and-destroy.  Innocent people that have absolutely nothing to do with this are being hunted down as if we are all a sport.  I challenge all of you to actually look inwards and remember why this company engages in journalism. [...]"

Levin: Five Ways the 'Unfree Media' Are Contributing to 'The Greatest Scandals in American Politics'.  In a series of tweets, [Mark] Levin blasted liberal media dishonesty, negligence and bias in their efforts to help Democrats impeach President Donald Trump.

'Cannot overstate how dramatic': Chris Wallace said he had 'goosebumps' during impeachment vote.  Fox News anchor Chris Wallace called the vote on impeachment in the House "dramatic" and said that he "could feel" the historic gravity of the vote.  "As somebody who lived and covered Washington for 40 years, as they called the vote I have to say that I could feel it, feel sort of goosebumps," Wallace said Thursday [10/31/2019] as the House voted successfully to move into the next stage of impeachment.

Trump vs. the barbarians at the gates.  All the Sunday News programs have become unwatchable but for Maria Bartiromo's on Fox Business.  Even Fox News Sunday is only marginally less biased than the other networks.  No one looking for actual news and real journalism bothers with any of them:  CNN, MSNBC, ABC, NBC or CBS anymore.  Tapper, Todd, Stephanopoulos, et. al. are each agents of the Democrat party dedicated to bringing President Trump to his knees.  Why?  Because he is not one of them.  Because they loathe him and the people who elected him.  They have contempt for him and for us.  Their contempt is on display 24/7 on all but Fox News which has recently been inching toward becoming just like the rest of them, hopelessly biased against all things conservative.

Mainstream Media Meltdown:  Journos Freak Out over Breitbart's Inclusion in Facebook News Tab.  Mainstream journos are freaking out at Mark Zuckerberg following news that Facebook might make them compete on a slightly more equal playing field with Breitbart News.  The mass mainstream media meltdown was sparked by reports that Facebook will include Breitbart News in its new "Facebook News," feature, which delivers news stories to Facebook users from a handpicked selection of 200 trusted news sources.

More Than One-Fifth of Newsroom Employees Live in NYC, L.A., D.C..  More than one-fifth of all U.S. newsroom employees live in the liberal strongholds of New York City, Los Angeles, and Washington, D.C., according to a newly published report.  A Pew Research Center analysis of U.S. Census Bureau data from 2013 to 2017 found that 22 percent of newsroom employees live in the three cities.  New York (12 percent) had the greatest share of newsroom employees, followed by Los Angeles and Washington with 5 percent each.  That proportion was almost twice the 13 percent of all U.S. workers who call the three cities home.

Who [are] "they?".  There is only one entity that has the power, influence, and ability to steer America off course, make an unknown community organizer President and an intelligence challenged bartender a Congresswoman, and that is the media.  But we need to go one step further because the fake media is just a powerful tool that is being misused.  More to the point it is the corporate ownership behind the counterfeit media that pulls strings.  Today's media is an oligopoly, meaning that very few companies control the industry.  It is the ownership of these corporations, along with their close associates, who are the answer as to who "they" are.

The Media is a Threat to America.  Why should the rest of the country care about what's happening to the media industry?  Same reason you should care about what happens when a crackhead can't pay for his crack.  Like the proverbial crackhead, the media has two survival strategies:  stealing and going crazy.  These strategies are happening all around us and they're wrecking the country worse than a million crackheads could.  Unable to make its business model work, the media turned to cannibalism.  The print media began merging into bigger conglomerates, and, lately, the failing digital media has gotten merger fever.  But the media can't actually outgrow its problems, and the bigger organizations, after cutting jobs and outlets, still can't make it work.  But the mergers also spurred unionization in print and digital media.  While the media bowed to political pressure and signed off on the unions, the costs are killing the media.

Journalists are doing nonstop PR for the intelligence community.  Of the many disturbing examples of media malpractice in the Trump era, none are so alarming as the press's unswerving deference to current and former members of the intelligence community.  They can be perjurers, power abusers, perhaps even killers-by-drone, but as long as they oppose President Trump, they can expect journalists to give them a sympathetic ear.  For partisan operatives such as former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper and former CIA Director John Brennan, both of whom lied to Congress under oath about consequential matters, media coverage has never been so friendly.

Meet the Press: The Ongoing Collapse.  In 2007, a brilliant moderator named Tim Russert hosted the important Sunday news program called Meet the Press (MTP).  Then, 12 years ago, MTP attracted 821,000 viewers aged 25 to 54.  The history of MTP is a storied one.  It is considered the longest-running program in television history with its inaugural episode airing in 1947.  But the days of bipartisan comity and friendly debate ended with the unfortunate passing of Russert in 2008.  After several false starts (does the name David Gregory ring a bell?), Chuck Todd was named the host in 2014.  Unfortunately, Todd turned out to be a disastrous choice.  Todd's extreme partisanship is perhaps guided by his wife (Kristian Denny Todd), who openly runs a Democrat propaganda operation.  The firm provides "direct mail and consulting services for Democratic candidates and progressive causes."  But Todd himself appears to be nothing less than a Democrat activist.

A New Insight into Media Bias.  Since America's colonial days the press has been a target of those who believe journalists have a point of view that shapes their reporting.  There have been numerous articles and studies revealing a journalistic predisposition to opinions and subjects that reinforce liberal points of view.  Now comes an excellent critique from World Magazine editor Marvin Olasky.  His latest book, "Reforming Journalism," is a philosophical and even theological deconstruction of historic and contemporary media.  Olasky dismisses the notion of "objectivity" in journalism.  Everyone has a belief system, he argues, and it influences how each person approaches stories.

NPR Poll:  More Americans Trust Trump Administration Than Congress, The Media.  A new NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist Poll released Thursday [10/10/2019] shows that more Americans trust the Trump administration than the media and Congress as a whole.  "The poll of 1,123 Americans was conducted with live telephone Oct. 3 through Oct. 8, 2019," according to NPR and asked a series of questions related to President Donald J. Trump's presidency.  When asked, "How much do you trust Congress:  A great deal, a good amount, not very much, not at all?"  66 percent of Americans said they trust Congress "not very much/not at all."  31 percent said they trusted Congress a "great deal/a good amount."  When asked the same question regarding trust about the media, 69 percent said they trusted our news "not very much/not at all."  29 percent of Americans said they trusted the media.

Zero members of Trump administration appear on Sunday talk shows.  The Trump administration was noticeably absent on Sunday's cable news lineup, with not a single member making an appearance on CNN, Fox, ABC, CBS or NBC. [...] President Trump is in the midst of an impeachment storm over allegations that he pressured Ukraine to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden and his son, Hunter.  The Sunday shows are widely viewed as a space for political actors to speak directly to the public and relay their perspectives on pressing political issues.

The Toxic Scourge of Twitter.  [Scroll down]  The reporting might look objective, fact-checked and sourced appropriately, with even-keeled forbearance, but it is undeniably the product of so many thumbing journalists staring with pallid eyes into the glaucous glow of their handheld devices.  All the "news" we are now serviced with is crowdsourced and designed, not to inform, but appease the liberal crawthumpers on Twitter.  This is why CNN sics reporters on Reddit users who post pro-Trump memes. [...] f you want to see how the news really works in this country, read Twitter.  It is the waterhead for all of journalism's broken practices.  If you'd rather be informed, stay off social media.  Look up primary sources.  Don't rely on twentysomething mediators.

Newseum Dies In Funding Darkness.  The highly expensive white elephant will close its doors on Dec. 31.  The vanity shrine to stale establishment media consensus "has struggled financially for a number of years and continuing to operate in our current location has proven unsustainable."  Ego aside, a museum to a dominant media culture that has turned off tens of millions of Americans over the years with its bias, arrogance, and unwillingness to perform real journalism never made much sense — especially in a location abutting dazzling tourist attractions such as The National Air and Space Museum.  Never mind personal political feelings.  Would you rather pay $25 to see Tina Fey's Sarah Palin costume from Saturday Night Live (an actual 2012 exhibit) or zero dollars to see the Spirit of St. Louis plane flown by Charles Lindbergh?

The Editor says...
"Saturday Night Live" is an opinion show, not a newscast.  Why was it featured in the Newseum?  That's like three-dimensional clickbait.

The Media's No Good, Really Bad, Terrible Two Weeks.  [Scroll down]  Hardly any part of this entire sordid tale went unbutchered by America's media apparatus.  It's a sad state of affairs indeed, but one that is hardly surprising these days, as the press has fully embraced activism in place of objectivism.

Gallup: Americans, Especially Republicans, 'Remain Largely Mistrustful of the Mass Media'.  A Gallup poll released on Thursday [9/26/2019] [...] found that only 41 percent of Americans have either a "great deal" of trust (13 percent) or a "fair amount" of trust (28 percent) in newspapers, television and radio to report the news "fully, accurately and fairly."

BBC Veteran: 'Kremlin' Style 'BBC Thought Police' Want to 'Mould' UK In Liberal-Left's Image.  John Humphrys, the veteran British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) journalist who helmed its flagship Today programme for 33 years, exposed the publicly-funded broadcaster "institutional liberal bias" within days of his retirement.  Mr Humphrys expressed his relief at being free from "the BBC Thought Police" which he claims has "tried to mould the nation into its own liberal-Left image", despite the broadcaster's notional legals requirement to remain balanced and impartial, in memoirs which are being serialised by the Daily Mail.

Study Shows 95% of Americans 'Troubled by Current State of Media'.  [Scroll down]  More than two-thirds of respondents see no hope for the media, at least in the immediate future.  A whopping 67 percent "believe ethics in journalism will be worse during the 2020 presidential campaign."  People also understand exactly how all this bad journalism damages the country.  Almost two-thirds, 64 percent, say it exacerbates division and partisanship; 63 percent said it "fuels inaccuracies"; 60 percent said it incites hate; 57 percent said it incites fear.  Yes, our media are awful and the public know it.

Same as it ever was: anti-GOP Media slams the economy.  As it did in 1992, the anti-Republican media is covering Trump's economy as negatively as possible while keeping a straight face.  After all, unemployment is at historical lows, most Americans feel optimistic about their own economic future, and most credit Trump with the growing economy.  Trump's predecessor was the first president since 1949 to preside over an economic recovery without a single year averaging at least 3% gross domestic product growth.  But Democrats, the media and Trump-hating pundits seem almost giddy at the prospect of a recession.

There's A Good Reason People Hate The Media.  Remember Robert Mueller?  Seems like forever ago when he was granted sainthood by Democrats and billed as David against the Trump Goliath, but it was only April.  When his report exposed journalists as frauds, his mentions on cable news dipped and the narrative switched from "Russian collusion" to "obstruction of justice!" [...] A study by the Washington Free Beacon found, "After mentioning Mueller an average of at least 3,398 times a month on its airwaves over the past 26-and-a-half months, MSNBC broadcasts only mentioned his name 370 times in August, a decrease of more than 89 percent.  CNN's drop was even more precipitous; after his name was heard an average of at least 2,716 times a month over that same period, it fell to 177 times in August, a drop of more than 93 percent."  What happened?  He didn't deliver the goods, or at least the goods they wanted, so he's no longer useful.

Obsession: Broadcast coverage of Trump 11 times greater than Democratic hopefuls.  Trump-bashing has become a tradition in broadcast news, with anchors, correspondents and pundits supplying near non-stop negative coverage of President Trump and his administration.  The coverage has been, on average, 90% negative according to a series of studies by the Media Research Center.  These days, the Democratic presidential hopefuls are paying a price for this obsession.  Networks' "fixation on Trump" is leaving comparatively little airtime for his would-be presidential challengers, the conservative press watch dog says in a new analysis released Monday [9/9/2019].

Media bias called out — and not by a conservative.  We welcome to the club of media skeptics a former MSNBC host and Dem congressional nominee.  Conservatives can take a small degree of satisfaction that not all Democrats are oblivious to the toxic level of media bias.  An article in The Hill by a progressive commentator named Krystal Ball, who ran for Congress unsuccessfully as the Democrat-endorsed candidate in 2010, and who has been a media figure for many years, including as an MSNBC host, calls out some striking examples of misreporting... the sort of thing that President Trump would call "fake news," though Ball scrupulously avoids using that term.

Just the facts!  Americans don't care what reporters think.  News consumers know what they want from reporters — just the facts, not opinions.  In findings aimed directly at the Facebook, Twitter, and other social media chatterings of journalists, the latest Gallup/Knight Foundation survey found that Americans appreciate the added value of putting out more info.  But when it comes to reporters coughing up their spin on the day's news, the advice is to zip it.

24 Hours of Media Malpractice.  [Scroll down]  But we also need to be very clear that what we currently have is a media that, with little forethought and much less remorse, engages in lazy character assassination, has no trouble attributing the worst possible motives to tens of millions of sincere Americans, routinely runs with wild and unverified allegations, and expresses zero skepticism when it's obviously warranted.  All that seems to matter is that the story is critical of politicians — or even ordinary voters — the media clearly doesn't like.

Mark Levin Explains Why 'There's Great Disrespect for the Media Today'.  "There's great disrespect for the media today," conservative talk show host Mark Levin told Fox News's Sean Hannity Wednesday night [8/28/2019].  "They have a credibility problem, thanks to them.  They've turned off half of America.  They treat half of America with utter contempt." [...] ["]Why do they hate him?  Because he's pro-American and they're anti-American.  That's the only explanation.  That's it!"

Self Interest:  Targeted Themselves, Journalists Finally Decide Outrage Mob Tactics Are Dangerous and Bad.  Journalists and their liberal friends have spent a few days expressing how deeply alarmed they are by new reports of a guerrilla-style ideological campaign by Trump-aligned conservatives, the goal of which is to embarrass and discredit members of the news media by mining and publicizing their 'problematic' social media posts. [...] Leave journalistic techniques to the professionals, and don't you dare turn them against us.  It's a weak argument, especially considering the many examples of the mainstream media stampeding toward stories that often (coincidentally!) seem to serve and advance certain partisan narratives and agendas.

The LA Times and New York Times:  Ombudsman for America's biased journalism.  Back in 1991, media critic David Shaw was getting the cold shoulder from his "friends" in the L.A. Times' newsroom.  You see, he had just won the Pulitzer Prize for his four-part series regarding the McMartin preschool molestation case.  He wrote a devastating critique of the mainstream media's sensational and inaccurate reporting concerning the veracity behind the charges leveled against the preschool's owners and staff.  Sensationalism that helped prolong, for six long years, the unjust criminal proceedings against seven innocent people — some of whom rotted in prison for the duration.  This miscarriage of justice was the result of the kind of yellow journalism of which Shaw bravely accused his employer, the Los Angeles Times.  Media critics like the late David Shaw, also called ombudsmen, are a dying breed among the arrogant dissemblers populating today's fake-news factories.

The Stunning Hypocrisy Behind The Media's Sudden Disapproval Of Outrage Journalism.  [Scroll down]  What the media want to do is sit in their bubble and destroy everyone else while asserting some kind of made up special right by which they can't be similarly attacked.  Meanwhile, conservative media figures have been dealing with bad faith attacks from the mainstream press for decades.

Is It True That 'Getting Killed by Police Is a Leading Cause of Death for Young Black Men,' as the LA Times Claims?  Centuries from now, when archaeologists unearth the long-buried cities of the United States of America, they may find artifacts of what by then will be the forgotten craft of journalism.  Just as we look today at the medical practices of antiquity and wonder how our forebears could have been so backward, those archaeologists of the future will marvel, as they sift through a newly unearthed newsroom amid the ruins New York, Washington, D.C., or Los Angeles, that American journalists were once burdened by such quaint notions as objectivity, fairness, and devotion to the truth.

Left-Wing Institutions [are] Mainstreaming Hatred.  For decades, the media have enforced two sets of rules on civility.  They insist that Republicans treat all Democrats with the utmost respect.  Any deviation, and the media bring down Thor's hammer.  At the same time, the leftist media and their allies praise and raise the profile of any Democrat who treats a Republican badly.  That's how the game is played and how it has been played for years.  There is never accountability for liberals who say outrageous things.

Study: MSNBC, CNN Host 7 Times More Democrats Than Republicans.  Democrats were overwhelmingly more likely to appear on certain cable news networks than Republicans, a new study found.  CNN and MSNBC are seven times more likely to host Democratic members of Congress than Republican members, according to a study published Monday by the Media Research Center.

Study: Cable News Is a Playground for Congressional Democrats.  Congress may be almost evenly divided these days, but not on the liberal cable news networks.  A new study by the Media Research Center finds that CNN and MSNBC host Democratic Representatives and Senators seven times more frequently than their Republican counterparts, and most often use Democratic talking points to question members of both parties.  MRC analysts examined every broadcast from 6am ET to midnight ET on CNN and MSNBC during three randomly-selected weeks when Congress was in session (January 7-11, March 25-29 and June 10-14), amounting to 540vhours of programming.  Each network conducted virtually the same number of interviews with sitting members of Congress:  159 on MSNBC, vs. 165 on CNN.  Our analysts found an overwhelming partisan bias on MSNBC, where congressional Democrats were interviewed 13 times more often than their GOP counterparts during these sample weeks (148 Democrats vs. just 11 Republicans).

The Role of Gun Control in Dictatorship.  While the president correctly identifies the propagandists in the leftist media as philosophical enemies of the people they work every day to conquer, he doesn't announce any plans to unilaterally cancel or rescind their rights.  He does not threaten to make their words and intentions illegal.  He doesn't threaten to trample the Bill of Rights because they hate him and the country he works to preserve and protect, often from them.  He has never once hinted at criminalizing their political opposition, or their open warfare on the Constitution and every civil protection enjoyed by Americans who refuse to subscribe to despotism.  On the left, however, the seeds are being sown to create a police state in which the politically compliant and complicit will be safe, but the holdouts will be brutally punished.

The Democrat Party Is A Joke That Would Cease To Exist Without The Media's Support.  On literally every issue, the Democrats are social psychopaths whose goals are so far out-of-touch with reality that they have to lie in order to pitch them.  There isn't a single thing the Democrats want and/or fight for that they're honest about.  Every single issue gets packaged in a hilarious euphemism that's designed to help make their goals more palatable, because their ultimate objectives are so totally insane that nobody would ever in a million years be okay with them.  And that's where the media comes in.  The media's job is to be a marketing arm for the Democrats.

Jeffrey Epstein Fallout Shows How Little Trust Americans Have in Media and Government.  [Scroll down]  From assuring us the Trump campaign colluded with the Russians to influence the outcome of the 2016 election to reporting every unproven allegation of rape against Brett Kavanaugh, Politico and its brethren have fueled this crisis of confidence.  Pro-life high schoolers wearing Make America Great Again hats were "mocking" and "laughing at" a Native American elder, the media told us.  Hillary Clinton will win the presidency.  The stock market will tank after Trump is elected.  Donald Trump won't serve a full term.  White supremacy is on the rise and poses a greater threat to national security that Islamic extremism because Trump and Republicans are using special "code words" to fan the flames of racism.  There is no national emergency at the southern border.  The Trump Administration is the first to lock migrant children "in cages."  That is only a partial list of falsehoods, flat-out lies and legitimate conspiracies that the untrustworthy folks who populate our once respected institutions have told us in the past three years.

Red Flags and White Supremacists.  As the Russian collusion story is in the rear-view mirror for Democrats and the media, it is dead ahead for AG William Barr, U.S. Attorneys John Durham and John Huber, and DoJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz, as the layers of the onion are being peeled back to reveal the seditious origins of the entire hoax.  Which is why the media pivoted deftly to a totally new narrative of "white nationalism."

The Media Crossed a Line This Week and There's No Going Back.  While the press continues to blame Republicans for their "rhetoric," there's no question that the vitriol we've seen from the left this week dwarfs anything anyone on the mainstream right has ever said or done in a political setting.  Period.  Calling entire voting blocks white supremacists, doxxing donors, yelling for the death of a Senator, asserting Republicans want mass shootings to occur, threatening people for their political activities, asserting the President wants to exterminate a race — these are not the rantings of sane people looking for de-escalation of rhetoric.  They are the drivers of escalation in our rhetoric and it's reaching dangerous levels.  There's no coming back from this for the media.  There will never be a time when a majority of the country trusts them again.  They will always now be looked on with scorn by far more people than approve of their actions.  No amount of rehabilitation post-Trump is going to save this current generation of journalists and cable news pundits from the credibility death spiral they chose to enter.

Media blames Trump.  Nobody cares.  Who said "journalism is supposed to be a positive force in society"?  That isn't the deal.  Newspaper readers want newspapers to deliver factual stories without bias.  Instead, writers hassle them with a bunch of half-baked social justice nonsense that seems to change on a whim.  We went from gay marriage to transgendered bathrooms to lesbians being told they must date transgendered women.  And the baker who was forced to bake a cake for a gay wedding thought he had it bad. [...] The media has labeled as racist the supporters of every Republican president since Nixon.  The word racist and the phrase white supremacy are meaningless because like the boy who cried wolf, the media keeps repeating it.

The Degrees of Fake News.  My own dealings with journalists have convinced me that most reports contain inaccuracies and distortions.  The crucial factor is discerning when those distortions are innocuous and unintentional, and when they're deliberate and malicious.

Throw Her Out.  [Scroll down]  It may be that CNN, MSNBC, CBS, NBC, ABC, PBS, The New York Times, and the Washington Post adore the Squad, their foul mouths, and their arrogant beliefs that they are going to change America from a capitalist economy built on freedom of spirit and freedom of thought, freedom of speech, and freedom to be great.  But there are scores of millions of others among us who are not mesmerized by them, nor are we fazed.  They are nothing.  They reflect isolated pockets of electoral support in a country of more than 300 million people.  Because the Left Media are enamored of them and want to work with them to change America, the members of the Squad get disproportionate air time, emboldening them to advocate increasingly radical proposals that would move America towards communism and the platforms whose roots in Stalinism Mark Levin so effectively has traced.  But that is not America.

Brennan Mueller Russia Hoax:  Co-conspirators of the Democrat Party Press.  Time and again the members of the fourth estate have acted in nefarious fashion against the interests of the truth.  Against the interests of the public.  Against the principles of the Republic.  Actively and dishonestly working as designated purveyors of Kremlin disinformation in the form of the Steele dossier.  As water boys doing the bidding for high government officials.  Of putting forth a narrative now proven, years later, to be a hoax.  A lie.  A deliberate attempt to work with forces at the highest levels of the Obama White House to undermine and destroy the Presidency of Donald Trump.  These aren't journalists.  They are partisan warriors using the cover of journalism to conduct hit jobs on the designated targets.

When Does the Deep State Morph into the Police State in Our Country?  Journalism is dead with the mainstream media predominantly invested in promoting progressive politics and deeply aligned with the Democratic Party.  It is difficult to determine the long-term damage to this country, given a mainstream media morphed into the active working partner of the Democratic Party, which increasingly resorts to fake news to gain political advantage for the other side.  It is an American citizen's fundamental duty to be well enough informed about the leading issues of the day so that when it is time to enter the voting booth, an informed decision can be made.  How can this happen in today's political environment?  Are the lies becoming the truth and the truth becoming the lies for an increasing number of Americans due to the media's extensive and influence and bias?

Poll: One-third of Americans say news media is the 'enemy of the people'.  One-third of Americans say the news media is "the enemy of the people," according to a new Hill-Harris X poll survey.  The poll, released Monday, found that the sentiment is strongest among Republican voters.  According to the survey, 51 percent of Republicans polled said they thought of the press as "the enemy of the people" compared with 14 percent of Democrats and 35 percent of independents who said the same.  A majority of all respondents overall signaled support for the press, with 67 percent saying that the "news media is an important part of a democracy."

Ten Questions NBC's Debate Moderators Should Ask the Dems, If They Want to Be Fair and Balanced.  NBC/MSNBC/Telemundo did not host a GOP debate in 2015, so we looked at the October 28, 2015 CNBC debate (both the prime time event and the early evening undercard forum). [...] Our review shows the moderators led by CNBC White House correspondent John Harwood — set out to trip up the candidates with policy questions that came from the left and even personal shots meant to embarrass them before a national audience.  If fairness matters, then this time around the debate moderators should not ask the Democrats to evaluate or criticize the incumbent Trump administration, since in 2015 the Republicans were never invited to evaluate or criticize the incumbent Obama administration.  Instead, most of the questions should be about the shortcomings of the current Democratic field, matching the agenda of the 2015 debate in which the candidates were mostly asked to react to criticism of themselves and their colleagues.

If Media Don't Want To Be Called Propagandists, They Need To Stop Publishing Chinese and Russian Propaganda.  If you ever spend any time in the Washington D.C. area, there's a good chance you'll come across a publication known as China Daily.  In appearance, it's a newspaper.  In reality, it is official propaganda from the Chinese government that Communist Party officials deem appropriate for influencing those inside the Beltway.  You can find it all over downtown D.C. in newspaper boxes.  Large stacks of free copies are also dropped off directly at offices all over the city.  Even better, if you subscribe to the Washington Post, you can get communist propaganda delivered straight to your doorstep for a fee.  A few times a year, the Post comes wrapped in a special advertising supplement called China Watch that, again, does its best to approximate a legitimate newspaper.  But underneath the masthead in fine print, it reads:  "This supplement, prepared by China Daily, People's Republic of China, did not involve the news or editorial departments of the Washington Post."

America Divided — Courtesy of the Liberal Media.  Ever since the Mueller Report was released on April 18th, and as America moves closer to the 2020 presidential election, our country is quickly wrenching itself apart along partisan lines.  Disturbingly, the media are enthusiastically throwing gasoline on this rift.  Liberal journalists are not merely playing the role of partisan commentators.  It's bad enough that they are.  Could it be as it appears, that some reporters may have actually colluded with entities at various government agencies throughout the ongoing Russia collusion saga?  Indeed the media may be the "enemy of the people."

CNN's Acosta 'Regrets' Media Did Not Stand in Solidarity More Against Trump.  Sunday [6/9/2019] on CNN's "Reliable Sources," CNN White House chief correspondent Jim Acosta revealed one his "regrets" in life is the media not standing together in solidarity.  Acosta lamented he has "missed some opportunities" to challenge President Donald Trump labeling the media "the enemy of the people."  "You know, I wish at times that the press had been a bit more in solidarity with one another in standing up to this White House and saying, 'Listen, 'You know, the president can't call us the enemy of the people.  We're not going to go along with that.'  Acosta told host Brian Stelter.  "I think we've missed some opportunities here and there to challenge that."

Pew: Fake News Tops Terrorism, Violent Crime, Climate Change as 'Very Big Problem in Country Today'.  "Made-up news/info" is considered a major problem by more adults in the U.S. than concerns like terrorism, violent crime, and climate change, results of a nationwide Pew Research Center study released Wednesday [6/5/2019] show.  Half (50%) of U.S. adults polled called fake news and information "a very big problem in the country today," compared to only 34% who cited terrorism:
  •   Made-up News/Info: 50%
  •   Violent Crime: 49%,
  •   Climate Change: 46%
  •   Racism: 40%
  •   Illegal Immigration: 38%
  •   Terrorism: 34%
  •   Sexism: 26%
About two-thirds of adults said that fake news and information has "a big impact" on Americans' confidence in government (68%) and creates "a great deal of confusion" about the basic facts of current events and issues.

Poll: Majority says mainstream media publishes fake news.  Nearly two-thirds of Americans say the mainstream press is full of fake news, a sentiment that is held by a majority of voters across the ideological spectrum.  According to data from the latest Harvard-Harris poll, which was provided exclusively to The Hill, 65 percent of voters believe there is a lot of fake news in the mainstream media.  That number includes 80 percent of Republicans, 60 percent of independents and 53 percent of Democrats.  Eighty-four percent of voters said it is hard to know what news to believe online.

Over $10,000 to Dems, $650 to GOP: Just How 'Non-Partisan' Is The Congressional Research Service?  When the establishment media refer to the CRS they usually precede it with the adjective "non-partisan."  But is it?  You can easily check for yourself.  CampaignMoney.com lists some 89 records of political contributions by those identifying as CRS employees, totaling $5,858 for the 2016 election year.  Political and economic analyst Eugene Boyd gave $750 to Philadelphia Democratic Rep. Dwight Evans' campaign.  Section head Douglas Grob gave a total of $500 to Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign organizations, plus $150 to longtime Democratic congressman and noted congressional fundraiser Chris Van Hollen's successful 2016 Senate campaign.  Sen. Van Hollen is now chairman of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee.  William Kandel, a CRS immigration policy analyst since 2010, gave $500 to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, which Van Hollen ran when he was a House member.

The Growing Popularity of Foot Shooting.  [Scroll down]  Perhaps the greatest practitioners of foot shooting are the media.  As have entertainers, the media have elevated their political goals above their reason for being.  Because a large fraction of their customers do not agree with those goals, their customer base is now far smaller than it used to be.  Much of the media has given up any pretense of objectivity.  "Fake news" is a reality.  Credibility is their currency.  Without it what are they?  They certainly aren't reporters or journalists.

The press serves the Deep State.  Before it was written, the American press demanded President Donald John Trump release the Mueller Report.  He did.  Now the president plans to release more documents concerning the spying on his campaign by Obama.  He has asked Bill Barr to do so.  The press is alarmed.

Liberal media attack Constitution and democratic institutions.  President Trump isn't the big danger to those institutions, no matter how much the news media claim he is.  The people who most want to undermine the United States are on the left — and the liberal news media are helping them.  Liberals are attacking our Constitution, Supreme Court, bicameral legislature and our very electoral system.  It's understandable that both political parties try to work government to their advantage.  This is different.  It's a concerted effort to manipulate key parts of our government so the left wins.  It's not just a few statues drawing protests, or Democratic candidates bashing Thomas Jefferson.  The entire American experiment is at risk.

The Media at Their Lowest.  When Joe Biden claimed this week on The View that the Obama administration "had not a whisper of scandal" during eight years in the White House, the audience cheered wildly. [...] Not only do the national mainstream media immorally sweep such contradictory statements under the rug, but they are, as President Trump has stated, "an arm of the Democratic Party."  Rather than being impartial in news-reporting, their narrative clearly promotes the Democratic Party's agenda and is hypercritical of Republican Party policies and social stances.  Can any mainstream reporter deny this with a straight face?  The devious relationship between one party and its willing accomplices in the media has moved beyond the point of eye-rolls and shoulder-shrugs.  It has reached a tipping point for our nation.  Joseph Goebbels famously stated, "Give me the media and I will make of any nation a herd of swine."  This has become the incestuous relationship the Left lustfully pursues with increasing reliability.  Through decades of permeation, the media have been given over to the Left, and for leftists, our society has become the herd of swine.

Mark Levin:  Media 98% anti-Trump, 'incestuous' with Democrats, fake news real.  "Unfreedom of the Press" is unlike [Mark] Levin's recent series of books on liberty and the Constitution, and touches on one of his favorite topics for his nightly radio Mark Levin Show: the media's liberal bias.  Over 258-pages, he uses history, authoritative studies from organizations such as Harvard University, and admissions from prominent journalists to prove the mass media as leftist and proud of it.  He lists dozens of comments, for example, of anti-Trump statements from journalists.  He also takes on the vast swath of reporters and organizations who claim that Trump is the greatest threat to journalism ever.  While Trump has often stated that the media is the "enemy of the people," Levin said the president has done little beyond rhetoric to squeeze the media.

The Quietly Sinking Ship Of The Leftist Media.  I wouldn't blame you if you didn't know that left-leaning media is currently dying a very slow death.  Nobody wants to talk about how badly they're failing.  It doesn't inspire much confidence, and to boot, the political aspect of its failure would run contrary to the "everybody is on our side" narrative that the left likes to tout.  The truth of the matter is that in almost everywhere you look, left-leaning media from print to screen is finding itself sinking like it's in quicksand.  CNN is one one of the best examples, as it is currently experiencing viewership at a four year low with April as its worst month on record.

CNN says 100 employees accepted voluntary buyouts in response to layoffs 'rumor'.  CNN says roughly 100 employees have accepted voluntary buyouts a month after an overhaul by parent company AT&T.  According to Deadline, AT&T's decision to offer buyouts, similar to those offered at HBO and the remnants of Turner, was in an effort to chip away at approximately $170 billion in outstanding debt, which AT&T agreed to take on as a result of their acquisition of Time Warner announced in 2016.  In March, AT&T restructured the majority of their TV assets under the umbrella of WarnerMedia, including CNN.

Our Lying Garbage Media Is Lying Garbage, But You Knew That.  The mainstream media is our enemy.  That's undeniable; to deny it is to deny what we see and hear with our own eyes and ears every day.  Don't be a "the media is garbage" denier.  It would be like denying climate change if climate change was a real thing instead of a media-driven scam designed to take your money and freedom.  Worse, the mainstream media is an enemy that considers you unworthy of the courtesy of not lying to your face about obvious things.  Liberal journalists have such contempt for us that they won't even make the effort to gaslight us properly any more.  Maybe it's because liberal journalists think you are dumb.  Maybe liberal journalists are themselves dumb.  Or maybe — probably — it's some combination of the two.  But they are no longer even showing you the respect of trying to pretend that they are not lying to you.

This Is GNN: Gaslight News Network.  Legacy media is staggering, bouncing off the ropes.  The ratings of CNN and MSNBC have cratered since the release of the Mueller Report.  The New York Times has been reduced to serving as the leak outlet for the foxes who were once hounds.

Trump Opponents Never Tire of Losing.  Meanwhile the media, having learned nothing from the ratings hit they absorbed due to their sloppy and often dishonest reports about the Russia hoax, are already parroting Democratic talking points on obstruction of justice.  That they're already carrying water for people like Jerrold Nadler and Adam Schiff suggests that they may well destroy what little public trust they still enjoy.  Journalist Glenn Greenwald, by no means a conservative, is stunned by the media reaction to Mueller's report:  "Pretending they got it right is just worsening the problem."

Propaganda, Trust, and the Media.  He who holds the reins of communication shapes the opinions and to a large extent the direction of the country, and for now, the left has a near monopoly on much of what Americans are exposed to. [...] They publish and air lies made out of whole cloth without a shred of fear of accountability as they debate amongst themselves whether Trump is either incompetent or treasonous.  According to a May 2017 report from the Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard Kennedy School, "Trump's coverage during his first 100 days set a new standard for negativity."  Negative reports outpaced positive ones with 80 percent negative against 20 percent positive.  Trump's coverage was merciless.  In no week did the coverage drop below 70 percent negative and it reached 90 percent negative at its peak."  Regarding Trump's fitness for office, the New York Times had published 6 to 1 in negative coverage while the Washington Post ran negative coverage at a staggering 24 to 1.

Watch Former Fed Prosecutor Smash Anti-Trump Commentator's Biased Version Of "Truth".  What is going on within the far left media is appalling.  They are taking lies and calling them truths and taking truths and calling them lies and then taking honest public servants and calling them dishonest when their positions don't support the anti-Trump agenda.  America needs more people like [Joe] diGenova to stand up to this dangerous and deceptive hypocrisy that infects nearly every facet of the media today.

Howard Kurtz regresses to CNN ways.  Fox News is unwatchable.  Too many of its personalities are trying to impress their buddies at other news outlets.  I used to tolerate Shep Smith, respect Chris Wallace, and like Neal Cavuto.  Now I would rather watch the Kardashians.  Howard Kurtz, meanwhile, has reverted to his CNN form. [...] I get that Kurtz is trying to play it up the middle by saying gee both sides were wrong but the problem is only one side was wrong.

Deliberate Destruction of Our Constitutional Norms:  The Mueller Report.  The press in this country has become a disgrace.  They are grossly partisan and don't even wish to hide it.  Two of the three most important daily publications in the country, The New York Times and The Washington Post, don't even bother to hide their contempt for the current president and all other Republicans.  They don't report news; they opine.  So do the broadcast channels.  The standards used today make the yellow journalism battles between Pulitzer and Hearst of over a century ago seem quaint.  The industry has done a deep dive into the muck — not to generate profits akin to the battles of yesteryear, but because of their unrestrained Leftist political agenda.

Media Matters to Dem Candidates:  Avoid Fox News to Save the Earth.  [Scroll down]  MMFA is probably FNC's most loyal viewer.  The site was founded by David Brock, a one-time conservative turned left-wing operative, so it has a real "crazy ex-girlfriend" feel to it.  The juice-box drinking staff spends their days trying to undermine and discredit the Fox News monster under their beds, all to no avail.  MMFA's latest windmill tilt at the cable news behemoth involves warning Democratic presidential candidates to avoid the network if they truly care about climate change.

Are There Any Limits to Illegal Immigration?  If one reads either the local or regional papers, it is composed of stories about one of three themes.  One, the disturbing litany of DUIs, gang stabbings and shootings, fatal hit-and-run accidents, police shootings of armed suspects, high-speed chases, robberies, and drug busts.  Two, there are also many human interest inspirational stories of illegal aliens from Mexico who are running successful businesses, whose children are star athletes or students. [...] Three, the grievance or victimization meme:  the lawsuit against law enforcement, the filing of a bias claim against the county, the firing of an official for some alleged insensitivity, or the injustice of some agency that has curtailed support from, tried to deport, or was somehow biased against, an illegal alien.  The point is, that unlike the past, almost every new story is grounded in some sort of overt ethnic context, and ultimately related to illegal immigration and its effects.

The Liberal Media 'Matrix'.  As the influence of establishment media outlets has waned, their attempts to control the narrative have intensified.  The cable networks and major print outlets have become more politicized, not less, as social media and streaming video make it much easier to expose hoaxes and puncture holes in the received wisdom.  The Sentinels who protect the liberal media matrix are vigilant against thoughtcrime, they anathematize dissent, but they are less interested in the canons of professional journalism, such as presenting both sides of a story and refraining from baseless speculation.

Republicans on CNN, MSNBC Wear 'Kick Me' Signs.  Although the Democratic National Committee has not allowed Fox News to host a Democratic primary debate since 2004, the DNC recently made a show of boycotting Fox for the 2020 presidential cycle.  Some conservatives have expressed outrage over this slight, but another question is why haven't Republicans taken similar steps against CNN and MSNBC?

Poll Underlines Liberal Dominance in TV News.  Can we dispose of the ridiculous fiction that the network news product is objective, strictly balanced and nonpartisan?  The poll of 2,200 Americans from March 28 to April 2 asked if certain media outlets are "more liberal" or "more conservative" or have "no political lean."  The Big Three networks averaged 35 percent "more liberal" and about 20 percent "no political lean."  Count on the "more liberal" classification coming from conservatives and independents, and the delusional "no political lean" answer coming from liberals.

After Savaging Fox News, Amanpour Bemoans 'Destructive' Media Criticism.  During an interview with Third Hour Today show co-host Sheinelle Jones aired on Monday, PBS anchor Christiane Amanpour denounced criticism of the media as being "corrosive and destructive" to democracy.  The comments came just days after the reporter vilely attempted to link Fox News to the recent terrorist attacks in New Zealand.  Talking to Amanpour at Variety's Power of Women gala on Friday [4/5/2019], Jones gushed:  "Following years of reporting from the front lines and in the newsroom, it's no surprise that Christiane Amanpour believes in the Committee to Protect Journalists."  Amanpour, who was being honored at the event, declared:  "We are watching an era in which life for journalists becomes tougher and tougher, more and more dangerous.  We are truth tellers, we're truth seekers, we go for the evidence and the facts."

Maher Panel Goes Off After Panelist Says CNN, MSNBC Are Liberal Equivalent of Fox News.  Last night [4/5/2019], Bill Maher's panel got heated in the online-only Overtime segment when the subject of Fox News came up.  Maher read a viewer question about the New York Times Magazine piece this week on the power and influence of the Murdochs.  "If Fox News would stop becoming state media..."  Maher started to say.  American Enterprise Institute senior vice president Danielle Pletka asked, "As opposed to CNN and MSNBC?"  "Oh, come on," Maher said.  "That is a false analogy."  "No, it's actually a totally correct analogy.  Fox News has become the news of the right and the others have become the news of the left," Pletka said.

Why do the least-bright people rise to the top?  For over two years, we have been tormented or delighted, depending on one's political preference, by the opinions and or declarations avowing President Trump's guilt with regard to collusion with Russia.  It was all a made-up scam from the beginning, but the media and the leftist loons have beaten this dead horse relentlessly in the fervid hope it would see Trump forced from the office he legitimately won.  Our horrific media who has long worked hand in glove with the Democrats, has spent hundreds of hours, over 500,000 columns, articles and op-eds asserting Trump's guilt.  It was all a hoax from the outset, fabricated within a few days of Hillary 's loss to Trump.  Most of those who got on board the Russia collusion hoax knew it was a lie from day one.  But they embraced the lie wholeheartedly.

Yes, there is collusion — between NBC, MSNBC and Dems.  Conservatives often complain that the media are colluding with Democrats.  Well, here's more proof that yes, there is collusion.  But what looks like bad journalism required good journalism to ferret it out.  New York Magazine and HuffPost contributor Yashar Ali is accusing Dafna Linzer, the managing editor for political coverage for NBC News and MSNBC, of trying to "bully" him to help Democrats.  While Ali leans and works left, he has a good reputation for being an honest broker — even among conservatives.  His complaints lit up Twitter Friday [3/29/2019].  Ali devoted a 25-tweet thread to criticizing the actions Linzer.  Ali said Linzer called to "bully" him "on behalf of the DNC" (the Democratic National Committee).  He slammed her actions as "highly inappropriate and unethical."

Freelance Reporter:  NBC/MSNBC Politics Managing Editor Tried "to bully me on behalf of the DNC".  Yashar Ali is a liberal journalist, but a fair one.  If you spend any time on Twitter, you'll see that he is respected by many conservatives.  On Friday [3/29/2019], he published a series of tweets which described an attempt to intimidate him by the managing editor of NBC/MSNBC politics on behalf of the Democratic National Committee (DNC).

A Primer in "Ventriloquist Journalism".  Most "mainstream" journalists are not merely biased, but have a narrative story line in mind when they begin "reporting," so that when they call you on the phone, they aren't looking for actual information and perspective — they are looking for a specific quote to drop in their story that fits their narrative.  The point is:  when you deal with the media, it is not just their innate liberalism you need to be on guard for — you need to keep in mind that they already have their story written. [...] Stan Evans had a typically great label for this:  he called it "ventriloquist journalism."  Reporters have in mind a specific quote they'd like to have from you, and have developed great skill in teasing it out of people.  Think of it as just one aspect of fake news.

Yes, there is collusion — between NBC, MSNBC and Dems.  Conservatives often complain that the media are colluding with Democrats.  Well, here's more proof that yes, there is collusion. [...] Alternet celebrated Schiff's "expert smackdown of 'corrupt' Trump."  It loved his "speech destroying House Republicans."  Los Angeles Magazine described him as "Mild-Mannered Congressman Adam Schiff," to further paint his foes as nasty folk.  The Washington Post published a story saying Schiff "has emerged as a public foil to Trump and his supporters" and that he "has stood resolute amid the attacks."  Imagine if Republicans had spent two years falsely claiming President Obama had colluded with Russia.  Do you think they'd be getting praised in the Washington Post?

Into a Mating Net with the Fourth Estate.  Now roughly half the people in the country (and probably more since publication over the weekend of the summary of Special Counsel Robert Mueller's report) see the corporate left-wing media for what they are — vile propagandists who hate Trump supporters, not just as citizens and voters, but because they conceive of them as unworthy human beings.  Neither the slandered nor the slanderers are going to change.  So now what?  It's too late for change because, as polls have shown, the media have accumulated a string of witnesses to their journalistic crimes, most notably their unforgivable promotion of the Russian collusion hoax.

The American Media Destroyed Themselves over the Mueller Investigation.  With only a few exceptions — Fox News, the editorial pages (not the front pages) of the Wall Street Journal, and a handful of websites — the better part of the American media has spent the last two years fulminating about Trump-Russia collusion we now know never existed.  Actually, we always knew that, but finally, it's official.  It was always a bunch of — excuse the expression — trumped up baloney that made no sense except to those who wished so deeply to believe it was true.  Which makes the people who were doing that fulminating — media, politicians and (usually retired) intelligence figures, who were, as is becoming increasingly clear, betraying the American Constitutional system with impunity — sick and evil.

Journalism Dies in Self-Importance.  When journalists don't consider themselves bound to old norms of objectivity, there comes an absence of restraint that is inherently corrupting.  The morning story conference takes on the atmosphere of a rally of zealots. [...] Today, opinion and dogmatic speculation are the currency of politics and journalism.  Facts have become elusive or even unnecessary, except for, say, the body counts at mass shootings.  Otherwise, the world is fluid and angry and ideological.

Powerful Video About 'Another Day In Trump's America' Goes Viral.  But It's Not What You Think.  A video titled "Another Day In Trump's America" posted to YouTube in March 20 has gone viral — but the video is not what you think.  And that's kind of the point.  Video creator Paul Martinez throws a gut-punch to the mainstream media for running with unvetted and out-of-context video clips to help push a narrative that he says fuels division.  As touched on in the video, such reckless anti-Trump enthusiasm was illustrated in the mainstream media's potentially libelous coverage of the Covington Catholic High School hoax.

Paul Martinez Spoofs the Lying Hacks in Democrat Mainstream Media.  These mainstream hacks at CNN, Washington Post, MSNBC, etc. continue to spew lies and hatred against President Trump and his supporters.  Then they lash out at the president and conservatives when they get called out.  It's a never ending cycle.  [Video clip]

ABC Panel:  The GOP Is Too Far to the Right, Dems Closer to the Center.  With nearly the entire Democratic 2020 field sprinting to be the closest to socialism without using the label, folks in the liberal media were busy trying to spin their radical policy positions as something palatable.  A great example of this occurred during ABC's This Week on Sunday [3/17/2019], when two panelists tried to suggest that it was Republicans who were the radical ones with Democrats supposedly as the centrists.  During the "powerhouse roundtable" discussion late in the show, Republican strategist Alice Stewart noted that the candidates could "run away from the socialism label" all they wanted "but you can't deny the fact that the Democratic Party is moving very, very far to the left."  "We're talking about a lot of policies that are extremely left.  The Cortezs of Washington and the younger generation of Democrats are really causing a divide in the Democratic Party," she added before triggered faux-Republican Matthew Dowd couldn't hold back anymore.

Betomania: Media in a lovesick swoon over Dems' 2020 contender.  Betomania is a lot like Beatlemania — except instead of teenage girls in the 1960s, journalists are now the ones swooning for their star.  If the Beatles were around today to sing about media infatuation with newly announced Democratic presidential hopeful Robert Francis "Beto" O'Rourke, their song would be titled "They love him, yeah, yeah, yeah."  O'Rourke is a skateboarding mix of rock 'n' roll (he was in a punk band named Foss), lefty politics, dictatorial ambition and media adoration.  Wrap it up in a hip social media package with a logo ripped off from Whataburger Spicy Ketchup (I'm not joking) and, voila, you have the perfect creation.

This is CNN? Primetime shows filled with liberal opinion, not straight news as network claims.  CNN touts its primetime lineup as being straight, just-the-facts news, but anyone tuning in to the network's evening programming can expect a heavy dose of liberal opinion, as "Anderson Cooper 360," "CNN Tonight" and "Cuomo Prime Time" don't always align with founder Ted Turner's bare bones, objective approach to journalism.  "Anderson Cooper is a mix of news and opinion, but Don Lemon and Chris Cuomo are obviously heavy on opinion and use the news as a launching pad for those opinions," Cornell University Law Professor William Jacobson told Fox News.  "There's nothing inherently wrong with that, so long as they are not mischaracterized as part of the news operation."

Study: CNN's 'The Situation Room' Is a Week-long Promo for Dem Investigations.  CNN's Wolf Blitzer has spent the past week using his evening show The Situation Room as a platform for Democratic lawmakers to plug their numerous investigations of President Trump.  Blitzer, a veteran reporter and host on the network, is not a name that immediately springs to mind when one thinks of biased or outlandish statements from CNN journalists.  However, the many interviews he has conducted with politicians on the Hill — a staple of his show — tell a story of bias through careful and deliberate framing of facts.

Trump is an Army of One.  Barack Obama had legions of apologists and defenders.  Every Congressional Democrat and scores of leftovers from the Clinton administration were ready, willing, and able to defend all things Obama, as well as viciously pounce on any of his detractors.  The Obamacare and Benghazi scandals were vociferously shielded from any criticism.  Bill Clinton enjoyed the same support from Team Democrat, particularly when navigating his scandal-filled two terms in office and impeachment.  His supporters attacked independent counsel Kenneth Starr incessantly, impugning his character and calling him a pervert.  In addition, all Democrat presidents have the unwaveringly loyal support of the media, print and digital.  News coverage of past Democrat presidents has mostly been favorable, overlooking negative stories and supplying an abundance of humanizing puff pieces.  Democrat presidential candidates are routinely endorsed by most major newspapers in America.

The left is working to crush dissent while CNN applauds.  On Thursday, the DNC announced that Fox News has been banned from hosting any of the Democratic Party's 2020 primary debates.  DNC Chairman Tom Perez went on television to explain that Fox News simply isn't a real news organization. [...] You figured out the game by now.  It's all projection.  Everything the left says is projection.  Whatever they accuse you of is exactly what they are doing — every single time.  They say they are deeply worried that Fox News might rig a primary debate.  Fox has never done that of course, and never would.  Has anyone else done that?  Well, let's see, in 2016 one of CNN's paid on-air contributors leaked a debate question to Hillary Clinton before the event.  CNN tried to cover it up and then they got caught.  There is nothing more corrupt than that.  Somehow their media reporter kid forgot to mention that scandal "Fox is State TV," they will tell.  It is monochromatic.  There is a strict party line.  Really?  Ever watch Fox News?  There is far greater diversity of opinion on this channel than on any other news channels.  Those of us who have worked at the other news networks can confirm that conclusively because it's true.  But spend a day watching our programming, and then theirs and see for yourself

Six reasons the DNC blacklisting of Fox News for presidential debates is a spectacular mistake.  Tom Perez, chair of the Democratic National Committee, has handed a gift to President Trump with his announcement that the party would not allow Fox News Channel to provide a forum for presidential debates among its contenders for the nomination. [...] Here are six reasons why this is a gigantic blunder.  One:  This is a tacit admission that the party's presidential field is afraid of tough questioning, about, for instance, support for the Green New Deal or for tearing down existing segments of the border wall.

DNC Blacklisting Of Fox News Proves GOP Needs To Fight Media.  The Democratic National Committee is refusing to allow Fox News Channel to televise any of its candidate debates during the 2019-2020 cycle, according to the Washington Post.  DNC Chair Tom Perez cited an article written by liberal journalist Jane Mayer of The New Yorker for his decision.  Her article alleged that Fox News Channel, which has been less hostile and hysterical about the man elected president by the United States electorate than its counterparts at every other television outlet, was too close to the Donald Trump White House.

New Yorker story used by DNC to bar Fox News from debates called into doubt.  The Democratic National Committee has announced that FOX News will be barred from hosting and moderating any debates during the 2020 Democratic primary.  The reason given does not hold up to scrutiny.  It's easy to speculate on why this is happening.  The far left base of the Democratic party despises FOX News and would go crazy if this was allowed to happen.  It's also safe to assume that Democrats running in 2020 don't want to face tough but fair questions from the likes of Chris Wallace and Bret Baier.  We don't have to speculate however, because DNC chair Tom Perez offered a very specific reason for the decision.  He claims it was based on an article in the New Yorker.

WalkAway founder slams 'liberal media machine' for helping Democrats become a 'party of hate'.  The man behind a growing movement urging disillusioned Democrats to walk away from the party has slammed the "liberal media machine" for helping the left become a "party of rage and hate."  Brandon Straka, founder of the #WalkAway trend, spoke about how he believes his former party has become radicalized during a wide-ranging interview with Fox News host and best-selling author Mark Levin.

Political bias is destroying people's faith in journalism.  Journalists are not activists.  We may share the passion for a particular cause, but our job is to follow the facts wherever they may lead.  We can't ignore something that reflects badly on a noble cause, as an activist might.  We have to care about the means as much as the end because our duty is to search for the whole truth.

Ocasio-Cortez and Newsom:  Stupid-East Meets Stupid-West.  The sad fact is, [Gavin] Newsom could hold up a dried cow pie and endorse it as the next high-tech smartphone that would soon make the iPhone obsolete.  The MSM would fawn over his brilliance and headline his claims 24/7, Apple stock would tank, Ocasio-Cortez would praise his idea for converting Earth-destroying "cow farts" into solid-state smartphones using only green energy, and the "fact-checkers" would rate Newsom's claims as "mostly true."  After all, cow-pies aren't really pies.  We've certainly reached peak stupidity in America when proposing the above would appear saner and far less moronic than actual proposals by Democrats such as Ocasio-Cortez's Green New Deal.

CBS's Lara Logan Calls Media 'Mostly Liberal' in Scorched Earth Interview:  I'm Committing 'Professional Suicide'.  In a recent interview, CBS News Foreign Correspondent Lara Logan critiqued the international "liberal" media while holding up outlets like Breitbart as the opposite side of the coin.  Logan spoke to retired Navy SEAL Mike Ritland about a variety of topics on Friday [2/15/2019] for his Mike Drop podcast (h/t Breitbart), and the conversation eventually turned towards her agreement with Ritland that "the media everywhere is mostly liberal, not just the U.S."  As Logan lamented that voter registration among journalists shows that the media is out of balance, she came with a metaphor to explain how she believes the press is tinged by the sameness of opinion.

CBS's Lara Logan Castigates the 'Propagandist' Press.  Ex-CBS journalist Lara Logan on Friday [2/15/2019] unleashed a blistering, uncensored attack on the extreme liberal bias polluting America's news outlets.  Logan derided the [...] "propagandist" press that has no interest in fairness.  Appearing on Mike Drop, the podcast of former Navy SEAL Mike Ritland, the foreign affairs correspondent and former 60 Minutes reporter berated slanted coverage in a way rarely seen by those in the mainstream press:  "We've become political activists in a sense.  And some could argue, propagandists, right?"  Logan's outburst came after noting former New York Times executive editor Jill Abramson's admission that the paper publishes "raw opinion" against Donald Trump.

CBS's Lara Logan on Media Bias: 'Unless You Seek out Breitbart,' You Won't See the 'Other Side'.  Lara Logan, foreign correspondent for CBS's 60 Minutes, said Breitbart News offers "the other side" of news media relative to what she described as a mostly left-wing and partisan Democrat news landscape in the U.S. and abroad.  She offered her remarks in an interview published last Friday with the Mike Drop podcast, hosted by retired Navy SEAL Mike Ritland.

Truth Must Be Told:  CBS's Lara Logan.  Here's how Lara Logan ended an interview she did with the Mike Drop podcast, hosted by retired Navy SEAL Mike Ritland:  "This interview is professional suicide for me." [...] Logan reports what the vast majority of conservatives already know:  the media is biased.  "Responsibility for fake news begins with us," said Logan, referring to journalists and reporters.  "You say the media is mostly liberal," she said to Ritland.  "I agree with you.  It's true.  Why can I say that with certainty?  Well, first of all I've been part of this for all my life, I'm 47 now and I've been a journalist since I was 17 and the media everywhere is mostly liberal not just in the U.S, but in this country 85 percent of journalists are registered Democrats so that's just a fact."

The Jussie Smollett Hoax and the Media's Tribal War on America.  These days the media isn't biased.  It's tribal.  Bias leads us to make mistakes.  But the media wasn't making a mistake when it loudly broadcast false claims with plenty of red flags about Trump supporters wearing red hats.  Just as the media wasn't making a mistake when it spread fake news about attacks on Muslim women by Trump supporters after the election.  This wasn't an error due to prejudice, but an active effort to reinforce tribal prejudices.  The Covington Catholic story in particular was not newsworthy by any rational definition of the term.  The media insisted on making it news because it perfectly encapsulated the tribal prejudices of its base of urban and suburban lefties by pitting anti-abortion kids in MAGA hats against saintly minorities.

Why is Trump, and not Obama, the so-called 'dictator'?  It is dangerous to our freedom and prosperity when most journalists, instead of holding all powerful politicians to account, support one party no matter what they say or do and seek to destroy the other party with misleading and inaccurate articles.  It degrades journalism to indoctrinate the public with misleading and false stories disguised as news.  Well, here we are again.  They are doing it again now, and not even a true matter of national security is stopping them.

The Tail Of Twitter Is Wagging The Dog Of Media.  Mark Cuban got fact-checked in 2017 for approximating that Twitter only reaches about 15 percent of the population.  In all likelihood, he wasn't very far off.  It's almost impossible to estimate how many of us Twitter actually "reaches," but mapping out the limits of its scope is now an important project.  Twitter makes and breaks careers.  It makes and breaks lives.  Perhaps most saliently, the platform shapes news cycles, which, in turn, shape how people see the world.  Because journalists spend disproportionate time on the website relative to most of their audience, outlets increasingly amplify Twitter's viral stories, and seemingly without questioning their broader relevance.

The Biggest Threat To Press Freedom Is The Media Itself.  These days journalists treat Twitter like their private clubhouse and routinely say things that leave little doubt about their skewed political perspective, sense of entitlement, and total ignorance.  (On that last point, in her rush to criticize Trump's State of the Union speech this week, a New York Times White House correspondent tried to correct the president to explain that Jews don't believe in heaven.)  Of course, no reporter — or anyone else for that matter — can expect to be wholly impartial, even-tempered all the time, or not have gaps in their knowledge.  The question is why people in a profession that depends on personal credibility would be so eager to participate in an daily Battle Royale that seems designed to test everyone's emotional and intellectual limits, aside from imposing finite restrictions on how much you're allowed to say about complicated topics to maximize contention, er, "engagement with the platform."  So what do journalists really get out of Twitter?

The Press Needs More Than A Super Bowl Ad To Fix Its Plunging Credibility.  While journalists are getting pink slips across the country, the Washington Post decided to dump a boatload of cash for a Super Bowl image ad that tried to portray the news media as national heroes.  Here's a better, and much cheaper, idea to restore the industry's shattered reputation:  Be less blatantly partisan.

Why many Americans are praying for Trump.  Mainstream media seek to convince us that a majority of Americans embrace their anti-Christian anything-goes-sexually agenda.  The truth is, millions of Americans are disturbed by our nation's cultural and moral decline.  A growing number of TV commercials selling everything from milk to phone services interject homosexuality.  I told my wife, "Next they will have men kissing."  Thirty minutes later, a Diet Coke TV commercial featured two men kissing in a cab.  With every new TV drama and sitcom, the question is, in which episode will the show promote homosexuality?  LGBTQ are only 3% of the population.  Why is there such an intense, relentless push to shove homosexuality into our faces?

Who Is 'Far-Right'?  Only Republicans ever merit the accusation of "extremism" in the minds of the anti-Trump media.  Nothing any Democrat proposes — not even infanticide — is far enough out of the mainstream to deserve being labeled "far-left" by the standards of people who think CNN and MSNBC are engaged in objective journalism.  Because liberal journalists consider any policy endorsed by Democrats to be mainstream, by definition, then by the same standard, any opposition to the Democrat agenda is inherently wrong and, as a corollary to this principle, any policy advocated by Republicans (e.g., actually enforcing U.S. immigration laws) is not mainstream. Once you understand how this works, you see why the utmost radicalism on the Left is entirely acceptable to the anti-Trump media.

Trump exposed how worthless the press is.  In a delightful column, Charles C.W. Cooke, editor of National Review Online, skewered the Washington press corps, which is broken.  He blamed not President Donald John Trump for this breakdown.  Of course not.  President Trump exposed how worthless the press is.  Cooke wrote, "Not since Florence Foster Jenkins [an heiress who dreamed of becoming an opera singer, despite having a terrible singing voice] have Americans been treated to such an excruciating example of self-delusion.  The most vocal among the press corps' ranks cast themselves openly as firefighters when, at worst, they are pyromaniacs and, at best, they are obsequious asbestos salesmen.

Big Data's Alliance With Big Media Is A Threat To Free Speech.  The media is dying.  Read about it in the media.  Facebook is pumping $300 million into the media.  And that's after the Google News Initiative shoved $300 million into fighting "fake news" and helping struggling media outlets like the New York Times.  These aren't investments.  They're charitable donations by Big Data to Big Brother.  Take Jeff Bezos taking $250 million, a little more than the $215 million he makes a day, and using it to buy the Washington Post, not because it's a good business opportunity, but a good political one.  The media isn't worth investing in.  TV and cable news are the weakest holdings of the entertainment giants.  That's why AT&T is none too fond of the CNN white elephant it's stuck with.

Can the Republic Survive the Mainstream Media?  People complain of the cultural turmoil and upset in the country without realizing that the mainstream media — which nowadays includes almost all broadcast media as well as the digital giants Facebook, Google, and Twitter, and others — are the main determinants of the mood and cultural milieu of the United States.  At this point it is inescapable that unless the mainstream media are happy, we cannot, as a society, be happy.  While almost nobody fully grasps the profound cultural influence of the media, we all respond to media-fostered agitation when they're upset — notably when conservative/Republican ideas are in the ascendance — and the relative calm and quiescence when their like-minded, left-leaning Democrats are in charge.

The White House Should Never Hold A Press Briefing Again.  Nielsen ratings for 2018 reveal that Fox News gained in total viewership by one percent, while CNN dropped a not insignificant 6 percent year on year.  CNN based much of their daytime business model on the build up to, the airing of, and the 8-person-panel takedowns surrounding the White House press conference.  They made an entire industry out of political talking heads.  They even invited me on once, which, like most of my ex girlfriends, they soon regretted.  The whole thing is even more upsetting to them because the American public, in spite of the internet, keeps telling researchers on the matter that they still prefer to consume news on television than from anywhere else.

Apologies Aren't Enough After The Covington And BuzzFeed Media Fiascos.  Why didn't the rest of the news media use greater caution before pushing the questionable BuzzFeed piece? [...] Just like the despicable coverage of the Covington high school kids, unchecked hatred of Trump has caused the press not only to drop any pretense of objectivity, but to abandon what reporters claim is their primary professional obligation:  To get the facts straight before reporting them to the public.  Apologizing after the fact doesn't do anyone any good.  If mainstream reporters don't like Trump calling their work "fake news," they should stop providing him so many fresh examples.

More about News Media vs Covington Catholic High School.

A Look Back at the Demise of the Mainstream News Media in 2018.  [Scroll down]  Journalists in media were so blinded by their hatred of Trump that they could not see the constant negativity was backfiring.  People dropped their subscriptions to biased newspapers and cable TV.  People turned to news from bloggers, Facebook friends and conservative outlets in order to avoid the bias of traditional news sources.  Instead of reading The New York Times, people visited the Drudge Report online.  Instead of paying for CNN and MSNBC, people watched streaming news services like Newsmax and The Blaze.  Conservative Fox News was the most-watched channel on basic cable for the 29th consecutive month.

'We're back to yellow journalism'.  Tuesday [1/22/2019] on the radio, LevinTV host Mark Levin lit into the American media for their lack of standards and the blurred line between fact and opinion rampant in journalism today.  "Freedom of speech and freedom of the press go hand in hand.  And when you have almost a monopolistic, pack mentality — groupthink — in the mass media and the major media, it undermines a republic.  Look at it as free speech:  If speech pretty much only went one way, you wouldn't have a free society, now would you?" Levin said.

NBC raises eyebrows over $400 million relationship with BuzzFeed.  NBCUniversal invested $400 million in BuzzFeed and the two companies have a "strategic partnership," raising eyebrows about why the Peacock Network isn't more transparent when covering the controversial website.  NBC News and MSNBC fawned over BuzzFeed's now-debunked report claiming President Trump directed his former attorney Michael Cohen to lie to Congress before the office of the special counsel released its rare statement.  A search of transcripts from both MSNBC and NBC News didn't turn up any mention of the investment when the news organization covered BuzzFeed's discredited bombshell.  While transcripts aren't always 100 percent accurate, it's clear the relationship was not disclosed with any consistency.

Who Knew?  NBC Has A 400 Million Dollar Investment In Buzzfeed.  Who knew that Buzzfeed and the peacock network, NBC, had a cozy relationship to the tune of about 400 million dollars?  Not many it seems. [...] I have to admit that I'm a lil shocked by this.  You are telling me that the network that employs such news stalwarts such as Chuck Todd, Chris Matthews, Rachel Maddow, and Al Sharpton has not mentioned that have a 400 million dollar coin invested in creators of awesome cat videos??  I'm stumped.  I can't tell you how many times Shepard Smith on Fox News will mention that the Wall Street Journal is in bed somehow with Fox News.  You can discredit both all you want but at least they acknowledge they are in bed with each other financially.

NBC Weaponizes for Hillary:  Funnels $400 Million To Extreme-Left BuzzFeed & Vox.  On one hand NBCUniversal is telling us it is serious about news objectivity, while on the other hand, and mostly under the radar, NBC is funneling an astonishing $400 million in capital into two of the most extreme left-wing news outlets in America:  BuzzFeed and Vox.  One need only watch 10 minutes of MSNBC to understand that NBC News is an extremist organization in favor of open borders, partial birth abortion, the government setting CEO pay, and destroying people's lives through the pushing of the Climate Change hoax.  Unfortunately for NBC, though, the MSNBC experiment only resulted in a ratings catastrophe.  To right the ship, NBC is promising that MSNBC will be moving from opinion news to straight news.  We'll see.

Dear reporter:  First, wipe the egg and the smirk off your face.  [Scroll down]  The BuzzFeed story was false.  BuzzFeed stories throughout the Trump presidency have been false.  No real journalist would have gone with the story.  "According to BuzzFeed" does not let reporters off the hook because they vouched for BuzzFeed by basing stories on its reporting.  [Aaron] Blake needs to apologize.  Blake needs to decide if he is a reporter or a pundit.

BuzzFeed, Acosta, and the Non-Existence of Journalism.  [Scroll down]  About [Jim] Acosta, the less said the better.  But [Sebastian] Gorka is definitely not a journalist (doubt he ever claimed to be).  Neither, for that matter, is Acosta.  There's a simple reason:  nobody is.  Journalism, as a profession, does not exist.  We know generally or specifically what qualifies one to be a cardiologist or an astrophysicist or even, heaven help us, a lawyer.  But a journalist?  What possible credential makes one a journalist?  A degree from the Columbia School of Journalism?  Well, that proves your parents can afford a hundred grand.  Either that or you're heavily in debt.  Anyone can be a journalist.  All you have to do is start typing.

The True Story of the Media's Role in Trump's Victory.  It's time to set the record straight.  When Trump announced his candidacy, virtually no one on the right took it seriously.  But the news media did — for strategic reasons, as I will show.  Had the news media not given Trump wall-to-wall coverage in the early phases of the campaign, he likely would have been the Wesley Clark or the Herman Cain of the 2016 cycle — an early flavor-of-the-week candidate who quickly faded once the primaries began.  Like most in-the-know kingmakers on the right, the left and the media (correctly, at first) believed that Trump was fundamentally unable to win the presidency.  And so, the legacy media set to work ensuring that Trump was the Republican nominee.  The goal was to guarantee that Hillary would face the weakest candidate possible.  That is why, as [Frank] Bruni noted, "the number of stories about Trump in the country's most influential newspapers and on its principal newscasts significantly exceeded what his support in polls at the time justified."  That is why "those stories were predominantly positive."  And that is why people on the right were so chagrined by the media's attempt to fix the nomination process — candidates like Rubio and Cruz, who were thought to be good matches for Hillary, couldn't get any traction in the press.

Conservatives: Stop Giving Interviews To MSM Like The 'Let-Us-Smear You' New York Times.  When one of the media reporters calls they make it seem they are interested in your take on this issue or that when they're really out on a fishing expedition for statements easily mischaracterized to bring an enemy down.

Real Collusion in America Is Between Democratic Party and Liberal, Progressive News Media.  If there is one thing I admire about the progressive, socialist left, it's that they will all come together and repeat the exact same message, the same talking points. [...] I am quite sure my colleagues at the Media Research Center can do quick research and uncover how many times leftists used the reference, "manufactured crisis," in the last ten days.  The results should not be shocking, but they would undoubtedly confirm what we all know.  The real collusion in America is between the Democratic Party and the liberal, progressive news media, which we have come to recognize as "fake news," subjective, propagandized reporting.

The Fake News Media to the rescue!  The fake news media isn't even trying to hide their naked bias for Democrats anymore.  Not that they ever really hid it before.  Barack and Michelle Obama are living proof that the news media will go to any lengths to create a mythology and false narrative around Democrats.  But now instead of being the personal PR firm of the Obamas, the fake news media is officially the personal PR firm of the DNC as a whole.

Another Year of Torrential Media Bias.  At the beginning of Trump's presidency, Christine Amanpour shed even a semblance of journalistic detachment and declared openly that she believes in "being truthful, not neutral."  That conceit has been universally adopted at CNN, resulting in coverage that is neither journalistic nor truthful but warped and purely attitudinal.  The wobbly wall that once separated news readers from pundits has completely collapsed.

Wikipedia:  Rotten to the Core.  How could a site with over 100,000 volunteer editors, with open access for anyone looking to get involved, be engaged in such widespread bias?  As an investigative journalist and activist who has spent many years seeking the truth in a landscape of obfuscation and lies, I decided to find out exactly what was going on at Wikipedia. [...] My research confirms beyond a shadow of a doubt that Wikipedia
  •   supports repressive dictatorships
  •   promotes certain political candidates and attacks others
  •   accepts donations in return for favorable coverage
  •   is hostile to non-mainstream media
  •   suppresses holistic health information
  •   permits the publication of libel, maliciously and selectively
and that these problems are part of a systemic bias that reaches to the core of the platform, rendering all information it provides suspect.  If ideologically-motivated actors are able to get away with epistemological murder in one subject area, it's all but certain they are pulling off similar crimes elsewhere.

Are the Investigations the Cover-Up?  What we are witnessing here is a carefully planned and orchestrated cover-up of a series of very serious crimes.  The deep swamp is pretending to investigate the deep swamp.  This cover-up would not be possible if the mainstream media were honest and aggressive fact-finders, but they actually function as a branch of the Democratic Party.  The cover-up would fail if Republicans were unified in absolutely demanding to see all the evidence that is currently being hidden, but Republican 'leaders' do not unify and fight hard for anything.  They appear to be comfortable with losing this battle.

James Comey, Menace to Society.  [Scroll down]  Our mainstream media is an arm of the Democrat/progressive (socialist) party.  Our entertainment industry is as well.  We are living in a tyranny, a dictatorship eerily similar to Orwell's dystopian 1984.  No freedom of speech.  Words no longer mean what they used to mean.

Media's Trump Obsession Has Crossed Over To The Clinical.  The mainstream liberal press may have had a "slobbering love affair" with President Obama (as CBS News veteran Bernard Goldberg once aptly put it).  But they're absolutely obsessed with President Trump.  Data compiled by Real Clear Politics shows just how bad this Trump obsession is.

Trump timeline
Measuring the Media's Obsession With Trump.  From the mail bomber to the Khashoggi slaying to Bush 41's death, news outlets have organized their stories to emphasize Trump, while often undermining his legitimacy.  In doing so, the press has devoted so much attention to him that he has in some ways helped revive American journalism.  It turns out that the media's obsession with the president is greater than one might imagine.


America's Trojan Horses Are Sacking Us From Within.  CNN confuses a free press with the business of news which, today, is basically show business.  The right to a free press doesn't belong to the news business, per se; it belongs to the American people.  The press holds a sacred trust, similar to officeholders.  They are the Fourth Branch of Government — the "Fourth Estate."

Chuck Todd, Lord of the Flies?  So, according to the not inimitable Chuck Todd, those of us who voted for Trump are "gullible."  That we are stupid goes without saying.  Trump "tricked Hillary into responding to non-issues while stupid voters took care of the rest on election day."  Todd went on to say "I knew the gaslighting was out there.... but I think there was part of me in my head that assumed people were discerning it out, knew the BS from the non-BS."  This from the allegedly "articulate" Chuck Todd.  Clearly he is not the sharpest knife in the drawer.  He did not major in journalism or even English — that is obvious.  He majored in political science, and never graduated.  How he ended up as a news anchor on NBC is a "riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma."  He is just another leftist ideologue posing as a journalist; like George Stephanopoulos, Chris Matthews, Tom Brokow, et. al.  Ninety-five percent of those who pretend to deliver news to the American people are left-wing activists who consider it their honor and duty to tell the rest of us how to think.  As Todd so freely opined at the "Recode Decode" podcast this week, they somehow failed to educate us illiterate morons who voted for Trump.

The Media are Just as Complicit in DOJ, FBI, Corruption and FISA Abuse.  We shared a discussion thread several months ago about how the media are enmeshed within the story of the DOJ and FBI corruption.  The media engagements with the parties swirling around the FBI, DOJ and Clinton-Steele Dossier are so pervasive they cannot reasonably report on any aspect of the story without exposing their own duplicity.  As more and more information surfaces about corrupt DOJ and FBI activity, it's worth remembering the media's complicit role.

Many of the kids working in "journalism" these days were still in diapers when Bush 41 was president.
Fake Praise for GHWB: Where Were Media When He Needed Them?  As with the passing of former President Ronald Reagan, the media are in full praise mode following the death of former President George Herbert Walker Bush.  Where were they when the one-term President needed them?  In Reagan's case, even his haters grudgingly acknowledged the overall success of his presidency.  As for Bush 41, the media's praise of Bush's "grace" and "class" serves to indirectly to attack President Donald Trump by showing the contrast between the two Republicans' styles and characters.  But what did much of the liberal media think and say about Bush at the time?

Flawed Media Coverage of Obama Hurts America Still.  One of the more frustrating aspects of our current political debate is the extent to which differences from administration to administration are exaggerated and distorted.  Let's take, for example, media coverage of the Obama administration.  To this day, the inaccurate picture of his presidency haunts American discourse.  While there are obvious differences with the Trump administration, Obama was not exactly the man who many millions of Americans think he was.  He was a peace president who ordered ten times more drone strikes than George W. Bush.  He was the peace president who left office with American boots on the ground in Afghanistan, Syria, and Iraq, and scattered across North Africa.  His administration refueled Saudi jets to enable the indiscriminate Saudi bombing campaign in Yemen.  Oh, and he droned American citizens abroad without even a nod to due process.

'Morning Joe' co-hosts marry in secret ceremony with thinly-veiled anti-Trump theme.  The couple wed at the National Archives in Washington, D.C., on Saturday, in front of the Constitution, the Declaration of Independence, and the Bill of Rights, Vanity Fair reported.  "We did an event there more than a year ago and we were just blown away," Brzezinski said of the venue.  "It makes sense now more than ever, given what we stand for as a couple, what we do for a living, and what we're worried about as a country."  Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.) served as officiant for the nuptials, a decision the magazine said "bore the weight of symbolism." Cummings is ranking member of the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, which is investigating President Trump, The Hill noted.

These people are left-wing propagandists, not journalists.
Top Democrat officiates secret wedding of MSNBC's Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski.  MSNBC "Morning Joe" co-anchors Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski tied the knot in a secret Saturday ceremony officiated by a top Democratic congressman in the rotunda of the National Archives.  Rep. Elijah Cummings, D-Md., married Brzezinski, 51, and Scarborough, 55, in an intimate affair set in the historic building, according to Vanity Fair.  Cummings, who is likely the next chairman of the House Oversight Committee, is a former colleague of Scarborough's, dating back to when the TV personality served as a Republican congressman from Florida.

Return of the Fifth ColumnistsThe New York Times, The New Yorker, MSNBC, CNN — I could go on naming most of America's mainstream media — have done their utmost to reverse the 2016 presidential result.  To call them fifth columnists would be an understatement.  When the 45th president openly declares he'd like good relations with a country that has more nukes than we do, they call him a traitor.  (Coming from an ex-head of the CIA, this is a bit rich.)  When he calls a spade a spade, like the "[bad] countries" that are sending their criminals over here, they forget that no truer words have ever been spoken, and instead ask for the smelling salts.

Fembot Tool Warns Journalists if They Quote Too Many Men.  It probably wasn't inspired by U.S. Senator Mazie Hirono, who not long ago told men to "shut up."  But that's in a way what a new Financial Times tool will do:  warn writers if they're quoting too many men and force them to purge male voices.

Anti-Trump and Anti-GOP: How TV News Is Spinning the Midterms.  With just one week to go before the 2018 midterm elections, the broadcast networks are heavily spinning their campaign coverage against the Republicans, even as President Trump's campaign activities have received more airtime than all of the individual Senate, House, and gubernatorial contests combined.  Not only was network coverage of Republicans far more hostile (88% negative) than that meted out to Democrats (53% negative), but we found nearly ten times more negative statements about Republicans and President Trump (97) than all of the Democratic candidates combined (10).  In fact, coverage of the entire field of Democratic candidates would have been 67 percent positive if it hadn't been for negative comments in stories about Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren's DNA test.

In less than a minute Chris Wallace nails the Washington Post on bias.  [Scroll down]  Looking beyond the Post, I firmly believe that most political reporters, hey, make that reporters regardless of their beat, at major outlets such as MSNBC, the New York Times, and CNN, when they are assigned to a story, will wonder to themselves, "How can I use my account to make Trump look bad."  This is opinion masquerading as straight news.  Trump repeatedly throws a penalty flag at these biased stories and so does an increasingly larger segment of the American population.

Kavanaugh:  What Have We Learned?  [#1] Most of the media is actively working for the Democrats.  If I had any doubt about this, it was completely erased by the events of the past month.  The only way any of it makes sense is if the press is eagerly doing the will of the Democrats.  Are the Dems accusing a Supreme Court nominee of sexual assault, and even gang rape?  Well then, the press will proceed under that assumption.  They already know the accused is guilty, no matter how insane the accusation, so they'll dig up facts to match the theory.  And if they can't find facts?  Any facts at all?  Well then, they'll just weave together rumor and conjecture until they hit their word count.

CNN Founder:  Network is 'Stickin' with Politics a Little Too Much'.  In an interview with Ted Koppel on CBS Sunday Morning, CNN founder Ted Turner said that while he doesn't watch the news much anymore, he thinks the network that he birthed was too political and could use some balance.  "I think they're stickin' with politics a little too much," Turner said "They — they'd do better to have — a more balanced agenda.  But that's, you know, just one person's opinion."  Koppel also asked Turner about his relationship with Fox News founder and fellow billionaire Rupert Murdoch.  "He didn't hate me," Turner told Koppel "He envied me."

1984 Now:  EU Thought Police Say "Hate" Must be Regulated Out of Media.  They're not really sure what hate is but are sure of this:  They hate it.  And thus should "it" — as represented by discrimination, exclusion, and a "dangerous nationalism" — be purged from the media via regulation. [...] Conventional media have long been in the Left's pocket, and social media are now notorious for their censorship, which mainly falls on conservatives.  For example, Twitter, already known for banning and "shadowbaning" traditionalists, now says that it wants to prohibit "dehumanizing" comments — with users' help.

Larry King Criticizes CNN: They're 'Sorta Liberal' And No One Does News Anymore.  Remember Larry King?  My grandmother used to watch him religiously.  He was the man who had the open-ended interviews with some of the biggest names in the news, politics, and popular culture.  He left CNN in 2010.  Earlier this week, he lamented how there's no news anymore.  Not holding anything back, he even admitted that CNN has become "sorta liberal."  There is no news anymore.  CNN has the panels that are 15-people deep.  And the breaking news alerts are getting way overused.  You can debate what you will about how we came to this juncture in cable news.  Frankly, this wasn't entirely a byproduct of Trump.  We were heading down this road years prior to the 2016 election, but Trump's upset win on Hillary Clinton injected steroids into the process.

Americans Can Agree On One Thing At Least.  The mainstream press might want to spend less time complaining about President Donald Trump's attacks on them and more time doing a better job.  A new survey shows that a substantial majority of Americans think the press is biased, unreliable and out of touch.

Ford's accusations against Kavanaugh reveal big problem in media.  In a nation where every major issue ends up in the Supreme Court, it only makes sense a nomination to that court has turned into political combat.  And the media love it.  Journalists have set aside their already pretend neutrality to openly support Judge Brett Kavanaugh's accuser, Christine Blasey Ford.  They have either skewered Kavanaugh or pushed to delay the hearings in a desperate hope that Democrats take the Senate and stop all future Trump nominees.

News Shocker: Media fact-checks Barack Obama, at least this once.  One of the things the mainstream media never quite got around to during Barack Obama's brief 2,922 days in office was fact-checking his every public comment.  Probably just an oversight.  However, during Donald Trump's endless 601 days in office the media have rediscovered their watchdog conscience and are keeping very close track — even daily — of his misstatements, untruths and exaggerations.  Probably because there's not much else happening with jobs, the economy, North Korea, Iran, ISIS, etc.

'I am part of the resistance inside the news media,' and I'm not anonymous.  Over the years, I've been asked to run anonymous letters dozens of times, but I've never done so.  The explanation is always the same:  Our readers have a right to judge the validity of a submitted opinion based on who you are and whether you have an ax to grind against the subject of your letter.  The opinion editors of the New York Times obviously feel differently. [...] The op-ed told us nothing new.  It merely confirmed what has been obvious for a long time — that many figures in the Washington, D.C., establishment fear President Donald Trump and are working to undermine his administration.

Bob Woodward Has a Trail of Accuracy Issues That Nobody is Talking About.  Longtime journalist Bob Woodward's best-selling new book, "Fear," presents a scathing depiction of President Donald Trump and his ability to perform his duties as commander-in-chief.  While senior Trump officials including Secretary of Defense James Mattis have denied quotations attributed to them in the book, media coverage of "Fear" has been largely positive, emphasizing the 75-year-old Woodward's experience and trustworthiness.  But that coverage has left out part of the story:  repeated, credible charges — including from well-respected fellow journalists — that in previous books Woodward embellished the truth, made dubious bombshell claims or was otherwise misleading.

Anti-Trump journalists find new, bizarre ways to join the resistance.  Media bias seems to get worse by the week.  Even a work week shortened by Labor Day delivered on that depressing trend.  Journalists cheered protests at the Supreme Court nomination hearing for Judge Brett Kavanaugh and swallowed a silly Internet hoax.  Then there was the anonymous New York Times op-ed defending a "steady state" rebellion against President Trump.  It was a new low for journalists devoted to overturning a democratic election.

Media pounce on conservatives and weaponize bias against Trump.  Anti-Trump news organizations continued to attack the president this past week on many fronts, including for what CNN Senior Political Analyst John Avlon called "a real culture of corruption."  In reality, Avlon should have been describing the state of journalism.  CNN, that stalwart of James Earl Jones voiceovers, has no room to point fingers.  It got caught believing another phony story about President Trump and is too stubborn and woke to admit it.  (Sort of like when three CNN investigative journalists had to resign in 2017, except then the network admitted they were wrong.)  Meanwhile, NBC is facing allegations from a former top producer that executives actively interfered in reporting on allegations of sexual misconduct against Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein.  And The New York Times has become increasingly obvious about the word play it injects into news stories, so its left-wing agenda remains intact.

Hall Monitor Nation.  Apart from building the wall, President Trump's most important act as president so far was his attack on internet censorship this week.  The left controls all the cultural institutions — the establishment media, corporate America, Hollywood, Silicon Valley, public schools and universities.  The only breach in their total dominion of the flow of information is the internet.  So now they're fixated like a laser beam on private citizens yammering to one another online.  Why can't people accept the officially certified news as delivered by respected truth-tellers like Brian Williams, CNN and NBC — the network that censored Juanita Broaddrick and illegally leaked the "Access Hollywood" tape?  Liberals assessed the situation and correctly concluded:  People are learning facts on the internet that we've been withholding from them, so now they don't agree with us.  We have to stop this.

Diary of August 30, 2018.  Let's play a little game of guessing what is the paper — and what is the editorial position of the paper — in which the following "news" headlines have recently appeared. [...]

Bury the good news, gin up up Fake News.  I get that the nation's press hates President Trump and I defend their right to trash him.  But what they practice is not journalism.  Real reporters put aside their feelings to report the news straight.  They may do that elsewhere, and certainly I do not mean to disparage those reporters across the country who cover the school boards and city councils and even the state legislatures.  But by and large our national news is anti-Trump propaganda.  It is backfiring.  You would think after three years, the press would take notice.

The media's hatred of Trump is only hurting itself.  [Scroll down]  Because the [New York] Times is the liberal media's bell cow, the floodgates were flung open to routinely call Trump a liar, a racist and a traitor.  Standards of fairness were trashed as nearly every prominent news organization demonized Trump and effectively endorsed Clinton.  This open partisanship was a disgraceful chapter in the history of American journalism.  Yet the shocking failure of that effort produced no change in behavior.  After the briefest of mea culpas for failing to see even the possibility of a Trump victory, the warped coverage continued and became the media wing of the resistance movement.  Which is how we arrived at the latest low moment in journalism.  This one involved the more than 300 newspapers (including The [New York] Post) that followed The Boston Globe and, especially his accusation that they are "the enemy of the people."  The high-minded among the media mob insisted they were joining together to protect the First Amendment and freedom of the press.  In fact, the effort looked, smelled and felt like self-interest and rank partisanship masquerading as principle.  True to their habit, most of the papers expressed contempt for the president and some extended that contempt to his supporters.

And They Wonder Why We're Angry.  Journalistic coverage of President Trump is more than 90 percent negative.  When a gunman attacked a newspaper in Maryland, one journalist was willing to immediately falsely report that the shooter was wearing a "Make America Great Again" hat.  Journalistic reports on the "killing" of the president or "impeachment" of the president were exponentially higher for President Trump than Presidents Bush and Obama in their first six months of their first terms.  Artists and comedians uphold the interpretive concept of beheading the president.  All of this factors into hundreds of violent attacks on Trump-supporters who are falsely and uniformly represented as neo-Nazis, KKK members, and "Alt-Right" fanatics.

Press needs to restore its credibility on FBI and Justice Department.  I will never call the mainstream media "the enemy of the people."  But I will call them out for having strayed from fairly reporting some of the biggest stories of the last two years.  No matter how egregious their errors, they insist on pointing fingers elsewhere and reinforcing their political biases, in ways unimaginable to those of us who grew up in the Walter Cronkite era.  A few days ago, The Hill's John Solomon revealed that Congress has discovered that Bruce Ohr — one of the highest-ranking Department of Justice (DOJ) officials reporting to Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein — was in continuous secret communication with former British spy Christopher Steele, the author of the salacious Trump-Russia dossier produced for an opposition research firm on behalf of Hillary Clinton's campaign and the Democratic Party.  Steele also just happened to be a paid informant for the FBI but was later dismissed for lying about his contacts with the media.

Solidarity in the trench.  A recent Gallup/Knight Foundation poll found that 62 percent of U.S. adults believe the news they get from traditional sources — newspapers, radio and television — is biased.  Nearly half — 44 percent — think the information is inaccurate, and 39 percent even conclude that it's misinformation cooked for a gullible audience.

Mainstream Media Glorifies Violent Antifa Protests.  The mainstream media has disingenuously framed the counter protests to "Unite the Right 2" rally in DC as being "anti-hate" when, in reality, many of the counter-protesters acted aggressively toward authorities and journalists.  TheDC's Vince Coglianese explains that some of the bad faith counter protesters that showed up to protest white supremacy on Sunday discredited the cause of the overall crowd gathered to protest due to their aggressive activities.  One counter-protester claimed that if the president showed up to the rally, he would "murder him for the people."

Newspapers have failed the First Amendment.  [F]reedom of the press is only one of five bedrock rights in America.  Standing up for the one that you use to earn a living is easy.  The test is how well you defend the other four.  When it comes to religion, newspapers are largely atheistic.  One year, the local newspaper did not even mention Easter on Easter Sunday — except in the paid ads.  9/11 changed newspapers slightly.  They now defend Islam.  As for free speech, newspapers did not condemn social media for banning Milo Yiannopoulos and other conservatives; newspapers did not condemn college campuses for harassing and even banning conservative speakers; newspapers did not condemn ABC for firing Roseanne Barr over one bad joke.

Why Normal Americans Hate the "Elites".  Personally, I am more unhappy about the press's assault on President Trump than about President Trump's assault on the press.  To listen to our heroic journalists, you might think that Trump is sending secret policemen to cart them off to prison.  No such thing, of course.  Rather, Trump is saying things about left-wing press outlets that are nowhere near as nasty as what they have been saying about him since before his inauguration.  Democratic Party journalists declared war on the president, and they now pretend that his fighting back is somehow an infringement of their rights.

Beat the Press (every Sunday).  It is blatantly obvious that the entrenched bureaucracy and their allies in the mainstream media have now declared all-out war on President Trump and anyone connected to him.  The volume of omissions, half-truths, and outright lies presented as 'news' by these outlets is astounding.  Trump has punched back, but something more is needed in order to push against the tsunami of Anti-Trump vitriol spewing from the establishment Fourth Estate.

A Winning President is Better Than a Presidential President.  [Donald Trump] came to office with a certain outsized, garish, New York persona, which set him up perfectly to send outrageous tweets, be politically incorrect, and drive liberals into a frenzy.  He plays them like a fiddle in some respects, but he also has to be willing to get down and dirty.  He stays close to the edge and slips sometimes.  This is necessary.  His reputation is important, to be sure; but Trump is making a strategic gamble with it.  He knows that, unlike him, the media has only its reputation.  It has nothing else to fall back on.  No one can make people watch a news program or buy a newspaper or read a blog.  When Trump is done, and a plurality of Americans clearly see the conventional media as phony liars, they are dead.

Now they see themselves as soldiers.  Yesterday [8/6/2018], CNN had the audacity to publish an "opinion" piece by an ethics professor from Notre Dame that compares "journalists" to soldiers. [...] It must be "journalistic ethics" that inspired Politico reporter Marc Caputo to call us gap-toothed garbage people.  "Accuracy and fairness?"  Like cutting video to make it look like Trump emptying a box of fish food was some kind of never-before-seen boorishness the likes of which the world has ever known?  Was it that "demanding code of journalistic ethics" that inspired Chris Cillizza to put a rifle scope on a gif of President Trump?  Sleeping with a Senate staffer to get classified information — talk about a demanding code of journalistic ethics.  How many retractions and corrections have the news media had to make over the last two years?

My Declaration of Incivility.  All around us the organized left (establishment media, Hollywood, and Democrats) are lamenting the loss of civility.  Of course, to express this lament, they must first take a break from calling us [names] throughout the halls of the U.S. Capitol.  Oh, and they must also take a break from bullying us out of public spaces and calling for more even more mobs to be vigilant so we face a "life sentence" of bullying.  With no professional consequences, NBC News is not only calling Trump a "Nazi," NBC News is smearing his supporters as "Nazis" — and I do not mean figuratively.  NBC News is not being coy about calling us Nazis.  NBC News is not nibbling around the edges of calling us Nazis.  NBC News is straight-up calling us Nazis.

Protesting Journalists, Much Like Protesting Politicians, Is Constitutional.  There is a notion amongst some journalists the recent protests directed towards them at a President Donald Trump rally somehow disrespected the First Amendment.  Larry Sabato tweeted as much this week, while also telling CNN's Jim Acosta "true constitutionalists ...is with you."  Politico's Marc Caputo apologized for venting his spleen over Twitter towards the protesters.  The anger journalists have at being criticized is completely understandable — and Odin knows I'm sympathetic towards journalists — but suggesting the protesters are somehow violating the First Amendment is incorrect.

Ana Navarro: 'CNN Tries to Be Very Balanced'.  Meghan McCain and Ana Navarro engaged in a fiery debate over media bias on Friday's [8/3/2018] episode of "The View," with Navarro vehemently defending the journalistic integrity of CNN, the network she frequently contributes to. [...] McCain cited a Pew Research study from 2012 that showed President Barack Obama received significantly greater positive coverage than Republican nominee Mitt Romney, and said she "would rather have a conversation about why Republicans don't have the same kind of fair and balanced media coverage that Democrats do than automatically jumping to terminology like 'enemy.'"

Ana Navarro Vs.  Meghan McCain:  Is CNN "Very Balanced"?  CNN must be "very balanced," says Navarro, because they frequently have anti-Trumpers like her on debating pro-Trumpers.  But that can't be the yardstick for "balance."  Fox has had Democratic panelists on day and night for years to debate Republicans.  By Navarro's standard, and contra every left-wing talking point about Fox for the past 20 years, that would make Fox "balanced."  It isn't, because it clearly has an editorial point of view notwithstanding the political diversity of its guests.  Same goes for CNN.  I defy you to watch it at any hour and conclude that the anchor is neutral towards Trump and his party.

MAGA hats, 'Fake News' shirts are hot sellers at Newseum, irritating reporters.  The Newseum in Washington, D.C., is an interactive museum that celebrates the role and history of the media in America.  So, what are among the top-selling items in the museum's gift shop and through its online store?  Red caps that say "Make America Great Again," and T-shirts that say "You Are Very Fake News."  But the popularity of items associated with President Trump has been irritating many members of the media, Poynter.org, the website for a media think tank, reported.

The Editor says...
The reporters are only irritated because they hate Donald Trump, which means they are not objective observers, which means they should not be employed and portrayed as reporters.

Levin: 'The media won't address its own unprofessionalism'.  Thursday [8/2/2018] on the radio, LevinTV host Mark Levin called out the media for reporting more on themselves than on legitimate news, and claiming that they are "under attack."  "The media keep reporting on the media, have you noticed that? ... The media have abandoned a pretense of seeking objectivity for ideological activism, progressivism ... they're devouring what they self-servingly claim to defend," Levin said.  [Audio clip]

Hey Media, You Started It.  Every television show you watch, every movie, every woman's magazine, every comedian, and, yes, every news program tells you you [are bad].  If you believe your country should vet its immigrants, you're racist.  If you voted for Donald Trump, you're racist.  If you make a joke about Barack Obama on Facebook, you're racist twice.  If you think motherhood is a woman's highest calling, you're sexist.  If you take it ill when Islamists blow you up in the name of their nasty little god, you're Islamophobic.  If you know that a man is a man even if he says he's a woman, you're transphobic.  If you think it's fair to debate whether homosexual actions are moral or not, you're homophobic.  Every day.  From every outlet.  All the time.  And now people are angry.

The media whips up hatred among classes, races, religions, and exactly two sexes.
  •   The media constantly publish stories showing that white people are racist.  In the past 48 hours alone, the New York Times has published stories showing that white people are racist in hotels and at public swimming pools. [...] Nearly every day, the media write an article that reads, "White people are racist in [kind of place or circumstance]."  This repeated emphasis whips up racial resentment and encourages violence against white people.
  •   Not a day goes by without some gleeful account of how the non-white population of America is increasing, eagerly looking forward to the day when whites are in the minority.  This "in your face, white people!" mentality stirs up understandable resentment among white Americans.
  •   We are constantly told by the media to hate the rich, that if they have a lot of money, they must not have earned it legitimately, that "their" money should be "our" money.  The resentment built up by this kind of storyline encourages lawmakers to enact theft by higher taxation.
  •   Women are constantly told that most men are rapists or harassers who don't respect them.  Women are encouraged to turn against men and see rape in every dorm room and every janitor closet.
  •   We are repeatedly told that the police are racist.

CNN Loves Hiring Former Obama Officials.  CNN personalities have repeatedly attacked Fox News for allegedly being a mouthpiece for President Donald Trump, pointing to the number of Fox anchors and pundits who have joined the administration over the past year and a half.  CNN has its own extensive history, however, of being a revolving door for the Obama administration and even masquerading former Obama officials as impartial journalists.

We Now Have a Direct Line From Russia To... The Media.  We're fretting about Facebook ads hoping to influence the election... yet this is a direct line from Russia to the mainstream media.  Look at all the trouble Russia went through to set up, staff, develop, finance, hide, spoof, and disguise their "Troll Farm" operation — all in the hopes of turning some Facebook heads amidst a million other ads and issues.  But with Steele and Fusion GPS, all it takes is a word to a Steele "source" and a week or so later it's being directly disseminated to the most influential segment of US society:  the national press. [...] It's unimaginable, but it happened.  The FBI allowed uncorroborated, foreign-sourced derogatory info on a presidential candidate, paid for by his opponent, to be used as credible evidence in a FISA hearing in order to gain access to the communications of a former campaign member.

Mark Levin: 'Why Do The Press Hate The American People?'.  Conservative radio talk show host Mark Levin had some strong words for the media during his appearance on Hannity.  Levin began by saying that "a lot has been said" about President Donald Trump's hostile rhetoric towards the press, specifically when he calls them the "enemy of the people," telling Sean Hannity that he has a "different take."  "Why do the press hate the American people?" Levin asked.  "65 million people, give or take, voted for Donald Trump for president of the United States... various press outlets, reporters, hosts or their guests called millions and millions of Americans 'Nazis,' 'racists,' 'deranged,' 'cultists,' 'deplorable,' and even worse.  How do the press in this country justify calling tens of millions of people such outrageous names?"

The Top 50 Liberal Media Bias Examples.  In fact, there was a time when American customers of the news knew exactly which newspapers sported which point of view.  It was taken for granted that one newspaper supported one side and another newspaper a different side.  But in the late 1950s and early 1960s that all changed.  Suddenly the folks in the news media began to present themselves as unbiased pursuers of "the truth."  Gone was the out-in-front bias and instead the media cloaked itself in a new air of detachment, a new just-the-facts mien.  This new era in media conceit coincided with the advent of a liberal mindset that took on the weight of the world, a new era in which liberals felt that their ideals rose above God, tradition and country.

As the Swamp Turns.  It now is clear that "As the Swamp Turns," the daily cable-news soap opera/circus, definitely will not end before November.  We will get our full two seasons of programming with an option for the Democrat-Media-Entertainment-Academia Complex to extend for two more.  Cable news is about ratings, not news.  When the important news is flat, CNN shifts into Malaysian Airlines Flight 370.  Bermuda Triangle?  Black hole?  Thus, Stormy Daniels is a natural for them — and, yummy for ratings, now she is getting divorced, too.  And the latest — the nonsense over the Michael Cohen secret recordings of his client, then-business-magnate-and-builder Donald J. Trump.  How long will this nonsense continue?  It now is clear that it will continue at least through the November elections.

These are the most and least biased news outlets in the US, according to Americans.  Americans believe the vast majority of news on TV, in newspapers, on the radio, and on social media is biased, according to new polls.  Those surveyed found that PBS News and the Associated Press were the least biased outlets, while Fox News and Breitbart News tied for having the most perceived bias.  But views on how biased or inaccurate media organizations are differed dramatically based on the respondent's political beliefs.

The Media's Self-Inflicted Gunshot Wounds.  A few weeks ago, when a [loser] shot up the offices of a Maryland newspaper, social media was flooded with tweets from members of the press (a.k.a.  America's least trusted profession, and yes, that's counting Indian guys who call from "Microsoft security") in which these self-appointed "guardians of truth" castigated the rest of us for not, you know, liking them more.  We're the most important pillar of a free society!  We're out there every day fighting for the truth!  Why don't you love us, you stupid [...]?!  Ah, media hypocrisy at its finest!  After 9/11, the response of many mainstream (i.e., left-leaning) news organs was to ask, "Why is the USA so hated?"  Literally, "Why do they hate us?" became a media mantra in the months following the attacks.  This was an example of the press doing what it does best — pretending to advocate introspection.  "Yes, thousands of Americans have been killed, but our job is to rise above emotion and ask the hard questions."  For journalists, introspection is easy when you're telling someone else to do it. [...] With the media, self-examination and soul-searching stop at the newsroom door.

Biased Media And Average Americans Not In Sync On What's Important.  We've seen in recent weeks what the big media think are important:  Russia, climate change, North Korea, abortion, upcoming elections, gun control and inequality.  How do those match people's real concerns?  Turns out, not much at all. [...] So what do Americans see as the No. 1 problem?  [A] record 22% say "Immigration/Illegal aliens," followed by "Dissatisfaction with government/Poor leadership" (19%) and Race relations/Racism (7%), "Unifying the country" (6%) and "Lack of respect for each other" (6%).

Russian Bots vs.  Media/Academia/Hollywood — Which Had A Bigger Impact On The Election?  Professor Tim Groseclose, author of "Left Turn:  How Liberal Media Bias Distorts the American Mind," makes the case that were the media truly fair and balanced, the average state would vote the same way Texas votes, in favor of Republicans.  But media bias gives Democrats a bump of about 8 to 10 points.  Of 20 major sources of news, Groseclose found about 15 years ago, 90 percent lean to the left. [...] NBC's "Meet the Press" host Chuck Todd worked on the 1992 presidential campaign of left-left Democrat Sen. Tom Harkin.  CNN's Jake Tapper used to work for a U.S. House Democrat.  ABC News "chief anchor" George Stephanopoulos worked as a top campaign strategist for the election of Bill Clinton, and after Clinton's election worked as his communications director.

Is The Media The "Enemy Of The People"?  It wasn't the first time that he had said or tweeted it.  And it never fails to get a rise out of the media.  President Trump had referred to the New York Times, CNN and NBC News as "the enemy of the American people" shortly after taking office. [...] While Jim Acosta was demanding a retraction for being called an "enemy of the people", the media had thrown every effort into opening the border.  The American people are defined by their physical possession of the territory.  And that territory and its possession is defined and measured by a border.  You can't advocate the destruction of the American people and then object to being called their enemy.  Without a border, there is no America and no American people.  The territories formerly known as the United States fill up with various peoples who claim the entitlements of citizenship but not its responsibilities, whose identity is not of their current country of residency, but of their country of birth.

Nunes Targets the Real Collusion:  The Media and DOJ.  Congress is finally closing in on the biggest perpetrator of the Trump-Russia election collusion hoax:  the American news media.  After taking an eight-year break from its vital role as the executive branch's watchdog, the media have been on a frenzied, anti-Trump bender since 2016.  Every conspiracy theory, every rumor, every dubious source has been chased down and breathlessly covered by once-credible news organizations.  (This shameful interview on CNN with a drunken former Trump campaign aide could be a new low in journalism.)  Despite sanctimonious protestations that the media are not — as President Trump suggests — the "enemy of the people," their collective conduct before and during his presidency has been disgraceful and borderline subversive.  The elite press is complicit in one of the greatest political scandals of all-time:  How the Obama administration concocted the tale that Donald Trump's campaign was working with the Russian government to influence the 2016 presidential election.

Cahoots:
Mueller's 'Pit Bull' Arranged Meeting With Reporters To Discuss Manafort Investigation.  Justice Department documents released on Friday [7/6/2018] confirm that the DOJ attorney known as Robert Mueller's "pit bull" arranged a meeting with journalists in April 2017 to discuss an investigation into Paul Manafort.  The documents show that Andrew Weissmann arranged a meeting with DOJ and FBI officials and four Associated Press reporters on April 11, 2017, just over a month before Mueller was appointed special counsel.  Manafort's lawyers obtained the documents on June 29 and revealed them in a briefing filed in federal court in Virginia.  The attorneys are pushing for a hearing into what they say are possible leaks of secret grand jury information, false information and potentially classified materials from the meeting.

Important: Robert Mueller Lead Attorney Coordinated Investigative Strategy With Four AP "Reporters".  The gist of the story is that Andrew Weissmann was meeting with AP reporters in April of 2017, approximately a month prior to the formal construct of the Robert Mueller investigation.  The information from the meeting, which was essentially based on research provided by the "reporters" about Paul Manafort, was then later used in the formation of the underlying evidence against Manafort to gain a search warrant.

Mueller "Pit Bull" Weissman arranged meeting with AP reporters to discuss Manafort probe.  The documents show that Andrew Weissmann arranged a meeting with DOJ and FBI officials and four Associated Press reporters on April 11, 2017, just over a month before Mueller was appointed special counsel.  Manafort's lawyers obtained the documents on June 29 and revealed them in a briefing filed in federal court in Virginia.  The attorneys are pushing for a hearing into what they say are possible leaks of secret grand jury information, false information and potentially classified materials from the meeting.

Court Docs Allege More Corruption by Mueller's "Pit Bull" in Manafort Case.  According to sources with knowledge of the meeting, the reporters had reached out to Weissmann on a different story earlier in the year and it was during that conversation that the AP team told Weissmann of their investigation into Manafort.  However, according to the recent documents, it was Weissmann that called for the meeting.  On April 12 — one day after the meeting — the AP published the explosive expose on Manafort.  "The meeting raises serious concerns about whether a violation of grand jury secrecy occurred," stated Kevin Downing, Manafort's lawyer, in a motion requesting a hearing.  "Based on the FBI's own notes of the meeting, it is beyond question that a hearing is warranted."

Mainstream Media On Their Last Legs.  Looking at today's most popular cable news outlets, you might think that they were created as some sort of façor a political purpose.  Sadly, you wouldn't be completely wrong.  In 2018, the idea that anchors and hosts should be objective seems farfetched and is accepted by so few that we've forgone pretending anymore.  What happens because of this is a loss of faith in these outlets, and President Trump has been at the forefront of this with his attacks on the media, and make no mistake, this should be setting off alarms for the general public.  When the president of the USA openly attacks the media, something has gone terribly wrong.

Sounds like a slush fund:
New Jersey Funds the Media.  In the liberal mind, the way to prove you value something is by funding it with taxpayer money.  So if you love journalism, you take taxpayer money and give it to journalists.  It is a sacred mantra of the Left that corporate funding of media inevitably results in a pro-corporate media bias.  Consistency would dictate that government funding of media would lead to a pro-government bias.  Not in New Jersey. [...] Garden State legislators have approved a bill to use taxpayer money to support "grants to strengthen local news coverage," starting with an opening $5 million kitty.  The goal is to have $20 million allocated toward the "civic information" fund every year for five years.

Fox News finds airing Trump rallies live, in their entirety is good for business.  Critics say Fox is essentially giving the Republican president free, repeated access to his supporters in a midterm election year.

The Editor says...
That's exactly what CNN, ABC, CBS and NBC did during the Obama presidency.

Trump [is] Blamed for Death of Reporters.  Did Media Blame Obama for Cop Killers?  How dare the President call out the anti-Republican media for its decades of biased reporting?  Pew Research, in 2013, found that only 7 percent of reporters called themselves Republican.  How dare Trump attack The New York Times, which has not endorsed a Republican presidential candidate since 1956?  How dare Trump go after The Washington Post, which has never endorsed a Republican presidential candidate.  And how dare Trump refer to CNN — one of whose "news" anchors, Don Lemon, has called Trump "a racist" — as fake news.

Border Hysteria Delivers Disastrous Week for Establishment Media.  A clean majority of 62 percent believe the "traditional news media" is biased.  A full 44 percent believe the media is inaccurate, and another 39 percent believe the media spread misinformation.

Levin: The media 'create their own reality'.  LevinTV host Mark Levin began his radio show Friday evening [6/22/2018] discussing how the media have inserted ideological progressivism into their news reporting.  "They create their own reality.  And in this case, it's a progressive reality," Levin said of the media.  "And they push it out as news."  He recommended the book The Image:  A Guide to Pseudo-Events in America, by the late historian Daniel Boorstin, to explain how the news media attempt to indoctrinate the public.

IG Report:  FBI Officials Accepted Bribes From Media.  On Page Xii of the IG report the Department of Justice Office of Inspector General (DOJ-OIG) highlights numerous FBI officials who accepted bribes from multiple media outlets including: "tickets to sporting events", "golf outings", "drinks and meals" as well as exclusive invitations and admission to "nonpublic social events".

How to Read a Newspaper.  You should always ask yourself who benefits from a newspaper story based on a leak, or some fact that wouldn't otherwise be reported in the ordinary course of plain news gathering.  Someone usually has a motive for making sure a story or fact makes it into the news.

Don't Buy Establishment Media's Sudden Concern for 'Human Rights' in North Korea.  The establishment media have one guiding principle when it comes to dictators and human rights:  If the dictator makes Republicans look bad (or Democrats look good), the media do not give a damn about human rights.  North Korea is not only the most recent example, it is one of the most striking.  Oh, sure, the list of dictators the media adore is endless — Fidel Castro, Hugo Chavez, Hassan Rouhani, Bashar al-Assad, Mohamed Morsi, Robert Mugabe, Saddam Hussein, and the Soviet Union — but when you look at today's narrative about human rights in North Korea, never let yourself forget that it was only four months ago — a mere 16 weeks — when the media [pandered to] Kim.

Netflix Approval Plummets Among Republicans Amid Obama Production Deal, Susan Rice Board Appointment.  Republican's approval of the internet streaming giant Netflix has dropped amid the company's recent embrace of Susan Rice and Barack Obama, according to polling data obtained by Variety.  A survey by the research firm YouGov found that Netflix's positive impression rating with Republicans fell by 16 percent since the beginning of 2018.  Meanwhile, the company's positive impression rating with Democrats has risen by 15 percent in the same period.

Sting exposes Indian media's corruption.  Cobrapost, an Indian Web publication, carried out a long sting operation where it pretended to be a Hindutva organization.  It caught several officials of big media houses in India admitting they were willing to run hate campaigns that would aid some political parties.

The Media Who Cried Wolf.  According to Rasmussen polling results released on in late April, 54% of likely voters "say they do not trust the political news they are getting."  That is an eight-point increase from last June's 46%, the poll's previous high, and 18 points higher than last January's result.  With just 32% saying "they do trust the political news they are getting," the establishment media polls well below the President.  If trustworthiness is the media's basic job description, they have an effective job approval rating of 32% favorable, 54% unfavorable.

The Biggest Threat to America's Future Is the Media.  Today, the media in the United States are not objective seekers and disseminators of truth.  In truth, the media serve as the propagandist and protector of the forces that want to change America from a constitutional republic to a socialist state.  The evidence is clear and overwhelming of the countless times the media have selectively covered what promotes leftist ideals and ignored or altered the facts of what exposes the sinister leftist agenda. [...] It is not hyperbolic to say today's mainstream media are an enemy of truth, conservative thought, and the authority of the United States Constitution.  Many young, as well as some seasoned journalists in today's media are not capable of reporting the truth, either because of their leftist indoctrination in liberal universities or out of fear of the consequences from the leftist editorial boards of most media outlets.

Mueller Year One:  Journalism's Real Heroes Continued.  A brave group of journalists — aided by key amplifiers in social media, cable news, and talk radio — continues to push back on the media's sycophantic service to the Democratic Party in which so many reporters, news personalities and political pundits are invested.  Now, reporters who tried to convince us Trump was nuts for claiming Obama's FBI spied on him are spinning hard to persuade us that an "informant" isn't really a "spy."  But these antidotal journalists and influencers are not letting them get away with it.

Am I Tuning in at the Wrong Times, or Does CNN Really Have Trump Derangement Syndrome?  Maybe it's a matter of timing.  Maybe I'm not giving this a fair shake.  But whenever I happen to tune in to CNN, there's a panel of talking heads discussing President Trump and the porn star.  Or President Trump and the Mueller investigation.  Or President Trump and whether he'll be impeached.  Or President Trump and Jerusalem.  Or President Trump and Saudi Arabia.  Or President Trump and Iran.  Or President Trump and North Korea.  Or President Trump and the American economy.  Or President Trump and pro-life legislation.  Or President Trump and national security — or whatever the major topic is — I almost never hear CNN talking about it.  As for CNN talking about a subject that didn't mention Trump at all, I can't remember the last time I witnessed that personally.

Mueller Year One:  The Real Heroes in Journalism.  After eight years of feeding the Obama cult of personality — swooning over his suave personal traits, covering for mistakes and misconduct, applying little if any scrutiny to his policies or performance — the news media suddenly developed a keen interest in presidential accountability and integrity on November 9, 2016.  Since the day Donald Trump won the election over their strenuous objections, the media have been out to get the man they deem unworthy of the presidency.  They have teamed up with the Left of and the NeverTrump Right to campaign for his removal from office.  Trump's family, aides, and cabinet members have been harassed and reviled in despicable ways.

National media is the swamp.  There was this idea after President Trump won in 2016 that the national press would take a step back to re-evaluate its blind spots.  For an industry that managed somehow to misunderstand everything about his rise to power, including the part where he was able to rally public opinion against newsrooms, a period of serious self-reflection seemed long overdue.

Propaganda Networks.  Why does American journalist Abby Martin do propaganda for socialist murderers?  You've heard about Russian propaganda.  Martin once worked for RT, Russia's state-run news network.  Now she's got a similar gig at teleSUR, an anti-capitalist, pro-socialist news network funded by Latin American leftists.  I'd never heard of teleSUR before researching this week's YouTube video.  But teleSUR matters because its videos get millions of views.  Latin America stays poor because people believe socialist propaganda.

The White House Correspondents' Dinner is Everything Wrong with the Media.  While President Trump rallied working class voters in Michigan, the Media-Industrial complex in Washington D.C. threw itself a narcissistic orgy known as the White House Correspondents' Dinner.  The Dinner is, in theory, a charity event.  But the only people who know that are reporters and Jeopardy trivia champions.  In between the celebrity appearances and the obscene taunts aimed at women who work in the Trump administration, the media orgy is supposed to be fundraising to send kids to college.  Sure.  The White House Correspondents' Association went from spending 60% of its take on scholarships in 2009 to 23% in 2015.  This year, the WHCA boasts that it's spending $134,500 on scholarships.  That's comparable to its executive compensation.

For the sake of journalism, stop the White House correspondents' dinner.  The 2018 White House Correspondents' Association Dinner should be the last.  It never has been a particularly good idea for journalists to don their fanciest clothes and cozy up to the people they cover, alongside Hollywood celebrities who have ventured to wonky Washington to join the fun.  But in the current era, it's become close to suicidal for the press's credibility.  Trust in the mainstream media is low, a new populism has caught fire all over the Western world, and President Trump constantly pounds the news media as a bunch of out-of-touch elites who don't represent the interests of real Americans.  The annual dinner — or at least the optics of the dinner — seems to back him up.

Top 10 Media Tweets Criticizing White House Correspondents' Dinner.  This was a very good opportunity for the Republican Party to show Middle America what the Coastal Media Bubble people think of anyone who disagrees with them politically.

America's Establishment Media Has Become The Laughing Stock Of The World.  The Mainstream Media is losing viewers and readers left and right as millions turn to alternative sources that are not extensions of left-leaning corporate interests that have long dominated America's media enterprise.  This fact is also a big reason why Donald Trump continues to not only survive but thrive as President of the United States.

The Three Festering Wounds of 2016: James Comey is central to all of them.  Three wounds, created or revealed in 2016, have become infected, and the infections are not yet cured.  First is the so-called "Russia dossier," which became the basis for the Robert Mueller investigation that is running away in the manner that Lawrence Walsh's "Iran Contra" investigation did.  The second is the "Uranium One" scandal, which the media still try to bury.  And the third is the fact that Hillary Clinton and her closest staff, such as Huma Abedin, committed felonies in handling classified information.  The then-FBI Director James Comey saw the proofs of their actions and nevertheless decided to protect them from punishment.  There is every reason not to write about these scandals, especially considering the enormous amount that has already been written.  So why try now?  Simply because the three all flow together in a symphony of corruption, misgovernment, and media misbehavior that cannot be ignored.

Former NPR CEO Opens Up About liberal media bias.  Most reporters and editors are liberal — a now dated Pew Research Center poll found that liberals outnumber conservatives in the media by some 5 to 1, and that comports with my own anecdotal experience at National Public Radio.  When you are liberal, and everyone else around you is as well, it is easy to fall into groupthink on what stories are important, what sources are legitimate and what the narrative of the day will be.  This may seem like an unusual admission from someone who once ran NPR, but it is borne of recent experience.

The Real Reason the Democrats Want to Be Rid of Confederate Monuments.  The media spend their days "rectifying" the news.  They write and print and speak to mislead.  Since they could not factually rectify the outcome of the 2016 election, they have spent every waking moment since constructing lies to delegitimize it; with falsehoods of collusion with Russia, and implications that racism, white supremacism, Nazis, and the KKK somehow denied them their rightful destiny They know none of those imputations are true, but their goal is make the public believe they are factual.  For the eight years Obama was President, the MSM never reported the vast numbers of people who were forced, enticed and even recruited to dependence on Food Stamps (an additional 10.7 million souls), or the catastrophic, unimaginable sum of 10 trillion dollars, by which he increased the national debt (he doubled it, adding more than all previous presidents combined), or the true facts of Obamacare, driving up costs, and wrecking the finances of what was the best system of medical care in the world).

Levin: If Exposing Media Is Only Thing Trump Does, He Will Have Been a Successful President.  On his nationally syndicated radio talk show Wednesday, host Mark Levin lambasted the media and praised Donald Trump, saying if exposing the media is the only thing Trump does, he will have been a successful president.  "I honestly believe if this is the only thing President Trump succeeds in doing he will have been a successful president — that is, exposing the media," said Mark Levin.  "For decade, after decade, after decade, and now it's worse than ever, the media have fraudulently presented themselves to the American people — to you — as some kind of objective nonpartisan entity just reporting the news.  Now they're all out of the closet, and it's not very pretty."

Majority of Democrats and Republicans say media has partisan agendas: poll.  Seventy percent of the general public agrees that news organizations "are subject to partisan agendas," with 85 percent of Republicans believing the news media is influenced by funding, according to a Wednesday YouGov poll.  "The rise of fake news, a growing multitude of media sources, and an increasingly polarized nation have Americans learning to take their headlines with a grain of salt," says the YouGov study.  The research also shows that seven in 10 Americans agree that news organizations report stories in a way that's favorable to their owners.

Chuck Todd gets questioned about hypocrisy — his wife's company has been paid millions by Democrats.  [Scroll down]  Referring to Jeffrey Lord's article in The American Spectator published the same morning, [two WABC] radio hosts asked [NBC's Meet The Press host Chuck] Todd to respond to the hypocrisy alleged in the column.  Lord goes through a litany of examples in his article, saying that while interviewing Bernie Sanders eleven times this year, Todd never disclosed the fact that his wife's company had received almost $2 million from the Bernie 2016 campaign.  Todd's wife, Kristian Todd, was also communications director for Jim Webb's Senate campaign in 2006 — but Todd did not mention that relationship in his 2017 interview with Webb on "Meet The Press."

Black Coffee:  The Starbucks Story Is Trash.  American journalism is a largely Democrat affair.  About 7% of journalists identify as Republicans.  About 28% identify as Democrats.  About 50% identify as independents but they are lying and are also Democrats.  Although many news outlets don't permit their reporters to donate to political campaigns, of those reporters who did donate in the last election, 96% donated to Hillary Clinton.

American Pravda Wins Pulitzer.  [Scroll down]  The days of the New York Times as a reliable, salient, or sane source of news have passed.  It exists now as an ideological apparatus of the progressive state, shilling for the hard-Left and the bureaucrats who pander to them.  It is least of all doing good work for the public.  A look back at one of their worst propaganda pieces in recent history is instructive, not only on the sad state of the New York Times, but mass media overall.

Possible tie between journalism and reality.  The New York Times bragged that it shared a Pulitzer with the Washington Post "for coverage that unearthed possible ties between Russia and President Trump's inner circle."  By unearthed they mean published Bobby Mueller's leaks designed to coerce innocent men to plea bargain to crimes they did not commit. [...] Giving Pulitzers to partisans for publishing Democratic Party lies sets a new standard for American journalism.

Harvard Poll:  Young People Trust the President More Than the Media.  Young people are deeply distrustful of the media according to the latest Harvard/Institute of Politics poll, signaling more trust in President Donald Trump.  Only 16 percent of young people in the poll said they trusted the media to "do the right thing" while 22 percent said the same about Trump.  Twenty-one percent said the same about the Federal Government and only 17 percent agreed that Congress did the right thing all or most of the time.

Poll: 77 Percent Believe Traditional Media Guilty of Fake News.  According to a survey by the Monmouth University Polling Institute, the vast majority of Americans believe that mainstream media outlets report "fake news."  A whopping 77 percent of over 800 respondents relayed their distrust for major news organizations in both television and print — a marked increase from the 63 percent that was already skeptical a year ago.  Of those, 31 percent believe it to be a regular occurrence, while 46 percent see it as a more occasional issue.

Trump is Now More Popular Than Obama.  [Scroll down]  At a minimum, it means that a great many Americans have figured out that the New York Times, Washington Post, Associated Press, NBC, CNN, etc. are partisan outlets and not to be trusted.  This, of course, is a process that has been going on for a long time.  Indeed, it largely brought into being the "blogosphere" of a decade and more ago.  But it seems to me that we are seeing something like its culmination.  The liberal media have so thoroughly squandered their standing with the public that their capacity to do ill is limited.

Brilliant Agitprop Outlines Modern Media.  [Video clip]

The Clapper News Network.  The late pundit Robert Novak used to say that government officials can choose to be either "a source or a target."  In other words, leak information to reporters and you can count on flattering coverage and protection from them.  An added bonus to leaking, as former Intelligence Director Jim Clapper discovered, is that the network to which you are leaking will turn you into a paid contributor.

A User's Guide To Media Coverage Of Political Protests.  Who are these kids anyway?  The Washington Post celebrated the walkouts with the front-page headline "We're the Next Generation."  Liberals represent everybodyWe are the world and all that.  But when tens of thousands of teenagers attend the March for Life across the country, the national media ignore them — unless it's to expose the nefarious nature of those Christian zealots.

The Left and Distraction:  Pulling It All Apart.  Sean Hannity said it back in 2007:  journalism is dead.  It always had bias, but it's now become nothing more than a broadsheet for the far left, an instrument to pretend leftist propaganda is actual "news" that instructs us.  If you think of journalists as Democrats with bylines, you are correct, and that's mainly what the American public needs to see.  It's an institution torn apart.

Levin blasts media's all-out assault on Trump and the First Amendment.  "They have nothing but vile, dripping contempt for the president," Levin said.  He took issue with the ways in which the media claim Trump is unstable and how they claim the president is undermining the freedom of the press.  He also faulted the media for refusing to investigate the domestic political spying of the Obama administration.  "The media in this country claim that the First Amendment and freedom of the press is under attack.  It is under attack.  It's under brutal assault by the very people who earn their livings supposedly as journalists and reporters!" Levin exclaimed.

Chuck Todd insists media not the 'opposition'.  This week's Mainstream Media Scream features Meet the Press moderator Chuck Todd at a media dinner pledging that the press isn't the opposition, but "simply a voice of truth."  At the Radio Television Digital News Foundation's "2018 First Amendment Awards" held Thursday night [3/8/2018], at D.C.'s Marriott Marquis Hotel, Todd was presented with the group's First Amendment Award.

Bozell: 'Clorox, Gerber, HomeAdvisor and Oreo Just as Responsible' as 'The View' for Its Anti-Christian Bigotry.  Since ABC's "The View" won't apologize for, and its sponsors won't condemn, the show's anti-Christian bigotry, Americans need to take action, Media Research Center (MRC) President Brent Bozell said Thursday [2/22/2018].  In a video message to the nation, Bozell called on Americans to join MRC's national campaign by demanding ABC and its sponsors apologize for insulting millions of Christians in the U.S.

Deep State Knows They Can Count On Corrupt Media to Push Their Propaganda.  Deep State uses the media (MSM) whenever they want a particular farce spread throughout the industry.  The MSM complies with an article where a reporter announces anonymous sources have shared whatever made up story line the deep state wants publicized.  No one in the media is more accommodating to the deep state lately than 'old faithful' — Yahoo's Michael Isikoff.

Our Radicalized Media:  A Clear And Present Danger.  Like Hitler's "Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda," the media control information, reporting only news that attacks our president and those working to exonerate him.  They bury news of lawlessness that implicates Democrats — Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, any member of the leftist cabal.  But why are the media protecting the bad actors?  Is it their liberal bent, their far-left ideology?  Well, yes and no.  Yes, the media are radicalized, wholly devoted to the progressive dogma of the left, but it's more than that.  These faux journalists couldn't spew their poison, advocate the overthrow of a president, without their boss's permission, without government approval.

Why Did CNN Hire Comey's Former Assistant Josh Campbell?  CNN's decision to hire former FBI Director James Comey's assistant disturbs veteran members of the bureau, former agents told The Daily Caller News Foundation.  The relationship between former FBI agent Josh Campbell, the cable news network and Campbell's seemingly close history with former boss James Comey, have raised a number of questions from these agents over the propriety of Campbell's new job.

The Newseum is a monument of absurd self-praise.  [The Newseum] lost more than $8 million last year and won't last much longer.  Its proprietors are looking for a way to sell off the building and move its contents to environs more suited to their importance — say, a fruit stand out in Gaithersburg.  The seven-story Temple of the Hacks was a monument to folly from the day it opened in 2008.  In nine years, it swallowed up $272 million from the nonprofit Freedom Forum, which was established by the late USA Today proprietor Al Neuharth and receives millions from outfits such as News Corp., the Ochs-Sulzberger family that owns the New York Times, ABC owner Disney, and NBC parent Comcast.  Note that euphemistic name:  Freedom Forum, not Journalism Forum.  Such is the brand value of journalism today that it has to pretend-identify with a concept people actually like.  Never mind that large media outfits such as most of those named above expend massive effort trying to reduce freedom, even freedom of expression, by beating a drum for hate-speech codes or, in the Citizens United case, taking the side of those who sought to ban films and books that might irritate powerful politicians such as Hillary Clinton.

When the Press becomes part of the cover-up.  Look, we've never had a Free and Independent Press.  They have always tilted toward the Left.  But regardless of that inherent bias, what is happening today is completely unprecedented.  Any pretense of objectivity has all but vanished.  And in their effort to protect Obama, Clinton and the Democrat Party, the Press has made the conscious decision to be part of a cover-up.  We sure have come a long way since Watergate, haven't we?

The Most Dangerous Aspect of Obamagate.  [Scroll down]  In our era, the Fourth Estate can no longer perform the one function that justifies its existence — to defend liberty by exposing the lies of its enemies.  Instead, the media embrace the anti-democratic ideology of the left, parrot its pernicious propaganda, and have themselves become a clear and present danger to the republic.

A Phrase to Retire in 2018: 'Mainstream Media'.  Most major legacy American media, particularly newspapers and cable television news networks, are Pravda-esque publicists and cover-uppers for the Democratic Party.  As evidenced by how red the 2016 election map was, Democrat policies and politics certainly are not mainstream.

The Media Octopus and How to Fight It.  The unholy alliance between the Compromised Media and the Democratic Party is today inarguable.  The two have become largely indistinguishable in both ideology and, often, in personnel, with mainstream-media reporters moving into any given Democrat administration, then returning to the media when the Republicans win.  The late Andrew Breitbart famously referred to this syndicate as the "Democrat-Media Complex" — a play on president Eisenhower's warning, in his farewell address, about the "military-industrial complex" — and noted that this one is far more dangerous to our political health.

The Problem Isn't Just Corruption at the FBI and Main Justice, It's Also The Media.  Over the past year we have learned that a significant number of people within the DOJ and FBI have been the source of leaks to the media.  Almost all of those leaks built on lies.  Reports have confirmed that FBI Director James Comey, his chief legal counsel, James Baker as well as his chief-of-staff James Rybicki have all been leaking to media outlets.  In addition, FBI Agent Peter Strzok and DOJ/FBI Attorney Lisa Page have been identified as leaking stories to Politico, the Washington Post and New York Times.  Adding to that mix, Asst. AG Sally Yates, Asst. AG John Carlin and a host of Main Justice officials were also participating in leaks; all leaks based on self-interest.

Replacing the Mainstream Media.  We complain about how biased the so-called mainstream media is but what do we do about it? [...] Since the Fourth Estate is so powerful, the best way to combat it is from multiple angles.  First of all, stop sharing articles on social media from left-leaning publications.  More than two-thirds of American adults get news from social media.  Forty-five percent get news from Facebook.  Eleven percent get news from Twitter.  If you find a news article you want to share, look and see if Fox News, Townhall, or another site on the right has also written on the topic. [...] Stop watching left-leaning network and cable news. Cable news is rapidly losing subscribers as people switch to streaming.

Trust in news media takes a hit during Trump presidency.  When truck driver Chris Gromek wants to know what's really going on in Washington, he scans the internet and satellite radio.  He no longer flips TV channels because networks such as Fox News and MSNBC deliver conflicting accounts tainted by politics, he says.

Things journalists believe that are untrue.  [Scroll down]  The nation is more prosperous than ever, and our wars are winding down — even as our newspapers dwindle in number and influence.  By the way, rare is the news section of the newspaper that contains any news account that does not involve the government.  Indeed, if you check closely, the government is the source of most news in the newspaper.  The symbiotic nature of the press and the government is one reason why most Americans no longer trust the news media. [...] But journalists like to think theirs is a noble profession, when in fact it is a simple trade.  They fancy themselves as do-gooders, sent to Earth to right all wrongs.  Persistent in all this is the wrong-headed belief that news organizations must educate the public.  No.  They must inform.  That is a humbler but more valuable service to society.

Liberal study claims U.S. has the most partisan press.  A new Pew Research Center survey of 38 countries found the United States has the most biased media in the Western world, according to readers and viewers.  While the American press often blows off any complaints about its liberal bias as conservatives-cannot-take-bad news, the truth is they can.  There were no riots in the streets when Obama was inaugurated.

Mika Brzezinski's Friends Embarrassed to be Americans in Paris.  Bad news, everyone.  We have failed Mika Brzezinski's wealthy liberal friends.  When they jet off to places like Paris, they are embarrassed to be Americans.  Now we've done it.  In the months since the election, Morning Joe on MSNBC has become a one stop shop for Trump Derangement Syndrome.  In this instance, Mika Brzezinski really went out of her way to show how in touch she is with average Americans.

DC Press Corps Knew for a Full Year Hillary Clinton was Behind [the] Russia Dossier [and] Hid It From the Public.  The DC press corps and prominent Washington journalists knew Hillary Clinton paid for the dossier as early as September of 2016 yet they suppressed the information and acted as if the salacious document was legit intel.  The liberal mainstream media withheld this from the American public for a year!  This is why Americans loathe the mainstream media.  They are nothing more than a mouthpiece for the Democrats and Deep State hacks.

Trump's Unnoticed Great First-Year Accomplishment.  Singlehandedly, [President] Trump has opened the door for Americans to freely speak truth again.  Before Trump entered the political arena, fake news media controlled public speech with an iron fist.  Citizens and politicians knew they had better toe the politically correct line or suffer severe consequences.  When fake news media demanded that we ignore biology and pretend Bruce Jenner is a woman, Americans played along with Bruce's mental disorder for fear of public humiliation and economic crucifixion by fake news media. [...] Fake news media have suppressed our First Amendment right of free speech for years.  Anyone who dares speak truth that contradicts a fake news media lie is severely punished — branded stupid, crazy, or guilty of hate speech.

Pew: Trump media three times more negative than for Obama, just 5 percent positive.  The media's coverage of President Trump has been overwhelmingly negative, more than three times more critical than the initial coverage of former President Barack Obama and twice that of former Presidents George W. Bush and Bill Clinton.  The Pew Research Center said that the early coverage of Trump was 62 percent negative.  By comparison, Obama's coverage was just 20 percent negative.

2017 — the year the media lost America.  [Scroll down]  That's how we feel about it here in the United States.  That's how we feel about the news media.  We don't trust them.  We don't believe them.  It's been so for decades.  But this year was the worst, and all because, being mostly Liberal and still hankering for Obama and whoring for Hillary, they are out to Get Trump.  They will find any pretext to do him harm.  Over at ABC, Brian Ross rushed to judgment when he reported that Michael Flynn was prepared to testify that Trump "as a candidate" asked him to contact the Russians.  That was a mistake.  ABC took it back.  Ross was suspended.  Other news outlets made the same mistake on that and upon other Russia-related scandals that never happened.  Russia was the big story of 2017, and always the wrong story.  The media tried every which way to get Trump on collusion and they kept coming up empty.  From one false lead to another, they wasted our time.  They wasted our trust.

Tom Brokaw:  Fox News is 'On a Jihad' to Protect Trump.  Legendary anchorman Tom Brokaw took a hard swing against Fox News this morning, during an appearance on a Morning Joe panel led by Mika Brzezinski.  Brokaw said President Donald Trump watches Fox News because it "reinforces what he believes," citing how they've handled the Russia probe as an example.  "Fox News, after Shepard Smith, in the late afternoon, is on a jihad right now on the whole question about whether there is a fairness about this or not," he said.  "The whole assault is on the institutions."  "Newt Gingrich looking in the camera and saying the FBI is a corrupt organization, right?  Three months earlier he had said Bob Mueller is one of the great, distinguished public servants we have."  Note Brokaw's charged language here, going as far as to use the word "jihad."  He wasn't finished.

The Media Have Not Learned the Most Important Lesson of 2016: The Constitution Matters.  The past year has been a very good one for journalism — not because of the quality of the writing, reporting, or analysis, but simply because of the sheer intensity of news.  Whatever one thinks Donald Trump is the best or the worst president, he certainly is the most interesting and entertaining.  But amidst the rush of events, the mainstream media have missed the biggest story of 2017, which is also partly the story of why 2016 happened the way it did.  That story is the restoration of the U.S. Constitution.

How Much Does the 'New York Times' Hate Donald Trump?  The Times, the Washington Post and other media enterprises have now devolved into fully partisan propaganda outlets.  They're out, proud and unafraid — and they're coming after everyone who disagrees with them by smearing their opponents as "racist."

CNN Declares War on Fox News.  CNN sniping at Fox News is nothing new.  The enmity between the two cable news giants goes back years.  Recently, with opposition to President Trump turning white hot and talk of impeachment or obstruction of justice in the air, CNN has been aiming more of its fire at Fox News, the only mainstream media source that reports fairly about the president.

There Is Nothing More Despicable Than a Democrat.  The Democrats are relentless, they come at you from all angles, they never stop, and they have absolutely no rules.  For them, at least, anything goes — lie, cheat, steal, and defame, it doesn't matter as long as they win.  Yet in the world the Democrats and the media have created, the Republicans have plenty of rules, and if they don't abide by each one, the media tries to make it a scandal.  It doesn't help that there are a lot of Republicans and conservatives who are just too pure to get down and dirty.  Many Republicans would rather lose with dignity than win, but people who voted for Trump want to win.  America wants to win.  Republicans, all Republicans need to learn how to fight like the Democrats, or the nation is lost.

Washington Post Against Enforcing Logan Act Before It Was For It.  The Washington Post, whose pages include numerous articles supporting the idea that President Donald Trump or his advisors violated the Logan Act before his inauguration, once dismissed the law in an editorial as an irrelevant atavism when used to criticize the acts of prominent Democratic officeholders. [...] The government has never successfully prosecuted anyone for violating this law.

Incorrigibly biased, but still on the staff:
ABC News President:  Brian Ross Will No Longer Cover Stories Related To Trump.  It's one thing to suspend a reporter for making an incredibly damaging error of basic fact on air.  But to remove him from covering a particular subject altogether?  That's the sort of thing you might do if you'd concluded he's incapable of covering that topic fairly.  If it's an innocent mistake borne of carelessness, there's no need to declare certain topics off-limits.  You do that only when you think the reporter's view of that topic will necessarily compromise his judgment.

The Mainstream Media Doesn't Deserve Our Respect or Our Trust.  The mainstream liberal media is primarily composed of stumblebum leftist jerks who want all the glory and respect due a caste of objective, moral truth-seekers, yet who don't want to do the hard work of actually being objective or moral or seeking the truth. [...] Remember, to our intrepid media, news is only news if it helps the liberal narrative.  If it doesn't, it's not news.  It's not anything.  It's un-news.  Like the stock market boom.  Like wiping out the ISIS caliphate.  Like Mueller's manifest conflicts of interest.  Un-news.  Remember, half the job of the mainstream media is generating metaphorical tumbleweeds.

The Democrat Media Complex.  The objective of the press today is not merely to inform, but to instruct the millions of impressionable American minds on what to believe, who to believe, and how to believe.  The content is so rigidly controlled today that in a way the fourth estate has now become nothing more than an institution of the government restricted to publishing and advancing White House directives and Democrat policy agendas.

Matt Lauer and the credibility crisis at NBC News.  Last night [11/30/2017] on Ticker Carlson's Fox News show, Fox Business anchor Melissa Francis (a former child star very familiar with show business), spoke of her own experiences while working at CNBC and made it clear that there was ample knowledge in the Peacock Empire of what was going on. [...] Francis also makes the point, similar to that made earlier by Jonah Goldberg, that when Fox News employees were being fired over sexual harassment claims, it was taken by other media outlets — including NBC — as a problem with the Fox culture, but when the problem popped up in the liberal media, it was a societal issue.

ABC News Producer Married To Susan Rice.  After ABC's fake news report on Michael Flynn yesterday, they need to be looked at more closely.  Turns out the ABC News "producer" is none other than Ian Cameron, who happens to be married to Obama's favorite liar Susan Rice!  I'm sure the fake news Flynn story had nothing to do with Cameron being married to an Obama regime official or anything.  It was just pure coincidence right?  But there are more ties between ABC and the Obama regime besides Cameron and Rice.

The Mainstream Media's Accused — The Rap Sheet, 19 So Far.  To the surprise of absolutely no one, the very same mainstream media that attempted to disqualify then-presidential candidate Mitt Romney in 2012 over the phrase "binders full of women," the very same media that grinded Republican senate candidate Todd Akin into dust over something he said, appears to be, itself, a depraved institution populated by powerful abusers and their enablers.  Over the past two months a number of powerful men have been fired or placed on suspension over allegations of sexual misconduct, horrific behavior that ranges from masturbating in front of female subordinates to pay-for-play.  And time and time again we hear the words Everybody Knew!  You read that correctly, according to those within this wicked institution, everyone knew ... and did nothing.  There is no question there is a cancer of abuse and enabling within our elite media, an institution that, through its unceasing fake news and hypocrisy on matters such as these, has deservedly lost all public trust and moral authority.

Not All Stings Work:  On the War James O'Keefe Is Winning.  Earlier this week, the Washington Post did a spectacularly self-congratulatory end-zone dance for no greater accomplishment than having passed a test.  Its reporters sniffed out a Project Veritas undercover who was testing the Post's eagerness to find still one more alleged victim to kill Roy Moore's candidacy in Alabama.  Where Project Veritas failed in this instance was, to paraphrase [Charles] Campisi, to make the situation seem so real that the subject did not know he was being tested.  Project Veritas has failed before.  It is inevitable in this line of work.  What is remarkable is how often these young guerrilla journalists have succeeded.

Washington Post reporter caught plotting liberal agenda with billionaire George Soros.  Allegedly unbiased Washington Post reporter Janell Ross spoke at a top-secret meeting of liberal movers and shakers last week, where Democratic donors including billionaire George Soros outlined the future of their progressive agenda.  A Post spokesperson told the Washington Free Beacon that Ross took part of the California event "without notifying her superiors that she would be attending."  The Democracy Alliance, which hosted the event, bills itself as "the largest network of donors dedicated to building the progressive movement in the United States" on the group's official website.

Progressives have a new nightmare.  Following the example of Jeff Bezos's bargain-basement purchase of the Washington Post, a couple of major media properties may fall into conservative hands and be repurposed as conservative outlets. [...] The MSM have been committing suicide by driving away half the public and being so obviously biased that even the remaining audience loses trust.  That opens the door to pick up properties on the cheap.  They are already politicized, so reversing the poles is not a huge obstacle.  There are plenty of unemployed journalists out there, so staffing up shouldn't be a problem.  Moreover, the conservative blogosphere has operated as a sort of farm team system for newly conservative magazines, newspapers, and websites to draw talent from.

Yes, Fusion GPS paid off journalists.  Digging through court documents, the Washington Examiner has found an admission from Fusion GPS that it did indeed pay journalists who covered the Trump-Russia collusion "narrative" that Fusion GPS was "researching" and spreading for the Democratic National Committee and the Hillary Clinton campaign.

Who planted the Roy Moore story on Washington Post reporters?  I have no idea whether the stories about Roy Moore are true or not, but neither do the Washington Post reporters and all the other reporters who just repeat the unverified story with no investigation.  Forty-year-old allegations are especially hard to disprove.  I find it odd that this story came up after the primary and after decades of service by Roy Moore.  Why did the Washington Post reporters wait until after no one else could be put on the ballot to run a 40-year-old story?  Isn't it also strange that a supposed sexual predator would have all of a sudden quit going after young girls 40 years ago?

Court Documents — Fusion GPS Paid Individual Journalists and Five Media Companies.  What a tangled web is weaved.  Hillary Clinton paid her lawyers at Perkins Coie for opposition research on candidate Donald Trump.  In turn Perkins Coie paid Fusion GPS to gather information.  Fusion GPS paid Christopher Steele to write the "Russian Dossier".  The FBI also paid Christopher Steele.  Additionally, prior evidence surfaced suggesting the FBI used the dossier to get FISA warrants against the Trump campaign.  And NOW we discover that Fusion GPS paid journalists and five media companies to participate.

Fusion GPS paid journalists, court papers confirm.  Newly filed court documents confirm that Fusion GPS, the company mostly responsible for the controversial "Trump dossier" on presidential candidate Donald Trump, made payments to three journalists between June 2016 until February 2017.  The revelation could be a breakthrough for House Republicans, who are exploring whether Fusion GPS used the dossier, which was later criticized for having inaccurate information on Trump, to feed anti-Trump stories to the press during and after the presidential campaign.  The three journalists who were paid by Fusion GPS are known to have reported on "Russia issues relevant to [the committee's] investigation," the House Intelligence Committee said in a court filing.  But the recipients' names, the amounts, and purposes of those payments were either redacted from the documents that Fusion GPS filed to the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia or were not disclosed.

Unsealed: Fusion GPS Bank Records Show Russia-Related Payments.  A federal court unsealed documents in a lawsuit over Fusion GPS's bank records on Tuesday, revealing new details of payments made last year to the opposition research firm that commissioned the infamous Trump dossier.  The documents also shed new light on requests made by the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence about payments that Fusion GPS made to journalists.  The records were unsealed in response to a ruling made last week by Richard Leon, a federal judge in the district court in Washington, D.C.  The bank documents list 112 transactions involving Fusion GPS.

'Mystery Booms' Leave Many Frightened and Unnerved.  This scenario is playing out across the United States, even around the world, at a regular if not increasing rate.  The first spate of unexplained Alabama noises seems to have begun in 2011.  By 2012, the science website EarthSky.org featured the headline "Mysterious, unexplained 'booms' in Alabama, Georgia, Wisconsin."  These events, dubbed "mystery booms," are being reported by local news outlets via TV, radio, and internet.  On the surface, they might sound like the stuff of conspiracy theories, but that's far from the truth.  These are real events reported by real journalists who consult the USGS, local military bases, and scholarly astronomers before reporting back to their stupefied public.

Claim: Washington Post Offered $1000 to Women to Accuse Roy Moore.  I don't know if this claim is true or not, but if it is, then I think it speaks for itself.  Doug Lewis is claiming that the Washington Post offered the women in Alabama a thousand dollars to come and and claims Roy Moore did what he allegedly dead back in 1979.

Endless Accusations Cloud the Truth.  [Scroll down]  I blame feminists and the media for this cloud of confusion, mostly because I hate feminists and the media, but also because they do bear some of the blame.  For instance, the New York Times, a former newspaper, now has a tip line where you can complain about something sexual someone famous did to you back in the day. How is that not going to lead to abuse? Liars will flock to it.  And if someone calls up and complains about Barack Obama, and someone else calls up and complains about Rush Limbaugh — which one do you think the Times will follow up on?

Poll Finds Poor Trust Numbers for ABC, CBS, NBC, NY Times, LA Times, WashPost.  Paul Bedard at the Washington Examiner reports a new poll shows more voters than not find the Big Three network newscasts and the nation's three largest liberal newspapers "untrustworthy."  The latest Zogby poll asked:  "Compared to four years ago, how trustworthy do you think the mainstream media is?  When we say mainstream media, we mean network newscasts — NBC, CBS, and ABC, along with large newspapers such as the New York Times, L.A. Times, and Washington Post?"  The results?  Forty-eight percent believe these outlets are untrustworthy while 45 percent said they did trust them.  The rest were unsure.

How Many Democratic Scandals Does It Take For The Media To Give Them Proper Coverage?  This week, CNN launched a new ad campaign called "Facts Firsts."  In its ad, it featured an apple and a narrator explained how some may try calling it a banana, but it's still an apple.  There was both praise and mockery of the new campaign.  Nonetheless, CNN clearly sees itself as the one outlet in all of news media where facts come first.  So how much time did CNN spend on a subject like the Uranium One deal that's now being scrutinized?  Within seven days since the story broke, it dedicated less than four minutes (according to conservative media watchdog MRC.)  That amount of coverage was clearly dwarfed by the coverage they gave to President Trump's feud with Rep. Frederica Wilson and Gold Star widow Myeshia Johnson or his spat with outgoing senators Bob Corker and Jeff Flake.

The lesson the media refuses to learn.  Much of the press — not all — spent the election working to elect Hillary.  Post-election, these same phonies continue their doomed quest to usurp him.  All they need is one more false rumor — one more joke taken literally — one more quote taken out of context — and then he will fall.  And the media plays up the protests, but the resistance is futile.  Violent, sure.  But impotent.  Just as limp as the press.  All the press has is its credibility — and it shredded that.  A Politico poll found only 37% of Americans believe the press does not fabricate stories that make Trump look bad.

Beware the Shiny "Booms" — Uranium One Scandal to Nowhere?  There's something unfortunately familiar in the pattern of explosive controversies and headlines-that-go-nowhere[.]  The DC UniParty always defends itself.  The latest scandal du jour seems to surround the criminal enterprise known as "Uranium One".  There is indeed a scandal within the entire construct of a payoff to the Clinton's via a corporation connected to Russians and bribes, kick-backs, and ultimately a payoff; and there are some newly outlined details from within the FBI investigating the companies and entities associated with the deal.  However, all of these "BOOM" headlines are not new.

Trump's a Big Mouth; Journalists are Villains.  [Scroll down]  Has the press at long last no decency?  The short answer:  No decency at all.  Trump is a big mouth but the press is despicable.  Democrat operatives masquerading as journalists, they are the prime engine of division in this country.  Skewing every story in one direction, they keep us from discussing issues in a reasonable way so as to reach compromise.  And squealing like scorched cats at every Trump remark, they manufacture a sense of crisis that has nothing to do with the true state of America.  They are villains.  Within the parameters of the First Amendment, the entire industry needs to be reformed.

Sharyl Attkisson Pulls Back the Curtain.  Sharyl Attkisson's The Smear gives insight to how news is made today.  It goes a long way in convincing readers that they should believe only a small portion of what is released by the government and reported by the press.

The Beginning Of The End Of Progressive Domination?  [Scroll down]  As for the media, their long-time habit of substituting political activism for journalism, unleashed during the Obama years, has been freed from its last restraints while covering Trump.  The contrast between the "slobbering love affair," as Bernie Goldberg described the media's coverage of Obama, and the obsessive Javert-like hounding of Trump has stripped the last veil of objectivity from the media.  They've been exposed as flacks no longer seeking the truth, but manufacturing partisan narratives.  The long cover-up of the Weinstein scandal is further confirmation of the media's amoral principles and selective outrage.  With numerous alternatives to the activism of the mainstream media now available, the legacy media that once dominated the reporting of news and political commentary are now shrinking in influence and lashing out in fury at their diminished prestige and profits.

Houston Proves Everything the MSM Says About Our 'Divided' Country Is a Lie.  Basically, the media fabricates the following: that old white men (i.e.  Trump supporters) are desperate to hold on to their privilege at the expense brown, black, gay, female, and young Americans.  And for this reason, every brown, black, gay, female, and young American must vote Democrat.  Let's begin with the fact that nearly half of those, 48%!, who voted for Trump are NOT men.  Let's end with the fact that 43% of those who voted for Trump are NOT white.  This means that there are, literally, tens of millions of non-whites and women who support this president.  If you look at the establishment media, though, this inconvenient fact is intentionally memory-holed, all in service to a propaganda campaign meant to hustle Americans into believing we hate one another.

AP Stylebook on transgender coverage:  Don't say trans person was 'born a girl or boy'.  In an #APStyleChat Twitter session Tuesday afternoon [10/10/2017], The Associated Press's official Stylebook account counseled journalists to not describe a transgender individual as having been "born" a certain sex.  "Call people transgender only if relevant; give the name they use publicly; avoid references to being born a boy or girl," wrote @APStylebook during the interactive Twitter session.  The wire agency then urged writers to "[a]void transgendered or transsexual; don't call someone a transgender; trans is OK on second reference and in headlines."  In a subsequent tweet, the AP prescribed the terminology to be used to refer to an individual's medical procedures for transitioning:  "For medical procedures often but not always used for a transition, say sex reassignment or gender confirmation."

AP Lingo Police:  Use 'Gender Confirmation' Surgery for Sex Change, Avoid 'Born a Boy or Girl'.  Our longtime colleague Ken Shepherd at the Washington Times reported the AP Stylebook team are re-jiggering their politically correct terminology again on the transgender issues.  They call themselves "the journalist's bible."  They took to their @APStylebook Twitter page on Tuesday to offer an update.  First, "Use transgender for people whose gender identity doesn't match the sex or gender they were identified as having at birth."  Then, let people forget someone switched genders if possible.

The Editor says...
Note to the Associated Press:  Alas, most reporters are probably much more familiar with the AP Style Book than with the actual Bible.  But to compare your style book with The Bible is blasphemy.  You would never dare to call it "the journalist's koran" — with a lower-case "k."  To fail to capitalize Bible is disrespectful to the Bible and to the English language.  To normalize deviant trans-sexual and homosexual behavior is an affront to civilization.

Pop Goes the Liberal Media Bubble.  The other day, for example, Bob Schieffer observed on Face the Nation that one in five journalists live in New York, D.C., or Los Angeles.  The news is manufactured by residents of the liberal bubble, where conservatives are few and far between (and certainly do not sound like Sarah Palin), jobs are plenty, education is high, and the benefits of globalization manifest in cheap prices, exotic restaurants, and a reserve labor force of cleaners, contractors, and home care specialists.  Can't say I was shocked when Schieffer's finding passed barely noticed, the consciences of the press untroubled by the fact that their experiences and backgrounds are so unlike the majority of the public whose interest they presume to uphold.

Is Michelle's 'true voice' Telling Her to Run for President?  When president Trump "colorfully" chastised a few NFL players for "taking a knee" during the national anthem, the press pounced on him as a racist intent on denying caring people the right to their own opinions.  But when Michelle Obama insulted every woman who voted Republican in the last election as being pawns incapable of recognizing their own best interests, the press ate it up.  It has been that way since the surprising results of the last election.  The most insulting things shouted out by those on the Left are given a free pass.

Americans worry more about the news media than they do about terrorism:  Gallup poll.  "Americans continue to cite dissatisfaction with government above all others as the United States' top problem," reports Gallup polling analyst Megan Brenan, citing a new survey from the pollster that places the faulty government in first place. [...] The news media did not fare so well in the survey.  On the top 10 list of problems, the media was ranked in seventh place — tied with concerns about crime and violence, and environmental or pollution issues.

The Left Warms Up To North Korean Dictator Kim Jong Un.  North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un is growing in popularity on America's political left-wing as the despot engages in a war of words with President Trump.  Progressives have shown an increasing willingness to embrace the brutal dictator as a means of attacking Trump, and some in the media have given the brutal dictator friendly, celebrity-like coverage.  Left-wing activists, meanwhile, are eagerly spreading pro-North Korea propaganda and making excuses for the dictator's murderous activities.

The media take North Korea's side.  Many members of the national media hate President Trump so much that they'll even defend North Korea if it keeps them consistent in their opposition to everything he does.  After Trump said at the United Nations General Assembly this week that the U.S. would crush the little Asian country should Kim Jong Un attack the U.S. or our allies, reporters and commentators reacted as if he had just threatened Switzerland on a whimsy.  Trump had simply said that the U.S. "has great strength and patience, but if it is forced to defend itself or its allies, we will have no choice but to totally destroy North Korea," a relatively measured response to years of hostilities from Kim's regime.  "There were gasps in the hall:  A forum for peace was used to threaten to annihilate a nation of 25 million people," New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof wrote Thursday [9/21/2017], surely still emotionally wrecked by the experience.

Levin: Our Media Is Really No Different from Media in Any Dictatorship or Communist Regime.  On his nationally syndicated radio talk show Tuesday, host Mark Levin defended comments he made concerning the Obama administration's surveillance of then presidential candidate Donald Trump, saying, "[O]ur media, for the most part, it's really no different from the media in any dictatorship or any communist regime."  "You see, ladies and gentlemen, our media, for the most part, it's really no different from the media in any dictatorship or any communist regime," stated Mark Levin.  "It's groupthink.  It's a gang attack.  It's a propaganda enterprise."

WashPost Objects to Spicer Saying Media's 'Largely a Liberal Group' Going Soft on Dems.  Former Trump press secretary Sean Spicer granted an interview to Washington Post media blogger Erik Wemple, which naturally focused on Wemple's loathing of Team Trump's media-bashing — which usually ignores Team Media's relentless Trump-bashing.  Wemple began with how Spicer's apparently too radioactive for a cable-news pundit gig, as Obama's spokesmen Jay Carney and Josh Earnest (not to mention "bimbo-erupting" Clinton aide George Stephanopoulos) did immediately:  "Spicer spent months berating White House correspondents, sticking up for a president who'd called certain media outlets 'the enemy of the American people' and spreading misinformation with very little contrition.  Any major network that hired Spicer as a contributor may well have faced a revolt among its White House correspondents, as well as other journalists outraged by the press secretary's conduct."

After Self-Reflection, Journalists Discover They've Been Too Critical Of... Democrats.  As any journalism professor could tell you, the purpose of reporting is to answer basic questions, like Who?  What?  When?  Where?  Why?  And does this story help bolster the chances of the Democratic Party's candidate or not?  So sayeth self-styled journalism ethicist Jay Rosen, and other theorists of the trade like Jeff Jarvis.  There was too much reporting going on, they argue.  Democracy dies in excessive transparency, apparently.  Who is at "fault" for the election of Donald Trump, they ask, as if Clinton had been predestined to wear her crown.  And did journalists do enough to propel history in the proper direction?

James O'Keefe Announces New Investigation:  MSM Members Will 'Lose Their Jobs'.  Filmmaker James O'Keefe said on Monday that Project Veritas will be releasing the results of one of the largest investigations the organization has ever conducted.  The Project, said O'Keefe, will lead to people being fired.  "In the coming weeks, you're going see one of the biggest investigations this organization has ever done," O'Keefe said.  "It's a continuation of American Pravda series.  It's aimed at the media.  We're going after their holy grail."

DACA media coverage is a nightmare of bias.  Journalism isn't dead, but the liberal news media are trying hard to murder it in its sleep like Freddy Krueger would.  That was evident in the news coverage of President Trump's decision this week to phase out a program known as DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals).  President Obama forced DACA on us in 2012 to allow illegal immigrant children known as Dreamers to gain temporary legal status to stay in the U.S. President Trump said the executive order issued by President Obama was unconstitutional and that it's the job of Congress to change immigration laws.  This was a dream scenario for the Trump haters who dominate the media.  There was no difference in tone from the far-left talking heads and the so-called journalists.

Howling about Fox as all-powerful, the left ignores the rest of the media's leftist slant.  Vox.com, the website associated with JournoList creator Ezra Klein, has an article out suggesting that Fox News is omnipotent, "more powerful than we ever imagined," powerful enough to swing elections. [...] Maybe so, but there's a problem further up in the premise.  Namely, that without Fox, the news would exist in a bias-free, utterly neutral environment and there's no such thing as a leftist slant coming from other broadcast news sources in contrast to Fox.  That slant could just as easily affect votes and swing elections just as Fox's conservative slant may contribute to conservative votes.  The study cites other cable news services such as CNN and MSNBC, but the alphabets should not be given short shift — ABC, NBC and CBS are also in the same game as Fox News.

Fox News Bankrolls Major LGBTQ Convention.  [Scroll down]  This effort appears to be aimed partly at recruiting more members of the LGBTQ sexual minority into the organization, as if they were seen as underrepresented in the news or broadcasting industries.  Gallup polling shows that Americans vastly overestimate the percentage of the population that is lesbian or gay, with a mean estimate of 23%, as compared to the 3.8% of the adult population who identified themselves as lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender in Gallup Daily tracking in the first four months of this year.  Only 9% of the public holds the accurate view that this minority is 5% or less of the population, meaning that 91% of the public substantially overestimates their numbers.  In addition to organizing an annual convention with at least 350 attendees, the NLGJA, founded in 1990, serves as a full-fledged LGBTQ lobbying organization with headquarters in Washington, D.C.

Why the Media are in a Never-Ending Hunt for Right-Wing Violence.  The reason normal people are suspicious of the media's narrative on Charlottesville is that we've heard this exact same story many, many times before. [...] No matter the year or the circumstances, the media and their eunuch politicians are quick to blame any surprising violence on the Right-Wing Nazis of their imaginations — from Lee Harvey Oswald (communist) to Jared Lee Loughner and James Holmes (psychopaths) to the two stabbing murders on a Portland train earlier this year committed by a Bernie Sanders supporter, whom the media — to this day — insist, all evidence to the contrary, was a Trump supporter.  When, a few months after the first murders by a Sanders supporter, a second Sanders supporter opened fire on a congressional Republican baseball practice, putting GOP Rep. Steve Scalise in critical condition, that political attack was simply discarded.

Media Normalizes Political Violence by Mainstreaming Antifa.  Charlottesville proved once more that the media is unworthy of the trust the people want to place in it.  Keen to pounce reflexively and at any opportunity on a president they abhor, the mainstream press provide cultural cover for Antifa's political violence.  In a textbook example of psychological projection, they ascribed to the president actions and motivations which proved to be their own: making excuses for political violence.

GOP Guest Hits MSNBC Host With Stat of Journalists Donating 96% to Clinton.  On Friday's [7/14/2017] MSNBC Live, host Craig Melvin denied that the dominant news media have a liberal bias after Republican Congressman Dave Brat started hitting him with reports that over 96 percent of journalists who made political donations chose Hillary Clinton over Donald Trump.

The Southern Poverty Law Center Has Become a Dangerous Joke.  The Southern Poverty Law Center, the "civil rights watchdog group" that ABC and NBC so prominently cite, has become a dangerous joke.  It's a joke because the very idea that Christians are members of a "hate group" merely because they advocate for orthodox Christian principles and the liberty to live those principles is so intellectually and ideologically bankrupt that it's barely worth addressing.

The 'Mainstream Media' no longer is really mainstream.  The election of Donald Trump to the presidency appears to have dealt the final blow to the credibility of the media outlets that formerly dominated the nation's political conversation.  The label "mainstream media" can no longer be applied to them, thanks to startling and compelling new evidence.

Media seeks fear, not trust.  Writing in Best of the Web, James Freeman of the Wall Street Journal posed the question:  "Have Consumers Decided Most News Is Fake News?"  I agree with Ian Betteridge, a British technology journalist, who said, "Any headline that ends in a question mark can be answered by the word no."  However, I suggest that getting us to think all news is Fake News is now the goal of CNN and most other news organizations.

As Its Influence Wanes, Increasingly Militant MSM Promotes Violence and Censorship.  Yes, the MSM has admitted they got 2016 exactly wrong and that they are out-of-touch with the average American.  What truly terrifies the media about 2016, though, is something that has remained largely unspoken.  It is what Trump's victory said so clearly about the MSM's inability to influence public opinion and, by extension, the outcome of elections.  What has also remained unspoken is the media's desperate and dangerous reaction to this waning influence.

CNN Posts Map of Confederate Monuments in U.S. — A Hit List.  Calls for the removal of Confederate monuments continue to grow, with Democrats around the country demanding that they be taken down.  But CNN has officially taken it one step further:  not only did they call for Confederate monuments be taken down, they published a map that some are calling a "hit list".

Is The U.S. Media Fair, Truthful And Not Controlled?  It's not easy trying to separate the mountains of geopolitical and corporate BS spin, especially when it comes to issues affecting health, weather geoengineering, food genetic modification, vaccines, and cancer research.

Our Post-Charlottesville Narrative Is A National Embarrassment.  Charlottesville has shown just how profoundly broken and destructively useless our media industry and political establishment really are.  It is a genuine national embarrassment. [...] The politicians, journalists, and media outlets above are betting on you responding to the Charlottesville crisis with anger, irrationality, and unthinking acceptance of the narrative.  Do not fall into this trap.

How the Mainstream Media Operate.  To understand America's crises today, one must first understand what has happened to two institutions:  the university and the news media.  They do not regard their mission as educating and informing but indoctrinating. [...] When it comes to straight news stories — say, an earthquake in Central America — the news media often do their job responsibly.  But when a story has a left-wing interest, the media abandon straight news reporting and take on the role of advocates.

Americans don't trust the media, and for good reason.  Firewalls that once strictly separated news from opinion have been replaced by hopelessly blurred lines.  Once-forbidden practices such as editorializing within straight news reports, and the inclusion of opinions as if fact, are not only tolerated; they're encouraged.  We've exempted ourselves from the normal rules that used to govern us, and so the most egregious kinds of reporting errors are becoming more common.  Formerly well-respected news organizations and experienced national journalists are making the sorts of mistakes that aren't tolerated in journalism schools.  When their mistakes are corrected at all, it's with little seeming regret.  And the corrections never garner a circulation as wide as the original salacious narrative.

CNN's Propagandizing and Incompetence Go Over the Top in Charlottesville.  NBC News — which has inflicted upon us the less than subtle propagandists Lyin' Brian Williams, Andrea Mitchell, and Tom Brokaw — is better known for left-wing spin than for veracity.  Yet it is a beacon of truth in comparison with the degenerating farce that is far-left CNN: [...]

How To Spot And Critique Censorship Tropes In The Media's Coverage Of Free Speech Controversies.  Fortunately, this ain't rocket science.  Americans can train themselves to detect and question the media's pro-censorship tropes.  I've collected some of the most pervasive and familiar ones.  This post is designed as a resource, and I'll add to it as people point out more examples and more tropes.  When you see the media using these tropes, ask yourself:  what normative message is the author advancing, and does it have any basis in law?

Between alt-right and 'antifa,' media still manages to be worse.  The only people dumber than the Neanderthals and Brass Knuckle Draggers are the insufferably tedious referees known as the Stupid Media who shape the country as a barking mad carnival, whipping up hysteria for every armed showdown.

After the Coup, What Then?  Our media preen and posture as the defenders of democracy, devoted to truth, who provide us round-the-clock protection from tyranny.  But half the nation already sees the media as a propaganda arm of a liberal establishment that the people have rejected time and again.

Fusion GPS - in bed with the mainstream media all along.  Fusion GPS, the political opposition research group at the center of the media's Trump-colluded-with-the-Russians "narrative" has been abnormally cozy with the mainstream media organs it's used in its disinformation and smear operations.  Now, they're protecting them.  Daily Caller reports that these very same press creatures who worked with Fusion GPS to spread the false stories about Trump, have gotten curiously silent about the firm's role in the widening web of scandal about the firm's actual role in colluding with the Russians.

Full of Schiff.  Democratic Rep. Adam Schiff has made himself a leading purveyor of the "collusion" hysteria with which we have been inundated since the election. [...] Every day it becomes clearer that the "collusion" hysteria is more a function of the Democrats' "collusion" with the mainstream media than anything else.

Tribune Columnist Slams National Anthem.  Exercising the freedoms of speech and press that so many have given their last measure of devotion for, Chicago Tribune contributor Diana Goetsch has penned an op-ed defending disgraced and unemployed former NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick and his infamous taking the knee during the national anthem.  Not stopping there, Goetsch goes on to slam the national anthem as a "pompous battle number" that wasn't played before sporting events until 1942 in the dark days of World War II.  One wonders if Goetsch has pondered the possibility that were if not for the sacrifice of veterans during World War II, she just might be plying her trade writing her tirades in Japanese or German.

The Zeroth Amendment.  By way of background, a general problem in political science with using polls to track ideological trends over the years is that you want to keep asking the same questions to see how voters' responses evolve.  But that means that pollsters seldom ask about new beliefs that would have seemed bizarre even in the recent past.  In turn, pundits, lacking polling data to write about, don't even mention historic developments, such as the rise of mainstream antiwhite American hate discourse over the past half decade.  For most mainstream journalists to notice their own increasingly vicious racist attitudes would be like a fish noticing it is wet.

What's the Difference?  CNN to Republican: 'I'm Not the Left.  I'm a Journalist'.  Providing some unintentional comedy, CNN anchor Poppy Harlow on Thursday lectured a conservative Congressman, telling him, "I'm not the left.  I'm a journalist."  Collectively, many Americans must have thought:  "What's the difference?"  The haughty defense came after Harlow demanded of Representative Jim Jordan:  "Are you comfortable with that huge reduction in Medicaid funding?"  Of course, the GOP health care bill does NOT cut Medicaid.  Jordan pointed this out:  "Remember, it is not a cut in Medicaid.  It is just a reduction in the rate of growth.  So it's still going to grow a lot over the next ten years."

How CNN took on President Trump and lost.  [Scroll down]  [Jeff] Zucker was not a journalism guy, but he understood numbers.  He lived and died by them.  His philosophy at CNN was to stay on anything that its viewers were watching whether it was a missing Malaysian plane or Trump.  CNN's old strategy of "flooding the zone" with meaningless non-coverage of a breaking event was merged with Zucker's own preference for reality television to create a constant coverage circus.  Hiring a ton of reporters from across the spectrum, from a New York Times Pulitzer Prize winner to the BuzzFeed trolls, would flood the zone with Trump scandals.  CNN would have the most Trump scandals and the most viewers.  It was a great strategy for manufacturing a whole bunch of fake news scandals.  And things that don't even qualify as fake news.  Like wondering whether Trump is afraid of stairs.

CNN's Stelter Blames 'Media Illiterate' Americans for Fake News Phenom.  CNN's Brian Stelter recently ranted about the phenomenon of "fake news" and explained to the nation exactly who's to blame for it:  media-illiterate Americans.  [Video clip] [...] Stelter's problem is that he can't tell the difference between the leftist propaganda versus actual truth.

Had Hillary Clinton Won the Election....  What might America look like today if Hillary had been elected?  Had she won we would not be hearing a single word about Russia.  Not a whisper.  It was not on the left's radar at all.  Ms. Clinton had embarrassed herself with that inane Office Depot reset button while she was Secretary of State.  Obama had told Medvedev to tell "Vlad" he would have more flexibility after the election, presumably re: nuclear disarmament.  The left cared nothing about that bit of collusion.

Why does the media still portray James Comey as a hero?  From the outset, reporters and Democrats (who had been calling for Comey's firing or questioning his judgment) declared him to be the man who fearlessly stood up to a president demanding loyalty pledges and discarding legal and ethical standards.  The problem with that narrative is not the criticism of the actions of President Trump, but the consistent efforts to ignore the equally troubling actions of former FBI Director Comey.  Yet, if Trump was to be the irredeemable villain, Comey had to be the immaculate hero.  The script glitch centered on three allegations — all of which were actively denied by legal experts.  First, Comey leaked memos of his meetings with Trump.  Second, those memos constituted government material.  Third, the memos were likely classified on some level.

La Raza Rebrands as 'Unidos US'.  The National Council of La Raza announced that it will change its name to UnidosUs, AP reports.  President Janet Murguia described "La Raza" as an outdated term that did not resonate with its members.  AP exclusively translates "Raza" as "the people" in its report.  However, the term can also be interpreted as "the race," which carries a suggestion of zero-sum ethnic conflict.

The Truth vs CNN.  Bill Whittle recounts the recent CNN scandal, describes the masterful way the videos were released and shows what incredible — almost unbelievable — harm is caused by media bias.  [Video clip]

We Should Cheer CNN's Ritual Suicide.  If you ever had any doubt that Donald Trump was right that the mainstream media is the enemy of the American people, CNN corrected your inexplicable inability to comprehend this painfully obvious truth by choosing July 4th to threaten some guy for daring to make fun of Its Medianess Holiness.  Apparently, if you dare defy the media it has the right to wreck your life — as long as you are an anti-Obama rodeo clown or a meme-making rando on Reddit.

Reminder: Valerie Jarrett's Daughter Was Hired By CNN In January.  If you want to understand why CNN is so biased against Trump and other Republicans, it's helpful to know that their staff is made up of various people who have very real connections to the world of politics.  Even the daughter of former Obama adviser Valerie Jarrett works for the network.

Everything Is About 'Trashing' Trump With Mainstream Media.  On Thursday [6/29/2017] the House passed Kate's Law, which imposes harsher penalties on illegal immigrants, especially criminals, who try to reenter the country.  The House also passed a sanctuary city bill.  However, NBC, CBS, and ABC spent much more time on President Trump's personal attacks on MSNBC's "Morning Joe" hosts Mika Brzezinski and Joe Scarborough than either the immigration bills or the travel ban.

Why James O'Keefe Is a More Honest Journalist than the MSM.  Because they so often rely on leaks — no photographs, videos or anything like them, often nothing concrete at all — what the New York Times, Washington Post, CNN and so many others (even the front pages of the Wall Street Journal, alas) report is very often, one is tempted to say most often, either a distortion or an outright lie.  This is particularly true when what they are reporting has political relevance — and so much does.  If not the root cause — that's uncontrolled and unacknowledged bias — this excessive reliance on leaks has seriously exacerbated the precipitous decline of the mainstream media.

An epidemic of lawlessness.  [Scroll down]  Now like much of the [Washington] Post story, this is a piece of highly classified intelligence whose disclosure violates the oaths of those who gave it to the Post.  The violation of a solemn oath by a witness is commonly taken to detract from the credibility of the witness's testimony.  Consider, moreover, that the sources for the story were not under oath when they confided in Greg Miller, Ellen Nakashima and Adam Entous.  The intelligent reader would be well within his rights not to believe a word they say.  If we believe it, however, this pertinent fact should be added.  The disclosure of highly classified intelligence by government officials also violates the espionage laws of the United States.  It is in all likelihood felonious several times over in the case of each of the Post's numerous anonymous sources.

The Leftist News Media, Unmasked.  If there's anything that the most recent presidential campaign and its aftermath have made crystal clear, it's that the major news media in America are teeming with leftists who overtly and covertly promote leftist worldviews and agendas.  Andrea Mitchell, who has been the chief foreign-affairs correspondent at NBC News since 1994, is emblematic of the media's pitiful devolution into nothing more than a propaganda mill.  Like a dutiful leftist, for instance, Mitchell has long viewed white Republicans and conservatives as being particularly inclined toward racism. [...] Over the course of her broadcasting career, Mitchell has made plain her affinity for leftist Democrats.  For example, in an April 2016 interview in which Senator Harry Reid said that "Hillary Clinton's qualifications" for being president were more impressive than those of anyone "since the Founding Fathers," Mitchell responded by saying that only "John Quincy Adams, maybe," had compiled a résumé equal to that of Clinton.  Just before the election that November, Mitchell characterized a Clinton campaign rally that featured appearances by such notables as Lebron James and James Taylor as "extraordinary" and "magical."

Pro-Trump Crowd Protests Fake News at CNN Headquarters.  Debbie Dooley and a crowd of great Patriots marched in front of the CNN headquarters in Atlanta today in a show of support for President Trump and in protest against CNN's fake news.  Who isn't proud of these people literally walking the walk to voice their opposition to the constant drip, drip, drip of propaganda from CNN.

Shareholder: CNN Acting Like Part of 'Anti-Trump Resistance'.  A Time Warner shareholder accused CNN of acting like it was the part the "resistance" movement against President Donald Trump.  "I'm inquiring about CNN's bias and our return on investment," shareholder David Almasi reportedly told Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes during Thursday's annual shareholders meeting.  "Half the American public — which includes potential and current CNN viewers — voted for Trump last November and supports his agenda.  CNN acts as if it is part of the anti-Trump resistance."

Is This Treason in Time of War?  The American media have not acted like free news sources for many years.  They run the identical storyline from day to day, and scapegoat and destroy the reputations of any dissidents to the Democratic Party line.  Several years ago a collusion ring among big news media was uncovered in the so-called JournoList scandal, showing day-by-day collusion among declared propaganda media, all enemies of the United States.  DC swampocrats have joined in the attack on POTUS, to the cheers of the establishment media, which are owned and controlled by half a dozen transnational corporations that owe no allegiance to the United States at all.  Rather, declared enemies of the United States routinely buy into our media corporations.

The mainstream media should shut up and listen for awhile.  In many ways, the frenzy about Trump and Russia says a lot more about media hostility toward Trump than it does about Trump's actions.  The mainstream media has always exhibited rampant bias against right-of-center political figures.  In the coverage of Trump, that bias has turned into all-out hysteria and insidious snickering.  While overt media hostility is outrageous, reporting laced with insidious bias is much more misleading and dangerous.

CNN Sponsor List.  This thread is in response to a suggested boycott of CNN sponsors. [...] I saw an earlier thread about boycotting CNN and contacting their sponsors.  For what it's worth, I suffered through about 3 hours of Headline News to compile a list of some of their sponsors.

Some Perspective on Trump and Media Madness.  A mainstream, anti-Trump media outlet (but I repeat myself) — staffed by (in the words of former Vice President Spiro Agnew) "a small and unelected elite" who possess a "profound influence over public opinion" without any checks on their "vast power" — that wants a certain result (Trump's destruction) has recourse to seemingly endless anonymous sources that conveniently — and eagerly! — say whatever is damaging to Trump, and then those leaks and quotes are approvingly duplicated by all the other major outlets who want exactly same thing, conferring upon these stories the illusion of objectivity and correctness.  Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence — which the media (tellingly) is not providing. [...] This is about a segment of the country that utterly loathes Trump, is simply incapable of coming to terms with the reality of a Trump presidency, and thus will do anything and everything to obliterate him — including through a death-by-a-thousand-cuts campaign.

Should We Hit Reporters and How Hard?  You know how, when an institution becomes so corrupt that it feels untouchable, its leaders begin to make a show of their dishonesty to prove just how untouchable they are?  Tammany Hall sachems wryly testifying about the "little tin boxes" where they keep their graft.  Vladimir Putin placing his puppet Dmitry Medvedev in the presidency to circumvent term limit laws.  Loretta Lynch meeting Bill Clinton on the tarmac to "discuss their grandchildren."  And so on.  Well, that's what I see when I look at "news" organizations that hire and elevate guys like George "I-love-you-Hillary" Stephanopoulos or Ted Baxter clone and open anti-Trumper Scott Pelley.  These are institutions that are so corrupt and feel so immune in their corruption that they want to show their corruption off by way of spitting in the eyes of anyone naive enough to oppose corruption.

Trump Is POTUS, and Leftist Hysteria Is Noise.  Sure, the media headlines are deafening, and you don't want to immerse yourself in enemy propaganda.  Don't doubt for a moment that the Demo-media are the enemy.  They've shown it a thousand times over the decades, during the Cold War, the Vietnam War, the Iraq War, after 9/11, after Pearl Harbor — how much evidence do you need?  They are the enemy.  Period.  For your own peace of mind, just turn them off.

Not so fair and balanced
Scientific Study:  Journalists Are a Bunch of Drunks With Sub-Average Brain Function.  [Scroll down]  I'd agree that a parade of unforced errors and stupid controversies from the very beginning made the media's job much easier, but I don't think 'the merits' fully account for the entirety of the enormous gap between the tone and content of Obama's coverage (+18) versus Trump's (-60).  Most of the media is appalled by Trump and furious that he won; not only because they're pro-Democratic liberals (which most of them are), but because his victory blew apart their near-unanimous consensus that he had virtually no chance.  Proving the Smart Set wrong angers the Smart Set.  But are elite-level journalists really the Smart Set?


Coming to terms with the creeps in the media.  For example, Fox host Tucker Carlson faced off the other night against former Democrat congressional candidate, MSNBC personality, and impeachment advocate Krystal Ball (yes, that's her real name) [...].  The woman's high staccato recitation of Trump's alleged crimes was extremely lucid, well rehearsed, and relentless.  But pressed for proof of these offenses, any sort of proof — eyewitness testimony, recordings, transcripts, a copy of the actual Comey memo — she just flamed in indignation that Tucker wouldn't just accept the word of The New York Times and Washington Post.

Harvard Study Reveals Huge Extent of Anti-Trump Media Bias.  A major new study out of Harvard University has revealed the true extent of the mainstream media's bias against Donald Trump.  Academics at the Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy analyzed coverage from Trump's first 100 days in office across 10 major TV and print outlets.  They found that the tone of some outlets was negative in as many as 98% of reports, significantly more hostile than the first 100 days of the three previous administrations.

The media have already impeached Trump.  In the immediate days and hours following [James] Comey's unexpected firing, some news outlets and TV commentators have indicated that they're convinced Trump is guilty of something.  USA Today published an op-ed Thursday [5/11/2017] by three legal and ethics experts under the title, "Firing Comey is worse than breaking a law."  That morning on MSNBC's "Morning Joe," well-known political journalist and former Bloomberg Politics co-managing editor John Heilemann said reporters should be assuming Trump's guilt at this point.  "There's a cover-up going on," he said.  "And that has to be the premise of all our reporting going forward."

The Editor says...
The premise of all your reporting should be a pursuit of the truth, whatever it turns out to be.  You shouldn't start with the conclusion (impeachment) and make the news lead in that direction.  That's activism, not journalism.

WashPost Bizarrely Claims Partisan Tilt 'Mostly Unheard Of In Broadcast TV'The Washington Post sounded the bias alarm on the front page of Tuesday's paper.  Sinclair is buying some powerful local TV stations from Tribune, "raising questions about content."  Reporter Todd C. Frankel worried "The deal also has energized long-running speculation that the quiet company has ambitions to be the broadcast world's Fox News."  Speculation by whom?  Liberals.  But liberals are often described in liberal newspapers as "critics" or "many people" or in this story, opponents of "media consolidation."  But Frankel uncorked a sentence that is so laughable it needs a copy editor:  bias in broadcast TV is unheard of???

The news media are losing their search for truth.  Today's mainstream news media seem to reflect increasingly the values of our increasingly doctrinally progressive academic institutions.  Last year, some 96 percent of media outlet political donations, according to the Center for Public Integrity, went to Hillary Clinton.  Increasingly, top journalists, as Obama speechwriter Ben Rhodes noted, are often young, highly educated ingenues who "literally know nothing" and can be easily misled by attractive figures like President Obama.

Poll Confirms Media's Bias:  Is 'Fake News' The New Norm?  Politico surveyed 63 members of the White House press corps.  Of those, only 5% were Republicans, while 16% were Democrats, 37% independents, and 37% weren't registered to vote at all.  Let's admit one thing right off the bat:  This year's poll is an improvement on last year's poll of 72 press corps members, in which none — zero, zip, nada — were Republicans.  You'd think there would have been at least a token GOP press-member in there, but no.  But the numbers are really worse than they look.  Among those 37% "independents" are reporters who, for reasons of political deniability, call themselves independent rather than affiliating with a party.  And some of those are actually farther left than the Democratic Party in their views.

The Bret Stephens freak-out is a reminder that the media is basically a massive high school clique.  [Bret] Stephens, who came to the Times after nearly 20 years with the Wall Street Journal, suggested in an op-ed concerning the fierce political debate surrounding climate change that, "if there were less certitude about our climate future, more Americans would be interested in having a reasoned conversation about it."  "[O]rdinary citizens also have a right to be skeptical of an overweening scientism.  They know — as all environmentalists should — that history is littered with the human wreckage of scientific errors married to political power," he added.  Despite that he was careful to note he doesn't "deny climate change or the possible severity of its consequences," the article left many reporters and pundits in a state of disbelief.

Poll Finds Americans Trust Trump More Than Media.  Only a day before journalists are set to meet at their annual self-congratulatory dinner, a new poll finds that their intended customers, the American people, don't trust them.  Indeed, the poll finds Americans trust the Trump White House to tell the truth more than they do the media.  The poll taken of 2,006 adults between April 23 and 26 is certainly bad news for the political media as 37 percent of respondents said they trust the Trump White House, while only 29 percent said they trust the media.

Trump Is More Trusted than Political Media.  Well, to be fair, almost anyone is more trusted than the national political media.

Obit Gives Us an Inside Look at Inside Journalism.  It's Not Pretty.  A new documentary about the New York Times arrives at just the moment America's newspaper of record presents itself as something that stands not for news but for power, partisanship, and elitism.  It's titled "Obit," perhaps in a witty response to the digital era's advance on outmoded media.  An inside look at how the paper's staff of obituary writers and researchers perform their tasks, Obit may be the closest that any media-maker gets to examining the Times' confidential procedures during this terrible period of oppositional journalism.

Who Really Controls the Modern Democratic Party?  Conventional wisdom views the media as the public relations arm of the Democratic Party.  Commonly referred to as "Democrat party operatives with bylines," big media trumpets the progressives' message 24-7, from the nation's major newspapers, network news shows, and most cable outlets, with a few exceptions, such as at Fox News.  But where is the mothership of progressivism?  The media, or the Democratic Party?

Clinton aide, fundraiser, to run Politico.  The new CEO of Politico is a long-time donor to Democrats, including former President Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton, and key liberal causes.  Patrick Steel of FBR & Co., an Arlington, Va., investment bank, gave a total of $64,850 to Democrats and their causes, according to the Center for Responsive Politics and an analysis from Andrew Mullins of the Media Research Center.

The Media Bubble Is Worse Than You Think.  News organizations old and new, large and small, print and online, broadcast and cable assigned phalanxes of reporters armed with the most sophisticated polling data and analysis to cover the presidential campaign.  The overwhelming assumption was that the race was Hillary Clinton's for the taking, and the real question wasn't how sweeping her November victory would be, but how far out to sea her wave would send political parvenu Trump.  Today, it's Trump who occupies the White House and Clinton who's drifting out to sea — an outcome that arrived not just as an embarrassment for the press but as an indictment.  In some profound way, the election made clear, the national media just doesn't get the nation it purportedly covers.

Gayle King Hilariously Defends Vacationing with Obamas; 'Not Political' Spending Time with 'Friends'.  On Friday's Access Hollywood, CBS This Morning co-host Gayle King responded to the fact that she had recently vacationed in Tahiti with, among others, the Obama family, pathetically claiming that it was "not a political statement" and no big deal since her "friends" are out of the White House.  "Gayle's Obama vacation under fire.  Welcome to Access Hollywood.  Did vacationing on a yacht with the Obamas get Gayle King in hot water with her CBS colleagues," reported Access Hollywood co-host and former Today newsreader Natalie Morales.

CBS Journalists [Angry] at Gayle King Over Yacht Vacation With Obamas.  Veteran journalists at CBS are reportedly quite upset with network host Gayle King after she enjoyed a recent yacht vacation with Barack and Michelle Obama in Tahiti.  King, co-host of "CBS This Morning," went on a star-studded vacation with the former president and first lady, Tom Hanks, Bruce Springsteen, and her best friend Oprah Winfrey on billionaire David Geffin's 138-meter luxury yacht, called the Rising Sun.

Ethical Issue?  CBS Host Gayle King Spotted on Super-Yacht in Tahiti with the Obamas.  Once again, CBS This Morning co-host Gayle King has demonstrated her networking skills.  As the media reported how the Obamas rode Hollywood producer David Geffen's super-yacht in Tahiti with bold-faced names including Oprah Winfrey, Tom Hanks, and Bruce Springsteen, there was another TV name in the mix.

Labeling Anything Negative As 'Fake News' Is Dangerous And Intellectually Dishonest.  Press bias isn't a black and white issue.  There will be times when the mainstream media — regardless of any biases — will cover a story truthfully.  It's important that in these cases, we don't instinctively recoil from the mainstream press because the president and his most ardent supporters continue to repeat the mantra of "fake news."  Additionally, we cannot accept as gospel truth everything the president or his preferred media allies say.  We must analyze every angle in order to suss out the truth.  This isn't always easy, but it's intellectually honest.  Not every story is badly slanted.  Not every reporter who works for mainstream media outlets is dishonest.

The Rotten Obama Record — and Legacy.  The Obama phenomenon had a complex side, but the most complex and nefarious part was the unwillingness of the mainstream media to criticize, or bring up any hint of wrongdoing on his part.  From the beginning, our media created an image for him, never actually delving into his background, his beliefs, or his life in any way.  Unlike the quest to find out Trump's tax returns, the media never sought to reveal who or what Obama was. [...] They reported everything as positive.  If there was something negative, or heaven forbid WRONG, it often was ignored, lied about or spun hard to make it look like nothing was there.  Great examples are the horror of Obamacare, the lies about Benghazi, and the falsehoods about the "wonderful" Iran deal.

The vast wasteland that is the Sunday news shows.  No one should waste time watching any of the five Sunday news programs.  They are all of a piece, joined at the hip in their singular campaign against President Trump.  The hosts of each show are leftists, including Chris Wallace of Fox — that apple did not fall far from the tree.  The rest of them — Dickerson (CBS), Todd (NBC), Tapper (CNN), Stephanopoulos, and Raddatz (ABC) — are fleas on the same dog.  Not one of them is distinguishable from the others.  They proudly antagonize any conservative guest, then strive and grovel to inflate Democrat guests.  They verbally bully every Republican and lick the boots of every Democrat.

The Fake News Crisis.  Within living memory, in 1968, the Democratic Party had its convention in Chicago, Hubert Humphrey was their nominee, and there were riots in the streets. [...] There is one huge difference between what is happening now, and what happened back then.  In 1968, there was a culmination of real events that actually affected America.  In 2017, there are no real events causing this, just narratives made up from nothing by a leftist media that is more divorced from reality than anyone thought possible.
  •   The Russians colluded with Trump.
  •   Trump is Hitler. Stupid. And evil.
  •   Obama was wonderful, transparent, brilliant, perfect, and fully competent.
  •   Trump's tax returns will show he is unfit.
  •   He is a racist that wants to ban all Muslims.
  •   Kellyanne Conway is a ditzy uninformed waste of a woman.
  •   Hillary Clinton is a pure and honest heroine fighting for good.
Virtually 24/7, these and other very unreal narratives are being played to the American public by our pathetic left wing media.  In 1968, the news had a reality component.  Yes, there was liberal bias in the news, but at least the events happened.

'It's Our Job to Tell You What to Think'.  Every day brings new evidence that today's media are engaged in clandestine fifth column activities involving journalistic acts of sabotage, media malfeasance, blatant disinformation or media espionage conducted by secret sympathizers.  President Trump is engaged in a vicious counter-terrorism war with the media and the Democratic Party. [...] The Democrat Party, aided and abetted by their army of fifth column "journalists," are waging a clandestine war against the heart and soul of America.

Media Bias Goes Far Beyond Language.  As the history of visual propaganda reminds us, images can be as powerful as words in promoting ideology.  And since the clichés are true — every picture tells a story and a picture is worth a thousand words — perhaps conservative men and women in the public eye should start demanding final approval of the images the mainstream media use of them.  Or at least insist on using their own photographers.

It's Bad.  But Should a 22-Year-Old Be in That Position In the First Place?  If you're on the right, you probably have a sneaking suspicion that non-conservative media prefer to spotlight two distinct types of voices to represent the conservative point of view.  The first is the "Reasonable" Conservative.  This figure may or may not be connected to a Republican campaign from a long time ago.  This type of pundit for figures like John Kasich, Jon Huntsman, Christie Whitman, and Jim Jeffords, and saw the departure of Charlie Crist and Arlen Specter as great losses for the GOP. [...] Then there's the flip side of that coin, the unappealing "Extreme" Conservative, the one who few conservatives want to be caught associating with, and who can be counted on to provide the least likeable, least persuasive, least appealing version of the conservative argument, time after time. [...] The Unappealing Conservative talking heads are [...] either completely unaware of how unlikeable they come across on camera, or cynically enjoy playing the villainous role in the television news version of professional wrestling.

Dem Congressman: 'Best Way to Oppose Fake News Is to Watch Outlets Like MSNBC'.  Democratic Rep. Ted Lieu (Calif.) got cozy with MSNBC on Thursday [3/16/2017] when he name-checked the news network as a remedy for opposing "fake news."  MSNBC host Ali Velshi asked Lieu about recently cosponsoring a resolution that calls for "opposing fake news and alternative facts."

How and Why Obamacare Repeal Will Succeed.  [Scroll down]  It goes without saying, of course, that the "news" media have played up disagreements among Republicans over the best way to approach repeal.  To exaggerate the dissension they continuously recycle statements from a few Republicans who seem to care more about publicity than policy.

When Did Media Bias Become a Virtue?  The Trump administration is a challenge for all journalists because of the president's refusal to play by the normal rules of behavior.  His allergy to the truth, bizarre use of Twitter, and belief that he's entitled to say anything, no matter how awful or false, about anyone who criticizes him make it hard to take the time to be fair to him or his policies.  But many liberal journalists' prejudice is so great that they have come to believe that even a pretense of objectivity is unnecessary.  To the contrary, they think that nothing short of coverage designed to ridicule everything Trump's administration does is required.  But by acting in this manner, they are merely confirming the belief of senior White House adviser Steve Bannon that the media are the real opposition party and, as Trump described it, the "enemy of the American people."

All Roads Lead Back to Brennan.  It is "our job," not Trump's, to "control exactly what people think," gasped MSNBC's Mika Brzezinski last month.  This week's gasp from the media assumes a slightly different form and can be translated as:  It is our job, not Trump's, to push stories about the government investigation of Trumpworld.  For months, the media, drawing upon criminal leaks from Obama holdovers, has been saying in effect:  Trumpworld is under investigation for ties to Russia!  Then Trump says essentially the same thing on Twitter and the media freaks out.  Why does the latter merit condemnation but not the former?  Notice what is happening here:  The Obama holdovers are denying the import of the very stories that they planted.

Talk Radio, Cable News, the Mainstream Media, and the News Revolution.  What we are witnessing is an utter inversion in the supposed way the media works.  Whereas the task of a Rush Limbaugh or Tucker Carlson is to offer cogent analysis from a more conservative viewpoint on the news of the day, a supposedly disinterested media cannot be relied upon in the same degree to do their quite different job of reporting the days' events.  Or is the implosion of the mainstream media even more revolutionary?  Opinion journalists are better reporters of the day's events than are today's reporters and far more skilled and up-front editorialists than the now common front-page editorialists of the major newspapers and network news who masquerade as journalists.  Whereas in the past, the Left deprecated these alternative-media outlets, they have steadily gained stature for their unapologetic transparency, while the mainstream has lost it.

It's All Fake.  Back in Obama's first months on the throne, Rick Santelli, a TV personality, was "reporting" from the floor of the stock exchange.  He responded to a question about Obama's housing plan with a rant about socialism, finishing it off with a call for a new Tea Party. [...] It did not take long for the moonbats to declare the whole thing a racist conspiracy cooked up by the twelfth invisible Hitler in league with the eternal cyclops of the KKK.  This was when the fake hate crime stuff got its start as a daily phenomenon.  It was also when it became apparent to a lot of people that the news is mostly fake. [...] It was so obvious that the media was coordinating their coverage with the Left, it was hard not to notice it.  The game was rigged and nothing in the media was on the level.  It was not just bias, it was collusion.  The question is, how fake is it?  The answer may be, more fake than you think.

Poll: 'Fake news' CNN tanks below even MSNBC.  CNN's public perception has been dropping like a rock — plummeting lower than even the left-leaning MSNBC — a free-fall that appeared to hit bottom around the time of its most aggressive anti-Trump coverage in October 2016.  CNN is now trending lower than it did even in the first few months of 2016, according to polling released Feb. 27 by Internet-based market research firm YouGov.com.

Press coverage of Trump in first month of office: 88 percent 'hostile,' says new study.  There was no press honeymoon for President Trump during his first month in office.  A meticulous new study by the Media Research Center finds that 88 percent of the broadcast news coverage of Mr. Trump and his team was "hostile" during the first 30 days of office.  The coverage was intense and plentiful.  The study, which analyzed both tone and content for evening newscasts on ABC, NBC and CBS, found that the "Big Three" networks produced 16 hours of coverage on the new president and his staff.  That is over half — 54 percent — of their total coverage for the month.

CNN Hires Valerie Jarrett's Daughter to "Report" on Trump White House.  Who could have possibly predicted that a third-generation Red Diaper Baby would have been hired by CNN to cover a Republican White House?  But, sure, I could imagine these fair, independent and completely honest journalists hired, say, Mitt Romney's kid to report on the Obama White House in 2008.

Sorry, Bush Is Wrong — The Media Aren't Doing Their Job.  While we deeply admire the former president for not holding a grudge, the media spent much of Bush's eight years in office actively lying about what he was doing and what he was trying to do.  It's one thing to disagree with Bush on Iraq; even some conservative media outlets loudly criticized Bush's strategy, down to the very presence of U.S. troops in Iraq.  But the media consistently mischaracterized Bush's actions, and served as a willing mouthpiece for the "Bush lied, people died" mantra of the left that served to undermine the effort to end the Iraq War.  Likewise, the media outright lied about what happened during Hurricane Katrina, painting a picture of an out-of-touch, racist chief executive who didn't really care about the deaths of African Americans from the ravaging floodwaters.

Media complaining about 1st Amendment rights?  Really?  The media...
    ...didn't [care] when IRS targeted Obama's political opponents, clearly violating their free speech and political speech rights.
    ...have never cared when Congress, especially Democrats, have sought to limit political speech in violation of the 1st amendment.
    ...didn't care as the Justice Dept. and Democrat state A.G.s clearly threatened legal action against people who dared say the climate changes naturally, which obviously violated their free speech rights.
    ...had no concern at all when the Obama admin sued the Little Sisters of the Poor for daring to exercise their religious freedom.
But now they are concerned about the 1st Amendment when they are asked to tell the truth.

Five festering problems the Democrats cynically ignore.  Our national media have a knack for missing important trends.  They are focused on what is seen as general confusion and a lack factual fidelity in the Trump administration.  The media miss entirely the contrast in adult responsible behavior by Republicans and the increasingly irresponsible Democrats.  Republicans at all levels of government are trying to solve America's problems.  Democrats are, at best, indifferent; it requires only a sliver of cynicism to conclude that very liberal Democrats are actually working to make our problems worse.

James O'Keefe offers $10,000 awards for evidence of 'media malfeasance'.  Conservative sleuth James O'Keefe is ramping up his effort to take down the mainstream media by enlisting the help of ordinary citizens to go undercover and expose wrongdoing in newsrooms around the country.  The Project Veritas leader announced he will give $10,000 to anyone who brings him evidence of "corruption, malfeasance and wrongdoing" in the press.  "If you have hidden audio recordings, videotapes or documents inside of a newsroom or media institution, and the material is good enough, I will pay you $10,000," Mr. O'Keefe says in the video set to be released on Thursday [2/23/2017].

Mika Brzezinski:  Media's Job Is to 'Control Exactly What People Think'.  MSNBC's Mika Brzezinski criticized President Donald Trump on Wednesday for undermining the media's message by creating his own facts, adding that the "job" of the media is to "control exactly what people think."  Brzezinski made the comment on "Morning Joe" after co-host Joe Scarborough said that he agreed with a panelist's view that Trump supporters are wondering why people are so upset over what the president is doing since he is implementing exactly what he campaigned on.

Trump Is Beating the Media at Its Own Game.  For years journalists opined self-servingly under the guise of objectivity and got away it because Republicans were too afraid to shatter that illusion of objectivity.  They permitted the media to serve as the arbiter of what qualifies as "mainstream," "extremist," "racist," and so forth, and made sure to stay within the media-determined parameters of any discussion.  Donald Trump has blown up that absurd arrangement and is beating the media at its own game.  He labels reporters in the same way that they label him.  He upends their dishonest framing of debates by treating them as what they are, liberal partisans.

A Purblind Press, Unable To Admit Error, Boycotts the President.  What is utterly astonishing about the fierce contest between the national press and President Trump is that the press does not realize how despised it is by most Americans, and how richly, as a group (which contains many individual exceptions), it deserves to be despised.  For 18 months Donald Trump campaigned with great energy all over the country, swept most of the primaries, many by astounding margins against a large field of candidates, and made a point of denouncing the national media as biased, self-serving, and malicious myth-makers.  He referred to them hundreds of times as "liars," and directed the very large crowds that he drew to the press section, and his supporters shook their fists in unfeigned rage at the press gallery.  Did the complacent, bemused national press think they were paid plants or that it was all a spoof?

The Mainstream Media Have Forfeited All Respect.  The media are beside themselves that someone would castigate them at every opportunity and use hyperbole such as "enemy of the American people" and purveyors of "very fake news" to get under their skin, as their narcissism and sense of self-importance knows no bounds.  They fail to understand why they are held in such disregard — polling has revealed only 32% of Americans trust the media (down from 55% in 2000) and why so many cheer Trump's visceral attacks.

Dark parroting
The Press is the Enemy.  No matter how much training the technocrats in government and media receive, we cannot trust them.  They are no longer reporters of facts, they are agents of propaganda as dishonest and skewed as the editors of Pravda.  Blogging is relatively popular in the right-wing world, not necessarily because we are the best, or the most highly trained professionals, but because most of the highly trained professionals have stopped doing journalism at all.  They are pure propagandists, at this point.  The market had a demand for news that was either unslanted, or slanted the other direction in a sort of compensation for the blatant left-wing agitprop spewed 24/7 from the major news outlets (Fox possibly excepted).


New Poll Shows Voters Have 'So Much Distrust' of the Media.  Howard Kurtz says that the latest Fox News Poll shows that Americans are "so polarized" and that there is "so much distrust" of the media.  The poll, released Friday evening [2/17/2017], reflected that 45 percent of voters trust President Trump more than the media, while 42 percent say the media are more trustworthy.

It's Not Fake News, It's Lying, Leftist, Political Propaganda.  [I]t wasn't until the press began telling bold-faced lies intended to undermine and harm the candidacy of Donald Trump that it occurred to me that the press was telling outright lies, intentionally and with malice, in an attempt to defeat my candidate, Donald Trump, in his run for the presidency.  And after he became President the untrue stories got even more outlandish and more frequent and forceful as the leftist press attempted to destroy President Trump's administration before it could get off the ground.  At this point President Trump began putting a name to it, and it began to resonate with everyone how fabricated liberal news is.

Why the Media's Trump Lie Machine is Failing.  Every five minutes the many mouths of the media broadcast, type, post and shriek that President Donald J. Trump is a liar.  After months of this treatment, more voters find him truthful than them.  49% of voters believe that Trump and his people are telling the truth.  Only 39% believe that the media is.  The media's war on President Trump isn't hurting him.  It is destroying the media's own credibility.

The Media's Jihad Against the Trump White House Staff.  [Scroll down]  The elephant in the room in these stories about the Trump White House staff is not just that the liberal media can't stand the new president — it can't abide his agenda.  And watching one executive order after another pour out of the Trump White House that is at a 180-degree variance with the Obama-era and all things far Left, the media reflexively zeroes in on the Trump staff.  Thus the stories.  Steve Bannon is really the president.  Or, according to Time magazine, which has put him on the cover, he is "The Great Manipulator" of the President.  And he's a white supremacist.  Not to mention he's anti-Semitic.  Oh, and by the way, he's incompetent too.  Kellyanne Conway ignored Ethics Rules 101.  She has no integrity and she went out of her way to make the rich Ivanka even richer using her public position.  And so it goes through the list.  Does this not mean that at any given moment President Trump may in fact have a genuine problem with one of his staffers?  Of course not.

The Crisis in Journalism Is Here.  It's getting harder and harder to kick in the needed amnesia to believe anything that comes from the media.

WSJ Editor Tells Reporters Who Don't Like Objective Trump Coverage To Leave The Paper.  Wall Street Journal editor in chief Gerard Baker told his reporters Monday [2/13/2017] the paper would not abandon objectivity in its coverage of President Donald Trump, and directed them to find work somewhere else if they want to adopt a more oppositional tone.

An Open Letter to the Mainstream Media's Anonymous Sources.  I'm not sure which of your stories stands out the most.  Is it the portrait you painted almost two weeks ago, of a president in his bathrobe compulsively watching the news?  Yesterday's story of a National Security Council in "turmoil," filled with staffers who "struggle to make policy" to fit President Trump's tweets?  The report in Politico that Trump's personnel concerns extend "beyond his embattled national security adviser" and that Sean Spicer and Reince Priebus may be on the chopping block, with "Trump campaign aides" drafting "lists of possible Priebus replacements"?  The CNN report that "multiple current and former US law enforcement and intelligence officials" have "corroborated some of the communications detailed in a 35-page dossier compiled by a former British intelligence agent"?  The list goes on and on.  You've been leaking relentlessly since the very first days of Trump's presidency, making the president look like a "clueless child," as the Washington Post's Chris Cillizza put it.  Political Twitter amplifies your voice, with countless concerned citizens retweeting the stories you helped create, appending dire worries that "we're all going to die."

Media return from soul-searching empty-handed.  On Election Day, after two years of journalists telling the public that Trump would lose, the opposite happened.  In a tone of deep remorse, CNN's media reporter Brian Stelter told his audience the following Sunday that it was "one of the biggest media failures in many years" and that reporters should accept that the public would lose confidence in the press.  "So, we on the other side of this screen over here have to reckon with that," he said, "not just for a week or two but for the long term."

The mainstream media are still in deep denial over Trump.  Since Donald Trump's election, the major media have been trying to figure out what they did wrong, given their fawning coverage of Hillary Clinton and their anti-Donald Trump stories.  Didn't they help twice elect Barack Obama?  Why didn't the formula work this time?  Mostly the media blame voters, talk radio and Fox News, never themselves.  One might say they are in denial, a condition that has a medical definition.  The psychologywikia.com defines it:  "Denial is a defense mechanism postulated by Sigmund Freud, in which a person is faced with a fact that is too uncomfortable to accept and rejects it instead, insisting that it is not true despite what may be overwhelming evidence."

Major Media Remain in Denial.  Since Donald Trump's election, the major media have been trying to figure out what they did wrong, given their fawning coverage of Hillary Clinton and their anti-Donald Trump stories.  Didn't they help twice elect Barack Obama?  Why didn't the formula work this time?  Mostly the media blame voters, talk radio and Fox News, never themselves.  One might say they are in denial, a condition that has a medical definition.

Hashtag Mentality and Today's College Students.  [Scroll down]  With the advent of social media, fact-checking has gone the wayside.  Compounding this is the fact that the media of today is so biased it can be viewed as the mouthpiece for the Democratic Party, except for a few news outlets that veer so hard in the other direction they cannot be considered balanced, either.  Objective news reporting is dead.  TV is a relic of a bygone era to our youth who have no concept of real news, never having grown up with it.  Combine it with a generation that has grown up in a sheltered environment, codified with the mentality that everyone is a winner and that they should always get their way and a sense of entitlement and the result is a perfect breeding ground for creating social justice warriors and hashtag experts.

European Conservative Parties Are Not 'Far Right'.  Europe's media constantly smear democratic conservatives as "extreme right" or "fascist."  That is a vicious lie, as you can hear for yourself by listening to video speeches on the web by European conservatives.  If you don't happen to understand their languages, you can listen to Nigel Farage, who sounds just like Trump.  But notice that the Fakestream in Europe can never allow conservatives to speak, not without smearing them in the same sentence.  Trump is a madman according to the media elites in Europe.  But then their own democratic populists are also ready to go for a new Hitler, if you listen to the establishment media.

16 Fake News Stories Reporters Have Run Since Trump Won.  Since at least Donald Trump's election, our media have been in the grip of an astonishing, self-inflicted crisis.  Despite Trump's constant railing against the American press, there is no greater enemy of the American media than the American media.  They did this to themselves.

With Obama gone, media crybabies mull boycotting WHCA dinner.  When Barack Obama was in the White House, the political press corps celebrated with him once a year at a ritzy, A-list-only five-course dinner and laughfest inside the Washington Hilton ballroom.  Celebrities from Hollywood jetted into town to join America's top media as major news outlets tried to outdo one another with outlandishly lavish parties.  But now that President Trump has moved into 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, there are new calls by the liberal mainstream media to jettison the annual soiree, known as the White House Correspondents' Association dinner, which has grown into a weeklong affair with garden parties and brunches galore.

Washington Post Media Columnist:  Cancel WHCA Dinner Now that Trump Is President.  Remember Margaret Sullivan?  She is The Washington Post media columnist who wanted to retire the term "fake news" when it boomeranged on liberals after it had been embraced by the mainstream media.  Now Sullivan has another crusade in which she wants to cancel something.  The White House Correspondents' Association dinner.  Although Sullivan supported The New York Times withdrawing from the dinner several years ago when she was their Public Editor, she did not call for its outright cancellation.  It is way more than obvious that her real reason for her sudden urge to cancel the dinner outright is that Donald Trump is now President.  And the recognition of that disturbing fact for them is something that Sullivan and her fellow liberal journalists simply can't tolerate at the WHCA dinner.

'Illegal' Press Leaks by U.S. Have Become 'Systematic,' A Legal Filing in N.Y. Alleges.  A New York-based FBI agent who played a leading role in a string of recent insider trading prosecutions is under criminal investigation for what federal prosecutors, in a recent court filing, call "unquestionable misconduct by an agent of the Government... improper and inexcusable."  It's the sort of story that ordinarily might be splashed across the front pages of the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal — except that in this case, the misconduct of which the FBI agent, David Chaves, is suspected was leaking grand jury information to the Times and the Journal.

Flashback: Six Years of Obama Super Bowl Softballs.  Bill O'Reilly will be talking to Donald Trump on Sunday [2/5/2017] for what has now become the standard pre-Super Bowl presidential interview.  For most of Barack Obama's eight years, he had the luxury of softball interviews with liberal journalists. [...] Here's a look back at those eight interviews before the big game.  In 2016, when CBS News assigned Gayle King, a donor, supporter and friend of the Obama family, to interview the President and his wife before the Super Bowl, the network guaranteed one of the softest interviews in the history of this administration.  Asking not one serious question, the journalist instead highlighted her favorite photo of the President and his wife.  King also brought up dance moves, relationship issues and Super Bowl predictions.

How to Create a Fascist Dictatorship.  Creating a fascist dictatorship is far easier than it may seem.  You are watching the rise of fascism in America, although the story the fake news media is telling you isn't the truth.

Visa Suspension, NATO and Voices From The Deep State.  The level of absurdity from the official media channel of the U.S. Department of State, CNN, is reaching new levels of Tokyo Rose disinformation and propaganda.

This Is Why Donald Trump Is President.  A healthy majority of Americans still view the main stream media outlets as nothing more than propaganda machines for the establishment using disinformation and manipulation in a fashion comparable with Soviet-run journalism, collaborators in perpetuating a corrupt status quo.  President Trump exploited already-existing sentiments, spawned by non-representative government and an out-of-touch media, but a movement lacking a leader around whom we could rally, someone who would express our views and, if elected, implement those views as policy.  Americans flocked to Trump because the country had a de facto one-party state, where all the traditional means for the people to seek the redress of grievances were blocked by the self-absorbed, unaccountable, permanent political-media elite.

America Isn't Just Divided — It's Fragmented to Pieces.  The 24-hour news cycle and media's insatiable appetite to make certain people look good and others to look bad has created an atmosphere of enmity between folks of different political and social persuasions, not to mention the rampant distrust.  There is a growing attitude of "everything we believe is right and everything you believe is wrong," and even when there is equity on both sides of an issue the animosity has gotten so pervasive that opposing views are rarely even considered by the other side.

'Forty-five percent of the media outright hate Trump'.  I thought it would be impossible for the MSM to treat a POTUS [president of the United States] with less objectivity than they did President Bush (43) but I was wrong.  Forty-five percent of the MSM is simply suspicious of President Trump.  Forty-five percent outright hate him.  Ten percent will adopt the appropriate "wait and see and report" attitude.

The price of admission to the press:  You can't riot while you're working and expect your pass to protect you.  [W]hen I read that as many as six journalists had been detained and charged with felonies during riots in Washington D.C., on the day Donald Trump became president, the first question I had was:  were they taking pictures or taking part?  Two of those detained were described in news stories as "journalist and activist."  I don't know if that is accurate, but I do know that it's not possible to be both at the same time.  A journalist who uses his or her credentials to gain access to an event — whether it's a speech, a battlefield or a protest march — gives up the right to be part of the action.  You can't riot while you're working and expect your press pass to protect you.

Trump aide Bannon calls media the 'opposition party'.  Steve Bannon, President Donald Trump's chief White House strategist, railed against the media in an interview, calling them the "opposition party" and advising the press corps to "keep its mouth shut."  Bannon, formerly an executive at Breitbart, a conservative, alt-right news outlet, said in an interview with The New York Times on Wednesday evening [1/25/2017] that the media had been "humiliated" by Trump's election.

It has been a really bad week for journalism.  For an industry that's as disliked and distrusted as Congress, there's a lot of work that media need to do to win back viewers' trust.  There's no room for error, especially now that there's a subgenre of "news" that has zero basis in fact, and is created from thin air for the sole purpose of generating cash.  But learning to be more careful and even-handed is apparently difficult for some in media, and this week was especially rough for newsrooms that are already struggling to regain credibility.

Missing All That Racial Healing.  For decades, the old joke was that homelessness "spikes" under Republican administrations, solely because the New York Times and Washington Post were blind to the homeless invisible under Democrats but, under Republicans, they are a living indictment of "trickle down economics."  We've already seen that the deficit is now a big problem for Paul Krugman, who, a few months ago, insisted that a President Hillary Clinton should do even more stimulus spending.  But what I find particularly jarring is how, 24 hours after Trump was sworn in, the last eight years under the first black president seemed to have vanished from American consciousness and how some people seem to think the racial climate in America is worse than ever, or poised to be.

President Trump Should Dump The Media.  Trust ratings and approval levels for the media are so far down in the toilet that it would take a plumber to find them.  If the media are the people's representatives, then the people want to elect different ones.  Those are some of the same representatives that the media is trying to ban from social media with a fake "Fake News Crusade" and by resisting any expansion of press briefings with threats and warnings.  "We'll have to consider doing things other than protesting and whining," Fournier threatened.  "We'll have to think about what we can do to bring some pain to make our point."  Do what?  Run items accusing President Trump of being a traitor, a liar, a racist, a rapist and a Batman villain?  The media has already done all of those.  What else is it going to except shout more lies even louder?  Within a brief span of time, the media's fake news operation claimed that Trump had banished the bust of MLK, lifted quotes from a Batman villain and had been cavorting with Russian prostitutes.  And that he was a compulsive liar.  That last accusation is notably hilarious considering the honesty and integrity of the media.

I Am Mad About The Protests and The PressThe protesters waited until the cameras were set up to begin "agitating."  They organized around the camera positions between D and 7th and K and 12th, and performed for the news crews.  We walked through those areas and there was no violence as the cameras were just getting set up after the inauguration events.  These were not just angry people.  They were trained, likely paid, agitators.  They were coordinated with with press so the crews knew exactly where to put there cameras.  The filming angles, shots and probably even the actions of the agitators were staged.  And the news ran with their footage over and over again.  The progression from "peaceful" protest, to confronting the police, to vandalism was set for maximum impact so people would focus on this and not the historic events taking place just blocks away.

President Trump Should Dump The Media.  Last week the media lost its mind over reports that press briefings might be moved from the White House back to the Eisenhower Office Building next door where President Eisenhower held the first ever televised press conference.  Media outlets issued panicked reports of being "evicted," "kicked out" or "exiled" from the cramped theater that used to be the White House's indoor swimming pool. [...] "The press went crazy, so I said, 'Let's not move it.'"  President Trump finally reassured them.  He got as much gratitude for it as President Nixon did for ruining a perfectly good indoor pool and as President Bush did for spending a fortune renovating it.  Instead the media began spreading the same conspiracy theories accusing Bush of plotting to permanently banish them from the White House.

Trump Should End Government Funding of NPR's Biased News.  Is National Public Radio's (NPR) description of an Obama urban directive as something that merely "links [government] funding to desegregation" fake news?  Well, it's so slanted that if you had no prior knowledge of the program, and heard that depiction of it, you would just say to yourself, "sounds good to me."  But to many conservatives, including the man that President Donald Trump has nominated to be the new secretary of housing and urban development, Ben Carson, the Orwellian "Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing" is a tortured interpretation of the Fair Housing Act.  To them, coercing suburbs to build high-density, low-income housing in order to reflect the national racial makeup — even when there isn't a hint of discrimination — is an outrageous attempt to pursue the liberal dream of closing down the suburbs by changing their nature.

Dear press corps:  We don't believe you.  After reading newspapers since I was six, I can clarify how readers now see the relationship between us and the American press corps.  I do so in four words.  We don't believe you.  As a person with four decades in newspapering, now retired, I do not blame your readers in the least.  This election cycle has shown that the news business is dominated by social justice warriors who push a narrative rather than tell stories in a fair and balanced manner.

Before and After Obama: 10 Signs of a Diminished America.  Big media burned away its credibility protecting Obama, pushing Hillary Clinton's candidacy, and getting the 2016 election spectacularly wrong.  Their conduct since the election — pumping out Fake News stories, falling for hate-crime hoaxes, loudly announcing that investigative reporting was about to make a comeback after eight years in hibernation — has only confirmed the public's distrust.

The 'News' Media as We Knew It Is Finished.  The U.S. presidential campaign of 2016 was not a sudden news reporting phenomenon of excessive bias, but it was the apotheosis of the breakdown of journalistic fairness and credibility that had been gaining acceleration in recent years. [...] In order to eschew fair new coverage of Mr. Trump in the last four months of the 2016 campaign, the media had to abandon even the semblance of fairness.  Their problem was that the media coup was entirely in the language spoken primarily by those who already had decided to vote against Mr. Trump.  The biased news coverage not only failed to change the minds of pro-Trump voters, but also backfired with most undecided voters, many of whom found the media language and bias offensive and transparent.  But confidence in media news reporting had long been in decline before Donald Trump appeared on the stage.  Years of incessant political correctness had been enforced in the establishment media generally, not just in news reporting, and many Americans simply did not buy this ideological product.

Liberal Journalists Rediscover Mission As Obama Leaves Office.  In an article published Monday [1/16/2017], Politico's Jack Shafer argues that Donald Trump has made reporters "free" to cover the presidency in a more aggressively critical manner than they did during previous administrations.  Reporters, Shafer says, "ought to start thinking of covering Trump's Washington like a war zone."

White House Correspondents Association Circles Echo-Chamber Wagons Against Trump Administration.  The White House Correspondents Association held a closed-door Town Hall event last Thursday to unite behind a singular ideological political narrative.  According to published reports of the event [via CNN ] the Association's prevailing theme was a rallying call there must be "unity" against the Trump administration. [...] Ah yes, the herd mindset must be retained if the echo-chamber is to battle united against a singular ideological adversary, President Donald Trump.

Finally, a Republican Leader Playing Offense.  Political games often have separate teams for offense and defense; sometimes the political leaders, often their surrogates.  In the case of Democrats, the media takes a prominent team role playing both ends of the field.  The media can ignore unfavorable stories.  A recent example is the sudden lack of interest or coverage of the Fort Lauderdale Airport shooting after the shooter's Muslim conversion was identified.  And the media can play offense, as they are with ongoing and relentless attempts to discredit the incoming Trump administration.

Open Letter to Chris Wallace at Fox News.  Your questioning of Reince Priebus this a.m. [1/8/2017] demonstrates once again that you have a firm grasp of the conventional wisdom but little else.  Your questions were the same as one would expect to hear on the mainstream networks or from New York Times reporters.

Dems may regret leak of top-secret report on Russia to NBC.  The Democrat-Media Complex has gone all in on the propaganda campaign to convince Americans that Donald Trump's election is illegitimate because "Russia hacked the election."  Even if a majority of voters reject the unconvincing case being made, Team Hillary and Team Obama both know that they must keep their own supporters engaged in outrage against the victorious party.  Because they believe they are the only legitimate custodians of power in America, any Republican who wins must have gained victory through illegitimate means.  But they may have made a fatal overstep with the release of the top-secret report on Russian influence to NBC News.

American Media has Become a Terrorist Organization, Incites Violence, Covers-Up Crimes.  The firebombing of a North Carolina is the latest attack on free speech in the United States.  This attack, which would be labelled a domestic terrorism and be the subject of never-ending media coverage had it happened at a Clinton office, has been largely ignored by the American media.  The North Carolina firebombing is part of a broader campaign of terror incited by American media, which continues to cover up violence.

CNN Is Now Least Trusted News Network Among Viewers.  A recent poll of cable news network viewers found that CNN's regular audience is far more skeptical of the political news they receive than Fox News fans.

Media Suddenly Find 'Courage' to Stand up for First Amendment.  "Thank you, Mr. President.  During these first 100 days, what has surprised you the most about this office, enchanted you the most about serving this in office, humbled you the most and troubled you the most?"  That was the obsequious question asked by a New York Times reporter during one of President Barack Obama's first press conferences, in April 2009.  The media were unperturbed by the president's rough treatment of the Fourth Estate thus far — how his campaign "hijacked" a press plane, with journalists aboard, flying them to Chicago without the candidate; how the campaign attempted to silence a journalist, Stanley Kurtz, when he revealed the truth of Obama's relationship with former Weather Underground terrorist Bill Ayers; and how Obama aides suggested that the "Fairness Doctrine" be revived in an effort to shut down vigorous opposition from talk radio.  No — Obama was their man, and that was all that needed to be said about press freedom and independence.

Oklahoma newspaper that endorsed Hillary still hasn't recovered.  I still don't quite understand why any one newspaper would actually endorse a candidate.  I was under the impression the media was supposed to be objective and not support anyone one way or another, but what do I know?  Either way, the Oklahoma newspaper that endorsed Hillary Clinton still hasn't recovered from putting their money on the wrong horse.

Top Ten Most Under Reported Stories of 2016.  [#2] The wipe-out of the corporate media apparatus:  It is understandable why the media would choose not to report on their own irrelevance; yet that doesn't mean their irrelevance is any less a story.  Arguably you could make the complete collapse of the U.S. corporate and legacy media the #1 story of this entire election cycle.  Never before has any single political election so thoroughly, completely and visibly destroyed the credibility of print or broadcast journalism.  Collectively and individually they will never recover from the continual abject and transparent falsehoods they promoted in each and every hour of their coverage, and in almost every column inch of their publications.  Put a fork in them, they are all done — and they did it to themselves, repeatedly.

When Entertainment Reporters Get Political.  If you think liberal media bias is strictly an issue for the New York Times and the Washington Post, you haven't looked at your average entertainment site lately.  Nearly every major Hollywood news site leans left.  It has been that way for some time, but in recent years it has gotten worse.  The improbable rise of Donald Trump is hastening that shift.  And, in an age when pop culture plays an increasing role in our body politic, that matters.  This reporter follows a gaggle of entertainment scribes on Twitter.  Most work for mainstream news outlets with no agenda ... on the surface.

These Are the Media's Top Ten Embarrassments of the Year.  According to the major networks, Fidel was awesome, Hillary rallies are the best, and white people ruined America.

The Trump Nail in the Media Coffin.  Once upon a time in the 1960s, all the iconic news anchors, from Walter Cronkite to David Brinkley, were liberal.  But they at least hid their inherent biases behind a professional veneer that allowed them to filter stories through left-wing lenses without much pushback. [...] Decades-long journalistic one-sidedness was apparently tolerable when there were no other news alternatives.  Mainstream-media monopolies once were also highly profitable, and long-ago liberal news people were at least well-mannered.  All of those assumptions are no longer true.

Trey Gowdy 'really disappointed' with the media.  Rep. Trey Gowdy, R-S.C., said Monday night that he hasn't been happy with the media during his time in the House, and said it's too often rushing to be first instead of worried about being right.  "I've been really disappointed in the media since I've been in Congress," Gowdy said at an event in his home state sponsored by Concerned Veterans for America.  "I think there is a blurring of the line between the opinion page and the news page," he said.  "And I can take you to the headlines of almost any website on the Internet right now, and you will say, 'well that's opinion, that's subjective, not objective.'"

All the News the Editors See Fit to Print.  News today is largely fashioned into narratives by mostly young, unworldly reporters and biased news editors, repeated on TV by well-coiffed, fashionably garbed and cosmetically buffed up news readers, jazzed up by often highly biased photo editors and presented on a plate to passive consumers. [...] With the advent of television and the monopolization of print markets it seems to me we lost the ability to forensically analyze the news; we have become passive consumers and got what we deserved — propaganda, largely megaphoning the increasingly leftward tilt of the Democratic Party and various "nonprofit" organizations who promote scare stories about food, health, and the weather and challenge wars only when a Republican is in office.

The New York Times and Washington Post "Intelligence Sources" are Currently Under Inspector General Investigation.  The Sunday Talk Shows are filled with various left-wing punditry using two media reports from the Washington Post and New York Times claiming anonymous, albeit transparently political, "intelligence officials" who state:  the Russian government "hacked the U.S. election".  First, the media's choice of wording is critical within both reports.  It is impossible to "hack an election".  What was hacked was the DNC email system, and John Podesta's email.  WikiLeaks published the content of both "hacks".  Additionally, WikiLeaks has denied the source of the information was a foreign government.

How a free press became fake.  If one wonders why American audiences are reposting fake news rather than purchasing subscriptions to the Washington Post, look no further.  When the free press falls into disrepair, readers click elsewhere.  Just as the electorate rejected elites at the ballot box in November, so audiences are ditching the establishment news media.  They're tired of journalists accepting fluff for fact, lecturing instead of reporting, and getting the story plain wrong.

The People's Guide to Fake News
Helpful Chart:  The People's Guide to #FakeNews


Liberals' fake news panic proves they can't handle the truth.  [Scroll down]  Because they can't handle the truth, they are turning their tantrums into a witch hunt and wild conspiracy theories.  The sudden fascination with fake news and Russian hacking reveals only their rage against reality.  Yes, it's true some websites carry stories cut from whole cloth.  There are also well-regarded newspapers that treat their own biases as holy writ.  Recall that the Times and its co-conspirators created a fictional Trump held aloft by goose-stepping brownshirts and toothless bigots rising from the swamps.  They aimed to scare the country into supporting Clinton by turning their front pages into editorial pages, where "straight news" became an oxymoron.

The Problem Isn't the Alt-Right — It's the Alt-Reality.  Most Americans' perceptions of the world are shaped by information they get from primarily liberal sources such as the media, academia, and government.  That's why many Americans live in an alternate reality where Hillary did nothing wrong at Benghazi, abortions occur only due to rape, global warming is supported by 97% of scientists, the economy is doing great, emotions are good and reasoning is bad, Republicans are racists, Castro was a kind and caring man, and Trump is an insane tyrant.  The reason liberals have been able to get away with lying for so long is that most of these issues don't affect the average voter.  The average voter doesn't care about Cuba, is not planning on having an abortion herself, and didn't lose anyone at Benghazi.  As a result, many people don't bother to see if what they hear is in fact true.

Force the Media to Win Back Our Respect.  Reforming the media would require more imagination and mostly be a matter of style and protocol.  For reasons of symbolism, Trump should skip the White House Correspondents' dinner.  It has descended into a strange Neroian feast, where left-wing Hollywood celebs and the denizens of WikiLeaks fame meet to treat, and in turn hear, the president as if he were a fellow Las Vegas carnival barker.  It is a relic whose time came and went a long time ago There is no reason in this rapidly changing digitalized world to follow antediluvian customs of rewarding the New York Times or the Washington Post, or NPR, or PBS with blue-chip perks at press conferences or first claims on interviews.  They have not proved disinterested or competent in their reporting and should have to re-earn the esteem that they customarily take for granted.  WikiLeaks reminds us that CNN, the Washington Post, and Politico offer no more disinterested opinion journalism than do Rush Limbaugh or the Drudge Report — though the legacy media do spend far more to reach far fewer.

Blue State Blues: 10 Things That Journalists Did Wrong in 2016.  The media have been functioning as an arm of the Democratic Party for several years.  Some are only willing to acknowledge it now because Trump's win was such shock to them, and because many made their partisan loyalties explicit in 2016.  But the profession has been corrupt for a long time, and remains so, from top to bottom.

Hollywood TV Critic Offers Double-Down Advice: 'Cable News Should Go Full Anti-Trump'The Hollywood Reporter is touting how its own television wizard advises a media war on all things Trump.  The headline is "In Order to Survive, Cable News Should Go Full Anti-Trump:  There's one way for cable news to stave off steep declines over the next few years, writes THR's chief TV critic, and it involves embracing and channeling anti-Trump anger."  TV critic Tim Goodman — one of the usual liberals who adored "serial killer chic" in Dexter ten years ago — lectured that "if we must have cable news, perhaps it's time for the people who run it to face the facts:  Millions of people just proved, definitively, that facts don't matter to them.  [Italics his.]  For everybody else, they know you didn't or couldn't make facts matter, and so they are out searching for actual journalism..."  Goodman's advice is like telling the liberal media to go full pro-Obama.  They're already there.  Why bother offering the advice?  "Quality journalism" equals liberal journalism.  "Quality journalism" means journalism that wins elections for Democrats.

How Trump Turned the National Media Into Impotent Hecklers:  Savor it.  It finally happened.  The national media no longer matters.  The entire institution has been rendered as irrelevant as a drunken fan in the cheap seats pretending to know more about the game than Kobe.  Sure, the media might still have the power to annoy.  But as far as how the players play, the institution is now just, well, belligerent jerks with no power, no sway, no influence.  Much of the credit does not belong to President-elect Donald Trump.  The media did this to themselves.

Tom Friedman, Apparently Straight-Faced, Claims Most of the Media Support Trump.  Chalk it up to the rigors of a book tour, if one is inclined to be charitable.  Otherwise this comes across as delusional.  New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman, making the media rounds to flog his new book, [...] made an assertion on NPR's On Point with Tom Ashbrook on Nov. 22 that surely set off guffaws coast to coast.

'Fake news' isn't the problem — mainstream news with an agenda is.  "Fake news" has been a big news story for the past week.  Hoaxes and fabrications hatched by clickbait-hungry websites — or, some reports say, by the Kremlin propaganda machine — have been blamed for Donald Trump's election victory.  Leading journalists such as CNN's Christiane Amanpour have decried the profession's "existential crisis" caused by the onslaught of fake stories.  Google and Facebook have both moved to curb the problem by denying advertising to "fake news" sites.  Meanwhile, critics on both the left and the right argue that the outcry about "fake news" is a manufactured crisis intended to smear and ostracize dissident, non-mainstream media — especially since some of the critiques lump together publications that contain real if slanted reporting, such as Breitbart News or Antiwar.com, with sites that publish actual hoaxes (such as a story about Pope Francis endorsing Trump) or satire.  Critics also charge that the "fake news" trope obscures the fact that the mainstream media have their own problem with false or misleading stories.

Washington Post Names Drudge, Zero Hedge, & Ron Paul As Anti-Clinton "Sophisticated Russian Propaganda Tools".  The desperate flailing of a mainstream-media struggling through the five stages of grief continues as no lesser unbiased foundation of the fourth estate than The Washington Post pushes ahead with its "fake news, blame the Russians" narrative for why their candidate failed so miserably.  Citing "two teams of independent researchers" (who surely have a substantial libel litigation provision) who found "Russia's increasingly sophisticated propaganda machinery... echoed and amplified right-wing sites across the Internet as they portrayed Clinton as a criminal," the Jeff Bezos-owned website names Drudge, Zero Hedge, and The Ron Paul Institute and countless other outlets among the "useful idiots" that true American patriots should be wary of.

The U.S. Media's Decades of Cheering Castro's Communism.  While every other country in the Western Hemisphere moved towards democracy, Cuba remained a one-party state under dictator Fidel Castro, who held power without free elections from 1959 until health problems forced him to step aside in 2006.  Castro's communist regime executed hundreds of political opponents and drove tens of thousands more into exile; hundreds of dissidents today languish in Cuban prisons.  The U.S. State Department, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch all listed Castro's Cuba as among the worst violators of human rights on the planet, while the Committee to Protect Journalists condemned the harassment and imprisonment of journalists.

'Fake news'? Judge for yourself who the faker is.  Let me make my position on "fake news" clear.  It does exist.  It is most evident in the revolving door between politics and the media — a phenomenon that doesn't bother the establishment media or establishment politics one little bit. [...] When political activists can move seamlessly from election campaigns to directing newsrooms and back again, the line between news and political agitprop is blurred to the point of journalistic prostitution.  Yet, it takes place at ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, the New York Times, the Washington Post and every other corporate media outlet, as well as the semi-official, government-subsidized mouthpieces like NPR and PBS.

The Pathological Intolerance of the Left.  [Scroll down]  Of course, CNN's Chistianne Amanpour weighed in with a speech to The Committee to Protect Journalists, those privileged but beleaguered victims of bias and violence. [...] She rails against "fake news sites."  Those would be the ones with which she and her fellow journos disagree.  That would be any site with conservative views reporting or commenting on the issues the left considers settled and beyond debate.  It is Amanpour and her ilk that broadcast fake news, like "Hillary will win in a landslide."  Every word out of their mouths is propaganda meant to sway public opinion.  That is how stupid they think American citizens are.  So stupid that we do not see them for exactly what they are:  elitist snobs who believe it is their job to dictate to us how to think, act, speak, and vote.

Media Finally Admit They Have a Credibility Problem, Face Industry-Wide Trust Crisis.  Several top reporters at establishment media outlets are finally admitting, more than two weeks after the election, that their industry has a credibility problem and has much work to do to regain the trust of their readers in the wake of Republican Donald J. Trump's landslide electoral college victory over Democrat Hillary Rodham Clinton.

An Obituary of The New York Times.  Working with the government to suppress stories, covering up election fraud in the ruling party and ruthlessly campaigning against the main US opposition leader, The New York Times has sentenced itself to wither away into irrelevance.  Remembered only in history books as a relic of the Cold War, much like its sister newspaper Pravda of the Soviet Union.

32 Times Establishment Media and Pollsters Assured the People of Donald Trump's Defeat.  From the time Donald Trump announced his White House bid, there has been no shortage of establishment media outlets predicting his defeat.  Indeed, as the weeks and months marked Trump's ever-apparent political preeminence, the pundits, pollsters, and prognosticators doubted and declared his collapse inevitable.  Even as Trump, a real estate mogul-turned-reality TV star, clinched the Republican presidential nomination, the affirmations of his failure kept coming.  The very establishment media and pollsters who benefitted from Trump's celebrity before branding him leader of a deplorable political base will stand against his governance.

Liberal media OK with normalizing Iran and pedophiles; Trump is a step too far.  The liberal press is fretting it will begin to "normalize" President-elect Donald Trump, that is, to treat him like any other president-elect in the history of America. [...] OK then.  The liberal press' mission — its renewed mission — is to continue doggedly pursue Mr. Trump to convince the American people just how bad he really is (those 60 million plus who elected him, didn't seem to get it the first time around).  Mr. Trump can't be normalized — he's too dangerous.  But Iran can.  Pedophiles can.  Pornographers can.  Here's a list of five instances where the liberal media sought to normalize the truly indefensible.

How Journalism Turns Into Propaganda.  President-elect Donald Trump's win proved how useless is the current state of journalism for investigating and conveying real news about real people.  And that's putting it kindly.  Not only were mainstream journalists blind to the pain of so many in the country — particularly the long-neglected Rust Belt voters who showed up in droves to elect Trump — but they shamelessly cheered Hillary Clinton's campaign and smeared all Trump voters while doing so. [...] But the high level of collusion we see today between Democrat power elites and the media goes back a long time.  The collusion continues post-election, as the media gives lopsided coverage to angry anti-Trump protests organized by Moveon.org, which are stirring up calls for violence.

Media Malpractice?  Media Bias And The 2016 Election.  As Election Day demonstrated, the contentious 2016 presidential campaign witnessed a stunning uprising of the people against the Washington establishment and political elite.  This was not the only revolt that transpired Nov. 8, however.  Election Day also represented a victory of the American people over the establishment news media, as they repudiated its liberal bias and attempt at influencing the election.

Obama Squelched Press Coverage of the White House.  Trump Should Not Follow Suit.  [Scroll down]  Most conservatives' first reaction will be laughter.  Their second reaction will be cheering.  After all, the vast majority of these media figures covered not just Trump but Republicans unfairly for years.  This is the same cast of characters that somehow turned Mitt Romney, a deeply honorable human being, into a cruel sexist carrying around binders full of women, strapping dogs to the top of cars, and forcibly cutting the hair of closeted gay teens.  They deserve it.  The media have obviously destroyed their own credibility.  Polls show that nearly seven in ten Americans don't trust the media.  That lack of trust meant that even solidly researched stories about Trump were routinely ignored during the election cycle.  Trump's slamming the media isn't out of bounds on a moral level.

The Simple Reasons Americans No Longer Listen To Reporters.  No one is listening to reporters these days.  Their approval rating sits at an all-time low, their worst nightmares are unfolding before them, and despite their most dire warnings, the American populace is largely unmoved.  Why?  Panicked clamors instead of measured reporting, shrill cries disguised as honest evaluations, and a level of hyperbole that is simply astonishing.  One would think reporters would have realized this by now, but not even their self-proclaimed truth-sayer, Bill Maher, could get around his own head.

Mainstream Media Recap:  Who Colluded With the Clinton Campaign?  In April 2015, the Clinton campaign held a private dinner party with at least 65 journalists and pundits in attendance.  Individuals from CNN, CBS, The New York Times, NBC, MSNBC and more came together under the campaign's stated goal of "framing the race" to help Clinton win.  Many of the above media outlets were indeed the Clinton campaign's biggest surrogates throughout the 2016 presidential election.  This past election cycle was unprecedented in terms of the bias and lack of objectivity exercised by the mainstream media.  The emphasis on mainstream media blaming "fake news" for Donald Trump's election is an attempt to distract and divert the feedback loop developed between the Clinton campaign and much of the press.  Throughout the 2016 election, the media obsessed over Trump to elevate his candidacy.  He was their preferred opponent for Hillary Clinton — after they had thoroughly subverted Sen. Bernie Sanders' campaign for the Democratic nomination.

The New War on Conservative Media.  Remember when Hillary Clinton won a landslide victory?  The fake news media which predicted it in order to depress pro-Trump voter turnout certainly does.  And so they're out to fight "fake news."  By fake news, they don't mean their own raging torrent of misinformation and lies.  The media has gone to war against Facebook.  While various supporters have blamed Hillary's loss on everything from the FBI to internalized misogyny, the media has decided that Facebook is to blame.  Why Facebook?  Cable news is dying.  Newspapers struggle online and offline.  The mainstream media's profitability lives and dies by social media.  But the essence of social media is that it allows communities to shape what they see.  That's a terrifying idea if you're a media conglomerate that depends on its megaphone.  But it's also scary if you're a leftist running for office in a country that doesn't agree with your views.

TV reporter fired after writing Facebook post praising Trump.  A Texas television reporter is out of a job after she criticized President Obama and praised President-elect Donald Trump on her personal Facebook page — claiming the country went "downhill" under the outgoing commander-in-chief.  Scarlett Fakhar said she was recently canned from her local news gig at Fox in Houston for posting last week that she was "happy and relieved" over Trump's unexpected White House win.  Fakhar had said in the post, which has since been deleted, that Obama made the "entire county hate one another" and claimed God "had a hand" in the election.  She also said she could "barely sleep from how happy and relieved she was" after Trump's victory over Hillary Clinton.

Outrage as reporter is sacked for praising Donald Trump and criticising Obama.  A US reporter has been sacked after she praised President-Elect Donald Trump and criticised President Obama for making the "entire country hate one another".  In a Facebook post that has since been deleted, Scarlett Fakhar, a Fox 26 Houston journalist, said "God had a hand" in the election and she could "barely sleep from how happy and relieved she was" after Trump's election victory.

Tucker Carlson Eviscerates Journalist Smearing Jeff Sessions As Racist.  Tucker Carlson eviscerated one of the journalists accusing Jeff Sessions of being racist on his new primetime show on Fox News Friday, saying bluntly the column on the Republican senator is "one of the most unfair things I think I've ever read."  "I mean, it's almost like a pure download from the DNC website," Carlson, who co-founded The Daily Caller, said to Roll Call columnist Jonathan Allen.  In a recent column arguing Sessions is "unfit" for any cabinet post in Donald Trump's administration, Allen accuses the senator of being racist.  Trump reportedly offered him the post of attorney general Thursday [11/17/2016].

Watch as Tucker Carlson reams MSM reporter for acting as DNC stenographer attacking Jeff Sessions.  Members of the mainstream media still are having a hard time understanding that the old days in which they could get away with pretending to be journalists, not propagandists, are fading into memory.  Donald Trump called their bluff, WikiLeaks exposed the level of conspiracy between Democrat leaders and  journalists  propagandists, and the American people confounded the media and supported Trump and Republicans down the ticket.  Nobody is taking better advantage of the new relationship between  journalists  propagandists and the voting public than Tucker Carlson.

Pat Caddell:  CNN 'Smearing' Trump Supporters — 'They Just Call Everybody a Racist'.  Political analyst Pat Caddell told Breitbart News Daily on SiriusXM on Friday [11/18/2016], "They just call everybody a racist," referring to CNN.  Caddell called the network "outrageous."  Caddell said, "What they have not admitted is their complicity in Hillary Clinton's campaign, or their unbelievable bias, and worse, their smearing of people, including Steve Bannon and others so that they could make some political points."  He laid the blame on having someone from Hollywood like Jeff Zucker running the network.  "I don't think it will go very well if that continues," said Caddell.

Top 10 Reasons George Soros Is Dangerous.  [#4] Media Matters:  Soros is a financial backer of Media Matters for America, a progressive media watchdog group that hyperventilates over any conservative view that makes it into the mainstream media.  Now its founder, David Brock, has openly declared war on Fox News, telling Politico that the group was mounting "guerrilla warfare and sabotage" against the cable news channel, and would try to disrupt the commercial interests of owner Rupert Murdoch — an odd mission for a 501(c)(3) tax-exempt educational foundation that is barred from participating in partisan political activity.

Post-Election Poll: 69% of Voters Don't Believe News Media Are Honest and Truthful.  A new post-election survey by YouGov shows that 69% of U.S. voters do not believe the news media are honest and truthful, and 78% of voters believe news coverage of the presidential race was biased, the Media Research Center, which sponsored the survey, reported today [11/15/2016].  "The media are in full panic mode because the American people rejected their leftist agenda — and them," said MRC President Brent Bozell in a Nov. 15 statement about the poll.  "People didn't believe the nonsense that the media were politically neutral.  Even a third of Hillary's supporters believe they were pro-Hillary!"

Drown Out the Lying MSM.  Older readers may remember an era when the media generally reported facts and left spin to the mind of the viewer, or at least wasn't so crookedly biased.  In accurately predicting President-Elect Trump's victorious path through Michigan and Pennsylvania, I indicated that the media was distorting polling numbers deliberately to keep Trump supporters from bothering to vote.  While Trump won an electoral landslide, only a relatively small chunk of votes made the difference in those two states and in Florida.  Yes, the lying, propagandizing jackals in media nearly won the election for Clinton.  They decided to hang together up until the bitter end, and are now predictably circling the wagons trying to figure out what went wrong.  Everyone knew there was a secret Trump vote, and they still lied. [...] Do you enjoy being lied to?  Or do you have to watch sports so badly that you're willing to fork over $150 per month for a cable or dish subscription that directly funds people who hate you and everything you believe in and want to mislead you, all while insulting you to your face?

Trump must ignore the media and trust his gut.  Here's my advice to President-elect Donald Trump:  When it comes to the media, don't listen.  Ignore the haters.  These are the same people who, as WikiLeaks exposed, were openly colluding with Hillary Clinton's campaign in violation of every ethical standard they are supposed to honor and uphold.

Exit Polls Prove the National Media Was Soundly Defeated By New Media.  While you read the following data from the 2016 exit polls, it is bigly important that you remember the last 18 months of election coverage that emanated from our elite national political media.  Also, keep in mind that like pretty much everything else that came from the national media, these exit polls turned out to be wrong, and if any of the numbers below are wrong, they are so in Trump's favor.

WikiLeaks emails reveal media whores' private dinners with Hillary Clinton campaign officials.  We know the word "whore" means prostitute.  But "whore" also has these other meanings:  Debase oneself by doing something for unworthy motives, typically to make money.  (Oxford Dictionaries)  An individual who compromises his or her principles for personal gain.  (Urban Dictionary)  By those definitions, many in the MSM are whores for Hillary Clinton.

About those rioters.  For many months, the LeftMedia have been warning that Trump supporters were so clearly violent they would likely riot when he lost the election.  The media were salivating at the ratings triumph of this imagined scenario.  They knew that it was coming, and it was going to validate their contempt for Trump and anyone who supported him.  So prevalent was the conviction that Trump was going to lose, and lose badly, that Chris Wallace, in the last debate, asked Trump if he would concede if he lost.  It never occurred to him to ask Clinton the same question.  Of course it didn't.  The media have been of one mind this past year and a half, including Fox News; Clinton was a shoe-in.  The Donald did not have a chance.  Not only would Clinton win, but the Senate and maybe even the House would fall back into Democrat hands.

The Media and the Pollsters have lost their clout by incompetence and deceit.  The entire media, even Fox news, reflected the bias against Trump, a bias well-documented in the Wikileaks disclosures of the Podesta emails, showing the media conniving to feed Clinton debate questions and coordinating their coverage with Hillary and the DNC. [...] Newsweek, which last sold for one dollar, was forced to recall 125,000 copies of its souvenir Madam President edition.  We're just not so into you fools any more.  And apparently even the editor of the NYT — the paper which published a piece suggesting it was okay for journalists to abandon objective reporting to help Hillary, has now relented and said "that the paper would "reflect" on its coverage of this year's election while rededicating itself to reporting on "America and the world" honestly."  Online friends remain skeptical of this new found "humility" of the formerly dominant media.

Trump outsmarts media as he sets sights on Obama's divisive, racialist policies.  [Donald Trump] overcame all the odds, beat back both political parties, jumped around all the powerful special interest industries that own Washington and scored an unprecedented victory for the people.  And he did it all while circumventing the massive media machine that worked in lockstep unison to block him at every turn.  Every mainstream newspaper and television outlet — after months of gorging themselves at the profit trough of his monster ratings — shirked all pretense of covering the election fairly.

This Was A Massive Repudiation of the Press.  [Scroll down]  This is why the pundits got it all wrong.  They believed the media and their spin, not just on the coronation of Hillary Clinton, but more important, on America's repudiation of Donald Trump.  They saw Trump's voters just as the Clinton campaign saw them:  a basket of deplorables.  All season long the pro-Hillary press treated Trump's followers with utter contempt.  At the same time the leftwing media were giving aid and comfort to Hillary Clinton, covering up her scandals when they could, spinning them in her favor when they couldn't.  Don't anyone here deny it.  We documented it all season long.  What we saw is what the public saw.  In fact, conservatives heard top leftist reporters like Jorge Ramos calling on the news media — yes, the news media — to take sides against Donald Trump.

The Democrat Media Complex Will Never Understand What Happened Tuesday Night.  The morning after the election, I was asked by a lifelong Democrat friend of mine what my thoughts were.  I told her that my big takeaway was the that media managed to make me respect it less and despise it more even though this was an election cycle where I had no emotional investment whatsoever in a candidate.  It's not just the bias, although I will never condone that while they're pretending to be neutral observers.  It's the overwhelming ignorance displayed by a group of people who truly believe themselves to be the smartest ones in the room.  It's like an island populated by people who are four feet tall and have never met anyone else:  they all think they're giants.

A Blow to the Non-Elite Elite.  There were a lot of losers in this election, well beyond Hillary Clinton and the smug, incompetent pollsters and know-it-all, groupthink pundits who embarrassed themselves. [...] Journalists often violated their own ethics codes during the campaign.  Political analyst Donna Brazile even leaked debate topics to the Clinton team.  Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank reportedly asked the Democratic National Committee to provide him with anti-Trump research.

The People Are Laughing at the Liberal Media.  Members of the media continue to talk among themselves, as if they had not been repudiated by the people on November 8.  Mass firings and new faces are needed if the media are going to have any hope of regaining any credibility with the public. [...] Reid Wilson of The Hill newspaper calculated that Clinton got 57 newspaper endorsements and Trump got only 2.  In addition to The Washington Post and The New York Times, which both endorsed Hillary, some of the other notable losers included:
  •   The Columbus Dispatch endorsed a Democrat (for the first time since Woodrow Wilson), and urged voters to elect Hillary.  Ohio went for Trump anyway.
  •   The Akron Beacon said that Hillary was the change this country needed.
  •   The Cincinnati Enquirer broke a century-old tradition to endorse Hillary.
  •   The Sun Sentinel editorial board urged Floridians to vote for Hillary.  Florida went for Trump.
  •   The Arizona Republic broke a 120-year tradition to endorse Hillary.  Arizona went for Trump.
  •   The Dallas Morning News broke a 75-year tradition of supporting Republicans to endorse Hillary.  Texas went for Trump anyway.
  •   The Houston Chronicle, the largest newspaper in Texas, usually backs Republicans but endorsed Hillary.

CNN's Camerota: 'Why Does President Obama Have to Be Gracious' to Trump?  On Thursday's New Day, during a panel discussion of the scheduled meeting at the White House between President Barack Obama and President-elect Donald Trump, and whether the two would be cordial despite their differences, co-host Alisyn Camerota at one point wondered why it is that President Obama "has to be gracious" to Trump instead of just sending an intern to meet him.

Roll Up Your Sleeves, Deplorables.  A theme is reverberating on this, the Day After, and it goes like this:  The media are buffoons who so obviously got everything wrong.  How could anyone trust them ever again?  All of the Network Gurus (save FOX's) staved off the Trumpocalypse for as long as they could on Tuesday evening [11/8/2016], keeping those delegate counts artificially inflated on the side of Hillary Clinton.  But their long faces told the tale, which was being whispered into their earpieces.  Now those same Gurus are temporarily owning the fact that yes, they failed to see this coming, and today they are reaching for explanations.

Liberal Media Are "Second-Biggest Losers" of the Election; "They Cheated and Got Caught".  Appearing on Fox Business Network's Varney & Co., MRC founder and president Brent Bozell said the liberal media were the second-biggest losers on election night:  "They were crushed.  They were the second-biggest losers.  But the difference between them and Hillary Clinton is that their loss continues.  She is finished, but they still stay in the game.  They have a public that simply repudiated them.  The public didn't distinguish between her calling them a basket of deplorable and the media treating them like a basket of deplorables."

Liberal journalists are biggest losers in Trump victory.  To most journalists, the election of Donald Trump is Mourning in America.  Trump won despite a massive effort by the liberal media establishment to discredit and destroy him, and they were still at it early Wednesday morning, even as it became obvious that they'd utterly failed to derail his candidacy.  On CBS, Slate columnist Jamelle Bouie painted the anti-Washington wave that carried Trump to victory as a racist "push-back against the advancement of African-Americans, of Hispanics, of women, of Muslim-Americans."  On MSNBC, co-anchor Rachel Maddow also played the race card:  "I'm thinking about President Obama too.  I mean, to have the first African American President succeeded by a guy who was endorsed by the KKK....it's a big deal."  The Stop Trump effort among journalists has played out in newspapers and on TV screens for months now.

Disrupters Were Journalism's Winners in the 2016 Election.  [Scroll down]  Judicial Watch is a conservative gadfly, yes, but it is acting more like a newsroom staffed by lawyers — a scary thought, to the government at the very least.  With an ample, donor-funded war chest, the nonprofit is taking journalists to school in deploying one of their most valued weapons, the Freedom of Information Act, doing so more effectively than any news organization in recent memory.  Mainstream news organizations are happy to take its costly court-won revelations and run with them.  So it's not surprising that its President, Tom Fitton, nominated Judicial Watch for three Pulitzer Prizes last year[.]  (It was disqualified because it was ruled to be an advocacy group, Fitton told the Pulitzer-laden New York Times).

The Editor says...
One could easily argue that the New York Times is also an advocacy group.

Journalists Celebrated Obama's 2008 Victory, Mourned Trump's 2016 Win.  For supposedly non-partisan reporters of the news, journalists sure reacted differently to President Obama's election in 2008 and Trump's election in 2016.  Obama's election was a "leap towards something better and uniting our country as never before in our history," according to MSNBC's resident Obama-super fan Chris Mathews, on the Sunday before election day eight years ago.  But early Wednesday morning, Matthew's colleague Andrea Mitchell frowned at Hillary's defeat, calling it "history put on hold yet again."  Earlier in that same segment, NBC Today co-host Savannah Guthrie shared this same sentiment:  "Hillary Clinton's attempt to break the ultimate glass ceiling in politics" was "a presidential bid that once again fell short."

Don't Get Comfortable Mainstream Media — You're Next!  In the following video, I set the record straight on many of the patently false narratives that have been forced on the American people by the very people and institutions We the People depend on for accurate information.  Much of it will shock the average viewer who has relied on the mainstream for their knowledge of Donald Trump. [...] One thing is certain:  Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, the Democrat Party, and their machine have turned Washington into more of a cesspool of lies and corruption than Hollywood would be able to pull off in a typical fiction movie, and they finally pushed the sleeping giant too far.  [Video clip]

The unbearable smugness of the press.  The mood in the Washington press corps is bleak, and deservedly so.  It shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone that, with a few exceptions, we were all tacitly or explicitly #WithHer, which has led to a certain anguish in the face of Donald Trump's victory.  More than that and more importantly, we also missed the story, after having spent months mocking the people who had a better sense of what was going on.  This is all symptomatic of modern journalism's great moral and intellectual failing: its unbearable smugness.  Had Hillary Clinton won, there's [sic] be a winking "we did it" feeling in the press, a sense that we were brave and called Trump a liar and saved the republic.

Concerns grow of press kept at bay during Donald Trump presidency.  Mr. Trump, who at campaign rallies regularly denounced the news media as "the most dishonest people you'll ever meet," has support for breaking the tradition and keeping the public in the dark about his daily whereabouts.  "I don't think Trump needs the press pool," said Rep. Duncan Hunter, a California Republican who is a top Trump ally on Capitol Hill.  "He didn't need it when he ran and he doesn't need it as president of the United States."  Mr. Hunter said the news media brought it upon themselves.  "If I had just won the election after everyone said I'd lose and rooted for my opponent, why would I give anyone the time of day," said Mr. Hunter.

The Editor says...
The news media tried their best to elect Hillary Clinton.  Now they can't understand why Trump doesn't trust them.

Trump Win Exposes Media's Smug Failures.  The media turned itself into the opposition and, accordingly, was voted down as the new political reality emerged: [...] Not only did the media get almost everything about this presidential election wrong, but it became the central issue, or the stand-in for all those issues, that the great new American Trump Party voted against.  The transmutation of political identities has arguably devolved into two parties:  the Trump one, the angry retro people, and the Media Party, representing the smug modern people, each anathema to and uncomprehending of the other.  Certainly, there was no moment in the campaign where the Media Party did not see itself as a virtuous and, most often, determinative factor in the race.

Why Hillary and Bill are the Mafia mobsters of US politics.  [Scroll down]  But it is the rancid stench of corruption surrounding the Clintons which pervades the air.  For once, Donald Trump didn't need to resort to hyperbole when he compared Hillary's behaviour to the Watergate scandal.  You'd think this story would be dominating the news agenda in the days leading up to tomorrow's election.  But outside of the Murdoch-owned Wall Street Journal and Fox News, which first reported the ongoing FBI investigations into the Foundation, it has been largely ignored by the Clinton cheerleaders in the mainstream media.  I've been covering U.S. elections for 25 years and have never seen such partisan Press and television coverage.  We moan about the perceived liberal bias of the BBC, but in America most of the media outlets make Pravda look impartial.

The Trust Vacuum.  Revelations the press has been clearing questions with the DNC, coaching Hillary through interviews and in acting as her political agents motivated John Nolte to write:  "national media now sees itself as part of the government".  It is part of the Narrative, along with everything else.  It's not news, it's a paid political advertisement.  "And here is the consequence of all this," he adds:  people have lost faith in everything.  Museums, churches, universities, perhaps even the FBI.  But the media's betrayal, given its former role as America's secular church was the unkindest cut of all.  Jeffrey Gedmin, formerly of Radio Free Europe, notes that Russian disinformation has never been so influential as it is today.

TV Critic:  The Biggest Loser of the 2016 Campaign Is The Media.  Baltimore Sun TV critic David Zurawik is turning heads by already proclaiming the Biggest Loser of the 2016 presidential election.  He says it's ...the media. [...] A strong consensus is forming against CNN's formula of putting paid partisans on the set.  After all, you don't have to pay partisans to get them to accept an invitation to spin on their party's or candidate's behalf.

Florida newspaper apologizes for anti-Donald Trump bias.  A Florida daily newspaper is apologizing to readers for not being objective enough in its coverage of Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump.  The Daily Commercial, which serves Lake and Sumter counties, recently issued a "mea culpa" admitting that it hadn't taken a balanced-enough approach to the 2016 presidential election.  "Because we have limited space and resources, smaller papers are generally limited to covering the horse race — the day in-day out happenings on the campaign trail," the paper explained in an open letter.

The Votes Are In — The Media Lost The Election.  The louder Don Lemon, Anderson Cooper, and Andrea Mitchell scold voters for daydreaming of committing heresies against democracy in the voting booth on November 8, the firmer viewers press that internal mute button in their minds.  A liberal-bias Laffer Curve demonstrates that the more journalists allow their preferences to override objectivity, the more viewers filter out spin from information and tune out advocacy.

Requiem for responsible journalism.  When the campaign smoke clears after Election Day, and Americans see the president they elected, the reputation of the media will lie among the ruins.  The art of journalism has taken a pasting as a source of credible information.  Masters of the press can blame only themselves, but they won't do that.  The losers are the innocent and naive who think the media preserves the distinction between fact and fiction.  The notion that the press should give light and let the people find their own way has evaporated in the newsrooms.

On The Upside, At Least This Election Will Destroy The Media.  Liberal journalists, by which I mean journalists, do not think you should know things that hurt their favored candidate.  This is an interesting new take on the whole idea of "news reporting," an innovative rethink that refocuses journalists less on ensuring people hear the news and instead focuses on ensuring they only hear certain news that, incidentally, supports the media's progressive political agenda.  So we get fact checking that involves neither facts nor checking.

Just how biased is the media against Donald Trump?  Media bias in political coverage is hardly new.  Going back to the muck-racking days of "yellow journalism", newspapers have expressed clearly partisan slants in the way they cover candidates to higher office.  And going back at least to the early 20th Century, that bias has tended, at least generally speaking, to favor candidates professing a progressive agenda.  This election season, however, appears to be have reached new levels of slanted coverage, one media watchdog says, with a report showing negative news coverage of Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump outweighing positive coverage by a whopping 11-to-1 margin.

This presidential race is the low-water mark of American journalism.  However it ends, the 2016 presidential race will mark the low-water mark of journalism that is worthy of the First Amendment.  Never before have so many media organizations, old and new, abandoned all pretense of fairness to take sides and try to pick a president.  Their cozy confederacy with the incumbent political faction is largely in opposition to public will.  Although polls show a tight race for the White House, studies find staggeringly lopsided coverage, with Donald Trump getting far more negative coverage than Hillary Clinton.

Major Newspaper Makes Unprecedented Confession About Trump.  A newspaper in Central Florida just did something unprecedented:  they apologized to their readers for the extremely biased coverage against GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump.  You have to see it to believe it.

Reform the Mainstream News Media.  Remember when Marco Rubio drank some water while giving the Republican response to the president's 2013 State of the Union address?  Remember how CNN ran a picture of the Florida Senator taking his sip with a chyron reading:  "Career Ender"? [...] So my question is this, if a drink of water threatens the career of a Republican, what happens when a former Democrat congressman makes sexual Twitter advances to a minor causing the FBI to seize the computer of his wife, the Democrat presidential candidate's aide and a woman with ties to radical Islam, and the said computer is found to contain emails that potentially exposed classified information to our enemies so that said candidate could hide her likely influence peddling?  Worse than a sip of water?  Better?  I'm asking for a friend.

By Overwhelming 10-1, Public Thinks Media Want Clinton to Win.  Two national polls released late in the week confirmed the public widely recognizes the news media's agenda in favor of Hillary Clinton and decidedly against Donald Trump, a reality documented in a NewsBusters study earlier in the week.  "By nearly 10-1, all those surveyed say the news media, including major newspapers and TV stations, would like to see Clinton rather than Trump elected," Susan Page and Karina Shedrofsky reported deep into a Thursday [10/27/2016] USA Today story on the latest USA Today/Suffolk University poll on the Clinton-Trump race.

Time for Newspapers to Retract Endorsements for Hillary.  Look far and wide and you'll find that nearly every major newspaper in the country has endorsed Hillary Clinton for president.  But surprise!  The ongoing Wikileaks dumps, coupled with the re-opening of the FBI's investigation regarding Clinton's reckless use of emails, shows the unbelievable and indisputable corruption of Mrs. Clinton's during her tenure as Secretary of State and that of the Clinton Foundation.  The sordid behavior of the Clintons as they wormed their way to massive wealth is finally breaking into the consciousness of the general public, and it stinks to high heaven.

State Dept Told 'Friendly' AP Reporters About Missing Hillary Emails Before Congress.  Department of State officials told Hillary Clinton campaign staffers they would leak a story about missing Benghazi investigation emails to a "friendly" Associated Press reporter before Congress "has a chance to realize what they have."

Why is the media barely covering Wikileaks?  Because almost 100% of mainstream media sources, as well as several prominent publishing news sources are implicated in the leaks in colluding with the Clinton campaign.  These "news" sources (as you will find in the leaks below) have conspired to get Hillary elected, by only reporting anti-Trump smear pieces, manufacturing or exaggerating scandals, and hiding anything damaging to Hillary.  Most are even donating big money to the Clinton campaign in order to keep the globalist status-quo.  These revelations are the stories journalists dream of, but CNN, ABC, NBC, MSNBC, New York Times, Washington Post, Politico, Huffington Post, AP, and several more are all implicated in the leaks.  This is why the media has been so one sided this election season, and why only 6% of people trust the mainstream media.  Trump hasn't helped with some past comments, but as CNN said here, the media is doing everything they can to help Hillary and give her a free ride.

Conservatives Look For a New Network.  With the far-left Huffington Post proclaiming openly gay Shepard Smith as "the future" of Fox News, many conservatives are looking elsewhere for news and information.  Almost on cue, it has been announced that a new digital conservative TV channel called CRTV is launching this December that will be featuring Mark Levin, Michelle Malkin and Mark Steyn.  There is also talk of "Trump TV."

American's Trust in Media Sinks to a New Low.  Americans' trust and confidence in the mass media "to report the news fully, accurately and fairly" has dropped to its lowest level in Gallup polling history, with 32% saying they have a great deal or fair amount of trust in the media.  This is down eight percentage points from last year.

NBC, Chuck Todd Hide Wife's Kaine Donation, and Her Firm Getting Millions from Bernie Campaign.  NBC Meet the Press host Chuck Todd has a wife who's active in Democratic Party strategic communications, and sometimes donates to Democrats.  In 2012, Kristian Denny Todd contributed $2,500 to Sen. Tim Kaine.  Todd never felt any need to disclose this during his three recent Kaine interviews on NBC (August 7, September 18, and October 23).  But Maverick Mail & Strategies, the firm Mrs. Todd founded in 2007 with fellow James Webb aides Steve Jarding and Jessica Vanden Berg, did heavy lifting for openly socialist Bernie Sanders for President this year.  Open Secrets shows a bill for $1.992 million made in ten payments to Maverick from January to April.  Todd has never disclosed this business relationship in 11 Sanders interviews this year.

"Amerca's Morning News" All in for Hillary.  I was listening to the radio when America's Morning News came on with some election "news".  It was essentially a campaign ad for Hillary Clinton disguised as "news".  It dwelt on the made up "scandal" of Trump accusers that have been mostly debunked.  Not a single word about the multiple Hillary scandals from exposing U.S. classified information, pay for play as Secretary of State, transferring half a million dollars to the campaign of the wife of the FBI individual who was supposed to be investigating Hillary, and on and on.  I have never seen the full force of the organized media so completely all in for one candidate before.

If The Media Investigated Hillary Like They Did Watergate, We Wouldn't Need WikiLeaks.  It has now been more than four decades since the Washington Post and New York Times led the charge to bring down Richard Nixon and his administration's massive web of corruption and political subterfuge schemes.  They did so by aggressively and tirelessly seeking out the truth, and reporting back to the American people clearly and comprehensively.  Today, both publications have become willing accomplices in suppressing the same type of information they worked so tenaciously to expose all those years ago.  By openly and unapologetically acting as institutional surrogates for the Clinton campaign, these same institutions, and nearly every other mainstream media outlet in America, have gone hands-off in exposing what may very well turn out to be the most explosive and damaging corruption scandal in American politics since "Tricky Dick" was reelected back in '72.

Can You Trust The Press?  I remember several years ago when there were complaints that young people were going to journalism school, not to learn how to accurately report the news, but with the idea that journalism would allow them to change the world.  That unfortunate misconception has played out as your see.  However, the world of information has changed.  [Video clip]

Brazile's Deception and the Big Media Lie.  It "pains" Jordan Chariton at Mediaite to say so, but "Trump is right — the [news] media is dishonest."  WikiLeaks has exposed the "jarring ... alliance between supposedly neutral 'analysts' and 'journalists' with Hillary Clinton."  Case in point:  interim Democratic National Committee chair Donna Brazile, who was exposed "tipping off the Clinton campaign to a CNN town hall question she'd be asked the next day."  (She denies it.)  But Brazile is just one in a "long list of phony 'analysts' and 'strategists' — as well as anchors and reporters — who were clearly in-the-tank for Hillary Clinton all along."  The "wider media lie" is that what you see on-air "is being delivered by neutral arbiters and journalists."

Matthews Confronts NYT Reporter On Bias:  Know Any Pro-Life Reporters?  MSNBC host Chris Matthews confronted a New York Times reporter on media bias during a "Hardball" segment Monday, asking whether she knows anyone at the paper who is pro-life.  "And really this is something I think that is kind of an effective argument," NYT reporter Yamiche Alcindor told Matthews, referring to GOP nominee Donald Trump's argument the "elite media" is biased against him and is helping rig the election.  "Because people really do feel when they go and get the news that they are really getting it from these people who have some sort of plan to rig this election, or rig the economy, or don't want to cover the real issues."

Why I Now Feel Compelled To Vote For Trump.  Bias has always been a factor in journalism.  It's nearly impossible to remove.  Humans have their thoughts, and keeping them out of your work is difficult.  But 2016 saw the remaining veneer of credibility, thin as it was, stripped away and set on fire.  More than anything, I can't sit idly by and allow these perpetrators of fraud to celebrate and leak tears of joy like they did when they helped elect Barack Obama in 2008. I have to know I weighed in not only in writing but in the voting booth.  The media needs to be destroyed.  And although voting for Trump won't do it, it's something.

The Mainstream Partisan Media Is Going Too Far.  The partisan media is insisting that the election is all over, Hillary has won, and there's no need for you backwards Trump voters to bother anymore.  The polls all confirm that Hillary has won, except they actually don't.  ABC just said that Hillary has opened up her widest lead yet, popping up to confirm my first paragraph.  Hillary wanted to run against Trump, as she thought him the easiest to defeat, and the partisan media cooperated all during the Republican debates by focusing entirely on Trump and not really giving the other 16 candidates much of a chance to get a word in.  Hillary told another of her whoppers, claiming that 17 of our intelligence services had verified that Wikileaks was a Russian production and suggesting that they were trying to get Trump elected.  Not true.