It’s just been announced that not a single person watched a network evening news show in the 17th largest U.S. city, Fort Worth, Texas, in 2009-2010.  Not one. Plus, about ten thousand visitors who happened to be in hotels there didn’t watch the ABC, CBS or NBC evening news.  They all tuned out.

That’s roughly equivalent to the 739,000 people who have stopped watching Brian, Katie and Diane in the last year according to TVNEWSER, as compared to earlier statistics.

The ratings are in the for just-completed 2009-2010 network evening news season. And when compared to 2008-2009 season “NBC Nightly News” ABC’s “World News” and the “CBS Evening News” have lost a combined 739,000 Total Viewers and a combined 338,000 A25-54 viewers.

CBS’s “Perky” Katie Couric alone lost 343,000 viewers. (more…)

“My bosses aren’t interested in tackling the story.”  That’s what a top investigative reporter at a major Chicago newspaper said when I asked why the story of Annabel Melongo – former Save A Life Foundation employee turned whistleblower – wasn’t being covered. “We’d have to spend a lot of time to get it right.” The reporter explained how, with a limited staff of investigative reporters tasked to write one “investigative story” each week, there aren’t enough resources to focus on the Melongo case.

And besides, it’d be “covering ground on someone else’s story.” In other words, bloggers have already told the what of Melongo’s incarceration in the Cook County Jail – a nasty place – under a $300,000 bond for “eavesdropping.” The reporter was right about that. But ferreting out the why of her imprisonment as she awaits trial is a different task.

If the Chicago print reporters were interested, they’d follow the money. If resources are so tight, here’s an economical way to do it:

First, add up all the government grants listed by the Chicago suburb-based Save A Life Foundation (SALF) in their Form 990s. That’s the yearly paperwork that 501(c)(3) nonprofits submit to the Illinois Attorney General (AG) and to the IRS. A simple email FOIA (Freedom of Information Act) request to the AG for SALF’s 990’s from its birth in 1993 until it folded last year takes a minute, and the information is free. Their reported government grants total $7,850,777.

Next, add up the dollar amounts of state and federal grants obtained via FOIA requests and email exchanges with agency officials. That number is considerably more than $7,850,777.

So what’s up with the discrepancy? (more…)

On Tuesday, seven bullets believed to have been fired from one or more AK-47s from across the border hit the El Paso City Hall. It was big news in the Texas border town right across the river from Juarez, Mexico, but it earned a collective yawn from the national MSM. What do the East Coast news gods care about us here in Texas anyway?

Folks in El Paso, though, were somewhat offended.  The El Paso Times reported:

EL PASO — Several gunshots apparently fired from Juárez hit El Paso City Hall on Tuesday afternoon.  No one was hurt, but nerves were rattled at City Hall in what is thought to be the first cross-border gunfire during a drug war that has engulfed Juárez since 2008.  El Paso police spokesman Darrel Petry said investigators do not think City Hall was intentionally targeted but rather was struck by stray shots. “It does appear the rounds may have come from an incident in Juárez,” Petry said.

El Paso NBC NewsChannel9 aired a video showing just how close the City Hall is to the site of the shoot out in Mexico.  ABC7 interviewed El Paso residents who live near City Hall. And, KFOX14 got a shot – a camera shot that is – of the circling Blackhawk mentioned below in the El Paso Times.

Authorities said a Mexican federal police officer was killed during an attack by gunmen near a Smart supermarket on Norzagaray boulevard.  Chihuahua state police identified the dead man as Domingo Hernández Espinoza and said that two other people were wounded. Investigators found 40 bullet casings from an AK-47 and other firearms. (more…)

In his June 8, 2010, 7,000-plus word Rolling Stone article entitled “The Spill, The Scandal, and the President,” Tim Dickinson fixed blame for the oil leak in the Gulf, but ignored how the effort to fix the mess it’s causing has been badly mismanaged. In that sense, he hit his intended targets, but missed the mark.

The subtitle of the piece identifies his targets.

The inside story of how Obama failed to crack down on the corruption of the Bush years – and let the world’s most dangerous oil company get away with murder.

The storyline is simple. A notoriously negligent oil company, British Petroleum (BP), plus a corrupt Minerals Management Services (MMS) inherited from Bush, equals The Spill. It’s a variation on the “It’s Bush’s Fault” motif.

Even a Republican Congressman piled on:

It’s tempting to believe that the Gulf spill, like so many disasters inherited by Obama, was the fault of the Texas oilman who preceded him in office. But, though George W. Bush paved the way for the catastrophe, it was Obama who gave BP the green light to drill. “Bush owns eight years of the mess,” says Rep. Darrell Issa, a Republican from California. “But after more than a year on the job, Salazar owns it too.”

(more…)

Drudge Report readers woke up this morning to the news that GOP senatorial candidate Sharron Angle won the Republican primary last night in Nevada.  Associated Press writer Michael R. Blood’s linked piece on Drudge represents the MSM’s template in its upcoming biased reporting against Angle, and other conservative GOP candidates.  It’s all in the language.

Blood’s piece begins:

Nevada Republicans Tuesday picked tea party insurgent Sharron Angle to take on Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid…

“Tea party insurgent.” Blood’s lede links a broad citizen movement with a word that connotes roadside bombs and civilian casualties. Angle is a…

…conservative renegade who wants to turn Washington on end.

Not just a “conservative,” but a “conservative renegade.” When John McCain was a “maverick” – a label first given him by the New York Times – he was the GOP favorite of much of the MSM.  When Barack Obama promised to turn Washington end, he was a “transformational candidate.”  Sharron Angle, though, is a “renegade.” The spin is in the chosen language. (more…)

In 2006, Michael Richards, who played “Kramer” on the Seinfeld series, appropriately apologized for his racist rant at the patrons of a comedy club where he was performing.  He later phoned the Reverends Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson to apologize, even though there was no indication they were at the comedy club when the incident occurred.

Now, alleged comedian Bill Maher has directed racist sarcasm at President Obama. Here’s what Maher said recently on HBO:

I thought when we elected a black president, we were going to get a black president. You know, this [BP oil spill] is where I want a real black president. I want him in a meeting with the BP CEOs, you know, where he lifts up his shirt where you can see the gun in his pants. That’s — (in black man voice) we’ve got a ‘motherfu**ing problem here?’ Shoot somebody in the foot.”

(more…)

Judging by this editorial, the Washington Post chewed on the White House memo written by White House Counsel Robert F. Bauer entitled “Review of Discussions Relating to Congressman Sestak,” and then swallowed it whole.  The title of the WaPo editorial tells the story: “White House transparency could have ended Sestak ’scandal’.”

The WaPo message: If the White House had only told the truth from the beginning, the whole episode could have been avoided. The lead paragraph of the WaPo editorial reads:

Okay, if all the facts are out, then we would agree: Nothing inappropriate happened. On the basis of the memorandum issued Friday by White House counsel Robert F. Bauer, the Joe Sestak job-for-dropping-out-of-Senate-race scandal is a non-scandal — except for the White House’s bungling of the episode. The unnecessary coverup, it turns out, is always worse than the non-crime.

To make its case that no crime was committed, the WaPo props up straw men by noting (1) that the Secretary of the Navy position had already been filled by the time Sen. Arlen Specter changed parties and couldn’t have been offered to Sestak, (2) that the position offered him would have enabled him to keep his House seat, (3) and that the position in question was an unpaid one.

From this, the WaPo concludes: (more…)

May 16, 2010, the day of the now infamous SEIU protest at the home of a Bank of America executive’s home in Chevy Chase, Maryland, also included a less publicized protest at the home of a J.P. Morgan bank executive.  The protests were all about denouncing the “evil banks.”

As reported by the Washington Post:

The controversy surrounds a May 16 protest organized by liberal group National People’s Action and the Service Employees International Union.

According to the NPA’s website,

National People’s Action (NPA) is a Network of community power organizations from across the country that work to advance a national economic and racial justice agenda. NPA has over 200 organizers working to unite everyday people in cities, towns, and rural communities throughout the United States. For 38 years NPA has been a leader in the fight to hold banks accountable to the communities in which they serve and profit.

In the 1970s, National People’s Action spearheaded the fight to pass the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act and the Community Reinvestment Act, widely considered to be among the most transformative public policy to grow out of community organizing.

When you open the window to the organization’s Board of Directors, their names appear under the banner of the umbrella organization, Community Voices Heard, Inc. (CVH).  Then, under the tab, “Strategic Alliances,” NPA appears. (more…)

“To Fisk,” means to refute, point by point, a published story; the verb comes from the left-wing British journalist Robert Fisk, whose slanted dispatches are often ruthlessly “fisked” in the blogosphere. Big Journalism’s comments on the text of the Washington Post’s “Cops Say There Was No ‘Escort’ For Bank Protesters” are in green:

A tempest developed in the conservative blogosphere over the weekend, with the D.C. police at the center of the storm.  the language art of belittling: “a tempest (as in a teapot) developed in the conservative blogosphere.” A bit condescending.

The controversy surrounds a May 16 protest organized by liberal group National People’s Action a group that merits some investigating and the Service Employees International Union. Hundreds of protesters targeted two homes in Chevy Chase, Md. — one belonging to a Bank of America attorney, the other to a J.P. Morgan Chase lobbyist — for raucous rallies decrying Wall Street’s efforts to influence bank-reform legislation.  That’s not what the video clips feature. They feature a wider, anti-capitalist agenda in play.

The protests had already garnered much attention from conservative activists upset that liberal activists would target bank employees at their homes. Then Big Journalism, a Web site started by digital media mogul Andrew Breitbart, published an item on Friday claiming that D.C. police officers had “escorted” the protesters to the residences. The word “escorted” came as Cpl. Dan Friz of the Montgomery County PD and I discussed the right word to describe the MPD’s role. I suggested a couple of options, like “accompanied” and then “how about escorted?” to which he readily agreed and repeated the word.  If they had a vehicle at the front of the caravan, it’s an escort. The item was picked up by influential bloggers, and yesterday, the Washington Examiner published an editorial titled “No more police escorts for union thugs.”  “Thugs” was the Examiner’s characterization. (more…)

Democrat senatorial candidate and sitting Congressman Joe Sestak (D, Pa.) has repeatedly confirmed that he was offered a government position by the Obama Administration in exchange for withdrawing from his eventually successful race against incumbent Senator Arlen Specter for his party’s nomination for the U.S. Senate.

When asked about the alleged bribe, White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs has just as repeatedly claimed to have no knowledge of any such offer made to Sestak.

Title 18, United States Code (USC) Section 211, entitled “Acceptance or solicitation to obtain appointive public office,” reads as follows:

Whoever solicits or receives, either as a political contribution, or for personal emolument, any money or thing of value, in consideration of the promise of support or use of influence in obtaining for any person any appointive office or place under the United States, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than one year, or both.

Whoever solicits or receives any thing of value in consideration of aiding a person to obtain employment under the United States either by referring his name to an executive department or agency of the United States or by requiring the payment of a fee because such person has secured such employment shall be fined under this title, or imprisoned not more than one year, or both. This section shall not apply to such services rendered by an employment agency pursuant to the written request of an executive department or agency of the United States.

Also, the alleged bribe of Sestak may also have violated Federal Campaign Election Laws, specifically section 600 on page 127 which reads: (more…)

Why is the Washington Post ignoring the SEIU protest at the homes of two bank executives, one being an employee of the Bank of America? Aside from a brief mention in a larger story on May 17 about SEIU protests, the paper of record in the nation’s capital has been strangely silent.

Even after the story broke here that the buses that carried an estimated 500 protesters to the Greenville Rd, Chevy Chase residence of a B of A executive were escorted by at least two units of the D.C. Metropolitan Police Department, the incuriosity of the WaPo continues.

This afternoon, all the details of this story were reconfirmed through the Montgomery County Police Department spokesperson, Corporal Daniel Friz.  Meanwhile, two high-level D.C. police officials have disputed their department’s police presence at the B of A executive’s home.

Operating in full CYA mode, the first statement cames from D.C. Chief of Police Cathy Lanier: (more…)

Step aside Governor Palin. The MSM has acquired a new primary target, GOP Kentucky senatorial candidate, Dr. Rand Paul. The host of Sunday’s Meet The Press kicked off the campaign.  So let the spin begin.

Here’s what it sounded like, with Key Spin Language (KSL) underlined, as David Gregory opened the program with his brief monologue.

This Sunday: The politics of anger and the anti-Washington wave.

Anger is KSL. Anger is irrational. It conveys a heat level beyond resistance and opposition.  Anger is wrathful, hot-tempered and indignant. Anger is bad. That’s taught in kindergarten.

Here was Gregory’s intro for the first segment, which focused on Rand Paul’s recent controversial comments about the 1964 Civil Rights Act:

Democrat Albert Arnold Gore, Sr., who filibustered the 1964 Civil Rights Act, with wife and Albert Arnold Gore, Jr.

Good morning.  Super Tuesday 2010 unleashed a new power player within the Republican Party.  But by week’s end, Kentucky Senate candidate Rand Paul, son of former presidential candidate Ron Paul, found the spotlight a little too hot, canceling his appearance on this program and raising doubts about his prospects for the fall.

(more…)

The family of Greg Baer, Bank of America executive, is located in a jurisdiction protected by the Montgomery County Police Department (MCPD), which responded promptly to a disturbance call from his neighborhood last weekend.

According to Corporal Dan Friz, an MCPD spokesperson in Rockville, Maryland, the department received a disturbance call from one of Baer’s neighbors at 4:10 pm last Sunday. Four MCPD units arrived at Baer’s Greenville Rd. address at 4:15 pm.  At least two Metropolitan Police Department units from the nearby District of Columbia were already at the scene when they arrived.

Why? Because police cars attached to the Washington MPD’s Civil Disturbance Unit had escorted the SEIU protesters’ buses to Baer’s home. Such cross-jurisdictional escort activity is not uncommon for both departments according to Friz and Metro Police Department spokesperson Officer Eric Frost.  Still, the District police did not inform their colleagues of what was about to happen in one of their Maryland neighborhoods.

The Maryland officers reported there were approximately 500 protesters on and near the front lawn of Baer’s house.  Montgomery County was not given a “heads-up” concerning the planned protest.  Although a protest permit is technically required in Montgomery County, in practice no citation is issued if the protestors disperse when requested to do so by the owner of the private property they occupy. (more…)

The Chicago media covers Illinois political corruption like crime reporters. They show up at the scene, gather for the perp walk, snap a photo, and cover the trial.  In short, they wait for the story to happen and then accept official explanations with minimum scrutiny.  Consequently, when the Machine gets caught, it’s generally not the media that breaks the story. And it’s been that way in Chicago for a very long time.

Here’s one example of a story gone missing: the strange saga of an FBI mole who interacted with several Chicagoland players, including Barack Obama, associated with the rise-and-fall of Antoin “Tony” Rezko and former Illinois Governor Milorad R. “Rod” Blagojevich.

It starts in the late 1990’s in New York where Bernard Barton, Jr. made “wrong decisions” while running his billboard leasing company. One wrong decision was selling space on billboards he neither owned nor controlled.

According to an FBI affidavit, those “wrong decisions” included Thomas’ drawing more than $350,000 from his customers’ credit cards while he was running a billboard leasing business in Manhattan in the late 1990s. He also charged more than $140,000 to an American Express business account he obtained using his father’s Social Security number.

To mitigate jail time, Barton volunteered to help New York federal prosecutors make a case against organized crime families that were trying to penetrate the billboard business. His offer worked. His sentencing has been delayed… for seven years now. (more…)

Washington Post blogger Greg Sargent, who writes under the by-line The Plum Line, criticizes pollster Whit Ayres for suggesting that the failed Times Square bomb incident gives Republicans a political opportunity.

Sargent closes his blog with:

Ayres is the GOP equivalent of prominent Dem pollster Stan Greenberg of Democracy Corps or John Podesta of the liberal Center for American Progress. If Greenberg or Podesta had explicitly said after the capture of the Shoe Bomber under Bush that it presented Dems with a political opportunity, you can bet that some folks would have made a lot of noise about it.

Here’s what Greg misses: The “Dems” don’t necessarily have to overtly declare a “political opportunity” as long as they have the Post and other MSM outlets to exercise the opportunity for them.

For example, here’s a January 2008 WaPo blog by Andrew Cohen who writes under the by-line Bench Conference: (more…)

If it’s civilly disobedient, disruptive, threatening, hateful, belligerent and occasionally violent and illegal, it must be the Tea Partiers. This we’ve learned from the MSM.

Yesterday, Tea Partiers took a page out of their early American heritage and dressed up in costume to protest Arizona’s immigration law.  This time they pretended to be anti-Arizona protestors.  Here are some photos, and here’s a news report on the incident:

Ideological cross-dressing is not a new tactic deployed by Tea Partiers. Tea Partiers can be seen dressed up as protesting SEIU members in the following clip: (more…)

When CBS 2 News producer Ed Marshall interviewed Republican Senatorial candidate Mark Kirk on May 3, 2010, he revealed his bias in the race that pits Kirk against Democrat Alexi Giannoulias, Illinois Secretary of the Treasury, whose family bank, Broadway Bank, recently went bust.

WLS radio in Chicago noted the exchange between Marshall and Kirk and thought it odd. First, here’s a transcript of Marshall’s comment to Kirk that caught WLS’s attention:

Marshall: “Channel 2’s made a decision. We’re really not going to cover the Senate race if it consistently, only in your terms, is about Broadway Bank. The bank’s been taken over by the government, Alexi’s been pilloried. Tell me: what is your campaign going forward? What are the issues that you are going to tell the voters why they should vote for you?”

Now listen to the WLS’s on-air comments about Marshall’s question here, as a Windy City media mini-fire storm broke out between the two news outlets. (more…)

President Obama’s distain for those associated with the Tea Party movement goes back at least as far as his 100th day in office when he said this:

The President’s mockery has continued with a sustained tone of ridicule that has ratcheted up as the Tea Party movement has spread.  Last month he said this:

According to Jake Tapper in a forthcoming book, Obama blames the GOP’s resistance to the stimulus bill for the opposition against him. It’s all part of his linking the Tea Party movement to the Republicans and, thereby, aiming to make them what they are not – a partisan issue.

Meanwhile, two TV news outlets, shills for Obama since he announced as a candidate for the presidency, are losing their audiences.  According to the New York Times: (more…)

When the nine members of the Hutaree militia group were arrested in late March near Adrian, Michigan, the MSM ran hard with the story.  Within 48 hours, the template was set: A “right-wing extremist Christian” militia group had been planning to wreak havoc by killing law enforcement officers as a way to engage a wider war against the government.

Soon the MSM had the Hutarees tried, convicted and jailed.

Throughout most of April, the story faded from the news and left behind the public assumption that the Hutarees’ diabolical plot had been thwarted by the FBI in the nick of time.

Then, at an April 27 court hearing concerning the group’s disposition as they awaited trial, the lead FBI agent in the case against the Hutarees was called to testify before U.S. District Judge Victoria A. Roberts. That’s when, according to the Detroit News, the government’s case started showing some serious cracks; (more…)

The case of Too Much Media, LLC (Plaintiff) v. Shellee Hale (Defendant), decided by the Superior Court of New Jersey Appellate Division on April 22, 2010, is not a decision that should cause alarm among those who are engaged in, or are patrons of, new media news sources.

Internet enterprises associated with mainstream news outlets run their own news-related websites. Legitimate self-interests led them to challenge the trial court’s understanding of slander per se in this case. Consequently, if you consider the defendant, Shellee Hale, a member of the “new media,” then NBC and the New York Times came to her partial defense.

But… here’s the question: Does Hale become a journalist of the new news media by simply submitting a comment on a website?

Hale’s act of posting a comment on a website did not, in the Appellate Court’s decision, singularly qualify her as a journalist. Consequently, she is not a heroine of the independent (of legacy media affiliation) internet news media, and not one around whom we should necessarily rally to support. (more…)