Forbes Executive Editor for business news Dan Bigman told Big Journalism that Forbes stands by an online article accusing Sarah Palin of possibly breaking the law. He said Forbes was just “raising the question” of whether Palin broke Federal Trade Commission Rules regarding product placement.

Bigman stood by the article that went after Palin for wearing a hoodie emblazoned with the logo of a hometown Alaska gym for Palin’s cover photo on the current issue of Newsweek. “We believe the issue of product placement is … worthy of investigation”, Bigman said.

The Forbes article, entitled Did Sarah Palin Use Newsweek for Product Placement?, is based on little more than a cover photo, a bogus Wonkette article, a writer’s speculation — “It seems probable, therefore, that she’s getting something for her enthusiastic endorsements — perhaps free personal training?” and that the Wasilla gym, Edge Fitness, was seen in the “Sarah Palin’s Alaska” travel documentary series on The Learning Channel last year.

The Forbes article is reminiscent of the Arctic Cat jacket ethics complaint, one of the myriad dismissed moonbat ethics complaints filed against Palin when she was Alaska governor. Like a moonbat, Bercovici repeats as fact the false Wonkette story that Palin had a secret Facebook page — “(Edge Fitness) also received a plug on a Facebook page Palin apparently created under an alias and used for posting pseudonymous comments.” Sarah Palin issued a statement denying having a secret Facebook page.

Also like a moonbat, Bercovici accuses Palin of having a “taste for the perquisites of Hollywood-style fame” based on a March 4, 2010 Associated Press hit piece that paints Palin as a greedy celeb scarfing up freebies at a Hollywood ‘gift suite’. The article buries the fact that the event was for charity and that Palin made a “sizable contribution” to Red Cross Haiti relief. Bercovici of course failed to note the “sizable” donation Palin made in exchange for the gifts.

As part of his indictment of Palin’s character, Bercovici includes an unsourced accusation that Palin “has been known to seek payment from magazines in exchange for her participation in stories.”

The Arctic Cat ethics complaint was about Palin wearing an Arctic Cat logo jacket at the start and finish of the race. Arctic Cat was the sponsor of her husband Todd’s snow machine entry in the Iron Dog race.

The ethics investigation was dismissed with a finding that there was no agreement between Palin and Arctic Cat to wear the jacket. The Associated Press reported June 4, 2009 on the dismissal:

Biegel had alleged that Palin improperly used her position as governor and state resources for her personal financial interests by being “a walking billboard for Arctic Cat.”

The personnel board’s independent investigator, attorney Thomas Daniel, said there was no evidence Palin used her position for personal gain. He said there was no sign that Palin or her husband received anything of value in exchange for the governor wearing the jacket at the start and finish of the race.

The Arctic Cat sponsorship was valued at $7,500 in 2007, according to Palin’s financial disclosure for that year. Daniel said the value of the 2008 sponsorship is not yet available, but added it’s irrelevant because Palin had no agreement with Arctic Cat to wear the clothing.

“If the deal was, ‘You’ve got to wear this jacket acting as governor as a condition of the discount or the sponsorship,’ then yeah, it might have been a violation of the Ethics Act, but that’s not the case here,” he told The Associated Press.

Jackets worn by many Alaskans have company names or logos on them, Daniel noted in a report to the board Tuesday dismissing the complaint.

“So the fact that a person wears a jacket with a company logo on it is not evidence that the person is receiving a financial benefit as a result,” he wrote. “To the contrary, it is the company that is receiving the benefit in the form of free advertising.”

The Forbes article begins:

Sarah Palin is no fan of the “lamestream media” — except when she’s using it to serve her ends. Is she using Newsweek to get free personal training? And, if so, is that entirely legal?

The article notes that Newsweek responded to an inquiry about Palin’s cover attire by saying Palin had no stylist for the photo shoot and chose her own clothes. Palin, SarahPac and Edge Fitness did not return queries seeking comment. So, based on a bogus Wonkette article and a cover photo, Forbes and Bercovici smeared Palin as a likely lawbreaker.

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In an article published Tuesday entitled “Casey Anthony: The Candidates Respond,”  Salon Magazine smeared Sarah Palin and several Republican presidential candidates with faked quotes reacting to the verdict in the Casey Anthony trial. The faked quotes, especially those falsely attributed to Michele Bachmann and Palin, made their way around the Internet this week, adding to the media-driven campaign of hatred against leading Republican women.

Palin was smeared as a separation-of-powers ditz, accusing President Barack Obama of not getting involved in the Anthony case:

“Once again we see, with our nation in crisis, President Obama stands by and does idly nothing while an injustice is committed here in this glorious nation of ours … Why the strange silence, Mr. President?”

Bachmann was smeared as a racist and anti-Muslim kook in a faked Sean Hannity interview:

“… people all over the place are asking me, why, in Barack Obama’s America, someone who murders a baby who happens to be white doesn’t get punished…they’re worried about the Muslim Brotherhood, which has clear ties to terror groups dedicated to creating a worldwide Islamic caliphate, and they’re worried that Eric Holder’s Justice Department isn’t going to do anything about it if the Brotherhood or another group comes for their children.”

Alex Pareene, who is described at the end of the article as “Alex Pareene writes about politics for Salon,” made up the quotes in apparent frustration that Republican candidates had not waded into the Anthony murder trial controversy. The new media standard now seems to be if a Republican won’t say something outrageously foolish, the media will make up the quotes they want and destroy the candidate anyway.

The article is so poorly-written (and without further clarification) that the author’s attempt at satire is lost upon the reader. The quotes are presented as sourced quotes and transcripts.

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Jose Antonio Vargas, a Pulitzer prize-winning reporter who has worked for the Washington Post and Huffington Post, has revealed that he is an illegal alien. Vargas came out as an illegal alien as part of a coordinated media campaign with the New York Times and ABC News seeking amnesty for illegal aliens like himself.

Vargas also revealed that he breached White House security by using a fake ID, including when he covered a state dinner. And that a superior at the Washington Post knew and approved of his actions.

Vargas made the revelations in an article he authored that was published in the upcoming New York Times Sunday Magazine.

Vargas writes that at age 12 he was sent to America from the Philippines by his mother to live with his naturalized American citizen grandparents. His grandfather Lolo repeatedly broke the law to get Vargas in the U.S. and to keep him here, Vargas writes.

One day when I was 16, I rode my bike to the nearby D.M.V. office to get my driver’s permit. Some of my friends already had their licenses, so I figured it was time. But when I handed the clerk my green card as proof of U.S. residency, she flipped it around, examining it. “This is fake,” she whispered. “Don’t come back here again.”

Confused and scared, I pedaled home and confronted Lolo. I remember him sitting in the garage, cutting coupons. I dropped my bike and ran over to him, showing him the green card. “Peke ba ito?” I asked in Tagalog. (“Is this fake?”) My grandparents were naturalized American citizens — he worked as a security guard, she as a food server — and they had begun supporting my mother and me financially when I was 3, after my father’s wandering eye and inability to properly provide for us led to my parents’ separation. Lolo was a proud man, and I saw the shame on his face as he told me he purchased the card, along with other fake documents, for me. “Don’t show it to other people,” he warned…

…The “uncle” who brought me here turned out to be a coyote, not a relative, my grandfather later explained. Lolo scraped together enough money — I eventually learned it was $4,500, a huge sum for him — to pay him to smuggle me here under a fake name and fake passport. (I never saw the passport again after the flight and have always assumed that the coyote kept it.) After I arrived in America, Lolo obtained a new fake Filipino passport, in my real name this time, adorned with a fake student visa, in addition to the fraudulent green card.

Using the fake passport, we went to the local Social Security Administration office and applied for a Social Security number and card. It was, I remember, a quick visit. When the card came in the mail, it had my full, real name, but it also clearly stated: “Valid for work only with I.N.S. authorization.”

When I began looking for work, a short time after the D.M.V. incident, my grandfather and I took the Social Security card to Kinko’s, where he covered the “I.N.S. authorization” text with a sliver of white tape. We then made photocopies of the card. At a glance, at least, the copies would look like copies of a regular, unrestricted Social Security card.

Later, with the help of sympathetic teachers, Vargas obtained a driver’s license in Oregon using subterfuge and a fake Social Security card.

Vargas parlayed his illegally obtained identification documents into a job at the Washington Post. He writes he confided in a superior, Peter Perl, who allowed him to continue working at the Post as an illegal alien in violation of the law.

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Democratic party front group Media Matters for America responded with typical vomit-slurping gusto in its response Sunday to Big Journalism’s report on the Washington Post crossing the line from journalism to partisan political action by orchestrating a viral Twitter campaign against Sarah Palin.

Writing at the County Fair blog section of Media Matters, blogger Eric Boehlert ignored the subject of the article as spelled out in the lede, “The Washington Post is engaging in online political activism by encouraging its readers to boycott news coverage of Sarah Palin.”

Anti-Palin logo by The Washington Post

Instead, he typed a fallacious article that claimed the subject was a complaint that Palin would not be covered by the Post: “Palin Bloggers Now Complaining She’s Not Getting Enough Coverage.”

Boehlert failed to inform his readers that the Post had made a radical correction to the wording of its anti-Palin Twitter campaign.

The Post made the changes after being contacted last Friday by Big Journalism.

As was reported previously, the Post launched a viral Twitter campaign to accompany columnist Dana Milbank’s Outlook section piece titled, “I’m Declaring February a Palin-Free Month. Join Me!” (more…)

The Washington Post is engaging in online political activism by encouraging its readers to boycott news coverage of Sarah Palin.

The Post has picked up the call initiated this morning by Post columnist Dana Milbank, adding a Twitter link on the column page. The link generates a message to be sent from a Twitter member’s page that reads, “I’m making February a Palin-free month. Will you join me?”

The Post added the Twitter link to Milbank’s column this afternoon, several hours after running and pulling a Washington Post online poll about boycotting Sarah Palin news coverage.  The poll initially accompanied The Post’s Milbank op-ed but was pulled within hours of publication at WashingtonPost.com.

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Liberal online political magazine Salon.com published a letter to the editor Friday that called for the murder of 2008 Republican vice presidential nominee former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin.

The letter was written in response to a mocking article at Salon titled, Good Morning America’s painfully friendly interview with Sarah Palin by Alex Pareene.

Pareene snarkily sums up the GMA interview:

“The interview was basically split into a couple of distinct sections: How awesome is your family, how bad is Barack Obama, how awful are people who criticize you, and how awesome is America?”

The first letter published in response to the article calls for Palin to be electrocuted by a cattle prod by convicted dog abuser Michael Vick:  “Vick gets a pet to torture and we get rid of Palin. A win-win for everyone!”

Michael Vick, the starting quarterback for the Philadelphia Eagles, is a convicted felon who spent time in prison for dog fighting and animal cruelty.

Screengrab credit: Gateway Pundit.rightnetwork.com

That letter has apparently sat in the pole position under the article in the Letters to the Editor section since it was posted “Friday, December 17, 2010 12:33 PM ET.”

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Democratic Party front group Media Matters for America has published yet another attack on Republican Sarah Palin. This one a dishonest portrayal of media coverage of her recent slip of the tongue regarding the crisis on the Korean peninsula.

In a Thanksgiving Day message posted Nov. 25th on her Facebook page, Palin opened her post with a tongue in cheek send-up of President Barack Obama in which no fewer than ten of his verbal gaffes and misstatements were included and sourced.

My fellow Americans in all 57 states, the time has changed for come. With our country founded more than 20 centuries ago, we have much to celebrate – from the FBI’s 100 days to the reforms that bring greater inefficiencies to our health care system. We know that countries like Europe are willing to stand with us in our fight to halt the rise of privacy, and Israel is a strong friend of Israel’s. And let’s face it, everybody knows that it makes no sense that you send a kid to the emergency room for a treatable illness like asthma and they end up taking up a hospital bed. It costs, when, if you, they just gave, you gave them treatment early, and they got some treatment, and ah, a breathalyzer, or an inhalator. I mean, not a breathalyzer, ah, I don’t know what the term is in Austrian for that …

The point Palin was making was that though everyone occasionally goofs up — including the President, you might not remember hearing about his, “because for the most part the media didn’t consider them newsworthy,” Palin wrote.

Such is not the case when it comes to Palin who in the course of a radio interview with Glenn Beck, mistakenly referred to South Korea as North Korea, but then quickly corrected herself. Media Matters blogger Oliver Willis, writing at his personal blog, posted the audio clip of Palin’s slip. Willis is one of several liberal bloggers who met recently with President Obama at the White House.

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