From Accuracy in Media’s Lynn Woolley and Cliff Kincaid:

When the Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure made a decision to sever its ties with America’s number one seller of abortions, Planned Parenthood, the media went to war. The media coverage was slanted in such a way that “mainstream” reporters like Andrea Mitchell and Lisa Myers of NBC News were openly advocating for a point of view—pressuring Komen to reverse course and give in to Planned Parenthood.

Why would the media go to war over something as seemingly insignificant as a policy change regarding funding at Komen, a private cancer charity? Part of the answer lies in the fact that, for the media, “women’s rights” take precedence over all other rights, including the rights of children. This is what “feminism” has become and this is what the Komen controversy was supposed to be about. In reality, it had nothing to do with breast cancer because the fact is that most Planned Parenthood affiliates don’t even provide mammograms. That money from Komen was used to refer women at risk of contracting the disease somewhere else.

So the issue was something else as well. While there were references to Planned Parenthood being an “abortion provider,” there was no explanation of what this “service” actually “provides”—a procedure that destroys a human life. This is why the annual March for Life against abortion is mostly ignored by the major media. It is a sad fact that even some conservative women still think that Planned Parenthood is simply an organization that provides information about voluntary family planning.

You saw very little in the mainstream media from pro-life people who supported Komen’s initial decision. The bias is so pronounced that the media long ago adopted the language of the Left. The term “pro-life” is never used. But “pro-choice” is. Newspapers use the term “abortion rights” to describe the political process of terminating the lives of the unborn, but use “anti-abortion” when referring to those of us who value human life. We are “against.” They are for “rights.”

So we made it a point to tune into the Big Three network newscasts on Friday night—hours after Nancy Brinker of Komen had caved. We wanted to see if this story would be treated in a neutral manner, or if the stories would be written from the standpoint that Brinker did the right thing—and, why did it take her so long? We did receive a shock, though it was a mild one. One of the three networks actually did a fairly nice job.

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Right off the bat C-SPAN should have aired this hearing. There is absolutely no excuse not to air it on TV. Since I had to stream it online I kept my TV on DirecTV News Mix to keep an eye on the news. The only network that had consistent coverage of the testimony was FOX News. I’m not shocked at all. I didn’t see anything about the testimony on the other channels. Jeff Poor from The Daily Caller helped me keep an eye on MSNBC and he didn’t see anything. He said they were hung up on Donald Trump all day. I was informed by a friend on Twitter, Doug Mataconis, that the hearing was discussed on The Situation Room on CNN for about 15 minutes. “Special Report” and The FOX Report both started off with Mr. Holder’s testimony.

Before I continue I noticed some friends on Twitter growing upset that headlines were partisan. The MSM was right: This was a partisan fight and every single Democrat coddled Mr. Holder. The Republicans were the only ones to demand withheld documents and answers from Mr. Holder.

Right after the testimony ended I began searching for coverage of the hearing on Google. First stop was Associated Press. Remember: If the AP doesn’t write anything on Fast & Furious more than likely the rest of the media won’t mention it. Pete Yost did write about the testimony, but hat’s where the excitement ends. Again, he distorts information to favor Mr. Holder and the Department of Justice. Mr. Yost fails to mention the subpoena was issued October 12, 2011. That’s 4 months ago. That is plenty of time to go through the hoops to release the documents. Mr. Yost says, “Though neither side said so, negotiations are almost certain to be the next step.” If you watched the testimony do you honestly think Mr. Issa or Mr. Holder will negotiate? Didn’t think so. Mr. Issa won’t accept anything less than the documents he needs. Then Mr. Yost describes a few dialogues, but doesn’t bother to get down to nitty gritty of the testimony.

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The firestorm over Komen For The Cure’s recent announcement that they would be cutting funding to Planned Parenthood was remarkably furious, so much so that it has degenerated into an obtuse PR mess for Komen. As I noted yesterday at the end of my piece defending Komen from the bitter Leftists at NPR, the situation was looking shaky and there was concern Komen would cave to the vitriolic attack from the Left (self-described vanguards of “free choice”, ironically).

Much of the wagon-circling against Komen was fomented by the Leftist media machine and their Hollywood sycophants, and leading the charge was Andrea Mitchell of Mitchell Reports:

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This is truly activist journalism at its worst. Mitchell has no intention to inform with this piece, but to advance her Leftist agenda against the Komen Foundation’s decision. She claims to be decrying the politicization of the issue, yet she aired the segment on her own show, which she herself describes as as a “political” program.

NBC News Chief Foreign Affairs Correspondent  Andrea Mitchell hosts an all political hour from 1 p.m. EST to 2 p.m. EST, Monday — Friday on msnbc. The show features in-depth interviews with high-profile figures and constant news updates.

The hypocrisy by Left and their media cohort concerning this issue has been stunning. They claim to only be interested in the advancement of women’s healthcare, yet their true agenda has been exposed as a mafia-like hit job to pound Komen into submission; protecting Planned Parenthood and their sacred sacrament of abortion. It does not get any more political than that.

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***UPDATE: Some are arguing “cracker” is acceptable within the context of Florida. Newsbusters, who also caught the slur, sums it up perfectly:

Jonathan Martin is also the left-wing operative who led the campaign to bring down Herman Cain over 15 year-old allegations. This partisan campaign was so frenzied and over-the-top and outrageous that even left-wing media watchdogs said so.

And now we get another glimpse into what motivates Mr. Martin, as he launches a racial slur against Southerners on a national cable channel:

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Wikipedia sums it up perfectly:

Cracker, sometimes white cracker, is a pejorative term for white people.

You’ll also note that MSNBC host Chuck Todd says nothing in response to Martin’s racial slur. In fact, Todd doesn’t blink an eye.

Moreover, keep in mind that these are the same MSM leftists who have and will continue to attempt to define every effective attack against Barack Obama as “racist” or as some sort of “racial dog-whistle.” This includes FACTS, such as the record increase in the number of food stamp recipients under Obama’s failed recovery.

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By now, most of you already know the story. In the heat of their fierce Florida death match, the Romney campaign released a campaign ad hammering Newt Gingrich. The ad is made up almost entirely of a clip from a 1997 “Nightly News” report when Tom Brokaw was still the network’s anchor:

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Byron York, in my opinion, has done the definitive analysis looking into what really happened with respect to the Speaker’s ethics case, but that doesn’t change the fact that the Romney ad is brilliant in its simplicity and effectiveness. This morning on the “Today Show,” Romney himself explained why:

“I think the reason it was so effective as an ad was that this was not something that Speaker Gingrich could say had been distorted or that Romney was telling things that were not accurate,” Romney said.

“People heard the news, they didn’t hear it filtered, it was just straight on, no heavy music that suggested some kind of sinister background. Instead, (it is) Tom Brokaw, a very credible and respected journalist, reporting the news and I think it was pretty devastating and pointed out that what Speaker Gingrich has been trying to hide is not out in the open.”

Let’s just hope that, should Romney become our nominee, he’s just as willing to salt the earth behind him when it comes to Barack Obama. Romney’s ruthless instincts are the exact right ones when it comes to winning the nomination, but one problem with our side is that we’re usually willing to do whatever it takes to destroy our own, but for fear of the what the corrupt MSM might say, we ease off the Democrats — and lose. Remember McCain’s unwillingness to bring up the twenty years Obama spent in that creepy, racially divisive church? That’s what I mean.

This is especially frustrating because the Democrats always come at us with both barrels blazing. Of course, they never have to worry about the MSM piling on for doing so. We, however, do.

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ABC is back at it with their hidden cameras series, “What Would You Do?” They put actors in provocative situations and use hidden cameras to see how people react.

Alan Funt, this aint. “Candid Camera“ was a fun show where people laughed when caught in funny and embarrassing situations. “What Would You Do?” has a clear social agenda where they seek to find and expose people’s racial, sexual and personal prejudices.

I must say this, the reporter, John Quinones is a nice guy. We spent some time on the news set together when he came to Las Vegas while doing a story on a polygamist colony in Arizona. We talked live on air about his segment and then chatted after. You would be hard pressed to find a nicer guy in the business, but he clearly has an agenda here—he is an activist. Fine, it is what it is and that’s how the show is formatted. ABC has chosen which groups to protect and which groups to expose and they will do it in prime time.

Here are some of the recent scenarios where they used actors to get reactions from real people:

A Muslim woman attempts to buy some items from a bakery and a rude and prejudiced cashier makes bigoted comments to her.

Homosexual parents take their children to a restaurant.

Homosexual partners kiss in public.

Racial profiling of Hispanics in a restaurant in Arizona. This segment was done in opposition to Arizona’s Immigration Law (1070) and the scenario they posed would not have been allowed by the law, but not to bother, they did it anyway. They showed the security guard demanding “ID, documentation and papers” without cause. The Arizona law doesn’t allow that and ABC has to know that, but they presented the scenario as permissible under 1070.

The show admits a social agenda, but there is a clear political agenda as well.

Which reminds me, NBC used similar tactics when it sent hidden cameras and  “Muslim-looking” men to a NASCAR race to record instances of prejudice after 9/11. I can hear the producers at NBC sitting in a meeting planning that segment, “Hell, those NASCAR fans are a bunch of  drunk, fat, white guys who hate anybody who’s not like them, we’ll get some great video!” If they didn’t say it, they thought it. I’ve been in those meetings where similar things have been planned. Like the ABC show, you must first come from the position that the prejudice is there, or why would you set up these scenarios in the first place? Does that not show prejudice also?

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It’s hard for the Activist Old Media to out-do itself with their leftist bias, but the Romney tax returns have them freaked out.

This fits right in their wheelhouse of deception and class envy.

The latest is an ABC story with this headline. “Romney Failed to Disclose Swiss Bank Account Income.”

Sounds serious there. Sounds like they finally busted Mitt and they are preparing the graphics and music for the hour-long prime time special showing him doing the IRS perp walk.

Five paragraphs into the story you find out the amount is $1,700 dollars. Now, $1,700 is more than most recent Democrats candidates for president donate to charity in a year, but on Romney’s tax returns to find a missing $1,700 dollars is like finding a penny in the cushions that you forgot to report. I guess the dollar amount is not important (unless its somebody making too much money,) it’s the headline they were after here.

Better get top terrorist reporter Brian Ross out of the Caribbean and off to Switzerland to uncover this latest Romney plot.

NBC’s Brian Williams called Romney’s wealth “unimaginable.” Unimaginable? How you doing Brian in your luxury Manhattan apartment? Ask your neighbor Beyonce if you can borrow some sugar.

Better send that crew back to Mexico to see how the branch of the Romney family is doing down there and demand they tell you how much money they make off their citrus farms. You left that out of the last story you did on them.

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I expressed my surprise at this last night on Twitter, while Jay Nordlinger noted it at NRO:

Brian Williams doesn’t know what “begging the question” means….

Williams used the phrase as he turned to Ron Paul to ask him about a possible third party run at approximately 2 minutes into this video, emphasis mine:

“There is no denying you have an enthusiatic base of support, we could hear them outside tonight. Yet, there was that recent interview you were asked if while campaigning, you envisioned yourself in the Oval Office. And you said, “Not really, but I think it’s a possibility.” So, that begs the question about your path and when you will give an honest answer about, perhaps, your third party plans going forward.”

While perhaps true that many people misunderstand the actual meaning of the phrase, time was one would have thought better of a national news anchor. A clear discussion of its meaning and usage is available here:

To beg the question does not mean “to raise the question.” (e.g. “It begs the question, why is he so dumb?”) This is a common error of usage made by those who mistake the word “question” in the phrase to refer to a literal question.

The concise explanation is below. As another example, were I to say Brian Williams misused English on national television, it would not beg the question, “Is he dumb?” However, were I to say: “Brian Williams is stupid because he is dumb,” I would have begged the question. (more…)

General Electric owns 49% of NBC. General Electric’s Chairman and CEO is Jeffrey Immelt.  Jeffrey Immelt is a big-time Obama supporter, and if you’ve watched any one of NBC’s three news networks (or their entertainment endeavors), you know that NBC is the biggest billionaire-led, multinational corporation-owned Super PAC ever created, and it’s all in to get Barack Obama reelected.

It is within this context that you must look at everything NBC does in order to make sense of their behavior.

What Brian Williams did last night, with his fascist demand that the debate audience shut the hell up, was to ensure nothing exciting came out of the debate and — what do you know? — nothing did. Williams is obviously aware of the fact that the more excitement and attention stirs around the GOP, the more infectious that excitement might become, and that is not good for the news media’s Precious One — who will need the MSM in prime fighting form if he’s going to win a second term and, you know, ruin America.

Newt Gingrich, like many politicians (including Obama), feeds off  his audience, and over the course of this primary it has been the roar of audience approval that has made Gingrich’s counter-attacks against Obama’s Media Palace Guards so compelling. Clips of these counter-attacks have gone viral, which means that Gingrich’s message exposing the corrupt MSM is starting to penetrate beyond the GOP faithful.

Can’t have that. And without the crowd roaring their approval, Williams knows any kind of counter-attack against him would look different, less like a winning moment and more like an argumentative one. In other words, Williams wasn’t going to allow himself to get John Kinged or allow our side to look like fighters and winners.

Brian Williams is not a dumb man. He’s a very smart and savvy political operative for the left, and he’s certainly smart enough to look for any angle that might help his side.

And that’s what last night was really about.

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If you didn’t watch tonight’s debate, let me sum it up for you: Why English as the official language in US? Your Thoughts on Terri Schiavo? When was America last great? Also, the Bush tax cuts didn’t work, explain to us why.’

Gingrich, who is usually good at rejecting false premises in questioning, punted and responded “it would have been worse without them.” Really?

… in May 2003 Congress accelerated the tax cuts to make them effective immediately. In addition to reducing marginal income tax rates, Congress also lowered the tax rates on capital gains and dividends.

It was at this point that economic growth took off. From May 2003 until December 2007 (when the recession caused by the global financial meltdown occurred) the economy created 8.1 million jobs, or 145,000 a month. By comparison, after the beginning of the 2001 recession and before the 2003 tax cuts, the economy was losing 103,000 jobs a month.

Bush tax cuts spurred growth and additionally stifled unemployment at 5.2% in the years following 9/11. Yes they worked. Gingrich should have answered better and the moderator asking the question should have been mocked on stage for presenting a presupposition as a legitimate, beyond reproach question.

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Let’s call it what it is now, folks. The biggest SuperPAC out there right now is the one working overtime to destroy any Republican wh0 might be so bold as want to take on the media’s Dear Leader in the White House.

Stephen Colbert won’t be parodying this SuperPAC, because he can’t make fun of his friends, but there is plenty of material out there he could use.

The Activist Old Media has two very specific goals in mind here, 1) keep the “horse-race” going as long as possible because it will help ratings and revenue, 2) work to damage whomever becomes the GOP winner. Oh, they call it good journalism, or whatever line they want to use, but the facts show otherwise. They have never been this aggressive towards Democrat candidates. The only time they go after a Democrat Presidential candidate to this degree is when he has been so damaged by his own actions that the candidate is finished and they have no other choice, then they pile on to make it look like they’re doing their job.  See: John Edwards (hey, didn’t the National Enquirer break those stories?)

Take your pick, Mitt or Newt, the media has the long knives out. Mitt Romney has already been called by some in the media, “one of the wealthiest candidates to ever run for President,” like that is some sort of negative. Let’s see here, I believe Jon Carry (intentional mis-spelling, click the link to remember why) was rather wealthy, in fact, he has four times as much money as Romney and his wealth was not an issue in 2004. Of course, Romney made his money on his own (he donated his inheritance to charity) and Kerry married his billion dollar fortune. To the media, Romney is the bad guy here, Kerry the good guy,  and he could not be put on the spot for finding a Heinz flavored Sugar Mama.

Romney has been ripped for donating to his church. 10% of his income, possibly more. Kerry donated 0 dollars to charity on his 2003 tax returns. I guess when you are the media and you are running the Obama SuperPAC you can rip candidates for donating to charity.

Romney has been ripped for paying the required 15% income tax on capital gains, Kerry paid 12%. I don’t recall that being an issue in 2004. BTW, don’t give me this garbage that it matters now because the media says it’s supposed to matter now, they would change the landscape of “what matters now” to whatever they want to fit their needs. They will pull out the class-envy card whenever it needs to be played, and since their candidate is using in now, they will belly-up to the table and unload the entire deck.

With Romney, the media has already stated that his religion will be a major issue and at the same time, Obama’s Media SuperPAC has virtually declared Reverend Wright off-limits. No, they have not vetted this issue already. Of course, now they will say this is old news and they covered it in ‘08, when they did not. NBC has yet to air audio of Reverend Wright—I saw them air video briefly once when they referred to some sort of controversy, but the audio is still too damaging to Dear Leader to have NBC put it on air.

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Speaker Gingrich is handling the corrupt MSM’s race-baiting in the exact opposite way John McCain did. Which means he’s doing it right.

Rather than surrender legitimate arguments and be cowed into leaving Obama alone on issues that matter, Gingrich is confronting these media attacks head on, and I for one am currently forgetting all about his misguided Bain attacks as I fall in love all over again.

Oh, you are going to enjoy this:

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That is exactly how you take it to NBC, the ”Today Show,” and Ann Curry. This biased trio is intentionally and cynically using race in the hopes Gingrich will stop launching what have been every effective attacks against Obama and his failed record.  And if you recall, this is exactly the same tactic the MSM used against McCain. Only McCain fell for it and we all know how much good that did him… and America.

Gingrich’s method of dealing with these racial pot-stirrers is to stay on offense by throwing the argument right back in the left’s face by pointing out the failures of liberalism and the left’s current unwillingness to do anything other than further impoverish urban America with a bigger welfare state.

Better still, Gingrich is not backing off the fact that President FailureTeleprompter is The Food Stamp President, and he shouldn’t back off. Facts aren’t racist, no matter how much Obama’s shameless MSM Palace Guards want them to be, and if the MSM wants to keep the food stamp argument alive, the Speaker is apparently more than game to help them along.

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From the Daily Mail:

She was billed as one of the most ‘boring people of her era’ while her performance was slammed as monochromatic and lacking charisma.

So it may come as no surprise then, that Chelsea Clinton’s much-hyped deal with NBC may already be coming to an end.

Her original contract was only for 90 days and sources say it is unlikely she will extend this.

The NYP has more, including a carefully worded NBC denial:

Her contract is for only 90 days, and while she’ll provide the network with two more stories, sources say it is not certain she’ll immediately sign again …

… Our source said NBC “created unrealistic expectations. Chelsea wanted a 90-day contract to see if she liked it. It’s possible she will do more for NBC in the future, [but] she doesn’t know if she’ll sign another contract.”

An NBC News rep said, “100 percent false. You will see more pieces from Chelsea. She has been warmly welcomed into this news division, and we can’t be more pleased with her work. We hope she will be with us for a long time. There was no over-hyping of her role.”

If you watched her debut segment, it was around eight minutes of your life that you’ll never get back.

Washington Post:

what was surprising to see on Monday night’s show is how someone can be on TV in such a prominent way and, in her big moment, display so very little charisma — none at all. Either we’re spoiled by TV’s unlimited population of giant personalities or this woman is one of the most boring people of her era.

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Time’s Mark Halperin wondered openly this morning whether the mainstream media might be “rooting for” Sen. Rick Santorum in the Republican primary. That could happen if journalists decide that Santorum would be a weaker general election threat to President Barack Obama than the presumed Republican nominee, Gov. Mitt Romney.

But Halperin’s theory is wishful thinking, and obscures one of the most important factors in Santorum’s come-from-nowhere success in the Iowa caucuses last night: the former Pennsylvania senator has thrashed the mainstream media relentlessly in the past few weeks, making it clear he has the courage to stand up to the Democrats’ Greek chorus.

Most recently, Santorum schooled NBC’s David Gregory and CNN’s Candy Crowley on the subject of Obama’s “appeasement” in foreign policy. Santorum showed a patient deftness in drawing a stark contrast with Obama, then defending it with hard facts and fresh, alternative ideas. The journalists, expecting easy prey, were dumbstruck.

Santorum also endured a truly low blow from Alan Colmes, and overcame bizarre attempts by NPR and CBS to cast him as a racist. He irritates the mainstream media, and for good reason–because so far, he is beating them.

In a way, Santorum has picked up where former House speaker Newt Gingrich had left off. Gingrich rose through the polls after targeting the media rather than fellow Republicans. His clashes with Romney knocked Gingrich off that message. Yet Santorum also has discipline and an knock for retail politics. He takes his fight with the media off air and offline. (more…)

On Sunday’s broadcast of NBC Nightly News, Andrea Mitchell hosted a segment on the upcoming GOP caucus in Iowa. Referring to the state itself, she stated:

The rap on Iowa? It doesn’t represent the rest of the country. Too white, too evangelical, too rural.

Yet literally the sentence before, she mentioned that Iowa “established that Barack Obama could attract white voters” in 2008.

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Last month, Sen. Rick Santorum schooled CNN’s Candy Crowley on the subject of President Barack Obama’s appeasement of America’s enemies.

Today, on NBC’s Meet the Press, it was David Gregory’s turn.

Like Crowley, Gregory attempted to “fact-check” Santorum by arguing that it could not possibly be “accurate” or “objective” to describe Obama’s foreign policy as “appeasement.”

In particular, he challenged Santorum to distinguish Obama’s policy on Iran from that of his predecessor, George W. Bush. (For several years, Democrats have tried to defend Obama by pointing out that the Bush administration refused to approve military strikes, either by the U.S. or by Israel.)

Santorum, as usual, delivered the facts on demand:

Santorum pointed out that Obama failed to support Iran’s democracy movement–and later added that Obama cut funding to pro-democracy programs that Bush had supported. He noted that Obama has given tacit support to Islamist political parties in Egypt and other Arab countries that oppose America and our allies. (more…)

A story on horrific poverty oddly gives me hope for local TV news.

As a local TV news/sports anchor for almost 30 years, one of my biggest problems with the business was when young producers or reporters would cut-and-paste a story from the Associated Press and just report it as gospel. I’m sure there were times when I made this mistake as well, but there were also times when I would take information I knew was inaccurate and change it in the script or just change it “on the fly” on set. Then I would spend the next two hours in meetings having to explain why I did what I did. Usually, my answer went something like this, “If I’m the face of this story, I’m not going to report something I know is inaccurate just because the AP says it is.” I would win the battles with facts, but after a while stations prefer to have news anchors who just shut up and read (if that makes sense).

This brings me to the remarkable thing that KNBC in Los Angeles did this week. A recent AP story claimed that 1 in 2 people were poor or low-income. A startling number, certainly. KNBC just flat out said that those numbers may be way off.

“Those figures appear to be wrong, perhaps based on a misunderstanding of the data by journalists who did not go back to the source to doublecheck their figures, said analysts at the U.S. Census Bureau district office in Los Angeles.”

Kudos to KNBC for doing its homework, double-checking the numbers and not just cutting-and-pasting from the Associated Press. Of course, if KNBC is right, you’ve got to wonder why the AP got this so wrong and how many other local stations across the country just reported the story as they got it from the AP. Online that 50% number, that KNBC says is inaccurate, spread like wildfire.

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Recently, the U.S Census Bureau released a report that creates a new designation of “low income” in order to “better reflect the distribution of poverty in the US.”  The Associated Press ran with a headline, “Census shows 1 in 2 people are poor or low-income,” and scores of other media outlets followed suit with equally dire ledes.  In NJ, one outlet reported, “Census: Nearly half of Americans live in poverty,” while Russia Today reported that “Half of America is officially poor“:

“While it’s no surprise that nearly 50 million Americans live below the poverty line, new statistics from the US Census show that almost 100 million others are counted as low-income citizens, making half of the population of America officially poor.”

But analysts at the U.S. Census Bureau district office in Los Angeles are reporting today that perhaps journalists misunderstood. and over 300 online news reports simply got the story wrong.

KNBC / NBC in Los Angeles reports:

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