Number three on our list almost violates the criteria that I set up in the first piece I wrote for this series. I said then that denizens of the Old Media that are too much a “cartoon of journalism” would not be included on my list. Yet despite my dismissal of such Old Media clowns, in the number three slot on the list you’ll find Paul Krugman of The New York Times.

Given today’s revelations about the JournoList, we now know Krugman either participated in a media conspiracy to get Obama elected or at least witnessed it first hand and did nothing to stop it.  Consider this fact merely the latest insight into a man who’s done more consistently left-biased journalism than nearly anyone in America.

Krugman is indeed quite a cartoon of modern liberalism. He is hidebound and far from a new or even a very free thinker. But he makes the list simply because he is not only a Nobel Prize winner but is one of the leading media figures in America today. So, despite that he is not an original thinker and is steeped in liberal orthodoxy, his prominence argues for his inclusion here.

And besides that he is a true liberal loon.

Krugman’s January 17 piece is a perfect example of the nonsense that he tries to pass off as political analysis. In his piece headlined “What Didn’t Happen,” Krugman seriously tried to claim that one of Barack Obama’s biggest failings was that he doesn’t blame Bush enough for his own failings.

Mr. Obama didn’t… shelter himself from criticism with a narrative that placed the blame on previous administrations.

(more…)

On Sunday the Washington Post ombudsman, Andrew Alexander, issued an interesting apology for his paper’s failure to write about the Department of Justice’s handling of the Philadelphia New Black Panther Party case.

After summarizing the case and the controversy over it, Alexander admitted,

The Post didn’t cover it. Indeed, until Thursday’s story, The Post had written no news stories about the controversy this year. In 2009, there were passing references to it in only three stories.

That’s prompted many readers to accuse The Post of a double standard. Royal S. Dellinger of Olney [Maryland] said that if the controversy had involved Bush administration Attorney General John D. Ashcroft, “Lord, there’d have been editorials and stories, and it would go on for months.”

“To be sure,” Alexander said, “ideology and party politics are at play,” although he seemed to be referring only to liberal bloggers, “Fox News and right-wing bloggers,” “Congressional Republicans,” Sarah Palin, etc. No admission, that is, of ideology or party politics at the Post.

To his credit, Alexander chastises the Post for not covering the controversy and concludes by telling his colleagues, “Better late than never. There’s plenty left to explore.” He even suggests some topics: (more…)

Welcome once again to our top ten most left-biased working journalist list and now it’s time for number five in the countdown. As we begin our downward slope to the number one most biased, it is fitting that we come to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s Cynthia Tucker as our fifth worst, most biased American journo.

Unlike the other left-wingers that merely hate conservative Americans, Cynthia Tucker seems to hate all of us. That seems true at least if her latest outrageous comment on MSNBC can be taken for granted.

In recent remarks made on Chris “Leg Thrill” Matthews’ MSNBC show, Tucker said that, unlike the Cold War days, today’s American enemy is “us.” Naturally Matthews chipped in with a hearty “exactly.”

Expounding upon her claim that we, each of us, is an enemy to the country, Tucker went on:

And one of the differences between the ’50’s when Sputnik was launched and now, that was a battle against Communism. It’s always much easier to rally Americans against an external threat, an external enemy. In this case, the enemy is us. Americans are addicted to petroleum. We use way too much oil. So it’s a little harder for the president to turn around and call on Americans to sacrifice. You remember what happened to Jimmy Carter when he did that.

Now I happened to think Jimmy Carter was right. Well, if he had done the things that, if we had done the things that Carter called for then, we may not be looking at this huge oil spill now.

Carter? One of the most failed presidents in American history comes in for praise? From Cynthia Tucker he sure does. But she should know. She’s an expert. (more…)

As we continue our Summer series of the most left-biased journalists working in the Old Media today, it’s time for number seven on the list. We’ve done Cable TV, we’ve done a wire service, and we’ve done a newspaper, so now it’s time to turn our attention to the wonderful world of magazines where we find a worthy candidate in Howard Fineman of Newsweek.

The venerable magazine has been around since 1933, but a bit of its long-time luster has faded of late. Not long ago the news mag tried a revamping under the guiding hand of wunderkind Editor Jon Meacham, but the new take didn’t… take, I mean. For some time Newsweek has been steadily losing readers and money (it lost about $29 million in 2009 alone). Perhaps it is because some of its writers are so hopelessly biased?

Enter Howard Fineman.

One of the first strikes against Fineman is that he’s a constant presence on the most left-wing entertainment/news cable networks in America. A day hardly passes when Fineman isn’t seen on MSNBC and that right there bodes ill for his status as a non-partisan journo.

But even if it were possible to maintain a good, unbiased status while still making the cut to appear on MSNBC–a dubious proposition in itself–Fineman isn’t able to toe that line. (more…)

A memo obtained from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence indicates the Washington Post is preparing to “publish articles and an interactive website that will likely contain a compendium of government agencies and contractors allegedly conducting Top Secret work.” You can view the memo below.  The series is likely to launch Monday.

WaPo’s Dana Priest

According to another memo from Art House, the director of communications for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the series will be written up by Dana Priest and culminates two years of research. He postulates Priest is likely to advocate:

• The intelligence enterprise has undergone exponential growth and has become unmanageable with overlapping authorities and a heavily outsourced contractor workforce.
• The IC [intelligence community] and the DoD have wasted significant time and resources, especially in the areas of counterterrorism and counterintelligence.
• The intelligence enterprise has taken its eyes off its post-9/11 mission and is spending its energy on competitive and redundant programs.

Marc Ambinder at the Atlantic reports, “Priest’s story is said to focus on redundancies, particularly the number of individual counter-terrorism analytical cells costing the government billions of dollars. Some of the redundancy is deliberate because of the nature of intelligence work. But a lot of redundancy, especially in terms of information technology, is probably just wasteful.”

The Washington Post is also working on a television component with PBS’s Frontline. (more…)

All through the 2008 presidential campaign we saw it time and again: any potential threat to then-candidate Barack Obama was sought out and destroyed by the Leftist media – MSNBC, Media Matters, Daily Kos and the like–  before it could could reach a critical point in the MSM and do any damage to Their Annointed One.  Whether it was Bill Ayers, Sarah Palin, Reverend Wright or Obama’s weaker than weak resume, the goal was to blow legitimate stories out of the water using whatever amount of lies, distortion, or double talk was needed to muddy those waters and confuse the narrative.

This tactic was designed to either give the MSM enough cover to ignore the story altogether or hand them the talking points necessary to blow the story back into the face of Republicans and the McCain campaign.

My favorite example of this template at work is how Obama’s ties to domestic terrorist Bill Ayers somehow morphed into a full-blown MSM storm about “hate-filled and dangerous” McCain campaign rallies. Second place goes to how Obama mangling a revealing answer to an honest question from a constituent immediately turned into a media meme over whether or not this private citizen had a plumber’s license. And let’s not forget how we all walked into the voting booth knowing more about Sarah Palin’s tanning bed than Barack Obama’s college records.

SIDE NOTE: Conservative or not, anyone who thinks this happens by accident instead of design needs to get out of the way because you’re part of the problem. (more…)

Over the next ten days, I will present to you America’s top ten journalists that are most biased to the left. On this list you will find denizens of the Old Media that just can’t seem to help themselves from delivering the news with a leftward tilt, journalists for whom balance means to condemn all Republicans and conservatives, folks that never met a righty they could like much less agree with or even report upon fairly.

This list will be peopled by journos that, in true Kealian fashion, simply can’t understand those Republicans and/or conservatives. After all, these journalists never met anyone that would support a conservative so they just don’t understand how conservatives could ever stand for truth. These are folks that just don’t “get” that there is any other side to a story but that of their own ideologically leftward political bent.

\This list will be restricted to working journalists (or one who just retired in one case), so biased old hacks like Dan Rather, Walter Cronkite, or Walter Duranty will be excluded even as we take their leftism for granted. Also you will not find those whose career is but a cartoon of journalism. People such as Keith Olbermann, John Stewart, Rachel Maddow, Maureen Dowd, or Chris Matthews do not belong on a journalist list, even one highlighting left-wing bias. Such people are simply too silly or admittedly partisan even for a list such as this.

The biggest problem is arriving at just ten. There are dozens of worthy nominees, we all know. Singling out so small a number from such a large field presented a challenge, for sure. (more…)

You know things are really starting to go south for the Obama administration when its journalistic functionaries and spear-carriers on the left are starting to openly fret and worry as they begin to feel November’s chill wind blowing. The visions of historic change, social justice and a plum government job are gradually being replaced by nightmares not just of defeat but repudiation. The racket has been exposed by its own audacity.

First up is Ruth Marcus, of the deeply compromised Washington Post. What used to be merely a center-left news organization that nevertheless played relatively fair and boasted some outstanding writers has devolved into a poor imitation of the Huffington Post, replete with White House operatives and partisan hacks. By comparison with many of her colleagues, the liberal Marcus looks like Stewart Alsop. Here she is, writing about Obama’s recess appointment of Dr. Death Panels himself, Donald Berwick:

As a matter of politics, the president’s choice of Berwick was, well, the polite word would be bold. The less polite word: boneheaded. Administration officials argue that Republicans would have seized on any nominee as an opportunity to re-litigate the health care debate. But Berwick offered opponents a loaded gun with his talk about rationing, his discussion of health reform as a matter of redistributing wealth, and his effusive praise for the British system. If the president wanted to buy a fight like this, he ought to have been better prepared to wage it.

And as a matter of good government, the president’s move to snub the Senate and install Berwick by recess appointment was outrageous… A recess appointment should be a last step in cases of egregious delay, not one of the first. That standard was nowhere near met in Berwick’s case. Berwick was nominated to be administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) on April 19, less than three months ago. He had not yet had a hearing. His committee vetting wasn’t complete.

Well, duh. For a Chicago pol, whose path to prominence came not via intellectual brilliance or personal charisma but through behind-the-scenes machinations to get opponents thrown off the ballot or have their sealed divorce records made public, “by any means necessary” is not only a tactic, it’s a categorical imperative. (more…)

What was once just a worry, then a fear, is now beginning to speak its name. Here’s Bill Kristol in the pages of the Weekly Standard on the pretty pass at which we find ourselves:

We are not now quite at a founding moment, or even a re-founding moment. But we have arrived at a genuine crisis, or a set of crises, and we may well be at a decisive moment for the country…

Of course, the leaders of the Democratic party don’t want to come to grips with the present moment. Committed to stale progressive policies, they’re doing their very best to push more of them through, even as the failure of those policies becomes ever more evident. Serious reflection on the failure of their favored policies, both at home and abroad, would be too painful. It would require a rethinking too consequential and too disruptive to be willingly undertaken. After all, experience has shown that liberals are more disposed to have the rest of us suffer, than to right themselves by rethinking the dogmas by which they are enthralled.

But it’s increasingly clear that “the inefficacy of the subsisting federal government,” in our case welfare state liberalism, is no longer sufferable. Out-of-control spending and debt really do threaten our economic future. Weakness and timidity abroad really do threaten a world in which terrorists and fanatics possess, and use, nuclear weapons. The nanny state, at once all-intrusive and all thumbs, really does threaten the future of self-government. The dogmas of multiculturalism really do threaten the strength of a free society.

(more…)

Second of two parts.  Part One is here.

Much of the Draft seems heavily influenced by the findings and recommendations of a USC/Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism study,“Public Policy and Funding the News.” It claims that the Internet and its blogging news reporters have benefited from government investment in development of the Internet, and will benefit again from TARPs I and II.

USC Report –

Long before the United States was founded, the Postal Service was subsidizing the news business. It was in good measure the free-mailing privileges conferred by many postmasters that allowed a robust network of colonial newspapers to emerge. George Washington wanted all newspapers, in fact, to have 100 percent subsidized mailing costs. The Postal Act of 1792 rejected the idea of a total subsidy, but it codified highly subsidized and extremely low rates. What brought a halt to publishers’ receiving 75 percent discounts on their mailed news products was the financial crisis that engulfed the Postal Service in the late 1960s.

It does not logically follow that if, historically, government had some role in the growth of news communications, it should “monitor” the “reinvention” of it by taking control of it. The Annenberg study offers recommendations as woozy and ill-defined as those in the Draft. (more…)

The slings and arrows of outrageous legislation, proposed and enacted, fly at you in fusillades from every direction. The enemy lurches towards you, massive, determined, unstoppable. The cavalry you expected to throw him back in confusion has decided to sit this one out. Betrayed, you’re on your own.

In this case, it is the National Rifle Association that has literally decided to sit this one out. After swearing that the freedom and right to bear arms is also dependent on the freedom of speech, it has decided to recuse itself from the First Amendment objections in exchange for a protected status. It will not oppose H.R. 1575, the Disclose Act, sponsored by Maryland Democrat Christopher Van Hollen. The purpose of this legislation is to counter the Supreme Court ruling in the Citizens United case, which freed corporations and non-profits from many of the restrictive speech provisions of the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act. It was a qualified victory for the First Amendment.

The NRA’s first obligation must be to its members and to its most ardent defense of firearms freedom for America’s lawful gun owners….The NRA will continue to fight for its right to speak out in defense of the Second Amendment. Any efforts to silence the political speech of NRA members will, as has been the case in the past, be met with strong opposition.

The rest of you can pound sand. (more…)

Finally, the MSM has thought to survey commenters to learn just why they write what they write and, more important, why they write under the cloak of anonymity. From boston.com, the web site of the Boston Globe:

At many of these sites, executives have begun to ask themselves: How did we get into this thicket, and is there a sensible way out? But a more basic question needs to be answered first: Who are these people who spend so much of their days posting anonymous comments, and what is motivating them?

Newspapers find themselves in a strange position. People wanting to have a letter to the editor printed in the paper have long been required to provide their name, address, and a daytime phone number. Yet on the websites owned by these same newspapers, all it usually takes to be handed a perpetual soapbox is an active e-mail address.

True enough. In the old days, a reporter or write would have to wait days (if not forever) for any reader response to his or her work, either in the form of a letter to the editor or to the writer himself. On the web, however, the feedback is instantaneous. (more…)

You know, she really wasn’t that bad. Sure, she said something pretty stupid about Israel on video, but taken in the context of her life — taken in the context of the narrative — she was a woman of enormous accomplishment.

That, at least, is the argument being made on Salon by Anna Clark:

Had Thomas retired a month ago, the news would have cued a celebration of her contributions to journalism. And let’s be frank: These contributions are truly astonishing. In 1943, a year after she graduated from Wayne State University, she was hired by United Press International. So began a long trajectory of barrier breaking in the places where media and politics meet, places that are hardly welcoming to professional women. Thomas became the first female officer of the National Press Club — which had been exclusively male for nearly a century — and the first female officer of the White House Correspondents Association. She served as the WHCA’s first female president in the mid-1970s. Thomas also helped persuade President Kennedy…

You get the picture: Helen Thomas is not being celebrated for the stories she broke, or her wit, or her insight: she’s being celebrated for her sex. Or gender, to use the current term. To which the only proper response is: so what?

(more…)

Via Jeff Dunetz, Helen Thomas’s last words as a White House Correspondent.

Irony meter: off the charts.

(more…)

Since I wrote my piece on Helen Thomas comparing the firestorm of condemnation that occurred immediately after entertainer Don Imus made his race-tinged comments about the Rutgers women’s basketball players to the relative kid gloves with which Helen Thomas is being handled over her outrageous anti-Israeli comments a few new things have occurred in the story.

First of all a few left-leaning pundits have scolded Thomas, most prominently Clinton era operative Lanny Davis, who issued a press release calling Thomas an “anti-Semitic bigot.” Joe Klein, another left-wing pundit, posted a few short paragraphs saying that he felt Thomas should be moved from the front row to the back of the room, though he is obviously avoiding a call for her to be fired. Apparently her anti-Semitism isn’t bad enough for Klein to want her fired.

We also have learned that the speaker’s agency that used to shop Thomas as a speaker for various functions has removed her from its list of celebrity speakers. Nine Speaker, Inc. made the announcement Sunday that they would no longer rep her as a speaker to prospective events.

And now today, Thomas herself has announced that she has retired from her multi-decade journalism career. Effective immediately, Thomas is done. (more…)

Long a disgrace to American journalism, Helen Thomas is finally gone: According to The Hill:

The longtime White House reporter is stepping down after her controversial comments on Israel. Helen Thomas announced Monday that “she is retiring, effective immediately,” according to a statement from Hearst newspapers.

Her decision comes after her controversial remarks about Israel hit the blogosphere. She later apologized for her comments.

Earlier, White House Correspondents Association President Ed Chen had noted:

Helen Thomas’ comments were indefensible and the White House Correspondents Association board firmly dissociates itself from them. Many in our profession who have known Helen for years were saddened by the comments, which were especially unfortunate in light of her role as a trail blazer on the White House beat.

(more…)

They say a conservative is a liberal who’s just been mugged, but for years Richard Cohen of the Washington Post has adamantly refused to accept the evidence of his own senses, and steadfastly hewed to the usual leftist blatherskite, even as he’s groped, however asymptotically, toward the truth.

Maybe he’s finally been mugged once too often. His latest column is called, “Did Liberals Get It Wrong On Crime?” –

This is a good news, bad news column. The good news is that crime is again down across the nation — in big cities, small cities, flourishing cities and cities that are not for the timid. Surprisingly, this has happened in the teeth of the Great Recession, meaning that those disposed to attribute criminality to poverty — my view at one time — have some strenuous rethinking to do. It could be, as conservatives have insisted all along, that crime is committed by criminals. For liberals, this is bad news indeed.

Bad news, huh? Why? Cohen never really explains, although the implication is clear: whenever your world-view is based on a fantasy of the way the world should work, instead of the reality of how it actually operates, the day of reckoning is never very pleasant. (more…)

A recent opinion article by Richard Greener and George Kenney in the L.A. Times ponders why the census is counting illegals and the problems this may cause with congressional-seat allocation.  As if it wasn’t enough for this White House — which has many problematic people in place as well as some serious and shady ethical issues — to take over the census, uneasy Americans are further irritated at the fact that they are well aware that illegals are indeed being counted.

The article makes good points, but leaves off one critical aspect in its call for leadership in Congress to fix the problem because the answer to their question was addressed back in October and November 2009.  Let’s review, very briefly. The LA Times states:

Worse yet, to the extent that the census accurately counts illegal immigrants, the greater the disproportionate representation accruing to states with large illegal communities, which cannot vote. Estimates vary, but a 2007 study by the Connecticut Data Center found that the 2010 census may affect the allocation of a dozen congressional seats on the basis of some states’ illegal immigrant populations.

(more…)

Did we just hear Connecticut attorney general Richard Blumenthal try to blame local journalists for his ‘misspoken’ words about his Vietnam war record? When Blumenthal was asked at Tuesday’s press conference why he didn’t correct published accounts of his Vietnam service, he said:

There were a few articles, not many. I am responsible for my own statements….I can’t be responsible for all the articles, I may not even have seen them. ….sometimes journalists do make mistakes.

Cr: Chion Wolf

Really?  Sure, journalists get quotes and background wrong from time to time but civil servants, who are in the public eye like Blumenthal, often call right away to demand a correction. In fact, that’s just what our A.G.’s press staff usually did with me – even when I wrote the quotes exactlyas he said them during phone interviews. Case in point: (more…)