A recent Livescience.com article appearing in Yahoo! News highlighted a study by psychologist Gordon Hodson of Brock University in Ontario in which a nexus is supposedly found between being unintelligent and conservative and being racist. I presume then that, as conservatives and morons tend to be more racist, the dots between them are connected? The story not only provided an overview of the study but also links to other similar studies which appear to back up Hodson’s conclusions. Well then, there it is. We always knew that liberals are smarter and more tolerant. We just needed a study to prove it.

Gordon Hodson

At best, psychology is an inexact science, as the human brain is the most complex system in the known universe, and to try to understand what makes it tick is daunting if not impossible. But layer on top of that the possibility that the researchers themselves may harbor a bias that leads them to subconsciously steer their studies towards reaching pre-determined conclusions, and you have the makings of a sham science project … with predictable results.

Hodson’s complete study is not available for free online, so I readily admit I only know what has been made public. Apparently the researchers offered a list of questions which would measure participants’ left or right leanings based upon the answers. For example, one measure in defining “conservative” is gauging one’s level of agreement with the statement “schools should teach children to obey authority.” Then they overlaid these results with responses to questions with overtly racial overtones such as “I wouldn’t mind working with people of other races.” I guess if you answer “yes” to authority and “no” to working with others not like you, you are a conservative racist. Conversely, if you replied “fight the power, maaan” and “I want my office to look like a rainbow, my brother,” then you are a tolerant and cognitively well-adjusted liberal. Oh, if only the world were so simple. (more…)

I take no pleasure in the misery of others, but as someone who recognizes that the mainstream media is the arch-villain in the fight for human liberty and the survival of an America that doesn’t resemble a European socialist country – yesterday, it was impossible for my heart to do anything other than leap for joy when I read that the New York Times lost $40 million in 2011.

No one wants to see anyone lose their job, but the New York Times, Washington Post, L.A. Times, and all the rest are nothing more than lairs for arch-villains, and when these hollowed-out volcanoes are bankrupted, the virtue of this outweighs what happens to the faceless henchmen who are now out on the streets looking for work. I wish them luck. I wish things were different. But this is about saving our country and humanity.

Over in England, some are openly panicking over the future of newspapers:

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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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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On Monday evening, the political blogosphere was rocked by the unprecedented publishing of a 200-page opposition research book on Mitt Romney written by the John McCain campaign for the 2008 GOP presidential primary. Who decided to release this information to the public? It wasn’t ThinkProgress; it wasn’t Newsweek or the Washington Post or Mother Jones. It was by a website which currently features the headlines “Martial Artist Kicks Down Banana Tree,” “Baby Flummoxed By New Sound,” and “Jessica Simpson Wearing A Giant Deformed Penis Mask.” I kid you not.

BuzzFeed, the name of the site in question, is the latest venture for Politico’s JournoList-er Ben Smith, as previously reported by John Nolte. Smith is heading up the “Politics” section of BuzzFeed, and while he claims objectivity, the case of this leaked document reveals exactly how he plans to use the site to hurt the GOP and aid Obama’s reelection campaign.

Screenshot of BuzzFeed’s politics page

The “About” page of BuzzFeed presents the site as nothing more than a place where readers can find interesting and viral Internet content:

We feature the kind of things you’d want to pass along to your friends: an outrageous video that’s about to go viral, an obscure subculture breaking into the mainstream, a juicy bit of gossip that everyone at the office will be talking about tomorrow, or an ordinary guy having his glorious 15-minutes of fame.

The site’s niche naturally extends to its political page, headed up by Smith. The political news cycle is chock full of bizarre and hilarious information that normally doesn’t end up on NPR–Mitt Romney sparring with pop group LMFAO, Herman Cain singing “Imagine” with pizza-themed lyrics, or Rick Perry blasting a coyote while jogging, for instance. Thus, a site to present this kind of offbeat content (the categories on BuzzFeed include “LOL,” “WTF,” and “Fail”) sounds like a great place to unwind, to set aside all the partisan bickering and just check out posts “for the lulz,” as we whippersnappers say.

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It’s always fun when media and their analysts tie themselves into knots when confronted with something that destroys their template.

Republican front runner Mitt Romney gives 50 or 60 bucks to one of his volunteer campaign staffers and leftists spin themselves into a self-imposed Ken Shamrock-style submission.

The fact that the volunteer was black is driving the left and their media absolutely nuts. “It galls me, I don’t even like to watch it. I felt like it plays into every sort of patronizing stereotype of what black people are.” That was the line on MSNBC over Romney paying Ruth Williams the cash.

Now, let’s get this straight, Williams felt inspired (by God, she said) to volunteer for the Romney campaign before he paid her. She earned the money. She worked for the money. She never expected it, but she was unemployed, she needed the cash and Romney gave it to her. Sounds like a fair transaction to me. Of course, the problem here is that it was done by an Evil Rich Republican who isn’t supposed to do acts of gratitude and since the recipient was a minority they are angrier than an OWS’er being told to find a job. Listen to the entire MSNBC segment and you’ll learn that it’s government’s job to take care of people like this, not churches or individuals. Seriously, these loons have snapped over this.

What they don’t care to mention is that this is nothing unusual for Romney. He sacrificed two and a half years of his life (beginning at age 19) to serve the people of France on an LDS mission. Hey, he was an unpaid community organizer before it was supposedly cool to call yourself that. You can just begin and end with that act of service, but if they cared to look at the rest of his life, they would learn more.

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And so, let the word go forth that Super PACs must bloom in every corner of America! Let the free speech flow! Let the money fall like rain, and let the national debate give voice to opinions other than those held by the MSM!

Wikipedia’s description of a Super PAC:

[A] political action committee, or PAC, is the name commonly given to a private group, regardless of size, organized to elect political candidates or to advance the outcome of a political issue or legislation.  … The 2010 election marked the rise of a new political committee, dubbed “super PACs,” and officially known as “independent-expenditure only committees,” which can raise unlimited sums from corporations, unions and other groups, as well as individuals. … Super PACs are not allowed to coordinate directly with candidates or political parties and are required to disclose their donors, just like traditional PACs.

Question: How is any part of that description different from what the MSM does on a daily basis and what it has been doing for years now?

Just like Super PACs, the MSM does most of its partisan campaigning in print, on radio and on television, and just like Super PACs, the MSM enjoys unlimited amounts of cash, much of it coming from the super-rich top 1% and their big multi-national corporations.

There are, however, three important differences between a Super PAC and The New York Times, Washington Post, Politico, The L.A. Times, The Huffington Post, ABC, MSNBC, CNN, NBC, CBS, and all the other usual suspects. And those differences make the case for why Super PACs are better for America than the mainstream media:

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When it comes to left-wingers disguising themselves as objective journalists, Politico is the worst. When the publication first came online, we all liked them. The coverage was fair and the editors and staff seemed to understand that the online world is different from legacy media. On these here Internets, we’re trying to do media differently. But what Politico was doing can only be described as a hustle, a con, a ruse — but one that was undeniably successful, at least in the short term.

In order to gain online traction and influence, Politico pretended to be objective — at least, until they had gained influence, in no small part through their conning of the right. We gave them links and praise and spread the word until…

In 2008, Politico struck.

In 2008, no one did more to undermine Republicans and aid Obama more than Politico. Bias doesn’t even begin to cover it.

With a vengeance, Politico protected Obama. Private citizens weren’t safe; they joined the infamous Journolist (even as they wrote untrue stories protecting Journolist); they created nonsense-narratives about tanning beds; and they spun Obama’s ties to domestic terrorists into a single meeting with “’60s radicals.”

And as we’ve seen during the 2012 campaign season, Politico is now a full-blown character assassination machine joined at the hip with the left in the taking down our candidates one by one. Sexual harassment allegations from 15 years ago and racist Texas rocks from 25 years ago get infinitely more play than Obama’s current scandals (Fast and Furious, Solyndra) and the President’s long list of failures.  Politico’s attacked Sarah Palin’s family, Journolisted away inconvenient whistleblowers, and arrogantly refused to correct provably incorrect stories.

And now Politico’s climbed naked into bed to nuzzle the ear of MSNBC.

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Columbia Journalism “Professor of Professional Practice” Sree Sreenivasan, still smarting from an encounter with James O’Keefe, seems to have declared himself the ultimate arbiter of what is, or is not, citizen journalism:

PEOPLE LIKE O’KEEFE THINK THEY ARE ACTING LIKE JOURNALISTS. They think having a camera makes them a journalist. Instead, this is a cheap caricature of journalism…

No, Prof. Sreenivasan, scribes who hide behind the varnish of objectivity to sell a political agenda are what pass for cheap caricatures of journalism.

The erosion of faith in media began before O’Keefe was born, and “professors of professionalism” like Sreenivasan enable it. There is no such thing as journalistic objectivity–accuracy, yes, but objectivity, no. Objectivity is a fairy tale told to idealistic activists who want to enter journalism so they can “change things”; they already know there’s no glory in the role of an “objective observer.”

Granted, there are a few who strive for objectivity as an ideal–but they are rare, and they won’t be found under the tutelage of Sreenivasan or fellow Columbia professor Dale Maharidge.

Prof. Sreenivasan has the audacity to lecture citizen journalists–who report facts that the mainstream media leaves out for the sake of “objectivity”–simply because they have, rightfully, reclaimed journalism? Please. Go troll on Facebook and whine about it some more, “professional journalists.”

Perhaps Prof. Sreenivasan believes that citizen journalists are responsible for polling such as this:

Pew: Public opinion of media never worse

Americans See Liberal Media Bias on TV News

Distrust in U.S. Media Edges Up to Record High

The Hill Poll: Most voters see media as biased and unethical

Americans View Media Bias As Big Problem, Poll Shows

Public trust in US media eroding: Pew study – Yahoo! News

Shall I continue?

The continual decline of public trust in media is not the fault of James O’Keefe or other citizen journalists–citizen journalists were created in response to it.

People like O’Keefe have it in for professional journalists.

Could Prof. Sreenivasan be more self-exalting and misleading? Do “professional journalists” send out profanity-laden emails to people with whom they disagree? Is this what Sreenivasan calls “journalism?”

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There was a time, probably before you were born, that the NBC News brand was the standard bearer for quality news. Granted, that bar was always low, but there was a time when they cleared it with ease. Now they have to jump up to reach it … they usually miss.

Two weeks ago news came down that MSNBC had hired Meghan McCain, daughter of Senator John McCain (R-AZ) and Daily Beast “columnist,” as a contributor. That means she would now be paid to give her opinion on TV, an opinion no thinking human being has ever sought out even when offered for free online.

It was a move so puzzling that the liberal website Gawker.com titled their piece on it “‘Lean Stupid’: MSNBC Hired Meghan McCain.” In her first appearance on the payroll, McCain said “she “bets [her] career” that Newt Gingrich won’t win the GOP nomination.” Gawker added, “What career?”

To that point her “career” had consisted of saying and Tweeting embarrassing things, complaining when people pointed them out, and authoring a book so poorly written and painful to read as to make “Everyone Poops” read like Hemingway. Now she’s MSNBC’s insight offerer on Republican politics, bring to that position all the wisdom being her father’s daughter and an “art history” degree has to offer … none.

But NBC wasn’t done building up their stable of members of the “Lucky Sperm Club,” people whose greatest (or only real) accomplishment is to be born to the right people.

It used to be mostly confined to Hollywood, when children of famous parents would miraculously find themselves cast on TV shows and movies regardless of talent because someone made a phone call or a producer saw an opportunity to kiss the right butt. No more.

As network “news” bleeds from objective reporting to an agenda-driven extension of corporate entertainment divisions, more and more “golden children” find themselves with positions that were once, not so long ago, reserved for those who earned them.

Enter Chelsea Clinton.

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Protection from the activist old media when scandal hits is a great deal when you can get it.

Political figures know that a Republican who sneezes sideways gets blasted non-stop, and a Democrat can stand on top of the local Clock Tower picking off the public with a high-powered rifle and the people will be blamed for getting in the way of the bullets.

This is the way the game is played, and everybody in the media and in politics knows it. Fortunately, the public is becoming more aware of this all the time.

You think I’m being extreme? Take the case of former New Jersey Governor Jon Corzine.

Corzine ran MF Global. That company just filed for bankruptcy, meaning investors have lost as much as $700 million dollars. Corzine is a Democrat–a big Democrat. It’s hard to find that fact in the stories being done on the collapse of MF Global, if Corzine’s name is even mentioned at all. Democrat Corzine may have also transferred investors’ funds days before the collapse to avoid detection by authorities. If this were a Republican, Joe Biden would call this a big ‘effin deal.

Good Morning America ran the story this week on the collapse of MF Global. It was all of 14 seconds long and Corzine’s name was left out. Whoops–didn’t have time to fit that in. Forget mentioning he was a big, lib Democrat, he got the luxury of his name being totally ignored. Hey, it’s a great deal when you can get it. (more…)

I ask what are we going to do about it? There’s no doubt that the MSM is in the tank for the Dems. That knowledge and a six pack will get me a buzz.

You’re connected and have a platform. Put the question out to all the folks who read your posts, “How do we combat this extreme bias?”

The alternate media does a great job but there are a TON of really intelligent people who are too busy earning a living to research things. How do we reach these people, most of whom are “Your father’s Democrats”?

The answer to this question is simple: Don’t stand for it.

I was a liberal until about 1991, and what a shocker it was to discover that the very same media I had no problems with prior to seeing the light was now filled with lies, propaganda, half-truths, and any number of parlor tricks intentionally set up to destroy our side. Unless you lived through it, you can’t imagine how frustrating it was to sit through the ‘92 election unable to do anything about the corrupt MSM’s partisan crusade to elect Bill Clinton.

Keep in mind that this was before the Internet, before email, before Andrew Breitbart, before Twitter, before Fox News, and before talk radio was the force that it is today. At the time, the only person going on television and aggressively exposing this injustice and saying the things I wanted to say was one of my few living heroes, The Mighty Brent Bozell.

The good news is that it’s not 1992 anymore and you no longer have to sit around frustrated waiting for someone else to speak for you. Best of all, you also aren’t in a position where you have to put all the effort into composing a letter of complaint hoping some newspaper will print it.

If you want to do something about media bias — which is doing something for America — use the Internet. Also…

Use us.

Help us. (more…)

Note to media: it’s the ethics, not the ideology!

Rolling Stone’s Matt Taibbi, also exposed as one of the alleged journalists working with the Occupy movement behind the scenes and undisclosed, offers up a weak defense of the inherent lack of ethics of those involved. Let’s square the circle and call it weak tea.

There is nothing terribly interesting in any of these exchanges. Most all of the things written were things all of us ended up saying publicly in our various media forums.

It likely fell to a mostly politically irrelevant Taibbi and Rolling Stone to lead the push back as a distraction from NBC’s big problem, Dylan Ratigan. The pigeon-coiffed man with the big mouth has some explaining to do, including to NBC suits and anchor, Brian Williams.

Emails included in Big Government’s document drop of emails exchanged by leaders of the Occupy Wall Street movement make it clear that MSNBC host Dylan Ratigan has been directly involved with the group, including helping them to draft statements and offering revisions to a statement David DeGraw might later discuss on NBC News with Brian Williams. Scroll to the bottom of this particular email from David DeGraw to view this passage below and more.

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Remember when Media Matters was hyper-sensitive to anti-semitism? Shockingly, they’ve gone silent in response the latest wave of anti-semitism.

They once had to dig deep and literally create an allegation of anti-semitism against Glenn Beck. Of course, Beck’s only “crime” was that he was attacking Media Matters sugar-daddy, George Soros. You may not know this but George Soros is Jewish. The reality is Beck and others criticize Soros, not because he’s Jewish, but because he funds a vast array of Leftist organizations which support a cradle to grave entitlement society with which they–GASP!–disagree. Soros’s heritage has little to do with this criticism, but that didn’t stop the professional smear merchants from turning up their dog whistle detection devices.

Glenn Beck has repeatedly attacked financier and philanthropist George Soros with anti-Semitic stereotypes, referring to Soros as a “puppet master” and accusing him of controlling the media, the political process, and the global economy.

You’re probably scratching your head right now. If you’ve done any research into Soros, you know he openly admits to doing this stuff. It isn’t a secret, but Media Matters – funded by Soros – tries to make it seem as if these accusations are far-fetched in an attempt to build a case in which criticizing their benefactor is an anti-semitic attack. Attacking Soros on things he admits to doing isn’t anti-semitic. The attack is based on one individual’s actions not that individual’s heritage. Media Matters is tapping into a stereotype – i.e “Jews are evil bankers” – in order to paint Beck as an anti-semite. It’s a disgusting tactic.

So who has recently been accusing bankers of “controlling the media, the political process, and the global economy?” Answer – A “movement” Media Matters has given its full-throated support to: Occupy Wall Street. How did Media Matters miss the signal? Using their own methodology, Occupy Wall Street’s attack on bankers is “steeped in anti-semitic sterotypes” and you don’t even have to make it up. There’s video. Occupy Wall Street has people in it saying that Jews are part of a conspiracy which controls Wall Street and the world. There’s others saying they (this time Zionist Jews) should be run out of the country. There’s no need to read into what they’re saying, it’s right there. Yet, Media Matters says nothing.

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We’re in that strange season of Liberal Limbo where everyone feels safe piling on a Democrat president. In the most glaring example, the media’s finally caught up to the Solyndra scandal and have decided to give it the attention it deserves. Which leaves only one question…

Why?

Because when you’re 14 months out from an election none of this matters. For now, these media reports might help to drag Barack Obama down into the thirties approval-wise, but we’re only in the middle of the second act of The One’s political story which means plenty of time remains for the thrilling 2012 comeback climax the MSM is most certainly crafting this very day.

You see, there’s no mustache-twisting villain yet. Republicans haven’t chosen a front-runner. But once the Right has a standard-bearer, the MSM will have their target — their villain — and Solyndra, the rise in poverty, chronic unemployment and even a second Great Recession will disappear from media-memory like last week’s thrilling chapter of “The Perils of The One!”

Moreover, the Palace Guards in the Obama-enamored media are also looking for cover. In the future, when the breathtaking bias they’ve shown these last few years is thrown in their smug faces, they’ll attempt to defend their corruption by pointing to Solyndra in the same way they once pointed to their heavy coverage of Whitewater, which also hit its peak — wait for it, wait for it  –  when it didn’t matter.

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This past Newsweek cover of Presidential candidate, Michele Bachmann, shows the unfair portrayals of female politicians in the media. While Publisher of Newsmax, Christopher Ruddy, reasonably displays Bachmann as a lady of office, Newsweek Editor-in-Chief, Tina Brown’s choice of an unflattering picture depicts Bachmann as an insane politician. As if the photo isn’t weird enough, the article entitled “Queen of Rage,” presents a propagated notion of instability and lunacy, whereas “Heartland Warrior” better describes her candidacy.

Bachmann’s Newsweek scandal is only the most recent of sexist subjections. Rooted in what seems to be the Madonna verses whore syndrome, society continues to allow the media to degrade women without concern. Thankfully, the National Organization of Women declared the cover misogynistic, but where are the rest of the feminists?

The list of unfair projections is growing with every women who steps into the political arena. As soon as a powerful, strong, intelligent woman surfaces as a leader, the media immediately attempts to destroy her reputation. From the 1st Vice Presidential candidate, Geraldine Ferraro, who was thought to have mafia relations, Hillary Clinton, who was portrayed as an unattractive obscene Presidential contender, and Nancy Pelosi, who’s facial features have been criticized, to Sarah Palin, who’s intellect and family life was demoralized, Christine O’Donnell, who was characterized as a promiscuous witch, Meg Whitman, who was unjustifiably called a “whore” by political opponent, Jerry Brown, Jan Brewer, who was  labeled a racist for wanting to protect her state from illegal immigration, and Nikki Haley, who was accused of extramarital affairs during her 2010 campaign – these women have been torn apart on matters unrelated to the real issues they were fighting to solve.

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The Portuguese language has a word, saudade, which  which describes “a deep emotional state of nostalgic longing for something or someone …  A stronger form of saudade may be felt towards people and things whose whereabouts are unknown, such as a lost lover, or a family member who has gone missing.”

Right now, Harvard’s Nieman Foundation for Journalism has a deep feeling of sausade for mainstream media coverage of the anti-war movement.  Their John Hanrahan reports that, although the anti-war movement is alive and well in the United States, indeed even reinvigorated by America’s involvement in Libya, they just can’t get any respect from the MSM.  Mr. Hanranhan lists in painstaking detail numerous recent protests, ranging from the pathetic  – an 84-year-old nun, an 82-year-old Jesuit priest and three other activists over the age of 60 breaking into a U.S. Naval Base near Seattle to “symbolically disarm” Trident II missiles by “putting up banners and scattering blood and sunflower seeds, and hammering symbolically on a road and fences” – to the fairly dramatic – a December 2010 protest against the war in Afghanistan which saw 131 demonstrators arrested outside the White House.  But none of these protests merited any serious media coverage much beyond local newspapers, far-left blogs and mischief-making foreign cable news outfits such as Al-Jazeera and Russia Today.

Flailing around for an explanation for why the media are no longer highlighting anti-war protests, Hanrahan’s analysis is almost self-parodying in its failure to even consider, let alone conclude, that political bias might be involved (I’ve previously blogged at Big Journalism on how the MSM’s coverage of the Obama administration’s wars is strikingly different in tone from how previous conflicts were covered).  The report acknowledges that these days the protests are smaller and less violent than during the Bush presidency (left unstated is the obvious conclusion that most of those demonstrating were primarily motivated less by opposition to war than by hatred of the Republican administration).  But if size and intensity were the main criteria for judging the newsworthiness of protests, how to explain the MSM’s wall-to wall coverage of Cindy Sheehan’s lone crusade against President Bush’s Iraq policy?

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The Columbia Journalism Review is a self-appointed “ombudsman” of the press. It’s mission statement is as follows:

Columbia Journalism Review’s mission is to encourage and stimulate excellence in journalism in the service of a free society. It is both a watchdog and a friend of the press in all its forms, from newspapers to magazines to radio, television, and the Web. Founded in 1961 under the auspices of Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism, CJR examines day-to-day press performance as well as the forces that affect that performance. The magazine is published six times a year, and offers a deliberative mix of reporting, analysis, criticism, and commentary. CJR.org, our Web site, delivers real-time criticism and reporting, giving CJR a vital presence in the ongoing conversation about the media. Both online and in print, Columbia Journalism Review is in conversation with a community of people who share a commitment to high journalistic standards in the U.S. and the world.

High goals. Professional journalists read this website / publication and are supposed to use it as a gauge to see if they’re doing their jobs properly. These are the alleged journalism experts. The “watchers” of the watchmen (the press). They’re meant to hold journalists accountable. They set them straight, if you will.

So I was shocked when I came across an item in their business press section, “The Audit.” This piece about the current coverage of the debt ceiling fiasco going on in Congress is a doozy. One section, in particular, made me literally say “bull[expletive deleted]!” out loud.

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This is not the real Anthony Weiner.

Somebody hacked him and this is an avatar named, Tony…uh….Tony….Whiner.

It’s a subtle difference in name, but makes all the difference in the world when it comes to what is going on here. Once you know what really happened, it will all fall right into place.

Anthony Weiner was a guy who attacked Republicans and made them cry when he went after them. This clearly was not that guy at the seven-minute news conference where he answered zero questions. He wasn’t asked what his name was, so since the media didn’t ask, we still can’t be sure who that was.

Even libs in the media are confused with who this new guy was who showed up at a news conference to talk about how Karl Rove, or somebody named Karl Rove, must’ve been looking over his shoulder while doing secret surveillance thanks to the Patriot Act and found his password (which BTW was “ImNotMarkFoley”) and hacked his Twitter account. (more…)

Surprised?

According to a University of Miami study, those historical rankings of American presidents that pop up every year or so are significantly weighted in favor of Democrats, thanks to the liberal leanings of academia.

Political science professor Joseph E. Uscinski, one of the study’s authors, said the new analysis shows that the overwhelmingly liberal academic community consistently ranks Republican presidents about 10 spots lower than the public would.

“I don’t think anyone is surprised,” Mr. Uscinski told The Washington Times. “Among the political scientists and historians that I work with, Democrats outnumber Republicans 8 to 1.”

What was eye-opening, he said, was the stark difference between the historians’ assessments of Republicans and the grades given by the public.

“On average, all the Republicans get the short end of the stick,” he said. “But the one it impacts the most is [Ronald] Reagan. It’s often difficult for people to fathom why he’s ranked as low as he is.”

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