Not long after my Friday piece ran that exposed FishBowl DC’s unbelievably nasty attack on the Daily Caller’s Michelle Fields, Fishbowl DC started tweeting me. The person behind the tweets is editor Betsy Rothstein (I think this is her) and she seemed flabbergasted that I would interpret Peter Ogburn’s ugly and sexist attack against a conservative woman who had done absolutely nothing wrong as political:

—-

There was more, but you get the picture. My reaction is two-fold:

1. For someone who runs one of those shallow, above-it-all, superior snark sites, Ms. Rothstein sure has a thin skin.

2. Crazy me for thinking that a venomous attack launched against a conservative by THE EXECUTIVE PRODUCER OF THE BILL PRESS RADIO SHOW is motivated by politics.

Whatever was I thinking?

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Yesterday, in an article titled “Mo. crackdown on taping lectures shows digital divide over academic freedom, student privacy,” the Associated Press falsely claimed that Big Government edited controversial footage of a University of Missouri labor studies course. From the article:

Conservative blogger Andrew Breitbart’s Big Government website obtained a leaked copy and edited hours of classroom lectures to suggest that she and a classroom colleague advocated union violence.

Neither Breitbart, nor Big Government, nor any of the Breitbart editors edited the footage in question.

In fact, Insurgent Visuals claimed publicly that they edited the classroom videos after they were posted online and leaked. (more…)

Falling to your own media malpractice makes you irresponsible, not a “victim.” It doesn’t make you a “target” when other people publicly note the absence of your journalistic integrity. Politico missed this bit of logic recently when it attempted to blame conservatives for the misdeeds of various members of the media, most recently NYT’s Natasha Lennard.

… these critiques may just muddy the waters enough to do some damage to both the media and the fledgling anti-Wall Street movement.

For those of you who might have missed the scandal, JournoList was a place where hundreds of members of the MSM (and those pretending to be conservative journalists)  got together to hone their anti-Republican narratives. In other words, this was where every conspiracy theory those of us on the Right held about the corrupt media was proven true. This was also where the MSM’s ongoing “call them racist” narrative in defense of Their Precious One was likely born.

JournoList might be dead as far as an organized infrastructure (though I suspect it lives on in informal emails, instant messaging and texts), but the corrupt spirit of it all is alive and well, especially at Politico, where no less than three of their “journalists” were members of Ezra Klein’s now infamous JournoList: Mike Allen, Ben Smith and Lisa Lerer.

This sort of background and context is important. We can never allow ourselves to forget what these “objective” news outlets have been a part of. What we know about their past tells us everything about who they are and the deceptions and dishonesty they are capable of.

It also helps to explain Politico’s behavior when they do something like this:

Conservatives looking to delegitimize the Occupy Wall Street protests have a new tactic — targeting journalists.

That is the opening sentence of a front page Politico piece posted just this morning that looks at how those of us on the right, especially this site and Big Government, have exposed the ongoing collusion and conspiracy between members of the mainstream media and the heavily astro-turfed Occupy movements currently stinking up public parks throughout the country.

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- There was never any serious proof that tea party members spat upon a black Democrat Congressman. There is, however,official confirmation of Occupy protest participants spitting upon a female member of our armed forces. There was a time in American media when facts seemed to matter. That time is long gone.

Timothy A. Clary photo

The problem with the media coverage, obviously, is that the MSM sees this movement as something that can turn out the vote for Obama in 2012 and offset the impact of the Tea Party. Regardless of the ongoing lawlessness, the hundreds of arrests, and what we’re seeing unfold today, Occupy Wall Street is useful to the MSM’s gameplan to ensure another term for President FailureTeleprompter. The Occupy movement also gives Obama’s Media Palace Guards reason to ignore the brewing Fast and Furious and Solyndra scandals.

- A case in point.

Wednesday marked the six week anniversary of solar company Solyndra declaring bankruptcy. Despite this, MSNBC’s Chris Matthews, Lawrence O’Donnell, Ed Schultz, and Al Sharpton have yet to report one single word about this growing scandal on their respective prime time programs.

- Why would Marxists want to take over DC’s Freedom Plaza? My God, comrades, isn’t the White House enough? Apparently not.

The “October 2011” movement organizer Dennis Trainor tells me that he believes capitalism is “homicidal” and that the U.S. needs a revolution. “This is not a reform movement,” he said. He is part of the illegal occupation of Freedom Plaza in Washington, D.C. The “October 2011” movement is not part of, but endorses the “Occupy Wall Street” movement that began several weeks ago.

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Jorge Ramos is the most famous and respected Spanish-Language television journalist.  He is often invited to participate in the political roundtable on ABC’s “This Week” program and last election cycle he was given the honor of moderating debates between the Presidential field.  When candidates Obama and McCain made their last appeals for the Latino vote, it was Jorge Ramos who had the honor of interviewing them on Univision.

There is no denying that Mr. Ramos is the most influential television journalist in the Latino-American community and this Sunday he interviewed Andrew Breitbart for Univision’s version of “Meet the Press”, “Al Punto”.  The following exchange was not only an example of typical “gotcha” journalism but unfortunately for Mr. Ramos, it also shows that he or his staff might be getting their talking points from the sad clowns at Media Matters for America.

RAMOS: In one of your websites, in “Big Peace,” there was an article written by Jason Bradley titled “Terror Babies: A Growing National Security Threat.” Do you share Mr. Bradley’s point of view?

BREITBART: I didn’t even read that article but I can tell you this, I created the Huffington Post in the United States of America which is a left of center blog. I created my blogs which are mostly right of center and I believe in open debate in our society. That’s why I believe so strongly in the first amendment, so I don’t know the specifics of that article, had I known going into this interview, I would’ve read it and we could have talked about the specifics.

RAMOS: Well the specifics is that Mr. Bradley’s view is that children born in the U.S. to undocumented immigrants are terror babies.

BREITBART: I’ve never read that, I’ve never heard that and I’d have to see the context of that to give you an opinion. I would never call people that are born in this country who are from Mexico terror babies.

There have been 3,607 posts at Big Peace,  3,659 posts at Big Journalism, 8,039 posts at Big Hollywood, 7,329 posts at Big Government and 35,422 posts at Breitbart.tv.  For Ramos to ask Breitbart about one post from March of this year, that didn’t exactly make headlines from coast-to-coast is unfair on its face.  But then for Ramos to characterize the post as saying “children born in the U.S. to undocumented immigrants are terror babies” is the kind of mis-representation that could only have been made if his staff only read the Media Matters lies about the post instead of the post itself.  Ramos not only slandered the post and its author with that statement, he also misinformed his audience about an article that most of them probably did not read.

Breitbart’s answer to Ramos’ fabricated mis-characterization of the post was “I would never call people that are born in this country who are from Mexico terror babies” and of course, neither did Mr. Bradley or anybody else in the Big Peace post in question.

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The most unusual part of Congressman Weiner’s mea culpa press conference today occurred before Weiner came to the stage.

Andrew Breitbart showed up at the presser and was immediately mobbed by reporters asking about today’s exclusive pictures of Weiner on Big Journalism and Big Government which seems to have pushed Weiner into admitting the truth.

Watching Breitbart take Anthony Weiner’s Stage and speak into the microphone Weiner rented showed how far Breitbart has come, but more importantly how far citizen journalism had come.

After ten days of being vilified by left wing media reporters, those same reporters were tripping all over their underwear trying to ask him questions about the story they had doubted until today.  Not only that, but at the behest of the same reporters who trashed him personally and his stories, Breitbart stood where Weiner was about to stand and demanded an apology from the slanderers in the press and from Congressman Weiner himself. (more…)

This seems pretty nuts. Correct me if it’s something completely in the ordinary for a federal agency:

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has bought a Google advertisement to steer people searching for “ObamaCare” to a page that is customized to detect searchers’ locations and steer them both to local health insurance information and to a list of “what’s in the law for you.”

“We are using a bunch of search term[s] to help point people to HealthCare.gov. Part of our online efforts to help get accurate information to people about the new law (i.e. also use Facebook, Twitter, blogs and webcasts),” an HHS official confirmed by e-mail.

Is this customary? Or is this the government using your tax dollars to steer Google searches to pages which feature only complimentary content about the most unpopular pieces of legislation from this administration?

Jerry Bever, general manager for Anchorage station KTVA, issued a statement today regarding the inadvertent voice mail left on the phone of a senior staff member of the Joe Miller campaign.  He claimed that the discussion his staff members had regarding potential scandals for the Miller campaign was taken out of context:

The complete conversation was about what others might be able to do to cause disruption within the Miller campaign, not what KTVA could do.

The American public is supposed to believe that the staff of KTVA were sitting around imagining potentially scandalous stories that others might foist upon the Miller campaign and not ideas that they, themselves were conjuring.

Instead of just taking Mr. Bever’s word for it (like so many in the media and at Soros-Funded left-wing activist organizations have), lets actually hold the statements made on the recording up to the context Mr. Bever has provided.

Look at what was said and try as hard as you can to fit these sentences into that context:

MALE REPORTER: Oh yeah… can you repeat Joe Miller’s…uh… list of people, campaign workers, which one’s the molester?

[INAUDIBLE]

FEMALE VOICE: We know that out of all the people that will show up tonight, at least one of them will be a registered sex offender.

[Laughter]

MALE REPORTER: You have to find that one person…

If they were discussing what others might do, why do they keep saying “You” and “I”?  Why don’t they say “They have to find that one person…” or “They know that out of all the people…” (more…)

Note: Please be sure to read Big Government’s expose on the Left’s manufactured smear attempt of philanthropist Charles Koch.

A Big Government investigation into the Left’s manufactured smear campaign against liberty supporting philanthropist, Charles Koch, has caught the Huffington Post, a member of the White House Press Corp (WHPC), in violation of journalism’s generally accepted code of ethics.

While various existing codes have some differences, most share common elements including the principles of — truthfulness, accuracy, objectivity, impartiality, fairness and public accountability — as these apply to the acquisition of newsworthy information and its subsequent dissemination to the public.

While pretending to simply be covering this story for the Huffington Post, it’s been confirmed that alleged freelance journalist and HuffPo contributor Brendan DeMelle actually played a part in creating it. DeMelle has also been pretending to cover the story objectively on his own blog, Desmogblog. (more…)

How has the increasingly marginalized demand for Internet regulations been dramatically amplified, despite the American people’s clear disapproval of just this kind of federal government overreach? You guessed it, the liberal media, who can always be depended upon to do whatever they can to promote and legitimize the latest bad idea coming from the left.

Armed with the freshest copy of the far left’s talking points, outlets like NPR, the Seattle Times and the Washington Post Business Section have concluded that the Internet will only be safe if the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) regulates it under Title II of the Communications Act – designed for monopoly Bell telephone companies in the 1930s.

NPR recently ran a story on broadband policy and the leadership of FCC Chairman and Obama friend Julius Genachowski. Reporter Joel Rose interviewed two people for the story: a professor from the University of Pennsylvania, who reminded the FCC that “they have to adopt something that is enforceable,” and the president of Free Press, who warned about the end of “the Internet as we know it” and whined about how “terrified” Genachowski is of following Free Press’s reckless demands to regulate the Internet.

Quotes from Congressmen Henry Waxman and Jay Inslee, both liberal Democrats who openly support the FCC unilaterally – and probably illegally – imposing Title II regulations, were also included in the report.

What did NPR leave out? At no point did NPR’s Rose interview or quote one – not one – expert or advocate who opposes Internet regulations. Neither did he quote one member of the bipartisan majority in Congress who publicly opposes an FCC takeover and Title II regulations. (more…)

This is my last post as Editor-in-Chief of Big Journalism.

A year ago this month, Andrew Breitbart and I, along with the rest of the team at Breitbart.com, began planning this site, designing the logo and the layout, recruiting the writers and generally establishing the tone of a new conservative website devoted to all matters media, including the Mainstream Media, New Media and the blogosphere, and the intersection of politics, culture and the press.  We launched on Jan. 6, 2010, and we’ve never looked back.

So thanks to my colleagues — and most of all of to you, our readers — for making us a success, one of the top conservative sites in the country and, along with our Big sister sites — Big Hollywood, Big Government and Big Peace — a force to be reckoned with, with not only in the blogosphere, but in Hollywood, on Capitol Hill, and at the Pentagon.

Dana Loesch, whom you all know from her work not only as a blogger and St. Louis radio personality but also as a force in the Tea Party, will guide you on our collective journey from here on out. Please join with me in wishing her nothing but the best. (more…)

In response to a video showing day laborers being hired to hold campaign signs for Barbara Boxer, the Pasadena Star-News published a story about the video that has been a “viral phenomenon” according to the story written by staff writers Brian Charles and Frank C. Girardot.  The video shows day laborers holding signs for the Boxer campaign during a rally outside of the location where Carly Fiorina showed up to debate Boxer, who was joining via satellite from Washington, D.C., where she was to vote on the very important bill to limit the volume on our TV commercials.   The video was taken using a hidden camera and captures the day laborers holding signs for the campaign and when questioned about the sign they responded with “I don’t speak English.”  When questioned further about who made the sign, one man referred to the lady “that pays” along with some other broken English that was not audible.

The Pasadena Star-News seemed compelled to come out defending Boxer and her supporters, by trying to refute the story by questioning the video’s authenticity — and why not, since the video was released on the Breitbart.tv and Big Government websites.  After all, the left wing media never pays attention to details of the facts surrounding one of their fellow leftists.  They do however, pay very close attention to detail of those that they choose to apply Alinsky tactics to by following those sacred rules for radicals that the left is so fond of deploying.  The Star-News article attempts to apply these rules although it’s clear that writer Brian Charles might be a newbie at this game as well as the sources from MoveOn.org and the Boxer campaign.  In seeking to determine whether the video was authentic, Charles spoke to a spokeswoman for MoveOn.org who said:

“The tape has numerous problems. The caption doesn’t match what the man is saying,” said Ilyse Hogue, MoveOn.org communications director. “He said more than what appears in the caption. The amount of syllables coming from his mouth doesn’t match what was in the caption.”

This spokeswoman mentioned “numerous problems” with the video but, for some reason could only mention one issue – a rather weak argument at that, considering the only thing that matters is the fact he pointed to a “lady that pays.”  The story gets more interesting as Rose Kapolczynski, Boxer’s campaign manager seems to insinuate that the day laborers were really Boxer supporters.  I can’t expect them to answer any other way but, really… (more…)

They are still virtual no-shows. The activist old media is putting itself on the sidelines with a Democrat Congresswoman who was caught on tape squeezing a lobbyist for cash.

They will be pulled kicking and screaming into this story by the people Dan Rather called “pajama journalists.” I think we’ve seen this story before.

Andrew Breitbart broke the story on Big Government because it shows everything that is wrong with government. Politicians who use their power to shake down lobbyists for cash so they can keep their power– usually the media love these stories, especially when there’s audio! But so far, nothing in the New York Times, nothing in Holmes’ hometown newspaper, the Washington Post. Only the Wall Street Journal has done its job. Writes John Fund:

Ms. Norton’s office didn’t respond to several requests for comment yesterday, leaving open the question of whether she crossed ethical lines that prohibit members from linking contributions to the performance of their official duties. At least one House member I spoke with says Ms. Norton is in clear violation of House rules and should be hauled up before the Ethics Committee.

The sleazy scramble for cash initiated by Speaker Pelosi is a far cry from her pledge to run the “most ethical and honest Congress in history” when Democrats won control in 2006. Just last February, when asked at a news conference about that quote, she interrupted a reporter and said “And we are.”

Thankfully, voters will have the final say this November on whether or not they believe the accuracy of that statement.

I’ve had a little experience at knowing a good story when I see it, and I saw this as one of the major stories of the week and jumped on it with my own analysis on Liberty.com: (more…)

So after this whole Shirley Sherrod thing, I’m thinking, Andrew Breitbart has a point.

Let’s review:

1. The Tea Party was born, causing a frightened media to drum up accusations of racism
2. Later, Congressman John Lewis claims Tea Partiers shouted the “N-word” at him. The press runs with it. Breitbart posts a $100K reward for evidence. None comes.
3. The NAACP creates a race-baiting resolution to smear the Tea Party.
4. Breitbart responds with the Sherrod video – becoming the first conservative to use leftist tactics on the left.
5. It works: the White House and the NAACP look stupid.

Moving on, from the Powerline blog, New York Times reporter Matt Bai writes this of the Tea Party movement on July 17th: (more…)

Another viral video broke this morning on Big Government, in this video, two students working on a project see Congressman Etheridge leaving a Nancy Pelosi fundraiser. As the Congressman approaches them, one student (who was holding a video camera) asked Etheridge if he supported the Obama agenda.

When you watch the video you see:

• Etheridge approached them. The student with the camera was recoding from the time one student said hello, and did not move until the congressman swung at him.
• The two students were polite throughout the entire incident.
• The question asked was not pro-Obama or anti-Obama, it was simply “Do you fully support the Obama agenda?”

Now look at the coverage. This is from the Charlotte Observer:

U.S. Rep. Bob Etheridge, a Lillington Democrat, was leaving a fundraiser in Washington headlined by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi when two guys with video cameras met him, according to a blog post on Big Government, a site affiliated with conservative commentator and publisher Andrew Breitbart.

The message of that last phrase is since it was published by a website owned by Andrew Breitbart, who is one of those crazy conservatives, it’s not to be trusted. Unless Breitbart is hiding somewhere behind the camera, he had no involvement in making the film.  Additionally, as someone who has written for both Big Government and Big Journalism, the editors of the sites get the posts edit and decide which posts go up and when.  And while I am sure that Andrew puts my posts on his refrigerator each time they appear, as the head man, Breitbart is in charge of general direction; his is the “face” of the sites, etc, like the head of any business. There was no reason to include him in the story in a cheap attempt at guilt (?) by association.

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And so we begin to hear some feedback from the liberal side, including direct comments from one prominent member of the “Cry Wolf” project.  On the Inside Higher Ed website Friday, founder and editor Scott Jaschik addresses Big Journalism’s Academia-Gate series in his post, “Who Is Crying Wolf?”

Some prominent liberal academics are soliciting short essays from faculty members and graduate students to document a pattern in American history of major social advances being opposed by conservatives who “cry wolf” about the impact of proposed reforms. The campaign — known as the “Cry Wolf Project” — hasn’t been officially announced. But conservative bloggers obtained some of the solicitations of essays and published them this week, along with considerable criticism.

A series of posts on Andrew Breitbart’s Big Journalism Web site have called the program “Academia-Gate” and suggested that the effort is inappropriately political. The creators of Cry Wolf, meanwhile, say that what they are doing is awfully similar to the ways that right-leaning scholars have used academic work to advance their causes over the years.

Jaschik acquaints readers with the members of the “Cry Wolf” project coordinators and the details of the request for proposals.  He then goes on to cite from a couple of BigJournalism’s posts in the series:

One post on Big Journalism noted that those involved in the project are sympathetic to organized labor, and that many influential academics are serving on the advisory board. “This is what our higher education system has become – a publicly funded amplifier of progressive ideology,” says the post by Patrick Courrielche. “If this Cry Wolf program were just limited to a few faculty members at a limited number of universities, it would be of little concern. But the project reaches into some of the most prestigious public and private schools of higher learning in the U.S., including MIT, Yale, Harvard, USC, Columbia, Rutgers, UC Santa Barbara, University of Pennsylvania, and President Obama’s alma mater — Occidental College.”

Liberty Chick, the blogger who started calling Cry Wolf “Academia-Gate,” described her concerns this way: “What’s far more dangerous is that the ideological academic, in his capacity as a professor, actually possesses the power to control. The power to influence students’ minds, to mold the students’ way of thinking to embrace their own power-hungry desires and believe in it as ’social justice’ — this is a frightening weapon. Via union solidarity, this weapon is shared with the mobilizers, the janitors and cafeteria workers who agitate the students with various demands against the university after ideologically minded professors have indoctrinated them to hear every grievance as a call for ’social justice.’

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On Friday, Newsweek “We Are All Socialists Now” Magazine published an article entitled, “Taliban in Turmoil.”  In it they report:

Dissension has broken out in the top ranks of Afghanistan’s Taliban. The group has muddled along without an operational head since February, when Mullah Mohammed Omar’s second in command, Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, was arrested in Karachi, Pakistan… But now a claimant to Baradar’s position has emerged—and at least some senior Taliban chiefs are seriously questioning whether he should have the job.

We reported this a full two weeks ago, but let’s not let that get in the way of our enjoyment of the Newsweek piece.

Gone walkabout: Mullah Omar

The claimant is Mullah Gul Agha Akhund, “an in-law and long term confidant of Mullah Omar’s.”  Apparently, senior officials —including Omar’s top military commander, Abdul Qayum Zakir— are skeptical of Gul Agha’s claim to power.  What’s more, Gul Agha’s claim is sowing doubt and confusion throughout the Taliban’s ranks.

That can’t be good for the bad guys. (more…)