We’ve all heard the old proverb, “nature abhors a vacuum,” or its variation “power, like nature abhors a vacuum.”  With the ascendancy of “conservative media” — i.e. Fox News, Drudge Report and the Big sites — to name just a few – we have also learned that news and information abhors a vacuum.

Fox News hasn’t grown to dominate cable network news and opinion because people were completely satisfied with the status-quo network news media — because let me tell you, we weren’t.  And despite what myopic critics claim, Fox News hasn’t become a cable news powerhouse simply because we suddenly decided that we prefer to watch attractive, intelligent, leggy blonde lawyers deliver the news (although it helps). No, there was an obvious vacuum in the news industry.

Although advances in technology and the full flowering of the information age coincided with the growth of alternative and conservative media, we all sensed that something was very wrong with television news long before Fox burst on the scene. Rush Limbaugh became new-media pioneer and a “mega-platinum-dittos” success on seemingly moribund AM radio by realizing that America was hungry for something different and better, something not leftist.

Mainstream network news, by its own open and blatant bias, had created a news, information and opinion vacuum. When an entire industry is controlled by doctrinaire liberals with a bad case of herd mentality as fully and openly as the “Mainstream Media” has become, eventually free people living in free markets will seek out alternatives.  If only it were that simple for our neighbors south of the border. (more…)

Over the past couple of months, a lot of readers of my website, AtlasShrugs, have been asking me why I go on these consistently belligerent TV shows to discuss Islam, knowing that:

• It is going to be a hostile environment;
• I will be debating liars, deceivers and Islamic supremacists;
• I will be defamed, smeared and slandered;
• The playing field will be grossly unfair;
• I will be interrupted, cut off, and rebuked;
• I will be given much less time than my opponent.

I will tell you why. It is an opportunity, however compromised. Voices like mine, Robert Spencer’s, Wafa Sultan’s and Ibn Warraq’s are never heard in the mainstream media. The truth is hidden from the masses, and the media’s criminal negligence is cloaked in good intentions. Well, the road to hell is paved with good intentions.

This is guerrilla warfare in the information battlespace, in the war of ideas. These media opportunities were hardly perfect, but they were something. Why make perfect the enemy of the good? They were better than the traditional blackout on our freedom- defense initiatives. It was a shot, and I was taking it and running with it, no matter how disgusting it all was.

From the media’s perspective, the Ground Zero mosque was an historical phenomenon. For the first time, a major news story became the most important national and international news story without the media. Think about that. Unlike the fringe pastor in Florida, who tweeted a Qur’an threat and the media descended like locusts to a Florida backwater to create a news story, a narrative, the Ground Zero mosque was not shaped by the media, not covered by the media — not at first anyway. (more…)

For those in the mainstream media committed to report the false and libelous narrative of “Watergate Jr.,” “wiretapping” and “bugging,” I predict much egg on your J-school grad faces. In your rush to judgment to convict James O’Keefe and his companions, you vengeful political partisans of press forgot to ponder: “Was Mr. O’Keefe up to one of his patented and obvious clown nose-on hidden camera tricks, trying to make his subjects look foolish?” Blog commenters seem to be quicker on the uptake than six-figured Washington-based pundits these days. And I predict there will be tape to vindicate these four pranksters, too.

Yesterday, I made the mistake of answering the following email, addressed to Big Government editor Mike Flynn, promptly:

Hi Mr. Flynn,

I’m a reporter from the Business Insider working on a short item about the new Big Journalism site launched today. Any chance you’d have Breitbart’s email so I can get in touch with him?

Would appreciate it so much.

Best regards,

Gillian

–

Gillian Reagan

The Business Insider

XXX@businessinsider.com

XXX Fifth Avenue, 7th Fl

New York, NY 10003

646-484-XXXX

twitter: XXXXXXX

I spoke with Ms. Reagan for about ten minutes and gave her a long explanation as to why I started Big Journalism. I awoke to something so far off from what I said that I called her back and asked her specifically about the following quote that is a composite of her question, a hodge-podge of my response and flat out lies.

Let me begin with the biggest deception of all: Business Insider is a front for Gawker, the notorious leftist/media snark site.  If she had been up front with me, like any sane person I never would have responded.  (Go to www.Gawker.com to see why.)  But she came to me under false pretenses.

Next, let me point out that when I told her she’d misquoted me, she told me that she had taped the conversation without my knowledge or my consent!

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