Long, long ago, the Associated Press simply decided to stop being objective. Other than the final act of officially declaring their left-wing bias, the AP has done just about everything else required to announce that they are on a crusade, among other things, to ensure Barack Obama’s reelection. But even then, you would think credibility would mean something to the AP. Biased or not, no one wants to come off as a hack, but hacky the AP is, especially with respect to today’s story about President Obama’s fourth-quarter fundraising for his reelection campaign.
When you read the AP’s reporting, it’s obvious what the AP is up to. The goal is to create the impression that Obama and the DNC represent an unstoppable political juggernaut, that they are unstoppable cash machines firing on all 12 cylinders of competency and popularity:
U.S. President Barack Obama’s re-election campaign, together with the Democratic National Committee, raised more than $68 million in the fourth quarter of 2011, Obama’s campaign manager Jim Messina said on Thursday.
Messina told supporters in a video message that 98 percent of the donations were made up of $250 or less, illustrating growing grassroots support for Obama, a Democrat, as he works to hold on to the White House in November’s election. …
The campaign beat its goal of raising $60 million in the final three months of 2011.
Obama’s fundraising totals dwarf those of Republican front-runner Mitt Romney, whose campaign said on Wednesday it had raised $24 million in the fourth quarter.
By hiding the context in this report, the AP intentionally lies through omission to put some wins in Obama’s sagging sails.
He said that the war was worth the price in blood and money, as it set Iraq on a path to democracy. …
They’re going face challenges in the future,” Panetta said Wednesday during a visit with troops in Afghanistan. “They’ll face challenges from terrorism, they’ll face challenges from those that would want to divide their country. They’ll face challenges from just the test of democracy, a new democracy and trying to make it work. But the fact is, we have given them the opportunity to be able to succeed.”
Those quotes are from a Fox News story posted earlier today. If, however, you are a NPR consumer, you would never know the Defense Secretary said any such thing:
Panetta told those gathered that “challenges remain, but the U.S. will be there to stand by the Iraqi people as they navigate those challenges to build a stronger and more prosperous nation,” The New York Times reports.
He also said, the BBC writes, that the effort had been worth the cost because the U.S. leaves with an Iraq that is now a partner.
“You will leave with great pride — lasting pride,” Panetta told troops at the ceremony, according to the AP. “Secure in knowing that your sacrifice has helped the Iraqi people to cast tyranny aside and to offer hope for prosperity and peace to this country’s future generations.”
That’s about as gracious as NPR is willing to get. Nowhere does NPR mention the Secretary’s words about democracy or the real miracle of the war in Iraq, and that’s that we now have the first true democracy in the history of the Arab world. And though it may be complicated and take a few steps back at times, as a direct result, the flower of self-determination is opening in that region.
The Left’s propagandists are constantly trying to convince us that there’s no inherent media bias. One of my fellow bloggers at TheRightSphere.com, Brock Boehlert, provides a perfect counter to the liberal noise-machine’s disconnected-from-reality talking point:
Recent headlines regarding the drop in the unemployment rate from 9% to 8.6% right?
Wrong.
Wrong, indeed. Those headlines are from 2004 when then President Bush was gearing up for re-election and the unemployment rate had dropped to 5.7%. How many millions of Americans would be jumping for joy at that unemployment rate right now? Yet, back then news outlets, including some allegedly unbiased sources like the Associated Press, were cranking out doom and gloom stories about the rate drop actually being bad news.
Now, that’s not necessarily a bad thing. The facts back then were similar to the facts now. The unemployment rate had dropped because over 300,000 had just given up looking for work. Now take a look at some headlines from last week after the unemployment rate dropped from 9% to 8.7%:
See the difference? I am not one to go one about “the liberal media.” That would indicate the media as a whole has a sought after liberal agenda (and some of them do but they’re easy to spot). The problem is, most journalists have an inherent bias that affects their reporting. They just don’t realize it. It just comes out naturally. The majority of those who work in journalism are Democrats/liberals.
I’m not as generous as my TheRightSphere.com colleague. I happen to think a lot more journalists intentionally skew the news to push an agenda, but the overall point is accurate. The media is dominated by Leftists and their bias comes out naturally.
Then again, are you shocked NBC Nightly News and ABC World News didn’t cover the press conference? We know all year Mr. Williams and Ms. Sawyer have never mentioned Operation Fast and Furious once. If they covered the press conference they’d be forced to talk and explain Operation Fast and Furious. I’m disappointed CBS didn’t run a story on the press conference, but since they’ve been on top of the story I’m willing to forgive them. Here are some topics NBC and ABC thought were more important than congressmen calling for Mr. Holder’s resignation:
Low cost Lipitor!
Annie Leibovitz says go iPhone!
Texas court says dogs have sentimental value
ACL injuries
New Kennedy tapes
They will do anything to avoid talking about Operation Fast and Furious. Like Cam Edwards said they’d run an entire 30 minute show on Brian Williams and puppies before they talk about Fast & Furious. (more…)
Let’s give Mr. Alter some props. He answered my email. Granted, it took awhile but he did respond. Here’s his response. It’s not bad until the end. You’ll see what I mean.
Hi, Mary:
Yes, I would tell you and Brian Terry’s family that Operation Fast and Furious was not a scandal. It was bad public policy that went horribly awry, with tragic consequences. It was a big blunder, a fiasco and maybe some other adjectives you and I could agree on, but not a “scandal” as conventionally defined. If you believe it’s a scandal, which to my mind connotes intentional wrongdoing for financial or personal (sometimes sexual gain), than you must include other huge policy mistakes under your definition.
So I assume you are willing to agree that the Bush Administration’s failure to recognize in advance that Saddam Hussein didn’t possess WMD was a scandal (removing Saddam’s WMD was the explicitly-stated purpose of the war). That intelligence failure led to an unnecessary war and the death of thousands. Many veterans of the Bush Administration have agreed that the war, like Operation Fast and Furious, was a case of good intentions gone horribly wrong.”Stuff happens,” as Donald Rumsfeld put it.
But those unfortunate, even tragic, things are not the stuff of scandal, unless they involved stealing by contractors and the like. As it happens, I was a supporter of the war initially, then criticized its conduct. But knowing that President Bush genuinely believed WMD to be present (In the same way Eric Holder genuinely believed the U. S. government could track guns through that straw purchase program, which had begun under Bush), I never called the Iraq War a scandal. Did you? I didn’t think so.
If you are motivated by anything beyond sheer malice toward the President of the United States you will agree with the logic of this post. In any event, please feel free to share it with your readers.
Warm regards, Jonathan Alter
I thought it was an okay response until the last part and he shot himself in the foot. If my supposed “sheer malice” for President Obama is blinding me then couldn’t I say Mr. Alter’s total devotion to President Obama is blinding him?
To Mr. Alter a scandal is intentional wrongdoing for financial or personal gain. The Department of Justice didn’t tell the Mexican government about Operation Fast & Furious. Could someone please explain to me how that doesn’t count as intentional wrongdoing? How does anyone think it’s right or a good thing to arm already dangerous drug cartels? How were they going to track the guns without anyone knowing on the other side or tracking devices in the guns?! No attempt was made at the border to confiscate the guns. The DOJ purposely did not tell the Mexican government. They didn’t inform the Mexican government because they wanted this operation fail. Operation Fast & Furious was doomed from the beginning. Eric Holder never believed they could track guns through the straw purchase program. If he did there would be tracking devices in the guns and the Mexican government would be involved. If you think about it the only way for the guns to be tracked would be to find them at crime scenes.
Another reason why Operation Fast & Furious is a scandal under Mr. Alter’s definition: the push for gun control laws. Let’s just say everything Mr. Alter and Mr. Holder has said is 100% true. It’s still a scandal because now the DOJ and some in Congress are using Operation Fast & Furious as a way to push for more gun control. They’re using this situation for personal and political gains. The New York Times concentrated on that one part of Mr. Holder’s testimony!
It’s not exactly breaking news but still disappointing that Brian Williams has not mentioned Operation Fast and Furious on NBC Nightly News. I just sent off this email to him:
Dear NBC Nightly News:
I am extremely disappointed & disgusted NBC Nightly News has completely ignored Operation Fast and Furious. Our federal government has allowed guns to walk into Mexico into the hands of Mexican drug cartels & have been found at crime scenes in Mexico and USA. Not to mention showed up at the murder scene of Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry. I’m also disturbed because of the in depth coverage you gave Attorney General Alberto Gonzales in 2007.
How come you guys have been ignoring Operation Fast and Furious? Sharyl Atkisson broke the story on February 23, 2011 and there was no mention of it in your broadcast. The next day instead of talking about Fast & Furious you report how the new bulb ban hits Easy Bake Ovens. Really? The bulb ban affecting Easy Bake Ovens is more important than a scandal involving the ATF allowing guns to walk across the border? I looked through your episodes in March and saw no mention of it, but Sharyl Atkisson reported on it 16 times, including an agent that spills the beans on the operation and towards the end of the month another agent spoke out!
Here’s the kicker for me. Congressman Darrell Issa subpoenas Attorney General Eric Holder. No mention of it on your show or anytime during that week. On April 2 you reported about a Southwest airplane tearing open. I agree that is an extremely important story, but you guys gave an in depth follow up on April 3 and April 4, including about the probe into Boeing 737 airplanes were expanding. How about the probe into Operation Fast and Furious?
I thought I hit the jackpot when I saw a video titled “Border Corruption Crosses Border” but I was let down. It’s great you guys reported about the corruption that hits our agents, but what about the corruption within our own federal government AIDING the Mexican drug cartels. It’s bad enough DEA, ATF, and Border Patrol Agents aid the drug cartels but our federal government is aiding them with GUNS. Couldn’t you have put that in this report?
(Did you guys forget Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry was brutally murdered by a gun from this operation in December 2010?)
Considering NBC as a collective is ignoring Operation Fast and Furious, I think each show on NBC and MSNBC needs to be examined and called out. The MSNBC website is a complete mess and difficult to navigate. Most websites allow you to sort the results by date or relevance and a certain time period. Not MSNBC! You’re only allowed a keyword. And, for some reason, each article is listed by its latest update rather than its original publishing timestamp (but when you click on the article the date of the last update doesn’t match) so they’re completely out of order. It’s a NIGHTMARE navigating their website, worse than navigating MMfA.
I began with ‘Hardball With Chris Matthews’ because his coverage of Alberto Gonzales was far superior to his lack of Operation Fast and Furious coverage. Since he did a great job keeping his viewers informed on Mr. Gonzales’ scanda,l I would think he would want to keep his viewers informed on Fast and Furious. No one died in Mr. Gonzales’ scandal. Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry did die as a result of Fast and Furious, but I guess that’s not as big of a deal as a few people losing their jobs.
I sent Mr. Matthews this email the other morning.
Dear Chris Matthews:
I have a very serious complaint because you have not talked about Operation Fast and Furious this year. How come?
I made a timeline for Fast and Furious and highlighted major dates. CBS News broke the story February 23, 2011. I reviewed your show’s transcript for that week and saw no mention of the operation On April 1, 2011 the Oversight Committee issued subpoenas to Eric Holder & the Department of Justice. Your transcripts from that week show no mention of the subpoenas. Mr. Holder testified on May 3, 2011 and once again your transcripts show absolutely no mention of his testimony.
Close your eyes. Picture this. It’s 1999. There’s an event for something significant and then-candidate George W. Bush is attending along with a few members of the KKK. Bush & the KKK members are together behind the podium. The first speaker is a KKK leader, then some others, and finally Bush. Also, the KKK arrived there to make it known they endorse George Bush. A photo shows the KKK and George Bush appearing to leave the event together.
Now imagine it’s 2003 and the photos have been made public. Do you think an organization like Media Matters For America would give George Bush the benefit of the doubt? Do you think The New York Times or the evening news would brush it aside? If this was any GOP politician do you think this would be ignored? Absolutely not!
As a communications professional, my assessment of the Obama Administration’s communications strategy is that it may be the most inept performance I have ever seen of any political regime.
Crisis communications is not a silver bullet. Some thing simply cannot be repaired. The whole point of communications in general, however, is that the job should never be challenging if the entity the communicator works for doesn’t provide fodder for the opposition.
The Obama Administration has repeatedly handed its opposition ammunition — not 9mm bullets, but everything from Stinger missiles to bunker-busters. The result is the appearance, to this citizen, of a White House on the verge of panic. I’m not the only one. When legendary far-left blabbermouth James Carville tells the White House it’s time to panic, it’s time to panic (That’s no diss on Mr. Carville. I love watching him.).
Almost none of this has to do with the truth or facts of any given situation. It has to do with how it all appears. Generally, it makes Mr. Obama appear like an amateur politician.
It Started Out So Well!
The Obama campaign had it made in 2008. The GOP had put up the Grumpy Old Troll against a PR juggernaut — the first viable Black presidential candidate. Young and slick vs. old and creaky. The backlash against the Bush presidency had peaked — people were tired of the war in Iraq, gasoline had hit $4, and the mainstream media so controlled the political narrative that it would’ve taken a literal disaster to push the Obama campaign off-message. Not only did the GOP face an uphill battle anyway, but now they were facing a wave of messaging that was hard to ignore: hope and change. So powerful was this message that, despite it and the candidate it spoke for being utterly lacking in substance, it swayed enough of the electorate to create an historic moment for America. The country had elected a God. I don’t need to tell you how this photo comes off:
In a piece on Politico, liberal standard bearer Sally Kohn posted her response to the growing Solyndra scandal, in which the Obama White House aggressively pushed through $535 million in loans to a company that was not financially sound, nor capable of providing the product or returning the loan.
Typical of a smear (where is our AttackWatch?) Kohn states:
The Bush administration initiated loans to Solyndra – and tried to push them through before Obama was inaugurated. Since the loan went through, knowledgeable private investors – high-powered Democrats and Republicans – have invested in Solyndra as well. But Solyndra couldn’t compete with Chinese counterparts because the Chinese government subsidizes its green jobs industry 30 times more than we do in the United States, helping jumpstart the new industry.
You see the problem? As Kohn wants it positioned, the issue is not that the Obama Administration pushed through bad loans, it’s that the Chinese are way better than the United States. That, while preventing its citizens from using the Internet and jailing those who publicly disagree with the Communist government, the Chinese care more about the environment because the government takes the people’s money and gives it to government run/coordinated/controlled “green” industries.
Anyone want to guess how much CO2 and other pollutants China puts into the atmosphere? It’s a lot.
ThePortuguese 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?
Last week, Miami New Times Blogger Kyle Munzenrieder accused Matt Drudge of trying to stroke racial flames for reporting the facts in the news.
Mr. Munzenrieder is upset because Drudge linked to stories that reported the violence surrounding the Miami Beach Urban Weekend as part of a larger collection of links covering multiple incidents of youth related violence that gripped such cities as Boston, Nashville, Charlotte, and Rochester over the Memorial Day weekend.
Munzenrieder decried Drudge because some of the incidents in question involved Blacks and gangs, stating in his blog that he thought that covering such story was “kinda racist.” Munzenrieder went as far as to offer a quote a racial Gawker conspiracy theory: “since the president of the United States is a black man, and since black voters tend to align with his party, it is to the advantage of the Republican Party and its allies to inculcate fear and apprehension about people who look like him. Hence the top stories on the Drudge Report today.”
Mr. Munzenrieder is entitled to his opinions and theories–no matter how farfetched they may be–but to accuse an editor of racism for reporting the facts in the news is the sign of a sick mind. (more…)
“As yet, nothing wildly exciting has taken place, according to pundits and the analysts, inside the Republican field right now.”
That’s ABC’s Christiane Amanpour working hard to tell Republicans that their field for the presidential nomination sucks right now. Actually, she defers her comments to the “pundits and analysts” who somehow are experts in knowing what is exciting. What would she call exciting? Perhaps if one of the Republican candidates did a “Howard Dean Scream,” or if one of them had a “John Edwards Affair” with one of their staffers during the campaign? Oh ya, the activist old media kept that quiet during the 2008 campaign because apparently that wasn’t the type of “excitement” they wanted.
Did the media miss Herman Cain’s announcement speech in Atlanta? I suggest they watch it if they want to see excitement. The same media that was so captivated (and they still are) by Barack Obama’s race has virtually ignored Cain. Go figure? By the way, if the media loves great speech makers, as they say they do, they might want to watch Cain for that reason as well. He uses no teleprompter, no reverb, and no Greek columns behind him. Maybe if he had, they would’ve called it “exciting.”
Did they miss Mitt Romney raising $10+ million dollars in eight hours in Las Vegas? I was there. It was exciting. Apparently a Republican who has such tremendous support financially from the people doesn’t count as exciting in the minds of the activist old media. Instead Politico uncovers that Newt Gingrich has a revolving account at Tiffany’s in the hundreds of thousands of dollars and Chris Matthew calls it a “big mistake” and that Newt wasn’t “thinking ahead.” Seriously Chris, you want to talk about big mistakes and not thinking ahead? How’s that 14 trillion dollar debt clock workin fer ya? Watching the debt clock rack up faster than lap times at the Indy 500 must be exciting stuff in the minds of the media. Also, Newt used his money, Obama is using ours. (more…)
I’m going to make some points about the lesser controversies (namely the lyrics issue) surrounding the invitation of rapper/poet “Common” to the Whitehouse, because John Nolte has the larger controversies that were completely ignored by Jon Stewart pretty well covered.
One thing that stuck out to me in Stewart’s attempted takedown of Fox News (or “epic takedown” if you’re a Mediaite straight news guy: notice how the first linked article is entirely opinionated but not distinguished as such as Mediaite claims to do, and the second glosses over convicted cop-killer and FBI-classified domestic terrorist Assata Shakur, aka Joanne Chesimar — also a hero to Common as an “alleged” cop killer). It was the equivalence Stewart attempted to draw between Johnny Cash and Common. Stewart showed George Bush presenting the National Medal of Arts to Johnny Cash (who had written some rough lyrics in his day as well) and then asked emphatically, “What’s the difference?! What’s the difference?!” The answer Stewart was getting at was as subtle as the CB4 rap he played the next day (yeah, this actually exists. I couldn’t stop singing it either):
Stewart is unsurprisingly asserting that anyone who objects to Common’s Whitehouse invite is either racist or trying to influence people who are, and are holding different standards to Bush’s and Obama’s choice of honorees. But Stewart’s first deception is that while the National Medal of Arts is presented by the President, honorees are selected by the National Endowment for the Arts, not the Whitehouse, so it was not Bush’s decision at all.
I’m not a birther, but the left is not helping their cause by hysterically mischaracterizing anyone who disagrees with the President on policy – or even asks why it took him three years to release a birth certificate – as a racist.
Yesterday morning during our CNN discussion on the birth certificate issue, James Carville said that the birther issue is a census of idiocy for America. I disagree. Playing the race card is the census of idiocy in America.
The article begins by acknowledging how many Democrats questioned John McCain’s birth in the Panama Canal zone. Apparently, it isn’t racist to question that of McCain. Despite Yahoo’s best effort to sweep this forced acknowledgment under the rug with a simple “but that died down,” it in fact, did not die down because the left was satisfied with the answer (they made a sensational amount of hoopla over the issue). It died down because the left was both faced with the hypocrisy of making a charge while claiming offense over the same charge and they wanted to be the only victim for sympathy and fundraising. The media did more to cover John McCain’s birther story and George Bush’s SAT scores than it did evaluating Obama’s backstory, like they’ve done with past presidents. That’s what this is truly about.
“If this were George Bush saying he was sending drones into Libya this morning a lot of us would be saying ‘Oh no you don’t, oh no you don’t, that’s taking it one step too far, that’s really making it an ‘American’ war.’ But now that Barack Obama’s doing it, does that make it any better? I don’t think so.”
This CNN report by Nic Robertson on funerals for alleged Libyan victims of allied bombing, including civilians, is model of hard-nosed reporting; of refusing to swallow government propaganda, and of speaking truth to power. And this should come as no surprise, since CNN’s track record in challenging Arab dictators’ claims of casualties caused by the American military goes back …
… sorry, CNN’s track record of uncritically accepting Arab dictators’ claims of casualties caused by American bombing goes back to the first Gulf War, when Peter Arnett parroted the Iraqi regime’s version of the Al-Amiriyah shelter incident. During the final stages of the air campaign leading up to the allied ground assault into Kuwait, US aircraft bombed a Baghdad command and control facility; the regime claimed it served a dual purpose as a civilian air raid shelter, and that some 400 old men, women and children were killed.
While no transcript of CNN’s coverage apparently survives on line, this self-penned puff-piece by Arnett includes his version of the incident; for a US government account, see the case study in this overview, from George W. Bush’s White House, of Saddam’s record of faking or deliberately causing civilian casualties to exploit for propaganda purposes (and while this is not the place to revisit the claims and counter claims, I couldn’t help but note that reports by CNN, the BBC and others stating that the casualties were old men, women and children also mentioned that many bodies were so badly burned as to be barely identifiable as human).
The tone and balance of CNN’s reporting at the time, along with that of other western media, can be gauged from their later reporting on the Saddam regime’s relentless milking of the incident to whip up anti-American fervour. In a story of over 300 words on the state-controlled commemoration of the seventh anniversary of the bombing, Brent Sadler managed to find space for one off-hand, single-line reference to US claims that the shelter was a legitimate military target.
“We are engaged in a class war … we know who our enemies are, we just have to stop lying to ourselves. And we know what to do about it because insurrection is intuitive, no one has to tell us how to do it … Why are all the white middle class people telling us to be peaceful? … Power will never cede its power peacefully.”
This has been bouncing around over the weekend, but somehow I missed it until now. Presidential candidate Barack Obama, December 2007:
The President does not have power under the Constitution to unilaterally authorize a military attack in a situation that does not involve stopping an actual or imminent threat to the nation.
As Commander-in-Chief, the President does have a duty to protect and defend the United States. In instances of self-defense, the President would be within his constitutional authority to act before advising Congress or seeking its consent. History has shown us time and again, however, that military action is most successful when it is authorized and supported by the Legislative branch. It is always preferable to have the informed consent of Congress prior to any military action.
***UPDATE: As expected, Politico's Dylan Byers uses Martin's suspension to once again admonish CNN for not "punishing" (his word) Erick Erickson and Dana Loesch. Fascistic GLAAD wins another scalp. Over the years, CNN's Roland Martin has said some awfully outrageous stuff about Republicans and the Tea...
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