Any time someone commits an act of violence that grabs headlines, journalists scramble desperately for a scapegoat, some person or social force to crusade against and extend the story’s expiration date (and thus ratings).  While it appears that Jared Lee Loughner’s motivation for shooting Gabrielle Giffords was nonpartisan (aka mental illness), there have already been reports from CBS, CNN, and the Associated Press attempting to pin Loughner’s motivations to Sarah Palin’s gun-target map, Giffords’ opponent Jesse Kelly using an M16 at a campaign event, and a general atmosphere of fear and animosity created solely by Republicans in Arizona.

As long as they’re bringing this subject up, I believe it’s a good time to discuss what the media could do if they really wanted to prevent future violence.  The answer is not to force conservative speakers to be “more careful” with their rhetoric.  In fact, I believe that the greater responsibility to prevent violence lies on the shoulders of journalists themselves; the media must stop suppressing conservative voices and increasing the ire of the nation.

This is not what makes us angry.

Only a literalistic idiot could find Palin’s “target” map something that would inspire violence, and only a partisan idiot could think that Loughner, a fan of flag-burning, would be a big enough Palin fan to have ever seen that map.  I find it extremely unlikely that someone can be inspired to violence through the words of a political leader unless it’s a direct order, which neither Palin nor Beck nor Rush have come anywhere close to saying.  The people who claim that these three use “coded language” to incite violence are as paranoid as Loughner; only crazy people see calls to violence in innocuous speech, such as John Lennon’s shooter claiming The Catcher in the Rye as his inspiration.

Indeed, when these conservative media personalities talk about removing politicians through the power of one’s vote, that is actually a deterrent to violence.  For Palin fans, her political speech gives them joy and hope, a cathartic reminder that someone out there is speaking for them.  Her defining political contribution has been giving hope to all the flyover country-dwellers deemed subhuman and unworthy by the elites in the media — hope that their votes mattered and that they could change things through their speech and political involvement. (more…)

**Link Fixed**

Washington Times – Off-the-record exchanges and thousands of confidential e-mails dating back almost four years reveal that high-profile journalists have been aiding and advising President Obama since he announced his candidacy in early 2007.

Provided by WikiLeaks to the Washington Times, the material was originally discovered by a cleaning lady at CNN.  Surfing on Wolf Blitzer’s computer during her 4:00 a.m. break, Emalina Ortiz inadvertently opened a window to “BO-WeServe”–a private forum for journalists supporting Obama’s campaign and, later, his administration’s agenda.

Shocked by what she read, Ortiz impulsively copied the archives to a flash drive and mailed it to WikiLeaks’ Julian Assange, a man she had heard Blitzer describe in his broadcasts as “a hero, someone who is not afraid to shine a light into the sewer to see what’s floating around down there.”

Spokesmen from the New York Times, the Washington Post, ABC, CBS, NBC, and CNN blasted Assange for exposing communications that linked Obama’s rise and governance to support from and tutelage by some of the biggest names in journalism.

In a brief phone interview, Times Managing Editor Bill Keller railed: “The cheeky sumbitch actually asked me if I wanted to break the story.  Said I could run it with a ‘Who watches the watchers?’ angle.  What the hell’s the matter with Assange?  He knows the rules:  we’re leaked to, not on.  Only the Times destroys reputations with impunity and immunity.  He crossed a line coming after us.”

(more…)

JournoList scandal is back and prepare for it to be a driving force in the news for quite some time. The Daily Caller published an article tonight indicating they’ve obtained emails from the JournoList and the initial details are as damning as we expected when the list-serv, founded by the Washington Post’s Ezra Klein in 2007, surfaced with the Dave Weigel kerfuffle last month.

Snippets from the article below, but make sure to read the whole thing at the Daily Caller and return to Big Journalism early and often as we unpack the details that emerge and track the fallout from this seminal event in the history of left-wing media bias.  It’s unclear exactly what the Daily Caller has, but there’s certainly no indication from this article they’ve already laid all their cards out on the table.

According to records obtained by The Daily Caller, at several points during the 2008 presidential campaign a group of liberal journalists took radical steps to protect their favored candidate. Employees of news organizations including Time, Politico, the Huffington Post, the Baltimore Sun, the Guardian, Salon and the New Republic participated in outpourings of anger over how Obama had been treated in the media, and in some cases plotted to fix the damage.

In one instance, Spencer Ackerman of the Washington Independent urged his colleagues to deflect attention from Obama’s relationship with Wright by changing the subject. Pick one of Obama’s conservative critics, Ackerman wrote, “Fred Barnes, Karl Rove, who cares — and call them racists.” (more…)

I don’t know about you, but I’ve had just about enough of this nonsense:

Transcript from Newsbusters:

KURTZ: Let’s start with the obvious question. Why did you not ask Eric Holder in that interview about this former Justice official’s allegation that a case against the New Black Panther Party was dropped because of racial politics?

SCHIEFFER: Well, it’s certainly a question that is a legitimate question to ask. And basically what happened was this all really became a story when the whistleblower came out and testified that he’d had to leave the Justice Department and so on. And, frankly, had I known about that, I would have asked the question.

I was on vacation that week. This happened — apparently, it got very little publicity. And, you know, I just didn’t know about it.

I mean, you know, God knows everything, but I’m not quite that good. Every once in a while, something will slip by me. And in this case, it just slipped by me. If I’d have known it, I would have asked about it.

This is, of course, Howard Kurtz interviewing Bob Scheiffer on Reliable Sources.

Bob Schieffer marginalized the DOJ/New Black Panther controversy first by not asking the Attorney General about it, and then again with his phony “it got very little publicity” line.  Of course “it got very little publicity,” Mr. Scheiffer; you’re the guy in charge of publicity!  When a mainstream media authority whines that something wasn’t covered in the MSM, it’s the definition of a circular argument.  (more…)

Acronyms seem to be more popular than ever. The President is the POTUS, his teleprompter is the TOTUS, and the Supreme Court is the SCOTUS. The media should have its own acronym, so I have the perfect plan.

There are many ways to describe the media in America in its current state, most seem to fit pretty well. Most common is the Mainstream Media. The MSM acronym fits. I like it, it works and most people know what it means. I know the reference here is that they are mainstream with their own leftist ideas, but, there is nothing “mainstream” about the current state of the media in this country. In fact, it is far from the mainstream. The American media hates the mainstream when they protest against excessive federal spending and a loss of Constitutional values. The media ignores the mainstream when it figured out that global warming is nothing more than fraud. The media has long since left the mainstream in this country (Fox News being the exception) and they have become a radical arm of liberal politics.

I have used the phrase, Activist Old Media at times just because it fits with their agenda, but witness the children at MSNBC. You don’t have to be old to be wrong. That’s the kid network. At just 14 years old it is young and pubescent and likes it that way. Someday it may grow up, but until then we will watch and laugh and be amused at its adolescent behavior. (more…)