- Blowing apart the meme that free speech is being suppressed due to journalist arrests:

Put together by Josh Stearns, this document has been a great resource to track journalists working on Occupy Wall Street stories around the country who’ve been arrested. So who are they? Only seven of the 25 arrested are full-time employed traditional news-gathering employees. A number were student reporters; a few were interns; a larger number were freelancers. Some work for traditional “objective” news organizations; others work for “non-objective” news organizations, like Alternet and Indypendent Reader.

Yes, Alternet and Indypendent Reader, two lefty websites, the latter which comes across more as activism (replete with glowing reports of #OWS) than an actual media website. The presupposition you’re supposed to share as a reader of their memes is that every single arrested journalist was the antithesis of Natasha Lennard. If the hyper-fellation of this movement in the press is any indication–as well as the press’s blatant obfuscation of the rapes, shootings, etc. therein–it’s not a leap of logic to assume that other members of lefty media sites perhaps crossed the line of observation-to-participation like Lennard.

Now consider this: the Society for Professional Journalists statement.

The number of journalists arrested at Occupy Wall Street has now reached six (there may be more), but the Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ) has had enough. It is publicly denouncing the arrests of those covering all Occupy protests and is demanding that Michael Bloomberg and city officials from across the country drop the charges against detained reporters.

Funny: According to SPJ’s own bylaws, some of those arrested might not even qualify for membership within the group. For whom are they speaking? The couple of AP photogs arrested? When the cops order you to get out of the way your media cred doesn’t recuse you from following the law. The press can be aggressive to the point where they ignore the physical safety of others, even presidential primary candidates. Why have some media present at the exact same locations not been cuffed whereas a couple others were? The futile attempt to argue this as an attack on the press only underscores further media bias.

I’m willing to give some of them the benefit of the doubt, but they can’t rage “against” the machine after being its lapdog for fifty years, all while expecting public sympathy. If they want to be truly revolutionary, they’ll pull a Steve Kroft and stick a camera in Nancy Pelosi’s face while asking her how she came in to that Visa IPO or maybe set up shop in the DOJ while Holder fidgets under Fast and Furious scrutiny.

- Remember when MSNBC’s Contessa Brewer freaked out over this? Will MSNBC breathlessly report on the firearms at OWS? Will they report on the shootings already happening? Or the other crimes?

- AOL/Huffington Post is hemorrhaging talent:

At least three top names from the company have departed this month, including Brad Garlinghouse, head of the company’s Silicon Valley office, who quit last week. Mr Garlinghouse’s departure came on the same day that Sarah Lacy, a senior writer at TechCrunch, said she was leaving, and just days after Saul Hansell, a former New York Times reporter who was a senior editor at the Huffington Post, quit his job.

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This isn’t the first time Contessa Brewer has stuck her foot in her mouth:

h/t KL South

Actually yes, yes he does.

While losing an economic debate with Rep. Al Brooks, Contessa Brewer throws down the “well do you have a degree in economics?” card.

Ed Morrissey notes:

Brooks actually has three degrees: political science, economics, and law. As a lawyer, Brooks would have been experienced enough not to make Brewer’s mistake in a cross-examination, which is to ask a question without first knowing the answer. Not only that, but Brewer was being flat-out rude as well as foolish; MSNBC invited Brooks to appear to get his perspective on the issues. If their hosts respond by belittling them (whether it backfires or not), what does that say about MSNBC, its management, and the kind of invitations they make?

Since Brewer made an issue out of having an economics degree before engaging in economics debates, she must have a doctorate in the subject herself, right? Not exactly. According to her Wikipedia entry, Brewer has a baccalaureate in broadcast journalism (magna cum laude). Apparently they didn’t teach interviewing skills at Syracuse, or logic either, as a requisite for the degree.

Would Brewer merit enough intelligence to discuss the issue with a degree?

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And they were worried about the appearance of political donations.

Poet Ogden Nash knew the score:

…if called by a panther, don’t anther.

And that’s exactly what America’s liberal agenda-setting media has done. It has not answered the “New” Black Panther’s call daring it to report on voter intimidation by two paramilitary dressed Panthers, one of whom was brandishing a club, outside a Philadelphia polling place in 2008.

Bartle Bull, a former civil rights lawyer and publisher of the leftist The Village Voice, a paper in which I have been published, said it’s “the most blatant form of voter intimidation I’ve ever seen.” Worse, our media agenda setters cower in silence behind their constitutional protection at the prospect of digging into the corroborated sworn testimony of Department of Justice whistle-blower Christian Adams that the Obama DOJ won’t prosecute those Panthers because it has embraced a politically correct policy of not charging blacks for civil rights violations. (more…)

You have to admit that, even against stiff competition, Contessa Brewer is the ideal public face of the asylum known as MSNBC.  With her earnest, slightly confused demeanor, her overweening sense of moral self-righteousness, her imperviousness to logic, facts and history, and her utter inability to take any kind of answer for an answer if it’s not the answer she wants, she’s at once ludicrously predictable, always entertaining and much prettier than either Chris Matthews or Keith Olbermann.

The pride of Syracuse University is, in fact, the perfect avatar of her generation, her head so stuffed full of political correctness that she literally cannot think any other way.  Instead of taking a set of facts — oh, just for laughs, let’s say an attempted car-bombing in Times Square — and coming to a logical working hypothesis — probably Muslim terrorists, with whom we are still at war — la Contessa immediately goes to the PC well, and comes up with this gem. Let the hilarity ensue:

Yes, I know: the girl can’t help it. She’s been raised in the religion of Bogus Bigotry and she sings lustily from the hymnal. But this is where the news media’s relentless search for “diversity” ultimately leads: to a glorious mosaic of male and female, white and black, straight and gay,all of whom think exactly alike.  They have the same templates, the same frames of reference, the same knee-jerk reactions to a given set of stimuli. It used to be that reporters asked skeptical questions, kept an open mind, tried to fit the facts into a historical context and then did their best to present the information in an intelligible, even-handed way. That was called “reporting.” (more…)

This morning MSNBC’s Contessa Brewer appeared on the Stephanie Miller radio show, a small syndicated left-wing talker, and during her appearance she expressed her “frustration” that the Times Square bomber was a Pakistani terrorist instead of a white person. Apparently Brewer had hoped that a new Tim McVeigh, perhaps coming from the Tea Party movement, would turn out to be responsible for the attempted bombing in New York instead of just another boring ol’ radical Islamist terrorist.

Brewer told the lefty radio host, “there was part of me that was hoping this was not going to be anybody with ties to any kind of Islamic country,” and intimated that the fact that since it was an Islamic terrorist evil white America would just use that as another excuse to be racists. “I mean they use it as justification for really outdated bigotry,” Brewer said.

So according to Brewer, I guess we should excuse all acts of terror because, after all, it’s those evil, racist, white bigots in America that force them to blow people up? (more…)

When the Times Square bomb was discovered, the usual suspects in the press once again showed us how objective they really are. Geraldo Rivera, keen to outdo Keith Olbermann in the irrelevance department, blamed it all on white people, racists and conservative extremists (which are all the same thing to Jerry Rivers, apparently). And Katie Couric interviewed tiny but autocratic New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg who ventured a guess that the bomber would turn out to be: “Someone home-grown, a mentally deranged person or somebody with a political agenda that doesn’t like the health-care bill or something.” Couric didn’t even blink or question that.

Why would she?  It fit the narrative.

And let’s not forget MSNBC’s Contessa Brewer, who revealed her frustration that the suspect is an Islamic terrorist. The horror!

I mean the thing is that — and I get frustrated and there was part of me that was hoping this was not going to be anybody with ties to any kind of Islamic country because there are a lot of people who want to use this terrorist intent to justify writing off people who believe in a certain way or come from certain countries or whose skin color is a certain way. I mean they use it as justification for really outdated bigotry.

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Well, looky here: it’s everybody’s favorite clueless MSNBC anchor babe, Contessa Brewer, the pride of Syracuse University, dealing with one of the contentious issues of the day with her usual winning combination of invincible ignorance and aggressive emotionalism.

Does this lead to a situation where neighbors are turning in neighbors or families turning against families?

MSNBC has gone so far in the tank that even its news shows are more like a vaudeville act than, you know, journalism. The function of the guest in these interviews is now less to answer questions or provide an alternative point of view, but to be part of the act; in this case, it’s California congresswoman, Loretta Sanchez, who — amazingly — agrees with just about everything la Contessa says!

No wonder nobody watches MSNBC: the whole thing is simply an excuse for a Democrat politician to make yet another pitch for “comprehensive reform.” And you know what that means…

As anyone who’s ever lived in our nation’s capital knows, Washington D.C.  – which, as JFK famously remarked, combines northern hospitality with southern efficiency — is abysmal at snow removal.  And with two major blizzards within a week, the city brought its fabled problem-solving ability to bear on what in Buffalo or Rochester is at best a minor inconvenience delaying you in getting to the bowling alley or the pizza parlor.

Besides the fact that the federal government apparently is now completely incapable of dealing with anything — do we really want to entrust our health care to this collection of circus clowns? — what did several feet of snow in the District of Columbia prove?

Why, if you’re the New York Times and MSNBC — indisputable proof of global warming!

Skeptics of global warming are using the record-setting snows to mock those who warn of dangerous human-driven climate change — this looks more like global cooling, they taunt.

Most climate scientists respond that the ferocious storms are consistent with forecasts that a heating planet will produce mores frequent and more intense weather events.

You have to love that “most climate scientists” line, as if the Times actually canvassed them all before issuing its ex cathedra statement. Meanwhile, over at MSNBC, it seems that talking points went out in force on Wednesday, as the usual suspects — Chris Matthews, Keith Olbermann, et al. — all hopped on the AGW bandwagon and sneered at Sen. Jim DeMint’s tweeted wisecrack that it was “going to keep snowing in D.C. until Al Gore cries uncle.”

But leave it to the Cable Network Nobody Watches’ loopy Contessa Brewer, the pride of Syracuse, to tear into the subject with her usual fetching combination of intellectual confusion, dogged belligerence and invincible ignorance: (more…)

Below is the entirety of Andrew Breitbart’s remarks during his Keynote address to the National Tea Party Convention in Nashville last weekend.

During Breitbart’s 33 minute long address, he threatens to upend the entire media establishment, calling them out on their hypocrisy while demanding they change their ways, or else.

The entire speech is available in this post and is broken down into four parts, but if you would like to view some of the highlights, you can click on any of the eight links below:

1. It’s You That Sucks!
2. You Better Bet Your Ass!
3. Just Add al-Qaida
4. MSM McCarthyism
5. Breitbart Challenges Soros
6. There Are More Tapes
7. The O’Keefe Arrest
8. Breitbart Issues An Ultimatum To The Media

Full Address Parts 1-4:

Part 1

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In the ongoing national debate — who is the most biased, belligerent and repellent MSNBC anchor or commentator — it’s a shame that Contessa Brewer hasn’t been getting much face time lately, as the network boots her around from failing show to failing show.  But when it comes to sheer aggression, combined with impenetrable obtuseness, the Pride of Syracuse University and former Imus in the Morning sidekick takes a back seat to none of her more notorious male counterparts in the low-rated loony bin.

So it was a cheer moment yesterday when mild-mannered New Hampshire Senator Judd Gregg had finally had enough and turned on his tormentrixes (Melissa Francis is the other)  in a way that more politicians under enemy fire should emulate:

Who’s next?