- Mitt Romney unhinged: Calls Gingrich a “disgrace,” failure.” Will MSM reprimand Romney for going mean or do they save that line of attack for Gingrich specifically? Instead, MSM keeps insisting that the guy with the blowout victory in SC isn’t “electable.”

- Major Garrett returns to the White House beat for National Journal.

- Gingrich asks for equal treatment.

- Reuters and Youtube to launch Reuters TV.

- Gingrich’s victory in South Carolina was a blow to liberal media. Romney supporters are furious. Media apologists lost the battle against South Carolina grassroots:

Down goes Juan Williams.
Down goes John King.
Down goes the media elites.
And, down goes the Dick Morris who told us Rick Santorum won the debate on Thursday night.

Hear the roar.

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On January 3, Media Matters for America (MMfA) linked, among others, a Big Government item by J. Christian Adams to support its mischaracterization of a Fox News segment on South Carolina’s contested voter ID law.

MMfA cherry-picked a small portion of Adams’s post, while ignoring the bulk of Adams’s argument solidly refuting MMfA’s own weak defense of Attorney General Eric Holder, thereby obscuring his criticism from their readers.

Emphasis via MMfA:

In a January 3 segment on Fox News’ Fox & Friends, correspondent Jim Angle promoted a number of falsehoods and misleading claims about voter ID laws and the Department of Justice’s action preventing one such law from being implemented in South Carolina.

Even Vote Fraudster J. Christian Adams Calls The Analogy “Silly And Constitutionally Incorrect”

Adams: Arguments “Flimsy” Since “The 15^th Amendment Is In Play When It Comes To Voting.”In a BigGovernment.com piece attacking the DOJ’s letter, J. Christian Adams wrote:

What Adams did was provide several solid arguments as to why Holder’s DOJ appears to be contesting the South Carolina law based largely upon misperceptions and fuzzy math for political reasons. Media Matters neglects to point out that Holder’s DOJ used out-dated data, grossly inflating any potential problem in South Carolina. They also repeatedly highlighted a 20% number already exposed as a math gimmick aimed at making the issue appear to be far more significant than it may actually be.

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- The other day the New Wonkette was salivating over hidden meanings in Gingrich’s office gewgaws; now the NYT is poring over Gingrich’s 1971 dissertation. Yes, really.

Mr. Gingrich would be our first president with a Ph.D. since Woodrow Wilson. Does his work as a historian tell us anything about him? Or, for that matter, anything about why, despite certain events in 1776, he considers “anticolonial” an epithet? To address these questions, a good place to start is his 1971 Tulane doctoral dissertation: “Belgian Education Policy in the Congo 1945-1960.”

For Pete’s sake. This is the stupidest thing the NYT has written today. Can you imagine if the NYT pored over Obama’s college thesis, or hey, even his college records, which have never been release despite repeated requests? Can you imagine the NYT going over Fast and Furious emails they way they’re rifling through Gingrich’s thesis — or devoured Sarah Palin’s emails?

- Al Jazeera opens a new bureau in Chicago.

Previously on Al Jazeera:

Why It’s Time for Rep. Peter King to Investigate Al-Jazeera
Another Al-Jazeera Journalist Suspected of Terror Ties
U.S. Officials Suspected Al-Jazeera Ties to Al-Qaeda
How Al-Jazeera Kills Americans

- Mitt’s media blowback:

Mitt Romney’s vulnerabilities as a candidate are well known, yet a seemingly new one surfaced last week: his unusual brittleness in the face of media questions.

With one prickly interview with Fox’s Bret Baier on Tuesday — in which the candidate appeared uncomfortable and even angry fielding basic questions about his record — the former Massachusetts governor set off a round of speculation about his ability to operate outside hermetically sealed campaign events, reminding his rivals and the media of the extreme lengths to which he has gone to evade the national press.

On a Fox panel that night, Juan Williams called the interview “disastrous,” Jonah Goldberg said Romney appeared “uncomfortable” and Baier said people thought Romney seemed “irritated and tense” — sentiments that were echoed across the other networks that night and in print the next morning.

For a candidate who has been in the national spotlight as long as Romney, his discomfort with Baier was telling. And it reflected a deliberate and long-standing strategy of dodging tough questions and questioners.

- Fox moving to the center?

- Lee Enterprises goes belly up.

- Fox says it was left off of Facebook’s Most Shared Stories for 2011.

In May, FoxNews.com wrote about a quirky page on the Centers for Disease Control’s website that advises viewers how to deal with a potential zombie apocalypse (strange but true). That story received 38,649 Facebook shares — well within the boundaries of the two New York Times stories, but not included in the list.

Other stories from FoxNews should have made the list as well, such as a September story about the White House condemning the death sentence of an Iranian pastor. It received 26,208 shares.

- But what happens if reporter Chelsea Clinton goes into politics? Newsbusters has more.

- “Tebow’s prayers are … flagrant end zone dance.”

Tebow is free to give “mad respect” to his lord, but I’d rather he do it on his own time. A number of players cross themselves on every play, but they do it discreetly — and expeditiously. Tebow’s prayer timeouts, by contrast, are as gratuitously in-your-face as the most flagrant end zone dance. And they last as long. Yet, according to his supporters, all of footballdom is supposed to give him a pass because his purpose is holy. Isn’t that what churches are for?

Christians aren’t supposed to hide their religion and in an era where one of the most recognized images in football is Janet Jackson’s nip slip. It’s refreshing to see someone out and loud about their faith. You can always change the channel.

- Eason Jordan, he’s baaaack!

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The SEIU and Soros-funded Media Matters for America is sounding the alarm: Fox News, they gush, has given a lot of airtime to Republican primary contenders.

The Republican presidential primary race isn’t news?

A serious question: is Fox supposed to ignore it? Is MMfA positing that Fox is deliberately excluding coverage of a Democrat primary due to bias? Can MMfA point to me who the Democrat primary candidates are since they suggest that Fox is not giving equal time? Can MMfA provide any clips of the Democratic primary debates?

What? They can’t? Why not?

Because there currently isn’t a primary for Democrats? Because Democrats have an unchallenged incumbent? Democrats have not held any primary debates?

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- Wonder if this occupier will get the Scott Olsen treatment from the media.

Via The Brigade. Click image for credit.

- Regis Philbin says goodbye.

- Fox hires two Democrat contributors, Ed Rollins.

- Hillary Clinton surprised by daughter’s new high profile job with NBC.

- Herman Cain now requires a Secret Service detail due to MSM reporter aggressiveness:

Cain spokesman J.D. Gordon said Thursday night that the campaign asked for the protection after The Washington Post posted an article online that morning detailing a series of physical skirmishes involving journalists at Cain rallies.

The Cain campaign asked for the security and Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano and congressional leaders approved the request Thursday, said a government official, requesting anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly on the issue.

From WaPo:

Lately, another common element has emerged from the fever-pitch of the Cain road show: physical skirmishes involving the press.

One incident on Wednesday involved journalists jostling among themselves for position. Another featured a local police officer aggressively blocking a video journalist. In at least two instances, Cain’s own private security guard physically blocked reporters, including one from The Washington Post .

There were two confrontational incidents on Wednesday, prompting Cain spokesman J.D. Gordon to touch base with the reporters involved and also to acknowledge in an interview that the campaign needs to address the issue.

- Setting the record straight on the media narrative “Gingrich left his wife on her cancer deathbead.”

- Meghan McCain tired of being addressed in the manner which she deserves. Meanwhile, most are just tired of Meghan McCain.

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- The difference with which the Washington Post treated Marco Rubio and Barack Obama’s stories is fascinating:

The Post was much easier on Barack Obama when a biography by reporter Janny Scott revealed that Obama falsely claimed his mother’s insurer tried to deny health care coverage because of a “pre-existing condition.”

The 1,610-word Rubio story was on the front page, and the headline clearly implies Rubio is guilty of wrongdoing: “Marco Rubio’s compelling family story embellishes facts, documents show.” The Post’s 486-word report on Obama’s mother’s health insurance was on page A-06 on July 15, with the headline:  ”Obama’s mother had health insurance, according to biography.”

Why is it news that Obama’s mom had health insurance? Oh, right: To help win a presidential election and pass his health care overhaul, Obama claimed that his mother’s insurer tried to not pay for her cancer treatments by claiming her cancer was a “pre-existing condition.” In fact, her insurer covered all medical treatments but denied her coverage for a “disability insurance policy” because that policy was picked up after she was diagnosed with cancer. (But no need to indicate in the headline that Obama fibbed.)

- Soledad O’Brien: “I never thought that I should not be emotionally connected to stories.”

- Fox hires disgraced former South Carolina governor Mark Sanford as a political contributor.

Mr. Sanford had been a rising star in his party before he admitted to having an affair with a lover he had met while on vacation in Argentina. He did so only after he disappeared for an assignation in Argentina without telling his staff where he went. In the process his staff created one of the great political punch lines of the year – and arguably since the Clinton scandal – by reporting that he was hiking on the Appalachian Trail.

- Interesting piece on copyright struggles between Getty and owners of mobile videos and images: “Who Gets The Copyright On The Photo Of A Beaten Gaddafi, Captured Off A Cameraphone.”

- Miami Herald vs. Washington Post over Marco Rubio.

- CNN set to interview Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. If one of the questions is not “Was Iran behind the thwarted terrorist assassination of a Saudi ambassador on US soil?” not a question, Fareed Zakaria should get the door. It does pose the question as to why we continue to give airtime and the consideration of influence to this tiny tyrant.

This morning while on the Political Buzz panel for CNN we discussed the reported “booing” of the gay soldier who asked about DADT at last night’s debate.

Considering the amount of print devoted to painting the entire crowd out to be bloodthirsty haters with zero regard for military service, it’s no wonder that it would become a question the next day.

Unfortunately for the progressives writing the spin (who forget that it was their idol Bill Clinton who enacted DADT in the first place), the entire story of the debate audience booing is a lie.

Sara Rumpf was in the debate audience and what she witnessed was vastly different than the account the outlets linked above are reporting:

I want to put this on the record now about an incident that happened at tonight’s Republican debate. It’s important that the truth is shared, because I have already seen liberal bloggers and some people on Twitter completely distorting what happened.

The debate included video questions that were submitted on YouTube, and one came from a soldier serving in Iraq who is gay and asked about the candidates’ opinions on don’t ask don’t tell. There was audible booing after his question…however, please note that it was not the crowd booing. It was only one or two people.

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The ever unfair and unbalanced Media Matters twists a Fox Straight News report to attack the cable network; however, a review of the MM post makes it clear that the Fox report is precisely as often advertised, fair and balanced. Mandating sick leave by all levels of government in America  is a growing trend. MM seems determined to lead the way by preparing the battlespace for any and all media debate on the subject.

Fox “Straight News”: Paid Sick Leave Is An “Entitlement”

In another installment of Fox’s ongoing series bemoaning the purported job-killing effect of regulations, America’s Newsroom anchor Martha MacCallum called a new Seattle ordinance requiring paid sick leave for employees another “entitlement” that could put small businesses “under water.”

For starters, the definition of “entitlement” isn’t complex. When a government passes a law requiring an employer to provide something to a worker, said worker is “entitled” to it. What Fox’s MacCallum actually states while referring to covered workers is, “they think it’s an entitlement, which it is in this case.” (My emphasis.) Her phrasing indicates she knew precisely how she was employing the term, as opposed to MM who seeks to turn it into some kind of outlandish statement. Perhaps the White Houuse should ship them a dictionary, if they’re going to  continue to do their ddirty  work. They might even become less transparent at it and foolish looking. What it is – in the case where a law mandaating it is passed – is indeed an entitlement.

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After Media Matters falsely stated that Fox was ignoring the Murdoch scandal (they covered it quite a bit, actually) I thought it wise to check out their version of the Murdoch scandal, that of their financier George Soros reportedly roughing up his girlfriends.

It turns out Media Matters is completely ignoring the story.

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“I know you’re creating a thing here for Fox.”

“That’s not what I’m doing. You know better than that.”

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Rupert Murdoch ATTACKED at Hearing!
A young leftist just attacked Rupert Murdoch at the hearing.

AMW has contributed to over 1,100 captures and saved scores of missing children in the twenty-plus years its been on air. The show was remarkable in that it was the first of its kind to use mass media and entertainment to locate criminals and missing children.

The show was almost pulled from the airwaves years ago but fans intervened and Fox kept it; when Fox’s fall lineup was recently announced AMW wasn’t part of it. That may change.

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What’s the best way to counter what you think are the lies coming from your opponents? Is it to make up lies of your own? Apparently MoveOn.org thinks so. On June 9, MoveOn admitted using lies, subterfuge and fraud to “counter” what they maintain is the wrong-headed thinking of Fox News. I guess to a left-winger, lies are just the ticket to get people to trust them! In fact, this whole story is just downright silly as MoveOn.org not only perpetrated a fraud, they made a big production of it all in the process.

Not long ago an emailer calling himself “Babi Gumm” began to inform various news sites and bloggers that he had “hacked into the Fox News ticker on 6th Avenue in New York.”

This “Babi Gumm” claimed that he had replaced the Fox ticker message with his own anti-capitalist message one screaming to America that “we are being lied to” by “Right wingers” who are “destroying the middle class and trying to kill our unions.” His supposed ticker hack also told viewers that “the country is not broke.”

There isn’t anything new to this message. It is all the typical bilge you see from the left and other anti-Americans on a daily basis. But if this guy really did hack the Fox ticker message board, it would be interesting news, indeed.

The emailer also pointed to a Youtube video posted in May by a “hiropro999″ that supposedly shows the “hack” in process.

Of course, the odd thing is that no other news of this “hack” made the news cycle. Fox immediately proclaimed the video a hoax and no one else paid much attention to the story. This absence of confirmation made many people doubtful of the claims. For good reason, as it happens.

With the whole story looking to be a dud, MoveOn.org finally admitted that it was they who sent the email, they who made the video, and what’s more, it was a doctored video as no actual hacking of the Fox ticker board occurred. Yep. They lied about the whole thing.

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Simon Rosenberg, of the Progressive “think tank”, NDN, went on Fox to parrot Democrat talking points regarding the budget and plans to reform Medicare. Unfortunately for Simon, the other guest on the show, radio host Ben Ferguson, wasn’t having any of it. Watch the money clip.

It seems Rosenberg is more comfortable at places like MSNBC where the host would attack the conservative, in this case Ferguson, instead of trying to calmly moderate the debate like the Fox host did.

Rosenberg was fearmongering. He was also lying. The only budget proposal the President has presented to Congress completely ignored the Simpson / Bowles Commission Rosenberg referenced in the video. That budget proposal was also soundly rejected by a vote of 0-97 in the Senate. Ferguson was right to point out that Democrats have decided to forgo offering any solution to the looming debt and deficit crisis and have opted to just attack – with fearmongering and lies – the Republicans who are offering realistic solutions.

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I love when companies stand up for free speech and refuse the speech-supressing bully tactics of entities whose entire purpose is to eliminate the diversity of thought from the airwaves.

Media Matters was slapped, hard, by Orbitz today.

Media Matters is gearing up to target a half-dozen of the Fox News Channel’s advertisers — Netflix possibly being one of them — though Orbitz Worldwide on Thursday stuck up for the nation’s top cable news outlet.

Orbitz, which is the first target of a campaign launched at DropFox.com — a new website from the liberal media watchdog group Media Matters — on Thursday also accused Media Matters of a “smear campaign.”

DropFox’s goal is to pressure advertisers into either pulling their ads from Fox News or forcing Fox to alter its usually conservative messages. DropFox focused on Orbitz first because among its assets is a travel website dedicated to gays and lesbians, a community Fox News is antagonistic toward, according to DropFox.

[...]

In Orbitz, though, DropFox may have already bitten off more than it can chew. The company is not only refusing to buckle under the pressure — which includes an online petition signed by 40,000 people asking it to ditch Fox News — but it is striking back at Media Matters, warning the organization it is risking its credibility by attacking Orbitz.

“This is a political organization that has been funded pretty extensively to go after one network, and we aren’t going to engage in that fight,” Orbitz spokesman Brian Hoyt said.

“We have a strict policy of tolerance and non-discrimination, and that means we don’t favor one political side over another. Tolerance is a two-way street,” he said. “We’re going to advertise on conservative TV stations, liberal TV stations and — if there are any out there — unbiased news broadcasts.”

[...]

The evidence DropFox and Media Matters have provided Orbitz was not convincing.

“We haven’t bowed to any boycott in the past, and we won’t bow to these types of smear campaigns in the future,” Hoyt said.

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Hubris defined.

The president of tax-exempt, Soros-funded Media Matters for America didn’t take this opportunity to reprimand Mr. Matthews for his recent demand that President Obama produce his birth certificate. Also not mentioned was the fact that Mr. Matthews was named by Media Matters as the “Misinformer of the Year” in 2005.

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John Stossel to Al Pires, lead attorney in the Pigford settlement: “How do you know they’re farmers?”
Answer: [long pause] “They fill out the forms… We HOPE they tell the truth.”

More at Stossel’s blog:

Want to get a check from the government for $50,000? If you’re black and willing to say you once “attempted to farm,” the money could be yours.

Why? In the 80’s and 90’s, some Black farmers were allegedly discriminated against by the Agriculture Department. Department loan officers supposedly did the opposite of what Shirley Sherrod was accused of:   they granted government-subsidized farm loans to whites but not to blacks.

Government shouldn’t be giving out government subsidized loans to anyone.  But that’s another story for another time.

When some black farmers sued, claiming discrimination, the USDA agreed to pay $50,000 to every black person who was discriminated against.

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Kerry Pickett at the Washington Times has this photo of pro-union protesters by the Fox News Truck:

New Tone?

A decline in viewership, too.

The president’s State of the Union Address drew 43 million viewers, according to Nielsen Media Research.

That’s down 11% from his speech last year, and down 18% from his address in 2009.

The networks carrying the speech included ABC, CBS, FOX, NBC, TEL, UNI, CNN, CNBC, Fox News, and MSNBC

Fox News was the most-watched of the cable news networks carrying the speech, averaging 5 million viewers. CNN was second with 3 million and MSNBC ranked third with 2.5 million.

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