The Washington Post reports that journalists are complaining of the White House’s heavy-handed rudeness towards them when they do anything but fawn over the administration, branding the correspondence “nastygrams.”

… this year, some reporters say, things have taken a decidedly frosty turn.

When a reporter gets something wrong or is perceived as being too aggressive, the response is often swift and sometimes at top volume, reporters say …

… In one of the e-mails that reporters have dubbed “nastygrams,” White House press secretary Jay Carney branded one of Mason’s stories “partisan, inflammatory and tendentious.” National Security Council spokesman Tommy Vietor, reacting to comments Mason made in a TV discussion, sent her an e-mail that included an animated picture of a crying mime — a visual suggestion that she was whining.

WaPo tries to offset this by reminding readers of how past press secretaries went to bat with media bosses over the heads of beat reporters, but this pales in comparison to what we’ve seen from the “most transparent” administration ever.

Although many praise Carney for improved access, they say the tone of private communication has become harsher under him.

You think? And it’s not just Jay Carney — it’s the entire administration:

White House Attempts To Bully Reporter Over Biden Questions:

Joe Biden has traveled across the country, threatening Americans with “rapes and murders” if congress didn’t pass Obama’s jobs bill, the same jobs bill that Democrats killed in the Senate (so are on the hook for said “rapes and murders?”). He didn’t like the questioning he received from Human Events’s Jason Mattera on the subject, so now the White House is taking aim at Mattera with an investigation.

Joe Biden’s office has complained to the Senate press gallery about a confrontation the vice president had with a conservative journalist last week on Capitol Hill.

Biden aides asked whether Senate rules were broken in the wake of the contentious exchange between the vice president and the reporter.

Eric Holder Lashes Out At Media For Asking About Fast And Furious:

Fed up with the media attention, Eric Holder today lashed out at the Daily Caller for daring to ask him about the scandal, replete with finger-pointing.

Embattled Attorney General Eric Holder today demanded The Daily Caller stop publishing articles about the growing calls in Congress for his resignation because of the failed Operation Fast and Furious gun-walking program.

As Holder’s aide was escorting the attorney general offstage following his remarks Tuesday afternoon at the White House, a Daily Caller reporter introduced himself and shook Holder’s hand. The reporter asked him for a response to the growing chorus of federal legislators demanding his resignation.

Holder stepped towards the exit, then turned around, stepped back toward the reporter, and sternly said, “You guys need to — you need to stop this. It’s not an organic thing that’s just happening. You guys are behind it.”

Audio and full story here.

The press is behind it? The Daily Caller reporter? Holder behaves as if this reporter walked guns across the border himself, only to return to the office and pen salacious stories about Holder’s knowledge and sanction of it.

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For starters, what Jason Mattera and the likes of James O’Keefe are doing is absolutely no different than what made the oh-so-legendary Mike Wallace oh-so-legendary. When the left uses these tactics, it’s heralded as holding power accountable and the brave pursuit of the truth. But now that New Media has given the right a chance to pick up that sword, it’s called unethical, and worse, it becomes The Story as opposed to the truth those tactics helped to uncover. But that, of course, is part of the plan. By making Mattera and O’Keefe the story, the corrupt MSM doesn’t have to talk about Obama’s ties to ACORN or the false statistics repeatedly spouted by a sitting Vice President.

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Secondly, what else are those of us interested in the truth supposed to do? Joe Biden, the Vice President of the United States, runs around America demagoguing and spreading false statistics with the unconscionable claim that if Republicans don’t pass Son of Stimulus women will be raped, and the sycophant media lets him get away with it.  There were likely dozens of so-called reporters following the Vice President around, and had Mattera not stepped up to the plate, Biden would’ve gotten away with this outrage.

In a just world, we would not know James O’Keefe’s name. Don’t misunderstand me; O’Keefe is my hero, and if I won the lottery, his Project Veritas would receive more money than he would know what to do with. But the reason we know O’Keefe’s name is because our media is so in the tank for the left that he and Hannah Giles were able to become famous by taking down that sinister den of corruption known as ACORN. In my mind, they didn’t become famous for putting ACORN out of business; they became famous for stepping into a vacuum created by a corrupt media. Anyone paying attention knew ACORN was corrupt. That was low-hanging fruit, but the leftist media consciously refused to pick it.

When George W. Bush was President, one thing we never had to worry about was the kind of corruption both political parties are capable of. And so for all their overreach and bias, at the very least we could rest easy in the knowledge that if anyone in the Bush Administration crossed the line, the MSM would pounce. This is true for all things Republican and conservative,  and that is a good thing.

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Falling to your own media malpractice makes you irresponsible, not a “victim.” It doesn’t make you a “target” when other people publicly note the absence of your journalistic integrity. Politico missed this bit of logic recently when it attempted to blame conservatives for the misdeeds of various members of the media, most recently NYT’s Natasha Lennard.

… these critiques may just muddy the waters enough to do some damage to both the media and the fledgling anti-Wall Street movement.

Joe Biden has traveled across the country, threatening Americans with “rapes and murders” if congress didn’t pass Obama’s jobs bill, the same jobs bill that Democrats killed in the Senate (so are on the hook for said “rapes and murders?”). He didn’t like the questioning he received from Human Events’s Jason Mattera on the subject, so now the White House is taking aim at Mattera with an investigation.

Joe Biden’s office has complained to the Senate press gallery about a confrontation the vice president had with a conservative journalist last week on Capitol Hill.

Biden aides asked whether Senate rules were broken in the wake of the contentious exchange between the vice president and the reporter.

[...]

Biden’s office has also contacted the standing committee of correspondents, which oversees the gallery, regarding whether Mattera broke the rules by ambushing him.

Heather Rothman, the chairwoman of the gallery’s standing committee, said the matter is under review.

“We’re aware of the concerns,” said Rothman, a reporter for BNA. “It’s being discussed.

“We’re aware this occurred and the vice president’s office [has made] contact,” she added, noting the standing committee itself hasn’t met to deliberate the issue.

The Hill says Biden was “lured” into the interview. No, he thought Mattera was another back-patting reporter with a satchel full of softballs, not an actual journalist who doesn’t trade principle for access like so many of today’s media. How difficult is it to answer why you’re fear-mongering with “rapes and murders” all week?

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Vice President Joe Biden lashed out at Human Events’ Jason Mattera when Mattera asked Biden if he regretted threatening Americans with an increase in “rapes” if the GOP didn’t pass the jobs bill.

Biden did not finish the story and say that the reason the jobs bill didn’t pass in the Senate was due to a lack of Democratic support. The bigger question is why the majority party in the Senate can’t keep it together to pass a bill.

In the video, Biden squares up to Mattera and growls “Let’s get it straight, guy, don’t screw with me.” It’s rude, condescending, and unbecoming for the office of the Vice Presidency.

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Tea Party Patriots, rejoice! With enemies like Michael Kinsley, who needs friends?

Read between the sneering lines of Kinsley’s May 18th column in The Atlantic and you may just find an unintended love-letter to the very Tea Party Patriots he so desperately would like to torpedo. In fact, Kinsley’s blindness to the movement’s power is a proxy for the entire Democratic party’s colossal blindness to the tsunami about to drown it out of office this November.

Kinsley’s sneer begins with the headline: “My Country, Tis of Me.” (Because no party ever acts in its own self-interest.)

The overarching purpose of Kinsley’s Tea Party obituary is the left’s standard 3M approach: moralize, marginalize, minimize. It’s done through a series of disinformation volleys. Here are Kinsley’s primary distortions.

The Tea Party Is Right-Wing.

Kinsley launches his first Scud: “The right-wing populist Tea Party movement has politicians of both parties spooked.” The most important word in this sentence is “right-wing.” The Winston Group’s three surveys conducted from December to February showed that while 57% of the Tea Party are Republicans, four in ten are Democrats and independents. The majority of the Tea Party is right-wing, but it is far from monolithic and hence representational of more than a fringe right segment of the country. (more…)

Last month, I attended my first ever CPAC. It was quite the experience, complete with one extended chat with Max Blumenthal. I’ve wanted to meet Max ever since he launched an attack on James O’Keefe.  I figured maybe if I asked nicely he would issue an apology to James. But to my dismay, he didn’t feel like it at the time.

I guess attitude and environment really is everything because Max was clearly not ready to switch from confrontational mode to apologist in front of several cameras and dozens of on-fire conservatives in the middle of CPAC 2010.

My parents raised me with to have a “no fear” mindset and carefully select the environments I subject myself to. It has taken lots of trial and error in my life to perfect these skills, but nevertheless, its something worth understanding.

When I was 15 a lot of exciting things happened to me: I got into surfing, I got a car, I had an exciting job and I started home-schooling. (Quick note on the homeschooling thing: it was totally my choice and I had to beg my parents to allow it. Not hard to believe if you’ve done time in the Miami-Dade Public School system.) (more…)

As Big Journalism readers know, a New York Times reporter accused a speaker at CPAC of using “racial tones” and “racial stereotypes.”

I was that speaker.

Last week, I was invited to participate on a panel to discuss my forthcoming book, Obama Zombies: How the Liberal Machine Brainwashed My Generation.  The New York Times’ Kate Zernike wrote up the speech for the NYT’s “Caucus” blog.  This was her headline:

CPAC Speaker Bashes Obama, in Racial Tones.

In the very first paragraph, Zernike writes, “How can conservatives win the youth vote that overwhelmingly went for Barack Obama in 2008? At the Conservative Political Action Conference, apparently, some are betting on using racial stereotypes.”

Her evidence? Nothing I actually said, but to her tin ears, I was allegedly channeling a “Chris Rock” voice.  Yes, Chris Rock.

Regarding my closing statement, Zernike opines, “Can we save our generation from Obama zombies, he [Mattera] asked. He answered himself by borrowing the president’s campaign slogan: ‘Yes, my brothahs and sistahs. Yes we can!’”  Obviously, Zernike is insinuating I purposely mispronounced the words “brothers” and “sisters” in order to mock black people, particularly President Obama.

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On February 18, 2010, at 12:45 PM, Kate Zernike’s piece “CPAC Speaker Bashes Obama, in Racial Tones” went live on the New York Times’ Website. Just after 4:00pm that afternoon, Andrew Breitbart received the Reed Irvine Accuracy in Media Award from AIM for uncovering corruption at ACORN this past year.  He used part of his speech to voice his opinion of Zernike’s piece.  Transcript begins at around 6:05 into part I:

Kate Zernike of the New York Times, are you in the room? Are you in the room? You’re despicable. You’re a despicable human being. You’re the New York Times.  What is your headline here? You came to CPAC to get your prey and here’s your prey, Jason Mattera from HotAir and also from Young America’s Foundation. This is the headline: CPAC Speaker Bashes Obama, comma, in Racial Tones.

How can conservatives win the youth vote that overwhelmingly went for Barack Obama in 2008? At the Conservative Political Action Conference, apparently, some are betting on using racial stereotypes.

It goes into a story that does not express that he used a racial stereotype.  It is just built upon a bed of lies. It says that he went into a Chris Rock voice. She’s the one that correlated his voice to Chris Rock. He happens to be from Brooklyn. He’s using HIS voice.

Part II of Breitbart’s speech after the jump.

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My friend Jason Mattera, Young America’s Foundation spokesman and conservative gadfly, is never afraid to speak his mind.  Even if you don’t totally embrace his style, he’s thoroughly entertaining and a really great, energetic guy.  What he’s not, however, is a racist.  But that’s exactly what New York Times reporter Kate Zernike concludedafter attending a CPAC panel discussion in which Mattera participated yesterday.

She posted on the Times‘ political blog that Mattera had “bashed Obama…in racial tones.” GASP!

See full video of the speech and read relevant quotes from the New York Times article here.

Anyone who meets Jason quickly becomes aware of the fact that he’s from Brooklyn.  His accent makes it hard to miss.  Like many people, when he talks excitedly, the pitch of his voice goes up.  This combination, Zernike concluded, constituted a “channeling” of Chris Rock and an obvious case of racism.  If Zernike had bothered to, oh I don’t know, speak to the person at whom she was hurling a provocative and damaging accusation, she may have noticed that Mattera happens to speak “like Chris Rock” all the time.  With the slightest bit of effort, this New York Times reporter may also have discovered that Rock also grew up….in Brooklyn.  Maybe this New York (!) Timesreporter may have put two and two together before dashing off her insulting and pathetic blog post. (more…)

The BigJournalism.com editorial panel is attending this weekend’s Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Washington, D.C., and it didn’t take long for a media-induced controversy to break out.  We expected the mainstream media couldn’t cover a gathering of 10,000 conservatives for an entire weekend without playing the race card at least once, but The New York Times‘ Kate Zernike charged Young America’s Foundation Spokesman and CPAC panelist Jason Mattera with “using racial stereotypes” by lunchtime of Day 1.

We’ve included the video of his speech below, as well as relevant excerpts from Zernike’s New York Times piece.  Let us know if you think it was appropriate for her to describe Mr. Mattera  using some of the most caustic vocabulary in American life.

We’ll be offering our commentary in the days to come.

Bonus question: Identify with time stamps where Mattera uses the “Chris Rock voice.”

February 18, 2010, 12:45 pm
CPAC Speaker Bashes Obama, in Racial Tones
By KATE ZERNIKE

How can conservatives win the youth vote that overwhelmingly went for Barack Obama in 2008? At the Conservative Political Action Conference, apparently, some are betting on using racial stereotypes. (more…)