Media outlets didn’t cover March For Life while it happened, despite knowing it was going to happen and hundreds of thousands of people there. News outlets do have stories on it now, but of course the number of people there are distorted and the stories are pretty bland. Again, remember how much effort went into Occupy Wall Street coverage. Reporters were at the scenes. News stations were always on them. Also if they had anyone on the scene at March For Life they’d have a more accurate number of people.

Photo Credit Michelle Fields from The Daily Caller

The best coverage belongs to Judge Andrew Napolitano on his show  ”Freedom Watch” on FOX Business Network. Judge Napolitano is a fierce pro-life advocate and doesn’t shy away from the issue. At the end of every show he signs off with “The Plain Truth” and yesterday it was about abortion.

His guest was Rep. Renee Ellmers who discussed the defense of life. This was the most coverage by anyone in the media. Thank you, Judge Napolitano.

I then went to FOX News and I’ll admit, I was disappointed. The article was written by Shannon Bream and just like C-SPAN she called the protestors anti-abortion. Yes they are anti-abortion, but why doesn’t anyone ever call them pro-life? Why do they have to be constantly addressed as anti? When pro-choice protesters march they’re referred to as pro-choice, not anti-life. She did, however, give a reasonable estimate of people there, tens of thousands. Trust me, that’s much better than some of the others.

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The March For Life took place yesterday in Washington, DC despite the cold, dreary weather. But unless you tuned into C-SPAN2 for a few hours this morning or EWTN (the Catholic station) all day you wouldn’t have known it happened. Other stations, including FOX News, glossed over this march while it happened.

Credit Elizabeth Avis @Beth_Avis

Before the march Michelle Malkin wrote a post about the media’s lack of attention. It got me interested and I decided to tune into DirecTV News Mix and the C-SPAN coverage all afternoon. Some people on Twitter, especially Sharon Cabana, helped me out by keeping an eye on CNN and MSNBC. There were a a few seconds of coverage on FOX News & MSNBC, but didn’t see anything on CNN. I’m not shocked, but it doesn’t mean I’m not disappointed. The Old Media was on hand to cover OWS at all times. They knew this was happening and yet no one on stand by. It’s awful how these peaceful, clean, and civilized people were completely ignored by the Old Media while the disgusting and uncivilized people of Occupy Wall Street received so much attention.

Thank goodness for social media like Twitter. Since I knew I wasn’t going to receive anything from the Old Media I knew I had to use the New Media. I reached out to people on the #MarchForLife hash tag and people have been tweeting me pictures. Here are a few:

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The level of cruelty with which the leftist media attacks conservative women never seems to hit bottom. Again and again, we’re told by leftists that the sexual revolution liberated women to be women. Burn your bras! Sleep around! What they forgot to tell women, though, was that there would be a price for straying off the Liberal Plantation and daring to think for yourself.  For if you do, Missy, we will use the power of our platform and words to publicly and sexually humiliate you.

Case in point, Fishbowl DC’s Peter Ogburn, who rips into the Daily Caller’s Michelle Fields for the unpardonable sin of being an attractive young woman who dresses like one.

To understand how vicious and sexist Ogburn’s attack is, first I want you to read what he wrote, and then below the fold, you can watch the “Skinemax” video he references:

ALL of the videos with the women feature shots above the waist. Some even go out of their way to show off cleavage. Because when I think Keynesian economics, I think Titty City. Pretty weird, I know.

What’s weirder? The latest video is hosted by Michelle Fields, from the Daily Caller. It’s no secret that Michelle knows that she is gorgeous and has great hair, but this is super weird. The camera work seems to be largely inspired by the early works of the Al Qaeda hostage tapes. A nervous and awkward Fields, who clearly has NO IDEA what she is talking about, rattles on about “How the New Deal Was a Failure.” We get it, Michelle. You think you’re hot. But, if you want to be taken seriously, maybe just be good at reporting and stop showing off your legs and cleavage. Do you remember that time Diane Sawyer showed off a bunch of cleavage while reading the news? No? Because it didn’t happen! See Michelle’s low budget Skinemax video below.

Here it comes.

Hide the kids!

NSFW!

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News reporters have always loved the reference to those vicious animals that protect the junk yards late at night. Some of the most frightening, realistic scenes from movies depict the bad guy climbing over a chain link fence only to be confronted by a large, nasty looking creature that has been trained to destroy intruders. Once the junk yard dog latches on, there is no letting go and … well …you know how this story usually ends, and it isn’t pretty for the perp.

The best news reporters love the junk yard dog reference. Every news room has at least one of them and they are not just the junk yard dogs, they are the Alpha Dogs in the news room. “I will take you down!” Or something like that, is what the promos usually say.

We have two very clear examples of news stories that need junk yard dogs: Solyndra and Fast and Furious. The list is long on potential scandals here.

Solyndra is the so-called “Green Energy” company that blew more than half-a-billion of our tax dollars in less than two years (stimulus anyone?). Fast and Furious is the gun running operation to Mexico that was approved and perpetuated by the Obama administration and has led to at least two deaths of U.S. enforcement agents. Obama’s Attorney General Eric Holder has already been caught in an apparent lie over what he knew and when he knew it. The President stands behind Holder, even after these facts have been reported.

Tell me there isn’t something there to latch on to that might ruin the perfect crease in his pants.

The media has started to cover these stories. Started. Props have been given here on BigJournalism to reporters, like Jake Tapper of ABC and Sharyl Attkisson of CBS who have started digging into these issues. Rush Limbaugh calls them “random acts of journalism.”

So far, groundwork has been laid by these reporters on Solyndra and Fast and Furious and they stand apart from the much larger group of poodles hiding in the corner “covering” this administration. To preserve our democracy we need junk yard dogs covering any administration.

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In a world with around 200 countries, we get this from the breathlessly excited ABC News anchor:

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Writing at Malkin’s spot, Doug Powers makes the excellent observation that this was likely a Freudian slip: 

ABC’s Diane Sawyer, who is ensconced in the 1% of America that the “Occupy Wall Street” occupiers are complaining about, is nevertheless fairly excited about the rapid spread of the protests. …

Sawyer seems a little too desperate to give the “movement” galactic legitimacy. Did she mean to say “a thousand cities” around the world? That still seems like a terribly high estimate[.]

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Academics have, for centuries, looked far back in time as they argued and speculated about why the Roman Empire fell, but we now have an opportunity to observe in real time the accelerating decay of that imperial gatekeeper of liberal conventional wisdom, the New York Times.

A pair of op-eds from August 27^th illustrate this sad phenomena as its writers invent a new stage in the Kübler-Ross grief scale inserted somewhere between “denial”, “anger” and eventual “acceptance”: “delusion.”

The first op-ed is by congressman and civil rights legend John Lewis, whose work in the Sixties makes it awkward to have to point out that he is entirely full of it, having morphed from an anti-establishment hero into just another establishment hack.  Sadly, he seems totally oblivious to his sad transformation over the last five decades even as he keeps milking his past in order to block any kind of critical look at the nonsense he is peddling in the 21^st Century.

His op-ed is entitled “A Poll Tax by Another Name,” which is a problem because what he is whining about – mostly laws that require voters to prove that they are who they say they are – is neither literally nor figuratively a “poll tax.”

Poll taxes are, well, taxes charged voters for the privilege of voting.  Voter ID laws, in contrast, are requirements that people identify themselves before voting.  Nope, not the same.  Not even close.

“Despite decades of progress, this year’s Republican-backed wave of voting restrictions has demonstrated that the fundamental right to vote is still subject to partisan manipulation. The most common new requirement, that citizens obtain and display unexpired government-issued photo identification before entering the voting booth, was advanced in 35 states and passed by Republican legislatures in Alabama, Minnesota, Missouri and nine other states — despite the fact that as many as 25 percent of African-Americans lack acceptable identification.”

Those GOP bastards, forcing people to prove they are who they say they are before voting in an election!  It’s almost a Robert Byrdian level of racism!

Wait, I should show more respect for this Democrat icon.  After all, Byrd was a kleagle.

Let’s leave aside the dubious notion that a quarter of all black adults lack a photo ID – which would mean, among other things, that a quarter of them can’t drive.  Or cash checks.  Or fly on an airliner.  Or get a job, not that this would be a big issue in the miserable Obama economy.

Let’s also leave aside the even more dubious (not to mention patronizing and utterly obnoxious) idea implied by Lewis that these citizens lack the basic competence to obtain such ID.  It’s interesting that hardcore conservatives have a significantly higher opinion of African-Americans’ ability to function than those liberals who loudly claim their leadership, but it isn’t surprising.  Liberalism is an ideology based upon low expectations.

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INTRODUCTION

I. Whoever Controls “The Narrative,” Controls the National Political Conversation

When it comes to most of today’s mainstream media we are no longer talking about an entity that reports truth or facts. Everything about the MSM is now about The Narrative. Even though they’re supposedly made up of separate and competing newsrooms, there’s a very good reason why the MSM as a whole is usually covering, emphasizing and amplifying the exact same stories. This is what The Narrative is and its usefulness to the MSM is how it pushes particular stories to the forefront of public awareness in order to further a political agenda — an agenda that 90% of the time is meant to aid the Left and damage the Right.

Another part of The Narrative is what the MSM chooses NOT to cover; what they willfully ignore.

You can see The Narrative at work as I write this. The same MSM that assured us that when it came to Barack Obama, the church he attended for two decades didn’t matter, is now obsessing over a church Rep. Michele Bachman’s hasn’t attended in over a year. Here you have two separate (and wildly hypocritical) narratives at work: one meant to protect a Democratic presidential candidate, the other meant to damage a GOP presidential candidate.

On the other hand, you can also see The Narrative working by what’s NOT being covered today. The same MSM that obsessed over the Valerie Plame non-story is currently all but ignoring Obama’s brewing “Fast and Furious” gunrunning scandal –mainly because it’s exactly the kind of scandal that can swamp a presidency into paralyzing, under-40 approval ratings.

II. How Alternative Media Created the MSM’s Need for a Media Matters for America

Prior to the rise of the Internet, the Left almost completely owned the narrative. The simple truth is that before Al Gore’s invention was fully realized, other than a few esteemed columnists, the media had no serious ideological competition from the Right. The rise of the Internet, however, changed all of that as citizen journalists — many of whom are motivated by the MSM’s liberal biases — found this new tool invaluable when it came to both debunking the MSM’s latest lie (the most famous being RatherGate) or reporting on stories the MSM chose to ignore for ideological reasons.

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On Tuesday, the Washington Post had an article, “Democrats try to woo women as more embrace GOP candidates,” that further confirms that this is the year of the conservative woman and that “Mama Grizzlies,” like those featured in Fire from the Heartland, are leading the way.

One Democrat strategist in the article says, “They do not think the administration’s economic policies are working for their families, and worry about the priorities of this administration, and wonder if they get it.”

That is a sentiment we’ve heard repeatedly from women at Tea Party rallies across the country and is echoed in Fire from the Heartland when cast member Michelle Moore says, “We are going to take a leading role because we are done – our children’s future is at stake.”

It is then expanded upon when Michelle Malkin says, “There is a sisterhood of Tea Party moms and activists who all share a common core steel-spined commitment to looking after their families.”

And further confirmed when Dana Loesch says, “Women realized that their involvement with politics was part of motherhood, their involvement in the national discourse about where our country was heading is about motherhood because we’re raising the next generation.” (more…)

This is a cautionary tale about reporters eagerly attacking other reporters working a developing story.  Because it’s not possible to provide evidence as quickly as some might demand it doesn’t mean the story is false.

On July 24, Kimberly Dvorak, of the Examiner, and Don Amato, of the blog Digger’s Realm, broke the story about two Texas ranches outside of Laredo, Texas, being seized by members of Los Zetas drug cartel. Today, Ms. Dvorak posted a copy of the police blotter which provides a good deal of the information necessary to confirm her initial story’s claims:

After 16 days of denials by Laredo law enforcement and local officials regarding a Mexican drug cartel takeover of a Laredo area ranch, a Texas police blotter proves the alleged incident did in fact happen and that multiple agencies responded to the scene of a seized U.S. ranch…

“On Friday 7-23-10 Laredo Webb informed that their county SWAT Team is conducting an operation in the Mines Rd. area. According to LT. Garcia with LSO (Laredo Sheriff Office) received a call from a ranch owner stating that the Zetas had taken over his ranch. As per the 17 (reporting person) he informed them that they stated La Compania (area business) was taking the ranch and no one was permitted on the ranch without permission. SO (Sheriff Office) will have an unmarked green Ford Taurus with two officers stationed at Los Compadres and a white Chevy Tahoe with two officers stationed at Mineral Rd. The LSO (Laredo Sheriff Office) will maintain surveillance in the area and advise if action is taken. Susp (suspect) Veh (vehicle) are described as a gray or silver Audi, a BLK (black) Escalade or Navigator and a van truck with a logo of a car wash spot free on the side. Border Patrol also has their response team on scene. Also known info of BMW’s and Corvettes entering and leaving the area. Auth LT Lichtenberger if assistance is requested LPD (Laredo Police Department) will secure the outer perimeter. (07/24/10 07:42:10 NR1873)”

Dvorak’s latest post confirmed several details that I had been able to ascertain through other sources.  One important detail was different: only one ranch was investigated and under surveillance, not the two originally reported.

The original story quoted multiple anonymous sources in law enforcement and was quickly picked up by Michelle Malkin,  Jawa Report, Big Peace and DBKP among others.  Almost as quickly, the story was branded an Internet  rumor,” “conspiracy theory,” a “hoax” or  outright lies by the usual suspects from the Progressive Left/amnesty crowd. (more…)

Democrats regained control of Congress in 2006 in part by talking endlessly about the Republican “Culture of Corruption,” a meme the mainstream media and the liberal blogosphere were only too happy to pick up and run with to the point that it became engrained in the culture; a Google search brings up 16,300,000 results for the phrase (after filtering out references to “Malkin”and thus Michelle’s new book “Culture of Corruption: Obama and His Team of Tax Cheats, Crooks, and Cronies”).

The original phrase was supposedly fed to journalists and bloggers by Howard Dean in the summer of 2005 as he tried to drive allegations of Karl Rove’s involvement in the alleged outing of CIA operative Valerie Plame, and he regurgitated it later in the year while talking about accusations of irregular stock trading involving Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist.  But the meme really took hold after Nancy Pelosi repeated it the following September in response to the indictment of then House Majority Leader Tom DeLay on ethics charges.

What do the Rove, Frist and DeLay cases have in common?  None of the three has ever been tried, let alone convicted of any wrongdoing.  But therein lies the beauty of a meme: it’s just an idea.  It doesn’t have to have any basis in fact.  It doesn’t have to be true.  It doesn’t have to mean anything.  It just has to be created, and then be picked up by commentators and pundits and repeated by rote until it takes on a life of its own; memes are self-replicating. (more…)

Last week, a post I wrote for Big Journalism which, unbeknownst to me, possibly inspired Bill O’Reilly’s Talking Points Memo later that evening. I’m embarrassed to say I didn’t notice it at the time. I watch Bill and the rest of the Fox guys when I can, but with three kids in the house it’s not every day. In any case, my post and Bill’s memo were strongly worded critiques of this David A. Graham piece for Newsweek in which he downplayed the New Black Panther story. Last Friday, Graham issued a somewhat belated response to Bill and me (okay, I admit, I like saying that). Here’s how his piece opens:

Last week, I found myself in the crosshairs of conservative ire because a news analysis I wrote didn’t take the allegations of voter intimidation by the New Black Panther Party story as seriously as conservatives felt it should.

Right off the bat we’ve shifted the goalposts. My critique was based on Graham’s biased handling of the material, in particular his use of the hacks and non-entities at Media Matters as a primary source, as well as his failure to get even Media Matters’ highly spun version of the story straight. Here’s a bit of what I wrote:

That second link–the one about questionable testimony–goes right back to Media Matters. David A. Graham summarizes MM’s lengthy hit piece by saying, “there are doubts about whether he was actually present for the incidents he described.” Well, no, there are not doubts about that at all. In his interview with Megyn Kelly (which Media Matters transcribes), [J. Christian] Adams plainly states that he wasn’t there…

That’s not a critique of Graham’s news judgment; it’s a critique of his facts. Rather than address the problem directly or issue a correction, he simply revises his original claim in the new piece: (more…)

Yesterday I had the displeasure of reading Gregory Ferenstein’s column, “Why the web benefits liberals more than conservatives.” Ferenstein’s thesis is that liberal ideological characteristics facilitate Internet success, while the opposite is true for conservatism. Frankly, his entire piece is based on assumptions without evidence. Ferenstein states:

From…the million-strong Barack Obama Facebook page to the huge audience of the Huffington Post, liberals have been the dominant political force on the internet since the digital revolution began.”

Ferenstein avoids the most important reason for this phenomenon: Age. Younger people dominate the Internet, and younger people are more liberal by significant margins. So, Ferenstein could replace the phrase, “Liberals have been the dominant political force on the Internet since the digital revolution began,” with “Young people have been the dominant demographic on the Internet since the digital revolution began.” They have the same meaning.

He continues:

Research…suggests that the reason behind this imbalance may be the liberal belief system itself.

Liberals, the research finds, are oriented toward community activism…and feature user-generated content. Conservatives…are more comfortable with a commanding leadership and use restrictive policies to combat disorderly speech in online forums.

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Mother Jones prides itself on “smart, fearless journalism.”

So, let’s see how MoJo did with a recent profile of Kris Kobach, University of Missouri/Kansas City law professor and Republican candidate for Kansas’s secretary of state position, who was described in the headline as “the man behind Arizona’s immigration law.”

Kobach is an experienced immigration litigator, involved in several high-profile cases over the past few years. (See Hazleton, Farmers Branch, etc). But he’s no legal puppeteer, as the headline implies. He is merely the lawyer who helped draft S.B. 1070.

… Kobach advanced an idea that had long been circulating in conservative legal circles: that local and state officials have the “inherent authority” to enforce federal immigration laws. This unorthodox notion bucked the prevailing view—long held by both Republican and Democratic administrations—that the federal government has principal jurisdiction over immigration under the Supremacy Clause of the Constitution. If local and state governments were to strike out on their own, they could undermine federal efforts, create the potential for draconian crackdowns, and detract from law enforcement efforts by discouraging immigrants from cooperating with police, critics argue. In 2002, however, Ashcroft’s Office of Legal Counsel issued a memo, which Kobach contributed to, supporting the “inherent authority” theory.

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I recently watched the HBO documentary Reporter,  profiling the New York Times columnist and Pulitzer Prize winning journalist, Nicholas Kristof, as he reported on the genocide taking place in the Congo.

Notably, the documentary spent considerable time focusing on Kristof’s journalistic standards, rather than only spotlighting the great tragedy taking place.  In fact, much of the video documents Kristof teaching his trade to journalism students.  That part of the film was very revealing.

One highlight of the documentary was when Kristof traveled to a village that had just been ransacked by militants.  Villagers told Kristof that an enormous number of people were murdered.  Their stories were horrific.

However, despite their eyewitness testimony, Kristof was skeptical about what he was told.  In fact, he continued to inquire about who saw the murders.  Was there proof about the number of people killed?  Was there any evidence?  He didn’t believe it was enough to simply report that villager X saw Y happen; he wanted the truth.  Reflecting on that clip, I wonder whether I would have held myself to such a high standard, or would I have simply reported what someone told me? (more…)

It’s quite a stretch to call The Nation’s Max Blumenthal a journalist.

A real journalist is free to have an opinion and even to express it, but he doesn’t fabricate things to make his subject look bad. A real journalist tries to understand his subject and help his audience understand it instead of just subjecting it to abject ridicule.

Blumenthal, who leaped to conclusions in his since-corrected Salon.com article to slander Andrew Breitbart and James O’Keefe, is an ethically challenged agitprop creator and self-indulgent performance artist. His slurring of O’Keefe, who helped to expose the criminal inclinations of ACORN, as a racist is the same thing that ACORN does when it’s attacked. If you disagree, you’re a racist. Nyah nyah nyah nyah nyah!

This left-wing extremist, who wrote the book Republican Gomorrah: Inside the Movement that Shattered the Party, is so consumed by his hatred of the other side that he can’t think straight. His work is littered with factual errors, non sequiturs, selective use of evidence, glittering generalities, and hyperbole.

Blumenthal hates the Christian right, evangelicals, supporters of Israel, tea party activists, conservatives, and Republicans. This is not an exhaustive list. To him, conservatives are a “movement that’s filled with people who can’t handle individual freedom and the pressures of democracy.” Conservatives also are needy losers seeking redemption, according to Blumenthal: (more…)

Fifth in a series.  Find parts one, two, three and four here.  And don’t miss this important update.

There’s an old saying in New England, something one utters when another person grabs your chair or bar stool and plops himself into it before you were ready to leave:  “You wouldn’t jump into my grave so fast.”

Well, hold the phone.  As everyone in the State of Massachusetts and the country knows, Ted Kennedy was diagnosed with a malignant brain tumor in May 2008, and as the months went on into 2009, the prognosis was: terminal.

With the imminent vacancy of Kennedy’s seat a foregone conclusion, Martha Coakley began ramping up her campaign for his seat… as early as January 2009.

The Boston Herald first reported on this story on September 25, 2009:

Attorney General Martha Coakley has run a shadow Senate campaign for months, shelling out $126,000 from her state campaign account for expenses likely tied to her Capitol Hill bid, including $15,000 for Web site upgrades just days before Sen. Edward M. Kennedy died, records show.

The spending spree began in January but ramped up the last two weeks of August as Coakley funneled $31,000 to consultants, fund-raisers and a Web design company in preparation for her foray into the high-stakes Senate race.

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