Examiner:

How much is too much? Politico broke the Cain sexual harassment story last Sunday night, launching organization wide coverage filling up a full week of heavy coverage on their scoop.

Since the scandal broke, the political reporting juggernaut has published at least 90 online stories on further developments and public reaction to the story.

That’s 90 stories in less than a week.

By contrast,  according to a good faith count using Politico’s own search engine….

…there have been exactly two stories with the words “Rielle Hunter” in them not only during the time it mattered, the Year of our Lord 2008, but still months after John Edwards dropped out of the race.

…there were only 16 stories about Jeremiah Wright the week that bombshell dropped, and more than a few were favorable to Obama.

…there have been fewer than 40 total stories about Fast and Furious since that story broke months ago.

…there have been only 65 stories about Solyndra over the last six weeks.

…and there have been fewer than 30 stories surrounding anything involving the New Black Panther Party.

Need I go on? Must I make the gun smoke a little more?

(more…)

Your money at work … attacking both truth and freedom. Why Is Media Matters a 501(c)(3)?

- New Video Suggests Media Matters Ignored Facts In Attempt to Smear Breitbart, Cover Up Pigford Fraud

This morning, Big Government posted video from an event at the National Press Club at which Faya Rose Touré (formerly Rose Sanders), an attorney from the $2.7 billion Pigford “black farmers” discrimination settlement, revealed major flaws in the claims process. Her statements support previous reporting by Big Government and Big Journalism–reporting which Media Matters ruthlessly and wrongly attacked as false.

The newly released video confirms much of what Pigford’s critics have been saying, destroying previous attempts by George Soros’s Big Labor-funded minions at Media Matters to hide the truth.

From Breitbart media’s earliest reporting on the Pigford settlement, Media Matters began recklessly hurling accusations of racism, and lying about Andrew Breitbart and others’ writing about the issue, while discounting facts now shown to be correct.

In hindsight, that appears to have been an orchestrated effort to suppress the truth behind Pigford and potentially keep the scandal from surfacing in mainstream media outlets.

It is an effort that has failed.

- Did Media Matters Collude With DOJ On Black Panther Story?

When news broke of alleged voter intimidation involving the New Black Panthers Party in the 2008 election, Media Matters for America (MMfA) launched a relentless push back against the charges, resulting in almost 8,000 MMfA site specific Google hits in which MMfA attacked virtually anyone who attempted to report on the controversy, while elevating any reporting that minimized it, or the Department of Justice’s decision to drop the case.

Meanwhile, a former MMfA Director of External Affairs, Xochitl Hinojosa, who had actually joined the Department of Justice in July of 2009 as a Public Affairs Specialist, took an active role in pushing back against the story from witin DOJ.

(more…)

This morning, Big Government posted video from an event at the National Press Club at which Faya Rose Touré (formerly Rose Sanders), an attorney from the $2.7 billion Pigford “black farmers” discrimination settlement, revealed major flaws in the claims process. Her statements support previous reporting by Big Government and Big Journalism–reporting which Media Matters ruthlessly and wrongly attacked as false.

At the same press conference, the New Black Panther Party (NBPP) and the Nation of Islam (NOI) joined in a barrage of racist, antisemitic, and homophobic rhetoric that went unreported by the mainstream media, though the event took place within their very own clubhouse.

The newly released video confirms much of what Pigford’s critics have been saying, destroying previous attempts by George Soros’s Big Labor-funded minions at Media Matters to hide the truth.

From Breitbart media’s earliest reporting on the Pigford settlement, Media Matters began recklessly hurling accusations of racism, and lying about Andrew Breitbart and others’ writing about the issue, while discounting facts now shown to be correct.

In hindsight, that appears to have been an orchestrated effort to suppress the truth behind Pigford and potentially keep the scandal from surfacing in mainstream media outlets.

It is an effort that has failed.

For example, Media Matters tried to dispel any link between Pigford and the New Black Panther Party (“Race-baiting confluence: On Breitbart site, Adams links Pigford to New Black Panthers“).

(more…)

The recent Big Government story revealing Barack Obama’s appearance alongside the New Black Panther Party has prompted Media Matters for America to tear away even more of the flimsy veneer of its “nonpartisan” mission statement. After Matt Gertz’s knee-jerk defensive maneuvers for Obama, Simon Maloy quickly doubled down with an attack on National Review’s Andrew McCarthy. Could someone again explain to me how MMfA is a tax exempt organization?

Media Matters’ Simon Maloy

Mr. Maloy is so excited to “debunk” McCarthy, he engages in the common Media Matters tactic of presenting only snippets of the article he’s critiquing, going so far as to say “I’ll reproduce just the first paragraph of McCarthy’s post, because it’s really all you need” (he later goes on to quote other parts of the article). To stoop to limiting the information presented to his readers, either out of fear that they may read it in its entirety and (gasp!) think for themselves or out of a juvenile need to deprive National Review of traffic, betrays incredible insecurity behind his snide partisan vitriol. Mr. Maloy either knows better or he is lying, saying anything he can to make Andrew Breitbart look bad and distract the media from the story’s implications for Obama’s reelection campaign.

Maloy desperately clings to the objection that the purpose of the Selma march somehow mollifies Breitbart and McCarthy’s main point — that then-candidate Obama was mingling with The New Black Panther Party, doing nothing to distance himself from its radical, violence-inciting leaders. To develop McCarthy’s thought further, if both Rick Perry and the KKK both showed up to a bake sale to benefit children with cancer, that wouldn’t excuse the Republican presidential candidate sharing a podium with the racist group. (more…)

On Friday, September 23, 2011, at the National Press Club in Washington, DC, a panel of activists held a press conference on the $2.7 billion Pigford settlement between the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and black farmers claiming past discrimination.

What ensued was a grotesque display of racism, antisemitism, and homophobia. And not a single member of the mainstream media was on hand to report what happened.

The event was opened by Malik Zulu Shabazz, Chairman of the New Black Panther Party, a militant hate group that supported Barack Obama in the 2008 election and sent armed thugs to intimidate voters at several polling places in 2008 and 2010. (On Monday, Andrew Breitbart revealed that Obama and other Democrats shared a podium with Shabazz and the New Black Panthers at a march in Selma, AL in March 2007.)

Shabazz would go on to express frustration that President Obama had not delivered as expected in the face of opposition. While making the otherwise valid point that black people should be able to criticize a black president, he complained that Obama had abandoned blacks for gays:

While Troy Davis was being executed, President Obama was focused on promoting the gay rights agenda as he prepares for an election.

Gary Grant, the President of the Black Farmers and Agriculturalists Association, said that Obama had failed to deliver on his promises to black farmers because he and his family were surrounded by white people:

I have mixed emotions about President Obama, you know. I think Dr. Ridgely [Muhammad, Minister of Agriculture of the Nation of Islam, seated on Grant’s right] probably has defined it best. He said: “Now, look. The man is black. His wife is black. His children are black. They are being–heʼs being guarded by white folk. Sheʼs being guarded by white folk. The children are being guarded by whitefolk. And then he went out and bought a black dog,” you know.

(more…)

Close your eyes. Picture this. It’s 1999. There’s an event for something significant and then-candidate George W. Bush is attending along with a few members of the KKK. Bush & the KKK members are together behind the podium. The first speaker is a KKK leader, then some others, and finally Bush. Also, the KKK arrived there to make it known they endorse George Bush. A photo shows the KKK and George Bush appearing to leave the event together.

Now imagine it’s 2003 and the photos have been made public.  Do you think an organization like Media Matters For America would give George Bush the benefit of the doubt? Do you think The New York Times or the evening news would brush it aside? If this was any GOP politician do you think this would be ignored? Absolutely not!

But of course MMFA immediately jumps to President Obama’s defense and makes every excuse for him. So far we haven’t heard anything from the MSM about the photos published at Big Government showing candidate Obama with the New Black Panther hate group.

(more…)

So tell me if I have this right: decades ago, on a hunting ranch Texas Governor Rick Perry’s family was leasing a very small portion of, Perry’s father pro-actively painted over a rock with an offensive word on it and according to the news media that’s not only news but worthy of the furious narrative that’s currently raging everywhere. But…! It’s not news within the intellectually honest way in which I’m framing the story. It’s news within the craven, dishonest way the cravenly, dishonest MSM is framing it.

For instance:

“At Rick Perry’s Texas Hunting Spot, Camp’s Old Racially Charged Name Lingered.“

That was the wildly dishonest headline on the front page of Sunday’s Washington Post and you can bet your sweet life it’s taken on a life of its own from there (which, of course, was the game plan). According to Google, there are now over 1100 related articles already online. Worse still, some media outlets have already entered phase two of this coordinated attempt to permanently take Perry out with a follow-up narrative best represented by Politico’s Ben Smith:

The story isn’t disqualifying, or all that damning. It’s distracting. And it is the latest in a series of distractions that make the key players at this stage in a primary campaign — governors, big donors — more open to Romney’s arguments that the party should unite around him, pivot to confront Obama, and avoid an endless primary, because who knows what’s going to fall out of Perry’s bag next.

Well, golly gee, thanks so much for policing your profession, Ben. You’re a real profile in courage spinning an obvious front page in-kind contribution to the Obama 2012 campaign into the damning narrative of “poor, beleaguered Perry — how will he ever get elected.”

Elsewhere at Politico, the headline went a little something like this…

“Perry’s Hunting Camp Problem.”

…without any context that frames the story in an honest way.

(more…)

Today, Media Matters for America has taken it upon itself to ask the question: “Who Is J. Christian Adams?” .

They say:

New Black Panthers Party fabulist J. Christian Adams is a long-time right-wing activist who began working for the U.S. Department of Justice during its notorious era of politicized hiring and now blogs for the right-wing media site Pajamas Media, often issuing false attacks on the Obama DOJ for its supposed politicization and “racial agenda.” His forthcoming book, Injustice: Exposing The Racial Agenda Of The Obama Justice Department, promises to cover similar territory.

In its attacks on Adams, Media Matters has even stooped to posting his home address and alleging that he is a Republican donor–without mentioning that he has also contributed to Democrats.

Media Matters also tries to dismiss Andrew Breitbart’s report this morning that Barack Obama spoke and marched with the New Black Panther Party while he was campaigning for president. They note that “several thousand people ‘appeared and marched’ with the New Black Panthers that day”–a point that Breitbart’s post itself made clear.

What Media Matters doesn’t want to tell you is what Adams’s book reveals: that the New Black Panthers were there to support Obama, and said so earlier that day while Obama listened and smiled; that the Panthers shadowed him, left the march with him, and raised black power salutes over his head; and that Shabazz claimed he spoke with Obama.

If there was a 4th of July event and the Ku Klux Klan were given a speaker’s slot, would any GOP candidate be stupid enough to speak there? Why, then, is it acceptable to Media Matters for Obama and other Democrats to have spoken and marched with the Panthers?

Media Matters refers to the ‘fable’ of the New Black Panther Party, but they don’t tell their readers anything at all about the New Black Panthers. In fact, they don’t seem to be critical of the New Black Panther Party in any way.

So, who is the New Black Panther Party?

I’ll do a short summary with a lot of video because, frankly, a tiny bit of research quickly brings up how awful this group is.

Let’s start with a video of Geraldo Rivera taking on New Black Panther Party leader Malik Zulu Shabazz over his statement after 9/11 that “Brother” Osama bin Laden deserved “respect” and applause:

That’s the reality of the New Black Panther Party. The fact that MMfA chooses to shield their readers from it in order to attack J. Christian Adams–who opposes this group–is repulsive. Apparently, attacking a conservative trumps telling the truth about a racist, homophonic, antisemitic hate group.

Here are some more facts about the New Black Panther Party. (more…)

When news broke of alleged voter intimidation involving the New Black Panthers Party in the 2008 election, Media Matters for America (MMfA) launched a relentless push back against the charges, resulting in almost 8,000 MMfA site specific Google hits in which MMfA attacked virtually anyone who attempted to report on the controversy, while elevating any reporting that minimized it, or the Department of Justice’s decision to drop the case.

Meanwhile, a former MMfA Director of External Affairs, Xochitl Hinojosa, who had actually joined the Department of Justice in July of 2009 as a Public Affairs Specialist, took an active role in pushing back against the story from witin DOJ.

Apparently, the Justice Department is going by George Orwell’s famous Animal Farm ending:

“All animals are equal, but some are more equal than others.” “We can only take action where we have legal authority,” wrote DOJ spokeswoman Xochitl Hinojosa in a December 2010 e-mail to The Washington Times Water Cooler. She continues: “As stated in the website below, we are statutorily authorized to initiate suits under Title IV of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Equal Educational Opportunities Act of 1974, and under Title III of the American with Disabilities Act.

It’s not unusual for D.C. professionals to move in and out of government positions. Yet given MMfA’s acute focus on the Panthers/DOJ story, Hinojosa’s involvement with and ties to MMfA invite speculation as to what extent MMfA and DOJ might have cooperated in pushing back against a potentially explosive story for the Obama administration.

Indeed, today, MMfA is already attacking J. Christian Adams and his forthcoming book on Obama’s beleaguered Department of Justice, which has shown itself, in the Panthers case and in others, as one of the most politicized DOJ’s in modern history. (For more on new evidence linking Obama directly to the New Black Panthers, see this exclusive at Big Government today: Shock Photos: Candidate Obama Appeared And Marched With New Black Panther Party in 2007.)

Hinojosa has at times been quoted by Media Matters on a variety of stories that pertain to the DOJ.  Yet the organization does not mention that she used to work for it, nor is that information available on MMfA’s current website. This 2009 cached snapshot of the Media Matters website confirms her tenure there:

(more…)

Newsweek commentator David Graham recently declared the Philadelphia Voter Intimidation controversy to be a non-story: “it’s not about a real investigation; it’s about staging an effective piece of political theater that hurts the Obama administration.”  He also meandered into the assertion that the ACORN scandal was “minimal” and “discredited.”  Graham’s career-long track record of suppressing news (without troubling himself with investigation) follows him way, way back to his college years at Duke University.  Why bring up such ancient history?  Well, because he graduated from Duke last year, in 2009.

One of the greatest media frauds in modern history, the Duke Lacrosse Hoax was once a story of violent, racially motivated gang rape by supposedly privileged white men (many were actually on significant financial aid).  Finally, here was the evidence verifying the far-left narrative of America as a deeply oppressive, racist society – evidence that had been missing, in the opinion of one Duke Professor, since the murder of Emmitt Till more than fifty years earlier.  Radical leftists throughout the campus and the nation came out of the woodwork to demand the alleged incident be used as a pretext for a comprehensive discussion on the roles of race, class, and gender in our society.

By the time David Graham took over as editor of the Duke Chronicle, the story was quickly becoming a story of the extraordinary bigotry of segments of the far left and their perverse willingness to exploit an obvious hoax to advance a political and cultural agenda.  The story became the willingness of the Duke Faculty and Administration to burn their own students at the stake in the advancement of, and in fear of, this same leftist narrative.

All of a sudden, none of these individuals at Duke wanted to talk about the matter anymore, least of all the administration.  It was time to put it all behind us.  Enter David Graham.

(more…)

In November of 2007, with support from George Soros’ Open Society Institute, Live from the New York Public Library presented the conference, “There You Go Again: Orwell Comes to America.”  The conference brought together noted journalists, linguists, political consultants and others to discuss the practice of deceptive political speech in the arena of public discourse today, or as the conference referred to it, “propaganda and the new face of American politics.”

The title itself was a blend of the quote made famous by Ronald Reagan in his 1980 presidential debate retort to Jimmy Carter, and George Orwell’s writings and their application to media in politics today.

George Soros presented a session at the conference that in hindsight draws some striking parallels to what we have been witnessing in politics and the media today.  When viewed consecutively in their entirety, the three videos in which Soros makes his presentation are compelling and bring clarity to where so much of the rhetoric on the left has been bred over the years.

It starts with Soros’ description of how propaganda has taken root in American politics and replaced truth with strategic deception.  Yet, considering the blatant manipulation of the truth in so many of today’s news stories, it reads more like a psy-ops manual for the left-wing media, labor unions and community organizers of today: (more…)

On Sunday the Washington Post ombudsman, Andrew Alexander, issued an interesting apology for his paper’s failure to write about the Department of Justice’s handling of the Philadelphia New Black Panther Party case.

After summarizing the case and the controversy over it, Alexander admitted,

The Post didn’t cover it. Indeed, until Thursday’s story, The Post had written no news stories about the controversy this year. In 2009, there were passing references to it in only three stories.

That’s prompted many readers to accuse The Post of a double standard. Royal S. Dellinger of Olney [Maryland] said that if the controversy had involved Bush administration Attorney General John D. Ashcroft, “Lord, there’d have been editorials and stories, and it would go on for months.”

“To be sure,” Alexander said, “ideology and party politics are at play,” although he seemed to be referring only to liberal bloggers, “Fox News and right-wing bloggers,” “Congressional Republicans,” Sarah Palin, etc. No admission, that is, of ideology or party politics at the Post.

To his credit, Alexander chastises the Post for not covering the controversy and concludes by telling his colleagues, “Better late than never. There’s plenty left to explore.” He even suggests some topics: (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…)

My name is Hippocritico and I’m here to help my friends in the mainstream media protect their journalistic legacies by making sure they don’t come off as brazen, biased, hypocrites by covering a particular story that hurts one political party and not covering a similar story that hurts a different one.

Lori Montgomery and Paul Kane of The Washington Post are obviously concerned with issues of discrimination in America. Here’s their coverage of an event that’s now famous for never really happening:

Black lawmakers said some protesters hurled racial epithets at them, and in one instance, spit upon them.

Rep. Emanuel Cleaver (D-Mo.) said that he was walking into the Capitol to vote when a protester spat on him. Police quickly responded and detained the protester, Cleaver said in a statement, but the lawmaker declined to press charges.

Others hurled epithets at Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.), a former civil rights leader, and Rep. Andre Carson (D-Ind.) as they left the Capitol after Obama’s speech.

“They were shouting the N-word,” Carson told reporters. “It was like a page out of a time machine.”

However, if Lorie and Paul  are looking for what could be a real story and scandal involving discrimination, I’ve laid it all out for them below. (more…)

It’s easy to make fun of Geraldo Rivera, but in this interview with the posturing radical Malik Zulu Shabazz he reaches back to the glory days of “Willowbrook,” filled with righteous indignation:

For those who’ve seen this movie before — back in the late sixties — Shabazz is (so to speak) a pale imitation of his fiery forebears, but still spouting the same tiresome, second-hand communist-inspired separatist resentment and hate that could only be expressed by someone who has never had any real obstacles put in his way. (He’s a lawyer, for crying out loud.) It’s an act, a sham, but a dangerous one, and Geraldo is right to call him out on it.

In case you’re interested, here’s what the real Black Panthers — led by Huey Newton and Bobby Seale — looked like back in the day:

And here’s the party platform: (more…)