The Internet doesn’t kill newspapers. Publishers do.

Washington Post publisher Katharine Weymouth emailed her year-end thank-you memo to a bunch of WaPo swells on New Year’s Eve (her first mistake). Before the electrons were even dry, the must-read Jim Romenesko posted her email in its entirety with the breaker that Weymouth blew air kisses to almost everyone at the Post—except executive editor Marcus Brauchli.

Image Credit: Washington Post

A C-Suite semaphore? Perhaps. But the real news wasn’t the errant Post Toasties. The real news was the unintentional candor with which Weymouth described how she is driving the paper straight into a digital tar pit.

If you care a whit about real journalism (in any medium), this memo will irk you, and not because of the grammar issues.

I can overlook the dozen or so typos—it was New Year’s Eve, after all. And I can ignore the “they’re-their” slip-up. Spell check doesn’t always catch that one. I can even see past the occasional subject-verb-agreement lapse.

No. No, actually, I can’t. She’s the publisher of the Washington Freakin’ Post, fer chrissake! Doesn’t she have people to catch that??

But what really gives me eye-bulge is watching the Sacagawea of the Fourth Estate instruct her expedition to press on after they’ve reached the Pacific. (more…)

December has been an incredibly busy month for Operation Fast and Furious. It all started with Mr. Holder’s outburst to The Daily Caller. Then the DOJ dumped over 1400 pages of documents on Congress on Friday, December 3rd, which the MSM ignored or buried, but The New York Times quickly spun it in Mr. Holder’s favor. Sharyl Attkisson at CBS shows us documents proving the ATF was using Fast and Furious to get stricter gun laws and the following day Mr. Holder testifies in front of Congress. Then Fast and Furious was brought up in the debate!

Now Mr. Holder and the DOJ are starting to unravel. Mr. Holder’s interview with The New York Times where he called us in the media racist. Last night the DOJ released a statement trying to explain that Mr. Holder didn’t use the race card. Anyone with a 1st grade reading comprehension knows Mr. Holder did call us racist. But the most telling thing to me at least is the Old Media has not reported on this statement. I’ve been surfing their websites all afternoon and evening and cannot find anything. I would think The New York Times would be more than happy to publish it, but nothing from them. They were so quick to make Mr. Holder the victim (even putting the article on page A1 of the Sunday edition!) you’d think they’d publish the DOJ statement! You know, gain more sympathy for Mr. Holder. Nothing. Complete silence.

Something interesting happened. On Tuesday CNN’s Jack Cafferty brought it up on his blog and The Situation Room. Not only did he mention Operation Fast and Furious, but he asked if this would be Obama’s Watergate. Mr. Cafferty’s blog is very neutral, too, on the operation. I’m incredibly impressed.

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Michele Bachmann was the first GOP presidential candidate to demand Eric Holder’s resignation. Last Monday Rick Perry published an op-ed in The Washington Times demanding Mr. Holder’s resignation and yesterday morning Jon Huntsman also remarked that Mr. Holder should resign, yet the majority of the Old Media ignore them and the other congressmen who think Mr. Holder should resign.

There is no excuse from the Old Media we should accept, especially since Mr. Perry’s op-ed appears in The Washington Times. The Old Media can deny it all they want, but we all know if this was a GOP administration they would be contacting every single Democrat politician and reporting anyone calling for the attorney general to resign.

Wait a minute. They already did! Oh yes: Remember my previous articles comparing coverage of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and Mr. Holder? That’s right. The Old Media was reporting on Mr. Gonzales so much in 2007 even I was sick of it and that’s when I was still a super liberal.

Politico gave a report on May, 20 2007 when Nancy Pelosi joined in: ”The nation cannot have a chief law enforcement officer whose candor and judgment are in serious question,” Pelosi said. “The president should restore credibility to the office of the attorney general. Alberto Gonzales must resign.” Why hasn’t she said the same thing about Mr. Holder? Of course Politico included the Republicans who thought Mr. Gonzales should go. I can’t imagine how happy that made them.

Look what I found! Then Senator Barack Obama calls for Mr. Gonzales to step down! I think someone should replay this to President Obama because he could apply his answer to Mr. Holder now.

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ABC has a piece today that offers some concern from professors of journalism that the Obama White House has gone further than any administration in memory toward creating a kind of state run media:

The White House Press Office now not only produces a website, blog, YouTube channel, Flickr photo stream, and Facebook and Twitter profiles, but also a mix of daily video programming, including live coverage of the president’s appearances and news-like shows that highlight his accomplishments…

Over the past few months, as White House cameras have been granted free reign behind the scenes, officials have blocked broadcast news outlets from events traditionally open to coverage and limited opportunities to publicly question the president himself.

In essence the White House is creating pool reports with itself as the pool reporter.

“The administration has narrowed access by the mainstream media to an unprecedented extent,” said ABC News White House correspondent Ann Compton, who has covered seven administrations. “Access here has shriveled.”

ABC notes that the scope of the White House press operation rivals traditional broadcast networks in some areas:

The White House has amassed 1.9 million followers on Twitter, 900,000 fans on Facebook and averages 250,000 visits to its YouTube channel per month. Its website received roughly 1.1 million unique visitors in January, according to ComScore.

By contrast, ABC News has 1.2 million followers on Twitter, 150,000 fans on Facebook, and averages 21.7 million unique visitors per month to ABCNews.com, according to ComScore.

Click over to read the full article and you’ll get to the part where journalist professor David Perlmutter compares the White House operation to Communist Russian state media.

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Doublethink.

Since Time Magazine has decided to suspend disbelief (which is the nice phrase that Hillary Clinton once used to describe General Petraeus back when the left hated him) by putting Barack Obama and Ronald Reagan on the cover of their magazine, we thought you’d need to see the view from behind:

So that’s why Reagan had his arm around Obama’s shoulder.

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New York Times Public Editor Arthur Brisbane published an amusing non-apology apology for the Times’ sloppy coverage of the Giffords shooting.

Rather than simply come out and say, “We subtly blamed an entire segment of the population for the shootings, and this has contributed toward a wave of hate against millions of Americans … we’re sorry,” Brisbane, speaking for the paper, spends nearly half of the article apologizing gratuitously for initially misreporting Representative Giffords as dead. And in lieu of a mea culpa for stirring-up bigoted hatred against millions of Americans – which has led to FBI crackdowns on tea partiers and thousands of death threats against tea party leaders, some of which on national television nearly made it on national television but for the slick editing of disingenuous, dishonest reporters like Christiane Amanpour – Brisbane (hereafter, “Brizzy”) simply implies that the NYT merely framed the story inappropriately.

So, stirring up ethnic/racial hatred that leads to thousands of death threats is merely inappropriate framing. Techno-lynching a group of people is just an honest mistake. Right, and encouraging folks to burn crosses on our lawns is what, overzealous art patronage?

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It isn’t just national issues that the Old Media misreports. As we focus on the “big” stories of the day, we often overlook the local scene and the left-wing excuse for “reporting,” therefrom. This is a perfect example of that.

Imagine you are a sophomore in high school and your sex ed teacher forces you to prance about your classroom singing and dancing to “The Vagina Dance” in a puerile attempt to teach the parts and functions of the female sex organ. Worse, imagine you are a male student in a classroom of such an unhinged teacher? Well, we don’t have to imagine it too hard because this exact situation has happened in a classroom in the Chicago, Illinois suburbs. But don’t worry. Chicago’s Old Media is all about reporting this incident honestly. Well, if honestly means to ignore relevant facts and shore up support for the out of control teacher and smooth things over for the school, that is.

Early this month, parent Robert King, whose son goes to Crystal Lake’s Prairie Ridge High School, complained to school authorities over the inappropriate teaching methods of health teacher Jacqulyn Levin. As a teaching tool Levin used “The Vagina Dance,” a song replete with dance steps and arm movements, and required her entire co-ed class to participate in it – all to the tune of The Hokey Pokey, no less. As it happens King’s son was uncomfortable being required to prance about the room, arms emulating fallopian tubes, and singing about vaginas, so the parents complained.

In response the teacher claimed that her song was nothing but a harmless “kinesthetic device” meant to help the kids learn through “fun.” The Illinois Family Institute, however, begs to differ and called the claim, “a rationalization, an obvious and foolish attempt to conceal the inappropriateness and silliness of the activity with a patina of pedagogical legitimacy” (I love how they used edu-speak against the teacher, too. Kudos to that.)

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I am waiting for Ezra Klein
to eat a copy of the Constitution
and tell us if it’s binding
and I am waiting
for 60 Minutes to wind down
and I am waiting
for a presidential debate moderator
to crack wise with Chris Christie
and I am waiting
for Old Media
to request end-of-life counseling
and I am really waiting
for the Associated Press
to screw up and forget to spin a story

I am waiting for Nova
to report a major extinction event
involving NPR and PBS
and I am waiting
for Charlie Gibson’s glasses
to fall off his nose
and I am waiting
for someone to interrupt Bill O’Reilly
and I am waiting for Saudi Arabia
to endow the “Al Jazeera Chair”
at Columbia University School of Journalism
and I am really waiting
for Katie Couric to connect the dots
on rising fuel costs

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I’ve always liked getting to the heart of the matter—something the activist old media has no interest in doing during this election cycle.

November 2 is a mandate on whether America will remain a country based on the Constitutional values of Liberty and freedom, or whether we are headed to the dregs of communism and socialism embraced by the American left and its Democrat Party. Too extreme you say?

This point was made as clear as can be with the two rallies held recently on the Washington Mall.

Ignore the crowd size for a moment (Glenn Beck’s was much, much larger on Aug. 28) and you can even ignore the fact that unions clearly organized and used their funds to bus people to the event (astroturf, anyone?)

The clear choice was seen in the messages being displayed by the people at the two events. (more…)

Naturally the Old Media is doing its level best to pump up the “One Nation” rally, which gathered in front of the Lincoln Memorial on the National Mall in Washington D.C. yesterday. But despite the glowing reports by the media there is no denying the fact that few people turned out for the anti-Tea Party event sponsored by some 400 of America’s most extreme left-wing organizations and their associates in uniondom.

Despite months of planning the event was a bust. Sponsored by dozens of unions and groups such as the Communist Party USA, various socialist organizations, Code Pink, the racist Latino group La Raza and other extremist groups, organizers hoped to energize the left just ahead of the midterm elections just one month away. But the numbers that have turned out — even with the streets full of union-sponsored buses — pale in comparison to the Glen Beck rally that many feel the lefties were trying to emulate.

Still, the Old Media is putting a sunny face on this debacle. The Washington Post, for instance, says that the One Nation rally is “energizing Liberals,” despite that few turned out to participate.

“Progressive groups hope to draw tens of thousands of supporters to the Mall on Saturday and create a show of force that will rival the conservative tea party movement,” the paper helpfully states in its first paragraph. But photos of the attendance clearly show that only a few thousand were actually in attendance. (more…)

OBAMA:  The Gulf gusher, Sestak and Romanoff, Israeli terrorism on the high seas —you see what’s happening here?  We’ve lost control of the narrative.  We look like bystanders, passive and helpless.  Even Old Media isn’t shilling for us. What the hell do we pay them for?

ROBERT GIBBS:  They’re too busy covering themselves covering the spill, sir.  Last night, the anchors led their broadcasts with attacks on each other over who was doing the best job keeping your feet to the fire.

DAVID AXELROD:  We need to do something dramatic to knock those stories off the front pages, sir—start driving the news again.

RAHM EMANUEL:  He’s right, sir.  Cap and trade, the union pension bailout, an FTC leash on the internet, selling out Israel, stealth-sabotaging the economy so Americans turn to you for salvation—our whole agenda is stalled.

OBAMA:  OK, how’s this: think of something really bad that’s bound to happen in the foreseeable future.  Then, suggest an action we can take now to forestall that event, a move so bold it dominates the news for weeks and gets us out of our prevent defense.

TIM GEITHNER:  China, sir.  We don’t want them dumping our Treasury bonds too soon, or all hell breaks loose before we’re ready.  So we make a deal:  they continue to prop us up while we pursue a controlled decline, we give them Manhattan as a “Special Administrative Region,” like Hong Kong.

OBAMA:  Too arcane.  Who’s gonna care about that besides Krugman and Cramer? Besides, I got my mosque going up at Ground Zero and I don’t want any interference with that.  I want a game-changer. I want the Times banner headline to be in one inch font.  I want the networks to schedule specials. (more…)

The Old Media is already misreporting the bloody incident off the Gaza coast between a flotilla of Muslim “peace activists” and the Israeli Defense Force. They are, of course, making Israel out to be the bad guys and while it is regrettable that anyone had to get killed in this incident, the fault lies with the armed “peace activists,” not Israel.

That’s right, these are supposed to be peace activists, yet they had armed themselves with bats, metal bars, and slingshots with marbles as projectiles and later firearms that they had hidden on their craft. Why isn’t anyone in the Old Media asking why peace activists are arming themselves?

In fact, the first Israeli troops that boarded the flotilla were only using non-lethal weapons — paintball guns — but this did not stop the Muslims from assaulting the troops with the metal bars, bats and slingshots. The troops did have handguns, but it is reported that as they boarded they were yelling to each other “don’t shoot, don’t shoot.” It is clear that they intended to turn the boats around with as minimal force as possible in order to ensure world opinion that Israel wants to avoid bloodshed when she can.

The Muslims had other ideas as they swarmed the first troops giving vicious physical blows. One soldier was thrown from the top deck 30 feet to a lower deck causing severe injuries. (more…)

Comparisons are always a great way to show how differently the Old Media treats conservative and leftist politicians in America today and Obama’s nomination of the Elena Kagan to the U.S. Supreme Court gives us another opportunity to see the Old Media’s penchant to excoriate a Republican’s actions while soft peddling and excusing away similar actions by a left-winger.

In this case, it is instructive to see how the Old Media treated the claim that Sarah Palin banned books from the Wasilla library when she was mayor and today how it is treating the recently highlighted Supreme Court arguments made by Elena Kagan that the government could ban books under the McCain-Feingold Act.

After McCain picked Governor Sarah Palin for his number two slot on the ticket during the 2008 campaign the Old Media lit upon a story that said Sarah Palin tried to ban books from the Wasilla library when she was mayor there in 1996. A list of the supposedly banned books was even bandied about by the left-wing blogs, causing a ruckus in the media, but it turned out the list had books on it published years after Palin had left the Mayor’s office. The list was a fabrication and was lifted from a website that detailed the books that had been banned at one time or another, in one place or another, over the last 100 years. (more…)

Much as the dinosaurs of earth’s past died out to due to changes in their environment, the old media of TV, newspapers and reports are finding it hard to adapt to the changes in the environment of the new media.

One of the true dinosaurs of the old media, Helen Thomas, recently lashed out at the new media and the fact that a majority of Americans now get their news, information and opinions from the new media, which happens to include talk radio, the internet, bloggers and video from camera cell-phones. Ms. Thomas also seems upset by the fact that a White House she strongly supports no longer looks to the White House press corps to get its message out as this White House uses Twitter, Facebook and YouTube to advise its supporters and friendly pundits.

Ms. Thomas has been on the White House beat since the days of Jack Kennedy and, like the dinosaurs, Ms. Thomas refuses to adapt to the changes in the American public’s taste for information, news and opinion. Ms. Thomas complains that there is no accountability in the new media, that “everyone with a laptop thinks that he/she is a reporter, those with cell-phones believe they are photographers and that the opinions of these people can ruin the lives of public and political figures.” (more…)

No clearer difference can be seen in how the Old Media and its left-wing compatriots treat mass killers, terrorists and nutjobs than the way Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab and Joe Stack have been portrayed by the Old Media and the left. Abdulmutallab, the jihadi Christmas Bomber, was treated as an aberration unconnected with any larger group — despite that he trained with al Qaeda — and Joe Stack, who flew a plane into an IRS building in Austin, Texas, has been held up as the epitome of the “teabaggers” and the “anti-government right” despite that not a single tie to those folks has been yet discovered.

Immediately after Abdulmutallab tried to blow himself and a plane full of passengers into martyrdom on Christmas Day 2009, President Obama’s administration declared this guy an “isolated extremist” and said he had no connection to our Islamofascist enemies. Obama was helped along in this by many Old Media news sources.

On Dec. 26, for instance, CBS reported that Abdulmutallab was a loner: “As of now, he appears to be a lone actor with no conspirators. A report the following day said of the jihadist bomber, ‘We’re not aware of anybody else,’ one official told Orr. No further arrests are imminent.” (more…)

The Democrats and their activist old media are running in circles and working themselves into pretzels trying to define the “Tea Party” movement. It can be quite entertaining to watch.  They really have no idea what is happening right in front of their eyes. The media would have an easier time reading Mandarin Chinese than they would deciphering the signs at a Tea Party rally.

You could argue that they don’t want to understand what they are seeing because that means they would have to admit that Democrats have lost the beloved grass roots that they claim to have had forever, and I would not disagree. But, for the moment, let’s just say that they are really trying hard to figure this out and it’s just not sinking in to their brilliant Ivy League minds.

Let’s give them a little hint:

Sunday on Meet the Press, Dee Dee Myers, the former Clinton press secretary, took a stab at defining the Tea Party movement. “I’m not sure exactly where this is going….is it a third party, is it part of the Republican Party?” (more…)

One of the first things that Barack Obama did after being swept into office on the wings of “hopenchange” was to sign an executive order that would close the terrorist detainee facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. President Obama gave a one-year deadline after which, he triumphantly promised us, the facility would be closed. Well, we are at one year plus ten days after the signing of the order and Gitmo is still open. Yet few stories expressing outrage about this lapsed promise have made the rounds in the Old Media.

On January 22, 2009, Obama signed the Executive Order that gravely asserted that Gitmo would be closed “no later than 1 year from the date of this order.” That was January 22, 2009. It is now February 3, 2010. I’d say a year and ten days after the order was signed just might constitute more than “no later than one year,” wouldn’t you?

Naturally, last year when Obama signed this order the Old Media covered it quite heavily. It was big news and was represented as an example of Obama’s fulfilling a campaign promise. All one need do is type “close Guantanamo executive order” into Google and page after page of Old Media coverage of the signing of the EO will be discovered. (more…)

The elephant in the room should be anchoring the evening news.

Seriously. I never cease to be amazed how those who say they are there to protect us are totally unable to see what is killing them.  Oh, viewers will be told to watch out for mad cow disease and deadly tennis rackets (you’ve seen the promos), while those same “experts” are incapable of self reflection. Right now, the media needs the paddles but they refuse to call the EMT.

One of two things is happening here; a) The leftist activist old media is on a mission to push their agenda and nothing else matters, or b) they really don’t know what they’re doing and the stories just take on a life of their own and like NASCAR , they just happen to take left turns nearly all the time. (more…)

Pollster Frank Luntz is trying to hawk his new poll on gun laws commissioned by the left-wing group, Mayors Against Illegal Guns. He’s trying to sell the concept that NRA members are just as interested in “common-sense gun policies” as anti-gun nuts and that legislators should take this into account when crafting future anti-gun legislation. The problem is that this poll (.pdf at link) is misleading in some important ways, and the fact that the devil is in the details is totally glossed over.

In an op ed in the Los Angeles Times written by Luntz and Tom Barrett, gun owners are compared favorably with non-gun owners over their feelings on gun banning laws. “The culture war over the right to bear arms isn’t much of a war after all,” the pair tells us. “As it turns out, there is a lot everyone agrees on.”

And this main point serves as the biggest problem with Luntz’s poll. Of course everyone will claim he’s for “common-sense” firearms laws. But the first thing that anyone will find out when discussing concrete policies is that disagreement quickly reigns when people start getting specific. An assumption that everyone “agrees” on just what common sense means disappears pretty quickly when the details are laid out. (more…)