Why would a journalist for MSNBC sit on an explosive story for over a week and allow her company’s competitors to report on it first?  It’s hard to believe that the answer to that question is anything but political bias.

By now we’ve all heard the inflammatory and divisive rhetoric Rep. Andre Carson (D-IN) spewed at an August 22nd “Job’s Fair” sponsored by the Congressional Black Caucus. As reported on several websites and discussed on Fox News, Carson said this about the Tea Party coalition in Congress:

“This is the effort that we are seeing of Jim Crow. Some of these folks in Congress right now would love to see us as second class citizens. Some of them in Congress right now with this Tea Party movement would love to see you and me (I’m sorry Tamron*) hanging on a tree,”

The statement was featured at Breitbart.tv and has been reported by ABC News, Fox News, Washington Post, NY Times, Huffington Post, CNN, USA Today, NY Daily News and many local news outlets.  Yet a search of “Andre Carson” on  MSNBC.com turns up nothing about this story.  And that’s curious considering one of MSNBC’s daytime anchors was sitting only a few feet away from Carson when he made the statement.
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Frightened by websites that don’t only report on stories that are Soros- and Obama-administration approved, CNN decides it just better to demand that free speech be shut down.

Yesterday on CNN’s American Morning, Kiran Chetry and John Roberts interviewed Shirley Sherrod about her response to the recent controversy over the release of her comments at an NAACP dinner.

When Roberts pressed Sherrod about what she would like to see Andrew Breitbart do in response to her summary firing by Labor secretary Tom Vilsack over her comments she said, “apologize.” That was the extent after rephrasing multiple times, “an apology.”

Apparently that wasn’t enough for Chetry. She responded by saying, “Would you like to see his site shut down?”

MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann came back from vacation to rant about the Sherrod story and now CNN is directing, completely unprompted by their guest, Sherrod to demand that Breitbart’s site be shut down. Olbermann and the rest of the left haven’t stopped blaming Fox News since Sherrod lost her job at lightning speed for her own comments that were in context (even though Fox News didn’t report on the Sherrod story until after she lost her job).

How do we go from “an apology” to shutting down free speech? It’s easy for the fascist left. (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…)

Yesterday, we revealed yesterday’s examination of Rep. Andre Carson’s contemporaneous account that he gave reporters versus actual video footage of the events at the Cannon Office Building. The video showing the congressmen walking down the steps unencumbered by the hostile, racist mob that we had been told was there proved that Rep. Carson’s description was exaggerated at best, fabricated at worst.

We asked our readers for any other footage and testimonials they might have from that day in Washington DC. In the true spirit of citizen journalists holding our government accountable, we received many tips. The following compilation further exposes the myth that Rep. Carson passed on to the eager media that day.

On Tuesday, AP reporter Jesse Washington ran a story on the Phantom ‘N-Word,’ accusing Andrew Breitbart and this site of misleading viewers by running a video of the March 20 protest at Capitol Hill that did not show anyone screaming a racial epithet at the Congressional Black Caucus, as had been widely reported.   And, Washington included a new eye-witness to the supposed hate-speech, Rep. Heath Shuler (D, N.C.):

A fourth Democrat, Rep. Heath Shuler of North Carolina, who is white, backed up his colleagues, telling the Hendersonville (N.C.) Times-News that he heard the slurs.

Yesterday, James Taranto at the Wall Street Journal actually did some reporting and called Rep. Shuler’s office.  He got a different story:

But when we phoned Shuler’s office this afternoon, press secretary Julie Fishman told us the local reporter misunderstood. According to Fishman, Shuler’s comments to the Times-News referred to the general tenor of the protests, not to the black congressmen’s specific allegations.  Fishman said that Shuler was not walking with Cleaver and did not hear the “N-word.”

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Last night on Anderson Cooper 360, there was a political panel discussion that focused on the growing doubts over whether racial epithets had, in fact, been hurled at members of the Congressional Black Caucus on the day of the Health Care vote in Washington, D.C.  The segment led with video of Andrew Breitbart repeating his offer of $100,000 to be donated to the United Negro College Fund if anyone provides video and audio proof of the alleged event.

The exchange that follows is notable for a handful of reasons.  First, the way Cooper frames the subject and introduces the discussion:

COOPER:  On March 20th, near the end of the bitter health care debate, Representative John Lewis, Andre Carson, Emanuel Cleaver say that some demonstrators, many of them Tea Party activists, yelled the “n” word as the Congressmen walked from House office building at the Capitol…

… Roland (Martin, CNN Political Analyst), what about that? I mean, if — if this happened, you would think there would be video by now. Does that — the fact that it is still being discussed. Is that a win for the Tea Party?

This is a new direction for CNN, which is desperately trying to reposition itself between Fox and MSNBC as the “objective” alternative, as well as other news outlets.  Until recently, the “N-word” slur has been reported as engraved-in-stone fact.  Now, the discussion is no longer about the alleged racism of the activists as much as it is about the validity of the charges. (more…)

Ever wonder what it must be like to be standing right in the middle of the action when a huge story breaks?  Thanks to Kerry Picket at the Washington Times, you can come close to that experience.  Except, in this case you can hear how events transpire when an unproven rumor gets spread to reporters and then gets promulgated as if it were a huge story.

Pickett has the audio of the very moment Rep. Andre Carson (D, Ind.) breathlessly relayed the dubious claims that racial epithets were hurled at the Congressional Black Caucus fifteen times on the day the Health Care Bill was being voted on .  The exchange between Rep. Carson and the group of reporters makes a  few important points quite clear:

1. Rep. Carson has a very specific story he wants to get out and he keeps repeating the same bullet items, as if they might be talking points.
2. No reporter ever actually heard the alleged racial epithets. (more…)