It’s bad when national media outlets show bias, but I honestly think it’s worse when your local media shows bias. Last night on Twitter I came across a tweet about thousands at a pro-Walker rally, but the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel said only hundreds were there.

This may not seem like a big deal, but the Associated Press picked it up and didn’t bother to check the facts. Other media outlets reported the original AP article. The MacIver Institute took a screen shot and posted it to their Facebook account:

I looked all over the Associated Press website and couldn’t find their articles. Not shocked at all, but luckily other local outlets used the numerous AP articles on their site. The first one appeared on their ABC website. This article is interesting because it glosses over the pro-Walker protestors, but goes into detail about the anti-Walker protestors. No bias here, right? The AP did post another article that was picked up by Madison.com. This one did get into more detail about the rally and the supporters, including those who spoke. The only article I could find that is any good is from Wauwatosa Patch. The writer, Jim Price, uses accurate numbers. He mentions the organizers were expecting 1,000 people, but 3,000 attended.

I don’t know about you, but when I hear someone say over 1,000 I picture 1,200, maybe even 1,500. I definitely don’t picture 3,000! It doesn’t change the perspective much by updating the articles to say over 1,000 when they will be specific about the number of counter protestors. Matt Batzel, from the original tweet, told me this is unfair because it appears the pro-Walker protestors only outnumbered the anti-Walker protestors 10 to 1.

The local TV stations also repeated the numbers like TMJ-4 and WSAW. Now, the TMJ-4 article says thousands now, but if you look under the by line it will say it was updated. The video of the actual news broadcast shows they changed their mind. The broadcaster says hundreds instead of thousands. Luckily, the MacIver Institute also posted a video on YouTube.

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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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Try to remember how you felt on the days after the horrible events of September 11, 2001. I remember our country experiencing something close to Dr. Elisabeth Kübler-Ross’s famous stages of grief. Except instead of “acceptance” being the final stage,  our nation swelled with an enormous sense of patriotism and resolve best represented by the bi-partisan members of Congress singing “God Bless America” on the steps of the Capitol, President George W. Bush’s rallying rescue workers on a pile of rubble, and flags being flown on almost every porch in America. Do you remember those days and those feelings? Now, ask yourself:  What kind of person would instead take the occasion of the day after the attack to lead a rally condemning America and holding the terrorist murderers up as martyred heroes?

Van Jones is that kind of person.

In a recently discovered video, the former White House appointee and current hero of the liberal elite and de-facto Huffington Post/AOL editorial director is seen telling the adoring crowd,  “It’s the bombs that the government has been dropping around the world that are now blowing up inside the U.S. borders.”  He said this after a whole host of speakers from the radical fringe fringe denounced our country and her policies and hijacked the tragedy to justify unloading a laundry list of cliched, left-wing reasons to blame America for the acts perpetrated by radical Islamist totalitarian terrorists.

Remember, this rally was taking place while the bodies of 3,000 Americans were still smoldering in the rubble of the World Trade Center and American heroes were putting their lives at risk at ground zero in a massive humanitarian effort.  What kind of monsters would use this occasion to turn Americans against one another?

It’s no wonder that this man is embraced and honored by groups like the once-relevant, now-radical NAACP and was given the high honor of holding a Presidential appointment in the first year of the Obama Presidency.  He speaks the revolutionary “blame America first” rhetoric of Bill Ayers, Jeremiah Wright and Malik Zulu Shabazz. (more…)

I have been a subscriber to AOL since I first bought a laptop computer way back in the dark ages of 1991. That’s right my friends I am the last person in the country who is still paying for AOL! That may end soon.

I even bought stock on in AOL way back before the tech boom of the late 90’s and wish I would have sold out long ago. As an early player in the ISP business I thought AOL could have been a market leader. They have floundered both in their business model and in their content. I kept waiting for them to find their way. It’s my optimistic nature.

AOL announced last week they were buying the Huffington Post. It was announced that Ms Huffington, one of the greatest political chameleons of all time, would control the content.  This may have surprised a number of analysts but to anyone who has been reading the “news” as provided by AOL over the last two years it was no big deal. Little in their content would change. It would be hard for anyone to imagine the content of AOL could get more left wing than it has been lately. The following three stories are illustrative of the general tone of AOL’s recent content.

Item 1- Sportswriter Kevin Blackstone posted a piece on dumping the National Anthem from sporting events. His logic is that the singing of the Star Spangled Banner is too political! After starting his column with some non-sequitur about the singing of the National Anthem in Congress in 1955 he concludes,

“But if our lawmakers don’t sing it every day to begin the country’s business, spectators of a mere sporting event shouldn’t be forced to sit through it, either, especially during the time we are living through right now.”

It seems that Mr. Blackstone views the celebration of our nation before a large public event as a punishment to be endured. He also feels, I gather from the quote above, that when things are tough in the USA we should ignore it rather than trying to find something all American’s can agree on – we live in an awesome country! If the National Anthem is too political for Mr. Blackstone maybe he thinks the flying of the flag should be stopped as well. Maybe politicians should be banned from attending sports events. Ok, I have to admit I may support that as well!

Item 2- Columnist David Corn pontificates on the sanity and political opinions of conservative icon Glenn Beck. The ultra liberal Mr. Corn, who has written for every far left rag other than the Daily Worker, sees Mr. Beck’s opinion that the uprising in Egypt may turn out to be more that a blooming democracy as an insane conspiracy theory. He belittles Mr. Beck’s suspicions of Acorn and the Tides Foundation as more ultra right kookiness. In Mr. Corn’s opinion the uprising in Egypt is a pure democracy movement and to consider it as anything else is unconscionable crazy talk! I only hope our President, who has show his rank amateurism at foreign policy during this crisis, has his staff drawing up some sort of contingency plans if things in Egypt take a turn for the worst.

Item 3- Why attack just one conservative value or person when you can you can group them into bunches and deride them as a whole? Journalism Professor Sharon Fish does that when she lumps Michelle Bachmann, Sarah Palin and Sharon Angle into a pile and labels that unelectable right wing morons. Sharon Fish seem to think all Conservative women are blundering dunderheads who couldn’t hold Mr. Obama’s jacket. They lack refinement in speech and presentation.

My solace is that I am old enough to remember another conservative icon that the media and elitists derided as a fool and bumbler a few years back. He was so dangerous to their ideology that even today they are trying to rewrite history to diminish is greatness. He would have been 100 this year.

Part 1:What is Media Matters? Do They Really “Have it in For Beck?”

You may not believe this part of the story but it is very true. Somewhere under a giant rock, located by the northern part of the Potomac river where it splits and forms a pattern that kind of looks like a wishbone, there is a secret lair filled with computers and television screens. The people who work there spend all day watching Fox news, reading conservative columnists, and listen to talk radio and surfing the net trying to identify anyone who disagrees with a project that George (Spooky Dude) Soros is behind. The name of this nefarious organization is Media Matters and its mission is to lie —tell half-truths, let’s face it, they will do anything except deal with the facts in order to try and discredit anyone who disagrees with the “Dude” of “Spooky.”

Allow me to interject some honesty. No,  it’s not true that Media Matters operates in a secret underground lair. It’s also not true that they work under a rock, it just seems as if  they crawl out from under a rock to make their reports. I am not even sure that they all work in an office filled with computers and TV screens, for all I know they are all freelancers.

The rest: lies, half-truths, ignoring the facts, and serving the “Dude” of “Spooky,” all that is the absolute truth. Additionally they work hard to be hypocrites, its as if they have a rule which says, “If a progressive and a conservative do the same exact thing, only the conservative is to be criticized.”

I have been following Media Matters develop its fake smears against Glenn Beck since  October 2010. That is when they initiated their quest to brand Beck as an anti-Semite to deflect criticism of the progressive movement and it’s Sugar Daddy George Soros.

Before continuing, it  would be dishonest if I didn’t point out that I am an audience regular, both to Beck’s Radio and his TV program. I don’t always agree with him, (sometimes he makes me want to punch my  laptop which streams the radio show) but the programs always generate thought, always entertains, and sometimes incite an ice-cream binge. But it would be just as dishonest not point out that this Case Study about the Soros-controlled hit squad is not really about Glenn Beck. False charges of Antisemitism are a particular hot button of mine.

As a Jew, every time I hear someone being bullied with false charges of Antisemitism I am compelled to offer a defense (usually that deflects the bully’s anger toward my  direction). That doesn’t mean I reject all charges of Antisemitism  When charges are valid I just as vigorously attack the bigot, such as when my friend Rabbi Nessenoff asked me what to do with this little video he took of Helen Thomas . I quickly posted it on my site The Lid, here at Big Journalism, gave it to Scott Baker (who at the time was working for Breitbart) who posted it on Breitbart TV,  sent out tweets and emails to most of the large sites by the end of the day it was on radio and TV and the calls for Thomas’ head were all over the place.

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In the journalistic blockbuster videos posted at Breitbart‘s Big Government and Big Journalism, Live Action exposes Planned Parenthood’s apparent complicity in putative underage sex-slave rings in New Jersey and, most recently, Virginia.  And the Make-Believe Media has circled the wagons around Planned Parenthood with obfuscated timelines and strawman arguments attempting to salvage PP’s public reputation.

Tipped off to this impending public relations disaster, last week PP announced – and the MBM dutifully reported – a purported FBI investigation of this undercover sting, implying that PP had discovered and quickly reported this possible criminal ring of underage sex traders.   Even the AP’s all-important Orwellian title “Planned Parenthood Seeks FBI Probe” implies a valiant PP calling for an FBI investigation of these criminals who sought PP’s advice in trafficking child sex slaves.

Yet, the videos appear to show billion-dollar corporation Planned Parenthood conspiring with child-prostitution hustlers.  Damning stuff?  Provocative, at least?  Well, no, not to some elements of the MBM.

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Every time I think that the “Press” can’t sink any lower than the rock bottom they’ve already hit, they somehow manage to burrow themselves further into the earth’s mantle. As is so often the case, this most recent gutter-dwelling example has to do with Sarah Palin, who dared to go on a humanitarian trip to Haiti. This does not suit! You see, how can the Press feel all holier-than-thou and better than Sarah Palin – and her fellow rubes – when she is out helping people in Haiti, while they are sitting at home and sipping their soy lattes? I mean, you can’t even see their super awesome and caring “cause ribbons” in print. Plus, she’s just a girl and not the right kind of girl; she embraces motherhood and doesn’t hyphenate her name. She doesn’t even limit herself to caring only about topics that women are assigned to caring about by the left. This aggression cannot stand.

So, they fall back on sneering contempt, mixed with insanity and outright lies. While that is what they are best at, even that no longer works. A funny little thing happened to their ability to do so: the absolute moral  insolvency of the Fourth Estate is now apparent to most and citizens are now finding the truth for themselves. This again happened on Monday, when the AP ran this picture and caption:

What the photographer purposely neglects to mention is that the woman fixing Palin’s hair is her daughter, Bristol. She is clearly seen in the following photograph, as also noted by Free Republic:

In other photos from Saturday, Todd and Sarah Palin’s white, brunette, eldest daughter Bristol, who accompanied her parents on the trip to Haiti, is wearing the exact same clothing and ponytail as the “hair stylist” in the AP photo.

That’s right, what the Palin-hating AP and others fail to report is that the “hair stylist” is Bristol Palin.

Bristol Palin was fixing a loose clip or an errant strand of hair for her mother. The photographer quite clearly knew that, having taken the picture and having actually looked through the lens at the people whose photo he was taking. He managed to identify Todd Palin, yet purposely did not identify Bristol.

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JournoList scandal is back and prepare for it to be a driving force in the news for quite some time. The Daily Caller published an article tonight indicating they’ve obtained emails from the JournoList and the initial details are as damning as we expected when the list-serv, founded by the Washington Post’s Ezra Klein in 2007, surfaced with the Dave Weigel kerfuffle last month.

Snippets from the article below, but make sure to read the whole thing at the Daily Caller and return to Big Journalism early and often as we unpack the details that emerge and track the fallout from this seminal event in the history of left-wing media bias.  It’s unclear exactly what the Daily Caller has, but there’s certainly no indication from this article they’ve already laid all their cards out on the table.

According to records obtained by The Daily Caller, at several points during the 2008 presidential campaign a group of liberal journalists took radical steps to protect their favored candidate. Employees of news organizations including Time, Politico, the Huffington Post, the Baltimore Sun, the Guardian, Salon and the New Republic participated in outpourings of anger over how Obama had been treated in the media, and in some cases plotted to fix the damage.

In one instance, Spencer Ackerman of the Washington Independent urged his colleagues to deflect attention from Obama’s relationship with Wright by changing the subject. Pick one of Obama’s conservative critics, Ackerman wrote, “Fred Barnes, Karl Rove, who cares — and call them racists.” (more…)

On July 14, 2010, Cybercast News Service (CNS) reported that the health care reform legislation Obama signed into law on March 23, 2010 will soon employ tax-payer funds to pay for abortions in Pennsylvania. According to CNS, the “Health and Human Services Department is giving Pennsylvania $160 million to set up a new high-risk insurance pool that will cover any abortion that is legal in the state.”

And in addition to the $160 million going to Pennsylvania, the federal government is also dispersing $12.5 billion for “community health centers” which can then, in turn, “fund abortions.”

In other words: When Obama issued an Executive Order barring the use of federal monies for abortion, it meant nothing. (Yes, it meant Congressman Bart Stupak (D-MI) was gullible, but other than that it meant absolutely nothing.)

Not only is Obama’s administration doing what he promised it wouldn’t do, but it’s trying to cover its tracks while doing it. Thus, instead of sending money directly to abortion providers, monies go to “community health centers” which then pay for abortions as needed. Or, in the case of Pennsylvania, tax-payer monies are placed at the discretion of state administrators for high risk insurance pools who then distribute the funds to abortion clinics. (more…)

Over the past several months I have had the honor of being Big Journalism’s official Correction Alpaca.  I’ve requested over two dozen corrections at Big Journalism and many others on Big Hollywood, Twitter, and via email.  Some of the news organizations I’ve addressed have done their journalistic duty and set their respective records straight, while others have neglected to fulfill this journalistic responsibility.  Others still have delivered what Patterico refers to as “stealth corrections,” that is, where a post is corrected without formal acknowledgment by the publication that the public record had been amended. We acknowledge there is a time and place for this, but it’s done far, far, far too often in the internet age.

If you recall, my responsibilities as Correction Alpaca commenced in order to alert the blogosphere of the mainstream media’s culpability and ineptitude in its mostly incorrect reporting of the James O’Keefe caper at Senator Landrieu’s Louisiana office earlier this year.  As of Wednesday, this saga, dubbed “Watergate Jr.,” by MSNBC has come to an end, with O’Keefe pleading guilty to mere misdemeanor charges of entering federal property under false pretenses and getting a proverbial “slap on the wrist” sentence.

So, in memory of “Watergate Jr.,” I would like to draw your attention to these sites, which at the time of this publication, still have published unforced errors regarding the prank in New Orleans:

Newsweek
The Los Angeles Times
The Atlantic… (more…)

It’s certainly arguable whether Joe Scarborough, the host of the now nearly unwatchable haute-gabfest, Morning Joe, on MSNBC, is a conservative, but whatever he is, he’s too much for Canadian-born actor Donald Sutherland.  Consider this, from the Huffington Post:

Are the programmers at MSNBC nuts? They give us refreshing afternoons with Chris and Ed, put us to bed with the clarifying sensibilities of Rachel and Keith and then, idiotically, wake us up with Mr. Small Mouth.

Who is this idiot? Why is he there? He can’t even listen. He doesn’t conduct a decent conversation. He runs over everyone else’s words with a landslide of diarrhea. I saw him on Friday, stomping around the stage like a posturing rooster, calling Paul Krugman a political hack. Paul Krugman’s a political hack? Surely they put make-up on Mr. Small Mouth. Doesn’t he look in the mirror? That’s where he’d see what a political hack looks like.

“Mr. Small Mouth? — Sutherland really knows how to hurt a guy. But he’s not finished putting the boot in.  Oh, no… (more…)

Global warming hysteria has often been compared to religion, and rightly so. But, there’s also many theatrical elements to be found, facets of the genre “green drama” that are so very familiar to those of us who have spent our professional careers watching environmental tragedies debut year after year.

Global warming is the blockbuster production of the environmental movement. It’s the Broadway hit that has maintained the rapt attention of environmental activists and policy-makers throughout the course of three decades. The players are familiar, having honed their roles after years of practice.

The directors naturally, and predictably, cast big, bad corporations as villains, with Exxon-Mobil supposedly skulking behind the scenes, passing out bribes to spineless skeptical scientists and obstructing the heroic politicians and activists trying to save innocent mother earth, before it’s too late.  And what a victim to have! Sure, your average activist would be happy to be part of the local neighborhood production of: “Stop Building That New Factory Before It Kills All The Babies In Town (The Musical)”, but the Global Warming Show is truly big time. It’s not just the babies in town that are in danger, it’s everyone’s babies, everywhere. This production has innocent tribes living on sinking tropical islands and disappearing glaciers and forlorn polar bears. Global Warming; it’s the show that’s got it all! (more…)

I woke up this morning to an email from Gillian Reagan, the reporter who had slammed me in a hit piece for Business Insider, defending her work and mitigating her sins, while not seeing how they all added up to an obvious hit job.  Thus began a war of words that’s continued all day.  Honest journalistic enterprise or partisan attack piece?  You be the judge:

PART 1: Gillian Reagan’s email

Hi Andrew,

We’d like to respond to your post on Big Journalism. May we repost the entry onto BusinessInsider.com so we can respond?

Let us know how you’d like to work it out.

Best,

Gillian

–

Gillian Reagan

The Business Insider

xxx@businessinsider.com

xxx Fifth Avenue, 7th Fl

New York, NY 10003

646-xxx-xxxx

~~~~

PART 2: Blodget Response to My Piece

From Buisness Insider:

Our Response To Andrew Breitbart’s Allegations About Us And Our Story

Yesterday, we published a story about Andrew Breitbart’s new site, Big Journalism. The story contained numerous quotes from Breitbart, including this one, in which the right-leaning Breitbart was describing sites operated by the left-leaning Arianna Huffington:

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Yesterday, I made the mistake of answering the following email, addressed to Big Government editor Mike Flynn, promptly:

Hi Mr. Flynn,

I’m a reporter from the Business Insider working on a short item about the new Big Journalism site launched today. Any chance you’d have Breitbart’s email so I can get in touch with him?

Would appreciate it so much.

Best regards,

Gillian

–

Gillian Reagan

The Business Insider

XXX@businessinsider.com

XXX Fifth Avenue, 7th Fl

New York, NY 10003

646-484-XXXX

twitter: XXXXXXX

I spoke with Ms. Reagan for about ten minutes and gave her a long explanation as to why I started Big Journalism. I awoke to something so far off from what I said that I called her back and asked her specifically about the following quote that is a composite of her question, a hodge-podge of my response and flat out lies.

Let me begin with the biggest deception of all: Business Insider is a front for Gawker, the notorious leftist/media snark site.  If she had been up front with me, like any sane person I never would have responded.  (Go to www.Gawker.com to see why.)  But she came to me under false pretenses.

Next, let me point out that when I told her she’d misquoted me, she told me that she had taped the conversation without my knowledge or my consent!

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