- Google joins the censorship fun at the request of repressive governments.

- If only outlets reacted this way when the issue isn’t editing an image into a frog, but rather manipulating or omitting facts to convince the reader of an illogical narrative. NPPA president: Sacramento Bee photo manipulation a ‘betrayal.’

- Komen denies that activist media (and the hacking of its website and other related liberal bullying) had anything to do with its reverse decision.

- NYP reports Lawrence O’Donnell is having himself an office romance with Tamron Hall.

- Matt Lauer scores the Obama Superbowl interview. There were rumors of a testy rivalry between Lauer and Brian Williams for the Q & A.

(more…)

I take no pleasure in the misery of others, but as someone who recognizes that the mainstream media is the arch-villain in the fight for human liberty and the survival of an America that doesn’t resemble a European socialist country – yesterday, it was impossible for my heart to do anything other than leap for joy when I read that the New York Times lost $40 million in 2011.

No one wants to see anyone lose their job, but the New York Times, Washington Post, L.A. Times, and all the rest are nothing more than lairs for arch-villains, and when these hollowed-out volcanoes are bankrupted, the virtue of this outweighs what happens to the faceless henchmen who are now out on the streets looking for work. I wish them luck. I wish things were different. But this is about saving our country and humanity.

Over in England, some are openly panicking over the future of newspapers:

- Branded Twitter pages are here! But only, apparently, if you’re a progressive news outlet. Seriously, Al Jazeera? What’s next, RT/ Russia Today / Komrade Kommuniqué? Rhetorical question.

- Real headline: Barack Obama controls media more than presidential predecessors.

President Obama grants many more media interviews than his predecessors, but holds far fewer impromptu question-and-answer sessions, according to data compiled by a professor who studies presidential interactions with the press.

By doing so, Mr. Obama and his administration have more control over who asks questions and where they are answered …

… However, Mr. Obama has comparatively avoided Q.&A.s with scrums of reporters, according to Ms. Kumar, answering questions at 94 photo opportunities and other such sessions in his first three years. Mr. Bush had spoken at 307 such sessions after three years in office, and Mr. Clinton, 493.

Of course. Interviewers submit questions to the President and his team, who then choose what they want to answer. If the questions go unvetted, they don’t get asked. This is why he avoids those impromptu Q and As — and interesting how his predecessors welcomed them.

- Compare the above to this from Newsbusters: Obama’s Been Skipping the White House Press Corps for Network and Social Media Softballs.

- Interesting: NYT reporter asks for readers’s help in identifying bomb.

(more…)

If you’re a Twitter user, you might start getting notifications just like this from Twitter in the very near future if you tweet something that some foreign governments don’t like.

On Thursday, the social media company announced on its blog that, effective immediately, it has implemented the ability to withhold specific content from certain geographical regions in order to respond to government censoring without affecting its entire base of users.

Until now, the only way we could take account of those countries’ limits was to remove content globally. Starting today, we give ourselves the ability to reactively withhold content from users in a specific country — while keeping it available in the rest of the world. We have also built in a way to communicate transparently to users when content is withheld, and why.

We haven’t yet used this ability, but if and when we are required to withhold a Tweet in a specific country, we will attempt to let the user know, and we will clearly mark when the content has been withheld. As part of that transparency, we’ve expanded our partnership with Chilling Effects to share this new page, http://chillingeffects.org/twitter, which makes it easier to find notices related to Twitter.

According to PC Magazine, Twitter will determine which content to withhold in much the same way it does DMCA notices, albeit proactively. (more…)

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.

(more…)

- The National Journal fact checks and compares Obamacare and Romneycare.

- Hysterical. Jeopardy contestants can’t identify Rachel Maddow:

Obviously they, along with most of the country, don’t watch MSNBC.

- Newt Gingrich isn’t the only thing Marianne Gingrich helped to propel to #1 last week.

- Twitter can now censor Tweets in certain countries:

The social network Twitter is facing a storm of criticism from users, after revealing that it has implemented a system that would let it withhold particular tweets from specific countries.

The company has insisted that it will not use the gagging system in a blanket fashion, but would apply it on a case-by-case basis, as already happens when governments or organisations complain about individual tweets.

The new system, which can filter tweets on a country-by-country basis and has already been incorporated into the site’s output, will not change Twitter’s approach to freedom of expression, sources there indicated.

- Washington City Paper notes the obvious and asks: Where are the women and non-white media critics? The problem? They rattle off a list of known progressive white male critics. When you look at only super far left progressives wherein diversity is a rhetorical device rather than observed practice, of course you’d wonder.

(more…)

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:

(more…)

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.

(more…)

- I can’t tell if I’m watching MSNBC. Stuff Liberals Say via Ace:

- WaPo ombudsman: Yes we’re biased and we need to start scrutinizing Obama’s record:

Deborah Howell, Post ombudsman from 2005 through 2008, said at the end of her tenure that “some of the conservatives’ complaints about a liberal tilt [at The Post] are valid.”

I won’t quibble with her conclusion. I think she was right.

- News archives proves gun control laws will fail.

(more…)

Twitter, Facebook and the blogosphere were on fire yesterday, with the news that Homeland Security Is Monitoring The Drudge Report, The New York Times, and other various websites.  The headline sparked burning blog posts all across the web, some bordering on hysterics. Type “Homeland Security” and “Drudge” into Google and perform a search within the last twenty four hours, and you’ll find 56,700 results at this writing.

The story was borne out of an upcoming privacy compliance review from the Department of Homeland Security regarding one of the agency’s initiatives that entails monitoring “publicly available online forums, blogs, public websites, and message boards.”  There’s just one important detail missing here:  the program was actually implemented in January of 2010.

The Volokh Conspiracy, a well-known group blog of law professors, puts the hype in check:

Matt Drudge and The Atlantic are hyperventilating, and Mark Hosenball of Reuters is bragging, about what The Atlantic calls an “exclusive” report that DHS “routinely monitors dozens of popular websites, including Facebook, Twitter, Hulu, WikiLeaks and news and gossip sites including the Huffington Post and Drudge Report.”

There are just two problems with this exclusive news report.

It isn’t news and it isn’t exclusive.

Readers of this blog could have learned exactly the same thing in one of my posts from, uh, February of 2010.

Here’s what I said two years ago:

With his usual nudge-and-wink, Matt Drudge invites us to be dismayed that “BIG SIS” — his moniker for Janet Napolitano — is “Monitoring Web Sites for Terror and Disaster Info.” Drudge links to a story saying that DHS will be monitoring social media like Twitter, as well as websites like Drudge, to keep abreast of events during the Winter Olympics. The source of the story is a twelve-page “Privacy Impact Assessment” issued by DHS.

This isn’t the first Privacy Impact Assessment (PIA) on DHS’s use of social media. A few weeks earlier, DHS wrote a similar assessment of using social media during Haitian rescue operations.

I am indeed dismayed, but not for Drudge’s reasons.  True, it’s disappointing that neither the Volokh Conspiracy nor www.skatingonstilts.com is deemed worthy of government monitoring.  But what’s really dismaying is that DHS and its Privacy Office felt obliged to labor over two separate and painfully obvious privacy assessments just to do things that you and I would do by simply firing up our browsers.

That’s it.  The story is that people at DHS are, gasp, browsing the Internet. As I said then, there’s no scandal, other than the electrons wasted by DHS agonizing over the privacy implications of browsing public Internet sources to find out what’s happening in the world.

The program is referred to as the Publicly Available Social Media Monitoring and Situational Awareness Initiative (pdf), and it was first implemented to monitor activity and news during events like those mentioned above.

Some seem especially concerned about the portion of the initiative that pertains to actually retaining personally identifiable information.

The DHS Privacy Office (PRIV) and OPS/NOC decided to further broaden the program’s capability to collect additional information, including limited instances of personally identifiable information (PII). As such, a Publicly Available Social Media Monitoring and Situational Awareness Initiative Privacy Impact Assessment (PIA) Update5 and new DHS/OPS-004 – Publicly Available Social Media Monitoring and Situational Awareness Initiative System of Records Notice (SORN)6 were issued on January 6, 2011 and February 1, 2011 respectively and are the basis for this Privacy Compliance Review (PCR).

But upon close inspection of “personally identifiable information,” the activity is really no different from what you or I might do to gather our own news interests.

(more…)

- Pat Buchanan’s future at MSNBC is “murky.”

- The NYT apparently cares more for correcting My Little Pony names than dedication to scandals like Fast and Furious. You think I’m making it up?

- Keith Olbermann reluctantly returns to Current to provide New Hampshire coverage on Tuesday. That no one, probably not even Al Gore, will watch:

“I am pleased that I’ll be running the election coverage on Current, following this Tuesday’s New Hampshire primary,” said Olbermann in a statement to The Hollywood Reporter on Sunday. “However, I don’t think those participating in the New Hampshire primary will share my satisfaction.”

Or care. You forgot to say “or care.”

- He’s baaaack: George Stephanopoulos returns to ABC Sunday mornings.

- Melissa Harris Perry on MSNBC: Talking about how the poor don’t pay as much in taxes is Racist©®.

(more…)

- Dueling narratives emerge on Iowa.

- Big Journalism’s Dana Loesch will be bringing coverage of Iowa with CNN beginning this evening. Larry O’Connor will be bringing coverage from Iowa on UStream; watch Breitbart.tv for details.

- The NYT: Why isn’t Obama more social?

Before you get excited that this is a case of MSM turning on Obama, read this graph:

White House officials, however, counter that Mr. Obama’s detachment from Congress could end up benefiting him politically. After all, many Americans regard this Congress as dysfunctional, with abysmal approval ratings.

Its a campaign strategy. This is a president who has hosted countless A-list White House parties; he’s very social, but he needs to give the impression that there exists tension between him and congress because he needs a bogeyman and congress is the perfect foil.

- I dislike David Brooks, but his quip on Romney was funny:

He talks — he sings, or at least recites, some verses from ‘The Star-Spangled Banner.’ It’s as if he’s running to be Tom Sawyer.”

- Kathy Griffin is much more interested in taking her shirt off for people than people are interested in seeing her take off her shirt.

- Oprah moves to save her network:

According to the Associated Press, Discovery is taking the long view and sees this as a three to five year investment, but with Winfrey’s increased involvement it is obvious that this is really the make or break year.

If things don’t improve, by this time next year Discovery could decide to dis-OWN the channel.

(more…)

The Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) has published a report accusing Twitter, the popular social media service, of failing to explain its “indirect support for online jihad” by providing communication services to international terror groups, in apparent violation of U.S. law.

The report, by MEMRI executive director Stephen Stalinsky, notes that several terror groups–including Hizbullah, the Taliban, and Al Qaeda-affiliated Al-Shabaab Al-Mujahedeen–maintain accounts on Twitter. Members of Congress and the have encouraged Twitter to act against these accounts, and the State Department is reported to be investigating them, but Twitter has not acted and refuses to provide comment to the media.

Hizbullah's Al-Manar News on Twitter (Source: MEMRI)

Stalinsky writes:

(more…)

- Jib Jab’s biggest stories of 2011, as told via paper cutouts:

- MEMRI: Twitter breaks US law with its indirect support of jihad:

As part of its research, the MEMRI Jihad and Terrorism Threat Monitor follows the multiple ways in which jihadi groups are using Twitter – “tweeting” news flashes, reporting attacks, battles, and other operational activities, and sharing videos, and more.

Jihadi groups’ use of Twitter is part of their online media strategy of taking advantage of Western websites and technologies, uploading videos to YouTube and to the Internet Archive, creating official Facebook pages, and other methods. Jihadis have come to depend on free web hosting, where content can be uploaded anonymously, reliably, and at no cost.

Headquartered in San Francisco, California and with servers in San Antonio, Texas, Boston, Massachusetts, and New York, Twitter is increasingly being used by terrorist organizations and their media outlets. Their online followers are growing in number.

- The Spectator takes apart the Guardian for this headline: Say what you will about North Korea, at least they’re authentically Korean:

And, as a commenter at Samizdata notes, it’s not as though Winchester’s hideous admiration for North Korea qua Korean culture is in any way accurate either. There’s precious little “authentically” Korean about the Kims’ dreadful totalitarian prison. Most of it is borrowed from the USSR and China, albeit then lacquered in the vulgar Pyongyang style.

- Chris Matthews: Hey, c’mon guys. Cut JFK some slack on his adultery.

(more…)

Ever since it was learned a Saudi Prince, Alwaleed Bin Talal, owned a large stake in News Corp – parent company to Fox News – the usual suspects (ThinkProgress, Media Matters, DailyKos) have been trying to use it as a way to “hurt” Fox News (the prince now owns roughly 7% of News Corp.) The flawed thinking goes like this: “ZOMG! Fox News is owned by a Muslim, but Fox viewers are mostly conservative, therefore racist and anti-Muslim, and shouldn’t be watching Fox News!!” Clearly, in order to make sense of the smear merchants’s narrative, one must believe that all Fox News viewers are racist and anti-Muslim. This is a classic strawman argument: create a false premise and then use it to “prove” a point about your opponent.

This is Alwaleed Bin Talal. Really.

Media Matters, in particular, has been beating the “Fox News is anti-Muslim, but it’s owned by a Saudi Prince” drum the loudest. Have some fun and go over to the tax-exempt 501(c)(3)’s website and search “Fox Saudi Prince” or “Alwaleed” and you’ll find pages of posts by Senior and Junior Fellows pretending to be amazed that conservatives watch Fox News even though it is partly owned by a Saudi Prince. It never once occurs to them that people who watch Fox News realize the network isn’t anti-Muslim (Okay, that’s not true. The propagandists at Media Matters, etc. know it, but their job is to promote the narrative. They lie for a living).

An unintended consequence of this silly narrative is that the rank and file leftists out there have taken this “information” and used it to let their inner fascist shine through. The smear merchants’ narrative has provided the cover for them. Now they’re free to play the guilt by association game to anyone who doesn’t virulently hate Fox News as much as they do. If you spend any time on social networks or message boards or the comments section of articles and blog posts, you’ve seen the comment: “Oh yeah? Well Fox is owned by a Saudi Muslim!! HA!” If you bother to engage a person like this, they will inevitably come around to citing the Saudi regime’s backward stances on human rights, especially towards women, and a host of other issues. To be fair, these are all valid criticisms, but they’re using them for the completely wrong reasons. They’re trying to silence Fox News. (more…)

From Fox Business/Reuters:

Saudi billionaire Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, an investor in some of the world’s top companies, has bought a stake in Twitter for $300 million, gaining another foothold in the global media industry.

Alwaleed, a nephew of Saudi Arabia’s king and estimated by Forbes magazine to be the 26th richest person in the world with a $19.6 billion fortune, already owns a 7 percent stake in News Corp and plans to start a cable news channel.

The purchase is remarkable because Twitter was a key means of communication for protesters in the Arab Spring revolts this year, violence that threatened Saudi Arabia until the kingdom unveiled a populist $130 billion social spending package.

Twitter, which allows people to send 140-character messages, or Tweets, to groups of followers, is one of the internet’s most popular social networking services, along with Facebook and Zynga.

(more…)

I’m not happy. Operation Fast and Furious was finally brought up in a debate, but it received one question and two responses. Growing up my mother told me to either go all the way with something or don’t bother with it because sometimes going half-way is worse than not doing anything at all. This is one of those cases. I don’t blame the media for ignoring the ONE question with TWO responses on Fast and Furious. If the moderators asked Speaker Gingrich or Governor Romney maybe the media would have given it a shout out.

I couldn’t find it anywhere in The New York Times. I found a part of the Fast and Furious segment in the Fact Check article at The Washinton Post. They didn’t mention that this Rick Perry quote came from his answer on the Fast and Furious question.

“Venezuela has the largest Iranian embassy in the world there.”

— Rick Perry

This is a dubious statement, especially since Iran has much deeper interests in countries closer to Tehran, such as Iraq and Syria. The extent of Iranian influence in Latin America is often overstated. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton was embarrassed in 2009 when it turned out her claim that Iran was building a mega-embassy in Nicaragua was untrue.

The rest of the articles at the Post didn’t mention Fast and Furious. There’s a blog post at MSNBC about Rick Perry, but it doesn’t mention his response to Fast and Furious. Matthew Boyle and Katie Pavlich wrote about it.

But I fault Fox News on this more than the rest of the media. Operation Fast and Furious deserved the attention gay marriage and abortion received if not more. So many people on Twitter were demanding questions be asked that Fast and Furious was even trending on Twitter.

(more…)

Recently, the U.S Census Bureau released a report that creates a new designation of “low income” in order to “better reflect the distribution of poverty in the US.”  The Associated Press ran with a headline, “Census shows 1 in 2 people are poor or low-income,” and scores of other media outlets followed suit with equally dire ledes.  In NJ, one outlet reported, “Census: Nearly half of Americans live in poverty,” while Russia Today reported that “Half of America is officially poor“:

“While it’s no surprise that nearly 50 million Americans live below the poverty line, new statistics from the US Census show that almost 100 million others are counted as low-income citizens, making half of the population of America officially poor.”

But analysts at the U.S. Census Bureau district office in Los Angeles are reporting today that perhaps journalists misunderstood. and over 300 online news reports simply got the story wrong.

KNBC / NBC in Los Angeles reports:

(more…)

This is BuzzFeed today, a site co-founded by Jonah Peretti, who also co-founded the Huffington Post.

A match made in heaven for our infamous JournOlister, Ben Smith.

Don’t click that BuzzFeed link and laugh, though. What looks like a goofy pop culture site won’t be one for much longer. The idea is for Smith to hire a dozen or so political reporters and (in his own words):

…to help build the first true social news organization – that is, an outfit built on the understanding that readers increasingly get and share their news on Twitter, Facebook, and other platforms.

This is a natural evolution for the left’s number one New Media hitman. The only thing Smith and I might have in common is an understanding of the awesome power of social media to undermine and make irrelevant the MSM — not when it comes to information gathering and news reporting, but most definitely when it comes to narrative building. In a recent interview, Smith didn’t express it exactly like that, but the subtext is pretty obvious:

Twitter, Smith says, is “sort of draining the life from the blog.”

“Where people were hitting refresh on my blog because they wanted to see what my latest newsbreak was, now they’ll just be on Twitter, and I’ll tweet it out and they’ll see it there,” he says. “What I’m doing right now is just incredibly old school. I might as well have ink all over my fingers and be setting type.” …

The idea that Twitter could be a promotional tool, driving traffic back to his blog and to Politico, doesn’t reassure him. “I now have as many followers—40,000—as the number of unique visits I get on a slowish, average day on the blog,” he says. “At what point do I have more people reading my tweets than reading my blog? I don’t know.” (He actually has almost 50,000 Twitter followers, which may answer the question.)

What has to be galling to Smith and others like him is that social media allows anyone with a popular Twitter or Facebook account to not only have as much impact as a blog at, say, Politico, but also a faster impact. Moreover, one smart, well-written tweet or Facebook post can undermine and deconstruct a news article or blog post before it has a chance to go viral and enter the national narrative. This new reality drives the corrupt MSM crazy. The last thing these people want is to be wallflowers when it comes to what Americans are talking about.

This is why, for over a year now, I’ve written and marveled at the power of social media, especially Twitter and Facebook, to go around the toxic filter of the MSM. More than once I’ve witnessed national narrative changes occur on Twitter that took  blogs a full day to catch up on and the MSM two or three. What’s happening is that through these extraordinary social media platforms, the American people are are having a conversation amongst themselves. We’re educating each other, learning from one another, sharing information, and exchanging ideas — and the MSM has zero say in any of it.

(more…)

- Another media group calls on US mayors to end journalist arrests. Sure, just so long as we can tell them apart from the actual protesters.

- Adam Carolla delivers and epic rant on OWS.

- Twitter may classify for Pulitzer’s “breaking news” category.

- A declining viewership now means stations lose out on revenue from campaign season.

- The most shared articles on Facebook for 2011:

1. Satellite Photos of Japan, Before and After the Quake and Tsunami (New York Times)

2. What teachers really want to tell parents (CNN)

3. No, your zodiac sign hasn’t changed (CNN)

4. Parents, don’t dress your girls like tramps (CNN)

5. (video) – Father Daughter Dance Medley (Yahoo)

6. At funeral, dog mourns the death of Navy SEAL killed in Afghanistan (Yahoo)

7. You’ll freak when you see the new Facebook (CNN)

8. Dog in Japan stays by the side of ailing friend in the rubble (Yahoo)

9. Giant crocodile captured alive in Philippines (Yahoo)

10. New Zodiac Sign Dates: Ophiuchus The 13th Sign? (The Huffington Post)

Full list.

- There is a glaring omission in the top Tweets of 2011 roundup. Can you guess?

(more…)