Appearing on Thursday’s O’Reilly Factor, former CBS investigative reporter Sharyl Attkisson claimed that CBS “had barely begun to scratch the surface” of the “Fast and Furious” scandal before the network moved on from the story. She noted that the network showed similar reluctance for its coverage of Benghazi and the ObamaCare rollout.
Biased Media
Ulysses S. Grant on the Bias Endemic of the Press
Powerline vs. WaPo ~ Interview w/John Hinderaker Added @end
The Washington Post just makes stuff up now… from whole-cloth! H/T to IOwntheWorld, via Powerline:
On Thursday, the Washington Post published an article by Steven Mufson and Juliet Eilperin titled “The biggest lease holder in Canada’s oil sands isn’t Exxon Mobil or Chevron. It’s the Koch brothers.” The article’s first paragraph included this claim:
The biggest lease holder in the northern Alberta oil sands is a subsidiary of Koch Industries, the privately-owned cornerstone of the fortune of conservative Koch brothers Charles and David.
The theme of the article was that the Keystone Pipeline is all about the Koch brothers; or, at least, that this is a plausible claim. The Post authors relied on a report by a far-left group called International Forum on Globalization that I debunked last October.
So Thursday evening, I wrote about the Post article here. I pointed out that Koch is not, in fact, the largest leaser of tar sands land; that Koch will not be a user of the pipeline if it is built; and that construction of the Keystone Pipeline would actually be harmful to Koch’s economic interests, which is why Koch has never taken a position on the pipeline’s construction. The Keystone Pipeline, in short, has nothing whatsoever to do with the Koch brothers.
Ethics Violations @ WaPo
- Koch is not the largest leaser of tar sands land;
- Koch will not use the pipeline if it is built;
- the Keystone Pipeline would harm the Kochs’ interest;
- and the Koch brothers have not taken a position on the pipeline’s construction for that reason.
My post garnered a great deal of attention, and Mufson and Eilperin undertook to respond to it here. It isn’t much of a response: they don’t deny the truth of anything Iwrote, and they don’t try to sustain the proposition that Koch is even in favor of the pipeline, let alone the driving force behind it. They lamely suggest that if Koch leased 2 million acres, rather than 1.1 million as they reported on Thursday, then Koch might be the largest leaseholder. But they make no attempt to respond to the official Province of Alberta maps that I posted, which clearly show that Canadian National Resources, Ltd., for example, leases more acreage than Koch.
The Post’s response attempted to explain “Why we wrote about the Koch Industries [sic] and its leases in Canada’s oil sands.” Good question! What’s the answer?
The Powerline article itself, and its tone, is strong evidence that issues surrounding the Koch brothers’ political and business interests will stir and inflame public debate in this election year. That’s why we wrote the piece.
So in the Post’s view, it is acceptable to publish articles that are both literally false (Koch is the largest tar sands leaseholder) and massively misleading (the Keystone Pipeline is all about Koch Industries), if by doing so the paper can “stir and inflame public debate in this election year?” I can’t top Jonah Goldberg’s comment on that howler:
By this logic any unfair attack posing as reporting is worthwhile when people try to correct the record. Why not just have at it and accuse the Kochs of killing JFK or hiding the Malaysian airplane? The resulting criticism would once again provide “strong evidence that issues surrounding the Koch brothers’ political and business interests will stir and inflame public debate in this election year.”
ABC’s Nightline Defines “News” Differently Than I Do
(Via NewsBusters) How do the journalists at Nightline define news? On Monday night, co-host Dan Harris and reporter Mariana van Zeller spent an astonishing nine minutes and 33 seconds on the salacious, gossipy phenomenon of “bootleg butt injections.” Yet, it’s been 123 days, 17 and a half weeks, since the show’s hosts have focused on ObamaCare and the problems with the law’s implementation.
Cavuto and Bozell Discuss Sharyl Attkisson’s Resignation
Progressives Want State Run-Dictatorships (redundant) ~ And Proudly Say So
Frontpage Magazine explains the above graphic found in a leftist/progressive/liberal Slate article:
Salon was a major presence on the liberal web before Atlantic, Slate and the Daily Beast began gobbling up all its traffic. Now it’s become a student newspaper tackling hot button issues involving transgender cafeterias and microcelebrity twitter outrages.
Considering how badly Salon is failing, it makes sense why it would look forward to the nationalization of the media, but it’s also just as stupid as you expect it to be. Case in point, this…
Imagine a world without the New York Times, Fox News, CNN, the Wall Street Journal, and countless other tools used by the 1 percent to rule and fool. In a socialist society run by and for the working people it represents, the mega-monopolies like Walmart, Halliburton, Exxon-Mobil, and the corporations that run the tightly controlled “mainstream media” will be a thing of the past.
Socialist countries do have independent media outlets. Salon and Fred Jerome apparently mean Marxist-Leninist. They just don’t say so because even their readers might question what there was to admire about Pravda.
A democratic, accessible-to-all media will move to center stage in a socialist USA. In some ways this democratization of the media is already happening on the Internet. But the government’s ability to spy on and even turn off the Internet belies any real democracy. In a socialist democracy, working people will control the political process, the way in which they make a living, and collectively and individually, they will influence mass culture.
If you’re following this megaton level of stupid, Salon envisions an all-powerful Socialist state where the government will not be able to spy on people or control the internet.
The Federalist (Gary) makes the point of the article clear:
The crazy-ass American Left just can’t get over that they were not alive during the Russian Bolshevik Revolution. If only they could have been there then things would have been done right.
Now the screwballs at Salon.com put their Marxist wet-dreams on the Internet as proof of what they really want for America.
Gary continues with a few excerpts:
✚ ‘Bye, Rush! If corporate media disappeared the people could have their voices heard.’
✚ Imagine a world without the New York Times, Fox News, CNN, the Wall Street Journal, and countless other tools used by the 1 percent to rule and fool.
✚ In a socialist society run by and for the working people it represents, the mega-monopolies like Walmart, Halliburton, Exxon-Mobil, and the corporations that run the tightly controlled “mainstream media” will be a thing of the past.
✚ Besides accumulating their own profits, the media are daily trumpets for the rest of the corporate world’s advertising.
✚ The (newspaper) ads are laid out before anything else except the lead stories; the other news and feature stories are then fit between ads. . . . Media owners’ profits do not come primarily from the money we spend to buy their publications, but from the ads inside them.
Oh the horror! Imagine a business actually planning out advertising so they could collect money and pay the wages of their employees!
Because they are losing the PR battle, they want to cook the books by destroying leftist media as well in order to STOP Fox News and Talk radio acolytes from having a platform (because they SMOKE similar programs in ratings).
Media Bias Is Not What You `Do` Report, But What You `Do Not` Report
Video Description:
[See video cross-posted here.] Media Research Center President Brent Bozell appeared with Fox News anchor Neil Cavuto to slam the “obnoxious” double standard in how journalists have covered Chris Christie’s traffic scandal in two days versus the scant number of stories on the IRS controversy over six months. According to Bozell, “It really goes to show you how out of control this left wing so-called news press is.” Cavuto explained, “The big three networks alone devoted 17 times more coverage to this story in one day, one day, than they devoted to the IRS scandal in six months.” A second analysis my the MRC finds the disparity is now up to 44-to-one.
[See original MRC study here.]
In Less than 24 Hours, Networks Devote 17 Times More Coverage to Christie Than Six Months of IRS
See NewsBusters:
In less than 24 hours, the big three networks have devoted 17 times more coverage to a traffic scandal involving Chris Christie than they’ve allowed in the last six months to Barack Obama’s Internal Revenue Service controversy. Since the story broke on Wednesday that aides to the New Jersey governor punished a local mayor’s lack of endorsement with a massive traffic jam, ABC, CBS and NBC have responded with 34 minutes and 28 seconds of coverage. Since July 1, these same networks managed a scant two minutes and eight seconds for the IRS targeting of Tea Party groups.
Tax-Payer Funded `Love-Boat` Tour of the Ravages of Global Warming on Sea-Ice Back-Fires (Caroling in the Antarctic)
Who was on board (Breitbart)?
According to the Guardian, the passengers consist of about 25 professors and graduate students, 20 tourists and 22 Russian crew members.
You can’t make this stuff up! Some environmentalists were taking a “Love Boat” type tour of the effects of global warming melting the ice in the Antarctic. PWNED!
NewsBusters points out the missing story bi-lines from the legacy media in the purpose of this mostly tax-payer funded boondoggle:
So what was the exact mission of these scientists? AP is rather vague about this reporting only:
The scientific team on board the research ship — which left New Zealand on Nov. 28 — had been recreating Australian explorer Douglas Mawson’s century-old voyage to Antarctica when it became trapped. They plan to continue their expedition after they are freed, expedition leader Chris Turney said.
Um, there is a bit more to the expedition than merely following in the footsteps of a century-old voyage. But what that mission really is, AP won’t say. If AP is vague about the mission’s purpose, Reuters provides even less information.
Since the MSM isn’t forthcoming as to the real purpose of those scientists traveling to Antarctica, we turn to Watts Up With That for more insight:
The expedition is being led by Chris Turney, “climate scientist”, who has “set up a carbon refining company called Carbonscape which has developed technology to fix carbon from the atmosphere and make a host of green bi-products, helping reduce greenhouse gas levels.” The purpose of the expedition is “to discover and communicate the environmental changes taking place in the south.”
It seems they found out what the “environmental changes taking place in the south.” are.
Finally, National Geographic bluntly states the mission purpose:
…The current crop of explorers are hoping to document some of the same data and compare them to Mawson’s numbers, “using the twist of modern technology,” Turney told National Geographic earlier this month.
As may be expected, global warming might play a role in this, he suggests, particularly with respect to melted ice in the East Antarctic.
Ah, so now we see why the MSM reluctance to flat out state why the scientists are in the Antarctic. Anything to avoid an inconvenient (but accurate) headline like this:
GLOBAL WARMING SCIENTISTS TRAPPED IN ANTARCTIC ICE
See Also: 96 Percent of Network Stories Censor Why Ship Is There
Antarctic ice trapped a ship full of scientists on a climate change expedition. Yet, 96 percent of network news reports about the stranded researchers ignored climate change entirely. The ship has been stuck since Christmas morning.
The broadcast networks mostly ignored the reason the Russian ship, Akademic Shokalskiy, was on its way to Antarctica. Twenty-five out of 26 stories (96 percent) on the network morning and evening news shows since Dec. 25 failed to mention climate change had anything to do with the expedition.
All `Data Points` Prove Global Warming
- “So record cold is now evidence of man-made global warming? What evidence would disprove climate change? It seems like no matter the weather, everything that happens proves it.” ~ Marc Morano
Any theory that cannot be disproved is a false theory:
“The underlying problem is that a key Darwinian term is not defined. Darwinism supposedly explains how organisms become more ‘fit,’ or better adapted to their environment. But fitness is not and cannot be defined except in terms of existence. If an animal exists, it is ‘fit’ (otherwise it wouldn’t exist). It is not possible to specify all the useful parts of that animal in order to give an exhaustive causal account of fitness. [I will add here that there is no way to quantify those unknowable animal parts in regards to the many aspects that nature could or would impose on all those parts.] If an organism possesses features that appears on the surface to be an inconvenient – such as the peacock’s tail or the top-heavy antlers of a stag – the existence of stags and peacocks proves that these animals are in fact fit.
So the Darwinian theory is not falsifiable by any observation. It ‘explains’ everything, and therefore nothing. It barely qualifies as a scientific theory for that reason….
The truth is that Darwinism is so shapeless that it can be enlisted is support of any cause whatsoever…. Darwinism has over the years been championed by eugenicists, social Darwinists, racialists, free-market economists, liberals galore, Wilsonian progressives, and National Socialists, to give only a partial list. Karl Marx and Herbert Spencer, Communists and libertarians, and almost anyone in between, have at times found Darwinism to their liking.”
The above is from an article by Tom Bethell in The American Spectator (magazine), July/August 2007, pp. 44-46.
(RPT post on Falsifiability and Conspiracy Theories)
Unanimity: `Media Leans Left,` Journalists from the NYT’s, NBC News, and CNN Agree
NewsBusters reports on unanimity of viewpoint that the unanimity of viewpoints are liberal:
“Top journalists from The New York Times, NBC News and CNN acknowledged Wednesday that, generally speaking, the national media has a liberal bias,” Politico’s media reporter Dylan Byers noted in a December 18 post recapping a Politico Playbook breakfast discussion held earlier on Wednesday morning.
More than one panelist opined that it’s not just that journalists tend to be liberal on policy questions but that they live and work in environments which are socially liberal. “I live in northwest Washington, none of my neighbors are evangelical Christians [and] I don’t know a lot of people in my kid’s preschool who are pro-life,” New York Times writer Mark Leibovich noted. Fellow Washington, D.C.-based journalist Jake Tapper picked up on that thread:
A certain type of person becomes a reporter, and generally speaking… the kind of person who is a reporter in Washington, D.C., or New York City has never worked a minimum-wage job outside of high-school… has never experienced poverty, is not an evangelical Christian, like much of the country is.
There are a lot of experiences that the kinds of people who are reporters, editors, producers, etc., in Washington, D.C., and New York City have not had.
Anti-White/Anti-Rich, Rich White Guy, Says White Jesus Kills
Some info on Tim’s unsightly past from Top Conservative News:
Tim Wise is an extreme left-wing Cultural Marxist. Despite living in a ritzy all white neighborhood in Nashville, one of America’s whitest metro areas, he constantly spews venom at white people. On November 5th, 2012, he has even publicly called on his followers to murder members of the Florida TEA Party [tweet below]. Despite his public call for murder, CNN continues to put him on the air. Tim Wise writes books saying that white people make too much money and should share with black people. Wise, who has make a fortune with this schtick, is substantially wealthier than most Americans of any race. Apparently, sharing your money with black people is only for the little guys!
Recently Tim Wise spoke at Indiana University. Before his speech, several of his fanatical supporters turned violent and attacked a group of protesters with pepper spray and other weapons. Police apprehended one of the thugs and he is being charged with a felony.
The Examiner adds to the narrative unfolding:
…”Here’s the reality,” Wise said. “The image of a white Jesus has been used to justify enslavement, conquest, colonialism, the genocide of indigenous peoples. There are literally millions of human beings whose lives have been snuffed out by people who conquered under the banner of a white god.”
Moreover, he said, “black folks can think Jesus is black and view Christ as black, but at the end of the day, the image that has been used to dominate Christianity in this world and on this planet is the white image.”
“The white Jesus, white god imagery has resulted in death. That’s something folks ought to deal with,” he added.
Filmmaker Rochelle Oliver accused Kelly and others of racism against black people for believing Santa Claus is white, Hadro added.
“[P]eople who think like Megyn Kelly believe it’s more comfortable for them to believe that there is a white man flying around the earth with magical reindeer than to believe that a black man in the year 2013 can actually be kind, can be loving and can actually be caring toward children,” Oliver said.
Defense attorney Mel Robbins said Kelly had nothing to apologize for and called Oliver’s statement “absurd.”
“Well, I can’t imagine Christmas morning at your house, Tim,” Robbins said.
Ultimately, Wise said, it was the billions of advertising dollars spent that helped propagate the image of a white Jesus.
Ironically, the White House used a white Santa at Michelle Obama’s reading of “The Night before Christmas” at Children’s National Medical Center in Washington, D.C. on Monday.
One would have to ask: Does Oliver think Michelle Obama is racist for using a white Santa?
Here is an extended debate on cultural diversity that comes via Smash Cultural Marxism’s post on Tim Wise:
`We Thought He Was Going To Be The Next Messiah` ~ Barbara Walters
“He made so many promises. We thought that he was going to be – I shouldn’t say this at Christmastime, but – the next messiah.” “We”? The media? The left? Both?
(NewsBusters) It’s also worth noting that this came the day after the Washington Post said Obama was responsible for three of the top ten biggest Pinocchios of the year, and five days after PolitiFact awarded him the Lie of the Year.
Some messiah, Barbara.