Biased Media

The Hammer (read here: The Krauthammer) Strikes Again

Published by Papa Giorgio

NewsBusters h/t:

Here is a portion from NB:

Moments later:

KRAUTHAMMER: Colby.

KING: Sir.

KRAUTHAMMER: Colby said it was a good speech. We really have to talk about the quote-unquote “investments,” which of course is what Democrats say when they want otherwise to say spending but they won’t use the word. And then he said it was okay on that, except that it didn’t address spending, which is a bit like saying, “Yes, but other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play?”

KING: Cranky, cranky, cranky.

KRAUTHAMMER: Spending and debt is the issue of the day. That is the President’s own deficit commission had said, and I thought all of you un-cranky liberals had approved their conclusions.

Indeed they had, which raises another interesting point.

Totenberg said the electorate is not serious about trimming the budget. She later commented that the cuts being discussed are trivial because discretionary spending is a small part of the budget, and no one wants to talk about reducing entitlements.

We’ve been hearing this a lot lately from liberal media members. Now that the Republicans control the House, folks that came out en masse against any plans to reform Social Security in 2005 are now teasing this subject again.

As such, it is really the press that want entitlement cuts generically but are going to balk and balk loudly at the specifics. This is important because what we saw in 2005 is how powerful the media can be in impacting public opinion and preventing legislation.

George W. Bush was re-elected with a strong mandate having been the first President since Roosevelt in 1936 to win back the White House while expanding his Party’s majority in both chambers of Congress.

The public was ready for significant Social Security reform, but the media wasn’t having any of it. Instead, so-called journalists – led by minority leaders Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid – went on a full-court press to shamefully convince the American people the program was fiscally sound for decades to come, and Bush was lying about its imminent insolvency to scare the public into supporting his agenda much as he did with weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

Now, six years later, these same folks are mocking any attempts to cut spending by ridiculing Republicans for not going after Social Security and Medicare.

It makes you wonder not only how they sleep at night, but also how they so effectively manage their hypocrisy instinctively knowing which side of an argument they need to be on when it fits the prevailing template.

Gotta hand it to ’em – this takes talent.

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(Emphasis Added)

Leftist Vitriol and the Call for Civility Debated (Colmes and Kelly)

Published by Papa Giorgio

The debate centers around a post on a blog here, “Civility, Just A Rouse To Neuter Republicans.” This wouldn’t be a “conspiracy,” as Alan Colmes mentions. It is smart political play that the progressive left has gotten use to sine the late 60’s. Here is the video found on HotAir’s post via this topic:

Take note that I am also posting links — similar the ones below — to two Michelle Malkin compilations on the hatred of the Left.

DisgustingDNC-Map

See the middle column, I will add compilations as I find them.

No To Muhammad Cartoon-Yes To Ants on Crucifix

Published by Papa Giorgio

NewsBusters h/t:

New York Times critic Michael Kimmelman was granted the front page of Wednesday’s Arts section for a snobbish chiding of uncouth American conservatives who helped squelch a video some found sacrilegious, by a featured artist in a Smithsonian gay art exhibit: “In Britain, Separation of Art and State.” (“Separation” except for when it comes to actually subsidizing the art, which Britain does.)

The Times even ran a large photo of a clip from the controversial video by artist David Wojnarowicz, “A Fire in my Belly,” showing ants crawling over a crucifix. This is the same newspaper that proudly refused to reprint newspaper cartoons mocking the Prophet Muhammad after radical Muslims instigated an uproar back in February 2006.

[….]

Kimmelman was convinced that conservative outrage against the art was politically “orchestrated.”

“There was also ‘Sensation,’ ” Mr. Serota added, an exhibition that caused a ruckus here in 1997, although for reasons different from those creating a stir at the Brooklyn Museum two years later. In the United States Mr. Donohue and Rudolph W. Giuliani, New York’s mayor at the time, in the role that Representative Cantor plays now, went through much the same paroxysm of orchestrated grief over a work combining an image of the Virgin Mary with elephant dung.

Kimmelman skipped over the fatal outrage stirred up by radical Muslims over cartoon images of Muhammad that appeared in a Danish newspaper, perhaps because he led off a February 8, 2006 article by refusing to defend them, calling them “callous and feeble cartoons.” Apparently Kimmelman finds some anti-religious art more appealing than other kinds.

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Baltimore Sun Lays Into Rachel Maddow

Published by Papa Giorgio

NewsBusters h/t:

Some on the left have been crying foul at CNN’s decision to air live Rep. Michele Bachmann’s response to the president’s State of the Union address Tuesday night. None have been more vocal than MSNBC libtalker Rachel Maddow.

One media critic had enough. On Thursday, the Baltimore Sun’s David Zurawik laid into Maddow’s criticism, saying it derives from “the mentality of a lockstep party member, not a journalist.” Zurawik’s gripe was Maddow’s insistence that because Bachmann was not officially representing a political party, her speech should not have been given comparable treatment to the president’s or to Rep. Paul Ryan’s Republican response.

Journalists “don’t let political parties tell us who we should and shouldn’t cover,” Zurawik added. “I have a West Highland terrier named Bugsy who has better journalism credentials and chops than you do,” he quipped.

…(click here to see video of Maddow)…

Here is the portion of the Baltimore Sun article that I think sums up the corrupted thinking at MSNBC and specifically Rachel “Madcow.” Take note “Z on TV” references the video, which can be seen in the link above:

….The essence of my critique: The Tea Party has played a major role in shaping the new Congress, and it has already had a significant effect on American life. Given that, if you aren’t sure about whether or not to cover, you err on the side of inclusion — not exclusion. Provide citizens with as much information as you can so that they can make the best decisions about their lives.

But check out the video MSNBC thinks I should see and note that Maddow’s argument boils down to this: Bachmann should not have been covered because she was not “ordained” by the Republican Party as its official responder.

This is the mentality of a lockstep party member, not a journalist. Unless the party “ordains” someone to speak, they shouldn’t be covered by the press, in Maddow’s thinking.

Memo to Maddow: That’s not the way journalists think. We bring citizens as much information as we can whether THE PARTY ordains it or not. Just like we don’t let the executive branch tell us which news operation is a “legitimate” journalistic enterprise, and which isn’t, we don’t let political parties tell us who we should and shouldn’t cover. Journalism 101 at Goucher College where I teach.

CNN was right in covering Bachmann. And by the way, there are interns at CNN’s Washington bureau who have better journalism credentials than you do, Ms. Party Operative Think. In fact, I have a West Highland terrier named Bugsy that has better journalism credentials and chops than you do….

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So easy a child should get it.


ABC-NBC-CBS Agree~Obama Reaganesque

Published by Papa Giorgio

NewsBusters has this story about the main three news orgs mentioning that they thought Obama sounded like Reagan:

I just want to point out that the media hated Reagan, thought he was a dummy, believed him to be incompetent, and the like (search through these videos for examples). One comment left on the NewsBusters story is this:

So Obama sounds like someone the media Hated……………………HMMMMMMMMMMMMM?

Very funny.

A Crazy Compilation of Crazy Media Attacks

Published by Papa Giorgio

NewsBusters has a great line up for their notable quotables:

  • First Impulse: Let’s Blame Conservatives

Arizona Daily Star columnist/cartoonist David Fitzsimmons: “I must tell you as a columnist who has covered politics in this state, it was inevitable, from my perspective.” Anchor Martin Savidge: “Why do you say that?”

Fitzsimmons: “Because the right in Arizona, and I’m speaking very broadly, has been stoking the fires of a heated anger and rage successfully in this state….The politics of the state does tend to be far to the right. I would say even rabid right.”

— Exchange at about 2:30pm ET during CNN’s live coverage of the Giffords shooting, January 8. Fitzsimmons later conceded his remarks were “inappropriate.”

[….]


  • The Tucson Shooting: Let’s Blame Talk Radio

“What’s been the role of talk radio in fueling the heated language?…People like Mark Levin, Michael Savage, for example who every time you listen to them are furious, furious at the Left with anger that just builds and builds in their voice, and by the time they go to commercial, they’re just in some rage, every night, with ugly talk. Ugly sounding talk. And it never changes. It never modulates…. They do see the other end of the field as evil, as awful. Not just disagreeable but evil. And they use that language, when they talk about the other side, isn’t that part of the problem? And my question is doesn’t that give the moral license to people who have crazy minds to start with?”

— MSNBC’s Chris Matthews on Hardball, January 11.


“It is facile and mistaken to attribute this particular madman’s act directly to Republicans or Tea Party members. But it is legitimate to hold Republicans and particularly their most virulent supporters in the media responsible for the gale of anger that has produced the vast majority of these threats, setting the nation on edge….That whirlwind has touched down most forcefully in Arizona, which Pima County Sheriff Clarence Dupnik described after the shooting as the capital of ‘the anger, the hatred and the bigotry that goes on in this country.’”

— January 10 New York Times editorial, “Bloodshed and Invective in Arizona.”

vs.

“In the aftermath of this unforgivable attack, it will be important to avoid drawing prejudicial conclusions from the fact that Major Hasan is an American Muslim whose parents came from the Middle East. President Obama was right when he told Americans, ‘we don’t know all the answers yet’ and cautioned everyone against ‘jumping to conclusions.’”

— From a November 7, 2009 New York Times editorial after the shootings at Fort Hood, Texas.

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Rachel Madcow Frothing at the Mouth Again With Bad Stats

Published by Papa Giorgio

Rachel Maddow gets it wrong again. No wonder progressives hate the right! They build false or misleading story lines (straw-men), and then attack this lie as if it were a truth:

NewsBusters has this and more on their piece on this absurdity from the MSNBC crowd:

According to the Census Bureau, the median income for men in 1980 was $12,530 per year. This grew to $20,293 in 1990 – a 62 percent increase. For women, this figure went from $4,920 in 1980 to $10,070 in 1990 – a 105 percent jump.

This means that the median income for the entire population in that decade rose at roughly the same rate as Maddow claimed the income for the top one percent did.

Makes you wonder just how often this MSNBC commentator so badly misrepresents economic data on her show.

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