Senate Democrats Throw Temper Tantrum At Media

Despite recent findings from The Hill that show that 68 percent of media reports in a politically biased manner with 46 percent saying the media favors Democrats and only 22 percent believing media favors Republicans, Senate Democrats are still bitterly complaining to the media that they do not report the Democratic position often enough.

When Jonathan Karl, a correspondent for ABC News, asked why Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.) had blocked a short-term FAA extension offered by Republicans on the Senate floor Tuesday, Democrats lost their patience.

“There’s a certain naivety that comes with your question,” said Boxer. “The story here today is the fact that our leader is reaching out to [House Speaker John] Boehner [R-Ohio] to say, ‘If we want to resolve a particular issue, whatever it might be, let’s talk about it,’ but not have one side say, ‘Take it or leave it or people will be out of work.’ And the essence of your question doesn’t understand that.”

Democratic Sens. Harry Reid and Charles Schumer added their complaints as well.

One reporter asked why Democrats didn’t swallow the cuts to small airports in their states to pass the short-term authorization and then return in September “to fight another day.”

But Reid retorted that Republicans would find other “hostages” to force Democrats to back down on the labor issue.

Democrats charged Wednesday that the media has fallen for the red herring of cutting subsidies to small airports.

“The fact is that you’ve got to dig a little bit behind the surface here of what this is really about,” said Boxer. “Whatever the issue is, this is about government by threats, government by one side making its demands …”

“And these folks falling for it,” Reid interjected, gesturing to the reporters in the Senate radio and television gallery.

Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.), who is in charge of the Democrats’ messaging operation, then broke in.

“In all due respect, the issue is not essential air service, it’s not even a labor issue, it’s the issue of hostage taking,” he said.

The Politico reports John Boehner's response:

Republicans are pointing to remarks Reid made to reporters Tuesday in which he was open to accepting the House version if Boehner didn’t act on a clean bill.

“The only reason 80,000 jobs are at stake is that Senate Democratic leaders chose to play politics rather than keep their word and pass the House bill,” Boehner spokesman Michael Steel said. “That’s indefensible, and they should end this crisis immediately.”

More reaction from The Daily Caller:

“All it will take to end this crisis is for the Senate to pass the House-approved FAA extension,” Boehner said. “The only reason so many jobs are at stake is Senate Democratic Leaders chose to play politics rather than pass the House bill. I respect the fact that Senators have certain objections, but they have had two weeks to respond to the House bill and done nothing, leaving tens of thousands of workers in limbo. The House has done its job, and now it’s time for Senators to do theirs.”

Republican House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee Chairman John Mica echoed Boehner’s comments.

“Senate Democrats had a House-passed FAA extension before them for two weeks but chose to do nothing,” Mica said. “Instead of passing this simple bill, Senate Democrats chose to protect outrageous ticket subsidies, as much as $3,720 per ticket in Ely, Nevada, on the backs of 4,000 furloughed FAA employees and thousands more out-of-work airport construction workers.”

Amazingly enough the media reported Democratic complaints and their temper tantrum but still did not get a straight answer to the question itself.

The Lonely Conservative provides the reason why Democrats blocked the short-term FAA extension. Seems the House GOP had stripped out favors to union bosses in their bill.

The Daily Caller provides ample examples, with dates,links and quotes, showing how very accommodating the media actually was in in mimicking the Democratic talking point calling Republicans "terrorists," using terms such as "hostage taking" during the debt deal negotiations.... but that isn't enough for these whining, sniveling, complaining Democratic Senators that simply did not wish to explain why they blocked the short-term FAA extension that passed the House of Representatives, which resulted in the temporary lay off 4,000 workers and potentially thousands more.

So now these Democratic Senators, who are showing how incompetent they are at their own jobs, think they should be in charge of what questions journalists and reporters ask, how they should be phrased and how they should report those answers.

This is your ridiculous item of the day.

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Poll: 2 to 1 Plurality of Voters Say Media Favors Democrats

Not like it is a huge surprise to anyone not living in a state of denial but another poll, this one conducted by The Hill, finds that the majority of voters, 68 percent believes there is media bias in the way news outlets report the news and 46 percent believe that bias favors Democrats with only 22 percent believing it favors Republicans.

Other findings:

The picture is not much brighter on the general question of ethics. Fifty-seven percent of voters think of the news media as either somewhat or very unethical, while only 39 percent see them as somewhat or very ethical.

The findings come as the phone-hacking scandal centered upon the now-shuttered British tabloid News of the World continues to make headlines on this side of the Atlantic. The tabloid was owned by the UK arm of Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp., and senior U.S. politicians, including Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), have called for an investigation into the company’s activities here.

While negative views of the media are common among all sectors of the electorate, some intriguing patterns emerge deeper in the poll’s findings.

Self-described centrists and liberals, for example, tend to hold a less unremittingly harsh view than conservatives.

The proportion of moderates who believe the news media generally report on politicians in an appropriate way is, at 33 percent, almost twice as large as the 17 percent of conservatives who take the same view.

At the same time, however, centrists tend to think the news media favor one side in their reporting. Thirty-nine percent of centrists endorse the idea that the media favor Democrats while 19 percent think they favor Republicans.

More at The Hill.

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Joe Walsh Tells Chris Matthews That Obama 'Doesn’t send a thrill up my leg'

Flashback to February of 2008, Hardball host Chris Matthews described his feelings when he listened to Barack Obama speak. Matthews said "I have to tell you, you know, it's part of reporting this case, this election, the feeling most people get when they hear Barack Obama's speech. My, I felt this thrill going up my leg. I mean, I don't have that too often."

Yesterday Representative Joe Walsh (R-IL)took on Chris Matthews and told him that Obama "Doesn’t send a thrill up my leg."

Video below from MediaIte:



Over at BreitbartTV you can see this clash between Walsh and Matthews discussed on Hannity.

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Obama And Democrats Top Recipients Of News Corp. Donations

When reading the details of the report, keep in mind that News Corp. is the parent company of Fox News, Wall Street Journal and New York Post.

A new report by the Sunlight Foundation shows that political donations by News Corp. employees and their families were almost evenly divided between Republican and Democratic candidates with Democrats receiving 51 percent and Republicans receiving 49 percent.

The top three recipients since 1989 are the names that have surprised many today though, with Barack Obama benefiting the most with News Corp. contributions totaling $368,669, Hilary Clinton receiving $298,525 and John Kerry $157,901.

Out of the top 10, only three (in the bottom five) were Republicans, the other seven being Democrats.

Compare the 51 percent 49 percent division of contributions by News Corp. employees and families with the national average from other media personalities.

2010:

The Democratic total of $1,020,816 was given by 1,160 employees of the three major broadcast television networks, with an average contribution of $880.

By contrast, only 193 of the employees contributed to Republican candidates and campaign committees, for a total of $142,863. The average Republican contribution was $744.

Here is a little more trivia for you:

News America Holdings (PAC), also known as Fox Political Action Committee, top recipients in 2009-2010 according to Influence Explorer:

• Nancy Pelosi (D-Ca) ($10,000)
• Howard L Berman(D-Ohio) ($10,000)
• Chuck Schumer (D-NY) ($10,000)

Fox News is consistently bemoaned by the far left as being conservative, slanted, biased, but according to the political donation figures compared with other media top names and their political donations, News Corp. and the Fox Political Action Committee are far more "fair and balanced", where there is no balance whatsoever in the recipient lists from other networks and publications.

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Andrew Breitbart: The Man Liberals Love To Hate And Why

Liberals despise Andrew Breitbart with a passion. Conservatives cheer him on for the most part and from a recent profile piece in The New York Times, Breitbart seems to be overly accessible, willing to make contact with him easy by volunteering his email and his phone number whenever asked and even when not asked.

Breitbart runs websites like Big Government, Big Journalism and Big Hollywood and was responsible for the outing of Anthony Weiner by being the first to publish and expose Weiner's online antics, which resulted in Weiner eventually resigning after first claiming his Yfrog, Facebook and Twitter accounts were hacked.

Breitbart's sites were also responsible for publishing videos about ACORN which subsequently resulted in Congress ending grants to the organization and federal agencies severing ties.

Liberals love to hate Andrew Breitbart, in my opinion, because he plays the game by the rules liberals and the liberal media created and he is better at it.

Some examples listed below will show how liberals do exactly what they claim to hate about Breitbart.

Conservative example via Breitbart:

Breitbart published an edited video he received of Shirley Sherrod (USDA employee when Breitbart published the video) speaking at the March 2010 NAACP Freedom Fund dinner in Georgia where her words from the edited video implied heavily that she discriminated against a white farmer.

The correction on Breitbart's initial post says "Correction: While Ms. Sherrod made the remarks captured in the first video featured in this post while she held a federally appointed position, the story she tells refers to actions she took before she held that federal position."

Subsequent events showed that the posted video was an excerpt of broader comments that conveyed alternate meaning. Breitbart said he did not edit the video and did not have a copy of the entire speech at the time.

The NAACP, who actually had the entire speech the whole time condemned Sherrod before watching it, then apologized, and Sherrod was forced to resign and is now attempting to sue Breitbart.

Liberal pundits toss Sherrod's name consistently claiming Breitbart's treatment of Sherrod was unethical, accusing him of editing the video himself all without one bit of proof or evidence to support their allegations.

Then they do the same thing they have accused him of.

Liberal examples:

Sarah Palin, October 2010, referenced the 1773 Tea Party and members of the far left liberal progressive portion of the Democratic party decided to deride her for her lack of knowledge, it was tweeted, retweeted, reported on and generally the left were having a field day stating that Palin didn't know the date of the Tea Party.

Cuffy Meigs at Perfunction provides a nice list of examples of liberal pundits and media personalities that jumped on that bandwagon before simple searches showed... oooops, Palin was right.





A more recent example from this past week of liberals providing a partial story, jumping into the fray, providing condemning headlines before the whole story emerges.

The Wisconsin Supreme Court flap where an initial story set liberals on a crash course with a brick wall, head first before the rest of the facts emerged.

From yesterday's post:

Latest Wisconsin news involves Supreme Court Justice Ann Walsh Bradley and Supreme Court Justice David Prosser where initial headlines quoting an anonymous source claimed that Justice Prosser "choked" Justice Bradley. No arrests were made and no charges filed against Prosser but liberals sites jumped off the cliff fast and furiousy before subsequent reports added a few facts to the news accounts.

Such as, there were other witnesses and according to another unnamed witness, Bradley charged after Prosser with fist raised and Prosser "put his hands in a defensive posture," adding "He blocked her."

That led to headlines from Think Progress such as "Four Ways Justice David Prosser Can Be Removed From Office", which discusses how the alleged choking was a class H felony, headlines from FireDogLake stating "Reports: Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Prosser Choked Colleague Before Anti-Union Decision," and more.

Those are just the tip of the iceberg where liberals report before they have the full facts, before they know the whole story, even as they condemn Breitbart of doing the same thing.

At least with the Sherrod affair, Breitbart actually had a video where the words came out her mouth, giving a legitimate reason for jumping fast and adding corrections after.

Do as I say, not as I do seems to be a liberal's prevailing mindset.

Back to Andrew Breitbart, who is accused by liberal pundits relentlessly of making up stories, hacking, photoshopping all allegations made against him in regards to the Weiner pictures and story before Weiner admitted he did do it all.

Breitbart wrote a book called RIGHTEOUS INDIGNATION where he talks about how one needs to deal with the liberal news world head on and the reason Breitbart is so hated within the liberal community is because he does just that, he meets them toe to toe, he plays the game by the rules they set up and he wins, time and time again.

Breitbart exposes their agenda, shines a light on their hypocrisy and beats them at their own game.

We need more Andrew Breitbarts.

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Wall Street Journal/NBC Poll Blows 'Mediscare' Media Meme Out Of The Water

38 percent of Americans are more likely to vote for a candidate that supports "changing Medicare for those under 55 to a system where people choose their insurance from a list of private health plans and the government pays a fixed amount, sometimes called a voucher, towards that cost," and 37 percent would be less likely to vote for a candidate that supports Paul Ryan's Medicare reform plan.

The Weekly Standard explains the numbers from the Wall Street Journal/NBC Poll:

If that number stands, that's pretty great news for Republicans.

And one could even quibble with the question wording. It uses the much feared "voucher" word, which Ryan's reform technically isn't. And it simply says future beneficiaries could put their voucher toward "private health plans," potentially leaving the wrong impression that some seniors could be denied coverage in the open marketplace. The private plans would be regulated by the government and required to offer coverage to all beneficiaries.

I wonder what the numbers would have shown had the poll question been phrased accurately?

Better news for Republicans is in this latest poll also as WS continues to explain:

.....While Ryan's Medicare reform is a wash, the poll shows that Obamacare is much more unpopular. By a 12-point margin (47% to 35%), respondents say they're more likely to vote for a candidate who favors repealing the "health care reform law." And 50% of respondents say they're less likely to vote for a candidate who supports the individual mandate, while 31% are more likely to vote for that candidate.

The media's favorite meme of late has been how the public is scared of Paul Ryan's plan, yet the numbers, even with a question phrased to misrepresent the plan, are still proving that media meme wrong.

Evidently the public is not as stupid as liberals and the media seem to think they are.

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Liberal Media Hoisted By Their Own Petard On Sarah Palin Emails

The Telegraph explains how the media frenzy and their pleas for readers to search the email dump of over 24,000 Sarah Palin emails from when she was Governor of Alaska, backfired on what Palin refers to as the "lame stream media".

One can only assume that the Left-leaning editors who dispatched teams of reporters to remote Juneau, the Alaskan capital, to pore over the emails in the hope of digging up a scandal are now viewing the result as a rather poor return on their considerable investment.

If anything, Mrs Palin seems likely to emerge from the scrutiny of the 24,000 pages, contained in six boxes and weighing 275 pounds, with her reputation considerably enhanced. As a blogger at Powerline noted, the whole saga might come to be viewed as “an embarrassment for legacy media”.

It gets worse for the media outlets that were so enamored with the idea of finding dirt on Palin, then finding none.

Sites that support Palin, such as Conservatives4Palin are now highlighting her accomplishments, her style of running Alaska, using the very same methods the NYT, Wapo and other media attempted.

Asking their readers to go through the emails and gathering links and whole excerpts to archive which show an on-hands, smart leader.

The difference is, where the media was looking for a bombshell to make Palin look bad and failed and have admitted there was no bombshell, Conservatives4Palin's efforts are showing considerable results.

The media is cherry-picking small excerpts to highlight, but they are leaving the bulk of the 24,199 pages out of their reports. That’s where you come in…

We need to gather links from the email database that prove what kind of leader Governor Palin really is. We need to find the stuff the media doesn’t want the public to know about. We want to show the stuff they aren’t reporting but is still available online. The media wanted to “expose” what kind of executive Governor Palin was while in office… So, let us oblige them! We need your help collecting and archiving excerpts.

It is always entertaining to see the liberal media outlets hoisted by their own petard.

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I am Sick Of Media Claiming Increase In Jobless Claims Is 'Unexpected'

Jobless claims rose again and the media is flapping it's jaws and claiming to be surprised or saying the rise was "unexpected".

How many readers are surprised? How many people truly find the news unexpected?

For those living under a rock let us point out the latest unemployment rate rose to 9.1.

There has been a very public battle between Democrats and Republicans in Washington to change the course of the last two-in-a-half years where Democrats want to throw more good money after bad to "stimulate" the economy (after the first stimulus package failed so spectacularly) as well as their stock-in-trade solution of raising taxes, and Republicans trying to pass a package that would Empower Small Business Owners and Reduce Regulatory Burdens, Fix the Tax Code to Help Job Creators, Increase Competitiveness for American Manufacturers, Encourage Entrepreneurship and Growth, Maximize Domestic Energy Production to Ensure An Energy Policy for the Twenty-First Century and Pay Down America’s Unsustainable Debt Burden and Start Living Within Our Means.

Media outlets are not supposed to be living under those rocks though, they are supposed to be caught up with the latest news and events, so when you see something like bloomberg's headline screaming "Jobless Claims Unexpectedly Climb in the U.S.", or Reuters with their first paragraph stating "The number of Americans filing new claims for unemployment aid unexpectedly edged higher last week," you have to wonder why these people are still in business.

Initial claims for state jobless benefits increased 1,000 to 427,000, the Labor Department said. However, economists polled by Reuters had forecast claims dropping to 415,000 from a previously reported count of 422,000.

The rise kept first-time claims perched above the 400,000 mark for the ninth week in a row. Analysts normally associate a level below that with steady job growth.

"It's the same dismal trend continuing. It's not getting worse, but it's not getting better either," said Keith Hembre, chief economist at Nuveen Asset Management in Minneapolis.

Unexpectedly?

I am no economist, just a lowly blogger, yet I expected it.

In fact, yesterday I provided three graphs where people could see, at a glance, just how badly Obama's incompetence and policies have failed to stimulate the economy, failed brilliantly to create conditions for job growth. and has done more damage in just 2 1/2 years than any president has ever done.

Yes, that includes Jimmy Carter.

I am not the only non-economist that is not surprised and finds the recent bad news about the economy and jobless claims totally "expected".

Rasmussen shows consumer confidence is done, The Hill reports that one in three likely voters expect to be worse off when they go to the polls a year from this November, Wall Street Journal reports that the average job seeker gives up after five months, and remember the official 9.1 percent unemployment rate does not include the over two million workers that are able and want to work but didn't seek a job in the 4 weeks prior to the government unemployment survey. Last but not least 65 percent of likely voters believe the country is on the wrong track.

It was reported by CBS News recently that chronic unemployment is worse than that in the Great Depression with 45.1 percent of all unemployed workers in this country being jobless for more than six months. Then we have the news that 1.7 million graduating college students in the 2011 class are facing the greatest unemployment numbers among their demographic in U.S. history.

All of that and more and the mainstream media keeps trying to convince their readers that the bad news coming out a mile a minute is "unexpected".

No wonder Sarah Palin calls them the "lame-stream media".

They are either lying to their readers, completely clueless and biased or too busy carrying Obama's water to bother with reporting the actual news without spin and then expecting their readers to buy their crap hook, line and sinker.

Either way I am sick of seeing the word "unexpected" in headlines and stories when the majority of the country damn well does expect the bad news because they are keeping up as the polling shows.

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Sarah Palin And Paul Revere

H/T Legal Insurrection



Transcript over at NPR.

Media Matters: Bias against Israel - again

*cross-posted from Assoluta Tranquillita*

In the midst of all the usual msm noise this past few days, five horrific murders - by terrorists - in Israel are again showing the blatant media biases against Israel. From The Algemeiner:

Itamar and British Media Bias

March 14, 2011 8:13 pm

I don’t own a television and I don’t buy newspapers. I do so mainly to save money, but also because I think that I end up better informed by seeking out information on the internet. A particularly striking example of this happened this week. Like many people I heard about the grizzly murders in Itamar on motzei Shabbat and I assumed that, since the brutal stabbing of children is something of a rarity, and matters Israeli are a veritable obsession for the British press, everyone else would have too. However, two conversations on Sunday with people who are neither ignorant nor apathetic quickly produced the response: ‘what murders?’

So I did some scouting. The killings were reported by some newspapers, though by no means all and always far from the front page. Nowhere on the news or in print were any pictures of the deceased shown, which is unusual for a media usually so keen to get footage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that they accept fairly obvious fakes. However, things only got really bad when I went onto the BBC website. Almost unbelievably, ‘Aunty’ (as people insist on calling it) reported the story as ‘Israel approves new Jewish settler homes in the West Bank’, mentioning down in paragraph three that this had followed the murder of the Fogels. It’s sometimes darkly joked that the world is more concerned with Jews building houses than Iranians building bombs, but it’s hard to avoid the conclusion that Britain’s state-funded broadcaster is more concerned with Jews building houses than Arabs breaking into a house and stabbing a three month old girl to death....

Go - now - and read the rest of this here.

Thus far, I have chosen not to add my own commentary, because the outrage I feel for this butchery prevents me from being any sort of articulate. Israeli Soldier's Mother wrote from her outrage, and her eloquence in the midst of this latest atrocity battering the Israeli family, is a must read:

A Choking Anger

"Did you hear?" Elie said when I came to the table moments after the Sabbath had ended.

"No, what?" I asked.

"Bad news," he said. And then he told me. "Two parents and three children. Stabbed. Itamar."

"Killed?" I asked, already feeling the horror starting to mount inside me.

"Yes," he answered quietly...

[...]


The anger, the rage that comes is almost more than I can stand. It chokes you. It fills you, infuriates you....

[...]

There are no words that can adequately describe the anger and the rage I am feeling and so there is no comfort. The world will forget, as it always does - each orphan, each infant. It sickens me beyond words....

Right now I have NO words to describe MY anger, my sorrow, at this latest evil, so go read the rest of Israeli Soldier's Mother's column here.

As you read, remember this: the innocent people of Israel live with these atrocities every.single.day. The msm is a willing accomplice in their part of the willful ignorance about the lives - the deaths of innocents - of the people of Israel.

And the world shrugs.

[Update:

As the world shrugs, and looks away, Israel National News is reporting on Yamar, the Fogel's 12 year old daughter.

"I Will Be Their Mother" Says 12 Year Old Tamar Fogel

by Uzi Baruch

The eldest daughter of the Fogel family, 12 year old Tamar, promised her relatives: "I will be strong and succeed in overcoming this. I understand the task that stands before me, and I will be a mother to my siblings". The orphaned youngster's words were quoted in the Hebrew daily Yisrael Hayom.

In their home in the town of Neve Tsuf in Samaria, Tsila and Chaim Fogel, parents of Udi, are sitting on low benches for the traditional “shiva” week of mourning alongside his three brothers and sister. There is a constant stream of comforters going in and out of the house, VIP's and ordinary citizens from all over Israel, whose hearts go out to the bereft family that lost son, daughter-in-law, and three young grandchildren in a barbaric terrorist slaughter on Friday night.

Chaim Fogel continues to retell the story of terrible hours from 3 a.m. on, when he received the horrific news, drove to Itamar, met his 12 year old granddaughter and then entered the family’s home. The authorities were forced to ask her to tell what she saw when she returned from her youth group activity to find her family’s bloodsoaked bodies at 12:30 a.m. Chaim himself had the heartbreaking task of identifying the bodies.

"We came to take the surviving grandchildren out of the Valley of Death, he said. I don’t wish on anyone in the world the sight I saw. It is horrendous, beyond description, beyond comprehension".

The grandparents recalled the last time they saw Udi, Ruti and the children, a week and a half ago on Saturday night. They celebrated the start of the month of Adar Bet in Itamar, danced, sang and laughed....

Read the rest here.

Andrew Malcolm Amused Over Polls On GOP Takeover That Hasn't Happened Yet

Ok, this is truly amusing and Andrew Malcolm over at LA Times' Top of the Ticket does a spectacular job highlighting the idiocy of polling people on what they think about the GOP takeover of the House and declaring people are not impressed, before the GOP actually has taken control!!!



Teaser:

With Republicans still 20 days away from taking control of one chamber of Congress, the House of Representatives, the Washington Post could no longer resist delivering the polling news that Americans are not yet convinced the GOP is the party for them.

The bold headline: "Public is not yet sold on GOP"

Imagine, waiting for the 63 new House Republicans to actually take the oath on Jan. 4 and perhaps find their seats before polling on what dismal failures they are. With Democrats controlling merely the presidency and the Senate, the newly elected Republicans have yet to accomplish a single meaningful thing. And clearly the public knows it.

You simply have to go read the whole thing.

Kudos Andrew!!

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Sarah Palin's Response To Media's Double Standards

The media and liberal bloggers have had a field day with Sarah Palin's misspoken comments about North Korea and South Korea and media outlets like ABC News even headlined with "Sarah Palin: 'We Gotta Stand With Our North Korean Allies'"

Sarah Palin, via Facebook, responds as she points out the media's double standards.

My fellow Americans in all 57 states, the time has changed for come. With our country founded more than 20 centuries ago, we have much to celebrate – from the FBI’s 100 days to the reforms that bring greater inefficiencies to our health care system. We know that countries like Europe are willing to stand with us in our fight to halt the rise of privacy, and Israel is a strong friend of Israel’s. And let’s face it, everybody knows that it makes no sense that you send a kid to the emergency room for a treatable illness like asthma and they end up taking up a hospital bed. It costs, when, if you, they just gave, you gave them treatment early, and they got some treatment, and ah, a breathalyzer, or an inhalator. I mean, not a breathalyzer, ah, I don’t know what the term is in Austrian for that…

Of course, the paragraph above is based on a series of misstatements and verbal gaffes made by Barack Obama (I didn’t have enough time to do one for Joe Biden). YouTube links are provided just in case you doubt the accuracy of these all too human slips-of-the-tongue. If you can’t remember hearing about them, that’s because for the most part the media didn’t consider them newsworthy. I have no complaint about that. Everybody makes the occasional verbal gaffe – even news anchors.

Obviously, I would have been even more impressed if the media showed some consistency on this issue. Unfortunately, it seems they couldn’t resist the temptation to turn a simple one word slip-of-the-tongue of mine into a major political headline. The one word slip occurred yesterday during one of my seven back-to-back interviews wherein I was privileged to speak to the American public about the important, world-changing issues before us.

If the media had bothered to actually listen to all of my remarks on Glenn Beck’s radio show, they would have noticed that I refer to South Korea as our ally throughout, that I corrected myself seconds after my slip-of-the-tongue, and that I made it abundantly clear that pressure should be put on China to restrict energy exports to the North Korean regime. The media could even have done due diligence and checked my previous statements on the subject, which have always been consistent, and in fact even ahead of the curve. But why let the facts get in the way of a good story? (And for that matter, why not just make up stories out of thin air – like the totally false hard news story which has run for three days now reporting that I lobbied the producers of “Dancing with the Stars” to cast a former Senate candidate on their show. That lie is further clear proof that the media completely makes things up without doing even rudimentary fact-checking.)

Bloggers are expected to have fun with political gaffes and we do so quite often before we move along to the next piece of news or the next major gaffe on the part of a political figure, but news outlets are expected to do their due diligence, dig a little and round out a story with details and facts, not speculation.

More importantly, if you click over to all the Youtube links Palin supplied, you wonder immediately why, if gaffes are so newsworthy to news outlets, the ones she quoted and provided videos of weren't given the same intense scrutiny instead of nothing or just mere mentions as those same media outlets moved along to other more newsworthy stories.

Palin's response was brilliant and for those that believed or simply tried to convince their readers that Palin truly thought North Korea was our ally, does that mean they also think gaffes by Obama meant he believed his own misstatements when he made them?

Does Obama really believe there are 57 states in America? Doubtful and when we, conservatives bloggers, had fun with that at the time, we joked about it but most never tried to convince their readers that he actually believed it.

The Politico was one news outlet that did mention that it was "Worth noting that she got it right earlier in the conversation," although even Ben Smith, the writer of that Politico piece, added it as an update, not in the original reporting.

The whole transcript of the Palin interview at Glenn Beck's website.

PS- Once again the liberal media and blogger's complete fascination with Sarah Palin has put her Facebook response at the top of political news discussion sites.

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Newspaper Endorsements Are So... Yesterday!!! Rick Perry Proves This True

Not surprisingly print papers are outraged, I tell you, just OUTRAGED, but it seems their endorsements, their reputation and their political savvy just isn't what it used to be.

Via The Daily Beast- Rick Perry (R- TX): The Hell With The Press

Perry didn't receive any endorsements from the major newspapers in the Lone Star State. And, the governor went out of his way to make sure he didn't. Perry didn't attend a single editorial endorsement meeting--knowing he would, therefore, be unlikely to gain any newspaper endorsements. And he didn't. Which is what he wanted.

Mike Baselice, Perry's highly skilled pollster, acknowledged Wednesday at a public forum sponsored by The Texas Tribune that the campaign asked primary voters in Texas whether a newspaper endorsement would make them more or less likely to vote for Perry. Only 6 percent said an endorsement would make them more likely to support Perry, while an eye-popping 37 percent said it would make them less likely (56 percent said it made no difference).

Talk about a paradigm shift. This is a sea change in the way candidates have historically campaigned. Good news for candidates who never much liked kissing the rings of the media elites. But more bad news for the increasing irrelevance of newspapers and the mainstream media.

The fifth-generation Texan is unabashed and candid about his decision: "The most prized resource that you have is the candidate's time, and what is the best return on your investment that you can get with a candidate's time," Perry told The Associated Press. "It was a calculated decision, but you know the world is really changing, I mean, the way people get their information, who they listen to, etc. Put it all on the balance beam and the balance was toward not doing the editorial boards."

Rick Perry is proof that newspapers and their political liberal activism is yesterday's news and yesterday's fad.... the new motto is now "We don't need no stinkin' newspapers".

Newspapers as well as television news are full of newscasters looking at the news and giving their interpretation, but rarely if ever do they provide links to the actual data so readers/listeners can decide for themselves and develop their own opinion. Blogs, while being opinion, 90 percent of the time offer links to the data so that readers can interpret themselves, which is why new media has become so popular.

Rick Perry understand this and took advantage of it. Look at those numbers in the quotes above, "Only 6 percent said an endorsement would make them more likely to support Perry, while an eye-popping 37 percent said it would make them less likely."

That makes the dinosaur media ready to go on the endangered species list.. and rightly so.

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Achorage CBS Affiliate Conspiring to Manufacture News To Influence Election? UPDATE KTVA Admits To Call, Denies Interpretation

If this proves to be true it will be one of the major media/ CBS scandals to rock the 2010 midterm elections.



Headline: "Anchorage CBS Affiliate Caught on Voicemail Conspiring Against Alaska's GOP Senate Candidate."

The following voice mail message was inadvertently left on the cell phone of Joe Miller campaign spokesperson Randy DeSoto.

The voices are believed to be those of the news director for CBS Anchorage affiliate KTVA, along with assignment editor Nick McDermott, and other reporters, openly discussing creating, if not fabricating, two stories about Republican nominee for U.S. Senate, Joe Miller.

The following is a transcript of a call recorded after CBS Alaska affiliate KTVA called Joe Miller’s Senate campaign spokesperson. The call failed to disconnect properly. It was later authenticated by McDermott, who sent a text to Randy DeSoto stating, “Damn iPhone… I left you a long message. I thought I hung up. Sorry.”

There is a transcript of the call provided of the YouTube audio above.

Hot Air's Ed Morrissey has a request in to Nick McDermott and news director Staci Feger asking for confirmation and comment and will update their post with any response they get.

Miller's website issues a press release:

Anchorage, Alaska. October 30, 2010 – In an apparent accidental voice mail message left on the cell phone of Joe Miller’s spokesperson, Randy DeSoto, what is believed to be the news director for CBS Anchorage affiliate KTVA, along with assignment editor Nick McDermott, and other reporters, openly discuss creating, if not fabricating, two stories about Republican nominee for U.S. Senate, Joe Miller. The voice mail message was later authenticated by Mr. McDermott, who sent a text to DeSoto stating “Damn iPhone … I left you a long message. I thought I hung up. Sorry.”

“Frankly, when I first heard this I was shocked,” said DeSoto. “Though a bit garbled at times, there are disturbing comments in this conservation that never should have occurred.”

In the first discussion, the KTVA reporters discuss getting a list of Miller campaign supporters in order to ‘find’ a “child molester.” “You have to find that one person,” says the male reporter, to laughter in the news room. The reporters at KTVA then discuss creating a “Rand Paul” incident at the then upcoming Miller Rally (held on October 28, 2010) and hoping for violence so that they can “send out a tweet” and “Facebook” that “Miller got punched” at the rally.

Attached is a transcript of the conversation from KTVA reporters.

Here is a link to the audio where you can hear the discussion

Sarah Palin calls them "corrupt bastards", via twitter.


Palin also discusses this in an interview, via Right Scoop, shown below.



Via the Contact page for KTVA, the information should readers wish to contact the station itself to ask for answers about their alleged deliberate collaboration to manufacture news to influence the Alaska election.

Alaska Broadcasting Company, Inc

1007 W. 32nd Avenue
Anchorage, Alaska 99503
Phone: 907-273-3192
Fax: 907-273-3189


Sales and Administration Office
3330 Arctic Boulevard, Suite 206
Anchorage, Alaska 99503
Phone: 907-646-2100
Fax: 907-646-2166


Vice President & General Manager: Jerry Bever

General Sales Manager: Laurie Bruce

Marketing Director: Shelley Byrd

Business Manager: Susan Sinclair

Programming Manager: Cyd Terhune

Traffic Manager: Monica Bouvier

Operations Manager: Bush Houston

Manager of Information Systems: John Berglin


News Department

1007 West 32nd Avenue
Anchorage, Alaska 99503
Phone: 907-273-3186
Fax: 907-273-3188
E-mail: 11news@ktva.com


News Director: Staci Feger

Assistant News Director: MJ Thim

Assignment Manager: Nick McDermott

Executive Producer: Carolyn Kuckertz

Web Producer: Colleen Kelly


[Update] CBS Affiliate releases a statement denying the allegations, reported by The Politico, while admitting the call was real and originating from KTVA .

A press release issued Saturday October 30, 2010, by the Joe Miller campaign claims that KTVA personnel, "openly discuss creating, if not fabricating, two stories about Republican nominee for U.S. Senate, Joe Miller." KTVA General Manager Jerry Bever says, "It's unfortunate that this recording has happened. It's unfortunate because it does not accurately reflect the journalistic standards of our newsroom and the garbled context will no doubt leave more questions than answers. The Miller campaign's analysis of the recording is incorrect in many material ways ranging from personnel involved in the conversation, the interpretation of conversation snippets and the reported transcript of the perceived garbled conversation."

"While the recording is real, the allegations are untrue," said Bever. "The recording was the result of a cell phone not being hung up after a call was placed to Randy DeSoto, Joe Miller campaign spokesperson, Thursday afternoon to discuss Joe Miller's appearance on that evening's newscast. That phone call was placed near the end of a coverage planning meeting in our newsroom regarding that evening's Miller rally in downtown Anchorage. The group of KTVA news personnel was reviewing potential "what-if" scenarios, discussing the likelihood of events at the rally and how KTVA might logistically disseminate any breaking news."

Bever continues, "The perception that this garbled, out of context recording may leave is unfortunate, but to allege that our staff was discussing or planning to create or fabricate stories regarding candidate Miller is absurd. The complete conversation was about what others might be able to do to cause disruption within the Miller campaign, not what KTVA could do."

While Bever would not discuss any personnel issues linked with the recording, Bever says "Have we had internal discussions about the level of professionalism we need to bring to our conversations, internally and externally? Of course we have, this is a lesson to learn from."

Not looking good for KTVA at this point.

Back to the transcript which shows how weak an argument KTVA provides:(H/T Hot Air)

FEMALE REPORTER: That’s up to you because you’re the expert, but that’s what I would do…I’d wait until you see who showed up because that indicates we already know something…
[Laughter]
[INAUDIBLE]
FEMALE REPORTER: Child molesters…
MALE REPORTER: Oh yeah… can you repeat Joe Miller’s…uh… list of people, campaign workers, which one’s the molester?
[INAUDIBLE]
FEMALE VOICE: We know that out of all the people that will show up tonight, at least one of them will be a registered sex offender.
[Laughter]
MALE REPORTER: You have to find that one person…
[INAUDIBLE]
FEMALE REPORTER: And the one thing we can do is ….we won’t know….we won’t know but if there is any sort of chaos whatsoever we can put out a twitter/facebook alert: saying what the… ‘Hey Joe Miller punched at rally.’
FEMALE REPORTER: Kinda like Rand Paul…I like that.
[Laughter]
FEMALE REPORTER: That’s a good one.

They are going to have to do better than saying it is a matter of interpretation.

(Minor adjustments made to this post)

Majority Distrusts Media and Plurality Says Media Is Too Liberal

Gallup:

For the fourth straight year, the majority of Americans say they have little or no trust in the mass media to report the news fully, accurately, and fairly. The 57% who now say this is a record high by one percentage point.

[...]

Nearly half of Americans (48%) say the media are too liberal, tying the high end of the narrow 44% to 48% range recorded over the past decade. One-third say the media are just about right while 15% say they are too conservative.

Those findings explain this sentence from Gallup perfectly:

Democrats and liberals remain far more likely than other political and ideological groups to trust the media and to perceive no bias.

Despite John Kerry's claim that voters are too uninformed, it seems Americans are watching, noticing and calling the media out on their liberal bias, hence distrusting them to report the news accurately and see them nmore as Democratic cheerleaders.

Sounds pretty informed to me.