Anita Dunn said that the White House criticism has been effective in preventing other networks from picking up stories broken by Fox.
Anita Dunn even tilts to the left in her photos
Remember when some wit said we should end the war in Vietnam by simply taking the troops home and announcing that we’d won? Former White House Communications Director Anita Dunn seems to be using the same philosophy in the President’s War on Fox.
Verum Serum has the details:
[S]he said that the White House criticism has been effective in preventing other networks from picking up stories broken by Fox.
“It did help people get a sense of perspective again,” Dunn said. “People took a step back and said, ‘Hmm, am I really wanting to go chase those stories?’”
Actually, Anita, what people did was take a step back and say, “Hmm, if Obama can figure out a strategy for a war with Fox, why can’t he figure out a strategy for the war in Afghanistan?”
Here, in one remarkable paragraph, Davies clearly demonstrates that liberal media bias is a worldwide phenomenon.
Anne Davies, remarkably impartial Washington correspondent and would-be TV critic
Anne Davies is the Washington correspondent for Rupert Murdoch’s Australian newspapers, so one might assume she has her biases under control.
But, alas, it was not to be.
Here, in one remarkable paragraph, Davies clearly demonstrates that liberal media bias is a worldwide phenomenon:
Fox dominated the news channel ratings. Its top host, Bill O’Reilly, who offers right-wing ideology and belittles liberals, attracted an average 881,000 viewers, while CNN’s award-winning Anderson Cooper, who bills himself as a serious journalist who actually goes to war zones, rated only 211,000 viewers.
Well, that about sums it up. Thanks for putting it all in perspective for us, Anne.
For generations, the New York Times motto was “All the news that’s fit to print.” Things have changed. The Times official ombudsman commented on the paper’s cluelessness on the ACORN scandal and other recent stories.
The New York Times has a new motto and a new mascot
For generations, the New York Times motto was “All the news that’s fit to print.” Things have changed.
The Times official ombudsman waddled in over the weekend (when most people don’t pay much attention to news) to comment on the paper’s cluelessness on the ACORN scandal and other recent stories thoroughly covered by Fox News and talk radio, but ignored the The Gray Lady.
In a mea culpa entitled, “Tuning In Too Late,” Times Public Editor Clark Hoyt admits, “The Times stood still.” What he should’ve said was that the paper stood still in its best ostrich imitation. Either that or its head was stuck deep where the sun never shines. And it wasn’t the first time.
ABC-TV has refused to run this anti-ObamaCare television commercial despite the fact that it’s running on other TV stations across the country. Take a look and we think you’ll agree there’s nothing objectionable about it. Unless, of course, you disagree with what it says.
ABC-TV has refused to run this anti-ObamaCare television commercial despite the fact that it’s running on other TV stations across the country. Take a look and we think you’ll agree there’s nothing objectionable about it. Unless, of course, you disagree with what it says.
Of course, this is the same magnanimous television network that turned an entire night of its valuable primetime programming over to the President a few weeks ago so he could hype his socialized medicine scheme.
Turning down a commercial is an especially puzzling decision since network television rating and revenues have slumped substantially. Money be money. Yet ABC declined to take the income it would have earned by running the commercial produced by the League of American Voters.
Where’s that damn Fairness Doctrine you we need it?
We have so many great commenters meeting from thread to thread on the site. Time to come together here in this open thread to discuss whatever you’d like.
We have so many great commenters meeting from thread to thread on the site. Time to come together here in this open thread to discuss whatever you’d like.
If you’re having trouble separating the hypocrisy in coverage of town hall anger, we’ve prepared this handy guide designed to help you recognize the difference between people who protest and people who cause disruptions.
We apologize for the horrifying photo, but the image of a "two-faced pig" just came to mind when we thought about the media
The media has a problem with all these people showing up to townhall meetings and voicing their dissent. Dissension, after all, is only praiseworthy when its target is a Republican President or conservative lawmakers.
You may remember a few protests against the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq during the Bush years. (By the way, whatever happened to war protests?)
Then there was the infamous shoe-chucking incident that was reported in a kind of a jokey way.
President Obama tripped up in L’Aquila, Italy last week. Surely, you saw this clip headlining all the network nightly newscasts. What’s that? You’ve never seen this clip until now?
President Obama tripped up in L’Aquila, Italy last week. Surely, you saw this clip headlining all the network nightly newscasts.
What’s that? You’ve never seen this clip until now?
Perhaps that’s because the same media that delighted in exposing every little faux pas by George Bush has now decided that President and the Presidency must be treated with the utmost respect.
Campbell Brown came back to CNN on Monday following maternity leave. She looked the same, but her show looked different. They retooled it while she was gone. And they dropped “No Bias, No Bull” from the title.
We assume that by dropping “No Bias, No Bull” CNN is merely acknowledging the huge role bias and bull have always played in the program.
We’d have an alternate title: Campbell Brown: Mo’ Bias, Mo’ Bull.
While the left demonized those damn white conservatives — evildoers like Miss California Carrie Prejean — as homophobes, a huge, mostly Hispanic crowd took to the streets of New York in opposition to Governor Patterson’s same-sex bill. The crowd, which some estimate at 20,000, gathered at the Governor’s Manhattan office, stretching from 35th to 40th Street on 3rd Avenue.
Welcome to the family, fellow right wing extremists.
Tradition dictates that the White House Correspondents Dinner roast the president. But host Wanda Sykes could not hide her liberal leanings and after a few polite Obama jokes, tore into the Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and others on the Obama Enemy List instead. This video shows us what the “roast” would have been like in an alternate universe, one where the media treats all sides fairly.
Anyone who wants to call waterboarding torture should talk to Bang Mi-Sun about real torture
A shocking story of real torture was told in Washington, DC on Wednesday. It went completely unreported by the biased liberal media that wants you to believe waterboarding somehow rises to the level of torture.
Here’s how Chosun Korea tells the story of Bang Mi-Sun:
There were gasps in the audience at a press conference by female North Korean defectors in Washington, D.C. on Wednesday when Bang Mi-Sun rolled up her black skirt and showed the deep ugly scars in her thighs. The event was part of North Korea Freedom Week.
As soon as she was asked to recount her life in a North Korean concentration camp, Bang (55) stepped on a chair and roll up her skirt. Various parts of her thighs were sunken as if the flesh had been gouged out. She also walks with a limp.
Bang had formerly been an actress with the propaganda squad of the Musan Mine. She fled the North with her children when her husband starved to death in 2002, but soon fell victim to human traffickers. She was arrested by Chinese police and was sent back to the North, where she was tortured. In 2004, she escaped again.
Nancy Pelosi immediately demanded congressional hearings to determine if Dick Cheney had authorized North Korea’s enhanced interrogation techniques.
Angry, liberal (forgive us for the redundancy) Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-IL) wants to put private health care out of business. And she admits that Obama’s health care plan will do exactly that.
You may have seen this video in which she says:
“And next to me was a guy from an insurance company who then argued against the public health insurance option saying it wouldn’t let private insurance compete; that a public option would put the private insurance industry out of business. (cheers) My single payer friends, he was right. The man was right. Here’s what I told him. I said excuse me sir the goal of health care reform is not to protect the private health insurance industry. And, I am so confident in the superiority of a public health care option that I think he has every reason to be frightened.”
Well, last week the angry, liberal (damn it, we did it again) representative showed up on Fox News, put on a happy face and tried to downplay what she said on the earlier video.
Media bias being what it is, Fox News is the only network that put the angry, liberal (we can’t stop ourselves) representative on the air to put her hypocrisy on display.
If Michael Savage is right and liberalism is a mental disorder, we wonder if it will be covered by Obama’s healthcare plan.
Charlie Rangel and Barack Obama. Two of the three taxing amigos.
This story hits the trifecta. It has liberal hypocrisy, media bias and remarkable stupidity all rolled into one.
The liberal hypocrisy? After being introduced by tax cheat Timothy Geithner, President Obama heaped praise on Harlem congressman Charlie Rangel for helping him close overseas corporate tax loopholes.
The remarkable stupidity? Rangel is being investigated for his own overseas tax scam.
The media bias? Have you seen it on the evening news?
Here’s how the New York Post editorialized about it:
Rangel, of course, knows a thing or two about offshore tax shelters: He’d been operating one for years.
The congressman had to fork over nearly $11,000 in back taxes last year after The Post reported that he failed to disclose more than $75,000 in rental income on his Dominican Republic villa.
Plus, he’s under investigation by a House committee for allegedly helping a company preserve its offshore tax loophole — in exchange for a million-dollar gift to a school named in his honor.
Though perhaps that’s not exactly what Obama meant when he gushed that the problems with tax havens “have been highlighted” by Rangel, among others.
This is perfect. We have tax vampire Barack Obama proposing the legislation, tax cheat Charlie Rangel writing the legislation, tax cheat Timothy Geithner enforcing the legislation.
Arlen Specter. If he was really two-faced would he have chosen that one?
You know the media bias is out of control when reliably-liberal Washington Post columnist Howard Kurtz notices it.
Here’s what Kurtz said about the media’s coverage of Arlen Specter switching parties:
Correspondent Carl Cannon, on AOL’s new PoliticsDaily site, says conservatives are right in complaining that much of the media have “a double standard regarding party-switchers. . . . When Republicans morph into Democrats, we tend to act like they finally saw the light, and quote them ad nauseam about how the Republican Party has gotten too narrow, etc., etc.” But when a Democrat joins the GOP, “we concentrate on the tactical advantage to the party switcher.”
When it comes to commentators, their analysis often turns on the direction of the defection. In 1994, when Democratic Sen. Richard Shelby switched parties days after the Republicans won control of Congress, a New York Times editorial said: “Talk about slipping out of the hills to bayonet the wounded! . . . His desertion to the victorious Republicans this week was hardly a huge surprise.” But when Jim Jeffords flipped control of the Senate to the Democrats by leaving the GOP in 2001, the Times said approvingly that the Vermont lawmaker had given George W. Bush “an embarrassing lesson” for having pulled a “conservative bait-and-switch” on the country.
Arlen’s switches back and forth are not uncommon in nature.
Here’s how the New York Times describes a similar situation:
When a school of reef fish loses its single male, the largest female begins acting like a male within a few hours and will produce sperm within 10 days. Some other species repeatedly switch back and forth between the production of eggs and of sperm during a single mating. Among deep sea fish that only rarely encounter potential mates, reproduction is often possible only if one changes sex.
Poor Arlen. The only sex involved in his switch was when he screwed the Republicans.
There she was — the loveliest, most intelligent, most popular, most down to earth first lady who’s ever graced the White House – volunteering at a Washington, DC food bank.
Naturally, the press fawned over her fashion sense. She was wearing a J. Crew cardigan, an ordinary pair of Capri pants, and…what the hell…a pair of $540 sneakers by Lanvin.
These were no ordinary sneakers. No, siree. They were imported from France, made of suede, laced with grosgrain ribbons and featured metallic pink toe caps.
When reporters asked about the shoes, the First Lady’s spokesperson dismissively snorted, “They’re shoes.”
And that was that. End of story. Except for one thing.
During the Presidential campaign, however, it became a campaign issue when John McCain wore a pair $520 shoes. CNN devoted an entire report to McCain’s “Well-heeled campaign.” His shoes were used as evidence that he was out of touch with ordinary people.
We never bought this regular folks façade the press presses on Michelle Obama. And a pair of $540 seems to show that our cynicism was well deserved.
But what do we know? We’re wearing Nikes. They’re rubber and some sort of synthetic material. The laces are cotton. They set us back $29 down at the neighborhood discount sporting good store.
Don’t you hate critics who review “films” instead of “movies.” You know, those self-important nimrods who think they’re too smart by half and wear out their thesauruses (thesauri?) in an attempt to convince you of the same thing.
The Times of London just ran one of those reviews on the new Star Trek movie that premieres May 8.
(One disclaimer: we are not ashamed to say that we are long-time Trekkies. We don’t even attempt to hide behind the supposedly more dignified name “Trekker.”)
Let’s just go with one paragraph of this freshman poly sci term paper disguised as a movie review:
There was always a very close relationship between the American Dream — not to mention American imperialism — and Star Trek, with its liberal, secular, multiracial, technophiliac vision of the future. But the two seem almost to have mind-melded with the election of an optimistic, liberal, multiracial President with a Kenyan father and a white American mother (Star Trek featured the first interracial kiss on US television, sparking protests at the time) — and, who is himself something of a 1960s tribute act, with his JFK and Martin Luther King cadences. Suddenly, with Barack Obama at the helm, America looks like a brand that people can believe in again. Or at least root for at the movies.
For God’s sake, it’s just a friggin’ movie, Limey Boy. It’s cowboys and Indians in outer space. Good guys versus bad guys. White hats versus black hats.
Read the whole thing. Just to remind yourself why newspapers are neither living long nor prospering.
We have to go now. Advance tickets just went on sale downtown for the May 8 opening.
Yes, we get it. The main stream media loves Barack Obama. A study conducted by the nonpartisan Center for Media and Public Affairs and California’s Chapman University has actually measured the amount of drool in the slobbering love affair
the MSM has been carrying on with Obama for the last 100 days.
MediaBistro reports, “Not only has Obama gotten more coverage, but that coverage has been more positive than his predecessors.”
“On the ABC, CBS, and NBC evening newscasts, 58% of all evaluations of the president and his policies have been favorable, while 42% were unfavorable. That compares with 33% positive in the comparable period of Bush’s tenure and 44% positive for Pres. Clinton.”
Maybe you’re wondering how the MSM (sans Fox) can be in such agreement with The One’s agenda. Turns out there’s a reason beyond the Administration’s daily phone calls with George Stephanopolous.
Washington Post media writer Howard Kurtz reveals that key MSM journalists are meeting furtively for swanky dinners at The Watergate where Administration bigwigs spoon-feed talking points to their left-wing media enablers. (Off the record, naturally.) Kurtz comments, “the catered gatherings…sound rather cozy, like some secret-handshake gathering of an entrenched elite. Are the top-level officials, strategists and foreign leaders there for serious questioning or risk-free spin sessions? And what exactly is the journalistic benefit if the visitors are protected by a shield of anonymity?”
Fortunately these reporters are no longer anonymous. Want to know the names of the media lapdogs eating out of the Administration’s hand? According to Kurtz, “Among those in regular attendance are David Brooks and Maureen Dowd of the New York Times, Gene Robinson and Ruth Marcus of The Washington Post, NBC’s David Gregory, ABC’s George Stephanopoulos, PBS’s Gwen Ifill, the New Yorker’s Jane Mayer, Vanity Fair’s Todd Purdum, former Time managing editor Walter Isaacson and staffers from Bradley’s Atlantic and National Journal, including Ron Brownstein, Andrew Sullivan and Jonathan Rauch.”
As Kurtz next points out, unsurprisingly, “The networks have given President Obama more coverage than George W. Bush and Bill Clinton combined in their first months — and more positive assessments to boot.”
“On Fox News, by contrast, only 13 percent of the assessments of Obama were positive on the first half of Bret Baier’s “Special Report,” which most resembles a newscast. The president got far better treatment in the New York Times, where 73 percent of the assessments in front-page pieces were positive.”
This explains a lot. While the competition is busy slobbering, Fox is clobbering.
Iowa flooding looked as bad as many sections of New Orleans. So where was the media? Where was Sean Penn? Kudos to Politico’s Richard Benedetto for writing about the way the mainstream media has been covering the Obama presidency in his column “Watchdogs are heeling for Obama”. We would’ve gone a little further and titled the piece “Media lapdogs are lying down for Obama.”
Benedetto’s journalism students gave the media a C+/B- for their covering during the first 100 days. After chronicling a few instances of media double standards in the way similar-to-identical statements made by GWB and BHO were portrayed, the columnist felt a C+ was about right.
His list seemed a bit short. How about the way similar events were covered? One of the major stories that’s been virtually ignored was the Iowa/North Dakota flooding. Remember the overwrought and outright false Katrina coverage? (“10,000 dead”?!)
As a widely circulated conservative-leaning email asked, Where was the hysterical 24/7 media coverage, with reports of lootings, shootings at rescuers, of rapes and murder? Where were the stories of people screaming that Barack Obama hates white, rural people? Where were the government bailout vouchers and government debit cards? Are the values of Iowa and Louisiana residents that different or is the media just that skewed?
What grade would you give the media for their coverage of Obama’s first 100 days? We’d give ’em a D for duplicitous double-standards.
Reverends Couric, Williams and Gibson conduct services nightly. This will come as no surprise to anyone this side of a catatonic trance, but TV network news has given us all Obama all the time.
The nonpartisan research group Center for Media and Public Affairs along with California’s Chapman University released a study that found the nightly newscasts devoted 27 hours, 44 minutes to Pres. Obama’s presidency in his first 50 days. That compares to 7 hours, 42 minutes for Pres. George W. Bush and 15 hours, 2 minutes for Pres. Bill Clinton during the first 50 days of their first terms.
Not only has Obama gotten more coverage, but that coverage has been more positive than his predecessors.
On the ABC, CBS, and NBC evening newscasts, 58% of all evaluations of the president and his policies have been favorable, while 42% were unfavorable. That compares with 33% positive in the comparable period of Bush’s tenure and 44% positive for Pres. Clinton.
The study continues:
CBS led the coverage with 365 stories and 10 hours 46 minutes of airtime, followed by NBC with 327 stories and 9 hours 38 minutes, and ABC with 329 stories and 7 hours 20 minutes.
The first half hour of Fox News’ “Special Report with Bret Baier,” which the study says most closely resembles the network evening newscasts, devoted 10 hours 24 minutes to the Obama administration, nearly as much airtime as CBS gave him.
But Fox News stands apart from its competitors here – only 13% of comments* were considered favorable. On ABC, 57% of the comments were favorable, compared to 58% for CBS and 61% for NBC.
What these numbers don’t tell us is what percentage of the comments were neutral and what percentage were negative. We’re willing to bet the ratio of positive to negative is stunning.
Time magazine’s report on Obama’s First 100 Days begins with a swoon: “Obama’s start has been the most impressive of any President since F.D.R.” At that point we fell asleep faster than Obama’s economic advisor Lawrence Summers.
Does anybody really read Time anymore? Of course not. That was a rhetorical question. Their “news” is always a week old. People must look at it for the exciting pictures, like the behind-the-scenes photo essay consisting of 77 dynamic shots of The One contemplating paintings, moving a chair, and a dandy close-up of his healthy snack consisting of cheese, crackers and a pear. (Yawn.)
Lawrence Summers demonstrates that the stimulus plan is somewhat less than stimulating. Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.
Sorry. Dozed off at the keyboard. If you manage to get through the story, let us know if there was anything “newsworthy.”
Any guesses as to who will be Time’s next Man of the Year? For the next four years. Maybe eight.
Janet Napolitano's Department of Homeland Security posse
Another story the media just conveniently overlooks in its efforts to be politically correct:
Those darn moderate Taliban factions with whom President Obama wants to negotiate are already causing problems in Pakistan.
Here’s how the ANI news agency reports the story:
Pakistani’s Taliban will not lay down heir arms in a northwestern valley as part of a deal that included the introduction of Sharia law but will take their struggle’ to new areas, a militant spokesman said today.
“Sharia doesn’t permit us to lay down arms,” Muslim Khan said by telephone. “If a government, either in Pakistan or Afghanistan, continues anti-Muslim policies, it’s out of the question that Taliban lay down their arms.”
Pakistan’s President Asif Ali Zardari, under pressure from conservatives, signed a regulation on Monday imposing sharia law in the Swat valley to end Taliban violence.
The strategy of appeasement has alarmed US officials, while critics say the government has demonstrated a lack of capacity nd will to fight the Taliban and al Qaeda.
According to Dawn, details of the deal have not been made public but government officials backing the pact have said part of it as that militants would give up their arms.
But a Pakistani Taliban spokesman in the scenic valley, a one-time tourist destination 125 km northwest of Islamabad, said they would be keeping their guns.
He said “When we achieve our goal at one place, there are other areas where we need to struggle for it.”
Based on this, we can foresee the day when American Muslims can have guns for religious reasons, but other Americans can’t have them for legal reasons.
That, of course, will allow the IslamoFascists to help Homeland Security hunt down rightwing extremists.
Back when Rupert Murdoch founded Fox, he said he was doing it because CNN was biased, out of touch and ignored a major part of the audience.
Murdoch’s wisdom was never more evident than during yesterday’s Tea Parties.
First, a CNN reporter asks a man why he’s at the Tea Party, interrupts his answer, and raves about the state of Illinois gets $50 billion in “stimulus” money.
We could excuse it as the emotional excesses of a single reporter. Except for one thing: the YouTube video of the segment is titled “CNN Reporter Roughed Up at Chicago Tea-Party” despite the fact that there was no physical confrontation whatsoever. The bias is simply endemic at CNN.
This one simple clip demonstrates why Fox has higher ratings than the other cable news networks combined.
“We need newsrooms that not only look like America, but think a little more like America.”
That’s just one quote from the speech he delivered last week at the Richard Nixon Presidential Library in Yorba Linda, California. But there are a lot more where that came from.
Watch the whole speech. If for no other reason than you know that Barney Frank won’t.
