The CBS Evening News with Scott Pelley on Monday trashed demonstrators in Germany for protesting against Islamic extremism, proclaiming they possessed an “anti-Muslim prejudice” that’s “on the rise in Europe.”
Reporting from Dresden, Germany, CBS News senior foreign correspondent Mark Phillips stated that the demonstrators chanted “we are the people” as not motivated by “a society being united” but rather as “a chant of exclusion.”
On Saturday, in a post titled "Political Correctness Kills in Paris, Terrifies Media," Jeffrey Lord at NewsBusters cited how the New York Times, in covering the Charlie Hebdo massacre, deliberately changed a story subject's quote from what it originally reported.
This post will show how the message massagers at the Times subsequently went another step further, attempting to convince readers that the subject's statement quoted elsewhere isn't what she said.
It's not enough to read the transcript. You really need to view the video to appreciate the depths of Christopher Dickey's world-weary, dismissive, preening political correctness. Asked on today's Morning Joe to comment on Muslim preachers inciting violence from their pulpits, Dickey of The Daily Beast sniffed that the problem is "exaggerated," claimed that the number of violent Muslims is "infinitesimally small" [down even from the "minuscule" number he cited last week], and engaged in the most fraudulent form of moral equivalency, saying that there are also crazy Christian, Jewish and Hindu preachers who incite their congregations.
NBC seems to have a particular affinity for slyly removing the word “God” from the Pledge of Allegiance. During the U.S. Open golf tournament in 2011, viewers immediately noticed and called out NBC for editing out the phrase “under God” during the recital of the anthem. Maybe since it’s been four years, NBC thinks it can get away with it again, because a promo for one of NBC’s new primetime shows again omits “under God” during a reciting of the pledge. Ironically, the show is called “Allegiance.”
On Wednesday's Jimmy Kimmel Live on ABC, Bill Maher reacted to the Islamist attack in Paris by beseeching his ideological fellow travelers to "turn toward the truth" about the Muslim world's opposition to "liberal principles." Maher underlined that "hundreds of millions of [Muslims] support an attack like this. They applaud an attack like this. What they say is – oh, we don't approve of violence, but you know what? When you make fun of the prophet, all bets are off."
At 4:45 p.m. Wednesday afternoon, the New York Times, teasing an item entitled "‘Dangerous Moment’ for Europe, as Fear and Resentment Grow," tweeted that "The Paris terror attack seems certain to accelerate the growth of anti-Islamic sentiment in Europe."
Consistent with a long-established nasty habit, the opening sentence of the report by Steven Erlanger and Katrin Bennhold has since been revised without notice, and is tagged as appearing on Thursday's front page. The headline is the same, but the first sentence now reads: "The sophisticated, military-style strike Wednesday on a French newspaper known for satirizing Islam staggered a continent already seething with anti-immigrant sentiments in some quarters, feeding far-right nationalist parties like France’s National Front." Yeah, those are Europe's biggest problems, not Islamic terrorism.
Following the deadly Islamic terrorist attack in Paris on Wednesday, major broadcast networks ABC and NBC joined other news outlets in not showing any of the controversial cartoons of the Islamic Prophet Muhammad from the Charlie Hebdo magazine during their evening newscasts.
Despite initially telling Buzzfeed that they would not be showing any of the cartoons, CBS News did go forward and displayed three of them on the air during the CBS Evening News with Scott Pelley. The three were shown as part of a report by CBS News foreign correspondent Elizabeth Palmer from Paris that led off the broadcast.
On Wednesday night, the “big three” of ABC, CBS, and NBC ignored the contradicting statements made by President Obama in condemning the terrorist attack on the Charlie Hebdo newspaper in Paris as an attack on free speech, but stating in a 2012 speech at the United Nations that “the future does not belong to those who slander the Prophet of Islam.”
When it came to discussing the terrorist attack in France on Wednesday, the President struck a different tone from 2012 when it came to the freedom of speech and expression: “Our universal belief in freedom of expression is something that can't be silenced because of the senseless violence of the few.”
In an item time-stamped 4:11 p.m. ET at his "On Media" blog at the Politico, Dylan Byers wrapped up a post primarily about the Associated Press removing its "Piss Christ" photo from its image library by claiming, in reference to the Charlie Hebdo Magazine murders in Paris, that "Though there (sic) identity is as yet unknown, the masked gunmen are believed to be Islamic terrorists."
Here's most of Byers' post about the outrageous hypocrisy at AP, which shortly affter the massacre had publicly announced that it would not show any Charlie Hebdo Islamic cartoon images:
On Wednesday's Now With Alex Wagner on MSNBC, Eric Bates raised the specter of censorship by Christian conservatives during a panel discussion on the past Muslim backlash against Charlie Hebdo magazine – the target of an Islamic terrorist attack in Paris earlier in the day. Bates, a former executive editor for Rolling Stone magazine, cited Jerry Falwell's lawsuit against porn magazine Hustler in the 1980s as an apparent example of "religious fundamentalists of all stripes and of nationalities have this penchant to say, we want to be able tell you what you can and can't portray."
This afternoon, Matt Balan at NewsBusters covered Tony Barber's disgraceful evening (London Time) column at the Financial Times. In the wake of the terrorist attack at the French satirical publication Charlie Hebdo which killed 12, Barber argued that "some common sense would be useful at publications such as Charlie Hebdo, and Denmark’s Jyllands-Posten." In other words, after sifting out the myriad paragraphs of weasel words and historical rehashes, Barber was contending that these outlets should self-censor to protect jihadists' delicate sensibilities.
Balan indicated that Barber is an associate editor at the Times, so readers could very well have interpreted the columnist's take as speaking for the newspaper. That is not so, as seen in its house editorial:
Correction: This post originally referred to Variety as the publication involved. It was Vanity Fair, and the text below has been corrected to reflect that.
At the Daily Beast on Tuesday, Vicky Ward, who profiled Jeffrey Epstein for Vanity Fair Magazine in early 2003, revealed that she and Graydon Carter, the publication's editor, were aware of and had specific details about the convicted ultrarich creep's sexual episodes with underage girls. They also apparently had proof that Epstein had forged denial documents from two of his victims. Epstein had recently become publicly visible as a result of his 2002 African travels with former President Bill Clinton.
At the last minute, Carter almost completely spiked the sexual elements of Ward's story, leaving only vague references to Victoria's Secret models, a party "filled ... with young Russian models" and to "beautiful women ... whisked off to Little St. James (in the Virgin Islands)." The published product focused almost entirely on the mystery of Epstein's career as a broker, including his admission to securities law violations, his subsequent business dealings, and his quirky but often lavish purchases and lifestyle.