In light of the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to make gay marriage legal nationwide, the Harrisburg, PA newspaper The Patriot News announced that both they and their online site PennLive.com “will very strictly limit op-Eds and letters to the editor in opposition to same-sex marriage.”
Censorship
By Tom Blumer | June 25, 2015 | 11:58 PM EDT
Though such instances are quite rare, especially from conservative and Republican office-holding politicians and bureaucrats, we've been told time and again by the left that it's people on the right who demonize and dehumanize their opponents.
Well, I don't recall George W. Bush, anyone in his administration, or any Republican congressman or senator serving at the time of his tax cuts or during the Iraq War characterizing their political opposition as not being "normal people." (Considering the out-of-control conduct of and statements made by many opponents, the temptation to do so must have been nearly overwhelming.) Readers can be sure that if they had, outfits like the Hill and the Assocated Press would have reported it. So why did those two news organizations ignore what they heard from EPA head Gina McCarthy at a White House climate change summit earlier this week?
By Matthew Balan | June 25, 2015 | 5:12 PM EDT
As of Thursday morning, ABC, CBS, and NBC's morning and evening newscasts had yet to report on Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan's Wednesday rant against the American flag at Metropolitan AME Church in Washington, D.C. Conservative talk radio station WMAL recorded Farrakhan's diatribe, where the radical figure called for an end to that national symbol: "We need to put the American flag down, because we caught as much hell under that as the Confederate flag."
By Tom Blumer | June 24, 2015 | 10:56 PM EDT
The politically correct speech police are everywhere these days. Many members of the leftist establishment have taken it upon themselves to aid in their enforcement efforts. No one is safe — not even the person they want us to believe is destined to be the Democrats' 2016 presidential nominee.
Yesterday, at a Florissant, Missouri church only five miles from Ferguson, Hillary Clinton uttered the following words in succession: "All lives matter." NPR's Tamara Keith and Amita Kelly devoted much of their four-minute "Morning Edition" report on her appearance to what was described as a "3-Word Misstep."
By Tom Blumer | June 23, 2015 | 10:55 PM EDT
Two recent NewsBusters posts have demonstrated that the major broadcast networks other than Fox News have failed to cover new information reported Sunday evening at the Wall Street Journal. Newly available emails reveal that MIT's Jonathan Gruber "worked more closely than previously known with the White House and top federal officials to shape" the Affordable Care Act, aka Obamacare.
Monday afternoon, NB's Scott Whitlock noted that "All three network morning shows on Monday ignored" the clearly newsworthy revelations. Very early Tuesday morning, NB's Curtis Houck observed that "The top English and Spanish-language broadcast networks" did the same thing Monday evening. The Associated Press and the New York Times, the nation's de facto news gatekeepers during the Obama era (far more the former than the latter, in my view) were instrumental in this deliberate averted-eyes exercise. Neither outlet has printed a word about what the Journal found.
By Tom Blumer | June 18, 2015 | 3:24 PM EDT
2016 Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, as seen in this March 10 Associated Press report, has claimed for several months that "No Classified Material (was) Sent via Her Personal Emails" from a home-based server she said "would remain private."
That claim, like so many other representations Mrs. Clinton has made, fell apart earlier this week, when, as Fox News reported, it was learned that Mrs. Clinton "used her personal email account to handle high level negotiations in 2011 for a no-fly zone to help topple Libyan dictator Muammar Qaddafi." Only Fox considers this a story. Apparently, the fact that icky Fox has reported it means that no one else in the establishment wants to. Video and the Fox story follow the jump.
By Seton Motley | June 15, 2015 | 10:29 AM EDT
As we’ve often discussed, the Tech Media is just as hopelessly Leftist and lost as the broader Jurassic Press. They are both echo chambers - talking points and terrible ideas bounce with great rapidity around their tiny little worlds. They are the Bubble Boys (and Girls) of news.
When a Tech Media story crosses over to the broader Jurassic Press - their ridiculous Leftist repetitiveness is truly comical. And highly disquieting.
On Friday, President Barack Obama’s huge Internet Network Neutrality power grab officially went into effect. A crossover story - with predictable, pathetic Press results.
By Matthew Balan | June 10, 2015 | 12:54 PM EDT
Jerry Seinfeld blasted political correctness on the early Wednesday edition of NBC's Late Night With Seth Meyers. Seinfeld cited how he recently got a negative reaction to a "gay French king" joke: "I can imagine a time when people say, 'Well, that's offensive to suggest that a gay person moves their hands in a flourishing motion, and you now need to apologize.' I mean, there's a creepy PC thing out there that really bothers me."
By Matthew Balan | June 8, 2015 | 6:39 PM EDT
NBC News censored itself on Sunday, after it broadcast the "have a nice day" message left by two prison escapees from New York State on Today. The Post-It note included a caricature of an East Asian man with slanted eyes, a bucktooth grin, and wearing a stereotypical conical hat. Hours later, when NBC Nightly News covered the manhunt for the fugitives, the newscast blurred out the "racially-offensive Post-it note," as John Yang labeled it, three separate times during the correspondent's report.
By Matthew Balan | June 4, 2015 | 1:41 PM EDT
CNN's Chris Cuomo pressed Pam Geller on Thursday's New Day over her leadership of "a group that does take shots at Islam on a regular basis." Cuomo underlined that "you can show the cartoon. People have the equal right to criticize your showing the cartoon as an overt provocation of a religion." He also wondered, "Why go slight for slight with the Muslims?" The anchor later asserted, "It just seems like you're throwing a stone at something that doesn't really help anything."
By Tom Blumer | June 4, 2015 | 12:26 AM EDT
Foreign Affairs is "a multiplatform media organization with a print magazine, a website, a mobile site, various apps and social media feeds, an event business, and more." It is published by the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), an influential organization which has caught flak for decades, predominantly from the right, for undermining and misrepresenting U.S. interests.
One doesn't have to be a conspiracy theorist to recognize that CFR has significant influence on Washington politicians and the press. Thus, it's fair to say that contentions in a column in its flagship magazine by Bridget Moreng and Nathaniel Barr that recognizing the ISIS victory at Ramadi last month as significant is "dangerous," and that any kind of statement indicating that ISIS is on the rise feeds "directly into the group's narrative," are very disturbing (HT Patrick Poole at PJ Media):
Latest Labeling Game at AP: Two Attackers Killed at Texas Muhammad Cartoon Contest Were 'Would-Be Terrorists'
By Tom Blumer | May 30, 2015 | 11:35 PM EDT On Friday, Jessica Gresko at the Associated Press reported on the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority board of directors' Thursday vote to "suspend issue-oriented advertisements until the end of the year." Though they wouldn't admit it, the board's move was obviously a reaction to Pamela Geller's request to post an ad from her American Freedom Defense Initiative (AFDI) which included a cartoon depiction of Muhammad. Gresko actually used the T-word — terrorists — to describe the two men who were killed when they attempted to attack Geller's Muhammad Art Exhibit & Contest in Garland, Texas on May 3. But she ruined with her preceding modifier: "would-be."
While it's an improvement over the repeated use of "militants" and "gunmen" to describe people who are in fact terrorists, it's still far from sufficient, and still horribly inaccurate.