Conspiracy Theories

For Media, 'Birthers' Are Big News; Socialists, Not So Much
By Lachlan Markay | December 7, 2010 | 12:55 PM EST

Which is crazier: believing President Obama was not born in the United States or is actually a Muslim, or believing in total state control of the economy? If you answered the latter, you are probably not a journalist.

The mainstream press went absolutely nuts over an August Pew poll showing that 18 percent of Americans believed that Obama was a Muslim. There was also considerable media chatter over a CNN poll that same month, which found that 27 percent of Americans thought Obama was "probably" or "definitely" born abroad.

But so far, reporters have been eerily silent on a Rasmussen poll showing that 27 percent of Americans believe the federal government should "manage the economy" - as distinguished from simply providing services like Social Security or unemployment insurance.

Judge Andrew Napolitano: Another 9/11 Truther on Fox's Staff?
By Lachlan Markay | November 30, 2010 | 11:35 AM EST

Fox News apparently employs a pair of 9/11 "Truthers": Geraldo Rivera, host of FNC's "Geraldo at Large", and, we've recently discovered, Judge Andrew Napolitano, who hosts "Freedom Watch" on the Fox Business Network.

Both Napolitano and Rivera have, er, raised questions about the "official" (read: commonsensical) explanation for the collapse of the WTC7 building on September 11, 2001. This conspiracy theory has been thoroughly debunked a number of times. Apparently Geraldo and the Judge are not convinced.

Angry Liberals Twist Bristol Palin’s ‘Dancing’ into Tea Party ‘Conspiracy’
By Matt Philbin | November 23, 2010 | 12:19 PM EST

Those Tea Partiers – is there anything in this nation they can’t spoil? They’ve already gummed up the president’s agenda with their rallies and signs and voting. Now, they’re trying to ruin “Dancing with the Stars!”

So says the left and many in the media agree. Now that newly resurgent conservatives have handed them a crushing mid-term defeat, liberals are seeing nefarious Tea Party plots everywhere – including in silly entertainment shows. And they’re taking plenty of shots at Bristol and, predictably, her mother.

Sarah Palin’s daughter Bristol, 20, has done remarkably well in this season’s “Dancing with the Stars” competition on ABC. As she’s advanced from week to week, buoyed by viewer voting, entertainment reporters and liberals have become increasingly frustrated.

Video below the fold.

MSNBC's Cenk Uygur Claims George W. Bush Confessed to 'War Crimes' in New Memoir
By Alex Fitzsimmons | November 4, 2010 | 6:49 PM EDT

In an attempt to re-litigate the past, MSNBC contributor Cenk Uygur indicted former President George W. Bush for war crimes.

Bellowing today from his regular perch on late afternoon Dylan Ratigan Show, Uygur mischaracterized the 43rd President's position on the waterboarding of 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed as "go ahead and torture him basically" before demanding that Bush be prosecuted for allegedly violating Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions.

"Now it seems to me we have a confession here of a war crime and a clear violation of international and United States law," proclaimed Uygur. "President George W. Bush should go to jail for at least 10 years."

The alleged "confession" Uygur referred to is an excerpt from Bush's new memoir, Decision Points, in which the former commander-in-chief reaffirms his decision to condone the use of waterboarding as an enhanced-interrogation technique for suspected terrorists.

 

CBS Affiliate Fires Two After Joe Miller Voicemail Controversy
By Rusty Weiss | November 2, 2010 | 10:43 PM EDT

Reporters from a CBS affiliate in Alaska recently left an accidental voicemail message for an aide to Senate candidate Joe Miller, in which producers are heard discussing the possibility of reporting on the appearance of a child molester at a Miller rally.  Essentially, they could be heard conspiring to create or fabricate stories.  The incident was so outrageous, it prompted Sarah Palin to refer to the reporters as ‘corrupt bastards.’

After initially claiming their employees were taken out of context, the General Manager at KTVA has announced the termination of two individuals involved in the conversation.

In the press release, KTVA’s investigation states that:

“The recorded conversation in question specifically involved how that evening's Miller rally might be promoted and the ensuing dialogue went downhill from there. These particular comments were not in line with KTVA standards.  As a result of this incident, the two producers involved in the recorded conversation are no longer with the station.”

This is a far cry from the station’s original response to the incident, in which they stated:

Schultz Claims GOP Wants to Create 'Little China Workforce' Out of Uneducated Americans
By Alex Fitzsimmons | October 15, 2010 | 3:26 PM EDT

In his latest meandering diatribe, MSNBC left-wing bloviator Ed Schultz yesterday hilariously mischaracterized the Republican Party's position on education reform as a scheme to create a cheap labor force of ignorant Americans by abolishing public education.

"They want us to be just like the folks in Indonesia," fumed Schultz. "They love the cheap labor. They love the 40 cents an hour stuff. So the best thing we can do on the right is what they're saying: let's just eliminate, let's abolish public education."

The incensed host of "The Ed Show" pressed on, invoking identity politics:

Joy Behar Hosts Truther Jesse Ventura to Decry 'Spineless Puke' Bill O'Reilly's 9/11 'Hate Speech'
By Lachlan Markay | October 15, 2010 | 10:50 AM EDT

For Joy Behar, saying Muslims killed Americans on September 11, 2001 is "hate speech," but saying the American government did it is perfectly acceptable and well within the bounds of civil discourse.

That, at least, is the standard she set forth yesterday, first throwing a temper tantrum on "The View" when Bill O'Reilly noted the religious identities of the 9/11 terrorists, and then calmly sitting down to discuss the incident with 9/11 truther Jesse Ventura.

"I question 9/11, I got a conspiracy theory." Ventura made sure to note at the outset. "So who's to say [Muslims] actually did [perpetrate the attacks] or not."

Behar's response: "Well that's another thing, yeah" (video and transcript below the fold - h/t Allahpundit).

How Is It 'News' for Time to Hype 'Extreme Militias' In the Last Weeks of a Campaign?
By Tim Graham | October 7, 2010 | 11:16 PM EDT
Time magazine's news judgment is truly puzzling. With just weeks to go before a crucial midterm election, their cover story package is ten pages stuffed with “The Secret World of Extreme Militias.” Voters are poised to sweep a pile of Democrats out of office from coast to coast, and they're camped in Zanesville, Ohio with a right-wing militia that claims 300 members as the nation's number one news story? (Katie Couric tweeted on Wednesday that she was eagerly reading it.)

Time editor Richard Stengel announced they gave new hire Barton Gellman six months in the field chasing the whisper of a possibility that some new Timothy McVeigh might emerge and vindicate this bizarre investment of effort. Just weeks after they asked on the cover if America was Islamophobic, it's clear that once again, Obama's sinking popularity reveals an ugly America that can't accept the gift they elected.

While Gellman opened with the usual hackneyed portrait of a Midwestern militia on wacky military exercises against an undefined enemy, it's clear that their deep anxiety over Obama is the main thread. A militia resurgence “now is widely seen among government and academic experts as a reaction to the tectonic shifts in American politics that allowed a black man with a foreign-sounding name and a Muslim-born father to reach the White House.”

NewsBusters 5th Anniversary: A Look Back at Some of Our Top Posts of Outrageous Media Outbursts
By NB Staff | August 23, 2010 | 10:18 AM EDT
As part of the 5th anniversary celebration of NewsBusters we h
Henry Rollins Knows What’s Wrong with American Education – and Guess Who’s to Blame
By Rusty Weiss | August 13, 2010 | 11:59 AM EDT
On the heels of a new College Board report that the United States is struggling to compete with other countries when it comes to college completion rates, Vanity Fair's resident straight talker, Henry Rollins, has figured out the problem.  The education system isn't struggling because of possible factors contained within the report, such as:
  • Inadequate funding of preschool programs
  • Poor college counseling programs for middle and high school aged children
  • High school dropout rates
  • A lack of international standardization for curriculum
  • Skyrocketing costs of education

No, Henry has stumbled onto the real, super secret reason why students are failing to finish their college work:  Sarah Palin and George Bush. 

To be accurate, it's not so much the direct fault of Palin and Bush - rather, it is those of you who support them, their stupid comments, and their intellectually uninterested ways.  Their fans see them as real people and because of that, they feel comfort in an unchallenging environment.

Rollins explains why ‘America doesn't seem to value a college education the way it used to':

Reality Check: Fox News Hosts Had Nothing to Do With Shirley Sherrod Resignation
By Lachlan Markay | July 22, 2010 | 12:24 PM EDT

UPDATE (3:20 PM): A couple of quotes below the fold demonstrate just how ideologically diverse critics are who note that Fox played no direct role in Sherrod's resignation. Pundits from the Washington Post and National Review weigh in.

Shirley Sherrod placed the blame for her ouster at Fox News's feet. Hardly surprising. She's a liberal (former) member of a liberal administration. More surprising, given the clear preponderance of facts contradicting this meme, is that much of the media has followed her lead.

Ironically, while a number of mainstream media outlets claim that Fox News is responsible for getting Sherrod to resign, Fox's first call for a resignation, made by Bill O'Reilly just before 9:00 pm on Monday, came roughly an hour after Sherrod had actually resigned.

In other words, Fox News exerted no meaningful pressure on the administration to take any specific actions with regard to Sherrod before the administration took those actions on its own accord. FoxNews.com had run a story earlier (no longer available on its site) displaying Breitbart's video and reporting what were then assumed (erroneously, it turns out) to be the facts of the situation - Sherrod had acted in a condemnable, racist manner.

In Light of NAACP Condemnation, Media Brings Back Tea Party Fraud
By Rusty Weiss | July 21, 2010 | 11:59 PM EDT
Memo to media members wishing to invite the Tea Party Founder on your show, or use him as a source for your biased reports:  He isn't exactly who you think he is.

Since the NAACP voted to condemn extremist elements in the Tea Party, news networks, sites, and liberal blogs have rushed to include ‘Tea Party Founder', Dale Robertson, in their reports.  Problem being, Dale Robertson as Tea Party anything has frequently and thoroughly been, um ... ‘refudiated'.   

Despite this, the media has a history of holding Robertson up as a shining example of Tea Party racism.  Why?  Robertson once demonstrated a level of ignorance that boggles the mind by holding a sign reading "Congress = Slaveowner, Taxpayer = (N-Word)", at a Houston Tea Party Society (TPS) event.

The reality however, is that Robertson has predominantly self-described, if any, links to the Tea Party movement, while legitimate factions of the movement have had to repeatedly distance themselves from the man.  Robertson was expelled from the event at which he was holding the aforementioned sign on the very same day.  He was formally denounced in a statement released by the Houston TPS.  He was called ‘no friend' of the Tea Party at Pajamas Media, and mocked at RedState.  He was shown to be for his infamous sign, before he was against it.

So logically, the media has decided to help further the cause of the NAACP by bringing Robertson back out of the shadows.  Since word of the the NAACP resolution got out, Robertson's name has appeared at...