So how does the Washington correspondent for Nancy Pelosi's hometown newspaper, the San Francisco Chronicle, explain away Nancy Pelosi's disastrous news conference on Thursday in which she accused the CIA of lying?
Simple. Blame it all on the evil Republicans and portray the House Speaker as the victim of political gamesmanship.
Such was the laughable premise of Carolyn Lochhead in her Chronicle article:
There's a legitimate debate to be had about the media's coverage of the alleged epidemic of "sexting" -- teenagers sending pornographic or suggestive photos of themselves nude or semi-nude via cell phone.*
After all, the media are well-known to glom onto a few anecdotes and drum up a "growing trend" without the benefit of empirical data to back up the alarming claim. That being said, San Francisco Chronicle columnist Mark Morford is not the petulant adolescent man to make that point.
Indeed, Morford actually aims at excusing sexting altogether, all while distorting and mocking average Americans' sexual mores in his May 15 column, "You Dirty Kids!":
From Editor & Publisher yesterday (bold is mine):
The Audit Bureau of Circulations released this morning the spring figures for the six months ending March 31, 2009, showing that the largest metros continue to shed daily and Sunday circulation -- now at a record rate.
According to ABC, for 395 newspapers reporting this spring, daily circulation fell 7% to 34,439,713 copies, compared with the same March period in 2008. On Sunday, for 557 newspapers, circulation was down 5.3% to 42,082,707. These averages do not include 84 newspapers with circulations below 50,000 due to a change in publishing frequency.
Below is a chart showing the specifics for the top 25, including percentage losses for the past four years and during the past year (current year source: Editor & Publisher):
Want to see the bitterness of media elitism? Take a look at what San Francisco Chronicle's environmental blog, "The Thin Green Line," thinks of the public's attitude about global warming.
According to an April 17 Rasmussen Reports poll, only one out of three voters believes global warming is caused by human activity. For Cameron Scott of the Chronicle's "The Thin Green Line," this isn't due to the public's ability to discern a hoax when they see one, but a so-called "disinformation campaign," as he explained on an April 18 post.
"This is the most successful disinformation campaign in the history of the world (it's largely financed by fossil fuel companies)," Scott wrote. "There is virtual scientific unanimity on the issue: Natural planetary trends alone cannot account for the rapid changes we are currently witnessing."
Back on March 15, Noel Sheppard noted that the San Francisco Chronicle completely ignored the thousands of average Americans that came together in Cincinnati, Ohio to protest Obama's unprecedented take over of the US economy. The Cincinnati Tea Party truly was massive but is just one of the many dozens of Tea Party protests that have occurred -- and are continuing to occur -- all across the country in the last two months. Still, the SF Chronicle didn't see any reason to cover the rally.
But never fear for the Chronicle does enjoy a good protest, nonetheless. As long as it's of a leftist, anti-war flavor, of course. Witness the Chron's coverage of the "Massive anti-war, anti-Wall Street protest in San Francisco" from this weekend, March 21.
This rally was no bigger (and arguably smaller) than the anti-Obama protests in Cincinnati, yet the Chronicle reserves the word "massive" for the anti-war/anti-Wall Street protest while offering no coverage at all for the one in Cincy. If size was the key here, as the Chronicle's headline seems to note, then why ignore the likely bigger protest in Ohio only a week ago?
Despite being in so much financial trouble it could be facing extinction, the San Francisco Chronicle continues to be one of the most disgraceful newspapers in the country.
In a piece dealing with Saturday's anti-war protest held in the City by the Bay, the authors disgustingly felt the need to share with their readers a truly offensive t-shirt that was for sale at the event (file photo):
On March 9, the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee held a hearing on one of Barack Obama's latest nominees. This time it was to assess the suitability of Tony West, Obama's nominee for the assistant attorney general in charge of the U.S. Justice Department's Civil Division. Things went "smoothly" according to the San Jose Mercury News, also publishing a nice bio of West. The Washington Post merely mentioned the hearing was "notable." Similarly the East Bay Express simply makes mention of the hearing having occurred. Apparently there was nothing of interest in West’s nomination.
Curiously enough, though, not one of these brief reports mention that Tony West was "American Taliban" terrorist John Walker Lindh's defense lawyer. Another key bit of info left out of these announcements was that Tony West raised $65 million for Obama's presidential campaign. Money well spent if it gets a cushy government job, I suppose.
NBC White House political director Chuck Todd appeared on MSNBC’s "Morning Joe" on Monday to dismiss Rush Limbaugh as "looking backward" and deride the radio industry as a "dying medium." Todd (see file photo above), who was talking with co-host Mika Brzezinski about Limbaugh’s role as a leader in the Republican Party, also suggested a linkage between the radio host and far left bomb thrower Michael Moore. He insisted, "They [Democrats] want to do to the Republican Party what Republicans tried to do to the Democrats with Michael Moore and all that stuff."
Speaking of radio, Todd sniffed, "But, it’s that idea that Limbaugh- even the whole- even the venue that he’s on, radio, not the internet. You know, it’s very ‘90s. It’s very backwards- is looking backwards." He added, "And, you know, radio is a dying medium, potentially- as it is just in general."
He concluded, "It is a backward-looking technology." Of course, it’s the newspaper industry that many would call a "dying medium." (The San Francisco Chronicle is just one of many papers to face bankruptcy recently.)
Well, the San Francisco Chronicle's Mark Morford out does himself with sycophantic, hyperbole over his Obammessiah, today, February 27. He so revels in hero worship for The One, it's amazing that the White House doesn't feel compelled to get an order of protection against this creepy columnist.
No one in the Old Media is more sold on The One and less credible for his girlish crush than Morford. He is a fount of mush as he wonders if he should be scared of today's problems or suffused with lust in his heart for Obama (if you'll remember the Carterism).
All this caused a firestorm of anry reaction on the Web including even a StephenFowlerSucks.com blog. However, despite the immediate notoriety of Fowler in the blogosphere, Fowler's hometown newspaper, the San Francisco Chronicle, neglected to publish a story about their most "distinguished" citizen for weeks. When an article was finally published, the Chronicle neglected to go into any real detail of Fowler's hideous behavior. Check out their highly abridged version of what happened written by Justin Berton and all you can figure out is that Fowler may have been just a bit impolite:
When University of Washington Professor Eric Steig announced in a news conference and paper published in the January 22 edition of the journal Nature that he and several colleagues removed one of many thorns in the sides of climate alarmists -- in this case, evidence that Antarctica is cooling -- he received extensive worldwide attention in the mainstream press.But when a noteworthy error was found in Stieg's research less than two weeks after it's publication, of the mainstream press, only an opinion column in the London Telegraph and a blog associated with the Australian Herald Sun carried the news.The Stieg paper's release was covered by 27 newspapers, including the New York Times, San Francisco Chronicle & Los Angeles Times, by CNN, by the Associated Press, by NPR and quite a few others (see reviews of the coverage at the end of this post).After independent analyst Steve McIntyre discovered a major error in the data, and released his results on his influential blog Climate Audit beginning on February 1, based on a Nexis search I conducted today, none of these outlets chose to inform their readers.Here's how the Stieg research showing supposed warming was received by the mainstream press:
Here's something you don't see every day.
A video report about last night's riot in Oakland related to the shooting death of an unarmed man at the hands of a Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) police officer actually calls it .... a riot. What's more, the reporter notes, as is really often the case in situations such as these, how people he characterized as "professional protesters" egged others on and created the atmosphere that led to so much violence and vandalism.
CBS5 reporter Joe Vazquez filed "Inside the Oakland Riot: A First-Hand Account." It's a little too "gee whiz" to me, but it least it gets some usually unreported facts out.
Here is the full text of the video: