By P.J. Gladnick | July 30, 2009 | 9:26 PM EDT

Call it the Press Conference From Hell.

Toledo mayoral candidate Ben Konop, an earnest young liberal, thought it would be a great idea to conduct a press conference in front of the home where his mother grew up. Little did Ben know that Maxwell the Heckler, the next door neighbor, would completely destroy his press conference and forever burn that incident into the public memory of Mr. Konop. To get the full hilarious flavor of how Maxwell destroyed the press conference, take a look at the video.

Most of the heckling consisted of "Boo! LIAR! BOOOOO!"

The first reaction of your humble correspondent when watching that video was that Maxwell the Heckler was some sort of anarchist bent on destroying Konop's press conference in a humorous way just for the sake of fun. However, upon investigation, it turns out that Maxwell the Heckler was actually "speaking truth to power," a favorite leftwing slogan.

By Mitchell Blatt | June 29, 2009 | 6:21 PM EDT
Wikipedia can be a vehicle for tearing down barriers and democratizing information. Unless the New York Times is involved.

Just as the Times was able to keep 40 other media organizations from reporting on the capture of their own David Rohde, so too were they able to keep Wikipedia from reporting it. They also used his Wikipedia page to try to win favor with the Taliban.

Just three days after Rohde was captured, a user edited his Wikipedia page to reflect his capture, but that edit was quickly deleted, and with the help of Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales, news of Rohde’s capture was kept off the page until his release.
By Noel Sheppard | June 13, 2009 | 11:45 AM EDT

Starting July 1, the Associated Press will begin publishing articles produced by nonprofit organizations, all four of which are left-leaning.

I guess they couldn't find any conservative nonprofits.

As reported by the New York Times Saturday (h/t Paul Chesser):

By Noel Sheppard | March 8, 2009 | 8:41 PM EDT

Wikipedia users have scrubbed all references to homegrown terrorist William Ayers and the controversial Rev. Jeremiah Wright from Barack Obama's entry at the online encyclopedia.

Apparently, any information posted about Ayers or Wright in the text of the Obama biography is not only immediately taken down, but the offending user is banned for three days.

Such was revealed by WorldNetDaily moments ago:

By P.J. Gladnick | October 9, 2008 | 2:17 PM EDT

(Wikipedia has now removed Obama's name from their "New Party" Wikipedia page. See update at bottom of this blog for details.)

By Mike Bates | September 19, 2008 | 9:33 PM EDT

On PBS's Web site today, ombudsman Michael Getler writes of complaints over an incident during last Sunday's pledge drive.  He describes the cheap shot taken by actor Mike Farrell against vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin:

According to Joseph Campbell, vice president of fundraising programs, here's what happened:

By Mike Bates | September 10, 2008 | 11:40 PM EDT

 On CNN's American Morning today, White House correspondent Suzanne Malveaux reported on Barack Obama's campaigning in Virginia.  Afterwards, anchor Kiran Chetry had a question:

CHETRY: All right. And Suzanne, what's on tap for the campaign today? And please tell me it's not lipstick again.

MALVEAUX: Let's hope not. He's going to be in Norfolk, Virginia. That is in southeast Virginia, and it's home to the world's largest Naval base. It's one of the most competitive areas that the Democrats and Republicans are fighting over. It's a critical piece of property, piece of land there with folks in Virginia, and they want those voters.
By Tom Blumer | September 7, 2008 | 10:10 PM EDT

It remains to be seen whether this turns out to be Barack Obama's "Christmas in Cambodia" untruth, his Dukakis-in-tank hilarity -- or both.

Regardless, what follows is a pretty obvious "misstatement" that would not possibly be ignored if it were uttered by a conservative or a Republican.

In his hilariously titled post ("Mighta Joined If He Coulda Capped Some Cong") on Barack Obama's interview in a barn this morning (not kidding) on This Week with George Stephanopoulos, fellow NewsBuster Mark Finkelstein reported on Obama's answer to a viewer's question about whether he ever considered military service. You can read Mark's post for his overall thoughts, but I want to focus on something the Illinois senator said that several commenters at the post took exception to (photo courtesy DayLife):

You know, I had to sign up for Selective Service when I graduated from high school. .... But keep in mind: I graduated in 1979.

There are only two "little" problems:

By Tom Blumer | August 28, 2008 | 2:49 PM EDT

WikiBidenObama0808.jpgIn a "Leading the News" story primarily about Democratic Vice Presidential nominee Joe Biden's prior praise of John McCain, Susan Crabtree at The Hill noted previous posts made by yours truly about the alterations made to Biden's Wikipedia entries shortly before and after he was named by Barack Obama.

Those posts showed that at least these changes were made since I downloaded -- and kept -- Biden's main Wiki entry on Friday:

  • (at NewsBusters; at BizzyBlog) The details of Biden's undergraduate grades went away, and other text in the related paragraph was worked over.
  • (at NewsBusters; at BizzyBlog) The section relating to 2004 under "Presidential Campaigns" was deleted, and most of the text that had been contained there moved to a section before the 1988 campaign. It was if the idea that Biden campaigned for the presidency was true before Obama selected him, and not true after that.
  • (at NewsBusters; at BizzyBlog) The footnote relating to the original entry's claim that Biden had only plagiarized British politican Neil Kinnock one time, which never related to that claim anyway, was removed. Further, no Wiki entries relating to Biden -- before or after -- adequately described the full extent of his 1987 plagiarism, which included Kinnock at least one and probably several other times, and other plagiarizing of John F. Kennedy, Robert F. Kennedy, and Hubert Humphrey.

What Ms. Crabtree wrote follows. It includes some follow-up she did, which is in bold:

By Tom Blumer | August 25, 2008 | 11:14 AM EDT

Joe Biden's 1987 stump-speech plagiarism of Neil Kinnock likely occurred more than once. Additionally, according to contemporaneous New York Times reports, including an editorial, Biden's orations featured unattributed speech-lifting from John F. Kennedy, Robert Kennedy, and Hubert Humphrey.

That's a lot more than Joe Biden's defenders and two of his Wikipedia entries have thus far revealed.

Previous posts (here and here at NewsBusters; here and here at BizzyBlog) noted "interesting" modifications to the main Wikipedia entry of Biden, who Barack Obama selected as his vice-presidential running mate this past weekend.

The first post reported that the detail of Biden's undergraduate grades (generally C's and D's, with two A's in phys ed and an F in ROTC) "strangely" disappeared between Friday and Saturday. The second ultimately noted that a section relating to Biden's involvement in the presidential campaign of 2004 had been deleted, but that its text had inexplicably been moved to before 1988. It was as if the idea that Biden had "campaigned" in 2004 was true before Barack Obama selected him, but no longer true after that.

But to get to the next example of Wiki whitewashing by Obama-Biden's busy bees -- the worst found thus far -- we need to go back 21 years to the New York Times.

By Tom Blumer | August 24, 2008 | 11:56 AM EDT

The Friday evening version of Joe Biden's Wikipedia entry remains firmly ensconced in a Firefox tab on my desktop, so it can be compared to its current form as Obama-Biden's busy bees brush it up. I'm doing comparisons as time allows, and there isn't much of it at the moment.

One thing is quickly obvious -- a section heading for a whole year has disappeared:

BidenWikiSun082411AMvFri0822

Amazing. Where did 2004 go?

You'll just loooooove what got moved to a different and less logical section of the entry, while the section "2004" went away (Note: I originally believed that the text in the "2004" section had been deleted; also see my comment below):

By Tom Blumer | August 23, 2008 | 11:46 AM EDT

Well, well.

The portion of Joe Biden's Wikipedia entry relating to his 1988 presidential campaign has been worked over a bit.

Specifics relating to his undergraduate grades have strangely disappeared. There are other subtle changes as well.

Comparison pics are after the jump.