los angeles times

Obamacare Penalty Starts Hitting Taxpayers, Nets Ignore in 91% of Stories
By Joseph Rossell | April 9, 2015 | 10:09 AM EDT

Surprise! Millions of uninsured Americans could owe Uncle Sam extra this tax season because of Obamacare. The IRS began penalizing tax filers this year if they failed to purchase insurance in 2014. Obamacare, formally known as the Affordable Care Act (ACA), included an insurance mandate.

Americans must buy qualified health insurance or face the larger of two tax penalty options when they file their 2014 taxes: $95 per adult and $47.50 per child up to $285 per family, or 1 percent of income up to $9,800, according to Kaiser Health News. These penalties are also scheduled to increase dramatically in the following years.

AP, Fortune, Other Media Overlook Communist Imagery in Taco Bell Attack on McDonald's
By Joseph Rossell | March 26, 2015 | 3:44 PM EDT

Many in the liberal news media again demonstrated their inability (or unwillingness) to identify communism when they see it.

Fast food restaurant Taco Bell “pulled out all the stops” with its new ad released March 24, according to The Hollywood Reporter. Although the ad did not mention McDonald’s by name, The Daily Mail also said the video portrayed “McDonald’s as a communist dictatorship where boring breakfasts rule.”

CNN Ends 2014 With All-time Low Ratings, MSNBC Falls to Third Place Among News Channels
By Randy Hall | December 30, 2014 | 6:18 PM EST

Just when it seemed that things couldn't get any worse for the liberal Cable News Network and MSNBC channels, the Deadline website released a year-end review by reporter Lisa de Morales on ratings for CNN in prime time, which hit an all-time low of 516,000, and viewers in the vital 25- to 54-year-old demographic fell dramatically to 126,000, the second lowest number ever.

Meanwhile, the “Lean Forward” network lost 17 percent of its prime-time demographic audience to end 2014 with a viewership of 169,000 in the demographic and a total audience of 590,000. While these numbers outpaced CNN's ratings in this category, MSNBC fell far below its competitor in several other statistics.

Major Newspapers Turn Down Pro-Life Ad, Baby Image 'Too Controversial'
By Randy Hall | July 6, 2013 | 5:45 PM EDT

Liberal newspapers across the nation have no problem selling advertising space for pictures of babies to promote such products ranging from diapers to online investment firms. However, three major papers -- USA Today, the Los Angeles Times and the Chicago Tribune -- rejected an ad from a pro-life organization that showed an infant at roughly 20 weeks' gestation because it's “too controversial.”

An article by Caleb Parke on the Live Action News website stated that the ad featured an illustration of an adult hand holding a 20- to 24-week-old baby with the quote: “This child has no voice, which is why it depends on yours. Speak up.”

23 Liberal Media Outlets, Including MSNBC Defend IRS Tea Party Probe
By Mike Ciandella | May 17, 2013 | 11:51 AM EDT

Blame the victim! Twenty-three liberal news operations have taken that strategy about the IRS attack on conservative nonprofits. Fifteen of the 63 members of the left-wing Media Consortium have thrown their support behind the IRS’s investigation. The 15 organizations either wrote or re-posted stories defending the IRS actions.

Another eight liberal outlets, including MSNBC, ran similar stories. Altogether, these outlets have received a combined total of more $14 million dollars from George Soros’s Open Society Foundations since 2000.

The IRS admitted to giving extra scrutiny to applications for nonprofit status from groups with words like “tea party” or “patriot” in their descriptions. After this revelation, at least 25 media outlets ran stories arguing that “The IRS was doing its job,” “the IRS was justified,” and that the only crime the IRS committed was “the sin of political correctness.”

L.A. Times Laments Occupy Protests' Lasting Impact: Restrictions on Protesters
By Jeffrey Meyer | December 7, 2012 | 1:14 PM EST

In what appears to be the latest homage to the moribund if not completely defunct Occupy movement, Los Angeles Times writer Frank Shyong chronicled the lasting impact of the movement in a December 7 article, gushing that in its heyday it had “enjoyed widespread popularity, and politicians responded with resolutions of support.” 

Shyong lamented, however, that “as demonstrations wore on and public sentiment shifted, cities got tougher with protesters.” Oddly enough, Shyong failed to note a huge factor in the shifting public sentiment: Occupy camps were plagued with violent crimes, including rape. What's more, on at least one occasion, a child was left abandoned in one of the squalid squatters' camps.

Dutch Politician Prosecuted for 'Insulting Muslim Worshipers', Where's the Media?
By Stephen Gutowski | January 27, 2009 | 5:51 AM EST

In a move strikingly similar to Canada's inquisition of Mark Steyn a Dutch court has ordered that Freedom Party leader Geert Wilders be prosecuted for expressing his belief that there is a clear connection between Islam and violence. Wilders is the creator of a movie titled "Fitna" which seeks to "stop Islamisation" and "defend our freedom". He has also equated the Koran to Hitler's infamous Mein Kompf. Apparently those are both criminal acts in the Netherlands nowadays.

Here's how the BBC described the court's order:

The three judges said that they had weighed Mr Wilders's "one-sided generalisations" against his right to free speech, and ruled that he had gone beyond the normal leeway granted to politicians.