There is a battle of funny headlines playing out across America. According to the Wall Street Journal, “Suspects Roused by Jihadist Thought.” Surprisingly, the New York Times headline was “Boston Suspect Cites Islamic Extremist Beliefs as Motive”. Unsurprisingly, they changed it to “Boston Suspects Are Seen as Self-Taught and Fueled by Web”. Note that now, instead of fueled by religious zeal, it’s the series of | Read More »
UPDATE: Let me add up top an update out of the gate. The issue here is not RedState, but a larger issue among conservatives as we keep growing new and expanding existing outlets for reporting the news. With our jobs board up (if you haven’t noticed), I want to help put solid conservatives in reportorial positions throughout the movement. Now is the time to stop | Read More »
Monday I was privileged to participate in the Hoover Institution’s Media Colloquium at Stanford University.
Perhaps you, like me, are aware of but unfamiliar with the Hoover Institution. The Institution is considered a Conservative think tank, and according to Wikipedia is “influential in the American conservative and libertarian movements.” It supports individual, economic, and political freedom; private enterprise; and our form of representative government based upon the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.
During the Colloquium, along with two dozen other journalists, I spent a very interesting day exploring foreign and domestic policy issues facing President Obama and the 113th Congress, with a number of accomplished academics. We discussed the economy, the national debt, the fiscal cliff, the sequester, taxes and too big to fail with Michael Boskin and Kevin Warsh; Obama’s reelection and dissociation theory with Shelby Steele; the future of Conservatism, and his new book Constitutional Conservatism: Liberty, Self-Government, and Political Moderation, with Peter Berkoowitz; national security issues including cyber and drone warfare with Amy Zegart; and the Middle East and Iran’s nuclear ambitions with Abbas Milani.
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If you ever needed a reminder of how pathetic the cast of clowns who make up the reporters and journalists in the media is, look no further than the David Gregory story and the reaction to it from the press corps. It is a non-story to them. Glenn Thrush, debating this with me on twitter notes, “The more [you] talk about the fake Gregory story | Read More »
So I read this opening sentence from a Politico article about the White House press corps reacting to… well, read: The White House Correspondents Association is strongly urging the Obama administration to allow press access to the president’s official swearing-in ceremony on Jan. 20, following indications from inauguration committee officials that the event could potentially be closed to the press. – and I have to | Read More »
Barack Obama has lost North Carolina and Florida. His ground game is at near parity in early voting with the GOP, the GOP is more energized, and he is going to lose both. But he will not stop spending money in those two states and redirect the resources to Ohio, which is now a must win state for him. He will not do it because | Read More »
Was Joe Biden on drugs or did he use Al Gore for his debate prep? That’s the question anyone viewing the debate on TV should be asking. Biden’s appalling petulant behavior, in conjunction with the moderator’s refusal to moderate the debate instead of debate the debate, allowed Biden to get out of control and make a clown of himself. That is all anyone will remember. | Read More »
I was too hard on Chuck Todd in my earlier post. I apologize to him for it. My point was not to brow beat Chuck Todd, but many people took it as such. I have to conclude I failed to convey the extent of my point because in focusing as I did on Chuck Todd and his remark, I overshadowed the substance of his remark. | Read More »
I got a great laugh out of this Chuck Todd near meltdown on Meet the Depressed the other day. His voice quivered in moral outrage over Jack Welch suggesting something was up with the unemployment numbers last Friday. Chuck Todd proclaimed, “What we’re doing, we’re corroding trust in our government in a way, and one time responsible people are doing to control it. And the | Read More »
For all the talk of how amazing and respected Barack Obama is in international circles, foreign media outlets fairly often end up doing the kind of reporting one might hope the American media would do on him. Yes, while the American media was busy manufacturing outrage over a Romney statement that was essentially right, foreign outlets were doing real reporting. I’ll start off with the German magazine Der Spiegel, which | Read More »
Update 12:45pm: The White House has issued a “clarification” of President Obama’s “not an ally” remark about Egypt. In brief, it amounts to “that’s a technical term and we don’t like technical things.” From Foreign Policy: “I think folks are reading way too much into this,” [White House spokesman Tommy] Vietor said. “‘Ally’ is a legal term of art. We don’t have a mutual defense | Read More »
For a very long time the media has hyped organic foods as somehow better than the derisively called “frankenfoods” — those genetically modified to be higher in crop yield or exhibit other qualities. The media has also hyped organic as being safer than non-organic foods treated with pesticides, etc. Turns out, it’s all media driven nonsense. More and more studies are showing there really isn’t | Read More »
Remember the media’s rush to immediately call out “lies” after last week’s Republican National Convention speeches? Compare the scrutiny (and repetition of Obama campaign tweets and emails) given last week with this tweet from ABC News’s Senior Washington Editor, posted during former president Bill Clinton’s DNC address:
this speech was a living, breathing organism. the crowd, the hall, the speech, one. #DNC2012
— Rick Klein (@rickklein) September 6, 2012
Is there any question why the absurd claim of media “objectivity” is being treated more and more like the badly-delivered joke it is by the American public? Read More >>
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Evidently the poor professional press is finding the 2012 slog less than fully enjoyable. ”If there is one narrative to anchor what often feels like a plotless 2012 campaign,” writes Dylan Byers in a Politico article titled “Reporters: We Loathe 2012 Campaign,” it’s ” media disillusionment.” His first citation is of New York Times Magazine‘s Mark Leibovich, who wondered “How am I ever going to get through [the 2012 campaign]?” in an August 29 article entitled “Feel the Loathing on the Campaign Trail.”
Byers effectively demonstrates that media members are having less fun covering the current election than they have past elections – particularly the one four years ago – but he has little to say about why that is. The best he seems able to do is to attribute the lack of enjoyment to the campaigns’ supposed decision to “run out the clock” on the 2012 election, saying the same things over and over while playing it safe with their statements and positions.
Reading between the lines, though, there’s a far bigger issue at play here – an 800 lb gorilla of sorts – in the form of alternative media, and the loosening effect direct communication outlets have had on the vise grip with which the establishment media once commanded the flow of information. Read More >>
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Under the improbable headline “Media: Obama is egotistical, selfish, dull,” Politico‘s Dylan Byers noted Monday that over the Labor Day weekend, “major media outlets…lobb[ed] five high-profile bombs at the incumbent.” The article itself isn’t as noteworthy as the title, which is particularly eye-catching from a political publication whose left-leaning orientation is well known.
The examples Byers points to come from the New York Times, the Washington Post, HuffPo, the Wall Street Journal, and his own Politico. Let’s take a quick look at them – and at the laugher that a senior campaign official offered in response.
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