Fake News
April 11, 2024 — John Hinderaker
I don’t really have much of a comment on this. I suppose it reflects the obsession with Donald Trump that has driven most of the traditional media off a cliff. But still, it is weird at best: Quite a mistake. https://t.co/s85xdoVa4T — Byron York (@ByronYork) April 11, 2024 It will be interesting to see whether the Times’ correction tries to explain the error. It would be hard to explain without
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April 10, 2024 — Lloyd Billingsley
Tom Ashbrook treated him fairly but Steve slams NPR’s Susan Stamberg and Noah Adams in fine style. Consider also NPR host Terry Gross, who conducts fascinating interviews with writers, musicians and artists. With guests on the political side, on the other hand, the critical skills and background knowledge seem to disappear. In February of 2019, Gross interviewed former FBI deputy director Andrew McCabe, author of The Threat: How the FBI
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April 9, 2024 — Steven Hayward
One of the classic articles from 30 years ago that still gets recalled fondly was Glenn Garvin’s “How Do I Hate NPR? Let Me Count the Ways,” which I think first appeared in the late Washington DC City Paper. Even back then I referred to NPR’s two main shows, “Morning Edition” and “All Things Considered” as “Morning Sedition” and “All Things Distorted.” The very voice tones of Susan Stamberg and
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April 8, 2024 — Lloyd Billingsley
Of COURSE it was scripted. If it hadn’t have been @sagesteele – the dumbest person I’ve ever worked with in sports or news – couldn’t have gotten through it. I mean Jesus, if this happened to you, you’d just assume it WASN’T being done to protect the network from you humiliating it – and yourself? That was Keith Olbermann, after Sage Steele revealed that her 2021 interview with Joe Biden
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April 7, 2024 — John Hinderaker
In the Wall Street Journal, Holman Jenkins reviews the dishonorable role that the intelligence community played in the 2016 and 2020 elections, and predicts more of the same. In 2016: A Democratic presidential campaign, representing the incumbent party, fabricated evidence that its Republican opponent and the eventual president-elect was a Russian agent, and the in-power party’s FBI legitimated the evidence in the eyes of the media so it would be
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April 4, 2024 — Lloyd Billingsley
And I was told, “You will say every word that we write out, you will not deviate from the script.” To the word. Every single question was scripted, gone over dozens of times by many editors and executives. Absolutely. I was on script and was told not to deviate. . . It was very much “This is what you will ask. This is how you will say it. No follow-ups.”
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April 2, 2024 — John Hinderaker
This morning’s New York Times email tells its subscribers that Russia and China are rooting for Donald Trump to win the 2024 presidential election: America’s biggest adversaries evidently want Donald Trump to win the 2024 presidential election. Vladimir Putin’s preference for Trump has long been clear. And now China’s government is taking steps to help Trump’s presidential campaign. The idea that either Russia or China prefers Trump to Joe Biden,
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March 26, 2024 — Steven Hayward
When I heard NBC News was hiring recently dismissed RNC chair Ronna McDaniel my first thought was, but of course they are! She was a mediocre RNC chair with little rhetorical flair or depth, and NBC News was hiring her because she’d help the cause of making Republicans look bad. (See: Michael Steele, the other former RNC chair that MSNBC hired and who now spouts reliably anti-conservative views on command.)
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March 22, 2024 — John Hinderaker
When we started this site, exposing mainstream media bias was a big part of our mission. Using the then-new internet, we and many others held liberal outlets (i.e., virtually all of them) accountable in a way that hadn’t happened before. The effect of that effort was not that the liberal press became more accurate or more objective. Rather, they came out of the closet. For the most part, they no
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March 20, 2024 — Steven Hayward
As you may know, the mainstream media is going through massive layoffs, to which a paraphrase of the great Oscar Wilde line comes to mind—one has to have a heart of stone not to laugh at massive media layoffs, given the increasing partisan mendacity and advancing mediocrity of the mainstream media. So guess what is proposed to reverse this dire situation? Behold The Jacobin (which is certainly an appropriate name
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March 5, 2024 — Steven Hayward
Some things even the Babylon Bee can’t make up: MSNBC staffers scatter after bed bugs found at Manhattan HQ ahead of Super Tuesday coverage: ‘They’re scrambling Bed bugs found at MSNBC’s Manhattan headquarters caused staffers to scatter ahead of the left-leaning network’s Super Tuesday coverage, The Post has learned. According to a memo obtained by The Post, an “unidentified insect” was spotted Sunday in the recently revamped studio 3A —
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March 3, 2024 — Lloyd Billingsley
When you watch Walter Cronkite, my recent piece should have read, “you not only CBS but hear it too.” That was certainly true, particularly of Cronkite’s Vietnam coverage, but as Douglas Brinkley explained in the 819-page Cronkite, there’s more that people should know. Cronkite had worked with Sidney Lumet to adapt the radio show “You Are There” for television. Lumet directed Network, which Cronkite saw in a private screening. As
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March 1, 2024 — Lloyd Billingsley
As in Christian Nationalism Nonsense, and the always insightful Mark Tapson explains it for you: The label “Christian nationalism” is the new Progressive dog-whistle for “scary American patriots.” It signals to Progressives that Americans who love God and country – which used to be the norm before our descent into a post-Christian, post-patriotism culture – are a subversive danger to democracy. Christianity, after all, imposes a moral code that chafes
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February 25, 2024 — John Hinderaker
One of the big stories in the New York Times today is another Clarence Thomas smear, but with a twist: “Justice Thomas Hires Law Clerk Accused of Sending Racist Text Messages.” The story is about Crystal Clanton, who graduated from the Antonin Scalia Law School at George Mason University in 2022. She is coming off a clerkship with Judge William Pryor of the 11th Circuit, who calls her “an outstanding
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February 19, 2024 — John Hinderaker
In 1962, there was a Senate race in South Dakota between Republican Joseph Bottum and Democrat George McGovern. The seat was open due to the death of Republican Francis Case. I was just a kid, but I remember that election well. Bottum was the favorite, but in the closing days of the race the Democrats spread a rumor that he was an alcoholic. That ploy may have been crude, but
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February 11, 2024 — Steven Hayward
One of the most valuable lessons I learned from M. Stanton Evans about the modern media is that the predominant method should be understood as “ventriloquist journalism,” that is, prestige reporters at the premier outlets like the NY Times, Washington Post, and the TV network news bureaus don’t really report at all. For every issue or event that occurs, the media already know what they think is the narrative of
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November 26, 2023 — John Hinderaker
Are journalists, as a group, the least intelligent of any profession? I think they may be, and the war between Israel and Gaza is bringing out the worst in them. Check out this exchange, in which a clueless reporter floats the theory that the ratio of terrorists to innocent hostages released under the recent agreement is evidence of Israeli racism: The first question that left me speechless (but only for
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