Category: Liberal media bias

In todays media environment we now have to find sources of information we trust to give us the news and opinion based on accepted fact as much as possible. My trust began to fade when Walter Cronkite said the US cannot win in Vietnam, 27 February, 1968 (https://archive.org/details/report-from-vietnam-feburary-27-1968) on his CBS news program. I was in college but was to be commissioned as a 2d Lieutenant in the Marines in 2 years. Tell me the facts, let me interpret.

CBS continues in that tradition. Last Sunday 60 minutes interviewed Germans about suppressing AfD, the Populus party in the upcoming election almost with glee, as if agreeing this was a good idea. Earlier that day Margaret Brennan interviewed Secretary Rubio who was in Germany as is noted below in an article in National Review.

CBS Sunday morning is still on our watch list but I fast forward segments that preach a left infected viewpoint.

 

My one quibble with Vance was that, as an extremely educated man, he knew well enough as he delivered his words that Europe had never had an American-style commitment to free speech; the concept is largely alien to the continental tradition of “democracy” and has eroded desperately in England — the land where it was first partially conceived, if never perfected. I made that argument even though I know the barest amount about modern European history, just enough to get me past my AP exams in high school. Margaret Brennan, however — the host of CBS News’ Face the Nation — apparently doesn’t even know that much. She argued to Secretary of State Marco Rubio that the sort of “free speech” JD Vance spoke in favor of is what caused (you guessed it!) the Holocaust:

Well, he was standing in a country where free speech was weaponized to conduct a genocide, and he met with the head of a political party that has far-right views and some historic ties to extreme groups. The context of that was changing the tone of it. And you know that, that the censorship was specifically about the right.

Give Rubio his due, he wasn’t willing to put up with Brennan’s absurdity for a moment. He immediately shot back: “Free speech was not used to conduct a genocide. . . . There was no free speech in Nazi Germany. There was none. There was also no opposition in Nazi Germany.” An excellent response, but one that of course didn’t go far enough: There was no free speech in Weimar Germany either. Hitler was banned from public speaking after the Beer Hall Putsch until 1927; he used his legally enforced “silence” to portray himself during that time as a populist martyr, until his influence grew to overwhelming levels.

What brought Hitler to power wasn’t “free speech”; it was German politics, and most especially the Germans themselves (which is why I’m closer than most to Norm Macdonald in my attitude toward Deutschland). In fact, there is no free speech in modern Germany, certainly not as we Americans understand it, for precisely the same reason. Free speech is not the problem, and the aggressive and heavy-handed censorship of “bad speech” is guaranteed to only make matters worse. I strongly agree with CBS News in rejecting the Alternative für Deutschland party; my problem is that CBS News seems to believe that Germany’s repulsive anti-free-speech police regime is a proper alternative for America.

I’ll also confess — as a cord-cutter and immensely slothful political columnist — that I was largely unfamiliar with Margaret Brennan until she started blowing herself up in public like this repeatedly over the past few weeks. I’m not proud of my ignorance, mind you, so I went back to search my archives here at National Review just to see if she had popped up in my writing before.

And as it turns out, she had: in a piece about the 2024 vice-presidential debate between JD Vance and Tim Walz. Brennan caught my attention — and that of others in the media — for cattily flipping a kill-switch to cut off Vance’s microphone after she had attempted to “fact-check” him (incorrectly) during a debate where the moderators had explicitly promised they would dispense with their transparent biases. His answer was so smoothly prepared that the moderators visibly panicked and tried to prevent him from finishing his sentence. Vance had already won the debate by the time of the exchange, but it was the icing on the cake for him that night, as the man who had to be silenced for being too good at this.

The next time Brennan came to my political attention, of course, was with her inaugural interview with . . . none other than JD Vance, on January 26, 2025. This is the one that resulted in Vance’s infamous “I don’t really care, Margaret” line, the one that has quickly become a national political meme as a paradigmatic example of the contemptuous dismissal of the mainstream media. (This is another way of saying that I quite enjoyed the moment.)

And now here we are, with Brennan blowing her own intellectual credibility with the public in the worst possible way — this time opposite Marco Rubio — and it sure cannot help but seem strangely coincidental that, once again, her flash point is JD Vance. A colleague of mine theorized that Brennan intensely resents Vance for successfully turning her into a joke, the embodiment of every tut-tuttingly officious Democratic apparatchik in the media, and that this motivated her to slip her rhetorical leash, resulting in her on-air humiliation on Sunday. I think he is correct. But I think Brennan conceived her dislike for Vance long ago — during, if not before, the vice-presidential debate — and now seems ready to go Captain Ahab on him . . . the consequences to the rest of her crew be damned.

 

 

 

John Durham just indicted Mr. Sussman, a lawyer with the law firm closely associated with the HRC campaign for lying to the FBI. He represented himself as a concerned citizen exposing the link between the Trump campaign and a Russian bank. What he didn’t do is tell the FBI he was an integral part of the HRC organization.

We have seen light starting to come to the alleged effort to attach Trump to the Russians as false. Already an FBI lawyer has pleaded guilty to changing a document before the FISA court to allow Carter Page to be surveilled. What he deleted would have disallowed that surveillance.

We know the MSM gobbled all this up with gracious enthusiasm and filled the airwaves with little or no investigation.

I watch both CNN and Fox, CNN has mentioned the indictment, but only mentioned. I wish I had a way of seeing how much time both networks spent talking about John Durham’s investigation.

By the way, I can’t stand Trump as a person. I did agree with about 60% of his policies.

 

Peace

“Trump’s initial comments on voter fraud came Monday during a meeting with congressional leaders, where he reiterated an unsubstantiated claim that 3 to 5 million illegal votes cost him the popular vote, according to two sources familiar with the meeting.”  This from CNN

Three to five million votes would be about 3% of those cast in 2016 (136,628,000). Every media outlet is repudiating what our president is saying; dismissing his statement and adding it to the evidence that Trump is an idiot, not fit to be president. It seems high to me also. But there seems to be some smoke in the air. Voter ID, a sensible idea, not prejudicial.

So, the WSJ on February 2d, 2017, has an editorial about a 2013 investigation in NYC by their department of investigation that looked at voter records, etc. http://www1.nyc.gov/assets/doi/downloads/pdf/2013/dec13/BOE_Unit_Report12-30-2013.pdf

Page iii of this report tells what happened when 63 investigators went out to vote fraudulently, 61 were successful.  The NYC election board then wanted to prosecute them for voter fraud!  The DA did not.

National Review wrote an article in 2013, below, http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/367278/report-new-york-investigators-obtain-fraudulent-ballots-97-percent-time-john-fund

Caucasians voting where the registered voter is mixed race, a 20 year voting for a 63 year old; and it goes on. Is it five million, who knows? Do we have a problem, there certainly is smoke around up. Voter ID, not prejudicial, only sensible.

Report: New York Investigators Obtain Fraudulent Ballots 97 Percent of Time

by JOHN FUND December 31, 2013 8:25 AM @JOHNFUND

New York City’s Department of Investigation (DOI) has just shown how easy it is to commit voter fraud that is almost undetectable. Its undercover agents were able to obtain ballots for city elections a total of 61 times — 39 times using the names of dead people, 14 times using the names of incarcerated felons, and eight times using the names of non-residents. On only two occasions, or about 3 percent of the time, were the agents stopped by polling-place officials. In one of the two cases, an investigator was stopped only because the felon he was trying to vote in the name of was the son of the election official he was dealing with. Ballot security in checking birth dates or signatures was so sloppy that young undercover agents were able to vote using the name of someone three times their age who had died. As the New York Post reports: “A 24-year female was able to access the ballot at a Manhattan poll site in November under the name of a deceased female who was born in 1923 and died in April 25, 2012 — and would have been 89 on Election Day.” All of the agents who got ballots wrote in the names of fictitious candidates so as not to actually influence election outcomes. Last year, guerrilla videographer James O’Keefe sent hidden cameras into polling places around the country to demonstrate just how easy it is to commit voter fraud and how hard it is to ever know it happened. In Washington, D.C., one of his assistants was able to obtain Attorney General Eric Holder’s ballot even though Holder is 62 years old and bears no resemblance to the 22-year-old white man who obtained it by merely asking if Holder was on the rolls. In New Hampshire, poll workers handed his assistants ballots in the names of ten dead people. After a public outcry, New Hampshire’s legislature passed a photo-ID law over the veto of the state’s Democratic governor. But opponents of photo-ID laws scoffed at O’Keefe’s revelations. The Department of Justice, which is currently suing Texas to block that state’s photo-ID law, dismissed the Holder ballot incident as “manufactured.” The irony was lost on them that Holder, a staunch opponent of voter-ID laws, could have himself been disenfranchised by a white man because Washington, D.C., has no voter-ID law. Polls consistently show that more than 70 percent of Americans — including clear majorities of African Americans and Hispanics — support such laws.  An even richer irony is that it is the people Attorney General Holder purports to speak for — the poor, often minority, inner-city residents — who suffer the most from voter fraud. As law professor Glenn Reynolds of Instapundit noted: “Many of America’s largest and worst-governed cities suffer from entrenched and corrupt political machines that maintain their position in no small part via voter fraud. Corrupt machines (like that of Detroit’s disgraced ex-Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick) siphon off money that should go to essential services and instead divert it to political fatcats and their supporters.” But after O’Keefe’s stings, the elite media once again yawned and dismissed concerns about voter fraud. New York magazine asked if it were possible to organize fraudsters to go to different polling places to vote for a particular candidate. “Sure, it’s probably doable,” they concluded. “But it has never happened. . . . National Weather Service data shows that Americans are struck and killed by lightning about as often [as voter fraud happens].” But how would we know fraud had occurred if procedures are as lax as New York’s Department of Investigation found? If one of the undercover agents had cast a vote for a real candidate, would any of the dead people, felons sitting in jail, or out-of-city residents have complained? “It could be the perfect crime because once a secret ballot is cast you can’t go back and identify one that’s fraudulent,” former California secretary of state Bruce McPherson once told me. “Because it’s so hard to detect is why strong prevention measures against fraud, like clean voter rolls, voter ID, and better security on absentee ballots are vital.” The issue of dead people on the voter rolls is a real one: A 2012 study by the Pew Research Center found that nationwide that are at least 1.8 million deceased voters still registered to vote. The New York Department of Investigation’s report doesn’t address the serious issue of absentee-ballot fraud, where at least a paper trail to catch fraud can be created. But it does highlight a troubling case indicating that voter impersonation Chicago-style is still with us. The report noted that the Gothamist newspaper had reported that in New York City’s September primary election: People had attempted to vote for other registered voters at IS 71, a poll site in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. DOI spoke with four poll workers assigned to IS 71 who cited multiple instances of young men they believed were attempting to vote for other registered voters at IS 71 during the 2013 primary and additional instances during the 2013 runoff election. Two of the poll workers recalled instances where young men who appeared to be 19 or 20 years old sought to vote as registered voters who were in their thirties or sixties based on the dates of birth recorded in the registration books. One of the poll inspectors stated that she asked some individuals to confirm their dates of birth, after which they typically walked away without voting.” The city’s Board of Elections monitored that polling site for the rest of the day but how much hanky-panky could have been happening at the city’s other polling places? The DOI report paints a scathing picture of a Board of Elections chock full of political patronage employees and rife with “systemic problems with accountability, transparency and dysfunction.”   As the New York DOI report demonstrates, it is comically easy to commit voter fraud in person, and, unless someone confesses, it’s very difficult to ever detect — or stop. The Gothamist reported that police officers observed the problems at IS 71 last September but did nothing because voter fraud isn’t under the department’s purview. Opponents of photo-ID laws — which the DOI report does not address — claim they will block people from voting. But there are very few cases of legitimate voters who have been unable to have their vote counted because they lacked ID. People who show up without photo ID at the polls are allowed to cast a provisional ballot that is counted after proof of identity is offered. “From voter fraud to election chicanery of all kinds, America teeters on the edge of scandal every November,” writes Larry Sabato, the director of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia and author of a comprehensive survey of voter fraud called “Dirty Little Secrets.” The fact that so many people want to thwart legitimate and prudent efforts to improve ballot integrity has become a scandal in its own right.

Read more at: http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/367278/report-new-york-investigators-obtain-fraudulent-ballots-97-percent-time-john-fund

The above title is from an article by Stuart Taylor Jr. (author and non resident senior contributor to the Brookings Institute). He talks about the HBO offering “Confirmation” focused on the 25th anniversary of the confirmation hearings of Clarence Thomas for SCOTUS.

“Despite the a surface appearance of fairness, “Confirmation” makes clear how it wants the hearings to be remembered: Ms. Hill told the whole truth and Mr. Thomas was thus a desperate, if compelling liar. Her supporters were noble; his Republican backers were scheming character assassins.” Quoting the article.

I guess it is OK to make a movie purported to be factual when it is not, “The Butler” comes to mind, anything by Oliver Stone, Roger Moore, etc. Why is it that our media, which includes Hollywood, determines it is OK to put out stuff that is so biased as to be actual lies, or just selective in which facts it presents and feels OK to say, “based on a true story” as their license.

Dramatic license doesn’t give anyone the right to misrepresent the facts of a case.  If you are going to make a movie, or show, about a factual event please tell us your bias, as noted above, or make it a documentary and present both sides.

The article last year about a rape at U. Va. is an example. A young, needy woman created a story in order to attract the attention of a young man, and Rolling Stone then proceeded to blow her insecurities into a giant story.  The magazine is being sued, as well they should be as Columbia School of Journalism even agrees they were negligent.  The reporter, Ms. Erderly, is still writing for the magazine.

“Rolling Stone publisher Jann S. Wenner told The New York Times the article was flawed, but “represented an isolated and unusual episode.” Wenner told the Times that Erdely would continue as a freelance writer and that Managing Editor Will Dana, the article’s editor Sean Woods and the fact checker, who was not named because she had no decision-making ability on publication, would not be fired.
Breaking News at Newsmax.com http://www.newsmax.com/Newsfront/erdely-reporter-apologize-university-of-virginia/2015/04/05/id/636540/#ixzz49O1JyWsJ ”

The young woman “Jackie” was not prosecuted for slander, libel, etc. The fraternity has suffered mightily, The University has gone through massive turmoil. “Jackie” has walked away from the consequences, even Michael Smerconish recently spoke about her culpability.

Has our media learned anything?  Probably not. We need to be our own fact checkers!  Facebook just this last week has been accused of bias in reporting the news.  Everyone is aghast. Well don’t be, everyone is biased, some do a better job of trying to present both sides, most don’t.

 

 

Hype: As the attorney general threatens to prosecute Americans for anti-Muslim hate crime, Muslims are faking anti-Muslim hate crimes across the country to prop up the fiction that Muslims are victimized in the U.S.

The latest fabrication involves the torching of a Houston mosque on Christmas Day. The arson was quickly seized on by the national media and Muslim-rights groups like the Council on American-Islamic Relations, which demanded that police investigate it as a hate crime.

“We urge law enforcement authorities to investigate a possible bias motive for this fire,” CAIR’s Houston chapter said in a statement.

Federal authorities did investigate, and they collared a suspect. Sorry, CAIR, he’s not a Muslim-hating Trump supporter. He’s a Muslim.

Not only that, he’s a longtime member of the damaged Islamic Society of Greater Houston mosque, where he prayed five times a day, seven days per week.

Last Christmas, a similar incident was reported at a mosque in Fresno, Calif.; and in a similar rush to judgment, the media joined Muslim groups in accusing anti-Islamic bigots for the vandalism of the Islamic Cultural Center there.

Only, it turned out that the incident was not an act of “Islamophobia” at all.

As in Houston, the damage was self-inflicted by a member of the mosque. Police arrested Asif Mohammad Khan. They said that he was an admirer of Osama bin Laden.

These are hardly isolated cases of Muslim groups and their media apologists misleading the public about anti-Muslim hate crimes.

They are part of a long series of events — including pure fabrications — that serve to portray non-Muslims as threats and deflect attention away from Muslims as the real threats. Learning from other groups, they’ve discovered that racism can be blamed for almost everything.

• October 2014: Two Muslim activists released a video showing NYPD cops harassing and “racially profiling” Muslims just for wearing Islamic garb. The video went viral; CAIR demanded an investigation for discrimination. But the whole thing was staged. The cops weren’t even real.

• June 2014: After three burned Qurans were found in front of a mosque in Dearborn, Mich., the imam there led a campaign to pass a local statute criminalizing the desecration of holy books. The media ran with it, and his crusade gained traction — until it was revealed that the Quran barbecuer was none other than a Muslim named Ali Hassan al-Assadi.

• April 2014: After murdering his wife, a Muslim man in El Cajon, Calif., made it look like an anti-Muslim bigot did the crime. He left a note with her body that read: “Go back to your country, you terrorist,” which led the media to report the murder as an “Islamophobic” hate crime.

Read More At Investor’s Business Daily: http://news.investors.com/ibd-editorials/010516-788209-muslims-fake-hate-crimes-to-serve-political-agenda.htm#ixzz3wl8M52Oa
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