Tag: journalism

More reporters admit to being threatened by the White House.

7:29 pm

More reporters admit to being threatened by the White House.

What is shameful about this is how willing these reporters — some of whom are quite powerful — to tolerate this abusive, intolerant, and even oppressive behavior from this White House. Imagine if an official in the Bush White House had done the same? Would these same reporters have simply shrugged their shoulders and made believe it didn’t matter? Not on your life.

In other words, these mainstream reporters are nothing more than boot-licking lackeys for Obama and the Democratic Party. They will tolerate any abuse in order to support their liberal policies and to remain their friends.

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Bob Woodward said today that a senior White House official threatened him for his critical reporting of Obama concerning sequestration.

11:41 pm

Transparency! Bob Woodward said today that a senior White House official threatened him for his critical reporting of Obama concerning sequestration.

A more detailed report can be found here, with this quote:

The Obama aide, Woodward told Politico, “yelled at me for about a half hour” as well. “I’ve tangled with lots of these people,” Woodward said. “But suppose there’s a young reporter who’s only had a couple of years – or 10 years’ – experience and the White House is sending him an email saying, ‘You’re going to regret this.’ You know, tremble, tremble, tremble. I don’t think it’s the way to operate.”

Update: The White Office has backed down, making public an email written by that senior official to Woodward, apologizing for the above-mentioned threats.

Update #2: Meanwhile, partisan Democrat Lanny Davis has said that he too has been threatened by a senior White House official for writing columns that are critical of Obama.

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“It is big media institutions who are identifiably more liberal to left-leaning who will shut you down, stab you and kill you, fire you, if they perceive that you are not telling the story in the way that they want it told.”

9:37 pm

Leftwing tolerance: “It is big media institutions who are identifiably more liberal to left-leaning who will shut you down, stab you and kill you, fire you, if they perceive that you are not telling the story in the way that they want it told.”

Note that this was not said by a conservative, but by a very liberal commentator with whom I generally disagree. He should know, however, as he was fired by a leftwing “big media institution” for not toeing the line.

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Two days ago the Congressional Budget Office increased its projection for the cost of Obamacare by 29 percent, while also saying that seven million workers will lose their health insurance due to the law, almost twice as many as previously estimated.

1:03 pm

Not fit to print: Two days ago the Congressional Budget Office increased its projection for the cost of Obamacare by 29 percent, while also saying that seven million workers will lose their health insurance due to the law, almost twice as many as previously estimated.

As noted at the link, not one news organization has seen fit to mention this juicy tidbit in their news reports. I wonder why?

Meanwhile, we will go bankrupt. This law, and the government that is imposing it on us, is unsustainable.

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Stuck in Atlanta

3:21 am

First of all, thank you to all who have donated money to Behind the Black. You cannot imagine how much this is appreciated.

Second, I am stuck in Atlanta due to bad weather, including a tornado, plus the typical lies of airport employees. Had the Delta airline agents told me the truth about the bad weather in Atlanta when I was still in Phoenix, I would have grabbed a different flight to get to New York and make my flight to Israel. Instead, they lied — a typical behavior I have found from too many airline customer service agents — and told me I would have no trouble meeting my New York connection. I didn’t. They lied. GRRR.

Anyway, as I am here I have decided to try to take advantage of the delay to begin the tedious process of adjusting to Israeli time, getting up at 3 am, which is 10 am in Israel. Hopefully this will make the transition in Israel much easier.

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Pretend gun control!

10:09 am

Now this is a great idea: Pretend gun control!

What we can do is pass a law banning a bunch of made-up things that sound scary, and many gun control proponents already have great ideas along this line. For instance, I read a column in which Howard Kurtz mentioned a ban on high-magazine clips — we can certainly do without something that nonsensical. And I’ve heard the press before mention armor-piercing hollow points and plastic guns (actually, I think we already banned that made-up weapon in the ’80s). And as long as the NRA and Wayne LaPierre go apoplectic about it (“This ban on sorcerer-enchanted guns is just a slippery slope toward eliminating all witch-hexed weaponry!”), gun control proponents won’t know the difference between this and actual gun control.

Considering the level of ignorance about guns exhibited by every one of the gun control advocates, both politicians and media pundits, I almost think we could get away with this.

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“2012 was the worst year for fabrication and plagiarism since I began collecting data in 2005.”

7:12 pm

The sad state of modern journalism: “2012 was the worst year for fabrication and plagiarism since I began collecting data in 2005.”

Silverman runs the website Regret the Error, cataloging journalistic errors and misconduct. This is his summary of this past year, and it ain’t pretty. The worst part is that there were a number of journalists on this list — CNN host and Time magazine editor Fareed Zakaria being the most prominent — who were caught either faking their stories or plagiarizing the work of others who were let off with a mere slap on the wrist. Consider that the next time you listen to Zakaria on CNN.

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Thank You, David Gregory

12:48 pm

“Thank you, David Gregory.”

Then there’s this: Laws are for little people.

To Howard Kurtz & Co., it’s “obvious” that Gregory didn’t intend to commit a crime. But, in a land choked with laws, “obviousness” is one of the first casualties — and “obviously” innocent citizens have their “obviously” well-intentioned actions criminalized every minute of the day. Not far away from David Gregory, across the Virginia border, eleven-year-old Skylar Capo made the mistake of rescuing a woodpecker from the jaws of a cat and nursing him back to health for a couple of days. For her pains, a federal Fish & Wildlife gauleiter accompanied by state troopers descended on her house, charged her with illegal transportation of a protected species, issued her a $535 fine, and made her cry. Why is it so “obvious” that David Gregory deserves to be treated more leniently than a sixth grader? Because he’s got a TV show and she hasn’t?

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Sequestration and NASA

9:49 am

Here we go again. Yesterday an aerospace organization, Aerospace Industries Association, released a sixteen page report [pdf] claiming that NASA will lose 20,500 jobs and NOAA 2,500 if the federal government goes over the “fiscal cliff” and sequestration happens.

Immediately, a slew of news articles xeroxed this report to pound home this point, noting the job loses for the specific cities of each newspaper and how disaster awaits the country if sequestration is allowed to take place and we go over that blessed “fiscal cliff”:

The trouble is, this is all hogwash and bad journalism.
» Read more

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Has Curiosity made a big discovery?

10:04 am

Has Curiosity made a big discovery?

There has been a lot of buzz the past twenty-four hours about the possibility of a major discovery from Curiosity. However, I agree with Jeffrey Kluger at Time. It is dangerous to pay much attention to these wild speculations, as they are often wrong. Stay calm, and wait for some real information. The most likely possibility is that they have found something very intriguing and exciting, but not Earth-shaking.

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This year’s Walter Duranty Prize for dishonest and corrupt journalism.

3:30 pm

This year’s Walter Duranty Prize for dishonest and corrupt journalism.

The award is named after the New York Times Moscow Bureau chief from 1922 to 1936, who

whitewashed the repressive evil deeds of the Soviet Union, leading to that country’s recognition by none other than Franklin D. Roosevelt, while winning a 1932 Pulitzer Prize for his efforts.

[Duranty] did this whitewashing most prominently in the case of the Ukrainian Holodomor: the forced starvation of between 1.2 and 12 million ethnic Ukrainians, depending on whose estimates you believe. In other words, a lot of people. Duranty called that genocide “an exaggeration and malignant propaganda” in the newspaper of record. He also covered up the show trial of the British engineers who were tortured into falsely confessing that they were trying to sabotage Stalin’s Five-Year Plan … and similar events … all the time excusing those Soviet misdeeds with what became his personal mantra: “You have to break a few eggs to make an omelet.”

Meanwhile, he fiercely attacked those who dared criticize him, particularly the brave Welsh journalist Gareth Jones, who risked his life to report on the Holodomor, and the British author Malcolm Muggeridge, who returned the compliment by calling Duranty: “The greatest liar I have met in fifty years of journalism.”

Virtually the same year he was winning his Pulitzer, Duranty was reassuring Soviet authorities that he would allow them to vet all reports about their country before they appeared in The New York Times — effectively making that newspaper a U.S. branch of Pravda, for a time anyway.

Read or watch the whole thing (video at the link). The speeches are both sad and hilarious.

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“The end of the media’s infatuation with Obama may be the greatest casualty of the debate.”

1:09 pm

“The end of the media’s infatuation with Obama may be the greatest casualty of the debate.”

This analysis is fascinating, as it notes a significant shift in the press’s normally lapdog Democratic Party spin effort to a much more hostile approach. If this is true, that the leftwing press has decided to stop protecting this administration, than Obama and the Democrats have no chance come election day.

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How ABC News destroyed a company with false allegations, and is now being sued for $1.2 billion because of it.

6:23 am

How ABC News destroyed a company with false allegations, and is now being sued for $1.2 billion because of it.

Though this attack by ABC was not obviously political, it followed the same pattern as their coverage of politics. They had an agenda, they pursued it without mercy, and they did so with a complete disregard for the facts. I hope they lose big in this case.

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The French magazine whose offices were firebombed last year after publishing an issue ridiculing Mohammad is about to do it again.

2:55 pm

Go for it! The French magazine whose offices were firebombed last year after publishing an issue ridiculing Mohammad is about to publish another issue doing the exact same thing.

Charlie Hebdo’s latest move was greeted with immediate calls from political and religious leaders for the media to act responsibly and avoid inflaming the current situation. Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault issued a statement expressing his “disapproval of all excesses.”

The magazine’s editor, originally a cartoonist who uses the name Charb, denied he was being deliberately provocative at a delicate time. “The freedom of the press, is that a provocation?” he said. “I’m not asking strict Muslims to read Charlie Hebdo, just like I wouldn’t go to a mosque to listen to speeches that go against everything I believe.”

I say, good for the magazine Charlie Hebdo. And more publications should join in! If a lot of people make fun of Islam and Mohammad, it will make it very difficult for the religion-of-peace’s firebombing and rioting mobs to keep up.

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