MSM Obama Confession Time: WashPo, NewsWeek, MSNBC, LA Times

Bias on Record:
Washington Post
Chris Matthews
Newsweek
Los Angeles Times

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Mainstream Media: Yes We Can!

Deborah Howell, the ombudsman at the Washington Post completely agrees [An Obama Tilt in Campaign Coverage]:

The Post provided a lot of good campaign coverage, but readers have been consistently critical of the lack of probing issues coverage and what they saw as a tilt toward Democrat Barack Obama. My surveys, which ended on Election Day, show that they are right on both counts.

Human Gaffe Machine Joe Biden?

One gaping hole in coverage involved Joe Biden, Obama's running mate. When Gov. Sarah Palin was nominated for vice president, reporters were booking the next flight to Alaska. Some readers thought The Post went over Palin with a fine-tooth comb and neglected Biden. They are right; it was a serious omission.

John at Power Line wasn't surprised [Ho Hum] and offers a possible solution.

Howell finds that the Post's coverage of Sarah Palin was especially biased. To which my response is, tell us something we didn't already know. Anyone who can still be shocked by newspapers' liberal bias hasn't been paying attention for a long time. The Washington Post is a Democratic newspaper, and a good one, for the most part. As I've said before, the Post is the most respectable voice of the Democratic Party. But it would be foolish to expect objectivity from what is essentially an arm of the Democratic Party.

Conservatives should stop talking about media bias and start founding (or buying) some newspapers of our own. Of course, until that happens we'll probably still complain about bias from time to time.

Ed Morrissey at Hot Air [Right on time!] sums up DBKP's position on the matter exactly.

Why didn’t the Post want to look at the files of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, Barack Obama’s only executive experience prior to his run for the presidency? The media never bothered to make a hundredth of the effort on Obama that they did with Palin, and they had two years to do it.

That’s the issue Howell should have addressed in her column. We already know that the Post gave imbalanced coverage of Obama and McCain, as did most of the rest of the media. And now Howell gives the mea culpa in her first column after Election Day, when it’s far too late to do anything about it. Where was Howell during the last three months? Why wait until the election is over to speak up? That’s an answer in itself.

Gateway Pundit has a video of MSNBC's Chris Matthews. [Now That the Election is Over... Media Admits Bias For Obama] Matthews declares that his job as a journalist is to continue his Grand Obama Pimp he perfected during his election coverage.

There will be no traditional press honeymoon between Chris Matthews and Barack Obama, Matthews already having been guilt of the press equivalent of premarital sex.

Journalists not only love new...
They love Democrats.
Sarah Palin was new but they raked her over the coals.
Such is the demise of our mainstream media.
The one thing that is clear after this election-- If you want to find the truth you will have to go elsewhere for your news.

Two words-- Rashid Khalidi.

Jammie Wearing Fool, WaPo Ombudsman: Yes, We Were Completely In the Tank for Obama :

They found plenty of space to go over McCain's health in agonizing detail but ignored Obama's drug use, shady connections and mysterious undergrad years.

I'm sure they'll make up for their grossly imbalanced coverage now that their guy is safely in office. And I have an oceanfront spread in Wyoming up for sale.

It's to the Washington Post's credit to admit that its coverage emanated from within the tank. We may see more stories like this.

More likely, we'll see the usual apologia from the MSM about how they were non-biased stalwarts looking out for the interests of the unwashed sheeple who remain as their customers.

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NEW YORK Times



Since the NY Times ceased being a serious journalistic endeavor some time ago, we'll let its horrific coverage of Election 2008 pass without comment.

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LA Times and the Khalidi Video

The Lost Angeles Times' refusal to release the video of the Obamas, Rashid Khalidi and Bill Ayers is well-documented. The LA Times previously had ordered its reporters not to write on their blogs about John Edwards getting caught leaving his mistress Rielle Hunter's room at the Beverly Hilton--even after it had been confirmed by Fox News.

* Obama, Khalidi Hidden Video: The Evolution of the LA Times Excuses
* LA Times Obama-Rashid Khalidi Video: $175,000 Reward Offered for Tape
* Obama-Khalidi Tape: Blogger Obtains Quotes from Hidden Video UPDATED
* John Edwards-Rielle Hunter Love Child: LA Times Censors Reporters on Story

As the LA Times mulls over further lay-offs, it might examine its refusal to provide its remaining customers with a product they seek: news.

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NewsWeek Keeps its Obama Thoughts to Itself--until AFTER the Election

Mikes America, at Flopping Aces, tipped off a post election admission from Jon Meacham and Evan Thomas of Newsweek on Charlie Rose: Newsweek Editors: Obama a “Creepy,” “Deeply Manipulative,” “Creature”

Why didn’t they say this in their magazine BEFORE the election?

Yesterday I shared with you the audio of Tom Brokaw being interviewed by Charlie Rose where both men admit they don’t know who Obama really is or what he intends to do in office. Now, a post election admission from Jon Meacham and Evan Thomas of Newsweek; also interviewed by Charlie Rose. Audio is provided with commentary by Rush Limbaugh (transcript):

FA provides the Brokaw video, as well as a transcript, ending with the following observation by MA:

At what point will Meacham and Thomas, along with Brokaw and so many others face the fact that they committed journalistic malpractice by hiding the character concerns they are only now sharing about Obama? Were they just tooooo busy digging dirt on Sarah Palin’s children and Joe the Plumber to tell the American people what a “creepy,” “manipulative,” “creature” Obama is?

Yes, they kept all of this out of their publication before the election.

Again, we'll give Meachum and Thomas credit for admitting their bias.

As with the others, they get absolutely no credit for being journalists--their professed profession.

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by Mondo Frazier
images: dbkp file

Sarah Palin 'Unnerves' NewsWeek Elitist Sam Harris; An Atheist Responds

Sam Harris Doesn't Speak for Me
The Crack Emcee
The Macho Response




Response from an Atheist

[NOTE: An interesting rebuke of Newsweek's Sam Harris and his opinion piece, "When Atheists Attack".

Harris wrote that he was 'unnerved' when he heard Palin speak at the Republican Convention. Harris reveals much more about himself than Sarah Palin. Newsweek subheaded the Harris piece, "A noted provocateur rips Sarah Palin—and defends elitism." Of course, readers of Newsweek know that a writer need be neither a "provocateur" nor "noted" to attack Sarah Palin.

But then, readers of Newsweek, largely a cult following these days, might be unnerved by the "news" magazine's declining subscription base.]

I got a call today from one of my best friends, asking me if I'd read Newsweek magazine recently; specifically Sam Harris's article on Sarah Palin called, "When Atheists Attack". I told him no; that though I am an atheist, I'm not a fan of Sam Harris, and don't trust the stance he's taken in the dialogue on atheism - because he's another angry Buddhist - which I regard as a spiritual con, beyond weird, a sign of elitist liberalism, and - as practiced in the West - part of the NewAge (rhymes with sewage) movement that I despise.

My friend, who sits on the fence in regards to a lot of political and theological arguments, read me a few of Harris's paragraphs about Palin that he found troubling. But, while doing so, my friend also gave me further reason to dislike the elitist Harris even more.

Let me explain:

See, I'm not like other atheists in a number of ways: though born an atheist, I've always considered the battle, and taken-offense, over "In God We Trust" on money (or the phrase "Under God" in the Pledge Of Allegiance) to be silly. For me, God is not "dead" but merely outgrown his usefulness. I understand why, mostly as a response to communism, presidents say "God bless America", and why these gestures were made historically, so they don't bother me a bit. They're nothing to rail against. They're anachronisms, kitschy, and (though I'm loathe to admit it) touching, threatening my atheism not one iota. I guess I'm saying I find many atheists, and the planks they stand on, petty, laughable, and weak, and that's also how I feel about Harris's critique of Palin as well.

Harris starts off with the confession that he "was genuinely unnerved by Sarah Palin's performance at the Republican convention" because it was "the most effective political communication" he'd ever seen. Considering how much we in the general public knew about Palin at that juncture, what was Harris afraid of? Why wasn't this man, who I suspect is a feminist, overjoyed to see this "sexy" woman (Harris's word) break the glass ceiling of presidential politics? He claims it was because "if anyone could make Christian theocracy smell like apple pie, Sarah Palin could", but I suspect - as the early, and hypocritical, attacks on Palin indicated - it was mostly because this married mother of five clearly wasn't a card-carrying member of the so-called "progressive" movement. Some elitists, who appear outwardly reasonable, have even gone so far as to declare she isn't even a woman.

Ladies and gentlemen (especially the gentlemen) I ask you: is Sarah Palin not a woman?

Whatever the case for his anxiety, Harris wasn't giving this new face on our national stage a fair break, as he indicates while discussing her Charles Gibson interview.

Harris says he was "relieved to discover, as many were, that Palin's luster can be much diminished by the absence of a teleprompter" - without uttering a word on how elitist Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama's celebrated stumbling without a teleprompter affected his mood. Harris adds that he "didn't much care that she did not know the meaning of the phrase 'Bush doctrine'", but as Charles Krathammer (the man who coined the term) has pointed out, that great "gotcha" moment apparently hasn't yet registered with "progressives" like Harris - or even the New York Times - as Charles Gibson's gaffe - not Palin's - three weeks later.

Continue reading: Sam Harris Doesn't Speak for Me



by The Crack Emcee
image: The Macho Response
Source: Sam Harris Doesn't Speak for Me

Mainstream Media: New Cutbacks in Jobs, Bureaus, Stock Prices, Advertising, Ratings

Cutbacks in Everything
--Except Left Wing Rhetoric



When you're Selling What No One's Buying

The big story of the Mainstream Media in the last week is cuts.

Cuts in jobs, in advertising revenue, in circulation, in ratings: in short, cuts in every meaningful indicator of how successful the Mainstream Media is.

Which is to say, they're not.

Not doing their job, not successful.

What the MSM is selling--liberal viewpoints, solutions, hand-wringing, harangues and advice--is the one area news consumers aren't buying.

Some news blurbs from the last week amplify this point.

NBC is closing their Chicago and Dallas bureaus.

NBC: Atlanta, which has managed Miami and New Orleans assignments, will add Dallas. Chicago will report in through the Northeast bureau.

The Liberal Lady, the New York Times is cutting newsroom jobs.

After years of resisting the newsroom cuts that have hit most of the industry, The New York Times will bow to growing financial strain and eliminate about 100 newsroom jobs this year, the executive editor said Thursday.

The Washington Post is closing a printing plant and offering buyouts to all employees.

Washington Post Co. will offer buyouts to employees at its flagship newspaper to cut costs as revenue and readership decline.

Buyouts will be offered to all newspaper employees. The newspaper employs 2,400 people, including 800 in news, she added. Revenue at the publishing division, which includes the newspaper, fell 8 percent to $657.2 million in the first nine months of 2007.

At the Chicago Tribune and Los Angeles Times, 100-150 jobs are being cut at each.

Tribune Co. employees were notified Wednesday that hundreds of jobs will be cut at the Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Times and other publications — the first cutbacks since billionaire Sam Zell took the media company private last year.

In separate memos, Tribune Publisher Scott Smith said 100 jobs would be cut and his counterpart at the Times, David Hiller, said 100-150 jobs would be eliminated.

Last fall, CNN dropped Reuters--but said the move wasn't about falling ratings and cutting costs.

Honest.

But in a twist, the cable news network CNN asserted that a decision to drop the Reuters news service after 27 years was not done to cut costs.

Newsweek is cutting the amount of copies it is guaranteeing advertisers by a half million.

Newsweek magazine plans to cut its guaranteed paid circulation by 500,000 copies, according to industry magazine Advertising Age.

The 16 percent reduction would lower the number of paid subscribers Newsweek promises advertisers from 3.1 million to 2.6 million, Advertising Age reported, citing people with knowledge of the move.

About a year ago, Time announced cuts in its news operations staff. It said at the time that there was no timetable as to future cuts.

As anyone who follows news closely, the nine MSM companies above are all flagship liberal operations. Whether it's big government, Blame America First, Global Warming, more taxes and regulations or endorsement of Democrat candidates and their programs, the MSM is all liberal, all the time.

In most cases, the MSM "news" shows and editorial staffs operate as a wing of the Democrat National Committee.

Don't expect the continuing MSM death spiral to change the outlook of either the reporting or the personnel responsible for the slide.

All nine of the above MSM mouthpieces staunchly maintain that they are unbiased "news" operations.

Their viewers and readers and in many cases, their stockholders, beg to differ.

And have been for some time now.

NBC denied that they were even scaling back their operations, labeling the cutbacks as streamlining in an "effort to achieve more journalism and less bureaucracy in the newsgathering operation."

They could achieve all of the above aims by simply requiring their newsrooms to drop their liberal viewpoints by hiring a few conservatives and losing the liberal herd mentality that infects their news operations.

When the National Enquirer reported on the John Edwards Love Child Scandal in November, not one--not a single, solitary, lonely--reporter from a MSM outlet asked Edwards one, single, solitary question about it.

NOT ONE ever asked the candidate if he had been in telephone contact with Rielle Hunter--the woman the Enquirer kept under tabs for months after the campaign spirited her out of sight within 5 miles of Edwards' campaign headquarters from New York--since Hunter had found out she was pregnant.

NOT ONE.

In the meantime, their viewers and readers were buying up Enquirers by the millions and Googling "Rielle Hunter" at such a pace that the woman's name became the most-searched for term on the Internet for awhile.

The news public was buying "Rielle Hunter"--and the Mainstream press wasn't selling any. They were selling anything and everything else that they were interested in, not their potential consumers.

[DBKP John Edwards Love Child Scandal Library of 25 stories on John Edwards, Rielle Hunter, the National Enquirer and the MSM news blackout on the story.]

The MSM tries to put the blame for their decline on the medium and hopes to counter it by creating blogs on the Internet. One suspects that they won't be selling anything different on their MSM blogs--and the public won't be doing any buying of their news there, either.

The Mainstream Media should borrow a page from the playbook of one of their heroes, Bill Clinton and have signs printed up:

ITMS

It's the message, stupid.



So, our advice to the Mainstream Media, as a member of the right wing blogosphere:

"Stay just the way you are, baby. Never change, we love you just the way you are!"

by Mondoreb
image: spittleandink
Sources:
* NBC News Streamlines News Bureaus
* New York Times Plans to Cut 100 NewsRoom Jobs
* Washington Post Cuts
* Post's Newsweek Cuts Circulation by 500,000
* CNN Cuts a Wire to invest in itself
* Tribune Company announces hundreds of jobs cut



Death by 1000 Papercuts Front Page.

Climate Change 30 Years Ago: Media, Scientists Pimped for Global Cooling

Pictured above: One of the more practical substitutes
proposed by climate changers for fossil fuels energy.
Man-made Climate Change advocates have few suggestions
except more taxes, more regulation.

The climate change debate rages close to home.

DBKP's Little Baby Ginn read a report on the effects of superhot magma on the ice shelf of Greenland, the melting of which has long been claimed by man-made climate change enthusiasts to be caused by the guy-down-the-street's Winnebago.

Sensibly thinking that perhaps magma could melt ice, she wrote a sensible article, "Scientists: Greenland's Super-Thaw Caused by Super-hot Magma Not Global Warming".

Her article was read by a science guy at Knight Science Journalism Tracker who wrote the following objective scientific assessment about LBG's article, in an equally-objective scientific post entitled, "LiveScience: Under Greenland, a thin stretch of crust may be helping the melt".

Some bloggers of the rightish stripe have already embraced and distorted her report - ignoring that it presumes warming air remains the main culprit - to proclaim this as another reason global warming is hogwash. It’s natural stuff like magma, not those trace gases we add to the air, that’s raising the temperature.

DBKP published our answer to the intrepid Tracker yesterday (The Effects of Magma on Ice: Science Trackers Remain Skeptical

Now, Dr. Tony Camplin comes to the rescue of LBG's scientific assault on man-made climate change. His take echoes Ginn's.

Dr. Camplin's Interdisciplinary World has a post that echoes Ginn, "Climate Models Wrong".

Shortly after the Nobel Prize Committee gave out one of the most questionable Peace Prizes ever, a report is now in that says we cannot trust the results of the same 22 models that were the basis for giving out the Prize. In each of the other Nobel Prizes, the people who receive the prizes have to have shown a significant contribution to their field, with actual results resulting in growth of knowledge.

Dr. Camplin adds a summary that should be emblazoned on the shields of anyone battling the bullshit artists in the Man-made Climate Change crowd.

I have said before, and I will say it again: the Left are not interested in the environment. Leftist environmentalists are Red, not Green.

Amen, Doc.

A lot of people alarmed by "man-made climate change" may be too young to remember the last time climate change was in the news. That was in the mid-1970s and, again, there were calls for the United States to "do something before it is too late".

As believeable Then as Now:
Time Cover Story of June 1974

In Time's April 24, 1974 issue, quite another worry troubled climate change scientists: that of global cooling.

Here's what Time wrote just 33 years ago.

As they review the bizarre and unpredictable weather pattern of the past several years, a growing number of scientists are beginning to suspect that many seemingly contradictory meteorological fluctuations are actually part of a global climatic upheaval. However widely the weather varies from place to place and time to time, when meteorologists take an average of temperatures around the globe they find that the atmosphere has been growing gradually cooler for the past three decades. The trend shows no indication of reversing. Climatological Cassandras are becoming increasingly apprehensive, for the weather aberrations they are studying may be the harbinger of another ice age.

It would be nice if scientists would do some heavy scientific lifting on climate change. Any that has been done involve studies, actual measuring, reflection and gathering data: in short, science stuff.

That data has been collected and analyzed by the "deniers"--the portion of the scientific community that has urged caution.

This time around, caution has not proved to be a match for hysterics.

Click on the above article to read what climate change
theory Newsweek was pimping 30 years ago.

On the other side, the man-made-climate-change-mongers have their computer models. They imput data and swear by the output. The concept of GIGO means nothing to these keen students of the scientific method, whether they are in the media, government or track science journalism at KSJT.

Climate Change Garbage In mean Climate Change Garbage Out.

Of course, any theory that means MORE regulation, MORE taxes and MORE power for government agencies and quasi-government bodies like the United Nations is going to be hyped by those who eagerly anticipate spending your tax dollars for their favorite charities--usually those causes with which they are personally involved.

It was only a little over 30 years ago that many of these same voices were shilling for the use of atomic weapons to melt the polar caps to combat Global Cooling.

When Global Cooling didn't catch on as a vehicle for more regulation and taxes, Global Warming became the fad. It will remain "the Next Big Thing" in climate change theory until the overwhelming weight of scientific facts crush it--just like it's Global Cooling brother.

How long will that take?

We don't have any idea. No pun intended, but cooler heads prevailed in the 70s and 80s.

But the climate changers of 30 years ago didn't have a Nobel Prize-winning ex-vice president eager to keep his name in the spotlight. The Political Correctness movement also wasn't as powerful, either. The PC crowd has had 30 years of practice labeling any speech with which they don't agree as "objectionable" or likening it to Nazism.

Newsweek was just as optimistic 30 years ago as the magazine is now.

Climatologists are pessimistic that political leaders will take any actions to compensate for the climatic change, or even allay its effects...The longer the planners delay, the more difficult they will find it to cope with climatic change once it becomes a grim reality.

Al Gore was still busy inventing the Internet and Bali was an exotic locale for Hollywood fantasies. The clever scientists at Knight Science Journalism Tracker weren't around to sniff out dissent.

Climate hysterics learned from that earlier lesson. No one who disagreed with the Globaloney in the 1970s were likened to Holocaust deniers. That was one thing they noted.

Anyone who is old enough to remember the last climate change fad also learned a lesson.

To give just as much credence to the alarmists today as they received in 1974-1975.

by Mondoreb
[images: newsweek;time;hamsteronawheel]



Death by 1000 Papercuts Front Page.

Dailykos' Markos: Newsweek Likes Me!

From Newsweek:

New York -- Markos Moulitsas, the founder and publisher of dailykos.com, will become a Newsweek contributor for the 2008 presidential campaign, offering occasional opinion pieces to the pages of the magazine and to Newsweek.com.

"We have always sought to represent a diversity of views in Newsweek, and we think Markos will be a great part of that tradition," said Newsweek Editor Jon Meacham. "He will give our readers in print and online a unique perspective. As always, our job is to create the most energetic and illuminating magazine possible, and Markos will help us do that as the campaign unfolds."

Markos posted this blurb from Newsweek on his blog, DailyKos.com, along with this little shot across the bow to his conservative adversaries:

Yeah, there's a lot of heads exploding in wingnutlandia today over this bit of news. But Newsweek is "balancing" me out with someone that should make heads on our side explode. Announcement on that name is still a couple of days off.

"Heads exploding in wingnutlandia" is yet another "Liberal Urban Legend" but it does make for good imagery. Markos' track record in backing candidates is a pretty dismal one. None of the over a dozen politicians Markos has backed in prior elections on Dailykos has been elected.

The Moulitsas-anointed Ned Lamont beat out Lieberman in the primaries. To some in the MSM this kind of track record has poll-vaulted Markos to political Kingpin status.

Of course, when it counted, Lamont suffered the fate of all those blessed by Moulitsas: he lost.

The rest of us just shake our heads and wonder how a guy who consistently backs losers is considered an "expert."

Source – Daily Kos - Newsweek

By LBG
Image [tpmmuckraker.com]



DBKP.com - Bigger, Better!.
Death by 1000 Papercuts Front Page.