Damage All Around

Recently, Andrew Breitbart of BigGovernment posted "Video Proof: The NAACP Awards Racism–2010," in which he stated:

Sherrod’s racist tale is received by the NAACP audience with nodding approval and murmurs of recognition and agreement. Hardly the behavior of the group now holding itself up as the supreme judge of another groups’ racial tolerance.

In my view, that point about the NAACP audience is being missed by those who don't visit "the right-wing blogosphere" or watch Fox News.

Despite Breitbart's protestations to the contrary, CNN has turned "Shirley Sherrod's Story," as that edition was entitled, into a tale excoriating Fox News Channel, specifically Bill O'Reilly, who called for Ms. Sherrod's resignation on his show earlier this week.

Yesterday afternoon, CNN showed the full video of Ms. Sherrod's speech to the NAACP, a special show that I watched on the plasma television at the car dealer, when I took in my vehicle for scheduled service. Several others were also in the customer-service area at the car dealership.

I could see it on their faces: they are now discounting "the right-wing blogosphere" and deeming Fox News as unfit sources of information.

Now, while I was waiting at the car dealership, sometimes I couldn't always quite hear what CNN was saying. But the best that I recall now, CNN didn't cover the audience's sounds of approvals to what appeared to be the racist statements Ms. Sherrod was making in her speech to the NAACP, although CNN did, at the top of the video-loop screen, print in words the text of that portion of Ms. Sherrod's speech. Furthermore, the two black women I was sitting across from, were nodding their heads in agreement to every point that CNN made, including that Andrew Breitbart is a major player in the Tea Party Movement. Let me also add that a large part of yesterday's broadcast was self-congratulatory (paraphrase): "We at this network didn't fall for the scam because we don't broadcast a story until we fully investigate that story" [as in watching the entire video].

Over at this thread at MSNBC, the following comment well summarizes the reactions, black and white, in the customer-service waiting area:

When did this sort of stuff become OK? How is it possible in a country that claims to be the "best in the world"? How does this blog clown sleep at night? Oh, that's right, he's conservative.

For the record, HERE is the full video of Shirley Sherrod's speech at the NAACP. The video is long, but I do recommend that you watch it in its entirety.

This video clip of Keith Olbermann pretty much sums up the way the Shirley Sherrod story is playing out in the mainstream media, albeit not always so condemnatory of Obama:



Let's keep in mind that a lot of American voters base their decisions at the ballot box upon information they glean from the mainstream media.

Maybe there is plenty of loss of credibility to go around, including for the Obama administration, which was quite willing to throw Mr. Sherrod under the bus before watching the full video of her NAACP speech. However, based on what I saw yesterday in that waiting area at the car dealership, conservatives have taken a big hit on this one.

How many of those in the waiting area at the car dealership and how many American voters will see the Bill O'Reilly's rebuttal, which aired last night?



What is your view of the damage done in this Shirley Sherrod story?

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Rejected By CBS

The following ad:



And we anti-jihadists wonder why we can't get out our message? Really, there is no mystery because the mainstream media will not allow the message to reach the American people.

And every time the message about the threat of Islam is obfuscated, the jihadists win.

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CNN Editor Fired

Even a stopped clock is right twice a day.



From Infidel Bloggers Alliance:

Mediaite reports that CNN has fired senior editor of Middle East affairs Octavia Nasr. As Daniel Halper pointed out the other day, Nasr wrote on Twitter on July 4 that she was "sad" to hear of the death of Hezbollah's Sayyed Mohammad Hussein Fadlallah--a man for whom she has "respect." Fadlallah had justified suicide bombings, is believed to be responsible for the Marine barracks bombing, and had said that "Zionism has inflated the number of victims in this Holocaust beyond imagination."

Ms. Nasr apologized. Somewhat:

It was an error of judgment for me to write such a simplistic comment and I'm sorry because it conveyed that I supported Fadlallah's life's work. That's not the case at all....

Read the rest of her "apology" HERE.

Of course, the left decries Ms. Nasr's dismissal and casts blame anywhere but on her:

And so, once again, the neocons have managed to help make us all a little bit dumber....

So here’s the neocon logic: When a reporter acknowledges the passing of a revered, if controversial figure in a way that doesn’t sufficiently convey what a completely evil terrorist neocons think that figure was — that’s unacceptable....

How is it possible that neocons have so much influence on CNN as to get a senior editor fired?

One of the comments at the above-cited Think Progress link is quite amusing (spew alert):

CNN...should be embarrassed that they let politics dictate their reporting.

LOL!

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Consequences Begin For Helen Thomas

As a result of the following idiocy uttered on American Jewish Heritage Celebration Day at the White House on May 27, 2010, by Helen Thomas, Nine Speakers, the agency representing her, has dropped her:



More information HERE, including this from Bill Clinton’s former White House counsel:

“Helen Thomas, who I used to consider a close friend and who I used to respect, has showed herself to be an anti-Semitic bigot,” wrote Davis in a statement.. “She has a right to criticize Israel…. However, her statement that Jews in Israel should leave Israel and go back to Poland or Germany is an ancient and well-known anti-Semitic stereotype of the alien Jew not belonging in the land of Israel that began 2,600 years with the first tragic and violent Diaspora caused by the Romans.”

“If she had asked all blacks to go back to Africa, what would the White House Correspondents Association’s position be as to whether she deserved WhiteHouse press room credentials – much less a privileged honorary seat?” wrote Davis, referring to Thomas’ seat in the middle of the front row at the White House briefing room.

“Does anyone doubt that my friends Ann Compton and Joe Lockhart, who believe in the First Amendment right of free expression as much as I do, would not be as tolerant and protective of Helen’s privileges and honors if she had been asking Blacks to return to Africa? Or Native Americans to Asia and South America, from which they came 8,000 or more years ago? I doubt it”, concluded Davis.

Helen Thomas is learning that words have consequences. And being in one's dotage isn't always protection from those consequences.

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Video: Obama Doesn't Want You To See This

With a hat tip to Blunt Politics:



Of course, many of the above facts were available to the electorate before the November 2008 National Elections. But the mainstream media would not disseminate those facts; as a result, a large portion of the electorate remained unaware of the truth about the man they voted for.

Can the media do the same for the 2012 National Election? If they continue the stonewalling and obfuscation, BHO will be elected again.

Mark my words. The Cult of Obama is that strong!

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Fake Tea Partier

From NewsBusters:

Dale Robertson, the racist nut who many in the media have paraded as emblematic of Tea Party attendees, claims to be a "leader" of the movement. In fact, he is a loner who has been rebuffed by every Tea Party group with which he has associated.

Of course that did not dissuade the liberal media from unquestionably presenting him as the "leader" he dubiously claimed to be. The Washington Post and liberal blog Talking Points Memo both portrayed him as such, despite the fact that numerous Tea Party groups have publicly denounced him (none, as far as I can tell, have backed him).

It turns out his "leadership" is not the only thing Robertson embellished....

Read the rest.

As long as we have mainstream media outlets that won't publish the truth, including appropriate retractions, the Tea Party Movement will have an uphill slog. That said, an uphill slog cannot be accomplished.

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FEATURED QUESTION: The Media

The recent earthquake in Haiti has wrought havoc and tragedy. Furthermore, the heart-wrenching and graphic images coming out of the impoverished nation are unusual in several respects; specifically, many of the images we have seen disregard the privacy and dignity of the victims, as noted by this article in the Washington Post:

The usual conventions of suggesting rather than displaying trauma seem to have been punctured, at least for now. Bodies caked in dust and plaster, faces covered in blood, the dead stacked in the streets without sheets to hide them -- these are all violations of the unwritten code that death can only be seen, in the established etiquette of the mainstream media, by analogy or metaphor or discreet substitute.

On Friday, The Post ran a picture of a young girl, seen from behind, her torso crushed by the weight of fallen concrete. The New York Times ran a picture of a dead man on a makeshift stretcher, covered in the white dust that makes so many of the bodies -- living or dead -- look sculptural. The BBC's Web site featured a warning about the graphic nature of its image gallery, which included a young girl looking up imploringly at the camera while a man, half buried in rubble and his face turned away, bled profusely down his back. Old ladies are seen disheveled and almost naked; the bandages on children don't hide the gore.

The article offers some theories as to why these graphic images are being shown. You can read the entire article HERE.

FEATURED QUESTION, in two parts: (1) What is your view as to the reason(s) the media are showing such graphic photos of the devastation in Haiti? (2) Is showing such images appropriate?

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Video: Liberal Media Hypocrisy Test

Many of us well recall the hate-filled protests during the eight years of the GWB administration. The following video provides a timely reminder:



Hat tip to Casting Pearls Before Swine for the above video.

Note to family and friends: Updates on Mr. AOW's progress can be found HERE. Click "Turn the page."

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Check Out The Dissatisfaction

Shamelessly lifted from Infidel Bloggers Alliance, where the following was posted by Epa today. A must read!

57% would swap out all incumbents and now Press Accuracy Rating Hits Two Decade Low

Do you get the feeling Americans are disgusted with institutions?

As an unresponsive government seeks to create the perception that town hall speakers and firearms carriers are racist fringe freaks, and a crowd in DC which was wel up in 6 figures if not 7, and larger than the inaugural crowd is said to be but thousands by the WaPo and NYT, Rasmussen publishes a poll which says 57% of voters would just get rid of all incumbents, all political labels but Reagan are hideous and the worst is the word 'progressive', and only 33% think we are headed in the right direction.

But what gets reported?

NEWSBUSTERS:

• Pathetic Bill O'Reilly wannabe Keith Olbermann, calling Fox News viewers 'tin foil hatters, conspiracy theorists, paranoids and racists.'
• David Shuster, dually pathetic Olbermann wannabe, profiling the Republican Party as 'all white males with short haircuts.' He then goes on to call the party angry and unhinged, with 'no women, no minorities.'
• A recent segment in which Shuster, Barney Rubble to Olbermann's Fred Flintstone, suggests Joe Wilson's comments may contain a 'racist or bigoted element.' Tamron Hall was appalled 'to have that southern white male shout down the first black president'. And of course, the Reverend Jesse Jackson chiming in with '...the big C-word, conservative... for some it means a code word for race.'
• Ed Schultz referring to Senator James Inhofe's criticisms of the President as potentially opening up 'the floodgates to these crazies that show up at town hall meetings.' He also insulted those who believe the President is leading this country in the wrong direction as 'lesser challenged news consumers.' Shuster, Donkey to Olbermann's Shrek, echoes the 'crazies' sentiment, later stating that Inhofe's constituents likely contain 'lunatics' who feel it is their 'responsibility to take out the president'.

Pretty inflammatory list, eh? But wait my friends, there's more...

• Have reservations about former Obama appointed green-jobs czar Van Jones and committed 9/11 truther, and you are most definitely a racist according to Keith Olbermann.
• Mike Barnicle and Chuck Todd discussing if race is the real reason for all opposition to President Obama. Todd then bumbles and stumbles his way to explain that the White House certainly doesn't want to cry race, but they are more than willing to point to polls that say detractors are southern racists.
• Tingly legged Chris Matthews saying that opposition to the President is based on 'who he is, where he comes from, his background'.

News and the MSM has not been so stilted and factually in error, and/or pointedly disingenuous in what and how it is reported since the explosion of the USS Maine in 1898 and the yellow journalism which lead to war.

But what is far more disturbing to thinking and critical americans is the underlying inchoate elite coalescence around a dialectic of 'fact'. 'That which does not fit the dialectic, CANNOT be fact'

Thus Joe Wilson's rudeness (though certainly at least arguably factual) is racism, after all, hey, South Carolina.

Thus the crowd in the mall cannot be the free expression of average people, it must be the manufactured organization of Ron Paulista birthers, which is why only thousands showed up.

But someone once said something about fooling all of the people all of the time ... and he wasn't even president (yet) when this ineluctable fact made itself plain in his thought.

And below the level of verbal expression, the disquiet among average Americans across the board about what is being done, and how it being reported, and reacted to ... grows... until it finds ugly fruition in permanently discredited institutions, and a permanent loss of fatih in the way we govern ourselves.

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This Morning On NBC's Today Show (video added)

(Two posts today. Please scroll down)

Something very like this from CNBC's John Harwood as he and the show anchor we discussing that parents shouldn't be concerned about BHO's upcoming national address to schoolchildren on September 8:

"Parents who object to the President speaking to schoolchildren aren't able to raise their children very effectively."

This is what the majority of Americans accept as news and words from an expert?

1. The mainstream media will not say anything negative about BHO's power grab and appointees. See Epa's post at Infidel Bloggers Alliance.

2. Having concerns about "The One" means that you are an unfit parent.

Get the picture?

Addendum, September 7:

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Walter Cronkite (1916 - 2009)

Like many of my generation, I grew up listening to the unique vocal tones of Walter Cronkite. He undoubtedly had one of the best voices in all of broadcasting.

I best recall him from watching that often-blurry image on my parents' black-and-white television set. The following is permanently etched into my memory, perhaps for you as well:


Of course, today's newpapers are filled with stories about the passing of Walter Cronkite, particulary as a witness to history. No doubt, we'll be seeing lots of television specials on the topic of this man, particulary on CBS. Most of what we will see will be a rehashing for those of us who grew up hearing the voice of Walter Cronkite as news anchor. We'll experience nostalgia which the present generation cannot possibly feel about this man.

In today's Washington Post, I noticed this interesting portion:

In later years, as he watched from the sideline, Cronkite became a critic of the evening news. "Nobody's asked me, which is strange, but I think the networks ought to be doing the headlines -- compressed as they must be -- and no features," he told me in 2002. "Drop that 'Your Pocketbook and Mine,' 'Your Beauty and Mine,' 'Your Garbage Can and Mine.' "

He also decried the staffing cutbacks as the networks shrank their evening news staffs, saying: "It's a dollars-and-cents issue with the ownership. There's not the sense of responsibility of the old-timers who were taught this was their duty."

Walter Cronkite's views and mine did not always agree. And I recognize that, even as an anchor, he had an agenda. On this topic of the deterioration of broadcast news, however, I believe that he was spot on. Viewers today want flash, not substance. Furthermore, the anchor's voices sound pretty much the same and not unique.

"And that's the way it is" with the media today, some twenty-eight years after Walter Cronkite retired.

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Media Lapdogs Getting Tired Of BHO, Control Freak?

You may have previously seen the video below, but I didn't get a chance to view it until this morning. I have to admit that I guffawed!



Did you pick up on that high-pitched giggle on the part of White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs around time marker 3:42? What is THAT? The laugh of the lunatic or of the egomaniac? And his condescending attitude appears to be wearing a bit thin with the White House Press Corps. Good.

I just loved one barb dished out by Helen Thomas: "I don't have to email it [my question]. I can tell you right now what I want to ask." Also, her quip: "[You] don't have any answers," followed by Gibbs's "Uh, well. Because I didn't know you were going to ask a question, Helen."

Read more about Helen Thomas's interactions with the BHO administration HERE. She is quite the gadfly.

Robert Gibbs is a court jester, and his attempts to protect the Emperor With No Clothes from having to field questions are risible.

The media lapdogs, who pushed so hard to get BHO into office, are complaining. If those complaints become widespread — once the Michael Jackson coverage finally ends, whenever that is — broadcast-media viewers may get to see that the BHO administration is not one of transparency.

I wonder if BHO will throw Gibbs under the bus. It's getting pretty crowded under that bus.

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A Bailout For Newspapers Too? Part Two

Last month, I posted about the Newspaper Revitalization Act. At the time of that posting, few took seriously the possibility that such a bailout, i.e., government control, of the print media could gain traction. The bill, proposed by U.S. Senator Benjamin Cardin, had no sponsors at the point of that previous posting and was limited to preserving local newspapers, not for the purpose of bailing out the media conglomerates.

Now comes this story from Fox News (hat tip to Weasel Zippers):

Obama Appointee Suggests Radical Plan for Newspaper Bailout

Rosa Brooks, who has moved from the L.A. Times to the Pentagon, called for more "direct government support for public media" and government licensing of the news, which critics say would destroy the independent media.

Influential Los Angeles Times columnist Rosa Brooks has hung up her journalistic hat and joined the Obama administration, but not before penning a public proposal calling for some radical ideas to help bail out the failing news industry.

Brooks, who has taken up a post as an adviser at the Pentagon, advocated upping "direct government support for public media" and creating licenses to govern news operations.

"Years of foolish policies have left us with a choice: We can bail out journalism, using tax dollars and granting licenses in ways that encourage robust and independent reporting and commentary, or we can watch, wringing our hands, as more and more top journalists are laid off," she wrote in her parting column on April 9.

Brooks said this would help rescue the industry from a "death spiral"...

But critics say her proposal would spell an end to the independent media and make journalists reliant lapdogs...

Read the rest.

A stepping stone to control of the media as portrayed by George Orwell's dystopia in 1984 via the control of what information and terminology the public can find available in the mainstream media? Welcome to Pravda USA!

Bill O'Reilly on the topic of Rosa Brooks:



WE THE PEOPLE can have all the Tax Day Tea Parties we want, but if the government gains extensive control of the media, those Parties will be in vain, particularly if there is no overall plan to continue the momentum of such a grassroots movement.

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This Week's Edition Of Newsweek

This week is one of the holiest seasons of the Christian calendar as Christians throughout the world hold various services and celebrations related to Holy Week. Yesterday was Maundy Thursday, today is Good Friday, tomorrow is Holy Saturday, and Sunday is Easter Sunday.
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All sensitivies toward Christianity aside, however, Newsweek chose this week to publish a cover depicting a cross with the following words spelled out with capital letters in the shape of the cross, in red lettering: "THE DELINCE AND FALL OF CHRISTIAN AMERICA." I was unable to capture the image, but you can see it here, Newsweek's accompanying article here.

The First Amendment right to freedom of the press certainly allows for Newsweek to publish such a cover and such an article and display them prominently at newsstands and at grocery check-out aisles, even during this Holy Week. But can you imagine the outcry were any mainstream-news magazine to publish a cover making any negative statement about Islam? Can you imagine what would happen if the Danish cartoons were splashed all over the cover of a news magazine at any time of the year, much less during Ramadan or Eid ul-Fitr?

More importantly, would any mainstream-news magazine dare to publish a negative cover about Islam?

(Crossposted to Infidel Bloggers Alliance)

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This Week's Cover Of Newsweek

Note the following text: RADICAL ISLAM IS A FACT OF LIFE. HOW TO LIVE WITH IT.



Article HERE.

Take your Pepto Bismol before reading the article.

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On Fox News Channel This Morning

In a discussion about the recent cover of the New Yorker magazine, Brian Kilmeade, one anchor of Fox and Friends, said, "I've been on the Internet. It's a scary place."

Yeah, Brian. We bloggers are scary, all right. Get used to it.

I decided to send "Fox and Friends" an email:
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In the first hour of today's show, Brian said, "I've been on the Internet. It's a scary place."

Scary???

The blogosphere is neither perfect nor always accurate. We aren't professional journalists, after all. Nevertheless, it would behoove the mainstream media to do some reading of certain sites on the web and stop ignoring the valid stories which break and are discussed in the blogosphere -- the stories which you will not tell or cover in any depth.

I hope that you understand that the mainstream media is losing credibility -- and why.

We bloggers are the pamphleteers of the Twenty-first Century. Get used to it.

~ Always On Watch

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Monopolies On The News

[Cross-posted at THE ASTUTE BLOGGERS]

Here is one reason that we keep hearing the same old, same old in the mainstream media, despite the concerns about media consolidation in the 1920s, when William Randolph Hearst wielded powerful control over print-media and radio-media:

Today, about a dozen media corporations—the largest is Gannett Co., followed by the Tribune Co.—own roughly one third of the country's more than 1,400 daily newspapers. Some argue that the reduction in the number of news outlets could lead to fewer critical opinions, with grim implications for democracy....[According to] Mara Einstein, associate professor of media studies at Queens College in New York, if that editor operates in a market with several options[,] "You read one person's point of view and then another person's, and you can come up with your own idea of what you believe is best." Online sites may fill in where mainstream news leaves off, but Davidson points to problems "weighing the gravity and the authority of the voices."

The FCC may be getting ready to allow even more monopolies on the news:

As America prepares for the year of intense democracy that is a presidential election, the question of how and what information reaches the public is crucial. So when the Federal Communications Commission last month proposed to loosen restrictions on media ownership, the reaction was deeply divided. FCC Chair Kevin Martin said the new rules, which would lift a 32-year ban on cross-ownership, would improve news coverage and help the struggling newspaper industry, which he called the "watchdog and informer of the citizenry." But what happens when fewer companies are responsible for the watching and informing?

As in the past, some are objecting to the FCC's proposal:

The FCC has long struggled to promote access to diverse news sources. Starting in the mid-1990s, the panel has been trying unsuccessfully to change the formulas governing cross-ownership, and it has often been attacked on all fronts. In 2003, the panel proposed allowing one company to own three television stations, eight radio stations, and the monopoly newspaper in a single market. A federal appeals court rejected the rules, while agreeing that the blanket ban on cross-ownership was outdated.

[...]

...[A]s in 2003, the proposals face serious challenges. While the FCC can move to adopt the plan, there are checks on its ability to implement it. A bipartisan group of 25 lawmakers has pledged to slow the enactment of the rule changes, while the White House has vowed to oppose any congressional intervention. Between the opposition on Capitol Hill and possible court challenges, the rules might never take effect.

Read the rest of the entire article in U.S. News & World Report.

How would our Founders, supporters of independent sources for the news, feel about what has happened to today's "free press"?

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