33 Articles

Friday, May 18, 2012
Why Is Roger Ailes Lecturing College Students About Journalism?
(1 comments) Fox has every right to be in the partisan attack business. But for prestigious universities to usher Roger Ailes into their lectures halls under the guise of him being a news executive and letting him spin fantastic tales about how Fox is a fair and balanced news organization is a joke.

Saturday, March 17, 2012
Struggling Clear Channel And Rush Limbaugh's $400 Million Payday
(38 comments) Whether Limbaugh's show is in the midst of the death throes, only time will tell. But one thing is clear, the radio industry has never seen anything like the sponsorship controversy surrounding Limbaugh's once-untouchable program.

Saturday, March 10, 2012
The Self-Destruction Of Limbaugh, Murdoch and Beck
(4 comments) Led by the likes of Limbaugh, Murdoch and Beck, the conservative press has adopted a strange brand of radicalism that embraces falsehoods, smears and even law breaking, all of which places their practice well outside the mainstream culture.

Thursday, February 2, 2012
Gingrich Assailed by Conservative Press; Conservatives Blame "Liberal Media"
Spooked by the prospect of a Gingrich nominee, key members of the so-called Republican Establishment orchestrated an attack campaign against the candidate. And where have most of those attacks being launched? In the conservative press.

Saturday, January 28, 2012
How Fox News Is Destroying The Republican Party
(15 comments) Wannabe kingmaker Roger Ailes is facing an open revolt. More and more despondent conservatives are expressing alarm over the unfolding Republican primary season and what they see as the party's dwindling chances of defeating President Obama in November.

Friday, January 6, 2012
Why Conservatives Can't Do Journalism
The right-wing's online Noise Machine today is populated by people like Andrew Breitbart and Dana Loesch who run websites that crank out borderline incoherent bouts of "journalism" that inevitably whip up their Obama-hating readers and have zero impact on the national discussion.

Tuesday, August 2, 2011
Touting "Innate" GOP Advantage, Wash. Post Ignores Wash. Post
(1 comments) There's "an innate sense" out there that Republicans are the ones to trust on key issues, such as spending and the debt? Well, that "innate sense" might extend throughout the Beltway press corps, but it doesn't reflect mainstream America. Not according to polling data.

Wednesday, June 1, 2011
One Year After Debunking Breitbart's "Slander," CNN Welcomes Him Back As Newsmaker
The usual Breitbart rhetorical recklessness was too much for CNN legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin, who appeared right after Breitbart. Dismayed by Breitbart's "outrageous" insinuations about Weiner and "young girls," Toobin said it was "too bad that he got to say that stuff on CNN."

Wednesday, April 6, 2011
Local Media Covered Monday Union Rallies; National Media Not So Much
In terms of the news pages for national newspapers, USA Today and the Washington Post ignored the King-inspired rallies, according to a Nexis search. The Wall Street Journal's print edition today also contained no mention, while the New York Times devoted 400 words to the union story. But the Beltway press showered attention on last week's Tea Party event that drew "dozens" of supporters to Washington, D.C.

Friday, March 18, 2011
Why Fox News Will Keep Bullying NPR
(1 comments) The brand of radical conservative who has NPR in their sights today is not the same type of conservative critic who tweaked the network's supposedly liberal bias in the past. This new brand of bully is borderline delusional about NPR and sees it as a genuine force of evil; a hub of sinister activity.

Friday, March 4, 2011
Is Fox News Chairman Roger Ailes Going to Jail?
(1 comments) The crime of Roger Ailes, powerful chairman of Fox News is technically the same crime committed by Bill Clinton, for which he was impeached in 1997. It's "subordoning perjury", i.e., urging someone to lie under oath. No one is above the law, said Fox News at the time. And now?

Wednesday, February 16, 2011
Did Glenn Beck Turn A Profit At Wilmington Charity Event?
There seems to be an enormous gap between the $300,000 ticket revenues Beck generated and the $44,000 he donated to charity. Beck's Wilmington costs accounted for nearly 85% of ticket sales? If true, that's one poorly run charity event. Keep in mind the Fox News host pocketed $32 million in 2009. Did he not pick up any of the Wilmington expenses himself, or did he deduct every last penny before making his $44,000 donation?

Friday, February 11, 2011
FOX NEWS INSIDER: "Stuff Is Just Made Up"
(4 comments) A former Fox News employee confirmed what critics have been saying for years about Murdoch's cable channel. Namely, that Fox News is run as a purely partisan operation, virtually every news story is actively spun by the staff, its primary goal is to prop up Republicans and knock down Democrats, and staffers at Fox News routinely operate without the slightest regard for fairness or fact checking.

Thursday, February 3, 2011
Ten Reasons Fox News Doesn't Really Care About The Egypt Story
(2 comments) Egypt is killing Fox News' mojo.Why? Fox News is a political organization. Under Obama, Fox News exists in order to attack Democrats and to try to destroy the Obama presidency, while at the same time boosting Republicans. Period.

Thursday, November 11, 2010
Memo to media: There is no right-wing "smell test"
There is no right-wing smell test. It no longer exists. In fact, there appears to be no sense of smell at all, which is closely related to the right-wing media's lack of common sense and decency. Day in and day out the right-wing noise machine traffics in utter nonsense pretending they're connected with reality and breaking "news."

Thursday, November 4, 2010
Andrew Breitbart's mainstream demise
(1 comments) The so-called "journalism" Breitbart and his bloggers produce is sloppy, unprofessional and unreliable, not to mention weirdly paranoid and more times than not just completely unhinged. And as ABC News discovered, Breitbart himself simply cannot be trusted.

Thursday, October 21, 2010
Memo to the media: The Tea Party is coming for you
detaining Hopfinger was a political statement. Just like Miller's announcement a week earlier that he would no longer answer questions from Alaska reporters was also a political statement: "We've drawn a line in the sand. The Alaska "arrest" sent an even more disturbing message from the Tea Party to the press: We're coming for you.

Thursday, October 14, 2010
Press claims Chamber of Commerce story's too "convoluted." Like Whitewater wasn't?
(8 comments) The Time scribe downplayed allegations that the Chamber of Commerce is using foreign funds as part of its 2010 blitzkrieg to take down the Democratic Party in November. I'm still a bit shocked that a journalist would dismiss any news story based on the premise that it's "convoluted and far-fetched."

Tuesday, July 27, 2010
Beck's incendiary angst is dangerously close to having a body count
(5 comments) It's impossible to argue that today's avalanche of insurrectionist rhetoric doesn't have a real world effect. Or that those on the fringes don't find comfort in seeing and hearing their worst fears legitimized on AM radio and Fox News.

Sunday, July 11, 2010
Welcome to a long, hot summer of right-wing race baiting
What's new now is the jaw-dropping notion that Limbaugh's pushing about how Obama's policies, which the AM talker insists are ruining this country, can be explained by the president's burning desire to exact revenge on America for its historical sin of slavery and long-running discrimination against minorities.

Wednesday, May 26, 2010
FLASHBACK: When the New York Times ignored gaping holes in candidate Bush's war record
(14 comments) I'm having a tough time buying the Times' sudden devotion to the Blumenthal military topic, considering that during the 2000 presidential campaign, the same Times staff went out of its way not to report on the web of detailed allegations that Republican George Bush had failed to fulfill his military obligation while defending Texas air space as an Air National Guard pilot.

Thursday, May 20, 2010
The Truth About Glenn Beck's TV Ratings
(1 comments) Beck has basically lost all the new viewers he picked up over the last twelve months (blame in on the Massa Moment?), which is why in May of 2010, he's pretty much back where he started in May of 2009. After twelve months of hype, Beck has not significantly grown his TV audience.

Tuesday, April 6, 2010
Post-Hutaree: How Glenn Beck and Fox News spread the militia message
For anyone who thought the dark, Waco-fueled chapter of domestic extremism in this country was behind us, the Hutaree arrests were a jarring reminder that, with the election of another Democratic president, the violent militia message is back. And it's stronger than ever.

Wednesday, March 31, 2010
What if Fox News actually wants mob violence?
(6 comments) Speaking out of both sides of their mouths with astonishing ease, conservatives denounced liberals who protested Coulter's appearance in Canada, and then played defense on behalf of marauding right-wing radicals who unleashed death threats, threw bricks through office windows, and hurled epithets at politicians.

Tuesday, March 23, 2010
Fox News, health care, and the right-wing nervous breakdown
Listening to Limbaugh, they thought they were dictating the agenda. Watching Fox News, they though they reflected the mainstream. And reading right-wing blogs, they thought they had killed health care reform. Wrong, wrong, and wrong. It was the sudden and rude realization that, instead, they'd spent the past few months trapped inside an echo chamber,

Wednesday, March 17, 2010
The media myth of Obama's "falling poll numbers"
(2 comments) Adopting the polar opposite narrative from the Bush era when pundits and reporters seemed obsessed with trying to boost the president's standing, Beltway scribes today have made it plain that when it comes to Obama and polling, good news is no news.

Tuesday, March 9, 2010
The Pentagon shooter, insurrectionism, and right-wing bloggers
(3 comments) what the GOP Noise Machine is doing today is embracing, and mainstreaming, the same kind of hate rhetoric and doomsday conspiratorial talk that flourished on the far-right fringes during the '90s. (Think Waco and black helicopters.) And legitimizing that kind of talk is dangerous.

Tuesday, March 2, 2010
Breitbart confirms he was duped by O'Keefe and the ACORN pimp hoax
(3 comments) The pimp hoax is not some footnote that can just be dismissed. The glaring blunder goes to the heart of Breitbart's credibility as a wannabe journalist. The lie was absolutely central to the rollout of last year's ACORN attack campaign.

Wednesday, January 20, 2010
Come back, Bob Woodward. Save us from Game Change journalism
let's look also at Game Change's already infamous "coffee" non-quote from Bill Clinton, reportedly spoken to Ted Kennedy. The authors not only couldn't confirm the inflammatory quote (so they printed it as a paraphrase), but then they went on television and improved the story. Out selling their book, the duo seemed to spike the tale with new information not found in the book.

Wednesday, January 13, 2010
Stenography 101: How the press let Palin and Cheney rig the system
(3 comments) If Palin steadfastly refuses to engage with journalists and insists on hiding behind her Facebook page, there's simply no reason reporters should give online press releases from a failed VP candidate (and half-term governor) the slightest bit of attention.

Wednesday, October 7, 2009
The NY Times' pointless pursuit of right-wing "buzz" stories
(1 comments) The partisan right-wing press this year has morphed into a minefield of paranoia, distrust, and hate. But, hey, if The New York Times thinks it's going to mine some news nuggets in the fever swamps, be my guest.

Thursday, May 28, 2009
Why didn't Washington Post columnists call Cheney a disgrace?
(1 comments) Cheney grabbed top billing following his national security (pro-torture?) speech last week. But the World News Tonight report on Gore's September 23, 2002, anti-war speech was buried mid-broadcast. The dispatch ran 43 words in its entirety. Why? Because Gore, the has-been, was a "disgrace" when he tried to butt in about the Iraq war, according to the press corps--the same pack that awarded Cheney such high marks last week.

Tuesday, September 16, 2008
McCain and Palin are laughing at the press -- and it's the press' fault
The press throughout this race has walked away from any semblance of traditional standards, yet journalists seemed oblivious to the long-term implications of their chronic embrace of fluff. Why their embrace? Because that's what the media feel most comfortable with; that's what they're good at. But now we're seeing the dire consequences -- when the press wants to inform voters about outrageous campaign conduct...