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PBS 'News Judgment': Upside-Down Alito Flag Bigger Than Potential Kavanaugh Assassin

On Friday’s PBS NewsHour, the Week in Review segment dove into the New York Times “scoop” that the flag flew upside down for a few days in January 2021 outside the home of Supreme Court justice Samuel Alito. This was Big News? Two years ago, when a man showed up outside Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s house intending to assassinate him, the NewsHour didn’t find that worthy on Friday June 10, 2022. Of course, the Big News then was slobbering over the Pelosi-picked January 6 Committee, just as this Alito story is a January 6 echo.  CAPEHART: This is outrageous. And it's outrageous because this is a Supreme Court justice who, at the time that flag was flown, was sitting in judgment of a particular case involving the — still, at that point, the sitting president. The other thing is, could you imagine what would have happened if that flag was flying like that on the property of Ruth Bader Ginsburg or Ketanji Brown Jackson, someone from the liberal wing on the bench of the Supreme Court? They would have been impeached. And so the idea that we're supposed to accept Justice Alito's rationale here that, oh, my wife did it, it's unacceptable. And I think it just feeds into the erosion of the trust and the standing of the Supreme Court with the American public. Capehart and PBS and all their leftist media colleagues are actively trying to erode trust in the Supreme Court, because they’re not in charge of it right now. Washington Free Beacon editor Eliana Johnson subbed in for David Brooks, which means you get an actual conservative viewpoint for a change. JOHNSON: I don't think that the good liberal readers of The New York Times or viewers of this network would be willing to argue with a straight face that the views of a woman — and she has not come out to say that she didn't do this — are derivative of her husband's views. My husband has nothing to do with the things I say on this network, and you can't have it both ways. You cannot say that women are strong and should be out and employed and have their own views and that their husbands are responsible for everything they then go and do. Capehart then repeated his point: "And if that had happened, again, to RBG, they would be raining thunder calling for her resignation. And I wouldn't — I would have a hard time arguing with them." Earlier, Capehart made snippy points against Trump as he and the president agreed to debates: "Even though Donald Trump did agree to these two debates, I will believe it when I see it. I don't think he actually shows up." When anchor Geoff Bennett asked why Trump would lower expectations of Biden's debating skills at this point, Capehart hissed: "But we're talking about Donald Trump, who never misses an opportunity to belittle someone he's afraid of, but just to belittle anyone."

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NewsBusters Podcast: Lawrence O'Donnell's Cheesy Trump Trial Diaries

Part of the endless Trump trial coverage on MSNBC was The Last Word host Lawrence O'Donnell reading what sounded like bad diary entries on courtroom happenings. Porn star Stormy Daniels dressed loosely in black, which "suggested the modesty of a nun." How bizarre.  Days later, O'Donnell mocked Trump's appearance in court. He "leaves his face, with his eyes closed, in tortured elderly shapes when he drifts off into his closed-eye space, his mouth shifts from its preferred scowl to the look of a collapsing old building." Ever have that feeling of "collapsing building mouth"? On MSNBC, Brian Stelter told Ari Melber the GOP's in terrible shape, with all these Trump bootlickers showing up at his trial in Manhattan. "I’m just trying to imagine if any Democrats are going to show up at the trial of Bob Menendez, the senator, or or the trial of Joe Biden's son Hunter -- both of which are gonna happen in the next few weeks! And we’re not gonna see any of this, and that tells you everything you need to know about the differences between these two parties in 2024." To which there is an obvious rejoinder: We’re just trying to imagine if any Democrat-servant networks are going to show up at the trials of Senator Menendez or Hunter Biden. No one expects they will be doing gavel-to-gavel coverage for those trials, and that tells you everything you need to know about the Democrat-servant networks. Speaking of MSNBC, The New York Times devoted nearly 3,000 words by Jim Rutenberg and Michael Grynbaum to explain “How MSNBC’s Leftward Tilt Delivers Ratings, and Complications.” What's complicated? The unintentionally funny part is when NBC News suggested MSNBC was ruining its branding as "straight news." Who believes that any more? Lester Holt made it clear "fairness is overrated." We were a little stunned at how angry the networks became over Kansas City Chiefs kicker Harrison Butker's commencement address at Benedictine College. It wasn't surprising: a Catholic speaker talked about Catholic issues to Catholic graduates. But the Butker critics who aren’t Catholics pulled out little snippets they could not abide. First, they hated that Butker paid tribute to his wife Isabelle for making him successful, for assuming “one of the most important titles of all: homemaker.” That is like a curse word to the feminists. They can’t allow the notion that children might benefit from having a parent in the home. Lester Holt's NBC Nightly News featured a student who inaccurately summarized it: "Getting married and having kids is not my ideal situation right now. It definitely made graduation feel a little less special, knowing I had to sit through that and get told I'm nothing but a homemaker.' Enjoy the podcast below, or wherever you listen to podcasts. 

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Column: Boos and Hisses for the Kansas City Chiefs Kicker

On May 14, Kansas City Chiefs placekicker Harrison Butker gave the commencement address at Benedictine College, a Catholic school in Kansas. Within 48 hours, the media elites were ablaze with outrage. There’s a “growing uproar,” warned NBC’s Hoda Kotb. A Catholic speaker talked about Catholic issues to Catholic graduates. But the Butker critics who aren’t Catholics pulled out little snippets they could not abide. First, they hated that Butker paid tribute to his wife Isabelle for making him successful, for assuming “one of the most important titles of all: homemaker.” That is like a curse word to the feminists. They can’t allow the notion that children might benefit from having a parent in the home. He said to the female graduates that “some of you may go on to lead successful careers in the world. But I would venture to guess that the majority of you are most excited about your marriage and the children you will bring into this world.” He didn’t say they shouldn’t have careers. He did suggest that many women – especially Catholic women – put motherhood first. Butker also inflamed the Left with a brief allusion to “the deadly-sin sort of pride that has an entire month dedicated to it.” None of us should have pride in our sins, but the libertine left is allergic to the entire concept of sorrow for sin. Personally, this was my favorite political passage: “Our own nation is led by a man who publicly and proudly proclaims his Catholic faith, but at the same time is delusional enough to make the sign of the cross during a pro-abortion rally. He has been so vocal in his support for the murder of innocent babies that I'm sure to many people it appears that you can be both Catholic and pro-choice.” Lapsed Catholics and non-Catholics have no grasp of how the Catholic Church defines “scandal.” Catholics like Joe Biden, who aggressively support the exact opposite of church teachings, confuse both religious and non-religious people about what Catholics are called to believe -- like abortion is by its nature a deadly sin. But simplistic reporters don’t want anyone calling Biden a phony, any more than they want you to proclaim he's a divider, not a uniter. Jonathan Beane, the chief “diversity” officer of the NFL, put out a statement that “Harrison Butker gave a speech in his personal capacity. His views are not those of the NFL as an organization. The NFL is steadfast in our commitment to inclusion, which only makes our league stronger." It never stops being comical to tout “inclusion” when you’re telling a conservative Catholic to shut up about “Pride Month.” One can never dissent from the “diversity and inclusion” cops, who blatantly imply only the leftist side of the cultural debate defines their most precious words. Bobby Burack at Outkick pointed out that the NFL had no public statement of objection for Butker’s Kansas City teammate Rashee Rice, who was recently arrested on eight felony charges concerning a hit-and-run accident “while drag-racing his Lamborghini at 119 mph on a Dallas highway.” Reckless Rice is also under investigation for allegedly punching a photographer at a nightclub in Dallas, “leaving the accuser with noticeable swelling in his face.” The NFL has no comment.   Butker’s speech predictably prompted a Change.org petition calling for him to be fired by the Chiefs. Once again, it’s the Left that claims conservatives will “end democracy” and crush freedom of speech, while they demonstrate their absolute intolerance of an opposing point of view.  They can't achieve true "progress" until dissenters are heckled and banned.

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Brian Stelter: So SAD the Trump Trial Shows the GOP Is a Cult That Repeats Fox Talking Points

As part of MSNBC’s never-ending Trump trial coverage, former CNN host Brian Stelter arrived on The Beat with Ari Melber on Tuesday to mock all the politicians and Fox News hosts showing up at the courtroom. Brian tweeted out his proudest soundbite. I'm just trying to imagine if any Democratic lawmakers are going to show up at the trial of Senator Bob Menendez – or the trial of Joe Biden's son Hunter. pic.twitter.com/zGjqRajjDv — Brian Stelter (@brianstelter) May 16, 2024 STELTER: I’m just trying to imagine if any Democrats are going to show up at the trial of Bob Menendez, the senator, or or the trial of Joe Biden's son Hunter -- both of which are gonna happen in the next few weeks! And we’re not gonna see any of this, and that tells you everything you need to know about the differences between these two parties in 2024. To which there is an obvious rejoinder: We’re just trying to imagine if any Democrat-servant networks are going to show up at the trials of Senator Menendez or Hunter Biden. No one expects they will be doing gavel-to-gavel coverage for those trials, and that tells you everything you need to know about the Democrat-servant networks.  Stelter is trying to argue that Trump has a "cult" of celebrity, but it's also true that the leftist media's obsessive coverage makes it a more high-profile event for Trump supporters to show up and be seen. No Democrats will want to add any sliver of news-worthiness to the Democrat trials.  Trump has tried to turn these partisan prosecutions around, as he did with endless scandal probes while he was president. He doesn't have the luxury of a broad media establishment that will bury embarrassing stories.  Stelter can’t wait for Showtime or HBO to do a Trump-trial movie: “I can't wait to see the actual real-life movie that's going to be made of this trial. Because today was the stuff of actual drama! And people should see it. It's a shame we don't have cameras!” Once again, Showtime and the rest aren’t making a Biden docudrama. He continued: STELTER: But I do think the Republicans suddenly belatedly showing up to support Trump is in some ways the most interesting thing that happened today. Where were they for the last three weeks? Where were Trump’s friends? People are focused on why isn't his family coming? None of his friends showed up until this week. Now all of a sudden, they're all popping up, whether it's for the veepstakes or because he's pressuring them to be there. But it is so revealing and so sad about the state of the Republican party that they're all belatedly showing up. Did you see what Lisa Murkowski said today? One of these establishment Republican senators? She was asked why aren't you going to New York City to be at the trial. She said, don't we have something better to do around here than to watch stupid boring trials? And the reality is, Ari, no. The GOP lawmakers have nothing better to do, right? Than to sit around, and take their talking points from Fox. Stelter added that "far right" networks like Fox News tried to ignore the trial, but the "big story" coverage of networks like MSNBC have forced them to acknowledge this is big. Once again, just like with the Pelosi-Picked Panel on January 6, Fox is going to carry some of the same "big stories" as the leftist press with a different spin. It's a little harder to skip stories that 37 national media outlets are obsessing over. PS:  MSNBC's Ari Melber really HATES anyone (accurately) saying the judge's daughter Loren Merchan is a Democrat fundraiser. He thinks Trump is Geppetto and all his GOP minions are Pinocchios. He wants the Gag Rule to extend to all Republicans for their "scurrilous" attacks on Loren. pic.twitter.com/kockYAYL30 — Tim Graham (@TimJGraham) May 16, 2024

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Column: Hillary Clinton’s Conspiracy Privilege

It’s hard to watch the incessant gavel-to-gavel coverage of the Donald Trump trial in Manhattan without feeling like you’re traveling in a time warp back to 2016. We’re back reliving the “Access Hollywood” tape and talk of how Trump would have never been elected except porn star Stormy Daniels accepted a six-figure check to keep quiet. The richest vein of hypocrisy on this adultery-mangles-electability question flows through the Clintons. Hillary Clinton appeared on MSNBC's "Morning Joe" to denounce Trump for squashing the bimbo stories. It was typically shameless. She said: “I think the defendant, the former president, knew exactly what he was doing when he went to such great lengths to try to squash, bury, kill stories, pay off people, because he understood the electoral significance of them.” The cast of “Morning Joe” treated Hillary Clinton as a therapist for their Trump angst, and no one interrupted and asked about all the squashing, burying, and killing of stories that Hillary Clinton engaged in when they first sought the White House in 1992. On the cusp of the Gennifer Flowers allegations breaking in January of that year, Hillary Clinton was telling Margaret Carlson of Time magazine “My marriage is solid, full of love and friendship, but it’s too profound to talk about glibly.” But after Flowers asserted she had a 12-year affair with Bill Clinton, they appeared on “60 Minutes,” and Hillary Clinton claimed women being questioned about their relationship with Bill were her friends. “We reached out to them. I met with two of them to reassure them they knew they were friends of ours. I felt terrible about what was happening to them.” In retrospect, one can smell what Hillary was cooking. She was pressuring potential accusers to stay quiet, but pitching it on national TV as just chatting things over with friends. One can only imagine how Melania Trump processed the Stormy Daniels tale, but paying a non-disclosure agreement isn't exactly maintaining your innocence. That's why the Democratic prosecutors in New York are pumping this out on CNN and MSNBC, hour on the hour. The Left thinks those religious conservatives are bothered by this, and it should cause them to vote for someone else, preferably that "devout Catholic" Joe Biden. But Hillary has always waged war on anyone who would seek to damage her and Bill's future in politics, and the media have always gushed over her warfare. At the end of the Year of Our Intern in 1998, Time magazine was aglow. Reporters Nancy Gibbs and Karen Tumulty oozed that "as she pursued the private rescue of a marriage and the public rescue of a presidency, she was the one person who seemed to see the larger story and shaped its telling." The "larger story" was the "vast right-wing conspiracy." In this election cycle, Democratic prosecutors lobbed 91 felony charges at Trump, and the networks largely refuse to even describe them as Democrats, let alone a vast left-wing conspiracy. Time managing editor Walter Isaacson even wrote that they wanted to name her "Person of the Year" in 1998 for her, um, "dignity." That's how they describe Hillary lying for months that Bill didn't have sexual relations with That Woman. "Her strength and her almost surreal ability to assert her dignity were remarkable to some and mystifying to others." This kind of copy is why most Americans don't trust the "mainstream media." They don't report stories as much as they "shape" them for the benefit of their political allies.

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Guess Which Huge Biden Lie CNN Refused To Fact-Check

CNN's big interview with Joe Biden had questions but no fact-checker. So, when the president lied, they didn't say a thing. That's certainly not the treatment Trump gets.

FOX News

Guess which huge Biden lie CNN refused to fact-check

CNN's big interview with Joe Biden had questions but no fact-checker. So, when the president lied, they didn't say a thing. That's certainly not the treatment Trump gets.

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NewsBusters Podcast: Reagan-Hating Networks Cite Reagan to Help Biden

Ronald Reagan is suddenly a topic in the liberal media, but only as a lame defense of President Biden’s betrayal of our ally Israel. ABC, CBS, and NBC all offered this talking point. The most energetic rebuttal of this pro-Biden theme came from Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) on CBS’s Face the Nation. Jorge Bonilla explains the Sunday spin, including that CNN State of the Union host Dana Bash did. She didn't throw Reagan spin at Sen. J.D. Vance (R-Ohio), but she suggested Donald Trump was an anti-Semite -- in part for his suggestion that Jews voting against him “should be ashamed.” That's an interesting spin, since Democrats routinely suggest that blacks and Hispanics that vote for Republicans are "race traitors," or aren't demonstrating a tribal loyalty. They don't expect that shaming with Jews. CBS's Sunday Morning aired a puffball interview with comedian Bill Maher, letting him claim he speaks for the "normies" and he's not ideological. On his Friday night program on HBO, Maher lamented that the Democrats "blew it" in all their legal warfare on Trump.  What was amazing in this profile was CBS reporter Robert Costa imploring Maher to lay off mockery of the Left, just shine the spotlight on the right-wingers! He asked: "What do you say to your [leftist] critics, though, who say that you should just focus on them, Bill, if they’re more alarming to you than the Left. And why not shine the spotlight on them only?" It's like he wants Maher to be exactly like CBS's own Stephen Colbert.  We conclude with questions Jorge knows from his places of residence: why would Gov. Kathy Hochul (D-N.Y.) claim black kids in the Bronx don't know the word "computer"? And why would the press ignore it? Then there is the very short-lived attempt by "Queers for Palestine" to block an exit to Disney World in Orlando. Enjoy the podcast below or wherever you listen to podcasts.

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CBS's Robert Costa Begs Bill Maher to Stop Mocking Lefties, Just Mock Republicans

CBS reporter Robert Costa put together a puffball interview for HBO Real Time host Bill Maher on their show Sunday Morning. They let him claim he's not ideological and didn't laugh when he said  “I speak for the normies. I speak for that vast middle that is tired of the partisanship. I don’t want to hate half the country, and I don’t hate half the country.” Bill Maher represents the "vast middle," the "normies"? Conservatives across America would make a face at that. At bottom, Maher is a bit of shock jock, so that when Democrats are in power he's going to mock them as well, just as he suggested on Friday night that the Democrats "blew it" in all their legal warfare on Trump.  What was amazing in this profile was Costa imploring Maher to lay off mockery of the Left, just shine the spotlight on the right-wingers!  Robert @costareports pressed @BillMaher on @CBSSunday: If “left irritates you,” but “the right often alarms you,” then “what do you say to critics who say you should just focus on them if they’re more alarming to you than the left, then why not shine the spotlight on them only?” pic.twitter.com/5glVpJQsFQ — Brent Baker 🇺🇦 🇮🇱 (@BrentHBaker) May 12, 2024 COSTA: You write a lot of throughout this book that the left irritates you, frustrates you at times, but the right often alarms you. MAHER: Yes. They’re very alarming. They’re extremely alarming. More alarming. COSTA: What do you say to your critics, though, who say that you should just focus on them, Bill, if they’re more alarming to you than the Left. And why not shine the spotlight on them only? MAHER: The truth isn’t one-sided like that. The Democrats constantly are,running against Trump with the idea ‘You people out there couldn’t possibly vote for this guy.’ And people are saying, ‘Watch me. Hold my beer. Watch me vote for him again.’ Earth to Bill: Your "news" people at CBS and ABC and NBC and PBS do believe the "truth is one-sided like that." Maher then insisted Trump is a massive liar and literally crazy with malignant narcissism. CBS ran a clip of Maher citing the Glenn Kessler "lie counter" at The Washington Post: "Trump made over 8,000 false or misleading statements as president. Nothing like this has ever happened before." What has never happened before (or since) was the Post doing a database of "false or misleading statements" by one politician. They refused to follow through with Biden. Maher could have asked Costa when he and Bob Woodward were going to do one of those investigative books on President Biden. Woodward did four on Trump. They're just like Kessler: "why shine the spotlight" on Biden?  Speaking of false statements, Maher talked about how he was willing (despite leftist protest) to interview former Trump Attorney General William Barr, in part because he found it very important that Barr was willing to say Trump lost the election. Then Maher also took after ”Bill Barr's, I thought, horrible behavior when the Mueller Report came out and he basically lied about it.” Costa didn't ask: What's the lie? It was more about spin as the collusion case fizzled. At the time, Democrats were furious because Barr announced Mueller would not indict Trump, but they wanted wiggle room. Mueller then offered verbal flatulence to Congress, "We did not, however, make a determination as to whether the president did commit a crime." But the scandal was over.

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Ex-NPR Editor Uri Berliner Mocks New NPR CEO Katherine Maher for Skipping House Hearing

NPR whistleblower Uri Berliner, who penned a bombshell expose on the woke one-sidedness of the "public" radio network's news product, knocked new NPR CEO Katherine Maher for failing to show for Wednesday's House hearing on the leftist bias of her new employer. She claimed she had a Board of Directors meeting all day. Instead, Maher submitted written testimony NPR is “bringing trusted, reliable, independent news and information of the highest editorial standards” to tens of millions of listeners. Eli Lake at The Free Press, which ran Berliner's piece, talked to Berliner about the no-show. “Why isn’t she there? Is she the right person for the job at this time?” he asked, adding that her written statement “sounds like a pledge drive.” This question could be turned around on Berliner, who surely was invited to testify by the House Republicans. Berliner also called BS on Maher’s claim that she doesn’t interfere in NPR’s editorial content. “She said she was on the other side of the firewall that separates the newsroom from the CEO,” he told The Free Press in a phone interview. “However, when my story came out, after I had already been suspended for five days without pay, she told editorial staffers in a public statement on the NPR website they had been hurt, demeaned, and disrespected by what I wrote. That’s knocking down the firewall right there.” He added, “She doesn’t address how NPR’s audience has shifted dramatically over time, from roughly reflecting America to a much narrower progressive slice of the country.” He insisted “NPR needs real leadership now...The board will need to decide whether Katherine Maher is the right person for the job.” Clearly, they decided Katherine Maher matched NPR's wokeness nicely, with the donations to election-denying Stacey Abrams and the tweets in defense of looting, which perfectly matched NPR's vibe. Fox News media reporter Joseph Wulfsohn reported on Berliner's comments last weekend at the Dissident Dialogues festival in New York [photo credit: Fox News]. Berliner revealed that one of the "big factors" that motivated him to go public about NPR's groupthink was Maher's arrival in March. He hoped the new CEO could "turn a new leaf" for the outlet. "As I said in my essay, we're welcoming a CEO, I'll be rooting for her because I thought, okay, maybe this is the time to bring this up. We've got new leadership. Maybe this is the time we could really tackle these things," Berliner said. Berliner then pivoted to the memo Maher penned to staff publicly rebuking him:  "Questioning whether our people are serving our mission with integrity, based on little more than the recognition of their identity, is profoundly disrespectful, hurtful, and demeaning." "Supposedly there's what's called a firewall in the newsroom," Berliner said. "There's the newsroom, the editorial team, and there are people who run the business, the CEO. And I think basically in one of her first acts, if not her first act, she crossed over that firewall to criticize me as a journalist. And that I found especially troubling given her views on the First Amendment, free expression."  Meanwhile, this is the kind of contempt NPR reporters show for their critics: Brian Mann is the guy who I testified failed to cover Hunter Biden's laptop in October 2020 in favor of a story titled “Experts Say Attack On Hunter Biden's Addiction Deepens Stigma For Millions.” NPR is facing a ton of criticism rn from people who either aren't actually listening to our reporting or who are just making #%#@ up. Which makes it harder to focus on real questions and critical feedback about our journalism. https://t.co/EOVKMb4ugk — Brian Mann (@BrianMannADK) May 7, 2024

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NPR Hearing: Our NewsBusters Opening Statement for the Congressional Record

It was an honor and a privilege to testify before Congress on the bias at National Public Radio. It was my second turn. In 1999, I testified about the bias at PBS. Nothing has changed much in the overall tilt of public broadcasting, even if it's grown more intense with social media and the Trump phenomenon. I collated examples of NPR bias by using the NPR topic tag on NewsBusters -- remember you can isolate individual networks or journalists or politicians to evaluate the media's performance. After preparing an opening statement for several days, your time is limited to five minutes, but your remarks as submitted to the committee are placed in the Congressional Record. I knew not every sentence could make the televised hearing, but the statement is often read by members and staffers before the hearing begins. So in case people wanted to get the entire statement as submitted, it is posted below:  ---    Good morning, I represent the Media Research Center, America’s preeminent conservative media watchdog organization. It was founded in 1987, and I joined the center in 1989. We monitor national media outlets on a daily basis and provide daily coverage of the media’s tilt at NewsBusters.org.  We are eager to testify with many examples on this hearing’s intention to examine accusations of bias on National Public Radio. NPR and PBS have for their entire existence made a mockery of language in the Public Broadcasting Act of 1967 that mandated “objectivity and balance in all programs or series of programs of a controversial nature.”     On its website, NPR has a statement of principles, including this: “We know that truth is not possible without the active pursuit of a diversity of voices, especially those most at risk of being left out.” I would say after decades of listening, the voices most at risk of being left out are the conservatives. They are talked about, but they don’t get to do much talking. We would make the same argument about PBS, from the NewsHour to the Frontline documentaries. Roughly half the taxpayers of America donate to a public-broadcasting system that considers them unworthy of inclusion. NPR never lives up to their evening newscast title, All Things Considered.     After senior editor Uri Berliner recently testified about NPR’s bias on the internet, NPR chief news executive Edith Chapin proclaimed, "We believe that inclusion — among our staff, with our sourcing, and in our overall coverage — is critical to telling the nuanced stories of this country and our world." The obvious rebuttal to that is: So why did Berliner write his expose? And why did he resign after NPR employees refused to work with him?     Berliner suggested this bias became more pronounced when Donald Trump ran for president. We can tell you NPR has demonstrated a leftist bent much longer than that. NPR legal reporter Nina Totenberg destroyed the Douglas Ginsburg nomination to the Supreme Court in 1987, then tried again with Clarence Thomas in 1991. They energetically channeled the accusers of Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh in 2018, and when a man arrived in an Uber on Kavanaugh’s street two years ago with weapons and plans to assassinate Kavanaugh, NPR failed to file a single feature story on it. Nina Totenberg could not be found. NPR, a supposed source of civility, didn’t demonstrate that she cared one bit about this potential political violence. But in March, between Morning Edition and Fresh Air, Kavanaugh accuser Christine Blasey Ford was granted an hour of taxpayer-funded air time to reproduce her unproven charges of teenaged sexual assault.     This kind of pattern underlines Berliner’s recent statement on NewsNation: ”NPR has a lot of soul searching to do about representing the country at large. Being a publicly funded news organization and really trying to represent this country in all its great diversity and viewpoints.”     NPR isn’t soul searching. NPR isn’t seriously trying to achieve a diversity of sources or an independent news agenda. Instead they are serving their own left-leaning donors, major and minor. As Berliner reported, by 2023, 67 percent of listeners said they were very or somewhat liberal. Apparently, you don’t want to upset them with an opposing view. This network lives in an airless bubble, or a silo, pick your metaphor.      Both PBS and NPR repeat the leftist media’s resistance to an opposing side on contentious issues like climate change and transgender ideology. Our study of seven months of PBS NewsHour found they gave over 90 percent of the air time to the Left on gender ideology stories. NPR displayed its take in 2022 by interviewing transgender Biden HHS appointee Adm. Rachel Levine to argue “There is no argument about the value and the importance of gender-affirming care. There is no argument.” NPR reporter Selena Simmons-Duffin underlined: “Gender-affirming care is not harmful. It's lifesaving, she explains.” No dissent was allowed.     NPR clearly doesn’t fear congressional oversight of its aggressive biases, on air and online. They had a fit when Elon Musk defined them on Twitter as “state-affiliated,” like somehow taxpayer funding doesn’t affiliate you with the state. They know Congress isn’t going to want to police their content. It doesn’t just upset the public broadcasters. It infuriates the so-called “mainstream media.” But the only thing that seems to concentrate the attention of public broadcasters on this subject is the threat of defunding. Even then, it might cause a “course correction” for a few weeks or months, before returning to the mean-spirited mean against Republicans. I would suggest NPR should have to come to Congress and defend its content choices at least once a year.     Their choices can be very questionable.  A glaring Exhibit A is the New York Post series on Hunter Biden’s laptop in October of 2020. Most of the so-called “mainstream media” tried to dismiss this story – falsely – as Russian disinformation. But NPR stood out.     NPR’s Public Editor Kelly McBride quoted Terence Samuel, NPR's Managing Editor for News. “We don't want to waste our time on stories that are not really stories, and we don't want to waste the listeners’ and readers’ time on stories that are just pure distractions.” He dismissed the Post stories as a “politically driven event.” That’s interesting, since you could argue Nina Totenberg’s hostile reporting on Supreme Court nominees created “politically driven events.”     Instead of seeking to investigate the Biden family’s influence-peddling, NPR’s Morning Edition broadcast a story titled “Experts Say Attack On Hunter Biden's Addiction Deepens Stigma For Millions.” There wasn’t one word in it about Hunter Biden’s business practices involving his father, which was the point of the Post stories.     The pattern continues today. When the House Oversight Committee had a hearing in March where Hunter Biden was supposed to appear, NPR’s All Things Considered wouldn’t consider a feature story on it. NPR covered the Pelosi-picked House January 6 Committee live for every minute, and then ignored the Biden impeachment inquiry.     Instead, NPR’s homepage was topped the next morning by their hot story: new details on Rupert Murdoch’s British phone-hacking scandal of 2011. NPR had a Biden mention on their homepage. White House reporter Deepa Shivaram had a TikTok-like video shoot on President Biden grabbing a trendy boba tea in Las Vegas under the headline “Food stops can tell you a lot about a campaign.”     There are other egregious examples of imbalance that encourage chaos and disorder in society:     On August 27, 2020, NPR's blog "Code Switch," with the slogan "Race In Your Face," posted an interview promoting a new book titled In Defense of Looting. Natalie Escobar promoted author Emily Osterweil's view that “looting is a powerful tool to bring about real, lasting change in society.”     On The NPR Politics Podcast on July 17, 2021, NPR reporter Danielle Kurtzleben brought on Yale law professor Elizabeth Hinton to promote her book on the acceptability of violence as a protest tactic against police. Kurtzleben called this book “excellent” and explained: “You talk about these clashes as rebellions -- and quite pointedly, not as riots. It's a very meaningful choice.”     On NPR’s Fresh Air on April 15, 2023, their movie critic John Powers praised the movie How to Blow Up a Pipeline, hailing it as “hugely timely” when “people are frustrated by society's inability, indeed unwillingness to even slow down ecological disasters like climate change.”     Notice no one is presented in these segments to object to these advocates of criminality and violence. So when people think NPR is that place for civility on the radio, they would be wrong. They can devote their resources to getting behind looting, rioting, and blowing up pipelines.     But NPR presents the Republicans as uniquely extreme. They were quite the welcome wagon in this Congress. On January 18, 2023, the NPR interview show Fresh Air headlined their show, “How will the hard-right Republicans in Congress wield their newfound power?” Gross began: “Now that Kevin McCarthy has assumed his new role as speaker of the House, a position he won after making concessions to the far right of his party, what can we expect?” Between host Terry Gross and her guest, New York Times reporter Catie Edmondson, they labeled the House Republicans as “far right” or “hard right” 32 times. Democrats apparently don’t have an extreme.     Nine days later, on Morning Edition, host Steve Inskeep laid out the red carpet for House Democrat leader Hakeem Jeffries to announce on the debt-ceiling debate, “We are not going to pay a ransom note to extremists in the other party." Republicans were suicidal in their opposition, Inskeep suggested: “You'd say to Republicans, "Drive the car off the cliff. We are not going to grab the wheel." Jeffries replied: "We're not going to let the car go off the cliff even though there are people who are willing to do it."      On the PBS NewsHour, NPR White House reporter Tamara Keith said last October “what's happening in the House is a reflection of a broader divide in the Republican Party, where there's maybe like 20 percent or 30 percent of Republicans who don't want to burn it all down.”     To NPR, the only “election deniers” are Republicans, and they won’t remind anyone that Hakeem Jeffries and the star Democrats on the January 6 Committee argued Trump wasn’t actually elected, that maybe he was installed with the help of the Russian government. Berliner pointed out how Congressman Adam Schiff was on 25 times to push the Democrat line. Fox News found the number of segments was actually 32.     NPR offered live coverage of every minute of the House January 6 Committee, in daytime and in prime time, a committee where Speaker Pelosi would not allow the opposing party to choose their own committee members. This year, hearings of the Biden impeachment inquiry or the Mayorkas impeachment received zero live coverage, despite Democrats being allowed to choose their own committee members.  It suggests Democratic-run hearings are “historic” and “newsworthy” and even nonpartisan, while Republican-organized hearings should be buried as serving no public purpose whatsoever.     NPR is a hub of the leftist argument that the current election is all about the survival of democracy, and that electing Republicans is the end of democracy. This leads to a serious tilt in the media. On the NPR-distributed weekly talk show Left Right & Center, the alleged “Center” of the show, former NPR anchorman David Greene, proclaimed: I think the bind that a lot of journalists are in is, how can we be passionate believers in democracy and not be biased in a presidential election?” Greene said he knows “voters get to decide,” but “Can you believe in democracy without being pro-Biden?”     At least in this case, Republican voice Sarah Isgur answered Yes. I would also answer yes, that in a democracy, conservatives and Republicans deserve to be half a debate, and the so-called defenders of democracy sound like the squashers of debate and democracy. They silence opposition by claiming every one of us conspires to end democracy.     The people who are opposed to independent, fact-based journalism in this debate are not the conservatives. It is NPR itself that refuses to operate in a nonpartisan manner that allows both sides to speak and is willing to cover stories and hearings that the Democratic Party would rather avoid. They take our money, and use it to smear us without rebuttal.

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Bill Maher Has Video: Stormy Daniels Was a 'Bad Witness,' Flip-Flopped to Victim

On Friday night's Real Time with Bill Maher on HBO, the host complained about how the Democrats from Merrick Garland on down "blew it at every turn" on creating legal problems for Trump, so now before the election, "it's Stormy or bust." Even there, Maher argued porn star Stormy Daniels is a "bad witness" because she has changed her story in front of this jury, from empowered porn actress to victim. On HBO @BillMaher frets Dems had multiple chances “to put Trump on trial...but blew it at every turn,” then points out it’s “Stormy or bust” but she’s “a bad witness” because what she claimed this week at the trial is “quite in variance with what she said to me in 2018” #RealTime pic.twitter.com/C5WdqErsaV — Brent Baker 🇺🇦 🇮🇱 (@BrentHBaker) May 11, 2024 Maher said: "Let me show you a little video. This is when I had Stormy on in 2018 and first I asked her about why she had sex with trump. Listen to that, and then listen to what she says after that and we’re going to talk about the trial because it's quite at variance with what she said to me in 2018." First she said “I have no idea” why she allegedly had sex with Trump. Maher said “you said this is not a #MeToo case,” and she agreed: “I wasn't attacked or raped or coerced of blackmailed… they tried to shove me in the #MeToo box to further their own agenda. First of all, I didn't want any part of that because it's not the truth and I'm not a victim in that regard.” Maher said “That’s not what she’s saying now. She's talking about he was bigger and blocking the way. It's all the #MeToo buzzwords. She said there was a power, an imbalance of power for sure. My hands were shaking so hard. Said she blacked out. Blacked out? She's a porn star!" New York Times columnist Frank Bruni tried to joke he might black out with Trump, too. Maher crudely said she has sex with strangers routinely. New York Post columnist Douglas Murray agreed with Maher: “Everyone who is hanging on the hope of Stormy Daniels being the way to get Trump in prison is going to have another disappointment coming.” Later, Maher applauded New York Times executive editor Joe Kahn’s comments about not being Pravda for Team Biden. Bruni agreed that reporters shouldn’t "sugar coat” Biden’s flaws or just feed voters “baby bird style.” But Murray said everyone can see through the media, that in 2020 they suppressed the Hunter Biden laptop story "because they wanted to get their guy in."  In the end, Bruni came around to the real Times viewpoint, you can't fail to present Trump as a threat to democracy:  But here’s thing we can’t do. We need to be honest about them both, we do not ignore and sugarcoat Biden's shortcomings. But we also can’t do this ‘Here's one that story about Trump, here's one bad story about Biden.' We can't enforce this mathematical equivalence, right?  You’ve got one candidate who has delusions or aspirations to a quasi-fascist state. You have another who's going to mix up the names of world leaders and need a midday nap. It’s not eenie-meanie-miney-mo.

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NewsBusters Podcast: Hillary's Hot Talk of Hitler and Bimbo Eruptions

Hillary Clinton was the big guest Thursday on MSNBC's Morning Joe. MSNBC’s headline on their YouTube video was "Joe Biden is the only choice for women who value freedom. Isn’t that just perfect for that network and that show? Abortion = freedom.  Hillary pleased the MSNBC crowd by saying there’s no choice for voters between Biden and Trump: "One is yes, old and effective, has passed legislation that I think is going to put America on such a strong footing for the future....The other is old and dangerous. I mean, why is that a hard choice for people?" Hillary also thought she should have been way ahead in 2016. Now we're reliving 2016 in a Manhattan courtroom, and Stormy Daniels was the star witness this week. The richest vein of hypocrisy was Hillary accusing Trump on hush money. He "went to such great lengths to try to squash, bury, kill stories, pay off people, because he understood the electoral significance of them." As if the Clintons never tried to squash and kill stories by female accusers!  Then Joe Scarborough descended into his Nazi parallels with Trump again, goading Hillary to unload all the "Trump is Hitler" talk. She said he's a dictator who will end democracy, and Republicans are "people who care more about a future tax cut than the sanctity of the Constitution." Together, they've spending almost eight years spreading this bizarre notion that eventually everyone will listen to them and agree with them, as long as the media keeps hammering away at the "fascist." They’re going to keep being disappointed. The press is constantly failing unless and until Trump is ruined. They're quite a fun bunch to watch. At the end, we notice Kamala Harris cackling over saying the word "Ovaries!" at a group of male reporters while she's visiting an abortion clinic as a campaign stop. It sounds sexist, like men don't know women's body parts. And The NPR Politics Podcast underlines why NPR obsessed this week over Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene and her failed attempt to boot Speaker Mike Johnson. Enjoy the podcast below, or wherever you listen to podcasts. 

Politics – The Daily Signal

CNN Fails to Fact-Check Biden’s Falsehood-Filled Interview

On Wednesday, President Joe Biden took the very unusual step of submitting to an interviewer who was an actual journalist (not like Howard Stern or Drew Barrymore). It wouldn’t be long before he started mangling his record—and Donald Trump’s.

CNN reporter Erin Burnett began with how Trump’s promises of new jobs in Wisconsin didn’t come true: “Why should people here believe that you will succeed at creating jobs where Trump failed?” Biden bragged: “He’s never succeeded in creating jobs, and I have never failed. I have created over 15 million jobs since I have been president.” He did it all by himself! He claimed that other than Herbert Hoover, Trump’s “the only other president who lost more jobs than created in his four-year term.”

There’s a massive asterisk; namely, the global COVID-19 pandemic. Trump’s employment record in the first three years of his presidency was strong. The raw number of employed Americans reached records. In October 2018, it had reached more than 156.6 million. The unemployment rate hit record lows across demographics—for women, blacks, Latinos, Asians, and youth.

Obviously, the severe lockdowns during the pandemic—most aggressively pushed by the Democrats and their media allies—drove massive job losses. Nonfarm payroll employment in the United States declined by 9.4 million in 2020. So, Democrats blame that on Trump, and when the pandemic was over, they took credit for the economy climbing out of that hole.

But that wasn’t Biden’s worst mangle. He claimed to CNN that “no president’s had the run we have had, in terms of creating jobs and bringing down inflation. It was 9% when I came to office, 9%.”

That’s ridiculous! It’s a baldfaced lie. Inflation was 1.4%, again, due to the pandemic. Burnett didn’t check his facts, during or after the interview. She pushed him to acknowledge inflation was bad, but she didn’t suggest he was lying.

Fox News contributor Joe Concha tweeted: “And of course, CNN makes sure its pious fact-checker is nowhere to be found afterward.”

And of course, CNN makes sure its pious fact-checker is nowhere to be found afterward… https://t.co/1lgapFWYgp

— Joe Concha (@JoeConchaTV) May 9, 2024

That would be Daniel Dale, who’s almost entirely deployed on TV to “fact-check” Trump. Since Trump’s Manhattan trial began in mid-April, Dale has appeared nine times to “check” him. He has not appeared to check anyone else. On April 18, Jake Tapper said, “He’s handy to have around at times like this.”

Some of these fact checks are “brag checks.” Trump will say he’s ahead in all the polls, when he’s ahead in most polls. But Dale sounds most exasperated when Trump blames Biden for his legal troubles. On April 18, Dale decried “his false conspiracy theory that essentially that Joe Biden is behind this case, which was brought by a locally elected district attorney.”

Dale can’t even disclose that District Attorney Alvin Bragg is a Democrat. He acknowledged Trump’s lead prosecutor, Matthew Colangelo, was a Biden Justice Department official, and then joined Bragg’s team. A “conspiracy theory” between Democrat lawyers looks obvious here and declaring it “false” is a lame spin.

On Tuesday, Dale threw a penalty flag at Trump for saying Bragg is a “Soros-backed” prosecutor—and Trump didn’t say that in the remarks they’d just aired. Dale turned on the spin machine by saying leftist billionaire George Soros is “a frequent target of antisemitic conspiracy theories” and then claimed “at best” the money was indirect: Soros donated to the Color of Change PAC, and then the PAC backed Bragg.

If a conservative DA received big money from a pro-Trump PAC, CNN would call him or her “Trump-backed” without hesitation. CNN deploys Dale not as a “fact-checker” as much as a spin spoiler.

COPYRIGHT 2024 CREATORS.COM

The Daily Signal publishes a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of The Heritage Foundation.

The post CNN Fails to Fact-Check Biden’s Falsehood-Filled Interview appeared first on The Daily Signal.

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Column: CNN Deploys a 'Fact Checker' for Trump, Not for Biden

On May 8, President Biden took the very unusual step of submitting to an interviewer who was an actual journalist (not a Howard Stern or Drew Barrymore). It wouldn’t be long before he started mangling his record – and Donald Trump’s. CNN's Erin Burnett began with how Trump’s promises of new jobs in Wisconsin didn’t come true: “Why should people here believe that you will succeed at creating jobs where Trump failed?” Biden bragged: “He's never succeeded in creating jobs and I have never failed. I have created over 15 million jobs since I have been president.” He did it all by himself! He claimed other than Herbert Hoover, Trump's "the only other president who lost more jobs than created in his four-year term.” There’s a massive asterisk – the global Covid pandemic. Trump’s employment record in the first three years of his presidency was strong. The raw number of employed Americans reached new records. In October 2018, it had reached more than 165.6 million. The unemployment rate hit record lows across demographics: for women, blacks, Latinos, Asians, and youth. Obviously, the severe lockdowns during the pandemic – most aggressively pushed by the Democrats and their media allies – drove massive job losses. Non-farm payroll employment in the United States declined by 9.4 million in 2020. So Democrats blame that on Trump, and when the pandemic was over, they took credit for the economy climbing out of that hole. But that wasn’t Biden’s worst mangle. He claimed to CNN that “no president's had the run we have had, in terms of creating jobs and bringing down inflation. It was nine percent when I came to office, nine percent.”  That’s ridiculous! It’s a bald-faced lie. Inflation was 1.4 percent, again, due to the pandemic. Burnett didn’t check his facts, during or after the interview. She pushed him to acknowledge inflation was bad, but she didn’t suggest he was lying. Fox News contributor Joe Concha tweeted: “And of course, CNN makes sure its pious fact-checker is nowhere to be found afterward.” That would be Daniel Dale, who's almost entirely deployed on TV to “fact check" Trump. Since Trump’s Manhattan trial began in mid-April, Dale has appeared nine times  to "check" him. He has not appeared to check anyone else. On April 18, Jake Tapper said “he’s handy to have around at times like this.” Some of these fact checks are “brag checks.” Trump will say he’s ahead in all the polls, when he’s ahead in most polls. But Dale sounds most exasperated when Trump blames Biden for his legal troubles. On April 18, Dale decried “his false conspiracy theory that essentially that Joe Biden is behind this case, which was brought by a locally elected district attorney.”  Dale can’t even disclose DA Alvin Bragg is a Democrat. He acknowledged Trump’s lead prosecutor, Matthew Colangelo, was a Biden Justice Department official, and then joined Bragg’s team. A “conspiracy theory” between Democrat lawyers looks obvious here, and declaring it “false” is lame spin. On May 7, Dale threw a penalty flag at Trump for saying Bragg is a “Soros-backed” prosecutor….and Trump didn’t say that in the remarks they’d just aired. Dale turned on the spin machine by saying Soros is “a frequent target of anti-Semitic conspiracy theories,” and then claimed “at best” the money was indirect:  Soros donated to the Color of Change PAC, and then the PAC backed Bragg. If a conservative DA received big money from a pro-Trump PAC, CNN would call him or her “Trump-backed” without hesitation. CNN deploys Dale not as a “fact checker” as much as a spin spoiler.

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NewsBusters Podcast: A Fun Day on Capitol Hill Truth-Telling About NPR

The House Republicans on the Energy & Commerce Committee invited me to testify on Wednesday about allegations of bias at National Public Radio. The expose by former NPR business editor Uri Berliner galvanized the Republicans to introduce several bills about defunding NPR after more than 50 years of taxpayer support. Is there any hope that NPR will change its biased ways? Don't be wildly optimistic. However, I told them they should hold more hearings and press new NPR CEO Katharine Maher to explain how their content serves all the public, and not just the Democrat fraction. Maher declined this invitation, insisting she had an previously schedule all-day board meeting. We'll hope this committee can find a date to ask her to justify all the tilt we've been exposing.  I reminded Congress that supposedly civil NPR has in the last few years endorsed the book In Defense of Looting, called a book "excellent" that claimed anti-police riots should be called "rebellions," and hailed a movie called How to Blow Up a Pipeline. Then there is their attack on Republicans.  On January 18, 2023, the NPR interview show Fresh Air headlined their show, “How will the hard-right Republicans in Congress wield their newfound power?” Gross began: “Now that Kevin McCarthy has assumed his new role as speaker of the House, a position he won after making concessions to the far right of his party, what can we expect?” Between host Terry Gross and her guest, New York Times reporter Catie Edmondson, they labeled the House Republicans as “far right” or “hard right” 32 times. Democrats apparently don’t have an extreme. Nine days later, on Morning Edition, host Steve Inskeep laid out the red carpet for House Democrat leader Hakeem Jeffries to announce on the debt-ceiling debate, “We are not going to pay a ransom note to extremists in the other party." Republicans were suicidal in their opposition, Inskeep suggested: “You'd say to Republicans, "Drive the car off the cliff. We are not going to grab the wheel." Jeffries replied: "We're not going to let the car go off the cliff even though there are people who are willing to do it." On the PBS NewsHour, NPR White House reporter Tamara Keith said last October “what's happening in the House is a reflection of a broader divide in the Republican Party, where there's maybe like 20 percent or 30 percent of Republicans who don't want to burn it all down.” Enjoy the podcast below, or wherever you listen to podcasts. 

Politics – The Daily Signal

PolitiFact Shames Talk of ‘Outside Agitators’ in College Protests

You can tell when the PolitiFact website is going to negotiate around the facts. On May 7, its top headline on the homepage asked: “Are ‘outside agitators’ co-opting campus protests?”

This isn’t quite the right question. The media have presented these events as “student” protests, so if half the participants aren’t college students, how would they describe the nonstudents? PolitiFact writers Kwasi Gyamfi Asiedu and Loreben Tuquero offered this summary:

—Police, city and university officials nationwide have blamed ‘outside agitators’ for campus protests but have provided little evidence for their claims.
—Law enforcement experts say police often consider ‘outside agitators’ to be people who move from city to city and are paid to be agitators.
—Historians say government and law officials commonly use the ‘outside agitator’ narrative to delegitimize protesters and their demands.

First, the “little evidence” is a weird claim, when PolitiFact’s article acknowledges facts like the New York Police Department reported that “32 out of 112 people arrested at Columbia’s private campus were unaffiliated with the university. At nearby City College, 102 out of 170 people arrested were not students.” Add it up, and 134 out of 282 protesters were not students. So, when Mayor Eric Adams complains about “outside agitators,” he’s not in need of a “fact check.”

They even scolded leftist Reps. Ayanna Pressley, D-Mass., and Hank Johnson, D-Ga., over their “agitator” concerns.

They did not mention the recent story of an outside agitator named James Carlson, who was part of the army that briefly occupied Hamilton Hall at Columbia University. He’s a 40-year-old trust fund heir who owns a townhouse in Brooklyn worth $3.4 million.

PolitiFact typically seeks out “experts” to match the narratives it wants to underline. It doesn’t like people suggesting these protesters aren’t local and they might be paid to protest. It found William & Mary law professor Timothy Zick to define the outside agitator spin: “It was used as sort of a phrase that would link protesters, no matter how peaceful they were, to Communists and other infiltrators who were causing disruption.” The term is used to cast doubt on protester “sincerity.”

Angus Johnston, “historian of student activism” at Hostos Community College in New York, explained, “The idea behind the concept of the outside agitator is that dissent can never be coming from the people who are expressing that dissent.” It also turned to Johnston to underline, “Some experts have been quick to note the main goal of a protest is to get others to join in.”

This spin is nothing like how the media spun the tea party protests against Obamacare legislation. They sought to discredit them as donor-funded “AstroTurf” (not grassroots). They went looking for the most racist or ignorant-sounding sign they could find to present protesters as a kooky “fringe” movement.

NBC’s Chuck Todd decried “town hall madness.” The front page of The Boston Globe lamented the “quarrelsome masses hollering questions downloaded from activist websites.”

MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann ranted, “The truth is out about the societal sabotage dressed up as phony protests against health care reform. … When Hamas does it or Hezbollah does it, it is called terrorism.” That looks pretty funny right now, since these protesters are a much better match for that Hamas spin. All of this was about “delegitimizing protesters and their demands.”

Protests are covered in wildly divergent ways, depending on whether the activists are on the Left or the Right. This is just as true for liberal “fact-checking” organizations as it is for liberal media outlets.

COPYRIGHT 2024 CREATORS.COM

The Daily Signal publishes a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of The Heritage Foundation.

The post PolitiFact Shames Talk of ‘Outside Agitators’ in College Protests appeared first on The Daily Signal.

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Column: PolitiFact Shames Talk of 'Outside Agitators' at College Protests

You can tell when the PolitiFact website is going to negotiate around the facts. On May 7, their top headline on the home page asked: “Are ‘outside agitators’ co-opting campus protests?” This isn’t quite the right question. The media have presented these events as “student” protests, so if half the participants aren’t college students, how would they describe the non-students? PolitiFact writers Kwasi Gyamfi Asiedu and Loreben Turquero offered this summary: 1. Police, city and university officials nationwide have blamed “outside agitators” for campus protests but have provided little evidence for their claims. 2. Law enforcement experts say police often consider “outside agitators” to be people who move from city to city and are paid to be agitators. 3.  Historians say government and law officials commonly use the “outside agitator” narrative to delegitimize protesters and their demands. First, the “little evidence” is a weird claim, when PolitiFact’s article acknowledges facts like the New York Police Department reported that 32 out of 112 people arrested at Columbia’s private campus were unaffiliated with the university. At nearby City College, 102 out of 170 people arrested were not students. Add it up, and 134 out of 282 protesters were not students. So when Mayor Eric Adams complains about “outside agitators,” he’s not in need of a “fact check.” They even scolded leftist Reps. Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.) and Hank Johnson (D-Ga.) over their “agitator” concerns. They did not mention the recent story of an outside agitator named James Carlson, who was part of the army who briefly occupied Hamilton Hall at Columbia University. He’s a 40-year-old trust fund heir who owns a townhouse in Brooklyn worth $3.4 million. PolitiFact typically seeks out “experts” to match the narratives it wants to underline. They don’t like people suggesting these protesters aren’t local and they might be paid to protest. They found William & Mary law professor Timothy Zick to define the outside agitator spin: "It was used as sort of a phrase that would link protesters, no matter how peaceful they were, to Communists and other infiltrators who were causing disruption." The term is used to cast doubt on protester “sincerity.” Angus Johnson, "historian of student activism" at Hostos Community College in New York, explained, "The idea behind the concept of the outside agitator is that dissent can never be coming from the people who are expressing that dissent.”  They also turned to Johnston to underline, “Some experts have been quick to note the main goal of a protest is to get others to join in.”    This spin is nothing like how the media spun the Tea Party protests against ObamaCare legislation. They sought to discredit them as donor-funded “Astroturf” (not grass-roots). They went looking for the most racist or ignorant-sounding sign they could find, to present protesters as a kooky “fringe” movement.  NBC’s Chuck Todd decried “town hall madness.” The front page of The Boston Globe lamented the “quarrelsome masses hollering questions downloaded from activist websites." MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann ranted, “The truth is out about the societal sabotage dressed up as phony protests against health care reform...When Hamas does it or Hezbollah does it, it is called terrorism.” That looks pretty funny right now, since these protesters are a much better match for that Hamas spin. All of this was about "delegitimizing protesters and their demands." Protests are covered in wildly divergent ways, depending on whether the activists are on the Left or the Right. This is just as true for liberal “fact checking” organizations as it is for liberal media outlets. 

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NewsBusters Podcast: 'SNL' Thinks Dumb Trumpers Get Their News from T-Shirts

We witnessed another mediocre edition of Saturday Night Live on NBC, but one snippet of the "Weekend Update" fake-news caught my attention. It came from fake anchor Michael Che, blink and you’ll miss it. He joked Biden supporters are "more likely to get their news from newspapers and mainstream media, while Trump supporters get their news from T-SHIRTS!" The T-shirt on screen said “Joe Biden sucks.” Translation: Democrats read The New York Times for hours, then probably master the crossword puzzle in a half-hour. Republicans read T-shirts and maybe a bumper sticker or two. Yes the right-wingers are too stupid for news reports in complete sentences. SNL’s analysis of media consumption among conservatives are pretty much like the scribbles on the front of a T-shirt. SNL could be speaking for our media elites. If you fail to read them and trust them implicitly and follow all of their political marching orders, they assume you hate a free press and wish desperately for the End of Democracy. Also: A new poll from AP and the American Press Institute found only 14 percent of expressed a great deal of confidence in election-related information they receive from national media. By contrast, 52 percent have little or no confidence at all in the information they receive from national news organizations. 53 percent, say they are extremely or very concerned that news organizations will report inaccuracies or misinformation during the election. Imagine that! AP media reporter David Bauder turned to American Press Institute chief Michael Bolden, who said “Years of suspicion about journalists, much of it sown by politicians, is partly responsible, he said. People are also less familiar with how journalism works.” Reporters have sown “years of suspicion about politicians.” That’s how investigating politician performance could be described. So why would investigating journalist performance draw complaints of “sowing years of suspicion”? Why can they never be evaluated for how they serve the public? They want to run the country, and they don’t want you complaining about it, okay? Bolden is implying that politicians have swindled the public with this liberal-bias thing, because they’re not very bright. Then he lobbed another insult, that people aren’t familiar with “how journalism works.” Oh no, we know exactly how it works, and we know it's not working for us. Enjoy the podcast below, or whenever you listen to podcasts. 

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NBC's Kristen Welker Presses Tim Scott SIX Times to Accept 2024 Election Results

Does anyone remember Kristen Welker -- in her short tenure at the helm of NBC's Meet the Press -- pushing around a Democrat to answer a question SIX times? Last December, Welker pressed Ron DeSantis six times to condemn Trump calling radical leftists "vermin." On Sunday, she was back on the anti-Trump train, demanding SIX times that Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.) pledge to accept the election results of 2024 long before we know what they are.  The first answer could be "I don't know, Kristen. Has NBC accepted the 2016 election results yet? Because that's not what it looked like through the whole Russian-collusion fiasco."  You can say this is a fair question, since Trump hasn't accepted the results of the last election. But this question certainly implies "will the Republicans accept their inevitable defeat?" “You voted to certify the election results of 2020,” Welker said. Trump said “the exact opposite of what you said and did after 2020. Why would you want to be on a ticket with someone where there’s such a fundamental difference?” “President Trump himself said he expects this election to be fair,” Scott replied. “He expects it to be honest, and he expects to win. That’s what the presidential candidate should expect. And I expect the exact same thing. And frankly, the American people agree with him.” Then Welker began pressing Scott on his willingness to accept the 2024 results. “Will you commit to accepting the election results of 2024: Bottom line?” Welker asked. “At the end of the day, the 47th president of the United States will be President Donald Trump,” Scott said. “Wait Senator,” Welker said, “Yes or no? Will you accept the election results of 2024 no matter who wins?” Scott just said, “That is my statement." After demanding Tim Scott accept the unknown 2024 election results SIX times, NBC host Kristen Welker hops on her NARAL hobby horse again, yelling at Scott that he can't say Democrats support abortion up until birth. Welker refuses to accept the 2020 DNC platform! pic.twitter.com/6LTzoJzxTv — Tim Graham (@TimJGraham) May 6, 2024 Welker robotically repeated: “Just yes or no: Will you accept the election results of 2024?” Welker said. The senator repeated: “I look forward to President Trump being the 47th president. Kristen, you can ask him multiple times—” “Sir,” Welker pressed on. “Just a yes or no answer.” “The American people will make the decision,” Scott replied. “And the decision will be for President Trump.” Welker wouldn't let up, like she had a Jeff Zucker yelling into her earpiece. “I don’t hear you committing to the election results,” she said. “Will you commit to the election results?” Then Scott called out her Democrat tilt. “This is why so many Americans believe that NBC is an extension of the Democrat Party. At the end of the day, I’ve said what I’ve said, and I know that the American people, their voices will be heard. And I believe that President Trump will be our next president.” Welker fanatically tried a sixth time: “The hallmark of our democracy is that both candidates agree to a peaceful transfer of power,” she said. “So I’m asking you, as a potential VP nominee, will you accept to commit to the election results in this election cycle, no matter who wins? Just simply yes or no.” “I expect President Trump to win the next election. Listen, I’m not going to ask to answer your hypothetical question,” Scott said. In the same show, Welker interviewed Sen. Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.) and she didn't ask him anything six times. But Welker also returned to quibbling with Sen. Scott when he said Democrats support abortion up to birth. That's a fact, NBC! NBC’s @kwelkernbc obsesses with @SenatorTimScott, asking SIX times variations of “Senator, yes or no? Will you accept the election results of 2024 no matter who wins?” Scott: “This is why so many Americans believe NBC is an extension of the Democratic Party” #MTP pic.twitter.com/IgoJLQXpZI — Brent Baker 🇺🇦 🇮🇱 (@BrentHBaker) May 5, 2024

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Top New York Times Editor Joe Kahn: We Don't Want to Be Biden's Pravda!

Current New York Times executive editor Joe Kahn granted an interview to former Times media columnist Ben Smith at his new venture Semafor.com. Kahn surely infuriated leftists like former Times ombudsman Margaret Sullivan, who want to shred any notion of objectivity against those horribly lying authoritarian Republicans. He said don't skew the news!?  BEN SMITH: Dan Pfeiffer, who used to work for Barack Obama, recently wrote of the Times, “They do not see their job as saving democracy or stopping an authoritarian from taking power.” Why don’t you see your job as: “We’ve got to stop Trump?” What about your job doesn’t let you think that way? JOE KAHN: ...One of the absolute necessities of democracy is having a free and fair and open election where people can compete for votes, andthe role of the news media in that environment is not to skew your coverage towards one candidate or the other, but just to provide very good, hard-hitting, well-rounded coverage of both candidates, and informing voters. If you believe in democracy, I don’t see how we get past the essential role of quality media in informing people about their choice in a presidential election. To say that the threats of democracy are so great that the media is going to abandon its central role as a source of impartial information to help people vote — that’s essentially saying that the news media should become a propaganda arm for a single candidate, because we prefer that candidate’s agenda. It is true that Biden’s agenda is more in sync with traditional establishment parties and candidates. And we’re reporting on that and making it very clear. Kahn said Trump could possibly win the popular vote in November. "It is not the job of the news media to prevent that from happening. It’s the job of Biden and the people around Biden to prevent that from happening." It’s our job to cover the full range of issues that people have. At the moment, democracy is one of them. But it’s not the top one — immigration happens to be the top, and the economy and inflation is the second. Should we stop covering those things because they’re favorable to Trump and minimize them? I don’t even know how it’s supposed to work. We become an instrument of the Biden campaign? We turn ourselves into Xinhua News Agency or Pravda and put out a stream of stuff that’s very, very favorable to them and only write negative stories about the other side? And that would accomplish — what? I think editors like Kahn are trying to maintain this pose that their media outlets are independent and fact-based and not a partisan machine. The pose fails when you actually read them. But it’s like he’s lecturing his troops that this is who they want to Appear. They want to be seen as independent. They want a little finesse in their editorializing. Trump drove them to an excess, Kahn implied, into an explicit Stop Trump mentality, especially in 2020, with the whole Tom Cotton op-ed fiasco. Smith asked "Do you think the Times let the inmates run the asylum for too long?" KAHN: I wouldn’t use those words. I do think that there was a period of peak cultural angst at this organization, with the combination of the intensity of the Trump era, COVID, and then George Floyd. The summer of 2020 was a crazy period where the world felt threatened, people’s individual safety was threatened, we had a murder of an innocent black man by police suffocation. And we have the tail end of the most divisive presidency that anyone alive today has experienced. And those things just frayed nerves everywhere. Kahn said "the newsroom is not a safe space." KAHN: It’s a space where you’re being exposed to lots of journalism, some of which you are not going to like. Don’t you feel like there was a generation of students who came out of school saying you should only work at places that align completely with your values? SMITH: Don’t you think we all sort of said that to them? KAHN: I don’t think we said it explicitly. I think there was a period [where] we implied it. And I think that the early days of Trump in particular, were, “join us for the mission.” SMITH: Was it a mistake to say that — even to think it? KAHN: I think it went too far. It was overly simplistic. And I think the big push that you’re seeing us make and reestablish our norms and emphasize independent journalism and build a more resilient culture comes out of some of the excesses of that period.

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Keith Olbermann RAGES with Mob on Twitter Against Peggy Noonan's Columbia Column

Wall Street Journal columnist Peggy Noonan, who was once a Reagan speechwriter and is now a dyspeptic critic of Donald Trump, infuriated leftists on Twitter this weekend with a column about her visit to the Columbia University campus to observe the pro-Hamas protests and attempt to interview some young protesters.  Noonan wrote she understood the youthful passion to protest, but these protesters all wore masks and didn't want to engage with largely supportive media. She found this carried an air of menace...and cowardice. This was the passage that New York Times reporter Peter Baker passed around that fanned the fury:  I was at Columbia hours before the police came in and liberated Hamilton Hall from its occupiers. Unlike protesters of the past, who were usually eager to share with others what they thought and why, these demonstrators would generally not speak or make eye contact with members of the press, or, as they say, “corporate media.” I was on a bench taking notes as a group of young women, all in sunglasses, masks, and kaffiyehs, walked by. “Friends, please come say hello and tell me what you think,” I called. They marched past, not making eye contact, save one, a beautiful girl of about 20. “I’m not trained,” she said. Which is what they’re instructed to say to corporate-media representatives who will twist your words. “I’m barely trained, you’re safe,” I called, and she laughed and half-halted. But her friends gave her a look and she conformed. Raging kook Keith Olbermann, the man so unbalanced that he tweeted the Supreme Court majority that overturned Roe vs. Wade were "domestic terrorists," argued Baker and Noonan were not journalists: Is there a point at which Peter Baker and Peggy Noonan will understand that vast swaths of America do not recognize them as journalists? Hell, if I knew about the "I'm not trained" line I could've gotten Noonan off my back and off my shows in 2004 instead of 2006 https://t.co/2P2OvlX3rt — Keith Olbermann (@KeithOlbermann) May 4, 2024 The Left could certainly argue that college kids might be smart not to sit down with a journalist they don't know, and Noonan could be characterized as an establishment Republican, who wouldn't naturally love radical disorder. Noonan noted they were yelling “Israel bombs, Columbia pays! How many kids did you kill today?” Lefties were probably angrier at Noonan for suggesting that even liberals in Manhattan were pleased the cops shut this encampment down:  The Vietnam demonstrations came to a country at relative peace with itself and said: Wake up! The Hamas demonstrations come to a country that hasn’t been at peace with itself in a long time. It watched, and thought: More jarring hell from kids with blood in their eyes making demands. The people of my liberal-left town were relieved to see the NYPD come in, drag the protesters away, restore order, and let people clean things up.

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Sister Barbara's Gone Rogue! NPR Touts Nuns for 'Enshrining Abortion Rights' in Missouri

Leftists love to believe that churches should be run like clubs -- the majority rules. So they'll make a big deal out of polls, like the Pew Research Center finding six of ten Catholics disagree with the church's opposition to abortion. They do not ask self-identified Catholics whether they actually go to church on Sundays, or if they stopped the minute they became an adult. You would get a more conservative result. On Tuesday, NPR's newscast All Things Considered brought on reporter Katia Riddle to channel the views of pro-abortion Catholics, but what made it more shocking is touting a pro-abortion nun -- someone who is financially supported by the Church, and who should be accepting of all the Church teachings. KATIA RIDDLE: Today, Missouri is replete with Catholic churches, iconography and people like Sister Barbara. SISTER BARBARA: I certainly did not intend to, you know, become a sister or a nun. RIDDLE: She's standing outside her modest apartment, wearing jeans and a sweatshirt. She grew up Catholic but wasn't all that religious. In her 20s, she describes a kind of love affair she fell into with Catholicism. SISTER BARBARA: An emphasis on serving the poor and getting involved in just, you know, the social justice issues of the day. And that was a whole new idea for me about what religious life was really about. Church officials might want to know who this nun is, and why she would publicly -- well, not all the way -- bite the hand that's feeding her. RIDDLE: NPR is not using Sister Barbara's last name. She fears retribution from her local archdiocese for publicly expressing her beliefs on reproductive rights. She doesn't agree with the church's position that abortion is a sin and should be illegal. SISTER BARBARA: I just don't see it in just real absolute terms. RIDDLE: She says she wouldn't personally choose to end a pregnancy. SISTER BARBARA: However, I have not been in the situation of a person who has - had suffered from incest or rape or all of those things. RIDDLE: The Bible, she points out, does not say anything explicit about abortion. She fell in love with Catholicism for its practice around compassion and service, not politics. SISTER BARBARA: I want to put a sticker on the car that says, don't like abortion? Don't have one. RIDDLE: That's why she's supporting an effort in Missouri to enshrine abortion rights in the state's Constitution. Several other nuns interviewed for this story said they feel the same. One was even collecting signatures to put the measure on the November ballot, though she didn't want to talk about it on the record. Over seven minutes, Riddle lined up the Catholic abortion advocates: ex-nun Alice Kitchen, retired reproductive endocrinologist Marilyn Richardson, Democrat state representative Ingrid Burnett, and college student Mary Helen Schaefer. The only surprise is a brief nod to Matt Lee, who runs a pro-life group called Missouri Stands with Women. He's a deacon in the church. RIDDLE: Lee says he's not surprised that many Catholics support abortion access. Some reproductive rights advocates say church leadership is scared of this diversity of opinion among its followers, but Lee disagrees. LEE: Could you say the Catholic Church is under attack or the church's beliefs are under attack or their institutions are? Sure, but that doesn't mean that the Catholic Church is scared. I mean, scared people tend to run away. The Catholic Church is not running away from this fight. Try not to laugh at NPR saying some other organization is scared of having a diversity of opinion inside its walls. Riddle concluded with the unsubtle hint that the Catholic hierarchy should be tethered to polls instead of their view of God's will: SISTER BARBARA: I think that the Catholic Church would not be here today if they didn't have a remarkable ability to turn corners when it's necessary - when things are about to collapse for it. RIDDLE: After all, she points out, Catholicism has been around for centuries. She's hoping this abortion debate is a relatively brief distraction from what she sees as the faith's fundamental aspirations. SISTER BARBARA: Reaching for some kind of ideals in the way we love and live with each other, with one another. RIDDLE: For Sister Barbara, one of those ideals would be for church leadership to value what a majority of Catholics believe.

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NewsBusters Podcast: Biden Laughs at the New York Times Interview Request

President Biden and his team have been very reluctant to hold press conferences or grant interviews. He's much less accessible than other recent presidents. For the most part, the press doesn't care. But The New York Times put out a statement shortly before the White House Correspondents Dinner protesting how it was troubling that Biden has "so actively and effectively avoided questions from independent journalists during his term." What happened next? At the White House Correspondents Dinner, Biden JOKED about it, even suggesting The New York Times was inferior to the Howard Stern show in its influence. Mr. Butt Bongo Fiesta was a better forum. Journalists laughed along, underlining they have next to zero professional self-respect.  Washington Post media blogger Erik Wemple posted has a new piece on Friday headlined “The New York Times, alone in its outrage over access to Biden.” He noted the Times laid it all out for Biden:  For anyone who understands the role of the free press in a democracy, it should be troubling that President Biden has so actively and effectively avoided questions from independent journalists during his term. The president occupies the most important office in our nation, and the press plays a vital role in providing insights into his thinking and worldview, allowing the public to assess his record and hold him to account. Mr. Biden has granted far fewer press conferences and sit-down interviews with independent journalists than virtually all of his predecessors. It is true that The Times has sought an on-the-record interview with Mr. Biden, as it has done with all presidents going back more than a century. If the president chooses not to sit down with The Times because he dislikes our independent coverage, that is his right, and we will continue to cover him fully and fairly either way. However, in meetings with Vice President Harris and other administration officials, the publisher of The Times focused instead on a higher principle: That systematically avoiding interviews and questions from major news organizations doesn’t just undermine an important norm, it also establishes a dangerous precedent that future presidents can use to avoid scrutiny and accountability. Times Publisher Arthur Gregg Sulzberger, according to the Times statement, has “repeatedly urged the White House to have the president sit down with The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, Reuters, CNN and other major independent news organizations that millions of Americans rely on to understand their government.” It's not like Trump will act like Biden in a second term. As Wemple shows, with numbers from Martha Joynt Kumar, Trump had about three times as many pressers at this point in his presidency than Biden – 97 to 34. Same with interviews – 327 to 118. Trump will take on hostile interviews. Biden's talking to Stern, Drew Barrymore, and Ryan Seacrest.  Wemple wanted to point out the Times is standing alone with its outrage, without supporting words from other news organizations contending with Biden’s hard-to-get status. “I think this is a norm that matters,” said Sulzberger in a Tuesday interview with Wemple. “And all our experience shows that when norms like this erode, especially a norm as uncomfortable as the discipline of answering probing questions from independent journalists, they rarely return.” Wemple said he asked The Post, The Wall Street Journal and USA Today — as well as TV outlets that have interviewed the president (ABC News, NBC News/MSNBC, CBS News and CNN) — whether the situation merited a public statement along the lines of the Times’s. "Not a single outlet responded with an endorsement of the Times’s message," including Fox News. They're all holding out hope for an interview -- which can draw ratings.  Enjoy the podcast below -- or wherever you listen to podcasts.   

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Column: The Public Doesn't Trust the 'Democracy-Saving' Media

The national media consider themselves essential in educating the electorate, so what happens when the electorate does not consider them a trustworthy guardian of democracy? The Associated Press and the American Press Institute just released a poll on the 2024 election and found only 14 percent of their sample expressed a great deal of confidence in election-related information they receive from national sources. By contrast, 52 percent have little or no confidence at all in the information they receive from national news organizations About half of Americans, 53 percent, say they are extremely or very concerned that news organizations will report inaccuracies or misinformation during the election. It's 83 percent if you count the middle option of "somewhat concerned." That has to hurt, since the media elites say “misinformation” is what other people offer. When faced with poll after poll showing the media are not trusted, their failure to accept these results underlines the persistent lack of trust. AP media reporter David Bauder turned to American Press Institute chief Michael Bolden, who said “Years of suspicion about journalists, much of it sown by politicians, is partly responsible, he said. People are also less familiar with how journalism works.” Let’s be uncharitable for a minute. Reporters have sown “years of suspicion about politicians.” That’s how investigating politician performance could be described. So why would investigating journalist performance draw complaints of “sowing years of suspicion”? Why can they never be evaluated for how they serve the public? Respect cannot merely be demanded. It should be earned. Mr. Bolden is implying that politicians have swindled the public, which paints the public as – how did The Washington Post put it? – “poor, uneducated, and easy to command.” Then he lobbed another insult, that people aren’t familiar with “how journalism works.” Maybe these elitists should consider that news consumers might want a mostly factual, somewhat objective product instead of hyperbolic editorializing that tells them what they should think. Obviously, the Republican half of the public isn’t going to support Democrat electioneering badly disguised as “news.” Since they refuse to consider any bowing to objectivity, they have to dismiss any demand for it as ignorance of “how journalism works.” Bolden weirdly claimed this may be because most people don’t have a journalist who “lived on their block.” Since journalists won’t meet you at the summer picnic or the Trick or Treat greetings, media outlets need to tell the public “what journalists do and how people reporting news are their friends and neighbors.” This sounds remarkably similarly to what NPR CEO Katherine Maher recently said to The Wall Street Journal as she dismissed bias complaints as a “distraction.” Maher said, “We want to be able to speak to folks as though they were our neighbors and speak to folks as though they were our friends.” Curiously, they don’t want to talk to Republicans like they’re neighbors and friends. Remember short-lived CNN CEO Chris Licht meeting with Republicans trying to say trust us, “we don’t bite.” That turned out to be (a) untrue and (b) fatal to his CNN career. Brian Stelter channeled the national media arrogance under Trump after Licht was dumped: “We were advocating for the truth, advocating for reality. Others felt that was left-leaning.” When you think reality has a liberal bias, you shouldn’t be shocked when a lot of people change the channel. 

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NewsBusters Podcast: The Lingo Games with 'Pro-Palestinian Protesters'

One of the ways you can always sense media bias is the terminology that the media elite decides to adopt en masse. Colleges are being occupied by "pro-Palestinian protesters," and you can't (accurately) call them "anti-Israel," not to mention "pro-Hamas." Liberals paint other liberals as pro-everything good, and the conservatives are anti-everything good. Anti-abortion, anti-gay, anti-government, anti-tax. All of this is messaging, like advertising slogans. This tendency is especially transparent on the "culture war" issues. Killing a baby is "abortion care." Seeking an amputation is "gender-affirming care." Florida adopting a six-week abortion ban is portrayed as very "restrictive." The media will use the word "protections" for whatever policies they support, like Democrats passing "protections for gender-affirming care." They'll call liberalized abortion law "protections," when the baby is clearly not protected.  Reporters casually pass along that leftists call trans surgeries "life-saving." They'll even call abortions "life-saving." On the PBS NewsHour, they filed a story that used the term "gender-affirming care" ten times, and nowhere in the report did anyone take exception to that term or anything else the transgender lobby is seeking to accomplish. It wasn't surprising, given the expert in the segment was NPR health reporter Selena Simmons-Duffin, who has filed one-sided stories in favor of abortion and the abortion lobby. Ex-NPR senior editor Uri Berliner appeared with Chris Cuomo on NewsNation and insisted “I think that really, NPR has a lot of soul searching to do about representing the country at large. Being a publicly funded news organization and really trying to represent this country in all its great diversity and viewpoints.” Berliner is no longer at NPR because almost no one in public radio believes that the taxpayer subsidies should encourage NPR to be fair and balanced. No one at NPR wants that, or if they do, they'll be sidelined like Berliner. Enjoy the podcast below, or wherever you listen to podcasts. 

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Ex-NPR Editor: NPR Needs Some 'Soul-Searching' About Serving All Americans

Ex-NPR senior editor Uri Berliner appeared again on Chris Cuomo's NewsNation show on Tuesday night. “I think that really, NPR has a lot of soul searching to do about representing the country at large. Being a publicly funded news organization and really trying to represent this country in all its great diversity and viewpoints.” It should seem obvious that NPR is impervious to "soul searching" since they didn't want Berliner to work there any more after he raised his questions about viewpoint diversity. Cuomo asked about morning host Steve Inskeep and then other people at NPR saying Berliner "cherry-picked" his stories and got it wrong. "Do you think in retrospect that you should have done anything different?" Berliner said no, "not at all. You know, I think even in our news in NPR newsroom, since the story was published, they've decided to institute regular reviews of coverage, which I think is a positive sign. I also think there's a conversation in this country that's happening within the media, but also more broadly about the really sad level of trust of the media and the extent to which narratives are imposed in newsrooms, whether they are legacy media and they're left leaning or whether they're coming from the right, and I think there's a large group of people that are tired of it, and are just calling out the media for doing things that are increasing the polarization in this country, so I don't regret -- I don't have any regrets.” Cuomo said "I was moved that the media left this story alone," and they didn't want to have a real examination of NPR's content. "What does it mean for you going forward? " BERLINER: Well, I you know, I think there was that there was some a lot of positive stories, including, interestingly, from college newspapers supporting what I said, and saying it's vital. And, you know, and from reporters and columnists around the country, and I would say this story lasted a lot longer than I expected it to. I thought, you know, I would write this and there would be pushback in the newsroom and it would be, you know, be over in a couple of days. You know, the head of the newsroom [Edith Chapin], criticized the story, I think she did it in a fairly respectful way, I was suspended five days without pay. I didn't object to that I didn't seek a grievance from the union. And I thought it was gonna go away after that. But then the new CEO, Katherine Maher, she injected herself into the newsroom, and she attacked me publicly and personally, and I think that extended the story, especially when people started finding out more about her views, not just the tweets, you know about America, being addicted to white supremacy, or criticizing Hillary Clinton for using the words [inaudible]. More importantly, videos that surfaced where she talked about the First Amendment being a challenge and a tricky thing when you're trying to suppress information. This is when she was running, Wikimedia, which oversees Wikipedia. And I think that really extended the story a lot.” Cuomo expressed amazement that the serious complaints within NPR were about wanting to take it further to the left, not further to the center. 

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Column: The White House Correspondents Host a Biden Rally

It was remarkable breaking news, occurring live on CNN. The White House Correspondents Association hosted a dinner and a Biden for President rally broke out. It’s only natural that CNN loves live coverage of the White House Correspondents Dinner, where the anti-Trump media celebrate themselves for how essential they are to preserving democracy and how valiantly they warn Americans that Donald Trump is democracy's antonym. President Biden’s speech made some jokes about his age – it’s that safe spot where all the late-night comedians go. But he also showed nastiness: “Yes, age is an issue. I’m a grown man running against a six-year-old.” They loved that joke on CNN. Like last year, Biden thought it was funny to insist he doesn’t have to grant access to reporters, because “I do interviews with strong independent journalists who millions of people actually listen to, like Howard Stern.” Instead, he lectured them about how Trump “has made no secret of his attack on our democracy,” and the “free press” needs to make sure the voters have “the information they need to make an informed decision.” Biden thinks a pro-Biden media needs to deliver: “I’m sincerely not asking you to take sides, but asking you to rise up to the seriousness of the moment.” He clearly means the media need to underline Trump needs to lose. Biden ripped into Trump, ranting about January 6, spewing misinformation about Trump’s attention-grabbing way of speaking. “He said he wants to be a dictator on Day One….he promised a bloodbath when he loses again.” If you’re a low-information voter, you wouldn’t know Trump joked with Sean Hannity about being a dictator for one day, and he said our economy would be a “bloodbath” if Biden was reelected. You can scold Trump for his rhetorical red meat. But that doesn’t mean journalists and presidents should mischaracterize what he says. This is not how these dinners used to work. Twenty years ago at this dinner, when President George W. Bush was lining up against Sen. John Kerry, Bush didn’t say one negative word about his opponent or one negative word about the opposing party. He made gentle jokes about the press. He didn’t urge the networks to defeat John Kerry at the anchor desk. He talked about heroic reporters in war zones, and heroic soldiers. That’s not how it unfolded in 2024. The hired comedian, Saturday Night Live fake-news anchor Colin Jost, concluded his comedy routine by remembering his late grandfather, a Staten Island firefighter, who voted for Biden in 2020. “He voted for you, and the reason that he voted for you is because you're a decent man. My grandpa voted for decency, and decency is why we're all here tonight. Decency is how we're able to be here tonight. Decency is how we're able to make jokes about each other, and one of us doesn't go to prison after.” He then repeated: “So, Mr. President, I thank you for your decency on behalf of my grandfather.” Jost said this after Biden said his opponent was a six-year-old who would spur a bloodbath if he loses. He said this after he mocked Trump as “currently spending his days farting himself awake during a porn-star hush-money trial,” and the courtroom sketch artist makes Trump look like “the Grinch had sex with the Lorax.” At least CNN allowed their contributor Scott Jennings to sum up the evening: “We had Biden speak tonight, and then we had a Biden surrogate effectively speak tonight.”  It's no wonder CNN wanted to air the whole thing live.

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Intolerant Nancy Pelosi Yells at MSNBC's Katy Tur, Suggests She's 'a Trump Apologist'

Democrats and MSNBC watchers – which are pretty much the same thing – cannot tolerate anyone making a contrary point. On Monday afternoon, MSNBC host Katy Tur interviewed former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi for almost 15 minutes. She asked the usual between-us-Democrats questions, starting with how much the Democrats can insure untrammeled abortion on demand if they can stay in power. Tur worried out loud that the anti-Israel protests on campus could hurt Democrats, as radical and violent protests at the 1968 convention helped elect Nixon. But Pelosi lost all patience with Tur at the tail end of an answer lasting two minutes and 40 seconds without interruption about how Biden is great: PELOSI: There are those who have real legitimate concerns about immigration, globalization, innovation, and what does that mean to their job and their family’s future? And we have to address those concerns. And Joe Biden is doing that. Created nine million jobs in his term in office. Donald Trump has the worst record of job loss of a president. So, we just have to make sure people know. Tur interjected with a fact: “That was during a global pandemic.” This inflamed Pelosi.   “He had the worst record of any president,” Pelosi repeated in anger, karate-chopping the air in Tur's face. “We’ve had other concerns in our country. If you want to be an apologist for Donald Trump, that may be your role, but it ain’t mine.” “I don’t think anybody can accuse me of that,” Tur said. Pelosi expects MSNBC hosts to be an apologist for Pelosi. Like Andrea Mitchell, Katy Tur hits the "Trending" bar on Twitter when the MSNBC base thinks they are so Republican they should just defect to Fox News. The big "Really American" account got out the flame emojis:  🚨If you only watch ONE video today, watch Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi stuffing Katy Tur into a locker for being "an apologist for Donald Trump" after Tur attempted to defend his abysmal job loss record. Extremely satisfying!🔥🔥pic.twitter.com/hPkVtfKr1o — Really American 🇺🇸 (@ReallyAmerican1) April 29, 2024 Tur closed out by asking about the House Democrats uniting against efforts by a few Republicans to remove current Speaker Mike Johnson, and then concluded with gushy thanks: "Thank you very much for joining us. It's really wonderful to see you in person. I appreciate it."

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Daily Caller: White House 'Corrected' Biden Remarks 148 Times So Far This Year

As we've pointed out how the networks typically ignore egregious gaffes by President Biden, Daily Caller White House correspondent Reagan Reese reports "White House communications staff has had to correct President Joe Biden’s public remarks at least 148 times since the beginning of 2024, a review of official White House transcripts shows." The White House website posts transcripts whenever Biden gives a speech or takes questions. Reese explained the Caller looked at 118 statements, speeches and chats with reporters spanning from Jan. 1 to April 24. Communications staffers frequently correct, add to or alter Biden’s official remarks "to either bring them into compliance with official White House policy or, in some cases, reality, a Daily Caller analysis showed. In several cases, official statements had to be changed to convey the exact opposite of what Biden actually said." [Emphasis ours.] “It was then, through no — through my American Rescue Plan — which every American [Republican] voted against, I might add — we made the largest investment in public safety ever,” the White House transcript of Biden’s March State of the Union address read. ....“We must be honest: The threat to democracy must be defended [defeated],” another State of the Union excerpt reads. Reese noted the hilarious Ron Burgundy-style Biden gaffe last week, reading too much from the Teleprompter. The Biden seemingly read the word “pause” off his screen, but the original White House transcript of the president’s remarks did not include the word “pause” — it said “(inaudible).” An updated version of the transcript now includes the president’s “pause” as well as the “(inaudible).” “Four more years, PAUSE.” Biden reads the instructions on the Teleprompter, which are always clearly marked, usually with lots of parentheses, meaning ‘dummy don’t say this part, is a command!’ Feel confident with this guy at the wheel??? pic.twitter.com/RUXA5jUkZM — Steve Cortes (@CortesSteve) April 29, 2024 For comparison, the Caller looked at a few transcripts of Trump's big events in 2020 to see how many edits or corrections the Trump staff made. (Some could argue Trump surely thinks every speech is the best ever, and wouldn't want staffers correcting it.) For the State of the Union, Biden staff made 13 edits, to zero for Trump staff. For the Earth Day speech, eight edits for Biden, zero for Trump. For the National Prayer Breakfast, eight edits for Biden, while "the Trump White House adjusted the transcript once when the former president missed one word in a quote." The Daily Caller’s analysis does not include times that the White House altered transcripts without indicating there was a change -- "stealth editing." Some had to adjust a claim on history: “I kept my promise to appoint the first Black [woman] Supreme Court justice,” the White House transcript reads from a Feb. 22 campaign reception. PS: This addition of "historic" was curious:  One White House transcript from Biden’s March 9 campaign event adds “historic” in front of a reference to Vice President Kamala Harris. “Because unlike Donald Trump, I know who we are as Americans.  (Applause.)  It’s why I promised to have an administration that looks like America.  (Applause.) The most diverse Cabinet and administration in American history led by a [historic] Vice President,” the transcript reads.

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NewsBusters Podcast: The Self-Love Flows at Reporter Party with Biden

The White House Correspondents Dinner airs live on CNN, with hours of journalists honoring themselves and how essential they are to America and to democracy. Who needs this? At dinners like this, they suggest they work in the noblest profession, and somehow it isn't encrusted with egotism and self-righteousness. We all know the way this works. The White House Correspondents Association typically hires a leftist comedian no matter which party is in control of the White House. Because leftist comedians are the ones who leftist journalists think are funny. This year it was Colin Jost, a fake-news anchor on Saturday Night Live. Back in 2009, the WHCA brought in Wanda Sykes to honor the Obamas and to rip Rush Limbaugh to compare him to Osama bin Laden and the 9/11 hijackers and say "I hope his kidneys fail." In 2017, comedian Hasan Minhaj called Donald Trump the "Liar-in-Chief" and said to the press, "You are his biggest enemy -- journalists, ISIS, normal-length ties. And somehow, you're the bad guys. That's why you gotta keep your foot on the gas." This year, it was President Biden that was telling all the reporters in the room that they have to get tougher on Trump, because he said he would be a dictator on Day One and he "promised a bloodbath when he loses again." Biden had zero-fear of the "fact checkers," since they're all assigned to monitoring Trump on a daily basis.  He joked about being a dictator to Sean Hannity, and his "bloodbath" was what Biden would do to the economy in a second term. Biden told the media he wasn't asking them to take sides....and yet democracy was at stake, so they better take sides. The next day, ABC's George Stephanopoulos uncorked a passionate Democrat editorial at the start of the show, touting how "no American president" faced criminal trials and other legal troubles, warning against how this could be "numbing" for voters (because Trump isn't losing by 30 points like they want). He couldn't talk about how all of Trump's prosecutors are Democrats desperately trying to bankrupt Trump or put Trump in jail, preferably before the election.  Enjoy the podcast below, or wherever you listen to podcasts.   

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WashPost 'Fact Checker' Glenn Kessler Aids Biden, Throws Four More Pinocchios at Trump

On Monday morning, Washington Post "Fact Checker" Glenn Kessler was tossing his "Four Pinocchios" Liar rating at Donald Trump again, this time over rent-support payments for migrants in the Democrat-run state of Michigan. In recent months, Kessler has emptied a bucket of Pinocchios on Trump and his aides, but he's conveniently avoided throwing a single Pinocchio at Joe Biden, not even when Biden blamed Trump for massive Covid deaths: "We lost over 1,200,000 people because of the slow start in all this [vaccination] process.”  Kessler ruled in February that "Biden’s phrasing is sufficiently subtle that a link is not so easily established." That's ridiculous. It looks like Glenn Kessler (D-D.C.). This was Monday's headline:  Trump and allies say Biden pays rent for ‘illegals’ in Michigan. Not true. Kessler established the federal government is assisting Michigan with rental subsidies, but it depends on what the meaning of "refugee" is. The federal government, through the Office of Refugee Resettlement, a unit of the Department of Health and Human Services, has long provided hundreds of millions of dollars a year to states and nongovernment organizations to help refugees transition to life in the United States. The Office of Global Michigan supports such efforts in the state, and in October launched the Newcomer Rental Subsidy program. Under this initiative, for up to 12 months individuals who qualify may receive as much as $500 a month in rental subsidies. Kessler repeatedly relies on 'the state" of Michigan to rebut the Trump camp, downplaying this is a Republican-Democrat fight in Michigan.  The state says these qualified applicants include refugees, asylees, people with special immigrant visas who helped the U.S. government overseas, victims of human trafficking, Cuban and Haitian entrants, Afghan nationals and Ukrainians granted humanitarian parole. These are all people legally in the United States.... the state says that it will not consider any application with a pending defensive asylum hearing.  Then he relies on "the state" to break down their rental-subsidy handouts, with this loaded summary: "In any case, more than half of the people who have been approved for rental subsidies are Afghan and Ukrainian refugees — a far cry from the murderers that Trump claims are overrunning the country." Kessler also lined up the Biden administration to rebut Trump: "An HHS spokesman said the refugee office funds could not be used for asylum seekers....A White House spokesman also disputed Trump’s claims in a statement." None of these statements were going the be challenged by Kessler. They were just going to be repeated.  Conservatives on Twitter mocked Kessler's conclusion:  The link to Biden is even more dubious. This is a state program that has received federal grant money, but there is no indication that Biden is even aware of it. So it’s absurd to run ads that claim Biden is paying rent for immigrants who are in the country illegally. Trump and MAGA Inc. earn Four Pinocchios. Kessler has repeatedly defended Democrats when Republicans make claims about the Democrats providing benefits to illegal immigrants. After all, it is an election year. 

Politics – The Daily Signal

Leftist Reporters Pretend They’re Not Partisan News Squashers

Eight years ago, the leftist media took great offense to being dismissed by Donald Trump as “fake news,” but they never seemed to grasp this is exactly how they painted the conservative media, as truth-defying propaganda outlets.

When the Trump trial turned to the National Enquirer, we could find national unity that the Enquirer defines “fake news.” The lefties are very excited to remind voters how the Enquirer was a Trump-allied tabloid full of garbage stories. But the liberal media spread some of them.

In May 2016, the Enquirer uncorked some garbage that Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, had cheated on his wife. ABC, CBS, and NBC spent a combined 15-and-a-half minutes spreading the word of this character assassination campaign.

The pro-Biden “media reporters” were still upset last week about the Enquirer and how it played “catch and kill” with Trump accusers, squelching stories that might embarrass Trump. NPR’s David Folkenflik complained to MSNBC’s Nicolle Wallace that burying salacious stories is “not a journalistic impulse, it’s not even a tabloid gossip impulse, this is essentially a partisan or propagandistic arm of the Trump campaign in all but name.”

This is coming from NPR, which aggressively trashed the Hunter Biden laptop story as a “pure distraction.” Folkenflik engaged with the story only to dismiss it as “a story marked more by red flags than investigative rigor.”

When The New York Times and The Washington Post published stories acknowledging Hunter’s laptop was real in March and April 2022, Folkenflik didn’t file a story with his regrets. He just kept attacking Fox News, his usual bread and butter.

So on the Hunter laptop, we can throw it back in Folkenflik’s face—NPR’s suppression was not a journalistic impulse, and NPR was essentially a propagandistic arm of the Biden campaign in all but name.

Worse yet, we fund it with our taxes. That gravy train should end.

Ex-CNN reporter Brian Stelter said the same thing on Joy Reid’s MSNBC show about the Enquirer: “It has nothing to do with journalism.” David Pecker’s “not a news man. He’s an advertiser! He’s a marketer, and his product was Donald Trump.” Thanks, Sherlock Stelter. Nobody should define Pecker as a news man.

Like Folkenflik, Stelter squashed the Hunter Biden laptop in 2020 as a Murdoch plot, or as a Russian disinformation campaign, because CNN’s a marketer and its product was anyone but Trump (meaning President Joe Biden).

Stelter also showed up on Alex Wagner’s MSNBC show. Wagner was hopping mad, asking what’s the point of a gag order on Trump when you have a “media-industrial complex that is effectively acting as a public defense line” for Trump? Once again, Wagner can’t imagine MSNBC acting as a “media-industrial complex” for the Democrats.

So, does Wagner wish the judge could issue a gag order for the entire conservative media landscape? No criticism allowed of the get-Trump prosecutors and judge? I thought this was a democracy.

Stelter broke out the usual bravado that the liberals live on “Earth One,” and they must see what’s happening on “Earth Two,” which is an alternative universe of hallucinations. Stelter claimed, “For Jesse Watters, Trump is God, and that is the programming every hour of every day on these other networks.”

That sounds like some crazy religion. Would Stelter survive a little fact-check on whether Fox and Newsmax perpetually pray hourly to the Orange Lord and Savior? Both sides suggest the other side of the media is fake. But both sides are slinging a lot of opinionated hot takes, and Stelter can certainly flip a flapjack on that skillet.

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The post Leftist Reporters Pretend They’re Not Partisan News Squashers appeared first on The Daily Signal.

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Are Journalists 'Anti-Authoritarian' as They Seek to Banish Conservative Views?

On Friday, Associated Press media reporter David Bauder looked at recent internal newsroom debates that went public, "Journalists taking the critical gaze they deploy to cover the world and turning it inward at their own employers." He cited Uri Berliner's essay on NPR, NBC dumping RNC chair Ronna McDaniel, and a fight at The New York Times over a story on sexual assault by Hamas.  Journalism as a profession attracts people who are anti-authoritarian, who see themselves as truth-tellers. Many believe the way to make an organization better is by criticizing it, said Tom Rosenstiel, co-author of The Elements of Journalism and a professor at the University of Maryland. “We’re taught to hold power to account,” said Kate O’Brian, president of news for the E.W. Scripps Co. There's one difference in these controversies: Berliner was basically forced out for exposing the Left. The other controversies were the Left enforcing their wokeness. Bauder summarized that "NPR management says he is wrong. But Berliner quickly became a hero among conservatives who hold the same belief." The AP reporter doesn't identify most of the rebels in these controversies as leftists enforcing a new ideological hard line (that Berliner was protesting):  A generational change also has emboldened many young journalists. In his own classroom, Kaplan sees more young journalists questioning traditional notions of objectivity that keep them from expressing opinions. Many believe they have the right to state their beliefs and support causes, he said. “Now you have journalists that are advocates,” Rosenstiel said. “That reflects something of a culture war that is happening inside of journalism.” Debates over coverage of the Trump administration had a similar galvanizing effect. “There are some journalists who say, ‘I’m not interested in covering conservatives because they are not interested in the truth,’” Rosenstiel said. See? There it is. The Woke Left doesn't believe in debates. They call it "bothsidesism" and insist debates be shut down, that contrary opinions somehow make "marginalized" people feel "unsafe." Are these journalists "anti-authoritarian" when they only want one side to be published? They clearly believe conservatives should become the "marginalized," now and forever. This was what happened when New York Times staffers had a fit over their newspaper posting an op-ed by Sen. Tom Cotton on using National Guard troops to suppress violent rioting.  One of the most prominent thinkers on this issue, [leftist] journalist Wesley Lowery, has written that some defenders of objectivity are more interested in inoffensiveness and appearance, less so on journalistic rigor. “In pursuing objectivity, we silence the marginalized,” a Harvard student, Ajay V. Singh, wrote at the height of the debate. “In silencing the marginalized, we tip the narrative of ‘truth’ into the hands of the powerful.” The logic there is bizarre: quote conservatives, and you "silence" someone else? Wesley Lowery wrote a book with a conspiracy-theory title, They Can't Kill Us All. In Lowery's world, he thinks no one should be allowed to protest they don't want him dead, they just oppose his paranoid views. When you represent "racial justice," then you can intimidate journalists out of quoting the "anti-justice" side.

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Journalist Kara Swisher: 'Anti-American' To Oppose Young Pro-Hamas Protesters

On The Chris Wallace Show on CNN on Saturday morning, leftist journalist Kara Swisher claimed it was "un-American" not to support young people protesting against Israel and shutting down campuses. She said this after being confronted with protesters saying Zionists don't deserve to live.  Wallace opened the show with Joe Biden's "very fine people on both sides" quote about the protests, that "he continues to walk a fine line between defending the protesters and denouncing them." Jonah Goldberg of The Dispatch said these disruptive protests on campuses are "almost all political upside" for the Republicans. Washington Free Beacon editor-in-chief Eliana Johnson said "I think it's a missed opportunity for presidential leadership. I think it's good politics to come out against protesters who are telling Jews to go back to Poland and saying Zionists don't deserve to live. Those are direct quotes from leaders of the Columbia protests. It's good politics for Biden to stand against that. The problem for him, of course, is that the left wing of his party, Representative Ilhan Omar, are showing up at the protest to shore them up. So of course, he would alienate the left flank of his party. But I do think it's a missed opportunity for him to fade into the background of this." Swisher, a longtime Wall Street Journal tech reporter who more recently was a columnist and podcaster for The New York Times, somehow thought it was anti-American to be anti-Hamas, as our Brent Baker captured it: “Not to support” the anti-Semitic pro-Palestinian protesters taking over colleges “is sort of anti-American” – @karaswisher on CNN’s Chris Wallace Show pic.twitter.com/vLeFIZ8BxB — Brent Baker 🇺🇦 🇮🇱 (@BrentHBaker) April 27, 2024   KARA SWISHER: Well, some people are saying that, and I think you have to be -- the question is, are you for order and against chaos, or for protests and the right to free speech? And what's interesting is how quickly everyone and shifting. All the free-speech warriors are suddenly like, order, order, we must have order. And so there are heinous things that are said, but there is a line where you have to support also young people, especially when they do things that they do badly. Not to support them, is sort of anti- American in a way. JOHNSON: Free speech is fine, but USC has canceled its graduation. Columbia University has canceled classes and put them online. We've gone well beyond free speech and into shuttering the operations of universities. And I do think it's a missed opportunity for Biden to say there are limits. We've gone beyond speech and into harassment and disruption here. And we will not stand for that. LULU GARCIA-NAVARRO, New York Times: Yes, I think we've also, though, seen a reaction from some of the police and others that have been deployed on campuses that have been -- SWISHER: Excessive. GARCIA-NAVARRO: Excessive, thank you. SWISHER: Like Texas today, or Indiana, because then then that's a whole different story as these young people -- you are changing the political mentality of young people right now. And if you push down too hard on it, especially at this age, and not being able to express yourselves, I think you have a much bigger problem later on. Leftists typically question any police use of force against protesters, and rarely think leftist protesters should be questioned for their tactics. We can all guess where Swisher would have come down if the "young people" had been Tea Party kids disrupting an Obama event.  They would be anti-American.

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USA TODAY: Kyle Rittenhouse Campus Speeches Raise 'Free Speech' Questions

This will grab your attention. At the bottom of the front page of Thursday’s USA Today was this headline: Shooter Rittenhouse’s tour draws outrage College gun-rights events raise questions about free speech and its impact USA Today thinks pro-gun-rights speech “raises questions”? The online headline was even stronger: Kyle Rittenhouse, deadly shooter, college speaker? A campus gun-rights tour sparks outrage As in: Who’s approving this speech on campus? A video in the online story shows “hundreds of protesters” at the University of Memphis. “Students celebrated his departure with live music and dancing on campus.” They forced Rittenhouse to leave early. This is a triumph in the media's eyes?  Reporter Cybele Mayes-Osterman sounded like an editorial writer from the beginning: Kyle Rittenhouse is not a typical college campus speaker. In 2020, at the age of 17, he took an AR-15-style rifle to a Black Lives Matter demonstration and fired it, killing two people and injuring a third. Rittenhouse said he pulled the trigger in self-defense and was acquitted of wrongdoing. He has since penned a book, “Acquitted,” and has set out on a series of college speaking events dubbed the "Rittenhouse Recap." He is slated to appear Thursday at Clemson University in South Carolina. Rittenhouse is selling books, and ostensibly promoting the right to bear arms on campus, but he’s also trying to persuade young people to join the conservative movement. The key group behind the appearances, Turning Point USA, is led by the self-described “youth director” of President Donald Trump’s first campaign and a key ally rallying votes for Trump this year. (I left in their links, because the reporters don't tend to say Rittenhouse "shot in self-defense," just that he shot people, and that police shot Jacob Blake, but not that he was reaching for a knife.) Who's letting speakers persuade students to become conservatives? Is that where the national newspapers "raise questions about free speech and its impact"? The tour promoter is the Trump-loving Turning Point USA, which is more salt in the USA Today free-speech wound:  The provocative choice of backing the Rittenhouse tour is par for the course for Turning Point and its local affiliates, which have hosted controversial figures like Nick Fuentes, a white nationalist and Holocaust denier. But it has stirred up devastating pain and disdain in a man he almost killed. "He has used every moment to gloat and to make light of taking life," Paul Prediger said, speaking publicly for the first time about what happened in protest of a Rittenhouse speech last week at Kent State The ADL said Fuentes appeared once at Iowa State in 2019, and the local TPUSA leader resigned over it. But "Prediger" has changed his name from Gaige Grosskreutz. A few paragraphs later, the paper acknowledges Rittenhouse tweeted a video with Prediger/Grosskreutz "admitting he pointed a gun in Rittenhouse's direction before being shot."  USA Today clearly finds the Rittenhouse speaking tour as more objectionable than pro-Hamas protesters creating encampments across the country as their leaders speak of violence against the "Zionists." Their cause isn't lead by some conservative white boy beloved by Trump voters.  

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NewsBusters Podcast: Cassidy Hutchinson Nails Those CNN Talking Points

CNN primetime host Kaitlan Collins gushed over former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson for 20 minutes on April 24. Hutchinson nailed all the CNN-pleasing talking points. Collins introduced her as “now a frequent target of Donald Trump's, after her explosive testimony before the January 6 Committee." Hutchinson warned: "It's really important to stress that the American people were not given the truth about Donald Trump in 2016, and he won. He almost won in 2020. And he very well could win again, if the American people do not, are not made aware of who he actually is." CNN types think Trump voters are so dumb that they have no idea who Trump is. She didn't say out loud she'll vote for Biden, but her underlining of how crucial it is to defeat Trump sends the message loud and clear. She's advertising for Biden-Harris, and CNN is happy to air it for free.  Only at the end of this 20-minute interview, in the last two minutes, do we get a slight hint of how Cassidy Hutchinson’s testimony turned out to be wrong, this tale of Trump grabbing the steering wheel. We know now that Trump's driver says that never happened. But Collins could only negotiate around the phony story. A Secret Service agent "could not corroborate your testimony of something that you said you were told by the White House Deputy Chief of Operations, at the time, Tony Ornato. And he's gone after you publicly as you've spoken out bravely." So Hutchinson poses as one who speaks the truth, and CNN doesn’t really want to challenge that. And it certainly doesn’t want to challenge her wild claims that this could be the final election: "what scares me more is the fact that this could potentially be the final election of our American democracy, as we know it, if he's reelected." That paranoid line couldn't please CNN bosses (or viewers) more.  Hutchinson claimed she really doesn't want to be a public person, but it's worked out well for her. She had the book deal with Simon & Schuster, and she speaks in public for money (not on CNN, but the CNN appearances don't hurt). Enjoy the podcast below, or wherever you listen to podcasts. 

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Column: Leftist Reporters Pretend They're Not Partisan News Squashers

Eight years ago, the leftist media took great offense to being dismissed by Donald Trump as “fake news,” but they never seemed to grasp this is exactly how they painted the conservative media, as truth-defying propaganda outlets. When the Trump trial turned to the National Enquirer, we could find national unity that the Enquirer defines “fake news.” The lefties are very excited to remind voters how the Enquirer was a Trump-allied tabloid full of garbage stories. But the liberal media spread some of them. In May 2016, the Enquirer uncorked some garbage that Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) had cheated on his wife. ABC, CBS, and NBC spent a combined 15 and a half minutes spreading the word of this character assassination campaign. The pro-Biden “media reporters” are still upset this week about the Enquirer and how they played “catch and kill” with Trump accusers, squelching stories that might embarrass Trump. NPR’s David Folkenflik complained to MSNBC’s Nicolle Wallace that burying salacious stories is “not a journalistic impulse, it's not even a tabloid gossip impulse, this is essentially a partisan or propagandistic arm of the Trump campaign in all but name." This is coming from NPR, which aggressively trashed the Hunter Biden laptop story as a “pure distraction.” Folkenflik engaged with the story only to dismiss it as “a story marked more by red flags than investigative rigor." When The New York Times and The Washington Post published stories acknowledging Hunter’s laptop was real in March and April of 2022, Folkenflik didn’t file a story with his regrets. He just kept attacking Fox News, his usual bread and butter. So on the Hunter laptop, we can throw it back in Folkenflik’s face – NPR’s suppression was not a journalistic impulse, and NPR was essentially a propagandistic arm of the Biden campaign in all but name. Worse yet, we fund it with our taxes. That gravy train should end. Ex-CNN reporter Brian Stelter said the same thing on Joy Reid’s MSNBC show about the Enquirer: “It has nothing to do with journalism.” David Pecker’s “not a news man. He’s an advertiser! He’s a marketer, and his product was Donald Trump.” Thanks, Sherlock Stelter. Nobody should define Mr. Pecker as a news man. Like Folkenflik, Stelter squashed the Hunter Biden laptop in 2020 as a Murdoch plot, or as a Russian disinformation campaign, because CNN’s a marketer and its product was anyone but Trump (meaning Joe Biden). Stelter also showed up on Alex Wagner’s MSNBC show. Wagner was hopping mad, asking what’s the point of a gag order on Trump when you have a “media-industrial complex that is effectively acting as a public defense line” for Trump? Once again, Wagner can’t imagine MSNBC acting as a “media-industrial complex” for the Democrats. So does Wagner wish the judge could issue a gag order for the entire conservative media landscape? No criticism allowed of the get-Trump prosecutors and judge? I thought this was a democracy. Stelter broke out the usual bravado that the liberals live on “Earth One,” and they must see what’s happening on “Earth Two,” which is an alternative universe of hallucinations. Stelter claimed “For Jesse Watters, Trump is God, and that is the programming every hour of every day on these other networks.” That sounds like some crazy religion. Would Stelter survive a little fact check on whether Fox and Newsmax perpetually pray hourly to the Orange Lord and Savior? Both sides suggest the other side of the media is fake. But both sides are slinging a lot of opinionated hot takes, and Stelter can certainly flip a flapjack on that skillet.

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Top Ten Egregious Reasons to DEFUND NPR

Anyone who spends time reading about NPR on NewsBusters is going to roll their eyes when NPR executives blather about how they believe in "viewpoint diversity" and "inclusion" of important voices. It's readily apparent on a daily basis that NPR is a sandbox for left-wingers, polishing Democrats and punishing Republicans, touting liberal journalists as heroic and conservative journalists as a pox on the First Amendment. Coming up with a list of ten egregious examples to advocate for separating NPR from the taxpayers is difficult, because there are many more examples than just ten. We decided to limit it to the Trump era, since that's roughly how long Uri Berliner was complaining inside NPR. Anti-Patriotic Song. On July 4, 2018, NPR's All Things Considered ripped a classic Irving Berlin song under the headline “For 'God Bless America,' A Long Gestation And Venomous Backlash.” NPR reported that leftist folksinger Woody Guthrie thought it was "a whitewash of everything wrong in America" and that it’s “annoyed many” people (NPR staffers and audience members, surely) "who hear it as a tune of syrupy nationalism and trivialized faith." Pro-Marxism. On February 24, 2023, NPR On The Media host Brooke Gladstone touted The Communist Manifesto: "like Hamlet’s ghost, the Manifesto is both impossible and imperative in its call for action.” It’s a “stalwart text…it’s stirring! It scans!” For the oppressed, it’s “music for their dreams.” Her Marx-interpreting guest China Mieville said true communism has never been tried, and “If you see this new sadistic hard right as an inevitable feature of capitalism, then the stakes of moving beyond capitalism become ever more urgent.” Pro-Chinese Communism. On October 1, 2018, NPR’s Morning Edition celebrated the 70th anniversary of the communist takeover of China. Co-host Ailsa Chang was in Beijing to gush. “It's communist in name, but it is not the party of the proletariat; it's the party of state capitalism. And it's a party that promised to lift people out of poverty, which, you know, to be -- truth be told, it has done a spectacular job of.” Chang interviewed a young woman who said China was doing great, that “we know the leader would make steady, wise choice, unlike (laughter) the United States.” Pro-Looting. On August 27, 2020, NPR's blog "Code Switch," with the slogan "Race In Your Face," posted an interview promoting a new book titled In Defense of Looting. Natalie Escobar promoted author Emily Osterweil's view that “looting is a powerful tool to bring about real, lasting change in society. The rioters who smash windows and take items from stores, she says, are engaging in a powerful tactic that questions the justice of ‘law and order,’ and the distribution of property and wealth in an unequal society.” Pro-Rioting. On The NPR Politics Podcast on July 17, 2021, NPR reporter Danielle Kurtzleben brought on Yale law professor Elizabeth Hinton to promote her book on the acceptability of violence as a protest tactic against police. Kurtzleben explained: “You talk about these clashes as rebellions -- and quite pointedly, not as riots. It's a very meaningful choice. It really kind of shapes how the reader perceives these clashes.” Kurtlzeben proclaimed “It’s an excellent book!” Pro-Sabotage. On NPR’s Fresh Air on April 15, 2023, their movie critic John Powers praised the movie How to Blow Up a Pipeline, hailing it as “hugely timely” when “people are frustrated by society's inability, indeed unwillingness to even slow down ecological disasters like climate change.” The movie’s a fictional take on the Andreas Malm book of the same name – “the most compelling argument I’ve read for eco-sabotage,” proclaimed Powers. He praised the movie for treating the saboteurs not as villains or “parody radicals,” but as “ordinary people whose reasons we can sympathize with.” Pro-Abortion Audio. On November 3, 2022, NPR’s Morning Edition featured reporter Kate Wells at an abortion clinic in Detroit, and they actually aired audio of an abortion of an 11-week-old baby. The abortionist told the woman,“you’re going to hear this machine turn on now, okay? It makes a loud noise.” NPR’s website warned some “may find it disturbing.” The doctor advises the patient to breathe during the killing. When the baby is dead, an assistant tells the woman, “Don’t you ever tell yourself that you can’t do something.” Anti-“Fox Monster.” On 2021, NPR’s On The Media devoted an hour to what they called “Slaying the Fox Monster.” Host Bob Garfield said “we're discussing how the marketplace might force Fox News Channel into responsible behavior or even into financial catastrophe." (In 2022, NPR also promoted Fox-deplatforming activist Nandimi Jammi, who quipped “you can’t chop off Fox News’s head in a day.”) Treasonous Mitch? On NPR’s Fresh Air on October 1, 2018, host Terry Gross discussed emerging claims on Trump-Russia collusion, and she imagined Senate GOP leader Mitch McConnell might be treasonous: “If it can be proven that McConnell knew that Russia was trying to interfere in our election and influence the outcome of it and then tried to cover it up, to deny that it was happening, is that treason? Is that, like, legally treason?” Washington Post reporter Greg Miller wouldn’t bite. Hunter Laptop Deniers. The most egregious example is NPR's red-hot loathing of Biden scandals. On October 20, 2020, NPR “Public Editor” Kelly McBride tweeted,  "Why haven't you seen any stories from NPR about the NY Post's Hunter Biden story?" She quoted Terence Samuel, NPR's Managing Editor for News. “We don't want to waste our time on stories that are not really stories, and we don't want to waste the listeners’ and readers’ time on stories that are just pure distractions.” He dismissed the Post story as a “politically driven event.” Today, McBride’s tweet remains, but the link to her newsletter doesn’t work. Why haven't you seen any stories from NPR about the NY Post's Hunter Biden story? Read more in this week's newsletter➡️ https://t.co/CJesPgmGvo pic.twitter.com/jAi7PnpbZf — NPR Public Editor (@NPRpubliceditor) October 22, 2020

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NewsBusters Podcast: Pretending the Trump Prosecutors Are Nonpartisans

ABC and CBS almost completely refuse to identify Trump's elected Democrat prosecutors -- Alvin Bragg, Letitia James, and Fani Willis -- as Democrats, and certainly not Democrats elected on a promise to get Trump. NBC dabbles with the D. For example, elected Democrat Alvin Bragg, the District Attorney of Manhattan, was described as a Democrat in 16 of 59 evening-news stories on NBC programs. But CBS never did in 48 Bragg stories. On ABC, there were 56 stories, but viewers only once heard that Bragg was a Democrat — on February 26, 2024, when correspondent Aaron Katersky relayed how “a spokesman for Trump... called Bragg ‘another deranged Democrat prosecutor.’” He's only described as a Democrat when they can make it sound like a wild Trump accusation. Elected Democrat Letitia James, the Attorney General of New York state, NBC mentioned her Democrat-ness in seven of 26 stories. But ABC’s World News Tonight has aired 44 stories mentioning James’s civil suit against Trump and his businesses, yet only one -- back in November -- showed the word "Democrat" in a fleeting on-screen graphic that was shown for less than two seconds. CBS also had one citation (in 35 stories), but only on screen: the March 24, 2024 Sunday night newscast briefly showed a Trump campaign message demanding that “Insane radical Democrat AG Letitia James” keep her “FILTHY HANDS OFF OF TRUMP TOWER.” Elected Democrat Fani Willis, the District Attorney of Fulton County (Atlanta), Georgia drew 60 stories on ABC’s World News Tonight (60) and 39 stories on the CBS Evening News, and ZERO out of 99 mentioned she was a Democrat. NBC were the "rampant" labelers at eight out of 50 stories (meaning they skipped it in 84 percent of stories. Longtime MRC Director of Research Rich Noyes (now freelancing from Connecticut) was at MRC headquarters to explain his latest study numbers (ending right before the Trump trial in Manhattan began) and projects it into this election year. He noted that while the networks liked to point out that Kenneth Starr was a "Republican independent counsel," he was never elected, but had served as Solicitor General under the first President Bush. Enjoy the podcast below, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

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NPR CEO Disses 'Distraction' of Bias Complaints, 'Bad Faith' Criticism of Her Tweets

Wall Street Journal media reporter Alexandra Bruell secured an interview with new NPR CEO Katherine Maher, and naturally, she discovered NPR doesn't want anyone focusing on the "distraction" of leftist tilt. They don't want anyone disturbing their "mandate" of taking taxpayer money from Republicans and whacking them with it. The headline defined it:  NPR Chief Defends Coverage, Accuses Critics of ‘Bad Faith Distortion’ of Her Views Katherine Maher said controversy stemming from an editor’s essay criticizing the radio network has been a distraction Bruell offered a sort of "poor thing" spin in how Maher's tenure had a rocky start with the Uri Berliner expose and conservative Christopher Rufo's unearthing of her woke tweets before joining NPR:  Critics have scrutinized her political views and seized on past comments she made on everything from the First Amendment to misinformation to the idea that written history is tilted toward the worldview of white men.  “All of this frankly is a bit of a distraction relative to the transformation our organization needs to undergo in order to best serve our mandate,” Maher said in an interview. Which "mandate" is that? We aren't told. She said NPR should be open to criticism...but clearly, she prefers internal conversations, not objections from, you know, the "public" when it comes to public radio. “We have robust conversations across the organization, including in response to the article,” she said. “Clear and well-reasoned pieces” from reviewers, like a write-up from NPR’s public editor and Poynter executive Kelly McBride that examined coverage of Israel and Gaza, have “found that our journalism is really solid,” Maher said. Citing McBride is especially perfect, since McBride went on Brian Stelter's podcast and divided NPR critics as supporters (liberals) and "bad faith" critics (conservatives). McBride sounds less like a Public Editor (working on behalf of the audience) and more like a Public Cheerleader (working on behalf of company morale). Maher's rah-rah memo to staff (posted on NPR's website) attacking Berliner for criticizing staffers for "who they are" instead of their on-air propaganda wasn't enough:  Days after Maher sent a note to staff addressing Berliner’s essay, NPR employees wrote to her urging stronger support for employees and asking her to call out factual inaccuracies in the piece “Without true leadership, resentment and discontent are festering among your staff,” the staffers wrote.  In a statement, Berliner said, “I wish that the company would have addressed and taken seriously some of the points I made.” If NPR wants to foster a broad range of views, “suspending and then rebuking a staffer is not the best way to go about it,” he said. The Journal reporter somehow didn't get any reaction from Rufo about all the Maher tweets about "cis-White mobility privilege" and so on. Maher tried to suggest her personal opinions are set aside in her professional life:  “There are many professions in which you set aside your own personal perspectives in order to lead in public service, and that is exactly how I have always led organizations and will continue to lead NPR,” she said. But Maher's attack on Berliner for his complaints about wokeness and "affinity groups" in the newsroom surely reflect her publicly-aired personal wokeness. Maher said their internal research shows people see NPR as “accurate and intellectual,” she said. “We want to be able to speak to folks as though they were our neighbors and speak to folks as though they were our friends.” That's not the way conservatives hear it on the radio.

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Column: Anti-Censorship Group PEN America Canceled by Pro-Hamas Authors

The leftist “free expression” group PEN America collided with a brick wall of radicals who don’t like anyone who expresses a sympathetic view of Israel after the Hamas slaughter of October 7. Their literary awards ceremony had to be cancelled due to a substantial withdrawal of authors striking a “pro-Palestinian” pose. If you disagree with that view? You’re “complicit” in genocide. Agree with the mob, or you favor mass murder. Their view is so obviously correct that they cannot understand how anyone could possibly disagree with it. “We refuse to gild the reputation of an organization that runs interference for an administration aiding and abetting genocide with our tax dollars,” a group of nominees wrote in an April 17 letter addressed to PEN America leaders. “And we refuse to take part in anything that will serve to overshadow PEN’s complicity in normalizing genocide.” Of 61 authors and translators nominated for a book prize this year, 28 declined. For the most prestigious book prize — the PEN/Jean Stein award, which comes with $75,000 — nine of 10 finalists dropped out. The fiasco will continue. PEN America’s annual World Voices Festival has also been hemorrhaging participants. Activists want heads to roll. “The fact is that Israel is leading a genocide of the Palestinian people. PEN’s perpetuation of false equivalences, their equivocation and normalizing, is indeed a betrayal.” PEN America replied: “The current war in Gaza is horrific. But we cannot agree that the answer to its wrenching dilemmas and consequences lies in a shutting down of conversation and the closing down of viewpoints.” This furor underlines what conservatives have been saying about PEN’s self-righteous “book ban” posture. They’re not “anti-censorship.” They’re promoting a leftist revolution in literature and libraries. What the Left wants is a system where the "experts" — educators and librarians — select all the books, and the "nonexperts" — parents — shut up and accept them. So it’s amazing to see the Left eating its own over who can position themselves with moral authority as the most “pro-Palestinian.”  Free expression is nowhere to be found. The Washington Post reported many of the withdrawing activists objected to a January event where author Randa Jarrar was physically removed after she screamed incessantly during a PEN-sponsored discussion of American comedian Moshe Kasher’s memoir Subculture Vulture, which featured Israel-supporting actress and Jeopardy host Mayim Bialik. Protesters were the censors: “Jarrar and other protesters from the group Writers Against the War on Gaza were shouting, through a loudspeaker, the names of Palestinian writers killed in Gaza.” The group tweeted video, complaining: “With delusional liberal aplomb, PEN America claims objectivity while platforming genocidal Zionists and silencing Palestinians.” As usual with the radicals, “objectivity” or "bothsidesism” is painted as evil, and anyone speaking in support of Israel is automatically a maniacal Zionist who must be deplatformed. The Post story ended with a quote from novelist (and former Andrew Cuomo speechwriter) Camonghne Felix: “We cannot hope to change every institution, but we hope that by changing ourselves what we will accept, that the organizations will have no choice but to bend towards us.” The notion of free expression is going to crumble when the leftist “negotiating” position is “no choice but to bend.”

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'No Evidence'! Dana Bash Yells at Gov. Kristi Noem Over Who's Behind the Trump Trial

Gov. Kristi Noem (R-S.D.) saddled up for another fight against CNN host Dana Bash on Sunday’s State of the Union. Two years ago, Bash pushed Noem around, insisting she support an abortion for a raped 10-year-old girl in Chicago. Noem kept attacking the rapist. On Sunday, the combat resumed over the Trump trial in Manhattan. Bash kept pressing Noem about how she couldn’t possibly support Trump if he was convicted, and pulled out the usual “No Evidence” fussing when Noem attacked the Bidens. BASH: Prosecutors allege Donald Trump falsified business records to hide hush money payments weeks before the 2016 election. As I mentioned, he violated both state, tax and federal campaign finance laws. So, are you saying that, even if that's true, he shouldn't have been charged and that he's above the law? NOEM: What I'm saying is that these prosecutors are using someone as -- whose testimony has been proven to be a liar. Michael Cohen has lied before Congress multiple times. That's their main witness. I would say that he certainly is not someone who can be trusted to do the right thing during this jury trial. They're also using a woman's testimony [Stormy Daniels] who signed a letter saying that this affair did not happen, that she has testified in the past that this never occurred. And so now they're going forward with a case built on that and saying that, because Donald Trump paid his legal bills, that now he can be prosecuted for something that even the person that alleged it happened is saying did not happen. Noem added: "When I'm walking around this state and talking to people, talking to people across the country, they don't even know which trial this is. They're like, I don't remember which one this isn't about. Is this the one they're coming after him for this or this?" Where Bash really got agitated and wouldn't let Noem finish a sentence is when the governor said "the Democrats and the activists are using this trial to derail him, to keep him in court, instead of out talking to Americans about what their real concerns are." She then interpreted that more narrowly as if only Biden was trying to derail Trump, when all the Democrats are, including the entire staff of CNN. NOEM:  And their real concerns are their everyday lives. They need a leader in the White House who gets up every day and puts them first and doesn't raise their taxes, doesn't overregulate them, take away their freedoms and give all our money to other countries, instead of making sure that we're taking care of America first and keeping us safe and secure. BASH: I just want to say for the record there's absolutely no evidence that President Biden is involved in this. This is the case that is being brought in the state of New York by the Manhattan DA. NOEM: And that's what I think is remarkable, is that, if you look at President Biden and what he's done and what his son has done, and the fact that... BASH: That has nothing... NOEM: ... they are not being prosecuted for some of their crimes... BASH: That -- OK, that has -- that has nothing to do with this. NOEM: ... that they have committed, it's really kind of unprecedented. BASH: That has nothing to do with this. Bash finished with this: "But kind of big picture, Governor, if Donald Trump is convicted in this trial, will you still support him in November?" PS: After Noem, Bash questioned Gov. J.B. Pritzker (D-Ill.) and she was still on a "no evidence" kick as she typically pressed the Democrat from the left, that Biden was too weak in attacking Trump:  We, of course, have seen the split screen that we're going to continue to see, President Biden campaigning, former President Trump in court. Biden is deliberately avoiding talking about Trump's legal issues on the trail because he doesn't want to play into the claims that he's orchestrating the political prosecution, which I guess I should say again that there's no evidence of. But just as a political strategic matter, do you think ignoring it is a mistake, or should Biden be reminding voters at every turn that the Republican nominee is currently on -- involved in a criminal trial? 

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NewsBusters Podcast: Hillary Clinton Says Trump Wants to 'Kill His Opposition'

As pro-Biden media outlets argue that Donald Trump's criticism of his legal adversaries is endangering lives, Hillary Clinton claimed on a podcast that Trump would like to "kill his opposition," and the media find that's not dangerously suggestive. Democrats (like congressional candidate Nate McMurray in New York) tweeting "Die MAGA Die" shouldn't be questioned. On a podcast with her old lawyer Marc Elias, Hillary said "Trump was like, you know, just gaga over Putin because Putin does what Trump would like to do: Kill his opposition, imprison his opposition, drive journalists and others into exile, rule without any check or balance."  Where are the so-called "independent fact-checkers"? Because if we used the typical Daniel Dale/Politifact standard, you’d expect them to say there’s no evidence Donald Trump ever said “I’d love to kill my opposition like Putin does, but nobody will let me.”  Maybe the media would get upset if a Republican tweeted "Die Hamas Die." That wouldn't be "mostly peaceful protest."  On the Left today, Hamas is viewed as more virtuous than people wearing red MAGA hats. On the Left, the American conservative is always the most evil enemy. No one on the Left is really an enemy, not compared to the domestic extremists on the right wing. Meanwhile, the Meet the Press gang gang was a little happy on Sunday. Steve Kornacki announced Donald Trump does lead Joe Biden 46% to 44% in the latest NBC News poll, but the margin decreased from five points to two, and Trump is down two points when they add Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and other third-party candidates.  Even so, Andrea Mitchell was worrying out loud that "the problem for Joe Biden and the Democrats" is Trump's trial is "crowding out everything else." Biden can't tout his steel tariffs or his student-loan "relief" handouts (going against democratic norms to buy Democrat votes). As if the media can't help but overshadow Biden with all the Trump-trial obsession?  Over on ABC, Politico's Jonathan Martin sounded a different note of panic: "I think if the election's about Trump, Biden's got a lot better chance." (That's the media's rationale for wall-to-wall coverage.) "Right now, Biden's problem is this election is about Joe Biden." Martin's lecturing the voters that they're focused on the wrong guy. Enjoy the podcast below, or wherever you listen to podcasts.   

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CNN's Zakaria Nudges Michael Douglas to Tout Biden's Brain: ‘He’s Sharp As A Tack!’

On Sunday's CNN's Fareed Zakaria GPS brought on 79-year-old actor Michael Douglas to plug his new Benjamin Franklin movie on Apple TV+. Zakaria nudged Douglas, a liberal Democrat, to vouch for Biden's mental acuity. From what he's heard, Douglas says Biden's "as sharp as a tack." Isn't that what all the Democrats say off the talking-points list?    ZAKARIA: So you and Biden are about the same age. Are you one of those people who wished he had, bowed out and let the field choose somebody else? How do you think about that? DOUGLAS: Well, I think that I walk a little similar to him. And the people that I’ve talked to and everybody that I have, say he’s sharp as a tack! He’s fine. We all have an issue with memories as we get older, we forget names. He’s overcome a stutter in his life. But let’s just say that his entire cabinet, including his vice president, everybody in his cabinet would be more than happy to work with him again in the next term. I cannot say that about the other candidate running because nobody in his cabinet from 2016 wants to be involved with him. Can we be sure that nobody in Trump's first-term cabinet would come back? Fact-checkers? It's obviously much easier to be in Biden's cabinet when no one at CNN is trying to get you removed for being a Trump selection (and trying to ruin your post-Trump career on top).  Zakaria then "went there" to where voters have concerns, that Biden won't be sharp as tack in 2026, or 2027. This answer may not have been what he wanted:   ZAKARIA: Do you -- do you think when you -- you know, everyone says, yes, he is OK now, but -- you know, what's it going to be like the next four or five years? But you're -- you're going to work for the next four or five years. You're not retiring. DOUGLAS: Well, I'm not. However, I will say we did Franklin in 2022. And after 165 days of shooting, for seven months, I haven't worked since. So, I took '23 off and we're going into '24. And I must say I'm enjoying the time off. And I think he'll be fine. Thank you very much. In the first half of the interview, Douglas talked about his reading of philosophy and his "Jewish roots," but Zakaria didn't have any questions about the Islamists vs. Israel or anti-Semitism on campus. This was more like a Larry King celebrity interview.

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NPR's 'Domestic Extremism' Reporter: Trump Could Cause Violence Against Jurors

One way the leftist media want to add juice to the Trump trial is to suggest the jurors will be threatened by Trump outbursts in court or on social media. On Friday’s All Things Considered, they brought in “NPR domestic extremism correspondent Odette Yousef” to spread the conspiracy theory that Trump messages will lead to violence. They really should be blunter, and just call her the Far Right warning correspondent. AILSA CHANG: Odette, you've looked at what it can mean to serve on a jury for a Trump trial, like the safety concerns, the repercussions personally. Tell us what you're finding. YOUSEF: So, Ailsa, the challenge here is that, you know, jurors need to feel that their privacy and safety are not at risk when they serve. But the court also needs to maintain some transparency to court proceedings so that there's public faith in the process. And finding that sweet spot is challenging, and it's been especially hard in the Trump trials. And that's because Donald Trump owns a social media platform, Ailsa. And so, you know, we've seen this pattern, a correlation, where, when he posts criticism about specific people or processes, what follows are threats. And this has already been happening in this case. Judge Merchan's own daughter has been at the receiving end of harassment. And I've spoken to some people, including a former juror on a trial involving a Trump affiliate, who've been just stunned that there haven't been more protective measures set up at the outset of this trial, given what's happened in the past. Notice the vagueness around “Merchan’s daughter,” who could be a minor, for all we know. NPR hasn’t mentioned Loren Merchan on air, and the only thing the shows up in NPR’s search engine is an online AP dispatch that underlines she’s a professional Democrat: Loren Merchan is president of Authentic Campaigns, which has collected at least $70 million in payments from Democratic candidates and causes since she helped found the company in 2018, records show. The firm's past clients include President Joe Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris and Senate Majority PAC, a big-spending political committee affiliated with Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer. Senate Majority PAC has paid Authentic Campaigns $15.2 million, according to campaign finance disclosures. Even AP tries to claim it’s a “daisy chain of innuendoes” to connect the judge to the daughter. Yousef then turned to former Obama aide and CNN analyst Juliette Kayyem (but just like Merchan, NPR launders out the Democrat background).  YOUSEF: She's a former national security official. She says at this point, courts should be expecting Trump to complain about the proceedings and that some of his followers may respond in violent ways. JULIETTE KAYYEM: It feels like we're sort of sleepwalking into 2024. It's just our democratic institutions that used to have these norms, but, well, those norms no longer are holding. And we have to accept that and prepare with the expectation that violence or the threat of violence is going to be part of our democratic processes, at least for the short term. Yesterday, I joined @NPR All Things Considered to discuss with Odette Yousef how we seem to be "sleepwalking" in 2024 as Trump continues with intimidation and threats of violence. How to keep jurors safe? Assume they are not. https://t.co/xpkCfP32Sy — Juliette Kayyem (@juliettekayyem) April 20, 2024 This is how pro-Biden news outlets are "setting the table" for the trial. That Trump will inspire violence by objecting to the partisanship on display (including in the press). This is the media trying to create a "gag order" through intimidation: CHANG: Well, I am curious, Odette -- if these so-called norms don't seem to be holding right now, how are you seeing that play out? YOUSEF: You know, there was a policy paper, Ailsa, released earlier this year by the National Conference of State Court Administrators that identified juror safety and well-being among the top issues that need to be addressed these days. And that's not just for the Trump trials. You know, someone with the organization mentioned the Kyle Rittenhouse trial, Derek Chauvin's trial... CHANG: Yeah. YOUSEF: ...Trials of people in Trump's orbit. We are in a moment now in the U.S. where norms have shifted. People who are civically involved, whether it be in trials, in election administration, on school boards, you name it, are now increasingly targeted with violence or the threat of violence. And that's a reality that won't reverse itself overnight, and it chills democratic participation. So people who can should be thinking about safety of these people in ways they may not have had to consider before.

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CNN's Jake Tapper Brings In 'Fact Checker' Daniel Dale to Knock Trump's Opinions

CNN's resident "fact checker" Daniel Dale usually shows his face on air when CNN wants to attack Donald Trump. On Thursday's The Lead with Jake Tapper, Dale confessed that Trump's statements during jury selection were mostly just opinion, but he mocked the "false conspiracy theory" that President Biden had something to do with Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg's prosecution, even though an Associate Attorney General joined Bragg's team.  JAKE TAPPER: Daniel, we just heard a little speech from Mr. Trump. What did you make of it? Did he say anything that was not true? DANIEL DALE: He did. I mean, it was mostly uncheckable, subjective opinion, but he did say a few things that weren’t quite right at very least. So he repeated his false conspiracy theory that essentially that Joe Biden is behind this case, which was brought by a locally elected [Democrat!] district attorney. He said Biden is behind it. He has his top people working with the DAs office to make sure everything goes right. There is no basis for that. That appears to be a reference to a former Justice Department official who went to work for the DA’s office. But there’s no sign that was anything but his own employment decision. In fact, this former official, Matthew Colangelo, had previously been a colleague of DA Bragg, so he rejoined his old colleague. At least CNN is mentioning Colangelo in passing. If this were a Trump Justice Department official arriving on a Biden prosecution, it would be a major scandal of partisanship. CNN would be aggressively digging for anonymous insiders to decry this plot. Then the Canadian Trump-basher turned to the usual "no evidence" claims on the Biden impeachment inquiry: DALE: He also claimed that Joe Biden is a crooked president should be on trial. I think that’s mostly opinion, but I think it’s worth noting, Jake, that we’ve had this extended Republican House investigation impeachment inquiry, no evidence of impeachable offenses, high crimes and misdemeanors, let alone criminal offenses. And then I should note, as you did briefly, that, you know, he read this big pile of documents of articles citing headlines denouncing the case. I googled some of them as he was speaking, so he read one — talking about the whopping outrage in Trump’s indictment. Well, that’s harsh criticism. Where was it from? A Fox News column. He mentioned the Daily Caller, another right wing publication. I googled another headline from the right wing National Review he mentioned. So there are some liberal scholars, legal experts, publications who have raised questions about this case. But that pile he showed was largely his usual friends, the usual suspects praising Trump, defending Trump in the conservative media. Dale (and Tapper) weren't going to mention CNN's own legal analyst Elie Honig isn't impressed with Bragg's effort. This was for left-wing consumption, as in this headline at Mediaite: "CNN’s Daniel Dale Torpedoes Trump’s Attack On Biden — Rips Quoting ‘Usual Suspects’ Like Fox In Courthouse Rant."

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So Sad! Brian Stelter, Post Reporter Can't Get Press Credentials from Trump Campaign

Charlotte Klein at Vanity Fair was upset that the Trump campaign is “cutting off access” to reporters who are extremely hostile to Trump, including Brian Stelter (also of Vanity Fair) and Washington Post reporter Isaac Arnsdorf, whose new book is titled Finish What We Started: The MAGA Movement’s Ground War to End Democracy. Klein protested the book “has been praised by two such members of that movement, Steve Bannon and John Fredericks, both of whom had Arnsdorf on their shows and recommended the book to their audiences.” That’s bizarre. By contrast, the Trump campaign took exception to the “End Democracy” hype. Since February, Arnsdorf has not been permitted to enter campaign events as credentialed media. That doesn’t mean he can’t cover events. He just has to sit where regular folks do. Klein lamented "that requires getting to rallies much earlier, which could be a deal breaker for some journalists given their busy schedules." Cry a river. “Nobody has been denied any access to our events,” Cheung said in a statement. “If reporters want to cover our events but are unable to secure a coveted press badge, they are more than welcome to apply for general admission tickets in order to experience our events." Arnsdorf declined to comment on the situation, but a Post spokesperson said the paper “will continue to fairly, accurately and independently report on the presidential campaign.” They don’t sound fair, accurate, or independent. They sound like Democrat operatives. He's not alone: In recent weeks, the campaign has taken similar punitive measures against other reporters, according to multiple sources familiar with the moves. An Axios reporter had their credentials approved for an event and then revoked the same day, following the publication of a story about the Trump-led Republican National Committee’s struggles in swing states. (An Axios spokesperson declined to comment.) At least one other Post reporter was temporarily denied press credentials to multiple events after accurately reporting on Trump’s public statements. Most recently, Brian Stelter, a special correspondent for Vanity Fair, was denied press access to Trump’s rally in Schnecksville, Pennsylvania  This is true and I know it firsthand — I applied for press credentials for Trump's most recent rally in Schnecksville, Pennsylvania and was rejected https://t.co/CpUHMb2WHy — Brian Stelter (@brianstelter) April 19, 2024 Klein conceded that the Trump campaign’s press engagement has even earned it praise. Some reporters have said they have in certain ways been easier to deal with than Joe Biden’s campaign, according to The New Yorker’s Clare Malone, who recently wrote a piece about Trump spokesman Steven Cheung headlined, “The Face of Donald Trump’s Deceptively Savvy Media Strategy.” Still, some hostile reporters are still "unnerved by the retaliatory behavior" and what will happen next. “This is the calm before the storm. Once there’s a press plane with 30 to 40 reporters flying around all the time, that’ll be when they’ll really have to deal with it,” the first political reporter told me. “Negative stories will be coming thick and fast and they haven’t had to deal with this since 2016; in 2020 they just had the White House pool. It’s only gonna get worse, I think.”

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NewsBusters Podcast: A Fervent Obsession with Trump Trial Jury Selection

The Manhattan trial of Donald Trump on "hush money" charges drew hundreds of minutes of TV obsession this week. The pro-Biden media is now enjoying talking about a “split screen” of Trump stuck in court on trial, President Biden on the campaign trail. ABC morning host Michael Strahan reported on Trump “test[ing] the patience of the judge while President Biden hits the campaign trails in a battleground state.” Meanwhile, the impeachment of Homeland Security Mayorkas was briefly covered and derided as a partisan stunt. George Stephanopoulos called it a "partisan" impeachment, unlike his salesmanship for the Trump impeachments.  Managing Editor Curtis Houck has the details and clips. Reporters from ABC's Mary Bruce to CBS's Nancy Cordes helpfully spun for Biden's campaign stops in Pennsylvania, where Biden said he's a Scranton guy who understands the middle class, while Trump is a clueless rich guy working for the rich guys. This split screen is exactly what the Democrats want -- Trump pinned in the courtroom, Biden making weird clips in Wawa that are carefully staged to sell he's "with it." The music and lyrics suggest Trump has engaged in "hush money" payments to a porn star and is now caught in a "criminal fraud" trial, while Biden is the honest guy searching out the common man. It's not "news," it's messaging. They can't find time to cover Biden making bizarre gaffes like his implication that his Uncle Ambrose was eaten by cannibals when his plane crashed in World War II. Rich Noyes posted a study on NewsBusters on Monday showing that ABC, CBS, and NBC usually avoid mentioning that Trump's prosecutors (like Alvin Bragg in this case, or Letitia James and Fani Willis in others) are elected Democrats seeking to build their brand by "getting Trump." NBC occasionally mentions the "D," but ABC and CBS seem allergic to it. Overall, 90 percent of stories have no party label. Instead, they just show Trump complaining it's "rigged," as that's an unfounded complaint about public-spirited nonpartisans who hold powerful people accountable. Enjoy the podcast below, or wherever you listen to podcasts.   

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WashPost Promotes NPR Staffers Loathing Critics of Their 'Legendary' Network

The Washington Post is covering NPR’s Uri Berliner controversy – now that he’s resigned. The front of Thursday’s Style section ran a story by media reporter Elahe Izadi with the usual framing of “conservative activists” vs. “public radio network.” As if this isn’t “right versus left.” This was the online headline: Turmoil at NPR after editor rips network for political bias The public-radio network is being targeted by conservative activists over the essay, which many staffers say is misleading and inaccurate. Izadi and the Post suggested that your critique is self-discrediting if it can be cited by conservatives. On its face, it seemed to confirm the worst suspicions held by NPR’s critics on the right: that the legendary media organization had an ideological, progressive agenda that dictates its journalism. [Imagine that!] The Free Press is an online publication started by journalist Bari Weiss, whose own resignation from the New York Times in 2020 was used by conservative politicians as evidence that the Times stifled certain ideas and ideologies… Izadi’s story was stuffed with NPR reporters and executives huffing that they’re not putting out a slanted left-wing product. They’re an “independent” outlet doing “fact-based reporting.” Disagree with that? It’s a “bad-faith” argument. The liberal bubble is thick. Several prominent NPR journalists countered that impression. “We have strong, heated editorial debates every day to try and get the most appropriate language and nuanced reporting in a landscape that is divisive and difficult to work in as a journalist,” Leila Fadel, host of Morning Edition, told The Post. “Media and free independent press are often under attack for the fact-based reporting that we do.” She called Berliner’s essay “a bad-faith effort” and a “factually inaccurate take on our work that was filled with omissions to back his arguments.” "Errors and omissions" are a constant NPR-employee talking point, as in Steve Inskeep's blazing attack on Substack. Izadi didn’t come to conservative critics for rebuttal – like ask Leila about her puffball interview with Liz Cheney, promoting her claim that the current Republican Party is a "danger to the country." But it grew worse: Ayesha Rascoe went for guilt by association, that any conservative critique of NPR is responsible for encouraging anonymous numbskulls on the internet: No news organization is above reproach, Weekend Edition host Ayesha Rascoe told The Post, but someone should not “be able to tear down an entire organization’s work without any sort of response or context provided, or pushback.” There are many legitimate critiques to make of NPR’s coverage, she added, “but the way this has been done — it’s to invalidate all the work NPR does.” …Rascoe, who, as a Black woman host for NPR, says she’s no stranger to online vitriol, but one message after Berliner’s essay labeled her as a “DEI hire” who has “never read a book in her life.” “What stung about this one was it came on the basis of a supposed colleague’s op-ed,” whose words were “being used as fodder to attack me,” Rascoe said. “And my concern is not about me, but all the younger journalists who don’t have the platform I have and who will be attacked and their integrity questioned simply on the basis of who they are.” Izadi's piece read like a long list of internal NPR complaints without any inkling of what all liberals know: NPR is a left-wing sandbox. It's "public," but it's owned by the Left. Berliner betrayed his colleagues by assailing its "legendary" status. 

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Column: Do Celebrities Have Deeper Liberal Thoughts?

When Laura Ingraham wrote her book Shut Up and Sing in 2003, the Left didn’t read the book as much as overreact to the title. The title implied something important. While celebrities gain a “platform” they feel compelled to use, do their opinions reflect any expertise? Or is fame more important than logic? Celebrities often lead with emotion, and expect to cause an emotional reaction. They don’t expect “independent fact-checkers” to examine their emotions. Exhibit A is an April 15 interview of Hillary Clinton on The Kelly Clarkson Show. Pop singer Clarkson brought up an Arizona judge ruling that an abortion ban originally passed in 1864 could stand. "Did you ever think in your lifetime we would see that happen?" Clarkson asked. "It's just insane to me the thinking that went on in 1864. It's a very different world. We know a lot more now. We are going backwards." Hillary agreed: “It is horrifying in every way.” She said “there’s a cruelty to it.” No one gets to suggest that maybe there’s something cruel or horrifying about ripping apart the body of an unborn baby. Clarkson said she was hospitalized both times she was pregnant. "I literally asked God, this is a real thing, to just take me and my son in the hospital for the second time, because I was like, 'It's the worst thing,'" she said, growing emotional. “It was my decision, and I’m so glad I did it. I love my babies, but to make someone... You don’t realize how hard it is. The fact that you would take that away from someone, that can literally kill them. The fact that if they’re raped by their family member and they have to — it’s just like insane to me.” Emotion dominates, realities don’t intrude. Pregnancy from rape (especially from a family member) is uncommon. The abortion lobbyists always play up the rare cases, but the dead baby is the “solution” in every deadly “choice.” On the same day, MSNBC host Jen Psaki played a preview of an upcoming interview with singer John Legend, who thinks his opinions match his stage name. Psaki was touting the man’s robotic repetition of every MSNBC and CNN pundit spinning against Trump. “He is part of a two-tiered system of justice but not the way he thinks he is,” proclaimed Legend. “He is getting way more concessions than the average criminal defendant would get. He is getting delays, he's got access to all kinds of lawyers that are filing this and filing that, delaying every trial, and most people don't have access to that kind of lawyering, don’t have access to the kind of concessions the justice system will provide to you if you can afford it.” Of course, Trump is a wealthy man who can afford a team of lawyers. So did O.J. Simpson. All of that resolutely ignores Trump is not “the average criminal defendant.” He’s a former president and the presumptive Republican nominee for president. I think we can guess in advance Psaki the Biden Press Secretary didn’t ask this crooner how many of these Trump prosecutions would be proceeding if Trump retired from politics in 2017, or why Trump was indicted for things when Biden wasn’t (like possessing classified documents).    Celebrities can echo progressive pundits like Joyce Vance or Van Jones, but somehow their proclamations are especially deep thoughts. We love how they sing, so their political views resonate with a crackle. They are not smarter than the average voter, but they can expect no one will disturb their emanations with any fraction of opposition. Call it celebrity privilege.