Tag Archives: CBS

Bias?

Posted on by

On Friday, Newsbusters posted an article about the mainstream media reporting on the indictment of President Trump.

The article reports:

Shhh! Nothing to see here! The Big Three (ABC, CBS, NBC) networks continue to bury the Hunter Biden probe and the growing scandals surrounding the Biden family’s corruption, including the House Oversight Committee’s revelations that Hunter, the President’s brother Jim and Hallie Biden (widow of son Beau) received payments from a Chinese energy firm — something President Joe Biden firmly denied. 

However, their voracious appetite for covering the various investigations (Stormy Daniels, Mara Lago documents, January 6th) surrounding former President Donald Trump remains unsatiated. 

Beginning with the House Oversight Committee’s breaking of the Hallie Biden news through the evening of Trump’s indictment, MRC analysts tracked the glaring double-standard. 

Over 14 days (March 16-March 30) ABC, NBC, CBS filled their evening, morning and Sunday roundtable shows with over 272 minutes (4 hours, 32 minutes, 56 seconds) of Trump investigation coverage compared to ZERO seconds spent on Biden family corruption stories. On average, network audiences saw almost 20 minutes per day of Trump investigation stories. 

Please follow the link above to the article. It gives a few examples of news stories that broke recently about the Biden family corruption and how much media attention has been  paid to those stories. It is aggravating that the information on Hunter Biden’s laptop showing drug use, prostitution, and emails indicating corruption is out in the public and no one has yet been held accountable, but President Trump has had his house raided and has been indicted. If most Americans watch the mainstream media, they are not aware of any of the questions of corruption surrounding the Biden family. I wonder if we will ever return to equal justice under the law.

What The News Fails To Report

Posted on by

On Thursday, Newsbusters posted an article about the latest reporting on Hunter Biden’s laptop. On Monday morning, CBS News announced that they had independently verified the authenticity of Hunter Biden’s laptop. CBS News is claiming that the laptop is Hunter Biden’s and the information on it is valid. ABC and NBC however have no followed suit.

The article reports:

On Monday morning, CBS News became the first of the Big Three networks to announce that their “independent forensic review” found Hunter Biden’s laptop is full of authentic contents. They didn’t dwell on how CBS mocked this laptop as Fake News before Biden was elected in 2020. Then CBS did not air a story on Monday evening, or on Tuesday, or on Wednesday. It looks like a one-and-done. 

ABC and NBC were not spurred to report its own version of the CBS story. NBC was more determined to do multiple stories last weekend on the White House wedding of Hunter’s daughter Naomi Biden, with Kristen Welker stories on Friday’s Nightly News and Saturday’s Today.

The significance of the laptop is not that Hunter Biden was engaging in a lot of activities that are illegal–drugs, sex, etc., but exactly what is the financial relationship between Hunter and his father? Has the Biden administration been influenced by Hunter Biden’s business dealings? Please follow the link above to read the entire article to read the timeline on the discovery of the laptop and the events that have followed. It still may be that the major network news programs will ignore the latest information on Hunter Biden’s laptop and cover more important things like the local quilt maker’s club.

 

When The Focus Group Goes Awry

Posted on by

On Sunday, Townhall posted an article about a bipartisan focus group on CBS that didn’t quite go the way the producers of the show expected it would.

The article reports:

A balanced focus group on CBS’s “Face the Nation” Sunday morning surely didn’t go quite as producers expected when the Democrat and the independent voter both found themselves agreeing with the Republican on key issues, including “woke culture” in schools.

The discussion, moderated by anchor Margaret Brennan, started off pretty tame and predictable, with participants describing the effects of a sputtering economy, inflation, and high gas prices on their own lives. But when the topic turned to raising children in America, even Brennan seemed surprised by the level of agreement.

What are your biggest concerns about raising children in America right now?” Brennan asked John, the self-identified Republican on the panel.
“The whole woke culture affecting our children,” John responded. “All these elementary schools and middle schools having woke culture pushed on them from the LGBT plus community for sexual identity and gender. We should be pushing the actual school studies, math, social studies, science. Not, you know, gender studies or sexual identification.”

Seemingly hoping for a counterpoint, Brennan next turned to Lashawn, the Democrat, and asked her to “weigh in on this.”

“I can also agree with some of his points,” Lawhawn said. “I say sex education, I feel like some things are brought to the children’s attention, they wouldn’t even think about.”
And you have eight kids,” said Brennan. “I imagine you have some pretty specific ideas in your mind when you’re speaking about this?”
The article concludes:

After a brief discussion about crime and border security concerns, Brennan made a point to note how this focus group has been different from others the network has done.

“Often when we do these focus groups we have people from different party affiliations disagreeing with each other, but I’m hearing all of you echo a lot of the same concerns and agreeing with each other,” she said. “None of you are very optimistic about the country right now.”

“No,” Stephanie replied dryly.

Sure, it’s just one focus group. But it also aligns with current polling. With midterm elections quickly approaching, when ordinary people of all political persuasions start agreeing on key conservative issues, it can only mean bad news for Democrats.

Education seems to be one issue where the party affiliation of parents does not matter. All of us want a good education for our children and grandchildren. All of us want our children and grandchildren to grow up to be happy and successful adults. I believe that the next two years will see even more parents fighting back against some of the garbage being taught in our public schools.

 

The Double Standard At Work

Posted on by

On Tuesday, Media Research Center posted an article about how the American media is reporting on the baby formula shortage in America.

The article reports:

The Biden administration continued to unravel last week, spiraling into the 30s in several approval polls. But the network evening newscasts are doing their best to protect the President from responsibility when it comes to the many crises threatening his presidency. The latest example is the baby formula shortage with which millions of parents across the country are facing. 

Media Research Center NewsBusters analysts looked at every baby formula shortage story on the evening newscasts from when they started covering it regularly. (For ABC and NBC, that was May 9. For CBS, it was May 10.) 

Do the thirty percent who actually support President Biden buy food or gasoline?

The article continues:

According to our analysis, out of the 54 evening newscast stories on the formula crisis, only 10 featured mentions of culpability or blame for the Biden administration. The other 44 did not.

ABC’s World News Tonight offered the most stories: 22 total. Of those, however, 17 had no suggestions of blame for Biden and only three hinted that the President could have some responsibility. The CBS Evening News produced 17 total stories. Fourteen had no mention of blame compared to just three that did. Finally, Nightly News managed 15 stories on the shortage. Eleven with no mention of blame and four that dared to suggest that Biden may be responsible for things happening in the country. 

Instead, ABC’s World News Tonight, the CBS Evening News and the NBC Nightly News projected Biden as proactive, taking decisive action to solve the spiraling crisis. On the May 18 NBC Nightly News, Lester Holt trumpeted, “Breaking news tonight, the major move by President Biden to tackle the nationwide baby formula shortage.” This is despite the fact that Biden’s FDA didn’t move to increase foreign imports of baby formula from abroad until mid-May.

As USA Today noted on May 26, “The problem was apparent months ago, long before the White House appeared to kick into high gear to respond to the crisis.” 

The article concludes:

Whether one thinks it’s fair to blame the Biden administration for the shortage, we know that the Trump administration (and Republican presidents in general) don’t get the benefit of the doubt on things like this. Also, as I explained in a May 24, 2022 study for NewsBusters, journalists had no interest in assigning blame on Biden for the skyrocketing gas prices. 

Afghanistan, inflation, gas prices, the baby formula shortage. When it comes to network reporting, nothing seems to be Joe Biden’s fault. The American public clearly don’t agree with this assessment, but the press is doing its best to cover for the President. 

Can you imagine what President Trump could have accomplished if he had had this kind of media coverage?

Television Is A Powerful Tool–It Is Being Used Skillfully By The Political Left

Posted on by

Yesterday Real Clear Politics posted an article alerting its readers to the indoctrination in the coming television season. Entertainment  is going political.

The article reports:

Last week, the Biden administration promised gun control groups that it will soon roll out a massive push for limits on firearm purchases and other measures. President Biden reiterated that promise on Sunday. And the television networks aren’t waiting to lay the groundwork for this effort.

CBS is in a full-court press for gun control on its evening entertainment television shows. The bad guys are always white supremacists who use machine guns — supposedly AR-15s — to commit mass public shootings. Criminals in Mexico supposedly get machine guns from the United States. A father’s desire to protect his family only leads to tragedy when his daughter gets into the gun safe and uses the weapon in a mass public shooting. And guns in the home pose a danger for children. Gun registration is necessary for solving crime.

Does anyone actually believe that criminals will register their guns?

The article also notes:

NBC isn’t to be left out, showing a woman who tried but failed to use a gun to protect herself. Instead, her gun was taken from her and used to kill a police officer. The lesson is that owning a gun will only bring you grief.

And that’s just in the first six weeks of the year. Every show gives an inaccurate impression about firearms, thereby helping in this push for gun restrictions.

…“Magnum PI” has an episode where a 12-year-old steals his father’s gun from a bedside table and accidentally shoots his 10-year-old brother. The message is that parents should be afraid of having guns in the home. But, in 2019, there were 37 accidental gun deaths among children under 11 years of age in the entire country. Most of those deaths involve shots fired by adult males, typically in their mid- to late-20s, who also have criminal records and are very likely to be drug addicts or alcoholics. With 43.8 million children under 11, the probability of a young child getting ahold of a gun and accidentally shooting another child is incredibly small. 

The article concludes:

The lessons from these entertainment shows are clear. Don’t try to use a gun for protection, and it’s better to not even think of owning one. Also, the biggest danger in present-day America is white racists with machine guns. Gun control advocates know Americans won’t accept more gun control if given accurate information. It is bad enough that news programs provide only one side of this debate. But when Americans just want to be entertained, they still can’t escape lies about gun ownership.

A friend once remarked to me that everything you see on television is there for a reason. At the time I thought he was paranoid. Now I think he may have been right.

There Has Been An Arrest

Posted on by

The Gateway Pundit is reporting today that Derek Chauvin, the fired Minneapolis police officer who was seen on video kneeling on the neck of George Floyd, has been arrested. The other three officers were not arrested.

CBS Minnesota is reporting:

Fired Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin has been arrested four days after George Floyd’s fatal arrest that sparked protests, rioting and outcry across the city and nation, and Hennepin County Attorney Mike Freeman announced he has been charged with murder and manslaughter, with the charges scheduled to be released shortly.

Every American is entitled to a trial by a jury of his peers. Therefore, despite the video and what appears on it, we need to withhold judgement until Mr. Chauvin has been tried. However, it is encouraging to me that he has been arrested and charged with murder in relation to the death of George Floyd. Hopefully this will provide closure for the family of George Floyd and might help calm some of the protestors that have created so much havoc in Minneapolis.

 

 

Is Leaking A Problem?

Posted on by

The Conservative Treehouse posted an article yesterday about a very interesting television interview of Jim Jordan by Margaret Brennan.

The article reports:

Representative Jim Jordan appears on CBS Face The Nation to discuss the ongoing impeachment fiasco. Ms. Brennan struggles to define a new journalistic concept for “first-hand” information as she claims David Holmes, who claims to have overheard half of a phone conversation that two other people were having, is a “first-hand” witness.

Jordan points out that Ms. Brennan is quoting from a seal(ed) transcript given to her by Adam Schiff that has not been released.

Whoops!

The video and the transcript are posted in the article. You can follow the link above to see them both.

It’s also interesting to see exactly how the interview ended:

REP. JORDAN: Well, I don’t think that’s what took place here, because there was never an investigation undertaken. There was never an announcement from President Zelensky–

MARGARET BRENNAN: But the request for one that was overheard and testified to.

REP. JORDAN: But it didn’t happen. There’s- there’s all kinds of talk about things, but they- it didn’t happen. And well, remember when this all broke? What the Democrats tell us?

MARGARET BRENNAN: And the attempt itself doesn’t bother you?

REP. JORDAN: What the Democrats tell us? There was a quid pro quo. The scary thing is the Democrats have been out to get this president. I was struck by listening to Speaker Pelosi’s comments, her answer to your second question. She used the word impostor. I’m talking about the president of the United States, who 63 million people voted for, who won an Electoral College–

MARGARET BRENNAN: Right.

REP. JORDAN: –landslide. And yet these Democrats have been trying to get him- the start of this Congress, Congresswoman Tlaib said–

MARGARET BRENNAN: Yeah.

REP. JORDAN: –she wants to impeach him before any evidence. Five members, think about this–

MARGARET BRENNAN: I understand.

REP. JORDAN: –five members of the Dem- of the Democrat- five Democrat members on the Intelligence Committee have voted to move forward with impeachment even before the whistleblower complaint was filed.

MARGARET BRENNAN: I’ve got to go to a commercial break. Thank you very much, Congressman.

REP. JORDAN: Thank you

I suspect that Ms. Brennan was very glad to see that interview end. Life is hard when you have to deal with smart people who tend to be at least one step ahead of you.

The Story Was Told Far And Wide. How Far Will The Truth Travel?

Posted on by

CBS Chicago posted an article yesterday about the attack on Jussie Smollett. It seems that what was originally reported does not seem to be true. As I am sure you remember, Jussie Smollett claimed to have been attacked by two Trump supporters wearing MAGA hats and shouting racial slurs. The attackers were also accused of shouting, “This is MAGA country.” That in itself should have raised suspicions–does anyone really believe that Chicago is MAGA country?

The article reports:

Jussie Smollett paid two brothers to stage an attack against him, directed them to buy items used in the alleged assault and actually rehearsed it with them, sources say.

Sources say at least one of the brothers bought the rope used in the incident at Smollett’s request. The sources also say the “Empire” actor paid for the rope, which was purchased at the Crafty Beaver Hardware Store in the Ravenswood neighborhood the weekend of Jan. 25.

Obviously, the actor is denying that the attack was staged:

Smollett’s attorneys, Todd S. Pugh and Victor P. Henderson, released a statement Saturday about the latest allegations.

“As a victim of a hate crime who has cooperated with the police investigation, Jussie Smollett is angered and devastated by recent reports that the perpetrators are individuals he is familiar with. He has now been further victimized by claims attributed to these alleged perpetrators that Jussie played a role in his own attack. Nothing is further from the truth and anyone claiming otherwise is lying.

“One of these purported suspects was Jussie’s personal trainer who he hired to ready him physically for a music video. It is impossible to believe that this person could have played a role in the crime against Jussie or would falsely claim Jussie’s complicity.

So what might be the motive for a staged attack? Consider that the mainstream media would quickly publicize any attack they could tangentially attach to President Trump. Therefore, the attack would make the news. Consider that actors tend to seek publicity.

Stay tuned. I think CBS Chicago has stumbled on the truth.

Rewriting The Constitution As You Go Along

Posted on by

The mass hysteria over the idea that Judge Kavanaugh might be confirmed has gotten a little out of hand. On Thursday, Newsbusters posted an article about some comments by ABC’s Terry Moran.

The article reports:

While CBS was conceding that Brett Kavanaugh will probably make it onto the Supreme Court, ABC’s Terry Moran on Thursday fumed about how “millions of women” will feel “annihilated” if the Judge is confirmed. He also warned Kavanaugh not to rule against abortion or the high Court will lose “legitimacy.” 

Moran lamented, “I can’t imagine the feeling of the millions and millions of women, and others who found Dr. Ford very, very credible.” Conceding a Kavanaugh victory, the ABC journalist stooped to extreme hyperbole on female reaction: “If, as seems likely, Republicans are able to get… Judge Kavanaugh onto the Supreme Court, they’re just going to feel annihilated inside.” 

But Moran wasn’t done. He lectured a potential future Supreme Court justice Kavanaugh: “Well, he had better take into that lifetime appointment a sense of the woundedness [sic] of so many people in the country.”

I mean, overturning Roe vs. Wade by an all-male majority, two of whom have had credible accusations of sexual misconduct lodged against them would not be a legitimate action. And that is the question of the court. Legitimacy. It has always had a high place in American, in the American popular opinion, and it could lose it if it loses legitimacy. 

Wow. Let’s just ignore the rule of law and do what I want.

There is nothing in Brett Kavanaugh’s professional history that confirms any of the allegations against him. It is possible that he drank too many beers in high school and college, but that should not disqualify him from the Supreme Court. He has obviously been an upstanding citizen during his adult life.

This is a quote from an article at Red State on September 26th:

In the early part of 1863, Major General Ulysses Grant was beset with difficulties and setbacks on his approach to the Vicksburg, MS. A group of his political foes visited President Abraham Lincoln and demanded Grant be superseded by one of the politician-generals that staggered about the military landscape of the Civil War. They topped the story by claiming Grant was a drunk (he actually was). Lincoln asked them what brand he drank because he wanted to send a barrel of it to his other generals.

If Brett Kavanaugh has accomplished more as a sloppy drunk than his critics have sober it tells us a lot more about the staff of the Washington Post and BuzzFeed “News” than it does about Brett Kavanaugh. Maybe they should take up drinking. Then maybe they could get their sh** together and act like adults.

I sincerely hope Brett Kavanaugh is confirmed as a Supreme Court Judge.

Did CBS Report The News Or Manipulate The News?

Posted on by

President Obama was re-elected in 2012. He won. The Republican Candidate was portrayed as an out-of-touch rich man who caused people to die of cancer. When he warned of the dangers of Russian aggression, Mitt Romney was told, “The 80’s called, they want their foreign policy back.” It was a big joke. And when Mitt Romney pointed out that it took President Obama 14 days to admit the Benghazi attack was terrorism President Obama balked, saying he did it that day.

Well, CBS News edited out part of a ‘60 Minutes‘ interview with President Obama on the day after the Benghazi attacks. During the interview, the President stated, “Well, it’s too early to know exactly how this came about, what group was involved. but, obviously, it was an attack on Americans.” 

Yesterday, Breitbart.com posted an article about the incident. The article reports:

(Investigative Journalist Sharyl) Attkisson said, “Let me say that that exchange should have been pulled out immediately after the debate, which would have been very newsy at the time. It was exclusive to CBS. It would have to me proven Romney’s point against Obama. But that clip was kept secret.”

“I was covering Benghazi, nobody told me we had it and directed me from the ‘Evening News’ to a different clip of the same interview to give the impression that the president had done the opposite. And it was only right before the election that somebody kind of leaked out the transcript to others of us as CBS and we were really shocked. We saw that was something very unethical done to have kept that up.”

She added, “The ‘Evening News’ people who had access to that transcript, according to the emails that I saw when it was sent from ’60 Minutes’ to ‘Evening News’ the very day it was taken, they, in my view, skipped over it, passed it up, kept it secret. And I think that was because they were trying to defend the president and they thought that would be harmful to him.”

I don’t know whether airing that exchange would have changed any votes. I don’t know how well-informed the people who voted for President Obama were. I do know, however, that it was unethical to edit that exchange out of the interview. It prevented the American voters from getting a true picture of the events at Benghazi and the President’s reaction to those events.

 

The Fight For Honest News Continues

Posted on by

John Hinderaker at Power Line posted a story today about Sharyl Attkisson, the investigative reporter who resigned from CBS’s Washington Bureau in March of this year.

Ms. Attkisson tells her story in her book Stonewalled: My Fight For the Truth Against the Forces of Obstruction, Intimidation and Harassment in Obama’s Washington.

In the book, Ms. Attkisson describes the hacking of her computer while she was at CBS:

Attkisson says the source, who’s “connected to government three-letter agencies,” told her the computer was hacked into by “a sophisticated entity that used commercial, nonattributable spyware that’s proprietary to a government agency: either the CIA, FBI, the Defense Intelligence Agency or the National Security Agency.”

The breach was accomplished through an “otherwise innocuous e-mail” that Attkisson says she got in February 2012, then twice “redone” and “refreshed” through a satellite hookup and a Wi-Fi connection at a Ritz-Carlton hotel.

The spyware included programs that Attkisson says monitored her every keystroke and gave the snoops access to all her e-mails and the passwords to her financial accounts.

“The intruders discovered my Skype account handle, stole the password, activated the audio, and made heavy use of it, presumably as a listening tool,” she wrote in “Stonewalled: My Fight for Truth Against the Forces of Obstruction, Intimidation, and Harassment in Obama’s Washington.”

But the most shocking finding, she says, was the discovery of three classified documents that Number One told her were “buried deep in your operating system. In a place that, unless you’re a some kind of computer whiz specialist, you wouldn’t even know exists.”

“They probably planted them to be able to accuse you of having classified documents if they ever needed to do that at some point,” Number One added.

It is scary that our government is involved in this sort of thing.

John Hinderaker comments on Ms. Attkisson’s story:

If the Obama administration hacked into a reporter’s computers, used them to spy on her, and even prepared to frame her for a potential criminal prosecution by planting classified documents, aren’t we looking at the biggest scandal in American history? Perhaps I’m forgetting something, but I can’t come up with anything to equal the stunning lawlessness on display here–if what Attkisson says is true (which I don’t doubt), and if the administration is the guilty party.

John Hinderaker suggests that she file a lawsuit against the offending agency. Ms. Attkisson’s story is another example of a government that is out of control.

Sharyl Attkisson Continues Her Work As A Good Reporter

Posted on by

I have previously posted articles about the work of Sharyl Attkisson, who left the Washington bureau of CBS News after realizing that they were not interested in actual investigative reporting on the Obama Administration. She is continuing her work as an independent reporter, using the tools often used by Judicial Watch to get information from a less-than-transparent Obama Administration.

The Daily Signal is reporting today that Sharyl Attkisson has filed a lawsuit against the Department of Health and Human Services to obtain information about the rollout of ObamaCare last year.

The article reports:

The former CBS News reporter and Emmy award-winning journalist won’t be going alone; the legal group Judicial Watch will represent her in court.

The lawsuit follows four unsuccessful Freedom of Information Act requests. In October 2013 and again in June of this year, Attkisson requested information from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) concerning the efficiency and security of the HealthCare.gov website.

All four requests went unanswered.

The government’s GSA website explains the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA):

The 1966 Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) permits any person to request access to federal agency records or information. Federal agencies are required to disclose records upon receipt of a written request, except for records that are protected from disclosure by nine exemptions or three exclusions in the Act.

Another government website lists the exceptions:

1) classified national defense and foreign relations information,

(2) internal agency rules and practices,

(3) information that is prohibited from disclosure by another law,

(4) trade secrets and other confidential business information,

(5) inter-agency or intra-agency communications that are protected by legal privileges,

(6) information involving matters of personal privacy,

(7) certain information compiled for law enforcement purposes,

(8) information relating to the supervision of financial institutions, and

(9) geological information on wells.

The article in The Daily Signal reports:

Attkisson admits that her lawsuit can never produce these lost documents “out of thin air,” but she said a court might help “get to the bottom of what occurred.”

Unfazed and optimistic, Attkisson wrote on her website that “It doesn’t hurt to try.”

We need more Sharyl Attkissons!

The Double Standard Is Alive And Well In California

Posted on by

CBS News reported yesterday that California State Senator Leland Yee was arrested Wednesday. Senator Yee, a strong advocate of gun control, was arrested for conspiracy to deal firearms without a license and to illegally import firearms.

The article reports:

Yee is also accused of accepting tens of thousands of dollars in campaign contributions and cash payments to provide introductions, help a client get a contract and influence legislation. He or members of his campaign staff accepted at least $42,800 in cash or campaign contributions from undercover FBI agents in exchange for carrying out the agents’ specific requests, the court documents allege.

Yee discussed helping the agent get weapons worth $500,000 to $2.5 million, including shoulder-fired automatic weapons and missiles, and took him through the entire process of acquiring them from a Muslim separatist group in the Philippines to bringing them to the United States, according to the affidavit by FBI Special Agent Emmanuel V. Pascua.

He was unhappy with his life and told the agent he wanted to hide out in the Philippines, according to the affidavit.

The Los Angeles Times reported today that Senator Yee’s indictment may mark an abrupt end to his political career. If he is found guilty, I sure hope it ends his political career.

Enhanced by Zemanta

This Lady Has More Courage Than All Of Congress

Posted on by

Sharyl Attkisson has set up a website. I strongly recommend that you follow the link and visit the site. Ms. Attkisson resigned her job at CBS after encountering significant interference in her reporting on Fast and Furious, Benghazi, and other administration scandals. At one point her computer was hacked. She is a fantastic investigative reporter who was blocked from doing her job. The website is organized by topic, with links to various stories she has written on specific topics. I wish her the best and hope her website gets a million hits!

 

Enhanced by Zemanta

This Isn’t A Surprise, But It’s Sad

Posted on by

Yesterday Newsbusters reported that Sharyl Attkisson has resigned from CBS News. Ms. Attkisson’s coverage of the Fast and Furious scandal won an Edward R. Murrow Award in 2012.

Politico reported Monday:

Attkisson, who has been with CBS News for two decades, had grown frustrated with what she saw as the network’s liberal bias, an outsize influence by the network’s corporate partners and a lack of dedication to investigative reporting, several sources said. She increasingly felt that her work was no longer supported and that it was a struggle to get her reporting on air.

At the same time, Attkisson’s reporting on the Obama administration, which some staffers characterized as agenda-driven, had led network executives to doubt the impartiality of her reporting. She is currently at work on a book — tentatively titled “Stonewalled: One Reporter’s Fight for Truth in Obama’s Washington” — that addresses the challenges of reporting critically on the administration.

…Attkisson joined CBS News from CNN in 1993. She served as an overnight anchor for two years before becoming a Washington-based correspondent, a position she held until this week. She has won five Emmy awards for her reporting on Fast and Furious, the Red Cross, Republican fundraising, TARP and border patrol.

Ms. Attkisson is a very good investigative reporter, and I hope she can find a job where her skills will be appreciated and she will be able to bring us more great reporting.

 

Enhanced by Zemanta

What Agenda?

Posted on by

The Washington Examiner posted an article today pointing out that the big three networks gave the Chris Christie bridge scandal 17 times more news coverage in one day than they gave the IRS scandal in six months. Hmmm.

The article reports:

Since Wednesday night, NBC News included six reports over 14 minutes and 14 seconds. CBS devoted five reports over 12 minutes and 27 seconds. ABC managed 4 stories over seven minutes and 47 seconds, said MRC.

As a comparison over the last six months, NBC featured five seconds on updating the IRS story. CBS responded with a minute and 41 seconds. ABC produced a meager 22 seconds.

Make no mistake, this is about taking out the person the Democrat party considers the frontrunner for the Republican presidential nomination. It also needs to be noted that as the polling numbers now stand, Chris Christie defeats Hillary Clinton in a Presidential campaign.

At this point I would like to state that I don’t want the Republicans to run Chris Christie for President. I think we can do better. There are other governors out there who have good track records, conservative credentials, and a lot more class than Chris Christie.

 

Enhanced by Zemanta

Why I Started This Blog

Posted on by

I am pretty much the average news junkie. During the early nineties, I realized that a lot of information I was getting from the media was not making sense to me. When the first Iraq war began, I started listening to talk radio and hearing things that I was not hearing anywhere else. As I began to pay attention, I realized that I was not hearing the full story on the news and began to look for other sources of information. As the internet grew, more of those sources became available (without having to subscribe to fifty newspapers and have a pile of paper in your house at all times}. During the 2008 primary campaign, I became very concerned about the things I was reading versus the things the news was reporting. I began this blog. Last Thursday, Newsbusters posted a story that convinced me that I need to keep blogging for as long as it takes for everyone to evaluate carefully what they hear on the news from the mainstream media or on the internet.

The headline in the article in Newsbusters is,”ABC, CBS Notice Obama’s ‘Lowest Ever’ Approval Rating; NBC Out to Lunch.”

The article reports:

On Tuesday, ABC’s World News and CBS Evening News both reported the latest poll numbers from the “respected” Quinnipiac University, as CBS’s Scott Pelley labeled the institution, regarding President Obama’s “lowest ever” approval rating, along with Americans’ dim view of the politician’s honesty. ABC’s Diane Sawyer noted that “for the first time in his presidency, a majority of American voters – 52 percent…say President Obama is not honest and trustworthy.”

The fact that 52 percent of Americans think that President Obama is not honest and trustworthy is important. Admittedly, in the past thirty years Americans have lowered their standards in expecting honesty from politicians (although we have sent a few of them to jail), but that is an astonishing number that we as voters need to be aware of.

Please follow the link above and read the entire article. All of us (including me) need to be better informed.

 

Enhanced by Zemanta

Speakeasy Restaurants???

Posted on by

CBS 2 in New York City posted an article Wednesday about an investigation they had done into New York City’s illegal dinner parties. There are a number of underground supper clubs operating in the city, and they are as of yet, unregulated.

The article reports:

But some critics have concerns about these unregulated dinner parties.

“It definitely falls into a gray area,” said Leon Lubarsky, owner of Letter Grade Consulting.

Lubarsky’s staff of retired New York City health inspectors advises restaurants on health regulations.

When asked if the underground restaurants should be regulated, Lubarsky told Leitner, “Yes, they should be regulated by the same system that regulates every restaurant in New York City.”

The article continues:

But if caught hosting an underground dinner party, the hosts could be fined $2,000 and ordered to shut down.

The price to get into one of these underground supper clubs ranges from $40 to several hundred. Some of the hosts say they are in it simply for the love of food, while others hope to turn a profit.

I have very mixed emotions about this. In Massachusetts I was involved in a church that was offering a monthly free dinner to whoever wanted it. Our kitchen help had to be certified, all food had to be cooked on the premises, and all ingredients posted. The rules were there to protect those eating the food. My feeling is that if the hosts (or hostesses) of these dinner parties are charging for the dinners, they should be regulated–they are essentially operating a restaurant–in their homes or wherever. I also wonder what would happen if anyone got sick after one of these dinners. Would the host (or hostess) be at risk of being sued?

I am not a big fan of government regulation–I think taking salt off of the table at restaurants or banning large sodas is stupid. However, I do think that food preparation should be overseen by the Board of Health in order to protect the public.

Enhanced by Zemanta

Do Americans Really Have A Right To Privacy?

Posted on by

The argument in Roe v. Wade was about Americans‘ right to privacy. This isn’t an article about abortion, but I think it is interesting to remember that argument in light of everything that is happening in America today–the NSA is spying on Americans, the IRS is targeting Americans, political opposition is being targeted, etc. Don’t Americans have the right to express themselves privately? Are we losing that right if we don’t agree with the people in power?

On Monday, CBS in Philadelphia reported that Sharyl Attkisson’s computer had been hacked. Ms. Attkisson is a CBS reporter who was pursuing stories on both Fast and Furious and the attack at Benghazi. I posted an article about her in May concerning her problems with the Obama Administration because of her reporting.

The article reports Ms. Attkisson’s comments on the hacking::

“Whoever was in my work computer, the only thing I was working on were work-related things with CBS were big stories I guess during the time period in questions were I guess Benghazi and ‘Fast and Furious.’ The intruders did have access to personal information including passwords to my financial accounts and so on, but didn’t tamper with those, so they weren’t interested in stealing my identity or doing things to my finances. So people can decide on their own what they might have been trying to do in there.”

…“We’re continuing to move forward aggressively, CBS News takes this very seriously, as do I. I think whenever an unauthorized party comes into the home of an American, whether it’s any private citizen or journalist and gets in their house, searches their computers — these are computers my family uses — and they’re inserting or removing material for whatever their reasons are, I think that’s a really serious and disturbing matter and we’re gonna follow it up and keep pursuing it.”

It will be interesting to see how far CBS News takes this investigation. I have a feeling that they may not like what they find and may be reluctant to report it.

Enhanced by Zemanta

We Might Eventually Get Answers To Benghazi

Posted on by

Breitbart.com posted an article today stating that whistle blowers are speaking to Congressional investigators about the attack on Benghazi.

Power Line posted the following tweet from CBS News reporter Sharyl Attkisson:

Finding out the cause of this tragedy and the reasons America left people there to die will not bring the dead back to life, but contrary to what Former Secretary of State Clinton said, it does make a difference.

Enhanced by Zemanta

We Have Forgotten

Posted on by

I belong to the generation that fought the war in Vietnam. My high school graduating class went to college or Vietnam. If you weren’t taking enough college credits, you went to Vietnam. You didn’t have a choice–there was a draft. Our generation lost some good people in Vietnam. Some of them came home physically, but not mentally or emotionally. Whether or not you believed the war was the right thing to do, it left a huge scar on the sixties generation. I was deeply offended when John Kerry was named Secretary of State. The lies he told to advance his political career dishonored all Vietnam veterans and made it harder for those veterans to get jobs. He changed the perception of the returning veteran from good citizen fighting for his country to out-of-control criminal. Now CBS television is picking up where Secretary of State Kerry left off.

On Thursday, Fox News posted an article about an episode of “The Amazing Race.”

The article reports:

The popular CBS reality show “The Amazing Race” is under fire for featuring an episode set in Hanoi, Vietnam, where contestants go to a B-52 Memorial, which is the wreckage of an American bomber plane shot down during the Vietnam War, to find the next clue in their televised round-the-world journey.

In the episode, the twisted metal of the downed plane is treated as any other prop, with a bright ‘Amazing Race’ ‘Double-U-Turn’ signed planted in front of it, signifying to contestants the next phase of their scavenger hunt.

Would they have done the same thing with the marine barracks in Lebanon? Unfortunately, the insult does not stop there–the contestants also learn a song young children sing that praises communism.

The article reports one viewer’s online comment about the show:

“So, did anyone but me find the ‘Amazing Race’ going to Hanoi and extolling the greatness of Hanoi offensive?” a viewer remarked online. “Especially the part where the contestants had a ‘clue’ box at a Hanoi monument of a downed B-52? And none of them even slowed down to look at it or reflect on what it meant?”

I really have no idea what the creators of the show were thinking. Many of the Vietnam veterans are still with us, and many have serious health issues related to the time they spent there. A little sensitivity might be a really good thing.

Enhanced by Zemanta

The Loss Of Civility In The Public Debate

Posted on by

Today’s Daily Caller posted a story yesterday about the attack on Fox News contributor Steven Crowder yesterday in Michigan. Pro-union thugs came out in force to protest the singing of a right-to-work law in the state. The pro-union protesters were attempting to tear down a tent put up by Americans for Prosperity when the scuffle began.

The regular media outlets have chosen to ignore this story. The article reports:

Media Matters isn’t talking about Steven Crowder.

The liberal media watchdog organization has gone deafeningly silent in the wake of Tuesday’s union violence in Lansing, Michigan. That’s where protesters opposed to the state’s now-passed “right to work” law destroyed a tea party group’s occupied tent and punched Fox News contributor Steven Crowder in the face.

Those two incidents — both captured in crystal-clear video — have received wall-to-wall coverage on the Fox News Channel since they occurred. Meanwhile, an analysis by the conservative Media Research Center released Wednesday showed that Tuesday’s ABC, CBS and NBC evening newscasts all ignored the attacks, only referring to the protests as “boisterous.”

Why should this be covered in the media? Because Americans need to know what is going on around them. Violence in never an acceptable form of protest–regardless of the cause.
According to Fox News, before the vote on right-to-work was taken, state Democratic Rep. Douglas Geiss, speaking on the House floor on Tuesday, warned,

“There will be blood, there will be repercussions.” This is not the route to a constructive debate of the issue.

Enhanced by Zemanta

The Questions About Libya Continue

Posted on by

This is a video of a CBS interview of one of the security people withdrawn from Libya in August:

The interview was posted at Hot Air yesterday. It is becoming obvious that the State Department cut security at the embassy at a time when it was needed.

The article at Hot Air reports:

One State Department source tells CBS News the security teams weren’t “pulled,” that their mission was simply over.

State Department officials have told CBS News that Wood was not part of the security assessment in Benghazi and that his assignment to Tripoli means he was unfamiliar with the local situation in the smaller port city in the country’s east.

Wood, however, says some of the members of his own team and additional personnel from the State Department’s elite security detail – the two teams which left Libya in August – would have traveled to Benghazi with Ambassador Stevens had they still been in the country. He did not say how many additional security agents might have been deployed for the Ambassador’s trip to the city, which is at least 400 miles east of Tripoli, but he tells Attkisson that he’s wondered if it might have made a difference on the night of the attack.

This really looks as if the State Department had no idea of what was going on in Libya.

Enhanced by Zemanta

The Foreign Press Reports On America Better Than The American Press

Posted on by

Yesterday Google posted an article by Agence France-Presse abount an interview President Obama gave to CBS’s Sunday’s edition of “60 Minutes.”

The article reported:

Obama, interviewed for Sunday’s edition of “60 Minutes” on broadcaster CBS, said he understands and agrees with Netanyahu’s insistence that Iran not be allowed to obtain nuclear weapons as this would threaten both countries, the world in general, and kick off an arms race.

But Obama added: “When it comes to our national security decisions — any pressure that I feel is simply to do what’s right for the American people. And I am going to block out — any noise that’s out there.”

I’m sorry that warnings that Israel is facing an existential threat are considered ‘noise’ to President Obama. Israel is supposed to be a strong ally, and the President is treating them as if they were an enemy.

The article reminds us:

Tensions have been running high between the United States and Israeli leader, and they will not hold a face-to-face meeting this week at the UN General Assembly in New York. The White House has cited scheduling problems.

The President of Iran has called Israel ‘the little satan’ and America ‘the great satan.’ Is there any doubt in anyone’s mind that after Iran goes after Israel, their next target is America? We can stop this by either supporting regime change in Iran (which President Obama has refused to do) or by supporting (and helping) an Israeli attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities. Otherwise our plans for ‘peace in our time’ will go up in smoke, just as Chamberlain’s did.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is not simply making noise–he is speaking truth that is inconvenient to President Obama’s re-election campaign. Therefore, he is being ignored.

Enhanced by Zemanta