Americans' Trust Of Media At 20 Year Low

Does that really come as any surprise? Here is what Pew Research found in their latest poll about Media outlets:

The public’s assessment of the accuracy of news stories is now at its lowest level in more than two decades of Pew Research surveys, and Americans’ views of media bias and independence now match previous lows. Just 29% of Americans say that news organizations generally get the facts straight, while 63% say that news stories are often inaccurate. In the initial survey in this series about the news media’s performance in 1985, 55% said news stories were accurate while 34% said they were inaccurate. That percentage had fallen sharply by the late 1990s and has remained low over the last decade. Similarly, only about a quarter (26%) now say that news organizations are careful that their reporting is not politically biased, compared with 60% who say news organizations are politically biased. And the percentages saying that news organizations are independent of powerful people and organizations (20%) or are willing to admit their mistakes (21%) now also match all-time lows.

A good part of that is because now that we have an Internet and thus access to almost real-time information, people can see exactly how manipulative Big Media outlets really are when they report the news.

You can access the complete story on-line here:

Press Accuracy Rating Hits Two Decade Low
Pew Research Center
September 13, 2009

Rupert Murdoch To The Mass Media: "You Dug Yourself A Huge Hole"

In recent years, newspapers all across the United States have seen their circulation numbers fall sharply and the value of their stocks decline at least as much. Magazines are hurting too as evidenced by Time which has asked for 82 volunteers to take a contract buyout in order to reduce the magazine's payroll expenditure.

We bloggers have known for a few years now why this has been happening. And now, Rupert Murdoch has said it publically to his peers.

Charles Cooper at CNET, reporting on a lecture series sponsored by the Australian Broadcast Corporation, quotes Murdoch:

"The complacency stems from having enjoyed a monopoly--and now finding they have to compete for an audience they once took for granted. The condescension that many show their readers is an even bigger problem. It takes no special genius to point out that if you are contemptuous of your customers, you are going to have a hard time getting them to buy your product. Newspapers are no exception." The 77-year-old Murdoch, recalling a long career in newspapers that began when his father's death forced him to take over the Adelaide News in 1952, said the profession has failed to creatively respond to changes wrought by technology. "It used to be that a handful of editors could decide what was news--and what was not. They acted as sort of demigods. If they ran a story, it became news. If they ignored an event, it never happened," Murdoch said. "Today, editors are losing this power. The Internet, for example, provides access to thousands of new sources that cover things an editor might ignore. And if you aren't satisfied with that, you can start up your own blog, and cover and comment on the news yourself. Journalists like to think of themselves as watchdogs, but they haven't always responded well when the public calls them to account."

And to drive the point home, Murdoch points to the first major victory we bloggers had over the MSM:

To make his point, Murdoch criticized the media reaction after bloggers debunked a 60 Minutes report by former CBS anchor Dan Rather that President Bush had evaded service during his days in the National Guard. "Far from celebrating this citizen journalism, the establishment media reacted defensively," Murdoch said. "During an appearance on Fox News, a CBS executive attacked the bloggers in a statement that will go down in the annals of arrogance. 60 Minutes, he said, was a professional organization with 'multiple layers of checks and balances.' By contrast, he dismissed the blogger as 'a guy sitting in his living room in his pajamas writing.' Eventually, it was the guys sitting in their pajamas who forced Rather and his producer to resign."

Remember that not one single major news outlet ever called Dan Ra^ther to task for his attempted deception. It was only after the story had been broken and uncovered by the blogosphere that any of the MSM even bothered to mention it.

And one very telling fact shows why we bloggers have been gaining in popularity and readership:

Murdoch continued: "Mr. Rather and his defenders are not alone. A recent American study reported that many editors and reporters simply do not trust their readers to make good decisions. Let's be clear about what this means. This is a polite way of saying that these editors and reporters think their readers are too stupid to think for themselves."

Excellent article.

You can access the complete article on-line here:

Murdoch To Media: You Dug Yourself A Huge Hole
Charles Cooper
CNET
November 16, 2008

The Palin Effect: Barack Obama Dispatches Female Surrogates And The Dems Are Now In Trouble

Just about a month ago, the libs were smugly saying to one another, "It must be tough to be a Republican these days what with Barack Obama rising up." Well, those same libs have learned a hard lesson of life: the higher you go up, the further you have to fall. In the space of less than a week, after John McCain sprang a trap that I am certain he planned a long time ago, that fall is upon them.

And it is not just in the politcal arena. The leftist media has seen its numerous vicious attacks against Sarah Palin and her family backfire and blow-up in their faces. One of the most profound examples is how tens of thousands of subscribers have cancelled their subscriptions to Us magazine after they ran a scandalously misleading cover about Gov. Palin (and the magazine's owner got exposed and raked over the coals on FoxNews), as compared to the very favorable cover they ran for Barack Obama.

The American people are seeing it now. They are seeing the sexist hypocrisy of the left. They are seeing the sexist hypocrisy of the Democrat Party. They are seeing the sexist hypocrisy of Old Media. And it all spells bad news for Obama.

Thus, Barack Obama is now being forced to do something in response. He is sending out female surrogates to hawk for him. From the New York Times via MSNBC:

Senator Barack Obama will increasingly lean on prominent Democratic women to undercut Gov. Sarah Palin and Senator John McCain , dispatching Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton to Florida on Monday and creating a rapid-response team to deploy female surrogates to battleground states, Obama advisers said on Thursday.

I wonder how Senator Clinton likes being referred to as a "female surrogate."

More:

With the McCain-Palin team courting undecided female voters, including some who backed Mrs. Clinton in the Democratic primaries, Obama aides say they are counting on not only Mrs. Clinton but also Democratic female governors to criticize their Alaskan counterpart, Ms. Palin — and, by extension, Mr. McCain — including Janet Napolitano of Arizona and Kathleen Sebelius of Kansas.

But this may all come at a price. I don't believe for a minute that Hillary Clinton will be rooting for Barack Obama since it is most definitely to her personal advantage if Obama loses in November. Check out this little tidbit:

Advisers to Mrs. Clinton, who has been on vacation this week, said that she stands ready to help the Obama-Biden ticket, but they urged not to overestimate the effect she could have, noting that she had other commitments this fall, like campaigning and raising money for Senate candidates.

And several Hillary supporters are not happy about her being relegated to such a subservient supporting role.

Looks like party unity just got thrown under the bus.

You can access the complete article on-line here:

Obama To Dispatch Female Surrogates
Patrick Healy and Jeff Zeleny
The New York Times via MSNBC
September 5, 2008

---

And what does this mean overall? Plenty according to former Clinton White House Advisor Dick Morris and Eileen McGann. In their latest column from TownHall, they show that the trials of the Democrats are just beginning, and so far, they have been failing them.

The turning point was the designation of Palin and the personal attacks on her. By stirring up a storm, Democrats assured that Palin would speak to 37 million Americans - just a million fewer than watched Obama's acceptance speech. Anecdotal evidence already suggests that women may have a gut reaction to the establishment's sexist assault on a woman candidate - and flock to McCain. They've seen him stake everything on this one big move of turning toward a woman - in direct contrast to Obama's deliberate decision not to name a woman. They've seen the media and Democrats gang up on her and do their worst. And they've seen Palin stand up and stuff the challenge right back down the establishment's throat. All this may have created an entirely new dynamic in the race.

Yes, a dynamic that Barack Obama and the liberal left was completely unprepared for and won't be able to effectively respond to for the next two months.

I'm not saying that this election is a done deal. No, not by a long shot. But given the events of the past week, it must be difficult being a liberal Democrat these days what with the McCain/Palin ticket rising up.

You can access the complete column on-line here:

Democrats In Trouble
Dick Morris and Eileen McGann
TownHall.com
September 5, 2008

CBS Found Obama Rule: 'Whatever Michelle Says Is The Message'

So, exactly how out of touch is Barack Obama? Well, his grasp of reality is so tenuous that he doesn't even remember the statements he made to his own headquarters staff.

Tim Graham over at NewsBusters has this:

In all the fuss over Barack Obama going on ABC and telling his opponents to "lay off my wife," some might have assumed that Obama was implying that Michelle Obama wasn't a major player in the Obama campaign. Read the transcript again, and you'll notice he never says that. (Michelle, however, felt compelled in that interview to deny Robert Novak's buzz that she axed Hillary from the ticket.) All this reminded me of an April 24 CBS Evening News story where Katie Couric spent some gummy-grinned giggle time inside the Obama campaign HQ. As she surveyed the press shop, a camera found this sheet of paper with a Barack declaration of policy: "Whatever Michelle Says Is The Message."

Think this is all made up? Here's the sign that CBS videotaped:



And here is what Katie Couric said during her tour of Obama HQ:

Then there's the press operation, answering questions from reporters, trying to tamp down any controversy, in constant contact with the road while trying to make sure the message of the day survives.

So, exactly why are we supposed to lay off his wife?

CBS Found Obama Rule: 'Whatever Michelle Says Is The Message'
Tim Graham
NewsBusters.org
May 21, 2008

Old Media Lies About Basra

We've all heard about the recent uprising in Iraq by forces under Shiite leader Muqtada al-Sadr. All seemed to be doom and gloom for the Iraqi government if you believed the reports coming from Old Media. But, if you are anything like me, you don't have alot of faith in Old Media and therefore took the reports with at least a few grains of salt.

I was right to salt down those reports. The truth eventually comes out and since Old Media refuses to report it, it is up to those of us on the Internet to bring the truth to the masses. The truth about the recent in-fighting in Iraq has come out and we can fianlly see what really happened. Despite reports that the Iraqi security forces were heading for complete failure and the Maliki government was suffering a major embarrassment, the Iraqi government has actually won the battle.

From Daveed Gartenstein-Ross & Bill Roggio writing for The Weekly Standard:

Virtually every media outlet declared the Basra operations a military failure before a week had passed. A New York Times headline blared that the "Iraqi Army's Assault on Militias in Basra Stalls" on March 27, two days after the launch of operations. Two days later--just four days after operations began--Britain's Independent noted that "the Iraqi army and police have failed to oust the Mahdi Army from any of its strongholds in the capital and in southern Iraq." And six days after the onset of operations, the Guardian was reporting that "the Iraqi army had made little headway in Basra and large swaths of the city remain under the Mahdi Army's control." To be sure, the Iraqi security forces' performance in Basra is best described as mixed. However, they did not run into a wall. The Iraqi military was able to clear one Mahdi Army-controlled neighborhood in Basra and was in the process of clearing another when Sadr issued his ceasefire. The ceasefire came on March 30, after six days of fighting, and was seemingly unilateral in the sense that the Iraqi government made no apparent concessions in return. By that time, 571 Mahdi Army fighters had been killed, 881 wounded, 490 captured, and 30 had surrendered countrywide, according to numbers tabulated by The Long War Journal. Thus, an estimated 95 Mahdi Army fighters were killed per day during the six days of fighting.

Don't you find it interesting that Old Media outlets like AP, Reuters and The New York Times completely missed these little facts about the operation? Why would they paint such a skewed picture rather than report the truth?

More:

The Iraqi security forces were at their best in the smaller cities in Iraq's south. The Mahdi Army suffered major setbacks in Hillah, Najaf, Karbala, Diwaniyah, Amarah, Kut, and Nasiriyah. The security forces drove the Mahdi Army off the streets in those cities within days. The casualties taken by the Mahdi Army in Baghdad, Basra, and the wider south surely played a role in Sadr's tactical decision to call a ceasefire.

That's another thing that didn't get reported. Sadr called for the cease-fire. The Iraqi government did not offer it.

The press was equally insistent that Maliki's move to secure Basra was a political embarrassment for him, with Sadr emerging the victor. The day after Sadr issued his ceasefire, Time claimed that "the very fact of the cease-fire flies in the face of Maliki's proclamation that there would be no negotiations. It is Maliki, and not Sadr, who now appears militarily weak and unable to control elements of his own political coalition." The Associated Press portrayed Maliki as "humbled within his own Shi'ite power base." And a second Associated Press report stated that "a strict curfew is ending in Baghdad, U.S. diplomats are holed up in their green zone offices, al-Maliki is resented and the private army of Muqtada al-Sadr is intact." But the fact is that the Maliki government did not agree to the nine-point terms for a truce that Sadr issued, nor did it sue for peace or promise that operations would cease. Instead the Iraqi government called Sadr's order for his fighters to pull off the streets a "positive step," and insisted that operations would continue. "The armed groups who refuse al Sadr's announcement and the pardon we offered will be targets, especially those in possession of heavy weapons," Maliki said, referring to the ten-day amnesty period for militias to turn in heavy and medium weapons. "Security operations in Basra will continue to stop all the terrorist and criminal activities along with the organized gangs targeting people." Subsequent to the ceasefire, the Iraqi military announced it was moving reinforcements to Basra, and the next day pushed forces into the ports of Khour al Zubair and Umm Qasr. Iraqi special operations forces and special police units have conducted several raids inside Basra since then, while an Iraqi brigade marched into the heart of a Mahdi-controlled Basra neighborhood on April 2. And two days after Sadr called for a ceasefire, the government maintained a curfew in Sadr City and other Shia neighborhoods in Baghdad. None of this would be happening had Maliki simply caved to Sadr.

Old Media seriously screwed the pooch on this story. Is it any wonder why we don't trust them?

And to answer our question from above:

It isn't entirely clear why the media leapt to the conclusions that it did about the Basra operations. Perhaps impatience coupled with a lack of knowledge about military affairs was the biggest factor. Perhaps, tired of six months of generally positive reporting about the surge, journalists were gleeful to announce that the situation on the ground was deteriorating. Or perhaps a negative angle was irresistible in light of General David Petraeus's upcoming congressional testimony. Whatever the reason, the press has done a major disservice to readers by misreporting the events in Basra.

You can access the complete article on-line here:

The Press Botches Basra
Daveed Gartenstein-Ross & Bill Roggio
The Weekly Standard
April 4, 2008

What Would You Ask Barack Obama During a Nationally Televised Interview?

So, if you were a reporter for say, the Washington Post or the New York Times, or better yet for NBC, ABC, CBS or CNN, what would you ask Barack Obama on one of his campaign stops?

Peter Kirsanow asks some of those question over at National Review Online. How I would love to be able to hear Obama answer each one of these question:

1. You’ve stated that as president you’d transcend the sharp partisanship that pervades Washington, but you favor a rapid pullout from Iraq, plan significant tax increases, oppose any and all restrictions on abortions, and favor Supreme Court justices in the mold of Stephen Breyer — positions strongly opposed by most Republicans. Accordingly, on which of these issues would you be willing to compromise, and to what extent? Which Democrats do you think would give a little, and how would you convince them? How would you get interest groups and donors to go along? ... 6. Stephen Moore calculates that your tax increases would result in a 52.2 percent income and payroll tax. Moore also states that your estate tax would be 55 percent, the dividends tax 39.6 percent, and the capital gains rate 28 percent. Do you dispute these numbers? If so, please provide your respective rates. 7. You admit that you won’t extend the Bush tax cuts. What’s the highest personal-income-tax rate you’d support? ... 11. You advocate a rapid pullout from Iraq, voted against FISA reauthorization, support unconditional negotiations with state sponsors of terrorism, oppose offering lawsuit protection to telecommunications companies that help the government monitor communications by suspected terrorists, and demand that Guantanamo be closed. Given our enemies’ mindset, isn’t it likely that they’d interpret your record as a sign of weakness — thereby strengthening their resolve and/or increasing the probability of attack? ... 15. During the February 21 Democratic debate, you stated that “Washington, D.C., is where good ideas go to die” due to the influence of special interests and lobbyists. Please recite three instances in which you, as senator, stood up to left-leaning special interest groups. Please include only significant substantive concerns of such groups, not, for example, whether you should appear on Fox News. ... 18. You maintain that the surge is a “complete failure” and that it hasn’t produced stability or political reconciliation. Yet for several months now, most objective accounts have shown that the surge has produced a dramatic reduction in violence, Iraq is becoming stable (albeit tentatively so), and significant political progress is occurring. Why do you refuse to acknowledge these facts, and why do you insist on pulling out of Iraq on the verge of what could be a significant and historic victory? Why shouldn’t voters infer that winning the war may be less important to you than scoring political points? 19. You support giving driver’s licenses to illegal immigrants and letting them participate in the Social Security system. Why won’t this encourage more illegal immigrants to come to the U.S.?

These are only a few of the question that Kirsanow would like to have asked. I'm certain there are other questions people would want answered as well. Perhaps we should begin a mass email campaign to the major newspapers and networks demanding that these questions be asked and that Barack Obama not be allowed to side-step them.

You can access the complete column on-line here:

Ask Obama
Peter Kirsanow
National Review Online
March 3, 2008

Bad Times

The fallout is still coming down for the New York Times and their hit piece against Senator John McCain. Apparently, the Old Gray Lady has gotten too old and set in its leftist ways to be taken too seriously anymore.

Dr. Thomas Sowell has something to say about that in his most recent column:

The front page of the New York Times has increasingly become the home of editorials disguised as "news" stories. Too often it has become the home of hoaxes. Going back some years, it was the Tawana Brawley hoax that she had been gang-raped by a bunch of white men. Just a couple of years ago, it was the Duke University "rape" hoax that they fell for. In between there were the various hoaxes of New York Times reporter Jason Blair, who was kept on and promoted until too many people found out what he had been doing and the paper had to let him go. Last month the New York Times created its own hoax with a long front page article about how war veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan were killing people back in the United States because of the stress they had gone through in combat. That hoax was shot down two days later by the New York Post, which showed that the murder rate among returning war veterans was only one-fifth the murder rate among civilians in the same age brackets.

And I'm proud to say that I was one of the New Media bloggers who helped to spread the debunkment of that story about the vets:

A Hidden Tax On New Cars, NY Times Lies About Veterans And Great Britain Is "Mostly Free"
84rules
January 17, 2008

You would think that after getting caught so many times that the Times would clean up it's act. They didn't:

Undaunted, the New York Times has come up with its latest front-page sensation, the claim that some anonymous people either suspected an affair between Senator John McCain and a female lobbyist or tried to forestall an affair. But apparently no one actually claimed that they knew there was an affair. This did not even rise to the level of "he said, she said." Instead it was anonymous sources reporting their suspicions. People who share the New York Times' political views are treated as "innocent until proven guilty." People with different views are condemned for "the appearance of impropriety," even if there is no hard evidence that they did anything wrong.

Which is why we don't trust the NYT at all.

And here is what makes me proud:

The rise of alternative media -- notably talk radio -- has limited how much the mainstream media can get away with. Dan Rather's fake memo about President Bush's National Guard service might have gone unchallenged, and affected an election, back in the old days when the media consisted largely of like-minded colleagues who would not embarrass one of their own. Bloggers and talk radio shot that one down. But it is doubtful if we have seen the last of the journalistic hoaxes. Not in an election year.

You can access the complete column on-line here:

Bad Times
Dr. Thomas Sowell
GOPUSA.com
February 26, 2008

Some other really good columns about the New York Times' diminishing credibility can be accessed on-line here:

New York Times' Unsubstantiated Assault As A Boost To McCain
Paul Weyrich
TownHall.com
February 26, 2008

McCained
Rich Galen
TownHall.com
February 22, 2008

Whose Side Is Old Media On?

Over at the American Thinker, Alan Fraser has penned a good one about Old Media and their constant barrage of bad news concerning the War on Terror. It begs the question: Whose side are they on?

Well, let's take a look:

From the beginning of the War on Terror, the mainstream media has been working to bring home the bad news on the war, virtually to the exclusion of any good news. Even if they've had to fabricate it on occasion. Do you remember the "Mai Lai Massacre of the Iraq War?" It was a Time Magazine cover story in June of 2006. Christopher Matthews interviewed Congressman Jack Murtha (D-PA) on national television, and Murtha said that Marines, in cold blood, had executed more 20 innocent civilians in Haditha, Iraq. The media's story has been falling apart ever since.

Old Media jumped all over Mutha's comments as if they were gospel, but now that the truth has come to light and Murtha himself is the target of a slander suit, Old Media has become very quiet and withdrawn about the issue.

Alan continues:

On the front page of the January 26th Wall Street Journal appeared: "The Waiting -- Just Four U.S. Soldiers are Missing in Iraq. For Their Parents, it's a Lonely Vigil." This is a depressing and heart-rending story about the lives of those families whose solider sons are missing in Iraq. It's a subject especially disturbing to military families. In a time of war, this could be a good story to run if it were written to, let's say, provide a little balance to what otherwise might be an overwhelming supply of gung-ho-support-the-troops kind of stories. You know, a little sobering counterpoint to a plethora of overly flattering articles about the troops and the war. But do you think that's what's going on here? Of course not. There is no balance because there are virtually no favorable stories being written about the troops. From the MSM to Hollywood the media have an overwhelmingly negative view of our troops and they make that clear to us every day as they portray them as stupid, pathetic, often victims, often murderers, or against the war. And boy do they ever love stories about the infinitesimally small number who have turned against the war. The effect of such an article is to demoralize.

Which is exactly what Old Media has been trying to do, and their biggest cheerleaders for doing so have been the terrorists themselves. An excerpt of a letter from al-Zawahiri to al-Zarqawi, July 9, 2005:

"I say to you: that we are in a battle and that more than half of this battle is taking place in the battlefield of the media. And that we are in a media battle in a race for the hearts and minds of our Umma. And that however far our capabilities reach, they will never be equal to one thousandth of the capabilities of the kingdom of Satan that is waging war on us."

So, whose side is Old Media on?

You can access the complete article on-line here:

Whose Side Are They On?
Alan Fraser
The American Thinker
February 8, 2008