10/27/15

The Vindication of Reed Irvine

When Reed Irvine started Accuracy in Media, he was hoping that the public would begin to question the sources of news and information. His mission to educate the public about liberal media bias has been so successful that, as Mike Flynn notes in a perceptive piece at Breitbart, candidates like Donald Trump and Ben Carson surge when they are attacked by the media. Many regard media attacks as proof that the candidate is saying something that is politically incorrect and therefore makes political sense.

At the National Press Club, Carson said, “I’ll tell you right off the bat, before I go any further, I’m not politically correct. I will not be politically correct. And that’s one of the reasons that a lot of the people in the press don’t like me. But it’s okay, because you know, what I really love is this country. I don’t necessarily care whether the press likes me or not. And therefore, I’m not going to conform to all their little requirements.”

He went on, “… there is only one business in America that is protected by the Constitution. And that is the press. And there was a reason for that. It was because the press was supposed to be an ally of the people. And they were supposed to expose and inform the people in a nonpartisan way. When they become partisan, which they are, they distort the system as it was supposed to work. And they allow the side that they pick to get away with all kinds of things.”

Gallup recently found that trust in the media remains at an all-time low. The percentage of Republicans who trust the media was at only 32 percent.

The media have been losing credibility on a consistent basis. Yet, the erroneous stories keep on coming, and the mass media continue to drift even further left.

It’s difficult to believe journalism could get worse than it is now. But Breitbart reporter Brandon Darby notes that the Los Angeles Times described the recent black Oregon killer at Umpqua Community College as supporting “white-supremacist causes.”

The problem for the news media and those who claim to distribute news and information goes beyond a lack of trust. They have political agendas which are becoming apparent to news consumers, who lose faith and are turned off. That’s why people applaud a figure like Trump or Carson when they mock or criticize the media.

A new film came out on October 16 that incredibly carries the title “Truth,” taking the side of former CBS newsman Dan Rather who used fake documents to smear President George W. Bush in the 2004 presidential campaign. Robert Redford plays Rather.

It is as if the truth doesn’t matter, and that Redford can sell a lie to the American people in place of the truth.

The film “Trumbo” debuts in theaters on November 6 and tells the story of “alleged” communist associations by a Hollywood screenwriter who was supposedly unfairly blacklisted from working. In fact, Dalton Trumbo was a Stalinist Communist and Hitler apologist.

Some news media don’t seem to care if they are perceived as biased. For example, MSNBC aired a “global citizen” music festival to entice young people into the pro-U.N. cause.

President Obama was given sympathetic coverage for expressing outrage over the Oregon massacre, though the media were slow to cover how his administration shipped guns to Mexico which were later used to killed U.S. border agent Brian Terry in the Fast and Furious scandal. The guns were also linked to several other crimes.

Administration arms smuggling in the Middle East backfired on Hillary Clinton’s watch as secretary of state when four Americans were killed in Benghazi. Yet our media insist that Clinton came out of the recent Benghazi hearings looking better. If anything, these hearings demonstrated not only that Mrs. Clinton failed to act to save the lives of those four Americans, but that she lied in blaming the deaths on a YouTube video.

Sharyl Attkisson was essentially forced out of CBS News for being too tough on the Obama administration. Fortunately, she now has her own show, “Full Measure,” being aired nationally on stations owned or affiliated with the Sinclair Broadcast Group.

In terms of media bias that is acceptable and even celebrated, it is noteworthy that Jeffrey Toobin, the senior legal analyst for CNN and staff writer at The New Yorker, is being honored with an award by the National Lesbian & Gay Journalists Association (NLGJA) on November 19 in Washington, D.C. A description of the event says that Toobin, through “sharp analysis and keen insight,” has “used his platform to educate viewers about the legal rationale for fair and equal treatment of LGBT Americans and, in doing so, has helped create the political landscape that allowed recent LGBT court victories to be widely understood by the American public.”

Translated into common sense language, this means that Toobin has been pro-gay in his coverage and helped sell the public on the homosexual agenda.

The event in honor of Toobin is being co-sponsored by Comcast/NBCUniversal and CBS News. It means that although reporters sometimes talk about one another as “rivals” in the media business, they are really on the same liberal team.

The public is not fooled.

As Carson noted in his National Press Club speech, “…the good thing is that a lot of the people in America are onto them [the media] and understand what they’re trying to do. And that’s one of the reasons we’re doing well. And it seems like the more they attack me, the better we do…”

09/2/15

Media Nervous Over Hillary Sting Videos

By: Cliff Kincaid
Accuracy in Media

You know an event is potentially damaging to Hillary Clinton or other top Democrats when Dana Milbank of The Washington Post shows up. Hence, Milbank’s attendance at Tuesday’s James O’Keefe news conference on Clinton campaign violations of federal election law was an indication that the Democrats are concerned. This time, despite video evidence of top staffers for Hillary accepting cash from a known foreign national, most of the media reaction was vintage Milbank. “Is this a joke?” the media wanted to know.

In fairness, Milbank’s questions seemed mild, when compared to some of the other media reactions.

The joke question came from Olivia Nuzzi of The Daily Beast, with other liberals joining in and wondering what the press conference was all about. The law says that foreigners are strictly prohibited from contributing to U.S. political campaigns, and O’Keefe had dramatic evidence of the campaign law violation. Thevideo was played on a television screen for all to see.

Looking for some reason not to pay attention to the facts, some in the media seized upon the small amount of money that was used to pay for the Hillary campaign merchandise in question.

This was not the only media reaction, but it seemed to be one of the most popular. “James O’Keefe Targets Clinton Campaign For Legally Selling A T-Shirt,” was the dishonest headline over an article attacking O’Keefe published by Media Matters, the pro-Hillary and George Soros-funded group. This article set the tone for the pro-Hillary contingent in the press.

However, the great number of journalists who showed up was an indication that, when it comes to Hillary, nobody really knows how serious the law-breaking will get. O’Keefe suggested that more evidence against the campaign is yet to come.

Milbank may be in a quandary about what to do with Hillary, who is dropping in the polls against the socialist career politician Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and leaving the Democratic presidential field open to other candidates, most notably Vice President Joe Biden, a notorious plagiarist. (In Biden’s case, Media Matters had also defended him, insisting the plagiarism wasn’t as serious as some knew to be the case).

Milbank’s modus operandi in the past has been to ridicule conservatives who provide evidence of corruption by top Democrats such as Hillary and Barack Obama. For example, he attacked those who investigated Obama’s relationship with communist Frank Marshall Davis. He showed up at an AIM conference to write an article distorting the findings of the Citizens’ Commission on Benghazi, which investigated Hillary’s role in covering up the terrorist attack that killed four Americans.

Mollie Hemingway of The Federalist has written that Milbank “serially exaggerates or distorts what he writes about. It’s just what he does.”

But those distortions won’t suffice when the video evidence itself can be seen by millions, telling the real story that some in the media try to conceal. As Project Veritas emphasized, the video shows Molly Barker, the Director of Marketing for Hillary Clinton’s national campaign, knowingly breaking campaign finance law by accepting a straw donation from a foreign national.

O’Keefe, who almost single-handedly took down the Alinskyite ACORN organization, has also investigated Planned Parenthood and National Public Radio. He wrote the book, Breakthrough: Our Guerilla War to Expose Fraud and Save Democracy, and has targeted Republican politicians in the past as well.

His reputation meant that O’Keefe’s Project Veritas Action news conference at the National Press Club was packed, with at least seven television cameras there to record the proceedings.

Washington Post reporter David Weigel conveyed the message from the Clinton campaign that the event was much ado about nothing. But at least he did an advance story about the video and got the Clinton campaign response.

Los Angeles Times reporter Evan Halper played the story to the advantage of the Hillary campaign, insisting that the video somehow missed its target. It was “Hardly the stuff of a Pulitzer Prize,” he insisted. He found it newsworthy, and somehow relevant to the issue of federal law violations, that the journalist from The Daily Beast had treated the video as a joke.

The “joke” response said more about the lack of seriousness from The Daily Beast than it did about O’Keefe’s video. Making matters worse, Olivia Nuzzi of The Daily Beast seemed proud of the fact that she didn’t grasp the seriousness of the election law violations, highlighting her “Is this a joke?” responses on her Twitter account.

O’Keefe may have the last laugh, as he repeatedly emphasized that more videos are coming, and that other Hillary officials may be in them and forced to resign. Reporters in attendance, anxious to dismiss these charges, seemed nervous about this prospect. They repeatedly pressed O’Keefe to spill more details about other undercover operatives he may have in the Clinton and other campaigns. He told the media they would just have to wait.

It was nervous laughter from the press, as they couldn’t figure out what other damaging evidence O’Keefe’s crew may have against the Democratic presidential candidate.

In a message to his supporters, O’Keefe noted, “Since at least 1996, Hillary and her husband Bill have been accused of accepting foreign contributions to further their political ambition. Back then, it was China accused of funneling massive amounts of money into the Clinton campaign and the DNC [Democratic National Committee]. The State Department investigated the matter. Three Americans were convicted of crimes, one of whom, Johnny Chung, admitted that $35,000 of his contributions came from the Chinese military. But Bill and Hillary got off clean.”

Not all media were prepared to laugh this all away. In his story about the O’Keefe news conference, Alan Rappeport of The New York Times seemed to admit that O’Keefe had struck gold, noting, “Foreign donations are a sensitive subject for the Clintons, as their family foundation has been under scrutiny for accepting money from overseas while Mrs. Clinton was secretary of state, and recent State Department emails showed that former President Bill Clinton tried to get permission to give paid speeches in North Korea and the Democratic Republic of Congo.”

One question is whether the illegal transactions captured in the Project Veritas video are part of a pattern of illegal conduct. The media will just have to wait. Maybe their laughter will die down in the wake of more videos being released.

Asked why the major media don’t do these kinds of undercover investigations and the job falls on him and his staff, O’Keefe dismissed the significance of liberal media bias and said that he thinks journalists are more motivated by a desire to protect their access to candidates like Hillary. In other words, reporters have to flatter the candidates with fawning coverage.

But it’s increasingly difficult to portray Hillary in a favorable light. At the campaign event where the video of the illegal contribution was recorded, Hillary had told the crowd that she would “stop the endless flow of secret, unaccountable money that is distorting our elections, corrupting our political process, and drowning out the voices of our people.”

A reporter seeking to maintain access to a candidate like this, caught in scandal after scandal, is something that is destined to truly become a joke.

04/26/15

Gay Marriage: A Trojan Horse Movement

By: James Simpson
American Thinker

The Left doesn’t care about gay rights, any more than they care about civil rights, welfare rights, minority rights, animal rights or any other “rights.” According to the Left, “the issue is never the issue; the issue is always the revolution.” The various “rights” the Left has aggressively promoted over the years are merely vehicles to advance the Left’s power.

Consider: the welfare “rights” movement, founded by the notorious socialists Richard Cloward and Frances Fox Piven, was not established to guarantee welfare to the poor. As they said, their purpose was to pack the welfare rolls with so many beneficiaries that the government would collapse of its own weight. In the ensuing riots, they hoped policy makers would be driven to accept their socialist solution. In short, they sought anarchy, using a militant poor as their foot soldiers. They couldn’t care less what happened to the poor in prosecuting this agenda, and they said so. Doubt me? Just look at the status of the poor today. There are more people on welfare than at any time in history. And the crime and degeneracy that accompany it are epidemic.

Look at our country today. With manufactured crisis Strategist-in-Chief Obama, we are almost there, and Cloward and Piven’s intellectual descendants were out in force in Ferguson. The communist agitators seeking “social justice” for Michael Brown burned down much of the neighborhood. Do black lives matter to them? Apparently not. And they have even said so. The issue is not the issue.

Occupy Wall Street’s black anarchist organizer Nelini Stamp’s new group, Dream Defenders, popularized the slogan “Hands Up Don’t Shoot!” But prior to Ferguson there was Trayvon Martin. Working with Eric Holder’s DOJ, Stamp’s group was responsible for getting Sanford, Florida police chief Bill Lee fired. This despite the fact the FBI agreed with Lee’s assessment that there was no case against Martin’s killer, George Zimmerman. Did Stamp care about “Justice for Trayvon?” Not according to Stamp. “We are actually trying to change the capitalist system we have today, because it’s not working for any of us,” she said.

The Left uses “rights” agendas to wrap itself in the mantle of righteousness and seize the moral high ground, tactically putting us on the defense in the process. But they couldn’t care less about the actual issue except in its ability to facilitate their path to power.

The agenda is never the agenda for the Left. And this is especially true for gay marriage. Homosexual marriage is a Trojan horse tactic. The true agenda is to establish the primacy of homosexual rights over the First Amendment’s guarantee of the free exercise of religion. Our nation was founded on this principle, and the gay marriage movement seeks to destroy it.

Consider that Annise Parker, the lesbian mayor of Houston, Texas, demanded to review pastors’ church sermons before public outrage forced her to back off. We have already seen how small businesses have been singled out and attacked for refusing to provide certain services to gays.

What is less known is that these gay couples are frequently part of the movement. They deliberately seek out businesses known for their Christian owners. They deliberately demand a service they know in advance will be refused. When the inevitable happens they use it as pretext to destroy the business and savage its owners. Doesn’t it amaze you how quickly legal groups immediately materialize to assist in the attack? The fact that they got unexpected push back through a spontaneous crowd sourcing campaign to support one pizza shop will not dissuade them from future efforts. If gay marriage is adopted, their current bullying behavior will look like child’s play compared to what’s coming.

This is a highly organized, nationwide campaign of vilification against Christians. But even Christians are not the ultimate target. If the First Amendment can be challenged this way; if a certain group’s “rights” can trump the U.S. Constitution, and if the Supreme Court can actually issue an edict making it so, then the entire Constitution has become meaningless. This is the Left’s true agenda and it always has been. This is the Cultural Marxists’ endgame. The issue is not the issue. The issue for them has always been destroying our country to impose socialism — with them in charge, of course. In order to do that they have to strip America of its culture, its traditions, and most importantly, the most important law of the land, the U.S. Constitution.

We are almost there. Well-meaning liberals and even some conservatives who support the gay marriage agenda are unknowingly committing an act of betrayal against their own country. If the gay marriage agenda wins, those other rights guaranteed by the Constitution will immediately be at risk. Obama’s “fundamental transformation” of America will be complete. Everyone in our country, including gays, will find all our rights summarily stripped. And if the gay lobby wants to see what that looks like for them, they should turn to Cuba, Russia or North Korea for their inspiration. It will not go well for them. The Left does not care about your rights. They care about one thing and one thing only: their power.

I recently gave a presentation on cultural Marxism at the National Press Club. You can watch it on YouTube, here. It’s about 35 minutes long. It was part of the latest Cliff Kincaid press conference. I have attended and reported on many of them on these pages over the years. Keynote speaker was former presidential and senatorial candidate, Ambassador Alan Keyes, a brilliant orator and Harvard-trained intellectual powerhouse who clearly explained what is at stake. His logic and legal reasoning was flawless and irrefutable. Following his act was quite a challenge. Also in attendance were Matt Barber of Barbwire, and Peter LaBarbera of Americans for Truth. But together we painted a picture of what the true gay rights agenda looks like.

04/22/15

Gay marriage: a Trojan horse movement aimed at the heart of our Constitution

By: James Simpson
DC Independent Examiner

Alan Keyes

The Left doesn’t care about gay rights, any more than they care about civil rights, welfare rights, minority rights, animal rights or any other “rights.” According to the Left, “the issue is never the issue; the issue is always the revolution.” The various “rights” the Left has aggressively promoted over the years are merely vehicles to advance the Left’s power.

Consider: the welfare “rights” movement, founded by the notorious socialists Richard Cloward and Frances Fox Piven, was not established to guarantee welfare to the poor. As they said, their purpose was to pack the welfare rolls with so many beneficiaries that the government would collapse of its own weight. In the ensuing riots, they hoped policy makers would be driven to accept their socialist solution. In short, they sought anarchy, using a militant poor as their foot soldiers. They could care less what happened to the poor in prosecuting this agenda, and they said so. Doubt me? Just look at the status of the poor today. There are more people on welfare than at any time in history. And the crime and degeneracy that accompany it are epidemic.

Look at our country today. With manufactured crisis Strategist-in-Chief Obama, we are almost there, and Cloward and Piven’s intellectual descendants were out in force in Ferguson. The communist agitators seeking “social justice” for Michael Brown burned down the entire neighborhood. Do black lives matter to them? Apparently not. And they have even said so. The issue is not the issue.

The Left uses “rights” agendas to wrap itself in the mantle of righteousness and seize the moral high ground, tactically putting us on the defense in the process. But they could care less about the actual issue except in its ability to facilitate their path to power.

The agenda is never the agenda for the Left. And this is especially true for gay marriage. Homosexual marriage is a Trojan horse tactic. The true agenda is to establish the primacy of homosexual rights over the First Amendment’s guarantee of the free exercise of religion. Our nation was founded on this principle, and the gay marriage movement seeks to destroy it.

Consider that Annise Parker, the lesbian mayor of Houston, Texas, demanded to review pastor’s church sermons before public outrage forced her to back off. We have already seen how small businesses have been singled out and attacked for refusing to provide certain services to gays.

What is less known is that these gay couples are frequently part of the movement. They deliberately seek out businesses known for their Christian owners. They deliberately demand a service they know in advance will be refused. When the inevitable happens they use it as pretext to destroy the business and savage its owners. Doesn’t it amaze you how quickly legal groups immediately materialize to assist in the attack? The fact that they got unexpected push back through a spontaneous crowd sourcing campaign to support one pizza shop will not dissuade them from future efforts. If gay marriage is adopted, their current Nazi behavior will look like child’s play compared to what’s coming.

This is a highly organized, nationwide campaign of vilification against Christians. But even Christians are not the ultimate target. If the First Amendment can be challenged this way; if a certain group’s “rights” can trump the U.S. Constitution, and if the Supreme Court can actually issue an edict making it so, then the entire Constitution has become meaningless. This is the Left’s true agenda and it always has been. This is the Cultural Marxists’ endgame. The issue is not the issue. The issue for them has always been destroying our country to impose socialism—with them in charge, of course. In order to do that they have to strip America of its culture, its traditions, and most importantly, the most important law of the land, the U.S. Constitution.

We are almost there. Well-meaning liberals and even some conservatives who support the gay marriage agenda are unknowingly committing an act of betrayal against their own country. If the gay marriage agenda wins, those other rights guaranteed by the Constitution will immediately be at risk. Obama’s “fundamental transformation” of America will be complete. Everyone in our country, including gays, will find all our rights summarily stripped. And if the gay lobby wants to see what that looks like for them, they should turn to Cuba, Russia or North Korea for their inspiration. It will not go well for them. The Left does not care about your rights. They care about one thing and one thing only: their power.

Yesterday I gave a presentation on cultural Marxism at the National Press Club. It was the latest of Cliff Kincaid’s many conferences held there over the years. I have attended and reported on many of them on these pages over the years. Keynote speaker was former presidential and senatorial candidate, Ambassador Alan Keyes, a brilliant orator and Harvard-trained intellectual powerhouse who clearly explained what is at stake. His logic and legal reasoning was flawless and irrefutable. Following his act was quite a challenge for the rest of us on the panel. But together we painted a picture of what the true gay rights agenda looks like. This four-hour presentation will be available for viewing through Cliff’s website in a few days.

03/19/15

Anti-Marxist Counter-Revolution in Latin America

By: Cliff Kincaid
America’s Survival

On Saturday, March 21, at 1:00 p.m., the Washington Conclave for Democracy will be held at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. to discuss freedom, democracy and free elections in Latin America. “The conference is aimed to expose fraud and deception in electoral processes in Latin America,” says organizer Dalmo Accorsini. The event is open to the press and the public and will feature several speakers with knowledge of the communist advance in the Western hemisphere, including in the U.S. The event will congregate conservative leaders and political activists from the USA and Latin America to denounce the Foro de São Paulo and the recent election results in Brazil.

The National Press Club is located at 529 14th Street, NW, 13th Floor, Washington DC, DC 20045 United States. Contact: Dalmo Accorsini, 561-803-5724, [email protected]

Background: With the end of the Cold War in 1989, it was believed by many that communism was on the wane. However, with Fidel Castro isolated in Cuba, he reached out to Luiz Inácio Lula de Silva of the Worker’s Party of Brazil, who would later become President of Brazil. An event was hosted in São Paulo, Brazil in 1990, the seat of Lula’s power, bringing together what came to be known as the São Paulo Forum.

02/10/15

“America’s Enemies in Hollywood Then and Now”

By: Cliff Kincaid
America’s Survival

A press conference on “America’s Enemies in Hollywood Then and Now” will be held on February 24 at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. to offer commentary on the direction of the Academy Awards and the politics of Hollywood.

Actor Bryan Cranston (right) plays Soviet/Nazi agent
of influence Dalton Trumbo in the upcoming film “Trumbo

Sponsored by America’s Survival, Inc. (ASI), a public policy organization, the event will also explore whether Congress should reinstate a committee on un-American activities and internal security – the same kind that led to the exposure and “blacklist” of Stalinist Communists in Hollywood. The news conference will examine how the Muslim Brotherhood lobby has been manipulating Hollywood’s portrayal of Islamic terrorism in recent years.

Date: February 24, 2015 (two days after the Oscars are announced).

Location: Zenger Room, National Press Club,
529 14th Street Northwest, Washington, D.C.

Time: 1:00 p.m. – 3:00 p.m. Open to the press and the public.

Hosted by Cliff Kincaid, President, America’s Survival, Inc., the event will feature:

Allan H. Ryskind, author, Hollywood Traitors; editor-at-large, Human Events. Allan Ryskind is the son of Hollywood screenwriter Morrie Ryskind, who co-wrote many screenplays on the Marx Brothers and many Broadway musicals. His father, along with Ronald Reagan, John Wayne, Walt Disney, and many others, led the charge against the Communist movement in Hollywood.
Trevor Loudon, author, The Enemies Within: Communists, Socialists and Progressives in the U.S. Congress. Loudon has called for Congressional hearings into internal subversive activities.
Deborah Weiss, Esq. is a contributing author to the book, Saudi Arabia and the Global Islamic Terrorist Network, and is the primary writer and researcher for the book, Council on American-Islamic Relations: Its Use of Lawfare and Intimidation.

Copies of the new book, Hollywood Traitors, will be available for signing by the author. For more information, please go to: www.usasurvival.org 443-964-8208