09/8/16

Journalism Should Be True to the Constitution

By: Sridhar “Sri” Rangaswamy

In today’s world, we see that journalism has become biased and full of prejudice. We the people are entitled to truth and facts, is that not the case? Instead, all we see is distorted news in today’s media.

NEWS stands for North, East, West and South. That is true journalism, according to the world and the constitution of journalism in this country.

News should accurately cover our country and leave it to us to prioritize and make judgements about what is important to us and what is true and false.

You can see this even in Google algorithms. If you Google anything about Hillary Clinton, they would have removed all the stuff they did not want you to see. This is not fair or ethical.

Our goal to the world should be totally:

Unbiased, with no prejudice.
Truthful and fact oriented.
Be full of honesty, integrity and high ethical standards.

As we see, they do not talk about the biggest housing crisis in the last 40 years. They don’t talk about our trillion-dollar deficit and ridiculous unemployment rate. What about the violence in Chicago in the last two months? No one is reporting to it. These kind of facts are not portrayed or established across all networks and media.

That’s why I love people like “Noisy Room”. They strive to make a true difference in the world.

04/13/15

Judge Jeanine Pirro, Chris Plante, and Rep. Lamar Smith to Receive Accuracy in Media Awards in D.C.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Contact: Spencer Irvine
(202) 364-4401 ext. 103
[email protected]

Washington, D.C. – Accuracy in Media will honor Fox News host Judge Jeanine Pirro, WMAL talk show Chris Plante and Rep. Lamar Smith (R-TX) with this year’s Reed Irvine journalism awards at a cocktail reception on Tuesday, April 21^st at the Capitol Hill Club.

Jeanine Pirro will receive the Reed Irvine Award for Investigative Journalism for her Fox News program, “Justice with Judge Jeanine,” during which she regularly pierces the veil on issues that the mainstream media misreport or ignore, such as the vulnerability of our electrical grid to an electromagnetic pulse (EMP) attack, and the unfolding Benghazi scandal and government cover-up.

AIM will also honor Chris Plante, a Washington, D.C. talk radio host who will receive the Reed Irvine Award for Excellence in Journalism. As host of “The Chris Plante Show” on WMAL, he serves as a one-man media watchdog powerhouse from 9 am to noon, five days a week.

Rep. Lamar Smith, founder and chairman of the Media Fairness Caucus, will receive the Reed Irvine Award for Accountability in Journalism for his tireless efforts to challenge the media’s biased reporting and raise the standards of mainstream press coverage.

WHEN: Tuesday, April 21, 2015
6:00 pm to 8:00 pm
The event will begin promptly at 6:15 pm.

WHERE: Capitol Hill Club
300 First Street, SE
Washington, DC 20003
Room: Eisenhower Room (1st Floor)

The Reed Irvine Accuracy in Media Award was established in 2005 to honor journalists for their courageous and principled reporting in the tradition of AIM founder Reed Irvine. Previous award winners include Andrew Breitbart, Sharyl Attkisson, Michelle Malkin and the late M. Stanton Evans.

For further information, please RSVP using EventBrite or contact Spencer Irvine at [email protected] or 202-364-4401, ext.103.

04/6/15

BS Grows Fat on the Rolling Stone

By: Frank Salvato

The Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism has issued a 12,866 word report that literally shreds Rolling Stone magazine, convicting the publication and its employees of gross negligence and ethical malfeasance in the publishing of a story that falsely accused the Phi Kappa Psi fraternity members at the University of Virginia of gang-raping a freshman coed. Yet, no one at the magazine will lose their job, not the editors or the reporter. Evidently it’s a good time to be a Progressive media hack in the United States.

The Washington Times reports:

“In a stinging report released Sunday evening, an independent review by the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism said the magazine was reckless in vetting its sources, including the purported victim, identified only as ‘Jackie,’ and neglected ‘basic, even routine journalistic practice.’

“Rolling Stone Managing Editor, Will Dana,…said the publication was ‘committing ourselves to a series of recommendations about journalistic practices that are spelled out in the report’…However, he spelled out no consequences for any staff members involved.”

Well, isn’t that special. They’ll try to do better. And we’re supposed to believe that in the smear-merchant industry that is today’s magazine media Rolling Stone is suddenly going to transform from a publication whose genesis was high times and Hunter S. Thompson into a 2015 interpretation of the 1950s Wall Street Journal. Don’t hold your breath.

Liberal offerings like Rolling Stone are great for entertainment reading, but they aren’t serious news magazines; they aren’t balanced in their reporting or the injected opinion pieces, and they do not prompt any critical thinking for their readers. They publish narratives most often based in pure ideology and let the facts fall where they may. This is not news reporting or traditional journalism in any fashion of the imagination.

Today’s magazine journalism – and increasingly newspaper and television journalism – is activist journalism; journalism meant to persuade the consumer to a specific point of view or ideological affection, often not providing the total of the story and/or cherry-picking sources to craft a narrative sympathetic to achieving the ideological goals held by the author and the publication. Such is the case with Sabrina Rubin Erdely and Rolling Stone magazine.

Isn’t it time that we – as a people; as a society – recognize that we should not be gleaning our news information from entertainment publications and programs? Rolling Stone was originally a magazine glorifying the 60s drug culture. The Daily Show and The Colbert Report were both comedy shows. Late night talk show monologues are jokes crafted on current events meant to be entertaining and witty, not journalistic missives crafted to educate the public on the facts surrounding news events. One has to question when the transition was made that allowed comedians and the drug culture the arbiters of truth.

In Rolling Stone’s refusal to fire all involved in this public deception – this ideological manipulation of the people, they have relegated themselves to the lowest rung of the tabloid sphere. In fact, the warped cynicism of Mad Magazine now has more ethos than Rolling Stone. And the need for serious news outlets remains…and that’s no laughing matter.

Frank Salvato is the Executive Director of BasicsProject.org a grassroots, non-partisan, research and education initiative focusing on Constitutional Literacy, and internal and external threats facing Western Civilization. His writing has been recognized by the US House International Relations Committee and the Japan Center for Conflict Prevention. His opinion and analysis have been published by The American Enterprise Institute, The Washington Times, The Jewish World Review, Accuracy in Media, Human Events, Townhall.com and are syndicated nationally. Mr. Salvato has appeared on The O’Reilly Factor on FOX News Channel, and is the author of six books examining Islamofascism and Progressivism, including “Understanding the Threat of Radical Islam”. Mr. Salvato’s personal writing can be found at FrankJSalvato.com.

02/19/15

The most important article about ISIS you will read this year

Doug Ross @ Journal
Hat Tip: BB

Kudos to Graeme Wood of The Atlantic, whose tour de force backgrounder on the burgeoning Caliphate in the Middle East (“What ISIS Really Wants“) is the kind of journalism that vintage media should engage in, but never does.

The entire article is an absolute must-read, but a digest version — summarizing the key graphs — is excerpted below. It’s a very short-form version of Graeme’s work, which you simply must read when you have the time to fully absorb it. The gravity of his findings cannot be overstated.

[ISIS] seized Mosul, Iraq, last June, and already rules an area larger than the United Kingdom. Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi has been its leader since May 2010, but until last summer, his most recent known appearance on film was a grainy mug shot from a stay in U.S. captivity at Camp Bucca during the occupation of Iraq. Then, on July 5 of last year, he stepped into the pulpit of the Great Mosque of al-Nuri in Mosul, to deliver a Ramadan sermon as the first caliph in generations—upgrading his resolution from grainy to high-definition, and his position from hunted guerrilla to commander of all Muslims. The inflow of jihadists that followed, from around the world, was unprecedented in its pace and volume, and is continuing.

Our ignorance of the Islamic State is in some ways understandable: It is a hermit kingdom; few have gone there and returned. Baghdadi has spoken on camera only once. But his address, and the Islamic State’s countless other propaganda videos and encyclicals, are online, and the caliphate’s supporters have toiled mightily to make their project knowable. We can gather that their state rejects peace as a matter of principle; that it hungers for genocide; that its religious views make it constitutionally incapable of certain types of change, even if that change might ensure its survival; and that it considers itself a harbinger of—and headline player in—the imminent end of the world…

…In conversation, [ISIS] insist[s it] will not—cannot—waver from governing precepts that were embedded in Islam by the Prophet Muhammad and his earliest followers. They often speak in codes and allusions that sound odd or old-fashioned to non-Muslims, but refer to specific traditions and texts of early Islam.

To take one example: In September, Sheikh Abu Muhammad al-Adnani, the Islamic State’s chief spokesman, called on Muslims in Western countries such as France and Canada to find an infidel and “smash his head with a rock,” poison him, run him over with a car, or “destroy his crops.” To Western ears, the biblical-sounding punishments—the stoning and crop destruction—juxtaposed strangely with his more modern-sounding call to vehicular homicide…

…But Adnani was not merely talking trash. His speech was laced with theological and legal discussion, and his exhortation to attack crops directly echoed orders from Muhammad to leave well water and crops alone—unless the armies of Islam were in a defensive position, in which case Muslims in the lands of kuffar, or infidels, should be unmerciful, and poison away.

The reality is that the Islamic State is Islamic. Very Islamic. Yes, it has attracted psychopaths and adventure seekers, drawn largely from the disaffected populations of the Middle East and Europe. But the religion preached by its most ardent followers derives from coherent and even learned interpretations of Islam…

…Denying the holiness of the Koran or the prophecies of Muhammad is straightforward apostasy. But Zarqawi and the state he spawned take the position that many other acts can remove a Muslim from Islam. These include, in certain cases, selling alcohol or drugs, wearing Western clothes or shaving one’s beard, voting in an election—even for a Muslim candidate—and being lax about calling other people apostates. Being a Shiite, as most Iraqi Arabs are, meets the standard as well, because the Islamic State regards Shiism as innovation, and to innovate on the Koran is to deny its initial perfection. (The Islamic State claims that common Shiite practices, such as worship at the graves of imams and public self-flagellation, have no basis in the Koran or in the example of the Prophet.) That means roughly 200 million Shia are marked for death. So too are the heads of state of every Muslim country, who have elevated man-made law above Sharia by running for office or enforcing laws not made by God.

Following takfiri doctrine, the Islamic State is committed to purifying the world by killing vast numbers of people. The lack of objective reporting from its territory makes the true extent of the slaughter unknowable, but social-media posts from the region suggest that individual executions happen more or less continually, and mass executions every few weeks. Muslim “apostates” are the most common victims. Exempted from automatic execution, it appears, are Christians who do not resist their new government. Baghdadi permits them to live, as long as they pay a special tax, known as the jizya, and acknowledge their subjugation. The Koranic authority for this practice is not in dispute…

…Many mainstream Muslim organizations have gone so far as to say the Islamic State is, in fact, un-Islamic. It is, of course, reassuring to know that the vast majority of Muslims have zero interest in replacing Hollywood movies with public executions as evening entertainment. But Muslims who call the Islamic State un-Islamic are typically, as the Princeton scholar Bernard Haykel, the leading expert on the group’s theology, told me, “embarrassed and politically correct, with a cotton-candy view of their own religion” that neglects “what their religion has historically and legally required.” Many denials of the Islamic State’s religious nature, he said, are rooted in an “interfaith-Christian-nonsense tradition.”

…According to Haykel, the ranks of the Islamic State are deeply infused with religious vigor. Koranic quotations are ubiquitous. “Even the foot soldiers spout this stuff constantly,” Haykel said. “They mug for their cameras and repeat their basic doctrines in formulaic fashion, and they do it all the time.” He regards the claim that the Islamic State has distorted the texts of Islam as preposterous, sustainable only through willful ignorance. “People want to absolve Islam,” he said. “It’s this ‘Islam is a religion of peace’ mantra. As if there is such a thing as ‘Islam’! It’s what Muslims do, and how they interpret their texts.” Those texts are shared by all Sunni Muslims, not just the Islamic State. “And these guys have just as much legitimacy as anyone else…”

…In Haykel’s estimation, the fighters of the Islamic State are authentic throwbacks to early Islam and are faithfully reproducing its norms of war. This behavior includes a number of practices that modern Muslims tend to prefer not to acknowledge as integral to their sacred texts. “Slavery, crucifixion, and beheadings are not something that freakish [jihadists] are cherry-picking from the medieval tradition,” Haykel said. Islamic State fighters “are smack in the middle of the medieval tradition and are bringing it wholesale into the present day…”

…The Koran specifies crucifixion as one of the only punishments permitted for enemies of Islam. The tax on Christians finds clear endorsement in the Surah Al-Tawba, the Koran’s ninth chapter, which instructs Muslims to fight Christians and Jews “until they pay the jizya with willing submission, and feel themselves subdued.” The Prophet, whom all Muslims consider exemplary, imposed these rules and owned slaves…

…The last caliphate was the Ottoman empire, which reached its peak in the 16th century and then experienced a long decline, until the founder of the Republic of Turkey, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, euthanized it in 1924. But Cerantonio, like many supporters of the Islamic State, doesn’t acknowledge that caliphate as legitimate, because it didn’t fully enforce Islamic law, which requires stonings and slavery and amputations, and because its caliphs were not descended from the tribe of the Prophet, the Quraysh.

Baghdadi spoke at length of the importance of the caliphate in his Mosul sermon. He said that to revive the institution of the caliphate—which had not functioned except in name for about 1,000 years—was a communal obligation. He and his loyalists had “hastened to declare the caliphate and place an imam” at its head, he said. “This is a duty upon the Muslims—a duty that has been lost for centuries … The Muslims sin by losing it, and they must always seek to establish it.” Like bin Laden before him, Baghdadi spoke floridly, with frequent scriptural allusion and command of classical rhetoric. Unlike bin Laden, and unlike those false caliphs of the Ottoman empire, he is Qurayshi…

…The caliph is required to implement Sharia. Any deviation will compel those who have pledged allegiance to inform the caliph in private of his error and, in extreme cases, to excommunicate and replace him if he persists. (“I have been plagued with this great matter, plagued with this responsibility, and it is a heavy responsibility,” Baghdadi said in his sermon.) In return, the caliph commands obedience—and those who persist in supporting non-Muslim governments, after being duly warned and educated about their sin, are considered apostates…

…[Cleric Anmem] Choudary said Sharia has been misunderstood because of its incomplete application by regimes such as Saudi Arabia, which does behead murderers and cut off thieves’ hands. “The problem,” he explained, “is that when places like Saudi Arabia just implement the penal code, and don’t provide the social and economic justice of the Sharia—the whole package—they simply engender hatred toward the Sharia.” That whole package, he said, would include free housing, food, and clothing for all, though of course anyone who wished to enrich himself with work could do so.

Abdul Muhid, 32, continued along these lines. He was dressed in mujahideen chic when I met him at a local restaurant: scruffy beard, Afghan cap, and a wallet outside of his clothes, attached with what looked like a shoulder holster. When we sat down, he was eager to discuss welfare. The Islamic State may have medieval-style punishments for moral crimes (lashes for boozing or fornication, stoning for adultery), but its social-welfare program is, at least in some aspects, progressive to a degree that would please an MSNBC pundit. Health care, he said, is free. (“Isn’t it free in Britain, too?,” I asked. “Not really,” he said. “Some procedures aren’t covered, such as vision.”) This provision of social welfare was not, he said, a policy choice of the Islamic State, but a policy obligation inherent in God’s law…

…If we had identified the Islamic State’s intentions early, and realized that the vacuum in Syria and Iraq would give it ample space to carry them out, we might, at a minimum, have pushed Iraq to harden its border with Syria and preemptively make deals with its Sunnis. That would at least have avoided the electrifying propaganda effect created by the declaration of a caliphate just after the conquest of Iraq’s third-largest city. Yet, just over a year ago, Obama told The New Yorker that he considered ISIS to be al-Qaeda’s weaker partner. “If a jayvee team puts on Lakers uniforms that doesn’t make them Kobe Bryant,” the president said…

…One way to un-cast the Islamic State’s spell over its adherents would be to overpower it militarily and occupy the parts of Syria and Iraq now under caliphate rule. Al‑Qaeda is ineradicable because it can survive, cockroach-like, by going underground. The Islamic State cannot. If it loses its grip on its territory in Syria and Iraq, it will cease to be a caliphate. Caliphates cannot exist as underground movements, because territorial authority is a requirement: take away its command of territory, and all those oaths of allegiance are no longer binding. Former pledges could of course continue to attack the West and behead their enemies, as freelancers. But the propaganda value of the caliphate would disappear, and with it the supposed religious duty to immigrate and serve it…

…Properly contained, the Islamic State is likely to be its own undoing. No country is its ally, and its ideology ensures that this will remain the case. The land it controls, while expansive, is mostly uninhabited and poor. As it stagnates or slowly shrinks, its claim that it is the engine of God’s will and the agent of apocalypse will weaken, and fewer believers will arrive. And as more reports of misery within it leak out, radical Islamist movements elsewhere will be discredited: No one has tried harder to implement strict Sharia by violence. This is what it looks like…

…It would be facile, even exculpatory, to call the problem of the Islamic State “a problem with Islam.” The religion allows many interpretations, and Islamic State supporters are morally on the hook for the one they choose. And yet simply denouncing the Islamic State as un-Islamic can be counterproductive, especially if those who hear the message have read the holy texts and seen the endorsement of many of the caliphate’s practices written plainly within them.

Muslims can say that slavery is not legitimate now, and that crucifixion is wrong at this historical juncture. Many say precisely this. But they cannot condemn slavery or crucifixion outright without contradicting the Koran and the example of the Prophet. “The only principled ground that the Islamic State’s opponents could take is to say that certain core texts and traditional teachings of Islam are no longer valid,” Bernard Haykel says. That really would be an act of apostasy.

02/15/15

Hitler Finds Out About Brian Williams

Hat Tip: Trapper Pettit

02/10/15

Say Her Name: Vaccine Victim Hannah Poling

By: Cliff Kincaid
Accuracy in Media

Brian Williams’ “chopper whoppers” about his exploits as a correspondent flying into Iraq are making him look foolish. It’s not clear whether he can survive in the anchor chair. But don’t think the Williams case means that the media are now on guard for misrepresentations and false claims. The controversy over vaccines has been another media low point. We are being told they are completely safe with no side effects. That’s a blatant lie.

Anybody who watches Williams’ newscasts can see who pays the bills: pharmaceutical companies. Commercials for various pills, and even vaccines, are regular fare and dominate the several minutes of time that pay for the newscast itself. You would have to be a fool to think these companies don’t try to exercise influence over what appears on the broadcasts.

Former CBS News reporter Sharyl Attkisson’s book, Stonewalled: My Fight for Truth Against the Forces of Obstruction, Intimidation, and Harassment in Obama’s Washington, offers evidence of how powerful these companies are. She explains how pharmaceutical companies, their front groups, and public relations representatives work to manipulate news coverage and hide the truth from the American people about injuries caused by vaccines.

Attkisson, an Emmy Award winner who received the Reed Irvine Accuracy in Media Award in 2012, left the network when it became clear that her investigative stories, especially of Obama administration misdeeds, were not welcome. One of the stories she had been covering on a regular basis for many years was the vaccine-autism link. She continues to do so on her own website.

This is an area where the truth affects many people, not just Brian Williams’ career. The developmental disorder known as autism is estimated to affect two million people. It involves difficulties in social interaction and verbal and nonverbal communication. Hiring doctors and therapists to treat the disorder can cost a family $50,000 or more a year. However, there is no cure.

The number of cases have risen from an estimated one in 5,000 in 1975 to one in 64 today, a more than 600 percent increase. The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) claims it can’t identify the cause, but has consistently claimed that the disorder is not linked to the growing number of vaccines required for children.

The pro-vaccination side has increasingly resorted to vicious name calling and smears against those favoring informed consent and parental choice on vaccines. The Washington Post published a piece by Arthur L. Caplan, an alleged expert on medical ethics, comparing the opponents of vaccines to Holocaust deniers. He said that doctors favoring choice on vaccines should have their licenses lifted.

There is one name these proponents of mandatory vaccines in the media desperately want to avoid: vaccine victim Hannah Poling. You can search in vain for her name in the recent coverage of alleged vaccine safety.

Attkisson notes in her book that in 2008, the federal government agreed to pay damages to the family of Hannah Poling, “a child who developed autism after multiple vaccinations.” Attkisson explained that the “landmark case” amounted to $1.5 million for the girl the first year and $500,000 each year after. In total, the compensation could amount to $20 million over the child’s lifetime.

The Poling case was just one of thousands of cases filed in the National Vaccine Injury Program. But it was selected as a “test case” to evaluate the arguments underlying most of the other vaccine-autism claims.

Attkisson writes that the case was “ordered sealed, protecting the pharmaceutical vaccine industry and keeping the crucial information hidden from other families who have autistic children and also believe vaccines to be the culprit.” But word leaked out.

At the time, the head of the federal Centers for Disease Control, which assures the public of vaccine safety, was Dr. Julie Gerberding. After insisting the settlement of the Poling case was not an admission of a direct vaccine-autism link, she left the CDC to become president of vaccines for Merck. Last December she was promoted to executive vice president for strategic communications, global public policy and population health at Merck.

Attkisson reported on the Poling case for CBS News on March 6, 2008. She said, “While the Poling case is the first of its kind to become public, a CBS News investigation uncovered at least nine other cases as far back as 1990, where records show the court ordered the government to compensate families whose children developed autism or autistic-like symptoms in children, including toddlers, who had been called ‘very smart’ and ‘impressed’ doctors with their ‘intelligence and curiosity’ … until their vaccinations. They were children just like Hannah Poling.”

In a September 10, 2010, story on the vaccine-injury court award, Attkisson reported, “Hannah was described as normal, happy and precocious in her first 18 months. Then, in July 2000, she was vaccinated against nine diseases in one doctor’s visit: measles, mumps, rubella, polio, varicella, diphtheria, pertussis, tetanus, and Haemophilus influenzae. Afterward, her health declined rapidly. She developed high fevers, stopped eating, didn’t respond when spoken to, began showing signs of autism, and began having screaming fits.”

Not surprisingly, Attkisson reports in her book, the vaccine makers didn’t appreciate her stories. She said that after word leaked out about the government’s settlement in the Poling case, “vaccine makers and their government partners” worked hard “to controversialize and tamp down all news coverage of the facts.” She notes that their strategy included “a full-forced attack on me and my ongoing reporting.” She learned in June 2008, after the fact, that “PR officials and a top attorney for vaccine maker Wyeth have managed to get a private meeting to spin two Evening News senior producers in New York about my reports.”

Attkisson names one of the pharmaceutical PR officials as former ABC and CNN reporter Eileen O’Connor, who now works at the State Department under President Obama.

Attkisson comments on the pressure campaign: “It’s wrong on so many levels, in my opinion. Improper for the meeting to be conducted without my participation or knowledge. Unethical to offer the powerful corporate interests—who are also advertisers—special access, while those on the other side aren’t given an audience to be heard. Inappropriate because the producers haven’t been in the chain of command on any of my vaccine-related stories.”

She notes in the book that some of the “hardest pushback” she ever received for a story came after CBS Evening News Executive Producer Jim Murphy assigned her to look into the reported cover-up of adverse effects of various prescription drugs and military vaccinations. She writes, “That series of reports leads to me to investigate related stories about childhood vaccinations and their links to harmful side effects, including brain damage and autism. At the time, the Bush administration is marching in lockstep with the pharmaceutical industry in denying problems with the prescription drugs at issue as well as both military and childhood vaccines.”

She writes, “It’s one thing for them to want their side of the story told: that’s understandable. But it’s quite another for them to want the stories censored entirely. They’re trying to keep them from airing altogether.”

She reports that just minutes before one of her first stories about childhood vaccinations and autism was to air, a spokesman for a nonprofit group called Every Child by Two called CBS in New York. “The spokesman evokes the name of former first lady Rosalynn Carter, who cofounded the group,” Attkisson says. “The call reaches Murphy, who then calls me on the hotline that rings directly into the Washington bureau newsroom. I’m preparing for my live shot. ‘Why is some group called Every Child by Two, supposedly fronted by Rosalynn Carter, calling me about your story?’” Murphy asks.

Attkisson responded, “I have no idea,” and said she had never heard of the group. She then learned that it “promotes children getting fully vaccinated by age two and rejects the idea of investigating harmful vaccine side effects that could injure the very youngsters they purported to protect.”

Attkisson recounted how she also later learned that Every Child by Two is funded by the major vaccine manufacturer, Wyeth, and a Wyeth spokesman was listed as the group’s treasurer. She writes that she wondered “how they knew we planned to air a story on the news that night.” Nevertheless, CBS went ahead with the story.

In a 2011 story, “Vaccines and Autism: a new scientific review,” Attkisson cited an article in the Journal of Immunotoxicology entitled, “Theoretical aspects of autism: Causes—A review.” It was a review of studies finding cases of autism following vaccination.

You don’t have to be a scientist to notice this pattern. I have heard from several parents who have seen it for themselves. One told me, “Our son was affected by vaccines and there are too many out there with the same story. I’m sick of hearing and reading news reports saying there is no correlation between autism and vaccines.”

On her website, Attkisson is described as an investigative journalist “who tries to give you information others don’t want you to have.” That certainly is the case with vaccine safety. She’s one of the few journalists with national stature willing to tackle this issue.

As we have recently commented, the media across the political spectrum seem unwilling to cover vaccine-related injury cases. Many reporters and commentators are mindlessly spouting claims about “vaccine safety” and dismissing a vaccine-autism link without even mentioning cases like that of Hannah Poling.

Attkisson has vigorously defended her stories. Indeed, when challenged by CNN reporter Brian Stelter about her stories linking vaccines to autism, she replied, “…those were some of the most important stories I’ve done and I would like to continue along those lines, at some point. It continues to be a very important debate.”

Now a senior independent contributor to the Heritage Foundation’s The Daily Signal, Attkisson continues to cover the vaccine problem on her own website and is now quoting CDC’s immunization safety director as saying it’s a “possibility” that vaccines rarely trigger autism but “it’s hard to predict who those children might be.”

Attkisson comments, “It is a significant admission from a leading health official at an agency that has worked for nearly 15 years to dispel the public of any notion of a tie between vaccines and autism. Vaccines are among the most heralded medical inventions of our time. Billions of people have been vaccinated worldwide, countless lives have been saved and debilitating injuries prevented. The possibility that vaccines may also partly be responsible for autism, in individual cases, is not something public health officials are typically eager to address.”

The major media are not eager to address it, either. But the people are demanding that the truth be told. They do not believe the media’s declarations of vaccine safety and effectiveness.

Whatever the fate of Brian Williams, the credibility of the media will continue to nosedive.

02/9/15

Forum: Is Journalism Dead?

The Watcher’s Council

Every week on Monday morning, the Council and our invited guests weigh in at the Watcher’s Forum with short takes on a major issue of the day, the culture or daily living. This week’s question: Is Journalism Dead?

The Independent Sentinel: If journalism isn’t dead, it’s critically wounded. People are going to blogs more-and-more for their information out of desperation.

Journalists by-and-large are no longer reporting the news, they are manipulating it.

They aren’t journalists any longer, they are commentators, inventors of the news and political operatives. They no longer serve as watchdogs and they aren’t embarrassed by that fact.

Journalists who don’t go along are brought into line or they are out the door.

Brian Williams is NBC’s Walter Mitty, but there are far more dangerous posers out there who are transforming the way Americans think, when they are not dumbing them down that is.

Dan Rather is still revered.

We accept all these liars and there is no accountability when they lie.

Simply Jews: Journalism as a profession isn’t dead and will never be dead. As any profession it requires professional education, extensive support (both on the ground and in the back office, including professional fact checking and, not to be forgotten nowadays, legal support). The tools and the means do change with time and technology progress, but it doesn’t mean that citizens’ journalism will be ever able to fully replace the professional one. At the best it will serve as a watchdog and as a complementary tool, but not as a replacement.

As for cases of sloppy or politically (or otherwise) skewed journalism: these are probably inevitable, as long as the live people, with all their conflicting motivations and all their strange impulses continue to work in the field. Why should, to take one example, Brian Williams signify the end of the journalism, when we had a much earlier example of Walter Duranty? And, not being a scholar of journalism history, I bet that such examples go many years back, way before Duranty. Rotten apples are an inevitable presence in any bushel of apples. And the fact that cases like these are discovered and aired by their fellow journalists is the best warranty of the general health of that profession. It is a keeper.

JoshuaPundit: Journalism itself isn’t dead, but it’s become rare and more often than not an unpaid (or poorly paid) pursuit. The process started, I think, when the Left took over most of the major journalism schools and having the proper ideology became increasingly important when it came to getting hired. And as the Left began increasingly using news as political propaganda at institutions they controlled like the New York Times and the Associated Press wire services, which allow ‘reporters’ to simply rewrite whatever these organs put out and disperse it without actually questioning it or investigating it further.

It was the Left’s control of most of the mainstream media that led to alternative channels like FOX, the conservative blogosphere and talk radio. Would Rush Limbaugh have 23 million people listening to him every day if the major newspapers and the alphabet networks on TV were actually practicing journalism? If they hadn’t been caught in so many deliberate lies and misstatements? And the practice has never stopped.

There is still a market for journalism… in fact, I think people are hungry for it. But the Left isn’t going to give up its megaphone any time soon, nor do I see proper standards of journalism or a differentiation between news reporting and commentary emerging in the near term.

GrEaT sAtAn”S gIrLfRiEnD: Gotta go with Mikey G on this here topic…

What difference does this make? For many conservatives, the “mainstream media” is an epithet. Didn’t the Internet expose the lies of Dan Rather? Many on the left also shed few tears, preferring to consume their partisanship raw in the new media.

Most cable news networks have forsaken objectivity entirely and produce little actual news, since makeup for guests is cheaper than reporting. Most Internet sites display an endless hunger to comment and little appetite for verification. Free markets, it turns out, often make poor fact-checkers, instead feeding the fantasies of conspiracy theorists from “birthers” to Sept. 11, 2001, “truthers.” Bloggers in repressive countries often show great courage, but few American bloggers have the resources or inclination to report from war zones, famines and genocides.

The democratization of the media — really its fragmentation — has encouraged ideological polarization. Princeton University professor Paul Starr traced this process recently in the Columbia Journalism Review.

After the captive audience for network news was released by cable, many Americans did not turn to other sources of news. They turned to entertainment. The viewers who remained were more political and more partisan. “As Walter Cronkite prospered in the old environment,” says Starr, “Bill O’Reilly and Keith Olbermann thrive in the new one. As the diminished public for journalism becomes more partisan, journalism itself is likely to shift further in that direction.”

Cable and the Internet now allow Americans, if they choose, to get their information entirely from sources that agree with them — sources that reinforce and exaggerate their political predispositions.

And the whole system is based on a kind of intellectual theft. Internet aggregators (who link to news they don’t produce) and bloggers would have little to collect or comment upon without the costly enterprise of newsgathering and investigative reporting.

The old-media dinosaurs remain the basis for the entire media food chain. But newspapers are expected to provide their content free on the Internet. A recent poll found that 80 percent of Americans refuse to pay for Internet content.

There is no economic model that will allow newspapers to keep producing content they don’t charge for, while Internet sites repackage and sell content they don’t pay to produce.

Professional journalism is not like the buggy-whip industry, outdated by economic progress, to be mourned but not missed. This profession has a social value that is currently not reflected in its market value.

The Right Planet: Is Journalism dead? At first glance, it certainly looks that way. But, to be fair, there are some who attempt to do honest journalism (former CBS investigative reporter Sharyl Attkisson comes to mind). But they appear to be a dying breed.

So just what is journalism? As one who studied journalism in college, I was taught to simply ask the who, what, why, where, when and how, minus the editorializing. I’ve long been of the opinion the major networks (i.e. ABC, CBS, NBC, etc.) abandoned journalism long ago, replacing it with political advocacy masquerading as journalism–specifically, shilling for “progressive” causes and the Democrats. I’ve heard people on the right, and even the left (see Kirsten Powers), refer to the major news networks as “state-run media.” That says it all, if you ask me. So much for a free press, huh! I’ve noticed, at least in my own experience, that the mere act of simply asking the who, what, why, where, when and how is enough to send a number of leftist political advocates masquerading as journalists into an apoplectic fit. It’s as if many so-called journalists have merely become “narrative readers” shilling for all things progressive. Anything deviating from the leftist narrative is ridiculed, mocked, dismissed, marginalized, demonized, etc.

Syndicated columnist Ruben Navarrette, Jr., who writes for CNN, recently came out and unambiguously stated he believes there is a strong bias at the major networks (including CNN) that favors Democrats, while constantly demonizing Republicans. As far as what can be done to remedy the situation, I’m a big fan of competition. There’s a new news network called One America News Network (OANN) that appears to be trying to do some honest journalism, separating editorial content from reporting. I wish them success. I think we need more OANN’s right now. The leftist leanings of many so-called news organizations is undeniable, in my opinion. And those who would state otherwise are simply being disingenuous, or suffering from a severe case of denial.

The Glittering Eye: Journalism is alive and well. It’s committed on a regular basis by our very own Tom of Virginia Right! and Greg of Rhymes With Right. However, there are a number of aspects of journalism as it has been practiced that are extinct, on life support, or endangered that include:

– the 5Ws style of reporting
– beat reporters
– foreign bureaus
– copy writers
– big city dailies
– newspaper conglomerates financed with debt

The 5Ws style of reporting (who, what, where, when, why) has been considered obsolete for a generation. It has been replaced with the “point of view” style–something that used to be eschewed as editorialization. If you find it difficult to tell the difference between the news section and the opinion section that’s why. Only the largest newspapers have foreign bureaus anymore. They’ve been replaced with foreign stringers or the wire services and I hold that responsible for the very low quality of the reporting about what’s going on outside our borders. Beat reporters, too, are becoming increasingly rare.

The big noise in newspaper writing today is the automation of writing routine stories. Basically, copy writers and, largely, editors are becoming things of the past. They’ll be replaced by a computer program.

Big city dailies have collapsing for the last half century. In 1960 Chicago had a dozen different daily newspapers. Now it has two and those are both parts of large media conglomerates.

Something I’ve been predicting for some time is the decline of the debt-financed newspaper conglomerate. For thirty years we saw newspaper after newspaper gobbled up by one conglomerate or another, the purchase financed with debt, the newspapers themselves saddled with the debt, in essence paying for their own purchase, and the conglomerate taking cash out of the deal. It sounds like a good plan until you factor in the competition newspapers are getting from the Internet in general and Craiglist in particular. Nowadays the margins are so slim in the newspaper business it’s hard for the newspapers to service their debt. Small highly local newspapers are still doing okay. They don’t have the debt problems and their owners don’t expect to lead lifestyles of the rich and famous, much as stereotype of the newspaper business has been for over a century, when Joe Pulitzer invented the newspaper conglomerate.

These are all subjects I’ve written about from time to time over at The Glittering Eye. Before he landed a job as a lawyer my dad worked as an editorial writer for the old St. Louis Star and the insights he conveyed to me about the nature of the newspaper business seventy-five years ago have given me an interest in and a distinct viewpoint on the developments in the business today.

Well, there you have it!

Make sure to tune in every Monday for the Watcher’s Forum and every Tuesday morning, when we reveal the week’s nominees for Weasel of the Week!

And remember, every Wednesday, the Council has its weekly contest with the members nominating two posts each, one written by themselves and one written by someone from outside the group for consideration by the whole Council. The votes are cast by the Council and the results are posted on Friday morning.

It’s a weekly magazine of some of the best stuff written in the blogosphere and you won’t want to miss it… or any of the other fantabulous Watcher’s Council content.

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01/30/15

Battling Boys of Benghazi

01/2/15

Top 10 Misreported or Underreported Stories of 2014

By: Roger Aronoff
Accuracy in Media

As 2014 comes to an end, and the new year begins, we want to highlight some of the worst abuses by America’s news media in the past year. We have picked 10 stories for which there were general narratives presented by the mainstream media, which either ignored the larger truths to be gleaned from these stories, or, in some cases, the media missed the story altogether. We easily could have picked 15 topics that met those criteria, but arbitrarily chose to look at 10, and in no particular order.

Among the glaring examples of journalistic malpractice in 2014 was the Rolling Stone magazine report of an alleged gang rape at a fraternity house at the University of Virginia. There was near-unanimous agreement that the publication failed in its most basic journalistic responsibility: to attempt to verify whether or not the story they were publishing was true, and what those accused of this alleged crime had to say in their own defense.

The ongoing IRS scandal, involving the targeting of conservative organizations for their political beliefs, and a blatant attempt to cover it all up, could also have been on this list. The media went along with the Obama administration claim that the IRS story is a phony scandal, without a “smidgen of corruption.”

What the stories we have chosen have in common is that in each case, the media have gone with a narrative that is intended to put the Obama administration, the Democratic Party, or the left in general in the best possible light, all things considered. Clearly, one can find articles and interviews and TV reports that contradict those narratives, and even some that put the Obama administration in a negative light. However, this is our view of how a corrupt, mainstream media attempt to spin these stories, and a brief analysis of what is being ignored or misreported:

Benghazi: The Scandal that Won’t Die
Obama’s Cynical Leadership
Obama’s Foreign Policy Disasters
The Rise of the Islamic State & Islamic Terror
Covering Momentous Elections
Democratic Civil War
Continued Failures of Obamacare
How the Media Inflame Racial Tensions
Media Portray Israel as the Aggressor
Judges Challenge Obama Actions

1. Benghazi: The Scandal that Won’t Die

In November, the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence released what it called the “definitive” report on Benghazi regarding the activities of the intelligence community in Benghazi, Libya, surrounding the deadly terrorist attacks that killed four Americans on September 11th and 12th in 2012. Reporters and pundits argued that this new report proves that Benghazi is a dead-and-buried story and that there is nothing new to learn about the attacks nor the efforts by the Obama administration to cover up the truth of what happened. They must have not read the report by the Citizens’ Commission on Benghazi (CCB), nor the media coverage thereof.

Our April 22 press briefing and Interim Report outlined how Muammar Gaddafi offered a truce to discuss his abdication in March 2011, which was rejected by the Obama administration. In addition, the CCB found that the U.S. government had knowingly facilitated the delivery of weapons to al Qaeda-linked rebels in Libya, that the failure to bring military assets to attempt to rescue our people in Libya amounts to a dereliction of duty, and that what was needed was a Select Committee on Benghazi to uncover the ensuing government-wide cover-up. The CCB’s findings received coverage from the Drudge Report, the Daily Mail, Newsmax, Town Hall, Fox News, and others, but only for a couple of days. However, within about two weeks of our press conference, the House voted to create a Select Committee to investigate the Benghazi attacks. The verdict is out on whether or not the House Select Committee remains really determined, and empowered, to reveal the whole truth about what happened. If so, that will involve holding Hillary Clinton, Susan Rice and Barack Obama accountable for their actions before, during and after this sordid scandal.

Obama’s Cynical Leadership

The New York Post’s William McGurn called President Obama “shamelessly cynical” on immigration because the President had punted this issue until past the election, so that voters’ input had little effect on the President’s actions. “Like every other action this President has taken on immigration, this new one will, in fact, make genuine immigration reform less rather than more likely,” wrote McGurn. Yet the President and his administration continue to call for immigration legislation as a means to mitigate and counteract the President’s clear executive overreach.

President Obama also delayed Obamacare’s employer mandate for medium-sized employers until 2016, and an Iranian nuclear deal keeps on being pushed off into the sunset. The normalization of relations with Cuba also occurred after an election that could be seen as a repudiation of the President’s radical policies, yet we see more of the same. “[American voters are] going to see Washington working better if this president has his way,” said White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonough just days after the November elections.

In the wake of such administration intransigence, POLITICO started championing “Obama libre”—the liberation of Obama from his earlier hesitancy and doubt. He is unleashed, the media argue, to be the president he always wanted to be during his lame duck session. Is that because he no longer feels accountable to the voters? Did he ever? The President must realize that what he is doing is making it highly unlikely that there will be any meaningful cooperation with Congress in the upcoming session.

Obama Foreign Policy Disasters

President Obama’s foreign policy disasters continue apace. In November, his administration eased sanctions on Iran provided that it “limit the growth of its stockpile of low-enriched uranium, convert or dilute its uranium that is close to bomb-grade, and not install any new machines for producing uranium fuel,” according to USA Today. What the media did not say is that this heralds the acceptance of a rogue state—which sponsors terror and threatens the international community—and its ability to move forward in enriching uranium, ostensibly under the auspices of a peaceful nuclear energy program. The administration is desperate to achieve an agreement, so that they can claim to have achieved “peace in our time.” Meanwhile, Iran has repeatedly proven itself to be untrustworthy.

The Obama foreign policy crises turned so sour that when the Islamic State rose up in Iraq and Syria, the media couldn’t help but note President Obama’s “evolving” rhetoric—which ranged from containment to utter destruction. The Washington Post gave White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest four Pinocchios for his claim that Obama wasn’t singling out the Islamic State (IS) when he called the group a “junior varsity” team in an interview with the New Yorker magazine.

By the administration’s own estimate, the military response to the war against IS will likely last three years, with the actual destruction of terrorist havens in Syria punted to the next administration. Currently, the plan is to vet 5,000 Free Syrian Army members, train them in Saudi Arabia, and bring them back to defeat and destroy IS. Meanwhile, members of the media complain that they don’t have access to any of the bombers or the ability to embed with the troops to report on what’s really happening. The truth of the matter is that Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry claim to have put together a coalition of more than 60 nations to help the U.S. “degrade and defeat” IS. In the meantime, IS continues to butcher and force conversion or death on tens of thousands of Christians and Yazidis, and the U.S. is serving as the Air Force for Iran against IS, while leaving their proxy, Basher Assad, in charge in Syria, where more than 200,000 people have already died since that war began in 2011.

The normalization of relations with Cuba was really a lifeline to a desperate, failed communist regime, but to the media, it was a welcome and long overdue act. CBS’s “60 Minutes” apparently had advance notice, as their cameras were there capturing events as they unfolded, helping to spin this into a foreign policy victory for Obama. The journalist Daniel Greenfield demonstrated what a betrayal this was to the Cuban people, yet it was an act very consistent with Barack Obama’s prejudices in favor of leftist thugs. It was also another broken promise. Obama had said that he would support and promote normalization with Cuba, reported The New York Times, only “if Cuba took steps toward democracy and released all political prisoners.” Instead, we got nothing in return.

The Rise of the Islamic State & Islamic Terror

Examples of beheadings, murders, and other killings by ISIS, which now calls itself the Islamic State (IS), al Qaeda and various “lone wolves” are increasing at an alarming pace, but the media dislike reporting on them in a religious context, even when it comes to the beheading of their own journalists by IS. There is a failure in the West, by the media and our government, to acknowledge and confront the threat to our freedoms and our way of life by Islamists bent on spreading their poisonous ideology.

In our coverage of the Moore, Oklahoma beheading, we noted that MSNBC’s Melissa Harris-Perry was quick to label the Islam-inspired attack as “workplace violence” and said that the attacker’s Islamic affiliation had as little to do with his actions as what he’d eaten for breakfast. Yet we also have seen the attack at the Canadian Parliament; Ismaaiyl Abdullah Brinsley’s murder of two Brooklyn police officers in December; the attack on four policemen in New York in November by a hatchet-wielding convert to Islam, called a terrorist act by Police Commissioner William Bratton; the Taliban murder of 141 (mostly children) in Pakistan; the Sydney, Australia hostage situation resulting in three deaths, including that of the Islamic terrorist responsible for the crime; jihadists driving cars into groups of pedestrians in France; and Islamic State massacres of religious minorities, burying some alive.

What does it take to spark media outrage? Instead, when the FBI decides to categorize the Moore, Oklahoma decapitation as workplace violence, we have Mark Berman of The Washington Post debating how some experts define terrorism. He quoted terrorism analyst J.M. Berger as saying, “One of the problems with an inconsistent definition of terrorism is basically, if a Muslim does it, it’s terrorism and if a white guy does it, it’s not…” What is it going to take to end this ongoing slaughter by jihadists, acting in the name of Islam?

Covering Momentous Elections

Throughout 2014 the public was alternately told that the Republican Party had failed miserably due to its unpopular government shutdown of last year, that the Republican-dominated House had blocked too much legislation and was a “do-nothing Congress,” and that the American people outright disapprove of the GOP as compared to the Democratic Party. And sometimes the media openly took sides. Accuracy in Media reported how “Lean Forward, an MSNBC motto developed in 2010, morphed into a campaign theme President Obama adopted in his 2012 campaign, and has come to mean, Vote Democratic.”

When the election neared and it became clear that the GOP would have a sweeping victory, the media started to downplay polling numbers that showed President Obama’s support was flagging.

Then the election arrived, and there was a shellacking. Now, states with a GOP-controlled legislature and governor outnumber Democrat-controlled states by a margin of 24 to 7, on top of GOP majorities in both the U.S. House and Senate. But the media had a different take on it. Instead of receiving a mandate, the GOP was told that the message from elections was to compromise with the President’s radical policies, although the people had clearly rejected them.

Matthew Dowd of ABC News said, “This wasn’t a vote for them, it was a rejection of the President and it was a rejection of the politics that’s been practiced the last couple of years in Washington, D.C.” He asserted, “Well, the Republican brand is still very damaged.” But, as AIM reported, polling showed that 53% of Americans wanted the GOP to have more control over the country’s direction than Obama in 2015. For more than a year, we had heard incessantly how out of touch and unpopular the Republicans were, and how damaged they were because they had become too extreme.

Democratic Civil War

Conflicts within the GOP grab headlines, but what about conflicts within the Democratic Party? In the case of the Republican takeover of the House and Senate, “Republican leaders won’t be able to satisfy their restive members with the familiar…excuse that they only control one-half of one-third of government,” said the New Republic, a magazine in turmoil. Yet, the last thing Republicans want is to “allow inmates to take over the asylum.”

Contrast that with coverage given to Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), whose agitation during the threatened 2014 government shutdown earned her praise as presidential material from The Washington Post. There is, in fact, a crisis in the Democratic Party, as many Democrats are running from President Obama’s record, and presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton has proven to be “not ready for primetime,” according to POLITICO. The long knives are coming out, as more and more Democrats and their media allies are calling for “anybody but Hillary” for the Democratic nomination.

We reported on Hillary’s many gaffes in what The Washington Post called her “Worst Week in Washington.” Hillary claimed that she and her husband were “dead broke” when they left the White House in 2001. (She had signed an $8 million book deal before leaving, and her husband has earned over $100 million in speeches.) The Washington Post expressed dismay that “some Democrats fear” Clinton evokes an “imperial image that could be damaging in 2016.” But perhaps, for us, Hillary’s most evocative image remains her question, “What difference at this point does it make?”—which will haunt any presidential campaign she embarks upon.

Continued Failure of Obamacare

Obamacare continues to be the signature legislation of the Obama administration, and, therefore, must be championed by the press. The New York Times, and other outlets, tried in vain this year to cover the “successes” of the health care legislation, be it through anecdotal evidence or inflated health care numbers. CNN reported in July that 10 million Americans gained health insurance this year due to the Affordable Care Act. We helped expose these numbers for the fraud that they are. In reality, there is only about “a net increase in private-sector coverage” of about 2.5 million individuals. The Heritage Foundation’s Daily Signal found that 71% of the increase in coverage was “attributable to Obamacare expanding Medicaid to able-bodied, working-age adults.”

Yet how many people have lost full time jobs or couldn’t find them as a result of the perverse incentives written into the law? Many Americans are unable to meet the high deductibles with these plans, and, as a result, are forgoing important medical procedures in order to ration their own health care. Yet about 85 percent of those signing up on the exchanges qualify for subsidies, a major redistribution of wealth.

Now federal investigators have found that half of listed Medicaid providers are unable or unwilling to serve enrollees. Ultra-narrow networks, which dominate the signature legislation, have also led to reduced care under Obamacare this year.

How the Media Inflame Racial Tensions

Our race-baiting media have fomented strife between citizens and the police, citing false statistics such as that blacks are 21 times more likely to be killed by the police than whites, driving a further wedge between the police and their communities.

MSNBC’s Al Sharpton, who headed the witch-hunt for George Zimmerman last year, has led the charge on behalf of the late Michael Brown’s and Eric Garner’s families. He has been a rallying figure behind the protests. Some of the left’s demonstrations against the police have been led by Sharpton, and were encouraged by Attorney General Eric Holder, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, and President Barack Obama. Most of the speakers at the demonstrations criticized the police, or talked about racism by the police—and Ferguson, Missouri burned and protesters attacked NYPD cops. Brown’s stepfather shouted “burn the b—ch down!” Protesters even chanted, “What do we want? Dead cops!” But after a “mentally ill” man killed two cops in Brooklyn, The Washington Post provided protest leaders with a chance to point to their disclaimer statements calling for peaceful protests only, and The New York Times merely highlighted the “change in tone” after the attacks.

The evidence shows that Ferguson and Staten Island weren’t racial incidents, but they are being used to inflame racial tensions.

Media Portray Israel as Aggressor

Hamas planned a massive tunnel attack on Israel this year, to occur on the Jewish New Year, Rosh Hashanah. The attack would allegedly have included mass killings and kidnappings around Israel. However, the media firestorm surrounding Operation Protective Edge blamed Israel, casting it as the aggressor in last summer’s war, which was instigated by continuous missile attacks from Gaza in the direction of Israel’s civilian population. Hamas, the terrorist organization that controls Gaza, committed the double war crime of using women and children as human shields while aggressively trying to kill Israeli civilians. They used hospitals and schools to launch attacks, hoping for return fire, in order to turn the world against Israel.

Although Israel agreed to ceasefire after ceasefire with Hamas, the media highlighted when Secretary of State John Kerry played “peacemaker” by consulting Qatar and Turkey, and, as we reported, “submitting a draft proposal that completely favored Hamas.” The media assertions that “there was little substantive difference between the proposal drafted by Secretary Kerry and the one released by the Egyptians earlier” that month was “quite frankly, untrue.”

As President Obama and Secretary Kerry kept blaming Israel for the ongoing hostilities, there was massive dishonesty by the media in this respect and in the treatment of casualty numbers. Unfortunately, the media continued to get its casualty count from biased sources on the ground in Gaza, but we also set the record straight about the inflated numbers.

Judges Challenge Obama Actions

As of June, President Obama had suffered his 12th unanimous defeat at the hands of the Supreme Court, according to National Review. But some have observed that this may be just the “tip of the iceberg,” since not all cases have made their way to the nation’s highest court. One pending Supreme Court case, King vs. Burwell, will determine the future of Obamacare subsidies, and will come before the court in March 2015. Will the judges rule against the administration there, as well?

In December, the administration suffered a setback when federal district court Judge Arthur Schwab concluded, “President Obama’s unilateral legislative action [on immigration policy] violates the separation of powers provided for in the United States Constitution as well as the Take Care Clause, and therefore, is unconstitutional.” This was because, in part, Schwab wrote in a 38-page opinion, the executive action “allows undocumented immigrants, who fall within these broad categories, to obtain substantive rights.”

As President Obama continues his executive overreach as a means to step around Congressional oversight and ignore the nation’s system of checks and balances, many of these battles will likely continue to be fought out in the courts.

12/25/14

“None Dare Call It Treason” Author John Stormer

John A. Stormer, author of the seven-million copy best seller, None Dare Call It Treason, is our guest on America’s Survival TV. His 1964 book is the most successful in the history of conservative journalism and is still relevant today. John Stormer’s book had a dramatic impact on Ronald Reagan personally and the movement that later elected him as president. The title of John Stormer’s first book came from the famous John Harington quotation: “Treason doth never prosper: what’s the reason? Why, if it prosper, none dare call it treason.”