10/28/15

A Stamp for Disgraced Newsman Cronkite?

Before Dan Rather disgraced himself as the anchor of the CBS Evening News, there was Walter Cronkite, who paved the way for a communist takeover of South Vietnam and openly despised and attacked President Ronald Reagan’s peace-through-strength policies. Cronkite, who became an advocate of world government and a stooge of Soviet propaganda operations, is now the subject of a campaign to put his likeness on an official U.S. postage stamp.

The terrible truth about Walter Cronkite, as we noted in 2009 after his passing, is that he “symbolized liberal media bias and used that bias with disastrous consequences for our nation and the world.”

This wasn’t just our opinion. The 1974 book by Dr. Ernest W. LeFever, TV and National Defense, examined in meticulous detail how CBS News programs under Cronkite “were frequently critical of U.S. policy,” usually from a perspective that “implied or called for a lesser military commitment and lower defense expenditures.”

The CBS News bias against a strong national defense continued when President Reagan took office, after the policies of Democratic President Jimmy Carter had severely weakened America’s standing in the world.

The push for a Cronkite stamp comes at a time when Robert Redford is playing Cronkite’s successor, Dan Rather, in a movie ironically titled “Truth” and based on a lie. Rather used forged documents to smear Republican President George W. Bush’s military service.

The proposed stamp seems to be a case of the old media longing for the days when a figure like Cronkite, once known as “the most trusted man in America,” could manipulate the public and affect national policy with little, if any, dissent.

The Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ) and the Radio Television Digital News Association are leading the campaign to have the Citizens’ Stamp Advisory Committee, a 12-member group appointed by the postmaster general, issue a stamp in Cronkite’s honor.

As CBS Evening News anchorman, Cronkite campaigned against the American effort to save Vietnam from communism and attacked President Reagan for his anti-communist and anti-Soviet views. What was suspected during his life became known after his death. Cronkite was named in his FBI file as having been targeted in a Soviet “active measures” campaign against President Reagan’s anti-communist foreign policy.

Later in life, as if to confirm his role as an agent of influence against his own government, Cronkite made an appearance before the World Federalist Association, which favors world government financed by global taxes, and called for the U.S. to renounce “some of its sovereignty” and pass a series of United Nations treaties. Then-First Lady Hillary Clinton also appeared, via videotape, to pay tribute to the former CBS Evening News anchorman.

In 1988, Cronkite addressed a left-wing People for the American Way conference and denounced President Reagan for the “unilateral” military actions in Grenada, when the U.S. military evicted a communist gang, and Libya, when Reagan ordered a military strike in retaliation for the acts of terrorism against Americans.

Incredibly, Cronkite said that the smartest president he ever met was Jimmy Carter. The Carter presidency paved the way for the coming to power of the communist Sandinistas in Nicaragua and the Islamic zealots in Iran. Later in life, Carter became an advocate of the interests of the Arab/Muslim world against Israel.

But SPJ at-large board member Bill McCloskey told Accuracy in Media, “In my view, Walter Cronkite deserves to be commemorated by the Postal Service as were a few other prominent journalists. He had a talent for engaging the American public in the important issues of the day in a way that they could understand and digest. His talent showed particularly in his reporting on Watergate and Vietnam, two very complex stories that had great importance to his audience, which was vast. There is a reason he was known as ‘the most trusted man in America.’ Certainly Walter Cronkite fulfills the Postal Service’s goal of commemorating American history better than some of the current crop of stamps featuring stylized eagles, flowers, ducks and bunnies.”

Regarding coverage of the war in Southeast Asia, Cronkite “contributed a great deal to our defeat in Vietnam,” noted Accuracy in Media founder Reed Irvine.

As we have previously pointed out, the bloody result of the Vietnam War was 58,260 U.S. servicemen and nearly one million civilians dead. The South Vietnamese military lost about a quarter of a million, while tens of thousands of South Vietnamese allies of the U.S. were left behind after the American military withdrawal and tortured in communist camps. Thousands of others fled in leaky boats, becoming known as the “boat people.”

Professor Paul Kengor’s book, All The Dupes Fit To Print: Journalists Who Have Served As Tools of Communist Propaganda, devotes a chapter to Cronkite, noting he was singled out in Soviet propaganda operations as willing to go along with communist campaigns against U.S. foreign policy. The record is clear for anyone, including professional journalists, to see.

Nevertheless, Arizona State University’s Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication has joined the campaign to honor Cronkite, saying it is encouraging alumni, students, faculty, staff and the journalism community to write a letter of support to the Citizens’ Stamp Advisory Committee.

Cronkite School Dean Christopher Callahan said, “Walter Cronkite is our school’s guiding light…We are rallying our network of students, alumni, faculty and friends to get behind this fantastic proposal by the Society of Professional Journalists and the Radio Television Digital News Association.”

The eagles, flowers, ducks and bunnies that the SPJ’s McCloskey says are featured on stamps are harmless. Cronkite left a legacy of suffering and death and helped destroy objective news reporting in the process. It is shocking that a journalism school is named after him and that the SPJ, which maintains an ethics code, is leading a campaign to honor the disgraced journalist.

However, a stamp in tribute to Cronkite would be on the same level as a movie honoring his disgraced successor.

After honoring Cronkite, can a stamp paying tribute to Brian Williams be far behind? Williams’ lies are penny ante compared to Cronkite’s ability to destroy a free South Vietnam, apologize for Soviet communism, and promote world government.

Citizens’ Stamp Advisory Committee, 475 L’Enfant Plaza SW, Room 3300, Washington, DC 20260-3501.

10/27/15

The Vindication of Reed Irvine

By: Cliff Kincaid
Accuracy in Media

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…”

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

Republican Party Elites Abandon Traditional Marriage

By: Cliff Kincaid
Accuracy in Media

Only six of 54 Republican members of the Senate signed a pro-traditional marriage legal brief to the U.S. Supreme Court that was submitted on Friday. USA Today noted, “By contrast, 44 Democratic senators and 167 Democratic House members filed a brief last month urging the court to approve same-sex marriage. The brief included the full House and Senate [Democratic] leadership teams.”

These developments strongly suggest that while the homosexual movement remains solidly in control of the Democratic Party, the tactics of harassment and intimidation that we saw wielded against the religious freedom bill in Indiana last week are taking their toll on the Republican Party as a whole.

In the Indiana case, a conservative Republican governor, Mike Pence, abandoned the fight for religious freedom in the face of homosexual and corporate pressure.

It appears that more and more elite or establishment Republicans are simply deciding to give up on the fight for traditional values and marriage.

While this may seem politically expedient, this dramatic move to the left by the GOP could result in millions of pro-family conservatives deciding to abandon the Republican Party in 2016, a critical election year.

USA Today also noted that “…while some members of the 2012 Republican National Convention platform committee filed a brief against gay marriage Friday, it notably did not include GOP Chairman Reince Priebus.”

The Republican senators signing the brief included:

Senator Ted Cruz of Texas
Senator Steve Daines of Montana
Senator James Lankford of Oklahoma
Senator James Inhofe of Oklahoma
Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky
Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina

Fifty-one members of the House of Representatives signed the brief. But House Speaker John Boehner’s (R-OH) name was not on it.

Taking the lead for traditional marriage in the House was Representative Tim Huelskamp (R-KS), who not only signed the pro-marriage brief but has also introduced House Joint Resolution 32, the Marriage Protection Amendment, to amend the United States Constitution to protect marriage, family and children by defining marriage as the union between one man and one woman. The resolution has 33 co-sponsors and has been referred for action to the House Committee on the Judiciary.

Huelskamp is the only Member of Congress who has authored one of the 30 state constitutional amendments that prohibits homosexual marriage and polygamous marriage. In 2005, when he was a state senator, 71 percent of Kansans voted for the state constitutional amendment that he authored.

In reintroducing the federal marriage amendment, Huelskamp said, “In June 2013 the Supreme Court struck down section 3 of the federal Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), which had defined marriage for federal purposes as the union of one man and one woman, but upheld the right and responsibility of states to define marriage. Since then, though, numerous unelected lower court judges have construed the U.S. Constitution as suddenly demanding recognition of same sex ‘marriages,’ and they struck down state Marriage Amendments—including the Kansas Marriage Amendment—approved by tens of millions of voters and their elected representatives.”

However, on April 28 the U.S. Supreme Court will review the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals ruling, which upholds marriage laws in Michigan, Kentucky, Ohio and Tennessee. A ruling is expected in June.

USA Today noted that scores of prominent Republicans last month joined a brief on the homosexual side filed by former Republican National Committee Chairman Ken Mehlman, a former lieutenant to Karl Rove who came out of the closet and announced in August of 2010 that he was a homosexual. He has since launched a “Project Right Side” to make the “conservative” case for gay marriage.

Big money Republican donors such as Paul Singer, David Koch, and Peter Thiel have either endorsed homosexual rights and same-sex marriage or funded the homosexual movement. Thiel is an open homosexual.

A libertarian group funded by the Koch brothers, the Cato Institute has been in the gay rights camp for many years and its chairman, Robert A. Levy, wrote a “moral and constitutional case for a right to gay marriage.”

Other signatories to the Mehlman brief included Governor Charlie Baker of Massachusetts, Senators Susan Collins of Maine and Mark Kirk of Illinois, and former presidential candidates Rudolph Giuliani and Jon Huntsman.

The signers of this brief at the Supreme Court in support of same-sex marriage were described as “300 veteran Republican lawmakers, operatives and consultants.” Some two dozen or so had worked for Mitt Romney for president.

One of the signatories, Mason Fink, who was the finance director of the Mitt Romney for president campaign, has signed on with a super PAC promoting former Florida Republican governor Jeb Bush for president. In another move signaling his alignment with the homosexual movement, Bush has reportedly picked Tim Miller, “one of the most prominent gay Republicans in Washington politics,” as his communications director.

A far-left media outlet known as Buzzfeed has described Bush as “2016’s Gay-Friendly Republican,” and says he has “stocked his inner circle with advisers who are vocal proponents of gay rights.”

But some conservative Christians are fighting back against the homosexual movement.

A brief to the court filed by Liberty Counsel notes that, in the past, the Supreme Court has upheld marriage as “a foundational social institution that is necessarily defined as the union of one man and one woman.” It cites the case of Skinner v. Oklahoma, in which marriage was declared to be “fundamental to the very existence and survival of the race,” and Maynard v. Hill, in which marriage was declared “the foundation of the family and of society, without which there would be neither civilization nor progress.”

Liberty Counsel said the court is being asked to affirm a false notion of marriage based upon fraudulent data about homosexual activity in society. It said, “For the past 67 years, scholars, lawyers and judges have undertaken fundamental societal transformation by embracing Alfred Kinsey’s statistically and scientifically fraudulent ‘data’ derived from serial child rapists, sex offenders, prisoners, prostitutes, pedophiles and pederasts. Now these same change agents, still covering up the fraudulent nature of the Kinsey ‘data,’ want this Court to utilize it to demolish the cornerstone of society, natural marriage.”

The homosexual movement has long maintained that Kinsey validated changes in sexual behavior that were already taking place in society. In fact, however, the evidence uncovered by Dr. Judith Reisman shows that Kinsey deliberately exaggerated those changes in a fraudulent manner by using data from pedophiles and prisoners.

Commenting on the impact of the acceptance of the fraudulent Kinsey data, Accuracy in Media founder Reed Irvine noted, “Gradually over the years, acceptance of the Kinsey morality has grown to the point where premarital and extramarital sex raise no eyebrows, where, in some communities, out-of-wedlock births are in the majority, homosexuality is glorified and aggressively promoted in our schools and the last taboo—adults having sex with young children—is now under attack in some of our institutions of higher learning.”

The Mattachine Society, a gay rights organization started by communist Harry Hay in 1950, cited the flawed Kinsey data in an effort to convince the public that homosexual behavior was widespread in American society.

The book, Take Back! The Gay Person’s Guide to Media Action, said the Kinsey Report on male sexuality “paved the way for the first truly positive discussion of homosexuality in the mainstream media.”

Today, this same Kinsey data is being used to convince the Supreme Court to approve homosexual “marriage” as a constitutional right.