Judy Woodruff and the Betrayal of America by the Main Stream and Liberal Media

A brief five second statement, really almost an side comment in the midst of a larger discussion, illustrated the nearly complete bankruptcy of our Main Stream Media and our beloved Liberal Media in the face of major scandal in the Obama Administration.

The side comment was made by Judy Woodruff, the co-anchor of Public Broadcasting's PBS Newshour.  She is one of the leading luminaries at PBS and a highly respected journalist.  Her candid comment tells us everything that is going wrong in main stream Journalism today.

The discussion took place today on Chris Wallace's Fox News Sunday.  The complete transcript of the hour long program is available here: Kevin McCarthy talks Iraq, future of the GOP; latest on IRS scandal.  

As Wallace's panel on pundits discussed the stunning disappearance of two years of Lois Lerner's emails and the highly improbable instantaneous failure of not just one but six individual computer hard drives (on six different computers) all happening exactly ten days after Congress began questioning the IRS about the targeting of Conservative Groups.  Any (and I do mean ANY) computer expert or engineer will tell you this is simply impossible.

Worse, the hard drives were not repaired of reclaimed, but destroyed.  Destroyed, ten days after Congress began asking questions.  Stunning, in fact it's frightening.

This scandal is much worse than Watergate in both the facts and implications.  Now I doubt the President is involved, but this is a conspiracy of huge proportions. We need a Special Prosecutor.

But what was upsetting this morning was not any of that.  What's upsetting was Woodruff's candid admission:   Well, what I can say, Chris, is I haven't reported this story. I haven't -- I don't know what happened inside the IRS.

What's tragic here is that PBS has willfully ignored the story and has spent not one second investigating or even exploring the implications of a massive, coordinated government cover-up.

Had this exact same situation occurred with a Republican President, Nixon, Reagan, Bush I or Bush II, PBS would be tearing the very walls of the IRS down the ground.  And they should be doing it now.  We only survive as a free democracy with the aid and protection of a vibrant, active press.

FOX NEWS has few resources and limited access.  They cannot carry the ball alone.  Plus they might distort the story.  We need ABC, CBS, NBC and PBS on the case.

We cannot survive as a free nation if the main stream media only does it's job when a Republican is President. The press is either going to have to start doing their damned job or we can simply never elect a Democrat President again.

If a Tree Falls in the Forest...

If a tree falls in the forest and.... The New York Times fails to report it, did it really fall?

Clearly there is a recent and very disturbing trend of the major media that leans leftward to downplay or even ignore rather major news stories.  To be certain, news organizations whether they lean left or right have always modified their reporting in a way that places their philosophies and political leanings in a more favorable light.  Fox News does it and so does NBC News.  This leaning, if you'll pardon the pun, is not news.

But now we see major news organizations simply fail to report news at all, ignoring it as if it doesn't exist.

MSNBC is especially bad about failing to report news unfavorable to Democrats or the Obama administration.  Often, when major news breaks, most people channel surf to get the best reporting and the most viewpoints.  When they reach MSNBC they find there is no story at all, no coverage.  It's not that a story is painted in a positive light, it's that the story doesn't exist.

I'm not sure the public is harmed by this practice as there are many options for news and most people do scan the channels and surf the news websites.  It's not a cover-up.... well, at least it's not a successful cover-up.  

But to see this happen again and again in The New York Times is disturbing.  And it's a well documented and pervasive problem.

There is an example happening right now.  Our nation has been plagues with mostly teens committing assualts on primarily elderly white adults in what has been dubbed "Knockout Games."  The New York Times basically hasn't reported on this nationwide trend beyond a snippet claiming that such attacks doesn't exist or are an "urban myth."

This is all the more funny because even as the Times denies their existence, while city leaders denounce the growing attacks in New York as Hate Crimes. Here's just a small a report from CBS News Channel 2 in New York

Police have arrested four men in connection with an assault in Brooklyn. The suspects allegedly hit the victim without warning, similar to recent incidents related to the so-called “knockout game” in which mobs of young people randomly sucker-punch innocent people for fun.

Around 2:45 a.m. Friday, investigators said a 24-year-old Jewish man was surrounded by four men and punched in the face on 18th Avenue in Borough Park. NYPD officers were nearby in an unmarked police car, commissioner Ray Kelly said Friday afternoon. The victim told investigators he heard one of the attackers say, “I’ll do it to this guy,” right before he was surrounded and punched, sources told CBS 2.

 The suspects fled, but were quickly apprehended and taken into police custody, sources said. The victim identified the suspects, police said. “I commend the excellent police work that we saw this morning,” Assemblyman Dov Hikind said in a statement. “I am grateful that these four thugs are off the streets and am hopeful that they will be treated with the severity of the law. I urge continuing diligence in dealing with this issue.”

Hate crime detectives were interviewing the four suspects — three Hispanic men and one Indian male — and the victim at the 66th Precinct, sources said.  The four men face assault charges, but those may be upgraded, CBS 2′s Don Champion reported.

The suspects range in age from 28 to 38, police said. There have been seven so-called “knockout” or “polar bear” assaults in the Crown Heights and Midwood sections of Brooklyn since October, Kelly said Wednesday. The alternate name “polar bearing” comes from the fact that the victims are white.

Councilman David Greenfield said the attacks have targeted Jewish people, with victims ranging from a 12-year-old boy to a 78-year-old woman. “These are anti-Semitic knockout attacks and it’s not a game,” said Councilman David Greenfield, who is calling on the men arrested early Friday morning to face gang assault charges.

Conservatives are enraged that The Times, Slate Magazine and MSNBC continue to deny the attacks and to deny any racial overtones, in spite of overwhelming exidence.

As Liberals we ought to be even more enraged.  After all it is the Liberal Media denying us the news we need to make intelligent decisions and provide balanced responses to conservative hysteria.  The answer is not to cover-up the news but to cover it fairly.

Waiting for the Benghazi Shoe to Drop

While my fellow Liberals are either in full denial or full cover-up mode, the truth about the disaster in Benghazi continues to leak out, exactly as I said it would last November, before the election.  It's a painful, slow dripping process that now, obviously, involves a huge CIA cover-up.

Thankfully Jake Tapper, now a headline star at CNN is leading the charge and doing the heavy investigative lifting.  Formerly with ABC News, Tapper is a journalist without a blemish on his record. And he has been both honest and objective about Benghazi since the very beginning.

Until this point the leadership in uncovering this scandal has fallen on Fox News and they've also done a superb job.  But my fellow Liberals always doubt the veracity of Fox and don't trust the network.  Having CNN at the lead adds much needed credibility for the left.

Whatever happened on the ground in Libya the night of September 11, 2012, it was either extremely illegal or would embarrass the USA in the middle east or world community.  The CIA is attempting to cover this up using extreme measures.  Eventually this will emerge as a scandal of monumental proportions.

President Obama could have avoided this entire mess if he had been both candid and honest in the first few days after the murder of our Ambassador and three other Americans.  Certainly he did not have to release any confidential or restricted information. But instead he told a number stupid, bold faced lies and tried to misdirect the public and the press.  He nearly destroyed Susan Rice's career in the process and Hillary Clinton is damaged, too.  In fact, in my opinion, Clinton deserves even more blame the Obama for her part in the bizarre "video" lie and cover-up.

Readers of this blog know I have been a many year Hillary Clinton supporter, but I assure you I will never support or vote for her again.  Her betrayal is unforgivable.

We can only guess at the truth right now and I'm not going to speculate.  But the truth is coming.  And Liberals and Progressives who have all claimed Benghazi is a "phony scandal" deserve the egg that is now all over their faces.

The Death of the Main Stream Media

The news today is upsetting and disappointing.  President Obama, just months into his second term, is embroiled in scandal after scandal.  Three of these scandals are so serious they might actually bring down his Presidency.  My gut tells me President Obama is primarily guilty of gross incompetence, but these investigations must play out in there own time and their own way.

But we are talking about the most serious Presidential Crisis since Watergate.  This is, in sum, considerably more serious than the President Clinton and Monica Lewinsky Affair and that one ended in an Impeachment Trial.

But my point this afternoon is that several of the traditional news media leaders are pretending like this isn't even happening.  This afternoon neither National Public Radio (NPR) nor NBC/MSNBC even mention any of the scandals on their website homepages. Not even a link! And today is the day IRS official Lois Lerner took the 5th and refused to testify before Congress and Press Secretary Jay Carney faced a revolt from the White House Press Corps.

Ratings indicate viewers are abandoning MSNBC is droves. The network is a virtual ghost town. And all the major network news broadcasts are failing in the ratings, trying to regain their footing.  Yet they continue to try to ignore the current Presidents troubles, I assume believing that if they don't report them, they don't exist.

Meanwhile the new media gets it right.  The Drudge Report dominates on-line news and The Huffington Post works hard at genuine journalism and is willing to let the chips fall where they may.  Other smaller news organizations and even bloggers, some leaning left, some right, all are on the case and gaining viewers and followers in droves. 

Here's Huffington's Home Page minutes ago: 

Huffington also covers the IRS scandal in depth on their front page, as well as the rest of today's news. 

The problem at NBC and NPR this afternoon is that they insult their viewers and readers intelligence. People know there is a crisis and they want the latest facts.  When they can't find them on NBC News or NPR, they go elsewhere.  

Old fashioned journalism works.  America was, quite literally, built on it.  By deciding to ignore journalistic principle and simply become a "Progressive" or Democratic Party advocate, you quickly lose all credibility.

Viewers can handle the truth.  And they want the truth.  They demand a robust press not a babysitter.  

The Truth About Cable Network News

Here's an incredibly short post (by the usual Wizard standards) about Cable Network News.  I just want to share the ratings for last Wednesday, a relatively typical night for Cable News, although slightly inflated because of the U.S. House of Representative's Benghazi hearings.

Included are the shows on Comedy Central because, quite frankly, that's where many Americans get their news.

FOXNEWS THE O'REILLY FACTOR 3,383,000

FOXNEWS THE FIVE 2,937,000

FOXNEWS BRET BAIER 2,638,000

FOXNEWS SEAN HANNITY 2,628,000

FOXNEWS GRETA VAN SUSTREN 2,363,000

FOXNEWS FOX NEWS WITH SHEPARD SMITH 2,240,000

CNN HEADLINE NEWS NANCY GRACE 1,576,000

COMEDY CENTRAL THE DAILY SHOW 1,450,000

CNN ANDERSON COOPER 1,391,000

CNN WOLF BLITZER 1,382,000

COMEDY CENTRAL THE COLBERT REPORT 1,250,000

CNN PIERS MORGAN 1,085,000

CNN ERIN BURNETT 944,000

CNN HEADLINE NEWS DR DREW 940,000

MSNBC RACHEL MADDOW 877,000

MNSBC LAWRENCE O'DONNELL 826,000

MSNBC CHRIS MATTHEW 703,000

MSNBC AL SHARPTON 624,000
MSNBC CHRIS HAYES 573,000 

There are two reasons FOX NEWS dominates the ratings. First they are much more entertaining.  Each host has fun and schedules a mix of lighthearted news and discussion with heavier commentary.

Second, they are, by far, fair and honest given the RIGHT WING perspectives of the hosts.  The shows tend to be facutal and often present both sides of the issues being discussed.

As a LIBERAL I can watch FOX, laugh at them and, occasionally cuss at them and always learn from them.

As a Liberal, I am appalled that 877,000 people watch Rachel Maddow, the single most dishonest person in major broadcasting.  I've learned the hard and painful way that if Rachel Maddow says it, it's likely not true, at best half true.

We Liberals DESERVE voices as HONEST and as ENTERTAINING at the conservatives have over on FOX.  We DESERVE BETTER THAN WHAT WE GET ON MSNBC. 

In Praise of News and Opinion Diversity

Like most of you I'm still trying to comprehend the events of the past week.  Most American's nerves are raw and we're all guilty of saying things or at least thinking things we don't necessarily mean.  Nothing is more rare today than facts, nothing more plentiful than opinions.

As we calm down and as the myriad of media, new and old, do their jobs, we will begin to understand all that happened in a few short, horrific days.

Until the terror in Boston and the horror in West, Texas I was planning to write a follow-up to my previous blog about Sarah Palin and the lack of real dialog between the left and the right in this country.  It is still, I believe, the biggest obstetrical we all face.

But I'm going to leave that blog for another time.

What I want to do here is simply praise the strength, diversity, the efficiency and the depth of the media in light of the new digital age and social media availability to all Americans.

You only need to be on Twitter for a few minutes t understand why despots in countries all around the globe try to regulate it or shut it down.  Today news spreads like wildfire.  Sometimes its not accurate, sometimes it's colored by strong opinions, but it's ALL out there and we all benefit.

Any of my fellow Liberals who deny the immense left wing bias of the major media are simply deluding themselves.  They should be embarrassed.  They should be one hell of a lot smarter than that.

But the right need not fear for one minute.  The views and OFTEN THE FACTS needed by all Americans are out there. And people get the news.... and the facts... and vital opinions.  This system really, really works!

You need look no further than the news about Dr. Kermit Gosnell, the abortion doctor who might just be the biggest MASS MURDERER in American History as proof.  Did the mainstream media ignore the Gosnell story?  Absolutely.  But did the new media get the story out and shame the old media in the process? YES!

And I don't think the Gosnell story is the worst example of main stream media dereliction of responsibility.  But the new media, FOX News, the Conservative pundits, the brilliant bloggers and others fill the gaps, effectively and consistently.

The truth is out there.  Now if we could just calmly discuss our ideas.

MSNBC's Betrayal of the Liberal Left

For the last several years many of my friends on the Left, both on Twitter and in the Blogosphere have decried the polarizing bias they see nightly on the FOX News Network.  Fox leans right and, occasionally, falls overboard on the starboard side of the ship.  Occasionally this bias extends in to the news programs as well.

Naturally these same Progressives and Liberals watch MSNBC and especially rejoice in the Liberal Glow of MSNBC's Primetime line-up. While still condemning the bias on Fox News, they love the fact that there is a left leaning alternative.

Unfortunately MSNBC betrays its viewers nightly with a horrific mixture of mis-reporting, false memes and outright lies.  They believe, I think incorrectly, that such overboard bias to the left is their only hope of getting television ratings and more advertising dollars.

As a champion of Liberal causes, I want more from my network.  I want honesty, honor, strict discipline, high journalist standards and an unrelenting search for the truth.

For critics to say that MSNBC is simply a mirror of Fox News is the ultimate indictment, a true measure of their total failure.

Sadly, MSNBC can't even live up to that mediocre standard.  Fox is a shining beacon of journalistic integrity compared to MSNBC.

Last night was the first night of the coverage of the Republican National Convention.  For Liberals and Progressives there is much to compare, contrast and even condemn.  So why not do that?  Are we incapable of wining a fair argument?

Republicans have very little minority support.  There were, indeed, few people of color in the delegations or on the floor.  So why did MSNBC feel the need to edit out every single speech delivered by a person of color?  Some of those speeches were important.  Several were electrifying!

MSNBC eliminated the speech of former Democratic Rep. Artur Davis, a black Alabaman who had actually seconded the nomination of President Barack Obama at the 2008 Democratic Convention!  This was an important speech by an important news maker.  It was also an electrifying speech that brought the crowd to its feet!

Not content to overlook one person of color, MSNBC bypassed them all. Gone from their coverage was Mia Love, a rising superstar in Republican politics. Mia is unique. She is a Black Mormon and a candidate for the U.S. House of Representatives from Utah.

Even if you somehow use the excuse that she was a minor player at the convention, how do you not broadcast the speech of Ted Cruz, a Latino American who will be the next Senator from Texas?  

This kind of reverse racism doesn't happen by accident. The executives at MSNBC decided they needed to support their false meme of racism in the Republican Party by purposefully hiding these key minority superstars in the Republican ranks. MSNBC's coverage demanded only whites be allowed to speak.  

Someone at MSNBC decided that we Liberals can't handle the truth.  We must be shielded from the small edges of color that actually are in the Republican Party.

Rachel Maddow owes us an apology.  MSNBC owes its viewers an apology.  

If there is any good news from last night's embarrassment it is that no one was watching.  Thank goodness they were watching Fox News, which actually covered the Convention with a reasonable amount of integrity and honor.

LAST NIGHT RATINGS:

FNC: 6,878,804 viewers (1,679,763 in 25-54)

NBC: 4,770,050 viewers (1,725,282 in 25-54)

CBS: 3,118,927 viewers (938,237 in 25-54)

ABC: 2,862,656 viewers (920,346 in 25-54)

CNN: 1,473,885 viewers (413,467 in 25-54)

MSNBC: 1,468,348 viewers (411,738 in 25-54)

Why is The Drudge Report the Single Most Important News Site?

This morning The Drudge Report is trumpeting a study that has determined that the Drudge website DRIVES MORE TRAFFIC than Twitter and Facebook combined!!

The same study by The Outbrain Publisher Network also confirms that Drudge drives more traffic than CNN, MSNBC, The New York Times or The Huffington Post. In fact only the three major search engines, Google, Yahoo and Bing! drive more traffic.

And Drudge is getting more powerful. The report indicates that both his traffic and his referrals are growing. Because of that Drudge, with just two employees aiding the eccentric Matt Drudge, is also increasingly influential. By his simple choice of stories and his paraphrasing of headlines, he becomes an opinion maker!

Because I work in the Internet Industry I am surrounded by "experts," including some of my own employees, who dismiss, criticize and even ridicule the outdated, simplistic, format of the website. To listen to these "experts" it's even a mortal sin to actually use Time New Roman as a font.

"Where's the flash? Where's the javascript? Where's the big pictures, maps, head shots, video, or audio? Where is the comment's section to "engage the loyal readers?" Where is the sacred "Like" button for Facebook? Or even a little "ReTweet" link? The site is circa 1990. It's an embarrassment to the profession of Web Design!!"

So why IS Drudge the premier News site? Actually it's because of all the reasons listed in the two paragraphs of criticism listed above. By eliminating all the add-ons and busy distractions, Drudge presents, in a quick glance, every single important news story of the day.

To be certain, Drudge has a keen instinct for the news that matters. And his super-quick updates often mean he has the important news first (at least before the other aggregation sires).

Most importantly you never need to dig to find a story. It's all on one page. By concentrating on political news, world news and business news, he covers the core of the news. Everyone is content to move on over to Entertainment Weekly or The Sporting News to get the non-essential stories of the day.

Finally, Drudge has enough tabloid flair to amuse the reader and keep the site compelling. If I'm honest the MSNBC, FOX and CNN websites are just as boring as hell. The news isn't there, it's on page whatever. And the home page puts you to sleep, even on a big news day.

So, even as a liberal, I turn to Drudge first, at least 6 or 7 times every day. It literally takes one minute to get up to date on important events.

The Drudge Report ain't broke. Thank god he hasn't tried to fix it.

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Here's another short analysis from several months ago that draws the same conclusions: The Incredible Drudge Report You'll note I borrowed their artwork for my blog entry today.

The Death of Journalism

Being a journalist was once a proud and noble profession, filled with high ideals and strong ethics. In several great movies of the early to mid 20th Century reporter were real heroes battling against corrupt government and powerful corporations.

We were inspired, even in awe as we watched Orsen Welles' Citizen Kane, spellbound by Humphrey Bogart in Deadline, USA, and mesmerized by Cary Grant and Rosiland Russell in His Girl Friday.

Get the story and get it right!

Those days are now very officially dead.

We were genuinely betrayed by FOX's gross negligence in handling the explosive Shirley Sherrod video. There are many, especially in the left who proclaim we "should have known" FOX would repeat such gross falsehoods without so much as asking for a simple verification of the tape. Regardless, FOX failed to follow the most basic of journalistic standards.

But what is much, much worse in the now revealed cabal of liberal reporters who conspired, successfully, to throw an election. Barack Obama might just have won fair and square, but now we'll never know.

In an EDITORIAL today Investors Business Daily assesses the terrible damage the JournoList cabal did to America. They are dead on-correct in virtually every word they print:

There are so many things wrong with this, we hardly know where to start. Nominally competitors, these supposedly impartial media mavens colluded in a way that would put airline or insurance officials in the dock for anti-competitive practices. They engaged in activism instead of fact-finding and mixed incestuously with activists whom they also should have been covering impartially.

Worst of all, they deprived millions of Americans of the information they needed to size up this new face on the political scene and determine if she really was a candidate who represented their interests.

That still remains to be done — and the country is poorer for it.

I'll leave you with Anderson Cooper's on air discussion of Journalism. While he himself has often failed to live up to the standards, it's till good to hear him recite then to remind us of what we've lost.