The next two years, more than the last two even, depend on President Barack Obama. While conservatives and fiscal hawks pin their hopes on the newly elected House members to trim the Federal government, nothing will happen if President Obama vetoes.
MTV aims to make a profit airing a show about a pregnant teen deciding to abort her baby, and the best media writers can muster is to call it a “sensitive issue.”
An MTV Special to be aired at 11:30pm Dec. 28, “No Easy Decision” is a half-hour program that follows a teen mom’s tragic decision to abort her child. The media coverage leading up to the program’s air date has merely glossed over the murderous reality that is abortion, and used terms like “sensitive issue,” “wrenching decision” and “ostracized party guest” to downplay the severity of infanticide.
The most egregious example of glossing over the impact of abortion comes from Linda Lowen at about.com. Lowen twists the media's lack of interest in abortion into some fantasy victimhood like a socially awkward teen at a party.
Our TV news elite often tries to ignore or play down moments that make Team Obama look incompetent or ill-informed. Case in point: on ABC December 21, World News anchor Diane Sawyer pressed Jim Clapper, the Director of National Intelligence, about terror arrests in London, and he seemed unaware, and he then apologized to Sawyer he was unaware.
ABC briefly followed up on that story the next night, but there was no mention of Clapper's gaffe on CBS, or NBC, or NPR. The PBS NewsHour gave it a brief mention. CNN put it in heavy rotation on the 22nd (which makes the other networks' omission more glaring). John Roberts reported "Sawyer's staff gave Clapper 24 hours to provide a follow-up explanation. He put out a statement, quote, 'The question about the specific news development was ambiguous. The DNI's knowledge of the threat streams in Europe is profound and multi- dimensional, and any suggestion otherwise is inaccurate.'"
On MSNBC that night, even Chris Matthews and Rachel Maddow slammed Clapper for not being fully briefed. Matthews did praise White House counterterrorism adviser John Brennan for his lame spin on Clapper's behalf:
To those who have spent time following new reports emanating from the Associated Press, it's not exactly a secret that many of the alleged journalists who work there are having difficulty with the idea that there will be a new Republican majority in the House during the next two years. A further annoyance is that many members of that majority, especially the newer ones, hold sensible, Constitution-based views inspired by Tea Party movement. But as supposed professionals, you would think that the folks at the wire service might try a little harder to avoid blatantly revealing their bias.
If the AP's Julie Pace was really trying to stay within the bounds of the patently obvious, she failed miserably, as the bolded words in the following paragraph from her 2:31 p.m. report (also saved here for future reference, fair use, and discussion purposes) on President Obama's decision to delay submitting a budget to Congress until mid-February indicate:
As reported at NB by TimesWatch editor Clay Waters, the New York Times bestowed the honor of "modern day Edward R. Murrow" on "Daily Show" host Jon Stewart for his advocacy for a bill awarding billions for the medical care of 9/11 first responders.
As it would only ever do for a liberal, the Times lauded Stewart as the exemplar of righteous journalistic advocacy – hence the likeness to Murrow, who, according to lore, brought down Sen. Joseph McCarthy during his communist witchhunts during the 1950s.
Matthew Boyle of The Daily Caller reported the "Diversity Committee" of the Society of Professional Journalists wants a yearlong "education campaign designed to inform and sensitize journalists" that the words "illegal immigrant" are hurtful and insensitive. In an article for the SPJ magazine The Quill, reporter Leo Laurence insisted that since our legal system presumes innocence until proven guilty, "Simply put, only a judge, not a journalist, can say that someone is an illegal." (The National Association of Hispanic Journalists has also argued that the I-word unfairly "criminalizes a person.")
At the national convention in Las Vegas, the Diversity Committee resolution urged journalists to use the phrase “undocumented immigrant(s), and avoid both “illegal immigrant” or “illegal alien.” In several MRC studies of TV immigration coverage, we found the networks still primarily use "illegal immigrants," but some journalists (like CBS's Harry Smith) used "undocumented" as a matter of routine. Laurence explained:
In the Bush years, liberals worried out loud about how our war on terrorism was destroying our reputation among our noble socialist allies in Europe. But in the Obama years, they are showing their old colors. The Huffington Post's Amanda Terkel delighted in Barney Frank's idea that our NATO alliance with Europe is strategically worthless and our spending on it should be slashed:
"These kind of restrictions on domestic spending with unlimited spending for the war — and you always have to talk about both — is a great mistake," Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) told The Huffington Post last week. "And the liberal community's got to focus more on Afghanistan, Iraq, NATO. NATO is a great drain on our treasury and serves no strategic purpose."
Lawrence J. Korb, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress who has argued that the defense budget can be cut without harming military readiness, said Frank's idea has merit. "Barney Frank has a good point," said Korb. "We ought to rethink the whole idea of NATO."
Catching up with a distorted news report from Christmas Day, the AP decided to distribute a particularly tendentious piece of “reporting” by the news service’s Washington, DC-based Alan Fram and Jennifer Agiesta, who misleadingly charged House Republicans “defied” public will on “tax cuts for the wealthy,” which were non-existent. They led:
Republicans say they will follow “the people's priorities” when they gain power on Capitol Hill next month. Yet when it came to tax cuts for the wealthy and other top issues that dominated the just concluded lame-duck Congress, the GOP either defied what most Americans want or followed their will only after grudging, drawn-out battles.
The duo’s first piece of evidence:
Congress' approval of a compromise between President Barack Obama and congressional GOP leaders renewing expiring tax cuts for everyone, despite broad public opposition to including people earning over $250,000. An Associated Press-CNBC Poll in late November found only 34 percent wanted taxes reduced for the richest Americans.
In fact, there was never any proposal on the table to “reduce” income taxes for any income class of Americans, just a continuation of the current rates. If the rates were not maintained, Americans would have faced a steep income tax hike as of January 1. (Yes, the wealthy, like everyone else with a job, will pay a little less in FICA, but that was not the subject of the AP-CNBC poll question.)
I don’t need to remind you that it’s that time of year when diabetes management can slide from stress, travel, and holiday cookies, etc. Which is why I do think a reminder is in order about the awesome eBook we all created as D-community effort last year: Nuggets of Wisdom from the diabetes Community. The [...]
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