Category: media bias

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Facebook scrambles to contain fallout

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By David McCabe – 05/13/16 02:40 PM ED

Facebook is scrambling to contain the fallout from allegations that it has suppressed right-leaning political content on its powerful platform — a charge that hits at the social network’s image of neutrality.

CEO and co-founder Mark Zuckerberg promised Thursday to meet with top conservatives about the allegations, a sign of how damaging any perception of political bias could be to the company.

“To serve our diverse community, we are committed to building a platform for all ideas,” Zuckerberg said in post addressing the issue directly for the first time.

“In the coming weeks, I’ll also be inviting leading conservatives and people from across the political spectrum to talk with me about this and share their points of view.”

Facebook’s problems intensified when unnamed former workers for its “trending” topics section told tech news website Gizmodo this week that colleagues had routinely omitted topics and news sources popular with conservatives.

This came after a separate report that said Facebook employees had raised internal questions about whether the company should be doing anything to stop the rise of presumptive GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump. Zuckerberg had also appeared to criticize Trump’s hard-line stance on immigration at a conference in April.

Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.), chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee, has demanded answers about whether Facebook employees have manipulated the presentation of political content.

https://thehill.com/policy/technology/279835-facebook-scrambles-to-contain-fallout

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Facebook Suspends FrackNation Page For Telling The Truth About Fracking

FrackNtion

by JAMES DELINGPOLE7 Mar 2016920

The Facebook page of FrackNation was suspended for 24 hours at the weekend after a series of complaints by activists who objected to the fact that it was telling the truth about fracking.

Filmmaker Phelim McAleer has been using the FrackNation page to report on the Dimock water trial – in which two families from smalltown Pennsylvania are trying to sue an oil and gas company for millions of dollars, alleging that it polluted their water with fracking fluid.

Thanks to the families’ allegations – eagerly, unquestioningly repeated in the green propaganda movies Gasland and Gasland 2 and frequently cited by activists like Mark Ruffalo and Yoko Ono – Dimock is now synonymous with environmental disaster. Not only have its faucets (taps to UK readers) been on shown on screen to burst into flames when you set a match to them but aggrieved locals have attested to the sickness the allegedly contaminated water has caused them, even to the point where they “won’t even shower in it.”

Now the case has finally come to trial, however, it is proving absolutely disastrous to the fracktivists’ cause: none of the claims by the two families – the Ely and the Hubert family – appear to be standing up.

Despite claiming to have suffered neurological, gastrointestinal, and dermatological damage from drinking the water, the families have had to admit they can produce no evidence of this. Indeed, they never even visited a doctor, not even when their children had supposedly been poisoned.

The Ely family were so oddly unperturbed by the deadly toxic water beneath them that they built a $1 million mansion on top of it.

https://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2016/03/07/facebook-shuts-down-page-for-telling-the-truth-about-fracking/

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Christie Accuses Media of Having Protected Predecessor Corzine

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list of terrible governors that the media has protected some more than other

James Florio January 16, 1990January 18, 1994 Democratic

Christine Todd Whitman January 18, 1994 January 31, 2001 Republican

Donald DiFrancesco January 31, 2001 January 8, 2002 Republican

John Farmer, Jr.January 8, 2002 January 8, 2002 Republican

John O. Bennett January 8, 2002 January 12, 2002 Republican

Richard Codey January 12, 2002 January 15, 2002 Democratic

Jim McGreevey January 15, 2002 November 15, 2004 Democratic

Richard Codey November 15, 2004 January 17, 2006 Democratic ( best one since Kean)

Jon Corzine January 17, 2006 January 19, 2010 Democratic

Trying to get in front of calls for him to resign, the persistently nationally barnstorming Gov. Chris Christie today charged the media with protecting former Governor Jon Corzine when the Democrat was governor. Max Pizarro, PolitickerNJ Read more

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Pew: 65% say the news media has a ‘negative effect’ on America

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By PAUL BEDARD (@SECRETSBEDARD) • 11/23/15 11:23 AM

More than six in 10 Americans believe that the news media, followed closely by Hollywood, has a negative effect on the country, according to a new survey.

An extensive new Pew Research Center survey finds that 65 percent believe that the news media “has a negative effect on the way things are going in the country.” Some 56 percent said the entertainment industry has a negative effect.

For comparison, 51 percent believe that the Obama administration has a negative effect and 40 percent say labor unions do too.

 

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/pew-65-say-the-news-media-has-a-negative-effect/article/2576955

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America’s Hopelessly Corrupt Political-Media Culture

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Obama is thought to be the worst president ever, “but such an individual could only attain and remain in power within the context of corrupt national institutions…”

Lawrence Sellin August 29, 2014 at 3:28pm

The United States has dire problems at home and perilous threats from abroad, all of which are solvable, but not with the politicians who are now wielding the power and the journalists who are controlling the national dialogue, few of whom serve the interests of the country or tell the American people the truth.

For Democrats, the only things Americans have in common are our differences. They attain and maintain power by practicing tribal politics, emphasizing and exploiting divisions based on race, ethnicity, gender and income. A united and healthy America is an anathema to the Democratic Party.

https://www.westernjournalism.com/americas-hopelessly-corrupt-political-media-culture/

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The Media’s Narrow Minds

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file photo by Boyd Loving

Journalism full of assumptions that shouldn’t be.

A. Barton Hinkle | October 19, 2015

“Liberals claim to want to give a hearing to other views,” William F. Buckley once observed, “but then are shocked and offended to discover that there are other views.” He might have been writing about some of the nation’s newsrooms.

Many media establishments obsess over diversity of pigment, while remaining ideologically monochromatic. This produces big blind spots and glaring examples of unconscious bias.

Here is one such example. A recent Wall Street Journal article on bicycle helmet laws began this way: “Helmets help prevent head injuries, so laws requiring cyclists to wear them would seem obvious.”

Really? Why?

Helmet laws seem “obvious” only if you take several things as already given: (1) that government should force people to do what is in their own best interest; (2) that government actually can know what is in other people’s best interest; and (3) that laws designed to promote people’s best interests actually will do so.

The point of the article, however, was to note that cycling advocates take what it calls a “surprising” position: Mandatory helmet laws “make cycling less convenient and seem less safe, thus hindering the larger public-health gains of more people riding bikes. All-ages helmet laws might actually make cycling more dangerous, some cyclists say, by decreasing ridership. Research shows that the more cyclists there are on the road, the fewer crashes there are.” It goes on to cite research showing that the reduction in head injuries is offset by increased obesity caused by people not riding, which thus produces “a net negative health impact.”

In short, given No. 3 might be wrong: A government program passed with good intentions might have unintended consequences.

Imagine that.

https://reason.com/archives/2015/10/19/the-medias-narrow-minds

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Is Checkbook Journalism Buying The Presidency?

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BY PAUL SPERRY
09/29/2015 05:06 PM ET

Did you know TV news networks pay former politicians for interviews? They do, and they pay them obscenely well. Even a few now running for the White House enjoyed secret deals, which raises a host of ethical questions.

Voters get most of their political news from cable or network TV. These outlets are supposed to keep politicians honest. Increasingly, however, they are paying officials huge sums to essentially produce news for them.

In effect, politicians have become quasi-journalists, and journalists have become quasi-campaign managers.

The latest example is GOP presidential hopeful Ben Carson, whose lucrative contract with Fox News Channel was only recently disclosed as part of a Federal Election Commission filing.

According to a revised financial report filed by his campaign last month, Carson earned a whopping $492,115 in “nonemployee compensation” from Fox through November 2014, when the top-rated cable news network canceled his contract as a “contributor.”

Read More At Investor’s Business Daily: https://news.investors.com/ibd-editorials-viewpoint/092915-773260-carson-santorum-huckabee-media-contracts-raise-specter-of-checkbook-journalism.htm#ixzz3nE9MxN94

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Deception in Media: Manipulating Public Opinion With Soros-Tied Polling Firm

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by S. Noble • September 11, 2015

In an exclusive find, Truth Revolt has discovered that the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) has hired a George Soros-linked pollster to “conduct a national survey on media and opinion in a difficult research environment of the Latin American market.” They were given a no-bid contract.

This should be bid out but instead it was awarded to Bendixen & Amandi “as the only source that meets the BBG requirement” and the announcement was hidden in an obscure government website.

The only source?

They have worked extensively for and are closely affiliated with George Soros’ Open Society Institute and Obama for America.

Bendixen & Amandi International also represents the Ford Foundation, which contributed more than $2.5 million to the liberal Center for American Progress between 2009 and 2010.

They have also worked with Hillary Clinton and other Democrats such as Patty Murphy in Washington.

Prior to the last election, President Obama’s re-election campaign manager Jim Messina inadvertently revealed Obama for America hired Sergio Bendixen, who at the time represented an organization founded by left-wing billionaire George Soros

https://www.independentsentinel.com/deception-in-media-manipulating-public-opinion-with-soros-tied-polling-firm

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Trump to Anderson Cooper During Interview: “The People Don’t Trust You And The Media”

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In an interview with CNN’s Anderson Cooper that was broadcasted tonight Republican candidate for president Donald Trump berated the reporter for continuing to address polls that shed him in a negative light instead of polls showing his upper-tier status.

“I am leading across the board,” Trump said in the interview. “And then you hit me with this poll that I didn’t see before, where oh, gee, it’s not even that kind of a poll. All i know is I have a very big group of support. And I think one of the reasons.”

“Let me tell you. The people don’t trust you and the people don’t trust the media. And I understand why,” Trump lectured Cooper.

Trump also said the American dream is “dead,” but he will revive it and “make it bigger, better and stronger than ever before.”

“You know I tell the story, the American dream — I talk about the American dream in speeches,” Ttump said. “The American dream is dead but I’m going to make it bigger, better and stronger than ever before. The American dream is dead. But i’m going to make it bigger, stronger. Right. And I go ‘boom!’ and I do it with great bravado and the audience goes crazy. ”

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2015/07/22/trump_to_anderson_cooper_during_interview_the_people_dont_trust_you_and_the_media.html

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Unfair coverage of Garrett

scott-garrett

Regarding “Garrett criticized after refusing to donate” (Page A-1, July 17) and “Waldwick still waiting on honor for slain Marine” (Page L-3, July 17):

The Record featured a one-two punch attack on Rep. Scott Garrett, R-Wantage, unworthy of an objective newspaper. The first punch, displayed above the fold on the front page, declares that Garrett has “stayed out of sight” (implication: cravenly) to avoid the “uproar” generated by a handful of politicos and advocates supposedly unhappy about his not donating to a GOP campaign group.

This hit piece seizes on inside-the-Beltway gossip to provide a soapbox for those who do not share Garrett’s positions and views, such as his being (shockingly?) “a Christian whose children were home-schooled” and labors to discredit him as an outlier within his party. Whatever limited merit such one-sided, meandering commentary might have as an editorial, it hardly warrants treatment as news, let alone on the front page.

The second punch thrown is a non-news item in the local section, which lends its soapbox this time to complaints from Waldwick Mayor Thomas Giordano, who bizarrely asserts that Waldwick is “still waiting” because of Garrett. The mayor says Garrett “really dropped the ball” and “hasn’t done much” to have the town post office renamed to honor a local hero, even though the congressman has three times introduced a bill to rename the post office.

In short, The Record publishes parochial gossip, partisan sniping and personal ruminations masquerading as “news” to portray Garrett as overly conservative and ineffec-tual.

Douglas Mayer

Allendale, July 17

 

https://www.northjersey.com/opinion/opinion-letters-to-the-editor/the-record-letters-thursday-july-23-1.1379252

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Networks Censor Obama’s Assault On Suburbs

streetscape_theridgwoodblog

ABC, CBS and NBC refused to cover the administration’s official unveiling of a policy as ambitious and politically radioactive as its socialized medicine scheme.

Under sweeping new regulations finalized last week, more than 1,250 municipalities across the country now must diversify neighborhoods through rezoning or risk losing billions in federal funding from the Housing and Urban Development Department.

Besides the fact that legal scholars view the federal mandate — whose goal is racially balancing the nation, ZIP code by ZIP code — as patently unconstitutional, it also threatens to import violent crime into the suburbs while lowering property values and negatively impacting local schools.

As kitchen table issues go, this is huge; yet the evening news didn’t see it that way. In fact, newscasts completely blacked out the issue after HUD released the rule last week.

“Instead of mentioning this expansion of the federal government, the CBS Evening News devoted a news brief to viral video of a ground trap blowing wildly in a rain delay during Tuesday night’s Pittsburgh Pirates baseball game,” NewsBusters noted.

ABC’s World News Tonight, meanwhile, devoted one segment to the announcement that Taco Bell will start home delivery.

After President Obama in his Saturday radio address encouraged civil-rights activists to join HUD in enforcing the new rule to bring more Section 8 housing to the suburbs — “Now you’ll have the data you need to make the case” — the networks still weren’t interested in the story.

On their Sunday news shows, the Big Three networks all ignored the issue again, focusing instead on socialist presidential candidate Bernie Sanders and the sequel to “To Kill a Mockingbird,” which recasts protagonist Atticus Finch as a racist.

Surveys show that most American adults still get their political news largely from the network TV news shows (as opposed to cable TV like Fox).

So the blackout of this radical rule, shrouded in bureaucrat-speak as “Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing,” means that middle-class families — but more importantly, suburban voters — don’t know what Democrats are doing to destroy their way of life.

Make no mistake, this is by design.

The big media support Democrats, and the last thing that they want to do is make suburban integration an issue in the 2016 presidential campaign.

Read More At Investor’s Business Daily: https://news.investors.com/ibd-editorials/071315-761398-big-media-punt-on-covering-hud-plan-to-diversify-suburbs.htm#ixzz3frsoQLXD

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Ted Cruz takes on the New York Times say produce evidence or issue a Formal Apology

ted_CRUZ_THERIDGEWOODBLOG

NEW YORK TIMES IS LYING: CRUZ CAMPAIGN CALLS ON THE TIMES TO RELEASE THEIR EVIDENCE OR ISSUE A FORMAL APOLOGY

07/10/15

HOUSTON, Texas — Yesterday, news broke that the New York Timeshad omitted Cruz’s best-selling book A Time for Truth from their best-seller list.

Bookscan, a subscription service that tracks the vast majority of book sales in America, is usually a reliable indicator of the New York Timesbestseller list. For example, this week’s #1 and #2 books on Bookscan are also #1 and #2 on the NYT list. But the #3 book, Cruz’s A Time for Truth, has been omitted altogether from the top twenty spots on theNew York Times list.

This is despite the fact that Cruz’s book sold more copies last week than 18 of the 20 books on the list.

Their decision to blackball Cruz’s book suggests that the Times very much does not want people to read the book.

The Times’s initial explanation was cryptic: “We have uniform standards that we apply to our best seller list, which includes an analysis of book sales that goes beyond simply the number of books sold.”

When the Times was roundly condemned for its obvious political bias, they issued a revised statement: “In the case of this book, the overwhelming preponderance of evidence was that sales were limited to strategic bulk purchases.”

This statement is false, and the Times knows it.

There were no “strategic bulk purchases.” Cruz spent last week on a nation-wide book tour, signing copies of his book at multiple locations. Booksellers at each event had long lines—sometimes over 400 people per event.

Pictures from some of these signings may be found here: Arlington, TX, Katy, TX, and Sioux City, IA.

Simultaneously, Cruz’s book was ranked the #1 political seller on Amazon, and made it as high as the #9 overall seller (across all categories, including fiction).

“The Times is presumably embarrassed by having their obvious partisan bias called out. But their response—alleging ‘strategic bulk purchases’—is a blatant falsehood,” said Cruz campaign spokesperson Rick Tyler. “The evidence is directly to the contrary. In leveling this false charge, the Times has tried to impugn the integrity of Senator Cruz and of his publisher Harper Collins.”

“We call on the Times, release your so-called ‘evidence.’ Demonstrate that your charge isn’t simply a naked fabrication, designed to cover up your own partisan agenda. And, if you cannot do so, then issue a public apology to Senator Cruz and Harper Collins editor Adam Bellow for making false charges against them.”

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Lois Lerner, DOJ and FBI Had Meeting About Targeting Obama’s Opponents, Networks ;ABC, NBC, CBS Refuse to Report

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By Geoffrey Dickens | July 8, 2015 | 3:18 PM EDT

What’s it going to take for the networks to start seriously reporting on the IRS scandal again? On Tuesday, Judicial Watch announced the stunning revelation that newly discovered Department of Justice and IRS documents showed there was “an October 2010 meeting between Lois Lerner, DOJ officials and the FBI to plan for the possible criminal prosecution of targeted nonprofit organizations for alleged illegal political activity.” This latest bombshell has yet to be reported on any of the Big Three (ABC, NBC, CBS) networks.

The July 7 Judicial Watch press release added: “The newly obtained records also reveal that the Obama DOJ wanted IRS employees who were going to testify to Congress to turn over documents to the DOJ before giving them to Congress. Records also detail how the Obama IRS gave the FBI 21 computer disks, containing 1.25 million pages of confidential IRS returns from 113,000 nonprofit social 501(c)(4) welfare groups  – or nearly every 501(c)(4) in the United States – as part of its prosecution effort.”

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Poll: 70 percent of Americans believe news media is intentionally biased

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file photo by Boyd Loving
BY EDDIE SCARRY | JULY 3, 2015 | 11:34 AM

Nearly three quarters of Americans believe the news media reports with an intentional bias, according to a new survey.

The 2015 State of the First Amendment Survey, conducted by the First Amendment Center and USA Today, was released Friday. It shows that only 24 percent of American adults agree with the statement that “overall, the news media tries to report the news without bias,” while 70 percent disagree.

When the question was asked last year, 41 percent agreed, a 17-point difference.

“These are discouraging results for those of us who have spent our careers in journalism,” Ken Paulson, president of the First Amendment Center, wrote in an op-ed for USA Today on Thursday. “In 23 years in newsrooms, I saw consistent and concerted efforts to get stories right. Clearly, the public’s not convinced.”

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/poll-70-percent-of-americans-believe-news-media-is-intentionally-biased/article/2567583

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Study Suggests Google Harms Consumers by Skewing Search Results

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Yelp-sponsored research examines Google’s practice of promoting its own search services

By TOM FAIRLESS
June 29, 2015 4:18 a.m. ET

BRUSSELS—New research by two U.S. academics suggests thatGoogle Inc. is harming Internet users and violating competition laws by skewing search results to favor its own services, a potentially significant twist in Europe’s long-running antitrust investigation of the U.S. search company.

The research combines statistical testing with detailed legal and economic analysis to examine the ramifications of Google’s practice of promoting its own specialized search services, such as for local restaurants or doctors, at the expense of rivals such as Yelp and TripAdvisor.

It was sponsored by Yelp, which has filed a complaint with European Union antitrust authorities over Google’s search practices. It was presented to EU regulators on Friday.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB11064341213388534269604581077241146083956