Tag: media bias

Posted on

Americans Trust Trump Administration More Than News Media in New Poll

Trump

Only 39 percent call media “truthful” in Emerson College survey, compared to 49 percent for new White House

Brian Flood | February 9, 2017 @ 8:37 AM

at the Trump administration is “truthful,” while only 39 percent feel that way about the news media. Worse, for the so-called “opposition party,” 53 percent of those surveyed described the media as “untruthful.”

The poll, released on Tuesday, also showed that Americans are divided on Trump’s performance so far — 48 percent of registered voters approve of the job that Trump is doing, compared to 47 percent who disapprove.

https://www.thewrap.com/new-poll-says-president-trump-is-more-trusted-than-untruthful-news-media/

Posted on

Errors From The Press Are Piling Up In The Opening Weeks Of The Trump Administration

Dont_believe _the liberal-Media _theridgewoodblog

 

ALEX PFEIFFER

Journalists can’t seem to get their stories straight in the opening weeks of the Trump administration, whether in tweets or in articles where falsehoods have been spread almost daily.

The mistakes have not just been from newer liberal news outlets such The Huffington Post or BuzzFeed, but from legacy media like Reuters, The Washington Post, and The New York Times.

What follows are several botched stories or conflicting reports since President Trump took office.

Read more: https://dailycaller.com/2017/02/04/errors-from-the-press-are-piling-up-in-the-opening-weeks-of-the-trump-administration/#ixzz4XqMUEpbm

Posted on

WHY IT’LL BE HARD FOR TRUMP TO SURPASS OBAMA’S RECORD OF CHILLING PRESS FREEDOM

Obama-Golf

‘Folks like Rush Limbaugh, some commentators on Fox News, that hot house … has been harmful to the country’

Many in the mainstream media are reacting with righteous indignation over comments from a senior Trump adviser suggesting the administration views the traditional media as an opponent. But if we’re to take these apostles of press freedom seriously, they should first explain why the Trump Administration is worse than the Obama Administration.

After all, the Obama Administration literally tried imprisoning an uncooperative journalist, monitored journalists’ every digital move, and “hammered” at least one challenging reporter with IRS audits.

Let’s rewind the tape.

The Obama Administration began with lofty promises of being “the most transparent administration in history.” Instead it ended up setting a record, by the Associated Press’s count, for denying the most Freedom of Information Act requests.

As the administration’s popularity began tumbling early into its first year, the Obama White House declared war on Fox News. The White director of communications, Anita Dunn, warned they would henceforth treat Fox News “like an opponent,” insisting, “we don’t need to pretend that this is the way that legitimate news organizations behave.”

The Obama administration made good on that threat. Soon thereafter, the administration sought to deny Fox News’ participation in executive branch news-making events — which only failed after other networks admirably refused to participate if Fox News were excluded.

As you’ll see in the montage above, President Obama blamed Fox News and talk radio for virtually every problem his administration encountered, warning in his waning days that these “domestic propagandists” were far more damaging to America than any interference from hostile powers like Russia.
https://news.grabien.com/story-why-it-will-be-hard-trump-surpass-obamas-record-chilling-pre

Posted on

Gannett Laying off 141 Employees at North Jersey Media group

bergen record
file photo by Boyd Loving
January 24,2017
the staff of the Ridgewood blog

Ridgewood NJ, Gannett owner of the Bergen Record is issuing layoff notices to 141 employees in a second major round of job cuts since it purchased North Jersey Media group.

Many long-time readers of the Ridgewood blog know there was not much love loss between this blog and the former owners of the Bergen Record, the Borgs.  The Ridgewood blog was frequently the target of their ire.

The Record like most of New Jersey’s local media worked in collusion with the far left and seemed to support every new tax, and regulation chasing every business out of the state along with most retirees and high earning tax payers.

While we hate to see people lose their job, we know the same consideration would not be given to us.

The company said Monday the cuts will take place across its North Jersey Media Group, which includes The Record, the Herald News of Passaic County and NorthJersey.com

The McLean, Virginia-based Gannett Co. Inc. has previously eliminated over 100 jobs at the newspaper group right after purchasing the papers last summer.

The company says North Jersey Media Group is reorganizing to meet the growing digital demands of its readers and advertisers.

Posted on

Trump Spokesman Accuses Media of False Inaugural Reporting

trump

Trump inauguration ratings second biggest in 36 years
https://ew.com/tv/2017/01/21/trump-inauguration-ratings/

by
Justin Sink
and
Margaret Talev
January 21, 2017, 6:02 PM EST January 21, 2017, 6:26 PM EST

Spicer insists that inauguration crowds larger than reported
Photographs show far fewer people on Mall than Spicer claimed

Donald Trump’s press secretary, Sean Spicer, took to the White House briefing room for the first time on Saturday to lash out at news organizations and accuse them of false reporting about the size of the crowd at Trump’s inauguration the day before.

“This was the largest audience to ever witness an inauguration, period, both in person and around the world,” Spicer said. “These attempts to lessen the enthusiasm of the inauguration are shameful and wrong.”

He took no questions from reporters and he did not say specifically how many people the White House believes attended the inauguration. He said three large sections of the Mall that each held at least 200,000 people were “full when the president took the oath of office.”

He alleged that some photos of the inauguration were “intentionally framed in a way” that minimized the crowd, without providing examples or evidence.

https://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2017-01-21/trump-spokesman-accuses-media-of-false-inauguration-reporting

Posted on

Socialism for the Uninformed

Bernie Sanders

By Dr. Thomas Sowell

May 31, 2016  5 Min Read

Socialism sounds great. It has always sounded great. And it will probably always continue to sound great. It is only when you go beyond rhetoric, and start looking at hard facts, that socialism turns out to be a big disappointment, if not a disaster.

While throngs of young people are cheering loudly for avowed socialist Bernie Sanders, socialism has turned oil-rich Venezuela into a place where there are shortages of everything from toilet paper to beer, where electricity keeps shutting down, and where there are long lines of people hoping to get food, people complaining that they cannot feed their families.

With national income going down, and prices going up under triple-digit inflation in Venezuela, these complaints are by no means frivolous. But it is doubtful if the young people cheering for Bernie Sanders have even heard of such things, whether in Venezuela or in other countries around the world that have turned their economies over to politicians and bureaucrats to run.

The anti-capitalist policies in Venezuela have worked so well that the number of companies in Venezuela is now a fraction of what it once was. That should certainly reduce capitalist “exploitation,” shouldn’t it?

But people who attribute income inequality to capitalists exploiting workers, as Karl Marx claimed, never seem to get around to testing that belief against facts — such as the fact that none of the Marxist regimes around the world has ever had as high a standard of living for working people as there is in many capitalist countries.

Facts are seldom allowed to contaminate the beautiful vision of the left. What matters to the true believers are the ringing slogans, endlessly repeated.

https://www.creators.com/read/thomas-sowell/05/16/socialism-for-the-uninformed

Posted on

Reader says News Papers are Dying

Bergen record Newspaper-vending-machine2

file photo by Boyd Loving

The NY Times will likely always exist in some form, but it is fading in relevance. It’s dying for a number of reasons, but mostly, it’s dying because the trend in how people consume news is rapidly changing. It’s no different to record companies and record stores managing the music business. The Times keeps trying to sell itself through online subscriptions but people simply won’t pay a cent for it. News is easily available elsewhere for free. Same deal with lesser outlets, like The Record. The other main reason is its content. The liberal bias might work on the Upper West Side, but not in Preoria. America is predominantly right-of-center, and The NYT, ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, and a whole host of what’s known as the mainstream media is losing market share and dying.

Posted on

New York Times Will Vacate 8 Floors In Its HQ To Generate “Significant Rental Revenue”

NYT_theridgewoodblog

by Tyler Durden
Dec 16, 2016 11:00 AM

Remember when The NYT reported that its ad hoc campaign to boost revenue by selling subscriptions in response to the vicious back and forth with Donald Trump, was said to be a smashing success? Perhaps it was subscriptions for the crossword puzzle because it appears the monetary success was not smashing enough, and according to a just released note from executives Arthur Sulzberger and Mark Thompson, the newspaper will vacate at least eight floors in its iconic building, allowing it to “generate significant rental income” because it is “frankly, too expensive to occupy this many floors when we don’t truly need them.”

Maybe the lesson here is that when the newspaper business model no longer works, one can just pivot into a REIT?

The remaining staff will be consolidated on the remaining, redesigned floors in a “more dynamic, modern and open workplace, one that is better suited to the moment.”

Furthermore, the NYT publisher and CEO will lose their corner offices, which they call a “vestige from a different era” and will “introduce more team rooms and common spaces.”

It is unclear if NYT would distribute pink slips as part of the cost-cutting effort, however as the letter adds, “in the end, these changes will impact every employee at 620 Eighth Ave. In the near term, we will have to move about 400 employees out of the building to nearby office space while the first phase of work is completed. We expect that group, which includes parts of marketing, technology, the newsroom, news services, corporate finance and print products and services pre-press operations, to move in the first quarter and return by the end of 2017. Your manager will notify you if your position is affected by this temporary move. We understand and appreciate the disruption this will inevitably cause and we will do everything in our power to mitigate it.”

https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-12-16/new-york-time-will-vacate-8-floors-its-headquarters-generate-significant-rental-reve

Posted on

Who’s “Fake News” is this anyway ?

Brain Williams

Here’s some fake “mainstream” news stories for you to consider:
.
“The Zapruder film:” frames of video footage of JFK’s assassination were reversed, making it appear that Kennedy’s head lurched the opposite direction, spawning a million conspiracy theories about multiple gun men, the grassy knoll, etc.
“The October Surprise:” Reagan supposedly sent Bush 41 to Iran to prevent the hostages from being released until he was elected president. Bush never went to Iran, and his whereabouts on the supposed dates were very public.
“Bush 43 snorted Coke”… according to a Texas inmate whose only known encounter with Bush was when Bush refused to pardon him.
“Laura Bush had an abortion.”
“Proof Bush avoided the draft” was based on a letter publicized by Dan Rather on 60 minutes that was such an obvious forgery, TV viewers spotted fifteen proofs of forgery from their living room couches.
“Jet fuel doesn’t burn hot enough to destroy the Twin Towers” It doesn’t burn hot enough to melt steel, but it burns plenty hot enough to weaken it. Ever take metal shop, anyone?
“Mad Max Beyond Superdome” No, after Hurricane Katrina, the Louisiana stadium was not filled of desperate people resorting to cannibalism.
“Blame for Katrina” The Bush administration had attempted to use federal funds to rebuild the dykes and levees in Louisiana, but was blocked by local Democrat politicians.
“Tar balls in the Gulf coast” were an entirely natural phenomenon. If they were affected at all by the oil spill disaster it was because there were fewer oil rigs to collect natural seepage, which leak far more oil every year than the oil spillage.
Most contentiously, “Project Veritas” misled America by editing footage to make it appear that Planned Parenthood sold baby parts, PP also arranged to keep child prostitution secret, NPR negotiated with reporters undercover as Islamicists, Clinton staffers coaching on how to commit vote fraud, … except, oh, yeah… Project Veritas released the entire unedited footage with the footage that had been merely edited for time, just like every news story based on recorded footage since the dawn of man. This is contentious, because I suppose it’s partly subjective whether the fact that a PP employee went in the back room to discuss a proposal to smuggle child prostitutes with her manager for several minutes amounts to exculpatory evidence; “obviously” it demonstrates some hesitance.
And some less important, but outrageous ones:
Dateline NBC demonstrated that GM minivans were prone to burn when struck in a collision, but didn’t include “if you overfill them with gas, and you stick bottle rockets where the gas is flowing out of them.”
A Food Lion was busted with old meat in the meat fridge… moments after it was put there by the network reporter who busted them.
The Washington Post accuses dozens of “right-wing” news sites and aggregators of spreading anonymous Russian-sourced fake news stories they found on the web and failed to verify … based on some anonymous probably Ukrainian-sourced fake news stories they found on the web and failed to verify.

Posted on

Liberals’ fake news panic proves they can’t handle the truth

dan rather

dan rather the founder of fake news

By Michael Goodwin

December 11, 2016

Hillary Clinton rails against an “epidemic” of fake news, Lyin’ Brian Williams hunts for untruths, and wacky Dan Rather is alarmed at pretty much everything. Not to be outdone, The New York Times spies a nation soul-searching for truth in a sea of lies.

Allow me to help our mendacious doomsayers, whose frightfulness conjures images of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. Step One is to get their heads out of their own posteriors.

Step Two is to locate the source of their fear and loathing, and they don’t need a shrink for that: It’s Donald Trump’s resounding victory. Because they can’t handle the truth, they are turning their tantrums into a witch hunt and wild conspiracy theories. The sudden fascination with fake news and Russian hacking reveals only their rage against reality.

Yes, it’s true some Web sites carry stories cut from whole cloth. There are also well-regarded newspapers that treat their own biases as holy writ.

Recall that the Times and its co-conspirators created a fictional Trump held aloft by goose-stepping brownshirts and toothless bigots rising from the swamps. They aimed to scare the country into supporting Clinton by turning their front pages into editorial pages, where “straight news” became an oxymoron.

https://nypost.com/2016/12/11/liberals-fake-news-panic-show-they-cant-handle-the-truth/

Posted on

Washington Post Story on “Fake News” Fake

meet-the-pr-firm-that-helped-vladimir-putin-troll-the-entire-country

Washington Post Appends “Russian Propaganda Fake News” Story, Admits It May Be Fake

by Tyler Durden
Dec 8, 2016 12:19 PM

In the latest example why the “mainstream media” is facing a historic crisis of confidence among its readership, facing unprecedented blowback following Craig Timberg November 24 Washington Post story “Russian propaganda effort helped spread ‘fake news’ during election, experts say”, on Wednesday a lengthy editor’s note appeared on top of the original article in which the editor not only distances the WaPo from the “experts” quoted in the original article whose “work” served as the basis for the entire article (and which became the most read WaPo story the day it was published) but also admits the Post could not “vouch for the validity of PropOrNot’s finding regarding any individual media outlet”, in effect admitting the entire story may have been, drumroll “fake news” and conceding the Bezos-owned publication may have engaged in defamation by smearing numerous websites – Zero Hedge included – with patently false and unsubstantiated allegations.

It was the closest the Washington Post would come to formally retracting the story, which has now been thoroughly discredited not only by outside commentators, but by its own editor.

The apended note in question:

Editor’s Note: The Washington Post on Nov. 24 published a story on the work of four sets of researchers who have examined what they say are Russian propaganda efforts to undermine American democracy and interests. One of them was PropOrNot, a group that insists on public anonymity, which issued a report identifying more than 200 websites that, in its view, wittingly or unwittingly published or echoed Russian propaganda. A number of those sites have objected to being included on PropOrNot’s list, and some of the sites, as well as others not on the list, have publicly challenged the group’s methodology and conclusions. The Post, which did not name any of the sites, does not itself vouch for the validity of PropOrNot’s findings regarding any individual media outlet, nor did the article purport to do so. Since publication of The Post’s story, PropOrNot has removed some sites from its list.

https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-12-07/washington-post-apends-russian-propaganda-story-admits-it-may-be-fake

Posted on

Jon Stewart Goes Off: Obama ‘Terrible for Press Freedom;’ Left’s Race-Baiting ‘Has to Stop’

Jon_Stewart_theridgewoodblog

by JEROME HUDSON3 Dec 20161,432

Comedian Jon Stewart sat down for a lengthy post-election conversationWednesday with New York Times editor Chris Smith and dished on all aspects of politics in the era of Trump.

“It is odd to be in a position of knowing that the leader of the free world tweeted that you were a pussy at 1:30 in the morning,” the former Daily Show host said of President-elect Donald Trump.

Stewart was set to discuss his new book, The Daily Show: An Oral History, but spent most of the evening airing his thoughts on the presidential election, why Obama was bad for freedom of the press and Hispanics, and how corporate media helps divide America.

“Not everybody that voted for Trump is a racist,” Stewart said, mimicking remarks he made in November. “I don’t give a fuck what any of you say to me. You can yell it at me, you can tweet it at me. They’re not all racists. Or they’re not giving tacit support to a racist system. We all give tacit support to exploitative systems as long as they don’t affect us that badly.”

https://www.breitbart.com/big-hollywood/2016/12/03/jon-stewart-goes-off-obama-terrible-for-press-freedom-lefts-race-baiting-has-to-stop/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social

Posted on

My Unhappy Life as a Climate Heretic

abominable-snowman-520169

My research was attacked by thought police in journalism, activist groups funded by billionaires and even the White House.

By
ROGER PIELKE JR.
Updated Dec. 2, 2016 7:04 p.m. ET

Much to my surprise, I showed up in the WikiLeaks releases before the election. In a 2014 email, a staffer at the Center for American Progress, founded by John Podesta in 2003, took credit for a campaign to have me eliminated as a writer for Nate Silver’s FiveThirtyEight website. In the email, the editor of the think tank’s climate blog bragged to one of its billionaire donors, Tom Steyer: “I think it’s fair [to] say that, without Climate Progress, Pielke would still be writing on climate change for 538.”

WikiLeaks provides a window into a world I’ve seen up close for decades: the debate over what to do about climate change, and the role of science in that argument. Although it is too soon to tell how the Trump administration will engage the scientific community, my long experience shows what can happen when politicians and media turn against inconvenient research—which we’ve seen under Republican and Democratic presidents.

I understand why Mr. Podesta—most recently Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman—wanted to drive me out of the climate-change discussion. When substantively countering an academic’s research proves difficult, other techniques are needed to banish it. That is how politics sometimes works, and professors need to understand this if we want to participate in that arena.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/my-unhappy-life-as-a-climate-heretic-1480723518

Posted on

ESPN Loses Over a Half Million Subscribers

Boycott NFL #boycottNFL

The Nielsen estimates revealed that ESPN lost 555,000 subscribers during the last month.

In other words, ESPN essentially lost the city of Albuquerque, New Mexico. This, coming on the heels of last month, the worst month in ESPN history, where the network lost621,000 subscribers.

In the last two months, ESPN has lost 1,176,000 subscribers, a subscriber loss nearly the size of the city of Dallas, Texas. ESPN currently has just over 88 million domestic subscribers. In 2013, a mere three years ago, ESPN had 99 million subscribers. That’s right, in the last three years, ESPN lost somewhere in the neighborhood of ten million subscribers, the rough equivalent of the combined populations of New York City and Phoenix.

https://www.breitbart.com/sports/2016/11/30/espn-loses-half-million-subscribers/

Posted on

Washington Post Disgracefully Promotes a McCarthyite Blacklist From a New, Hidden, and Very Shady Group

black list

Ben NortonGlenn Greenwald
November 26 2016, 1:17 p.m.

THE WASHINGTON POST ON THURSDAY NIGHT promoted the claims of a new, shadowy organization that smears dozens of U.S. news sites that are critical of U.S. foreign policy as being “routine peddlers of Russian propaganda.” The article by reporter Craig Timberg – headlined “Russian propaganda effort helped spread ‘fake news’ during election, experts say” – cites a report by a new, anonymous website calling itself “PropOrNot,” which claims that millions of Americans have been deceived this year in a massive Russian “misinformation campaign.”

The group’s list of Russian disinformation outlets includes WikiLeaks and the Drudge Report, as well as Clinton-critical left-wing websites such as Truthout, Black Agenda Report, Truthdig and Naked Capitalism, as well as libertarian venues such as Antiwar.com and the Ron Paul Institute.

This Post report was one of the most widely circulated political news articles on social media over the last 48 hours, with dozens, perhaps hundreds, of U.S. journalists and pundits with large platforms hailing it as an earth-shattering exposé. It was the most-read piece on the entire Post website after it was published on Friday.

https://theintercept.com/2016/11/26/washington-post-disgracefully-promotes-a-mccarthyite-blacklist-from-a-new-hidden-and-very-shady-group/