New York Times Warns Young Reporters-Be Careful of Those Evil Bloggers

Its really amazing how little the progressive mainstream media really understands. In yesterday's NY Times, media reporter Jeremy Peters issued a warning to young journalists in a front page article “Covering 2012, Youths on the Bus” The warning?  There are partisan bloggers out there who are out to embarrass mainstream journalists. By partisan bloggers Peters means conservative bloggers, because to the NY Times a liberal bias is the definition of fair coverage.

The point that the NY Times doesn't understand is  conservative bloggers are not out to embarrass mainstream journalists.  Our mission is to point out the bias of liberal journalists where necessary, to tell the truths much of the mainstream media miss, ignore or misrepresent.  Bloggers have taken over the traditional role of the mainstream media, we are the eyes and ears of the public, pointing out the smoke screen of liberal bias presented as truth by "news" organizations such as the Times.

The list of examples the NY Times uses on the article as proof the conservative blog world's desire to "embarrass" MSM reporters actually prove why conservative blogging watchdogs are necessary. The recounting of the incidents used as  support for their warning to young reporters are misleading and in some cases untruthful.

Helen Thomas, the trailblazing White House correspondent, saw her career come to an ignominious end last year after she made hostile comments about Israel to a rabbi who filmed the encounter and posted it on his personal Web site.

This is a story which I had a personal involvement with as I was the one who took the video and made it go viral.  Rabbi Nesenoff came to me only after the mainstream media refused to even look at the video. Within hours of my posting the story and video on my site, The Lid, here on  Big Journalism and Breitbart TV, and submitting the story to be linked by Instapundit, and Drudge, the Helen Thomas story was all over the mainstream media.  The  Thomas indecent was not big news because her comments were hostile to Israel, but because they were anti-Semitic.

Thomas' Antisemitism (which she continues to spew) needed to be revealed to show her readers that she had an obvious bias so they could put her writing in context. Personally, I do not believe that Thomas should have been fired, but  I do believe her readers should have had the opportunity to understand where she was coming from.

CNN fired Octavia Nasr, its senior editor for Middle East affairs, after she composed a 19-word Twitter message expressing sadness after the death of a Hezbollah leader.

Here too the issue is context. This  woman who  the gatekeeper of all CNN news from the Middle East.  Her tweet was not revealed as an embarrassment, it was revealed because it explained some of the biased Middle East coverage presented by CNN. Octavia Nasr was not fired because of a tweet, she was fired because as a sympathizer of the terrorist group Hezbollah, she could not be counted on to be a fair gatekeeper.

Some reporters have even found their personal e-mails leaked and used against them. David Weigel, now a columnist for Slate, was pressured into leaving his job at The Washington Post last year after he attacked conservatives in private messages that found their way to a right-leaning Web site, The Daily Caller.

JournoList was not about personal emails but correspondence with an on-line message board composed of major "Journalists"  and academics.  It was revealed was these people were colluding to skew the news to help the liberal point of view.  As for Weigel his job at WAPO was to be the "house conservative," and report on conservative news in a "gossipy" kind of way.  His Journalist letters proved he had a true disdain for the people he was writing about and had  misrepresented himself to his editors and to his readers.

The NY Times warning was correct in this respect,  there are many conservative bloggers (myself included) who are looking over the shoulder of the mainstream press. It remains an easy task because those liberal media organizations believe that we are looking to embarrass them personally.  To be honest, we don't care if they spend their days goofing off, smoking joints,  and/or sleeping with sheep. We are looking to see if their stories are truthful and fair. If they cover Michele Bachmann's religious beliefs, they should cover Barak Obama and Jeremiah Wright. If they publish Rick Perry's college transcripts, then dig up the president's also. When they find that one crazy person who may show up at a tea party rally of thousands, then they should also cover all of the Nazi signs at the Wisconsin Union protests.

And Be truthful !  Just in the three examples the NY Times used in their message to young reporters, it misrepresented the truth. Keep in mind the basic warning of the article, we are there with you, not to trip you up but to be quality control agents for the public, a role the mainstream media discarded a long time ago.

To paraphrase Harry Truman, "We don't embarrass them, we just point out the truth they are ignoring, and they find it embarrassing."

Why Does Media Matters Hate The Jews And Israel?

I get it! Media Matters for America (MMFA)  is being paid by George Soros and other progressive money-men to make sure the progressive point of view is protected.  That's why they work so hard to fight the few conservative media sources trying to tell the truth about progressive policies. What I don't understand is if they are so busy trying  to take down media sources such as Fox News and Breitbart's "Big" sites, why do they feel the need to spend so much time pushing anti-Semitic stereotypes such as "the Jews control the government and the media" and  creating anti-Israel spin to the latest news?

The really sick part of it is,  along with their campaign against the Jewish people and the Jewish State, MMFA falsely attacks conservatives on Jewish issues in an attempt to brand them as Jew haters. The year-long MMFA campaign trying to falsely label Glenn Beck as an Anti-Semite is well known and readers of The Lid have read of the MMFA trying to brand this blogger as a Jew basher (a charge I didn't hear about until hours later because it was made on the Sabbath), but MMFA has written inflammatory headlines to imply that there is  is a concerted effort by right-wingers to bash Jews. For example they wrote this about Jim Hoft, the Gateway Pundit.

Hoft The Latest Right-Wing Media Figure To Attack American Jews For Supporting Obama

What what the content of Jim's horrible attack on American Jews? It was a comment on a recent Gallup poll, which said that Jews were sticking with Obama:

Sad.
The destruction of Israel is at hand and Jewish Americans still march blindly behind Obama.

 That's all! Beyond that reader's of Jim's blog (as I am) will report that Gateway Pundit is strongly pro-Israel and regularly "has the back" of American Jews.

The truth is if you really want to see attacks on Israel and American Jews become a regular reader of MMFA. Here are just a few examples:

• 6/14/10 Media Matter's Senior Policy Fellow MJ Rosenberg created a piece for Huffington Post claiming that Helen Thomas'  was not being anti-Semitic when she told Israeli Jews to go back to Russia and Poland. I wonder what he thinks about Thomas' claim
  

  "We are owned by propagandists against the Arabs. There's no question about that. Congress, the White House, and Hollywood, Wall Street, are owned by the Zionists. No question in my opinion. They put their money where there mouth is…We're being pushed into a wrong direction in every way.

• 7/12/10 An  article written by Lara Friedman, of Americans for Peace Now, and Isaac Luria from J Street (both groups regularly demonize Israel) we learned that the years of Hamas rocket attacks against civilian towns in the Negev were Israel's fault (because the left Gaza),  Israel should negotiate with HAMAS, and Israel doesn't need to be recognized as the Jewish state (a key for  peace).

• 8/16/10 Criticized Fox News for having Bill Kristol on the air. Kristol's offense was forming a pro-Israel PAC.  Funny thing is, you never heard them complain about MSNBC having Al Sharpton on as a regular.  Sharpton incited two anti-Semitic pogroms in NY which lead to a total of nine deaths. If MMFA truly cared about conflict of interest, why wouldn't they write about President Obama receiving foreign policy advice from Samantha Power who has called for a US invasion of Israel.

• 1/28/11 Promoted the anti-Semitic meme that Jews control foreign policy. Senior Fellow MJ Rosenberg demonstrated why he defended Helen Thomas as not being anti-Semitic...he  echoed some of her claims. Using the term Israel Lobby  (its more PC than "Those Dammed Jews) MMFA claimed it was that foreign policy controlling lobby that caused the Egyptian uprising.
  

  If one needs additional proof that the "pro-Israel" lobby and the policies it dictates to US policymakers are bad for both the U.S. and Israel, look no further than what is happening in Egypt.
  
  
  The regime that the Israeli government and its U.S. lobby have depended upon to enforce the status quo is going down. It is not clear when, but it's going to be soon, much sooner than anyone ever anticipated. And you can be sure that any democratic government that takes Mubarak's place is not going to play the role of America's (let alone Israel's) enforcer in the Middle East.

  And later in the same article the MMFA writer implies the Jews control the media:
  

  I am often accused of harping on the lobby's baleful influence. I plead guilty. But it's my obligation because (1) I know from personal experience — 15 years on Capitol Hill and four at AIPAC — how it operates, (2) I know how little it really cares about Israel, and (3) I am free to tell the truth about it. If I worked in the mainstream media or in the U.S. government, I wouldn't be.

• 2/15/11 and 2/17/11 Promoted falsehood that the Muslim Brotherhood does not want to attack Israel.  Forget for a moment that the terrorist organization Hamas was created by the Muslim Brotherhood, since the Egyptian uprisings started there has been many examples of different Muslim Brotherhood figures attacking Israel. For example On Russian television, one Brotherhood leader, Rashad al-Bayoumi,  said that when they came to power they will abolish the treaty altogether. Another, former spokesman Doctor Kamel Helbaoui, explained how they might get out of it. 

• 5/11/11 Senior Fellow MJ with anti-Israel propaganda again.  He says it doesn't matter if Hamas recognizes Israel as long as Hamas recognizes the 1949 Armistice lines.But why does it matter whether Hamas recognizes Israel or not, so long as it agrees to permanently end terror attacks against Israel? Who needs its recognition?  Per his usual style of half truths, MJ omits the fact that Hamas continues to promise the destruction of the "Zionist entity." In other words they are cool with a State called Israel, as long as it is a Muslim State Of Israel.

• 5/20/11 MMFA's Rosenberg promotes the anti-Semitic meme of a "Dual Loyalty" of American Jews, calling critics of Obama's May 2011 Middle-East Address "Israeli-Firsters."
  

  But he failed. Arabs saw the speech as a bunch of empty words. And the Israeli firsters went ballistic. Why? Because of one paragraph.
  
  
  The president said: 

  The United States believes that negotiations should result in two states, with permanent Palestinian borders with Israel, Jordan, and Egypt, and permanent Israeli borders with Palestine. We believe the borders of Israel and Palestine should be based on the 1967 lines with mutually agreed swaps, so that secure and recognized borders are established for both states. The Palestinian people must have the right to govern themselves, and reach their full potential, in a sovereign and contiguous state.

While I disagree with the official MMFA interpretation of Obama's speech, they have every right to have their opinion.  What is disgusting is their challenge to the patriotism of the Jews who disagree with Barack Obama's Middle East policy.

MMFA is quick to bash anybody who uses a Hitler reference (except for George Soros), and I am not by any means saying they are a bunch of Nazis, but they do use a lot of the same themes.  MMFA claims the Jews control the Media and American foreign policy, in Mein Kampf, Hitler introduced to Nazi ideology "the idea of the Jews as an evil race struggling for world domination."

The MMFA charges that American Jews who criticize Obama are "Israeli-firsters." Hitler said:

The struggle for world domination will be fought entirely between us, between Germans and Jews.....Even when we have driven the Jew out of Germany, he remains our world enemy  (Rauschning,Hitler Speaks,p. 234)

Understand, there is no claim here that MMFA has any intention of promoting another Holocaust against the Jewish people. What the argument is that the progressive organization will do and say anything to protect President Obama.  In many cases the lack of a factual argument forces their writers to rely on old stereo-types to sell their point.

It is easy for MMFA to claim that the statements provided above as evidence  were not anti-Semitic, after all its Sugar Daddy George Soros is a Jewish Holocaust survivor and all of the MMFA writers mentioned are at least Jewish-born and I assume still Jewish. That of course is an easy out, "some of their best friends...."

One example maybe, but there's lots more examples of MMFA use of anti-Semitic themes and the twisting of facts about Israel.  I would not claim to know if the Soros-funded group is anti-Semitic, its impossible to look into their hearts, but the constant attacks on American Jews made in its name,  it is clear that MMFA leadership must know about and endorse those attacks.  They are just too numerous to ignore.







gg

OMG! Helen Thomas Wants Back into the White House Press Corps

Sheeee's Baaaaaaaaaaaaack! Or at least she wants to be back.   Helen Thomas made an appearance at the Busboys & Poets bookstore in Washington, D.C.  yesterday, and said she is ready for a comeback. She wants to return to the White House briefing room.

“Nothing can replace being there when you’re a reporter,” Thomas said. “Seeing with your own eyes — no, nothing can replace that. I was very lucky to cover history for so long.”

Thomas forced out of her job last June when a video first seen on this website came to light, where she told the Israeli Jews to "get the hell out of Palestine and go back to Germany and Poland.  

Anas “Andy” Shallal, the owner of Busboys & Poets and moderator for her appearance Sunday, followed up by asking her if she had reapplied for those credentials. According to Thomas, she said she had but hadn’t gotten an official response and assumed she had been denied.

“In a back way,” Thomas said. “I’ve been denied – I think so, I never heard.”

The words made to Rabbi Nesenoff last  June was even the worst of it.  Just a few months later in a speech made to a Muslim Anti-Bias conference Thomas used almost every anti-Semitic stereotype in the book.

"I paid the price for that," said Thomas, a longtime White House correspondent. "But it was worth it, to speak the truth. The Zionists have to understand that's their country, too. Palestinians were there long before any European Zionists."

Thomas claimed that "You can not say anything (critical) about Israel in this country."

That was the nicest thing Thomas said all night. In her speech about about discrimination against Arabs she launched into an anti-Semitic tirade about how those rich Jews control America

In a speech that drew a standing ovation, Thomas talked about "the whole question of money involved in politics."

"We are owned by propagandists against the Arabs. There's no question about that. Congress, the White House, and Hollywood, Wall Street, are owned by the Zionists. No question in my opinion. They put their money where there mouth is…We're being pushed into a wrong direction in every way.

It was almost as if Thomas was reading directly from the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, at an anti-Bias conference!!!

During her interview and speech, Thomas often used the term "Zionists" negatively, saying that Dennis Ross, President Obama's adviser to the Middle East, was a Zionist.

"Obama, he puts in charge for the Arab world a Zionist like Dennis Ross…You don't put a Zionist in charge of the Muslim world in the White House."

Below is the video of the Speech.



There are some people who believe that any criticism of Israel is Antisemitism. That belief is as ignorant as Antisemitism itself. There is however, a great deal of crossover between hatred of Israel and hatred of the Jews. To find out what people really mean you need to examine the words they use. Make no mistake about it, Thomas uttered the word "Zionists" but her words showed that she meant the word "Jews."  What Thomas said in December and again in her Playboy interview, that Congress, the White House, Hollywood and Wall Street are owned by Zionists, was a repetition of the anti-Semitic stereotypes that have been used for centuries to incite hatred of Jews. Ms. Thomas is nothing but a bigoted hater and that was the reason she was fired, not because she hates Israel (although most of the progressive media is anti-Israel). Thomas was canned because she is a low-life hater, an anti-Semite and she should not be allowed back into the White House press corps, nor should any other bigot.

The Revenge of the Nerds: Breitbart Vindicated Again

The most unusual part of Congressman Weiner's mea culpa press conference today occurred before Weiner came to the stage.

In New York pimping his new book, Andrew Breitbart showed up at the presser and was immediately mobbed by reporters asking about today's exclusive pictures of Weiner on Big Journalism and Big Government which seems to have pushed Weiner into admitting the truth.

Watching Breitbart take Anthony Weiner's Stage and speak into the microphone Weiner rented not only showed how far Breitbart has come, but how far citizen journalism had come.

After ten days of being vilified by left wing media reporters, those same reporters were tripping all over their underwear trying to ask him questions about the story they had doubted until today.  Not only that, but at the behest of the same reporters who trashed him personally and his stories, Breitbart stood where Weiner was about to stand and demanded an apology from the slanderers in the press,  and from Congressman Weiner himself.

Andrew shouldn't hold his breath waiting for their apology (and he knows that). You see,   the progressive agenda-driven mainstream media looks at Andrew Breitbart and sees the devil himself.

Breitbart and his team of editors and contributors (of which I am one) are everything that the press hates.   We find the facts that either they don't find or they choose to ignore, and we reveal them to the public. As the guy whose name is on all the sites, along with being the content director and a reporter, Breitbart's job is to publicly take the body slams directed at all the writers including himself.

Let's face it, Breitbart's "Big" sites not only shoot down the progressive media's political idols, but they make the press seem incompetent for not reporting those stories themselves.

Just look at the some of the major stories broken on a Breitbart site, the ACORN Scandal "pimp and hooker" videos, the misunderstood Shirley Sherrod video, the Pigford Scandal and my personal favorite the Helen Thomas "Tell the Jews to go back to Germany" video.  With the exception of the Sherrod video all of those stories should have been discovered by the mainstream media first.  ACORN already had a long history of criminal charges, the "pigford-related" government settlement was big news, but the story behind it was ignored by the media, and after I posted the Helen Thomas story on Big Journalism and Breitbart TV, friends in the media told me they weren't surprised,  Ms Thomas had said similar things to them but it was a private conversation and she was one of their own. 

Most in the press will never understand why we continue to find stories like the Weiner story or all of those others reported first on a Breitbart sites.  Just chalk it up to the Revenge of the Nerds.

For those of you who haven't seen that movie, there is a scene near the film's end when one of the nerds wore  a mask while being  intimate with one of the hot "cool girls," Betty Childs, who was dating one of the colleges football stars.

Betty Childs,  [blissfully] Oh, Stan. You were wonderful. You did things to me you've never done before.  [Lewis takes off his mask-Betty gasps] Ahhh! You're that NERD!

Lewis: Yeah.

Betty Childs, [blissfully] Oh, you were wonderful. Are all nerds as good as you?

Lewis: Yes.

Betty Childs, Pi-Delta-Pi: How come?

Lewis: 'Cause all Jocks ever think about is sports, all we ever think about is sex.

In a way we are like those nerds, that is why Breitbart, his editors and contributors constantly come up with stories you will never find in the mainstream media.  'Cause all those reporters ever think about is their progressive agenda, all we ever think about is finding the truth.

As Andrew Klavan wrote on PJ Tatler:

Watching Breitbart crush Weiner beneath his heel like an insignificant weiner, it occurs to me that Breitbart’s genius – and he really is an information genius – consists almost entirely of two pieces of knowledge:  one, leftists will lie knowing the media will back them and two, the media will back them.  With those two principles, he manages to make utter fools of both lying leftists and their corrupt mainstream media cronies again and again.  Not to mention again.  It’s wonderful.

It certainly was wonderful because, not surprisingly, Andrew Breitbart and the "Big" sites were vindicated. At the same time his editors and those who contribute to his sites were also vindicated.  And for a medium-sized blogging nerd trying to scrape a living out of a keyboard and a desire to find the truth...that makes me one of the "cool kids."