CBS’s iconic 60 Minutes has had plenty of scandals and embarrassments in its long 57-year history, most notably the fake-but-accurate Dan Rather mess. Yet never has it found itself in greater disrepute than in 2024.
Donald Trump, for good reason, recently declined to join 60 Minutes for its traditional election-year in-depth interviews of the two presidential candidates. Why?
Read More
A string of polls from legacy outfits has pointed to a shift toward former President Donald Trump in most of the major battleground states while Vice President Harris maintains a national lead, but some analysts see a critical disconnect between state and national polling that could suggest the Republican is on even stronger footing.
Harris currently leads Trump by 2.0% in the RealClearPolitics polling average, with 49.1% support to his 47.1%. That figure includes a Rasmussen Reports survey showing Trump with a two-point lead, a Reuters/Ipsos survey showing Harris up two, a Morning Consult poll with Harris up five, a Yahoo News poll with the race tied, and a number of other surveys. A New York Times/Siena College survey showed Harris up three points.
Read More
As the nation reels from a second cowardly attack on former President Donald Trump’s life, it is increasingly clear the radical left refuses to tone down their hateful rhetoric against Trump even if it threatens his life repeatedly. The American people, however, want to put Trump back in charge of the two most pivotal issues facing the country – the economy and immigration.
Just five days after the contentious debate between former President Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris blatantly exposed the mainstream media’s allegiance to the radical left, Trump fended off yet another attack on his life. On Sunday Trump was on what should have been a secure West Palm Beach golf course, only to be threatened once again by a radical extremist with a weapon.
Read More
On Thursday, Vice President Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) finally took questions from reporters after being criticized for dodging the media for nearly three weeks after becoming the Democratic nominee for President of the United States.
As Fox News reports, Harris spoke to journalists on the tarmac at the Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County Airport after a rally in Michigan. Her unplanned press gaggle took place after former President Donald Trump held an hour-long press conference at his Mar-a-Lago estate in the early afternoon.
Read More
The mainstream media is running with the headline that the latest Fox News poll shows Former President Trump two points behind President Joe Biden – a difference well within the margin of error – but the poll also reveals an edge for Trump on a majority of electoral issues. In addition, a majority of voters say the race in November will be about the issues, not about the candidates, a finding that could significantly favor Trump.
The poll does show Trump has lost a modest amount of ground since his conviction earlier this month, however, he remains up significantly with key groups of swing voters compared to 2020. The data continues to show Biden in a deep deficit with minorities and young voters but clawing his way back up with older voters and whites.
Read More
The decline of the mainstream media continued in the first month of 2024, with over 500 journalists being fired in January alone.
As Politico reports, there were 538 layoffs in the month of January in the media industry, including jobs in print, broadcast, and digital media. The report from Challenger, Gray, & Christmas suggests that the trend first seen in 2023 will not be slowing down in 2024. Last year, there were 3,087 layoffs in the news industry, which marked the highest annual total since the 16,060 firings in the year 2020, which was primarily due to the Chinese Coronavirus pandemic.
Read More
Election integrity champion Gina Swoboda was elected chair of the Arizona Republican Party on Saturday, prompting negative coverage from the mainstream media. Endorsed by both Donald Trump and Kari Lake, she won the election in a landslide over another MAGA conservative, Arizona Corporation Commissioner Jim O’Connor, but The New York Times portrayed the election as chaotic and evidence of the party’s “yawning ideological divide.”
The article said Swoboda “runs a nonprofit group that has falsely claimed to have found huge discrepancies in voting records in a number of states.” The article linked to a piece by ProPublica which reported on the work of Swoboda’s Voter Reference Foundation (VoteRef). VoteRef discovered discrepancies between the number of voters and the number of ballots cast in numerous states. ProPublica cited objections to the report from several election officials as evidence the work was invalid.
Read More
Foundation for Freedom Online Executive Director Mike Benz breaks down exactly how Big Tech, Big Government, and the Deep State are working together to impose speech restrictions on the people of the United States and across the globe.
Read More
After reading my commentary about my self-inflicted ordeal of listening to NPR for a month, a friend noted this station’s “reports” bear no resemblance to “objective reality.” Can so many Americans, asked my correspondent, believe that the U.S. is full of oppressed transgendered who must take up arms to protect themselves against “anti-trans rhetoric?” Do NPR listeners really think American blacks are suffering from “systemic white racism,” and that only increased government control can protect them from being shot on the streets by white racists?
Read More
Tucker Carlson reportedly wants to host his own GOP presidential debate. The idea struck a chord with many people. It would be must-see TV for the most popular commentator on the Right to grill presidential hopefuls before a national audience. Republican voters would also prefer if those asking the candidates questions were not liberal reporters.
With Carlson now visible primarily on Twitter, it looks like he will have the opportunity to host the debate on the social media giant. According to the Washington Post, “Carlson wants to moderate his own GOP candidate forum, outside of the usual strictures of the Republican National Committee debate system.”
Read More
On its face, there wasn’t anything unusual about the email that landed last week in the press office of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.
“Background interview request from the Washington Post,” read the subject line that summarized the industry-standard process whereby information is shared with reporters under pre-negotiated terms, usually anonymity. When sanctioned by a politician or their team, it is called “going on background” to shape and broaden a story with additional facts and contexts but without direct attribution. When not sanctioned, well, then that is just called leaking.
Read More
Axios agreed to sell to Cox Enterprises for an estimated $525 million, the companies announced on Monday.
Cox Enterprises, a global media company with 50,000 employees, is Axios’ most recent lead investor.
Axios CEO and co-founder Jim VandeHei celebrated the deal.
“This is great for Axios, for our shareholders and American journalism. It allows us to think and operate generationally, with a like-minded partner — and build something great and durable that lives long after we are gone,” he said, Axios reported.
Read More
It is not often that two contrasting mainstream media events reveal so completely the nature of the deep dysfunction of modern culture. Yet that is precisely what happened last month.
Those two events are as follows: First, contrarian Substack writer and known anti-woke crusader Andrew Sullivan appeared on Jon Stewart’s new show, “The Problem With Jon Stewart.” I do not think I am being uncharitable when I call the appearance a disaster. Which, to be fair, is not entirely Sullivan’s fault, seeing as he was thrust into what was effectively a three-on-one fight (more like a dozens-on-one fight, if you include the studio audience). He was the lone dissenter against a pack of braying fanatics, egged on by a motley trio consisting of a grifter and two useful idiots, one of whom is the most famed enforcer of liberal dogma from decades past.
Read More
Yo! John Stankey! We told you CNN was stinking up AT&T. Now you are making it worse!
In an interview with CNBC last week, AT&T boss John Stankey exchanged his trademark “Mr. Hollywood Casual” for “Doctor Evil Lite,” while dodging every sensitive question about CNN’s “Mother Zucker” debacle.
In fact, Stankey did the best non-stop weasel dance since the invention of “Whack-a-Mole.”
Read More
Many iconic U.S. newspapers sport slogans that seek to explain their mission – and self-image. “All the News That’s Fit to Print” has been called “the seven most famous words in American journalism.” “Democracy Dies in Darkness” was an overtly partisan call to arms. But the most telling section of a newspaper’s true values is its “Corrections” page. That’s where journalism distinguishes itself from just about every other profession, routinely and straightforwardly admitting its mistakes. Who else does that?
It is a soul-crushing enterprise. A single misspelled name is all it takes to ruin an otherwise stellar article. We reporters may forget the topic of the piece we wrote last week, while the error five years ago is seared into our memories. But it is also crucial: Reader trust is the lifeblood of journalism. If you can’t believe what you read, why bother?
And yet, we do get things wrong all the time. Despite the self-righteous claims of too many news outlets, journalists don’t print The Truth. The “first draft of history” is necessarily messy and incomplete. What journalists have long promised readers is that we will do our best to get the story right initially and then set the record straight when better information emerges. This isn’t solely a commitment to high-minded ethics. It is also transactional: Journalists can so readily acknowledge errors because readers honor and reward our honesty. They forgive us our trespasses because we acknowledge them.
Read More
Journalists and conservative pundits Jonah Goldberg and Stephen Hayes, whose commentary has not supported President Trump, have resigned from their paid TV contributor jobs at Fox News.
Hayes and Goldberg, long-time conservative commentators who most recently have rebuked Republican politics that revolves around Trump, co-founded The Dispatch in 2019. The site is described as “a place that thoughtful readers can come for conservative, fact-based news and commentary.”
On Sunday, they announced their joint resignation from the posts they have respectively held since 2009. They write that the network’s irresponsible coverage now outweighs its responsible coverage, which long kept them tethered to their lucrative contracts.
Read More
Journalists who get into public spats with politicians may want to rethink their eagerness to pour salt into old wounds, at least in the middle of litigation.
The 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals resurrected a defamation lawsuit by Rep. Devin Nunes against Ryan Lizza and Hearst Media, because the journalist called attention to his article on Nunes and illegal immigrant laborers after the California Republican sued.
Read More
Joseph Curl, the former editor of the Drudge Report, announced on Tuesday that he will launch a conservative-oriented news aggregator to deliver to individuals who “devour news all day.”
The new site, dubbed “Off The Press,” will deliver 24/7 access to breaking news with the goal of preventing the continued mainstream media echo that many sites produce.
Read More
The guessing game of how long the levitation of the Biden presidency can be taken seriously seems to be entering a new phase. The deluge of illegal entries into the United States at the southern border is now running at a rate of closer to 3 million than 2 million a year and yet we still see and hear the bobbling talking head of the Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas assuring us, “The southern border is closed.”
The media has provided almost no coverage of this calamitous invasion. A recent Trafalgar poll found that 56 percent of Americans don’t think Joe Biden is “fully executing the duties of his office,” yet the docile White House press corps continues to ask him about his ice cream and other such probing questions of national interest. Apart from a rising stock market and a quieter atmosphere, the record of the new administration is one of almost complete failure.
The oceanic influx of unskilled labor at the southern border cannot fail to aggravate unemployment and depress the incomes for the vulnerable sectors of what, under President Trump, was a fully employed workforce. The administration has reduced domestic oil production and squandered the country’s status as an energy self-sufficient state. These are all familiar issues to those who follow public affairs, but the 95 percent Democratic-supporting media preserve the cocoon of a fairyland Biden presidency, whose bumbling chief flatters himself with comparisons to Franklin D. Roosevelt.
Read More
Victimizers quickly becoming victims is a recurrent theme of Thucydides’ history. In his commentary on the so-called stasis at Corcyra, he offers his most explicit warning about the long-term dangers of destroying legal institutions, customs, and traditions that serve the common good for short-term gain.
The historian notes that in the inevitable yin and yang of politics, the destroyers inevitably will seek, but do so in vain, refuge in what they have destroyed. Between 2017 and 2021 the Left has done exactly that.
What was common to the media’s deification of the criminally minded Michael Avenatti, and the promotion of a series of abject hoaxes? Do we remember the Steele “dossier,” the supposed authority of Fusion-GPS, the Schiff “report,” and the entire Russian “collusion” yarn?
Read More
Joe Biden is not mentally or physically fit to be president of the United States. This has been obvious to anyone with eyes or ears for the entirety of his presidency. Acknowledging this simple fact should not be a partisan issue. Regardless of policy disputes, Republicans and Democrats alike should want the leader of the free world to exhibit strength, power, and reassurance on both the national and the world stage. But Biden is merely a figurehead. He is a facsimile of a leader in an office that normally demands sharpness, stamina, and clear-headedness.
No honest assessment can conclude that Biden’s public appearances present a man who is in control of his faculties or who looks sharp and confident. On the contrary, he looks frail, weak, indecisive, unsure of himself, and unsteady. When he speaks, he often says things that simply don’t make sense, even as he almost exclusively reads from a teleprompter or uses notecards. He has repeatedly said that if he takes unscripted questions from the press, he’s “gonna get in trouble” from his staff.
Yet those who do not follow politics closely or ignore conservative outlets could be forgiven for thinking that Biden is fully capable, thanks to the corrupt Fourth Estate that has refused to accurately cover Biden’s ever-increasing list of embarrassing moments.
Read More
Lately, the local ABC News affiliate in Washington, D.C., has been running promotional spots with the well-worn tagline “speaking truth to power.” That is an odd slogan for a media outlet that can certainly be counted among the powerful in the region. It also raises a question as to whether this local news department has truly discovered “the truth” and is devoting its broadcasts to sharing it with its viewers.
At least implicit in the use of the slogan is a recognition by the station that truth does indeed exist. Sadly, many in American journalism are increasingly denying the existence of objective truth and calling for an end of objectivity in journalism. As Stanford University communications professor emeritus Ted Glasser said recently, “Journalists need to be overt and candid advocates for social justice, and it’s hard to do that under the constraints of objectivity.” In other words, the task of a journalist is to push the progressive narrative forward, truth and objectivity be damned.
Glasser isn’t alone. Recently, in a speech at Washington State University, “NBC Nightly News” anchor Lester Holt also questioned the value of objectivity. “I think it’s become clearer that fairness is overrated,” he said. “The idea that we should always give two sides equal weight and merit does not reflect the world we find ourselves in.”
Read More
The widower of Ashi Babbitt, the Air Force veteran who was killed by a Capitol Police officer on January 6th, has filed a lawsuit seeking to finally uncover the name of the guilty officer, the New York Post reports.
Aaron Babbitt filed the lawsuit in the Washington D.C. Superior Court, demanding all information related to his wife’s murder, including video footage and statements from witnesses to the incident, in addition to seeking the identity of the officer who fired the fatal shot. Separately from this lawsuit, Babbitt’s family has filed a wrongful death lawsuit for $12 million against the Capitol Police, according to the Babbitt family’s attorney Terry Roberts.
Babbitt had previously filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request with the D.C. Metropolitan Police Department (MPD), but the MPD failed to respond by the original May 12th deadline, by which time they either had to provide the material or give a formal response explaining why they could not hand over the materials.
Read More
The Mainstream Media Are to blame for the D.C. rioting. Through four years they relentlessly pursued a single-minded goal: to take down the fairly-and-squarely democratically elected presidency of Donald Trump. Towards that end, they escalated non-stories into major “news” and elevated non-entities into major public figures. As they did in 2014 with the tragic crash of Malaysian Airlines Flight MH17, they contorted serious news into theater and abandoned their duties to investigate honestly and report dispassionately, fairly, and responsibly.
Read More
A current narrative dominating mainstream media and many top Democratic officials is the total absence of voter fraud. Every top outlet or public figure mirrors the next in language. Reports are swept aside as “false or misleading,” and statements from various secretaries of state and county registrars are cited as proof that no fraud occurred.
The talking points in this election that argue against the possibility of voter fraud aren’t new, or even original. Especially in Virginia.
Read More
The mainstream media, including The Hill here, on Friday afternoon called the Georgia election for Joe Biden despite a recount being taken amid widespread voting irregularities.
Read More
Monday morning on The John Fredericks Show, host John Fredericks welcomed Newsmax CEO and Chairman Chris Ruddy to the show to discuss the concept of his company and his growing audience.
Read More
Wednesday morning on The John Fredericks Show, host John Fredericks welcomed Senior Advisor to Trump-Pence 2020 who discussed positive coronavirus news and how the economy responds to that as well as Trump flipping states that he previously did not in 2016.
Read More
Tuesday morning on The John Fredericks Radio Show, host John Fredericks welcomed media personality Steve Cortes to the program to the show to discuss the mainstream media’s attempt at gaslighting the American public about Joe Biden.
Read More
Monday morning on The John Fredericks show, host John Fredericks welcomed special guest Donald Trump, Jr. to discuss his latest book Liberal Privilege and how Joe Biden has done nothing of significance in his 50 years of government service.
Read More
The vast majority of Americans consider news bias to be “a major problem,” but more than half believe the issue is with the news other people consume, according to a survey from Gallup and the Knight Foundation released Tuesday.
Nearly half of the adults surveyed believe there’s “a great deal” of “political bias in the news,” while 37% believe there’s “a fair amount,” according to the survey. Nearly three-fourths, 69%, note they’re more worried about bias in others people’s news than their own.
Read More
Each new dawn brings another farcical rant from the mainstream media. Facts be damned, hypocrisy ignored, truth summarily rejected—all in the name of “But Trump!” and “Orange Man bad!” Pravda veterans would be proud and perhaps, even a little jealous, as nobody in the MSM is being forced to propagandize at the point of a gun, with threats of a permanent vacation to sunny Siberia. No, the American news media does all of this of its own volition.
Read More
A small but chaotic protest in Louisville, Kentucky, last Wednesday led to seventeen arrests, five cars towed, and one confiscated gun, but for some reason, the local media initially focused like a laser beam on a panicked woman in a car that struck a “protester.”
Louisville has seen unrest since May 28 over the shooting of 26-year-old Breonna Taylor, a unarmed black woman killed by police during a shootout in her apartment. The incident happened during a no-knock raid for drugs in her apartment on March 13.
Read More
by Jeffery Rendall Living in the news bubble that is Washington DC it’s easy for swamp dwellers to lose perspective on their own actions and how they’re being viewed by others. Last week’s media circus surrounding the confirmation hearings of Supreme Court nominee Judge Brett Kavanaugh must’ve given outsiders…
Read More
This week mainstream media reporters nationwide took a posture against President Donald Trump and asserted they act with integrity and objectivity and that his attacks on them are attacks on democracy itself. Hook people in the mainstream media up to polygraph machines and ask them if they really believe that.…
Read More
The government of Ireland has confirmed to The Tennessee Star that the Irish tax records cited in a recent Tennessean article about the Irish subsidiary of GOP gubernatorial candidate Randy Boyd’s company are private, and not available to the public or the media through legal means. Ms. Leann O’Kelly, Press…
Read More