NPR host Brooke Gladstone admits that journalists are generally more liberal than regular Americans, but she thinks they overcompensate for their bias by giving too much of a voice to conservatives. For instance, Gladstone believes conservatives do not deserve an equal voice with liberals in the global warming debate.

Gladstone, whose interview appeared on the blog of CNN’s In the Arena, has voiced in the past that the media have a “tendency to bend over backwards to prove they aren’t liberal.” In the interview she clarified the media’s over-reaction as “fairness bias.”

Aren’t those two words contradictory? Apparently not for Gladstone, who thinks the press can be “too fair” to conservatives in giving them more air-time than liberals, or granting them an equal voice when their argument doesn’t warrant such a pedestal. According to her, this is the product of conservatives “hammering” the liberal bias of the media since the days of Nixon.

“I do not for a second advocate banning any voices from the air, but to give equal time to those who dispute say, global warming, merely muddies the water,” Gladstone claimed. “The public is not served by hearing prolonged presentations of a nonsensical debate. Give them a voice, but not an equal voice. That’s the same as lying in order to appear fair.”

For the full interview on CNN’s In the Arena blog, click here.

Matt Hadro contributes posts at the NewsBusters site.

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Alex Fitzsimmons

Less than 24 hours after a devastating tornado ripped through Joplin, Missouri – killing at least 116 people – an MSNBC anchor was busy putting a political spin on the tragedy.

Tamron Hall wondered aloud on “News Nation” today whether climate change was to blame for the rash of hurricanes and tornadoes that ravaged several states, including Missouri, over the last few months.

“What about climate change?” speculated Hall, interviewing Dr. Howard Bluestein. “You have many people who see these severe storms, and not just the tornadoes, but the strength of hurricanes and even severe storms, we’re getting hail and high winds right now from Texas, I believe, all the way through the Midwest. Is this a result of climate change or an effect of climate change?”

Bluestein, a meteorology professor at the University of Oklahoma, dismissed Hall’s baseless conjecture: “I don’t think we can prove whether or not the occurrence of all these bad events this year are due to global warming whatsoever. They could be simply due to natural variability.”

Hall began the interview with an open-ended question about the potential causes of these severe weather events, but after Bluestein suggested “random chance” could be the culprit, the daytime anchor pressed the climate change issue.

A transcript of the segment can be found below:

MSNBC
News Nation
May 23, 2011

2:34 p.m. EDT

TAMRON HALL: What about climate change? You have many people who see these severe storms, and not just the tornados, but the strength of hurricanes and even severe storms, we’re getting hail and high winds right now from Texas, I believe, all the way through the Midwest. Is this a result of climate change or an effect of climate change?

Dr. HOWARD BLUESTEIN, University of Oklahoma: Well I can’t speak for hurricanes, but for tornadoes and supercells, I don’t think we can prove whether or not the occurrence of all these bad events this year are due to global warming whatsoever. They could be simply due to natural variability. After all, when you think back to some of the other historic events, like April 30 1974, the tornadoes in Missouri in 1953, the tri-state tornadoes back in 1925. If you go through the records, you’ll see that every 20, 30, 40 years there are these tremendous widespread outbreaks and some of them occurred long before we were talking about global warming.

HALL: Alright, Dr. Howard Bluestein, of the University of Oklahoma, where they certainly see their share of tornadoes in that state. Thank you so much, sir.

Alex Fitzsimmons is a News Analysis intern at the Media Research Center.

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Scott Whitlock

According to the three major networks, the granting of numerous waivers to Barack Obama’s health care law, including 38 in April alone to wealthy, entertainment businesses in Nancy Pelosi’s San Francisco district, isn’t of much interest. ABC and CBS have completely ignored waivers, while NBC only included a general mention from a Republican senator.

As the Daily Caller’s Matthew Boyle reported, 1300 waivers have been granted and while that information is online, “it has not made public which companies and other entities have been denied waivers and why they were denied.” 20 percent went to Pelosi’s district.

Appearing on the January 2, 2011 Meet the Press, Senator Lindsey Graham pointed out, “…But the Obama health care is a real burden to small businesses and large businesses. There’s been 200 and something waivers.” Chuck Todd made a reference to a future waiver program on May 1. Those two were the only instances of waivers even being referred to on NBC.

However, while ABC ignored waivers, Good Morning America, for example, found time to promote the obstacle course game show Wipeout and other pressing topics.

Here’s what the networks haven’t been telling you about waivers in general, as explained by conservative columnist Michelle Malkin:

Seattle-based REI. The trendy Pacific Northwest outdoor equipment retailer’s progressive CEO and Democratic campaign donor, Sally Jewell, appeared with President Obama in 2009 to tout White House health care reform initiatives. Two years later, REI snagged a waiver to protect the health benefits of a whopping 1,180 workers from the very tentacles of the big government bureaucrats Jewell embraced at Obama’s roundtable.

The Daily Caller’s Boyle also noted, “Of the 204 new Obamacare waivers President Barack Obama’s administration approved in April, 38 are for fancy eateries, hip nightclubs and decadent hotels in House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi’s Northern California district.”

The New York Times covered waivers only in relation to comments made by Mitt Romney that he would grant them for all 50 states.

For more on this, see a blog by Noel Sheppard.

Scott Whitlock is a news analyst for the Media Research Center, a contributing writer for NewsBusters.org

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By Brent Baker

Like clockwork, an unusual weather event occurs and some shallow journalists immediately leap to speculating about global warming – even accusing humankind of causing the event. On Thursday night, looking at the tornadoes across the South, ABC’s Sam Champion ridiculously claimed “everybody is asking if climate change played a role here.” Brian Williams blamed humans: “What’s going on here? Is this something we have done?”

On the NBC Nightly News, Williams prompted Greg Forbes of the Weather Channel:

Let’s be candid here. When you and I go home, you see friends and family, you get e-mail from people you know. People ask the same question: What’s going on here? Is this something we have done? What has happened to the climate because it seems so much of what we cover is relentless weather-related tragedy?

Forbes skirted around Williams’ silliness:

Yeah, it really has been a remarkable April, certainly a record April. It may be the most tornadic month of any month on record. It certainly, the atmosphere has been in a frenzy. The jet stream just keeps blasting across the country, and then the warm moist air from the Gulf of Mexico just keeps feeding the instability and so we’ve had tornado after tornado…

Champion, on ABC’s World News, conceded there’s no substantiation to the speculation:

You know, all winter long, Diane, we’ve been talking about the fact that the leaky Arctic fence, that unusual cold polar air, the melting sea ice, the thing is, there’s no coordinated effort to study what that looks like on climate change compared to severe weather, so we don’t know the answer to that.

Brent Baker contributes posts at NewsBusters and he is the Steven P.J. Wood Senior Fellow and Vice President for Research and Publications at the Media Research Center . http://www.mrc.org/

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By Andrew Bolt

I KNOW we can’t expect the media to be saints with scaremongers.

Scares sell, and sometimes scares even turn out to be true.

But now that we know not a single person died in Japan’s Fukushima nuclear emergency, and that not a single person is likely to, either, can we please introduce a new tradition with scaremongers that could still sell papers and lift ratings?

Sure, keep interviewing them as we greedily do after every fresh “catastrophe”, whether it’s Fukushima, bird flu, the Y2K bug, SARS, a nuclear winter, acid rain or global warming.

But then, after everything settles down as it usually does, can we have the same traders in fear back for a follow-up that’s just as likely to appeal to our hunger for sensation.

Let’s call it “How did they get it so wrong?” Or “What’s your excuse?”

May I propose the first guests? For ratings gold, I want to see the following people lined up against a studio wall to be shot in close-up explaining how they got Fukushima so wrong.

First, let’s ask Crikey writer Guy Rundle to show us his dead Fukushima pilots, stripped of flesh.

Rundle is the alarmist who wrote: “As I write, the Japanese are conducting direct overflies to try and control the continuing damage most likely a suicide mission for the pilots and crew…

“The Japanese crews will slough their skin and muscles, and bleed out internally under the full glare of the world’s media.”

Then let’s have veteran nuclear hysteric Helen Caldicott, who warned on 3AW that the Fukushima reactor could blow (a scenario ruled out by nuclear experts).

This, she wailed, meant “hundreds of thousands of Japanese will be dying within two weeks of acute radiation illness”, with countless more later suffering an “epidemic” of cancers.

Explain yourself, Helen.

Next let’s have Dr Tilman Ruff, actually a Nossal Institute infectious diseases expert and long-time anti-nuclear activist, who wildly claimed “we might be looking at a Chernobyl-type disaster or worse” and hungrily described the many ways people could get sick from the fallout that never really came.

Such alarmists and more were given a red carpet entree into the news rooms of almost every big news organisation in the land back when fear sold.

Let them be dragged back in for questioning now that calm once more prevails.

Andrew Bolt is a journalist and columnist writing for The Herald Sun in Melbourne Victoria Australia.

Andrew Bolt’s columns appear in Melbourne’s Herald Sun, Sydney’s Daily Telegraph and Adelaide’s Advertiser. He runs the most-read political blog in Australia and is a regular commentator on Channel 9′s Today show and ABC TV’s Insiders. He will be heard from Monday to Friday at 8am on the breakfast show of new radio station MTR 1377, and his book Still Not Sorry remains very widely read.

Read more excellent articles from Andrew Bolt’s Blog . http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/

By Noel Sheppard

“For those of you who are confused [about global warming], you’re forgiven. It’s my fault.”

So hysterically said retired Minneapolis anchorman Don Shelby during a speech at the University of Minnesota, Duluth, Tuesday:

After spending 32 years in front of the camera as an anchorman and investigative reporter for WCCO-TV in Minneapolis, Don Shelby wanted to apologize to people about climate change. [...]

Shelby was speaking at the University of Minnesota Duluth on Tuesday on what he called “The most important story since journalism began — global climate change.” His speech served as the kick-off for a two-day sustainability fair sponsored by UMD’s Office of Sustainability.

The TV newsman’s mea culpa about having misreported climate change came after of years of treating the story the same as he would any other, requiring the views of two opposing parties, Shelby told the packed lecture hall of the chemistry building.

But, he said, climate change is not a pro or con issue; it’s a scientific fact. And journalists who work to “balance” a story present an inaccurate picture when they give equal weight to sources promulgating inaccurate facts.

“If I report a story on abuse of children, I don’t go out and interview an abuser on the up-side of child abuse,” he said as an example of how an effort to balance can go too far.

Yes, global temperatures rising by about one degree Celsius in the past 160 years as we came out of a solar minimum, radically increased the population, and replaced grasslands and forests with cities, skyscrapers, concrete and asphalt is akin to abusing a child.

There’s therefore only one side to the story as to why the planet got hotter, and reporting the other far more logical one is like letting a child-abuser explain why beating kids is okay.

This is what passes as critical thinking in journalism today. And this man was speaking to a group of college students filling their minds with the same lack of objectivity.

Scarier still, for 32 years Shelby reported to the citizens of Minneapolis and St. Paul on television and radio. Makes you wonder what other biases the Emmy Award-winning “newsman” has been sharing all those years if he’s willing to stand up in front of an audience and claim he was misrepresenting this issue.

Having never lived in Minnesota and therefore not the slightest bit familiar with Shelby, I have no idea what his political leanings are beyond this bizarre mea culpa concerning global warming.

For a clue, at his My Space page, Shelby lists one of his heroes as the perilously liberal Charles Kuralt, and claims the person he’d most like to interview is Osama bin Laden. This is a picture of him prominently displayed at left:

Remind you of anything? (At right)

(H/T NB reader Scott Taylor)

Noel Sheppard is the Associate Editor of NewsBusters.

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By Tom Blumer

Back in mid-2008, as gas prices approached $4 a gallon and the first inklings that a real recession would soon be under way were appearing, George W. Bush told a town hall audience questioner who wondered when gas prices might start coming down that it might be time for owners of gas-guzzling SUVs like the questioner to “think about a trade-in.” He also laughed at the questioner’s indication that he had ten children and told him that “you definitely need a hybrid van.”

… Well, of course George W. Bush didn’t say these things. Readers here and anyone else who understands the establishment press know that if Bush or any other well-known Republican or conservative had said these kinds of things, the nation would have been alerted to it quickly and repeatedly. Reporters would have solicited comments from Democratic Party officials, who would have dutifully told the world that such remarks were proof of how uncaring and out of touch the person who made them must be.

President Barack Obama said the exact things mythologically portrayed in the opening paragraph above at a town hall meeting in Fairless Hills, Pennsylvania on Wednesday.

Here are relevant excerpts from the White House web site’s carriage of Obama’s remarks (bolds are mine throughout this post):

Q. My name is Jazz (ph). You were talking about the rise of gas prices. … Is there a chance of the price being lowered again?

THE PRESIDENT: Well, let me go over what I said a little bit earlier.

But I’m just going to be honest with you, there’s not much we can do next week or two weeks from now. What we can do is, for example, increase oil production here in the United States. …

… the second thing we can do is increase efficiency on cars and trucks, which is where most of our oil is used. (Applause.) Now, I notice some folks clapped, but I know some of these big guys, they’re all still driving their big SUVs. You know, they got their big monster trucks and everything. You’re one of them? Well, now, here’s my point. If you’re complaining about the price of gas and you’re only getting eight miles a gallon — (laughter) — you may have a big family, but it’s probably not that big. How many you have? Ten kids, you say? Ten kids? (Laughter.) Well, you definitely need a hybrid van then. (Laughter.)

None of that is going to help you this week, though. So, like I said, if you’re getting eight miles a gallon you may want to think about a trade-in.

Of all the potentially controversial content above, only the following made it into the 4:39 p.m. version of the report on the event by the Associated Press’s Darlene Superville, whose narrative was clearly supportive of the President’s handling of the question (HT Instapundit; also noted at several other sites):

Obama needled one questioner who asked about gas prices, now averaging close to $3.70 nationwide, and suggested that the gentleman consider getting rid of his gas-guzzline vehicle.

“If you’re complaining about the price of gas and you’re only getting 8 miles a gallon, you know,” Obama said laughingly. “You might want to think about a trade-in.”

Though Superville’s narrative differs slightly from the White House’s (which among other things, doesn’t have the words “only” or “you know” in the transcript), her “Obama said laughingly” observation is crucially and painfully instructive. It wasn’t just the crowd which was laughing at the questioner; it was our president, who was thereby exhibiting clear condescension towards a citizen he is supposed to be serving. Combine this with Obama’s reaction to the fact that the questioner has ten children and his derision of “these big guys” and their “monster trucks,” and his response steps right up to the line of contempt. In my opinion, it clearly crosse that line.

If a conservative or Republican were to say such contemptible things, it would be big news. Not even the most hardened defender of the establishment press would disagree that at a minimum, replies such as Obama’s if made by a conservative or Republican would make their way into subsequent revisions of AP reports.

Not this time. The AP reporter’s 7:33 p.m. update, less than three hours after the report excerpted above, moved on to Obama’s meeting with Al Sharpton in its first two-thirds, but retained coverage of Obama’s Pennsylvania visit in the final third. In what may be a sign that Superville or her editors recognized the toxicity of the portion of Obama’s remarks she originally reported, the final third’s content seemed to overcompensate for what was previously reported:

“I’m just going to be honest with you. There’s not much we can do next week or two weeks from now,” the president told workers at a wind turbine plant outside Philadelphia.

It’s a theme Obama’s struck before as he tries to show voters he’s attuned to a top economic concern with gas prices pushing toward $4 a gallon.

Gee Darlene, Obama didn’t seem very “attuned” when he was ridiculing a fellow citizen with 10 kids who happens to own a vehicle popular with “monster truck” guys which is getting poor mileage, where the cost of a fill-up has doubled for reasons totally out of that citizen’s control.

Now of course material from previous wire service reports drops out in subsequent revisions and updates all the time; that’s the nature of news (though it should be a journalistic standard that all previous renditions of reports that are revised and updated are retained and made accessible). But decisions as to what stays and goes overboard can be pretty clear indicators of bias, as can failures to follow up. I don’t see the press asking Republicans or conservatives what they think of a guy who basically told a fellow citizen, as Mark Steyn characterized it in his column yesterday, that “It’s your fault.” That would extend the life cycle of comments which reflect really badly on Obama. Apparently, we can’t have that.

It’s obvious that if Obama’s arrogant and condescending comments were more widely known, they would be hurting him with voters. But Darlene Superville and her employer did what they could to minimize the damage. This is the way of the state-compliant media as it moves into campaign mode.

Cross-posted at BizzyBlog.com.

Tom Blumer is president of a training and development company in Mason, Ohio, and is a contributing editor to NewsBusters

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By Julia A Seymour

Three Mile Island Nuclear Power Plant

The massive earthquake and tsunami that rocked Japan on March 11 claimed many lives and knocked the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant offline reviving decades-old fears as well as liberal media bias about nuclear power.

The news media have promoted anti-nuclear positions since the Three Mile Island accident in 1979, although that incident did not injure or kill anyone and no long-term health impacts have been proven. At that time though, the frightening network coverage was “eerily similar” to the fictional Hollywood account of a nuclear disaster in a film released just days earlier: “The China Syndrome.”

Three Mile Island was no “China Syndrome,” yet some press outlets specifically sent reporters who had seen the film to cover the Harrisburg, Pa. nuclear accident, according to a PBS program aired in 1999.

Following the Japanese disaster, ABC’s “Nightline” declared that “the new images from Japan have given the [California] doomsday earthquake scenario new urgency, with an added twist, the threat that a quake might be followed by a nuclear meltdown.”

Like “Nightline” some recent reports have spread fear and worry concerning nuclear energy. CNN polled viewers on the question: “Should nuclear energy be a source of electricity?” Martin Bashir on MSNBC and others on ABC included left-wing anti-nuclear “experts” without noting their liberal perspective.

The U.S. gets roughly 20 percent of its power from 104 reactors providing nuclear energy, while many European countries like France rely on it much more. Despite the heavy reliance on nuclear power serious accidents are very rare.

Many of the recent news stories about Fukushima have mentioned Three Mile Island, the largest U.S. nuclear accident, especially after Japan’s nuclear agency raised the accident level to 5 – the same level as the 1979 Pennsylvania accident but two levels lower than the Soviet’s 1986 Chernobyl disaster.

Because of that it is important to remember the facts about what happened at Three Mile Island, rather than just the long-lasting media hype about the disaster and media bias against nuclear power. Despite very frightening news reports at the time of the accident and in years after, no one was hurt or killed and very little radiation was leaked.

Scary Media Coverage of Three Mile Island

Three Mile Island’s (TMI) accident terrified many not only because of communication problems with industry and government officials, but because of frightening new reports with predictions that ultimately didn’t happen. An anti-nuclear Hollywood film also influenced the press coverage of the accident, which is frequently cited as the turning point against nuclear energy in America.

In fact, The Washington Post said the “accident clouds future of nuclear power” as early as two days after it happened on March 28, 1979. Since then not a single new nuclear power plant has been built.

Just days after the TMI accident, CBS news anchor Walter Cronkite’s introduction for a series of reports on March 30, 1979, was downright scary.“[T]he horror tonight is that it could get much worse. It is not an atomic explosion that is feared, the experts say that is impossible, but the specter was raised that perhaps the next most serious kind of nuclear catastrophe – a massive release of radioactivity.”

One ABC anchor called it a “nuclear nightmare” unfolding “on the Susquehanna River.” ABC’s Tom Jarriel warned that “the first casualty of this accident may have been trust.” Despite Jarriel’s implicit prediction that there would be casualties, there were no deaths caused by Three Mile Island and no proven health problems from the leaked radiation.

Another ABC reporter, Bettina Gregory, showed viewers the steam towers of Three Mile Island while warning, “Tonight the plant looms like a pale ghost, the specter of potential meltdown hanging over this community.”

Other reports featured experts making predictions that ultimately turned out to be wrong. In one report by CBS’s Charles Crawford interviewed a doctor of environmental medicine who said, “There’s no doubt in my mind that at the doses that seem to be uh, uh, that the people seem to be exposed to downwind – several miles from the plant – that eventually 20 or 30 years from now there can be expected to be an increase incidents of cancer in this population.”

That doctor, Paul Molvy of Mt. Sinai Hospital was later proved wrong by studies conducted by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), the EPA and other government agencies.

According to the NRC, those studies found that the average dose of radiation to the roughly 2 million people in the area of Three Mile Island was 1 millirem; they noted that exposure from a chest x-ray is roughly 6 millirem.

Despite anecdotal claims of negative health effects from TMI, multiple studies have failed to prove this and a class action lawsuit over health impacts was even thrown out of court.

“In the months following the accident, although questions were raised about possible adverse effects from radiation on human, animal and plant life in the TMI area, none could be directly correlated to the accident,’ NRC said on its website. ‘Thousands of environmental samples of air, water, milk, vegetation, soil, and foodstuffs were collected by various groups monitoring the area.”

In 1999, long after the facts of the incident were established, PBS maintained the media hype by airing a hyperbolic “American Experience” episode entitled “Meltdown at Three Mile Island” completely with an ominous score fit for a Hollywood horror movie. Even the name of that documentary overstated the TMI disaster, which was only a partial meltdown and was mostly contained.

According to the NRC, TMI “permanently changed” the nuclear industry:“NRC’s regulations and oversight became broader and more robust, and the management of the plants was scrutinized more carefully.” Plant designs were changed, operator training was improved, emergency preparedness was updated and many other changes were made to improve the safety of nuclear facilities.

Hollywood’s Anti-Nuclear Movie Drove Reporting

Just days before the reactor shutdown at Three Mile Island, Columbia Pictures movie “The China Syndrome” was released. In that fictional thriller, a reporter played by Jane Fonda accidentally witnesses an “accident” at a nuclear power plant.

When she tries to report the story she finds an extensive industry cover up including dummied records. Like any anti-industry Hollywood film corporate goons even attempt to kill those trying to expose the plant’s safety problems. Unfortunately, thanks to the timing and the news media the “China Syndrome” became nearly synonymous with Three Mile Island despite stark differences.

According to a New York Times magazine article from Sept. 16, 2007, Fonda was “firmly anti-nuke before making the film,” but became a “full-fledged crusader” after TMI. Co-star Michael Douglas was “converted” to the anti-nuke position after watching “eerily similar scenes from ‘The China Syndrome’” in actual news coverage of Three Mile Island.

As is too often the case, the entertainment media’s concept of a nuclear disaster had a huge impact on the news coverage of Three Mile Island. Just two minutes and 12 seconds into PBS’s 1999 documentary about the disaster, the filmmakers quoted Mike Gray, a journalist and one of the writers of “The China Syndrome.”

A minute and a half later, PBS mentioned the possibility of “meltdown: a scenario called The China Syndrome” which would have happened in the nuclear reactor had reached 5,200 degrees. Later the narrator of the documentary said, “for residents, life seemed to be imitating art” and then showed a clip from the Hollywood movie.

It wasn’t until the final three minutes of the hour-long PBS show that NRC’s senior engineer Roger Mattson acknowledged that Three Mile Island “was not the China Syndrome.” It was a partial meltdown, and the part of the core that melted down was found in the bottom of the containment. It did not, as “The China Syndrome” suggested – melt through the bottom and through the earth all the way to China and render a state “the size of Pennsylvania permanently uninhabitable.”

But that PBS documentary also revealed a disturbing fact about the journalists sent to cover Three Mile Island. Gray, the screenwriter of “The China Syndrome” and one of the many journalists who went to Harrisburg, Pa. to cover the Three Mile Island accident said that at least one national publication decided which reporters to send  to report on the accident based on whether or not they’d seen the movie.

“At one of the major New York dailies the managing editor stood up on his desk and shouted, ‘Who here has seen The China Syndrome?’ Three guys raise their hand, he says ‘you, you, you – you’re going to Harrisburg’,” Gray recalled. “So the movie then became a briefing film for the press.”

Of course, the fictional film being watched by the press was not without a point-of-view. In the book, “Three Mile Island: A Nuclear Crisis in Historical Perspective” J. Samuel Walker wrote that despite the filmmaker’s denials about presenting “a strongly antinuclear message,” the director “conceded that it was ‘not impartial’.“

Walker also wrote that Gray himself “wrote privately that it [The China Syndrome] explained ‘the fundamental horrors of nuclear technology’.”

Lefties Already Calling for End of Nuclear Power in Wake of Japanese Crisis

Despite the extreme natural disaster that created the crisis and fueled radiation fears in Japan, some on the left-wing in the U.S. are already calling on the Obama administration to “abandon its nuclear energy policy.” MSNBC host Cenk Uygar echoed those sentiments on air.

On March 16, Uygar criticized Energy Secretary Steven Chu for saying that the Obama administration’s goal of 20 new nuclear plants remained unchanged.

“Here’s where it gets dangerous,” Uygar said, “3 million Americans live within 10 miles of an operating nuclear power plant. So I’m worried about that as I see what’s happening in Japan.” In typical MSNBC fashion, Uygar claimed it was the lobbyists keeping politicians on both sides of the aisle in favor of nuclear power rather than safety improvements and the desire for lower-emitting forms of energy.

Although it may irk many on the left, public support for nuclear power was at a “new peak” at the beginning of March. A poll taken by Gallup March 4-7, 2011, found that 62 percent of U.S. adults “favored nuclear energy as one way to meet national electricity needs,” Reuters reported March 22. Gallup said that was the highest support since it began polling the issue in 1994.

Julia A. Seymour Contributes posts at the NewsBusters site where she is an Assistant Editor/Analyst for the Business & Media Institute of the Media Research Center.

See and Read more Quality Material at NewsBusters

Can you spot the bias? From the New York Times, a March 8 report by John M. Broder, “At House E.P.A. Hearing, Both Sides Claim Science“:

In an effort to support the E.P.A.’s regulatory power, committee Democrats rounded up five eminent academic climatologists who defended the scientific consensus that the planet is warming and that human activities like the burning of fossil fuels are largely responsible.

In the italics, yes, of course — the New York Times states the so-called global warming “consensus” (a spin of the left) as fact and makes certain to inject it in the copy. A more objective line would have been:

In an effort to support the E.P.A.’s regulatory power, committee Democrats rounded up five eminent academic climatologists who testified that the planet is warming and that human activities like the burning of fossil fuels are largely responsible.

EXCEPT that’s not the only bias to be found.

Note the way the GOP rebuttal is described in the next paragraph:

The Republicans countered with two scientific witnesses who said…

The Democrats’ witnesses are “eminent academic climatologists” while the GOP’s witnesses are merely “scientific witnesses.”  No academic eminence for them, no sir – yet, strangely, the official witness list for the hearing shows that every single witness is a university-affiliated Ph.D. scientist with appropriate credentials.

Amy Ridenour is the mother of three fifth graders and CEO since 1982 of the National Center for Public Policy Research, a conservative think-tank located on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C. She contributes Posts at the NewsBusters site and also contributes Posts at Amy Ridenour’s National Center Blog

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By Noel Sheppard

Ralph Nader said Tuesday conservative talk radio hosts Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity are part of a well-organized counter-scientific ignorance movement designed to prevent people from believing in the theory of manmade global warming.

Sadly, this was said to a bunch of impressionable students at the College of New Jersey.

STUDENT QUESTIONER AMANDA REDDINGTON: Over like a hundred countries recognize global warming and the negative effect people have on the environment. Do you, what’s your opinion on like America’s slow acceptance of this reality?

RALPH NADER: It’s partly because there’s been a well-organized counter-scientific movement, pseudo-scientific attack. Clinton never pushed it, and Bush opposed it withdrew from it, right? Obama’s not pushing it. So, most of the environmental groups when they hear every day Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity, you know, this huge ignorance movement going on. Who’s to counteract Limbaugh, right? You don’t get on if you offend corporate advertising.

REDDINGTON: Okay, thank you.

NADER: But they’ll learn as soon as things start melting.

REDDINGTON: Yeah.

NADER: The beaches and all that. They’ll learn. Look at Alaska.

REDDINGTON: Yeah.

Amazing.

Al Gore and his green disciples have spent billions of dollars in recent years trying to convince the American people that this myth is real. They have as their minions virtually every media outlet in the nation with the exception of Fox News, conservative talk show hosts, right-wing bloggers, and a handful of publications.

Yet, the reason the citizenry aren’t buying into the fable hook, line and sinker is because of people like Limbaugh and Hannity.

It really boggles the mind how people like this can be at all taken seriously.

(H/T The Blaze)

Noel Sheppard is the Associate Editor of NewsBusters.

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By Noel Sheppard

New York Times columnist Paul Krugman on Friday made the idiotic claim that House Republicans are stealing food from babies and pregnant women.

Later that evening, appearing on PBS’s “Inside Washington,” syndicated columnist Charles Krauthammer demonstrated just how foolish Krugman’s assertion was.

GORDON PETERSON, HOST: New York Times columnist Paul Krugman: “House Republicans are literally stealing food from the mouths of babies — nutritional and pregnant women and very young children, one of the items on their cutting block — so they can pose, falsely, as deficit hawks.”

Peterson got that quote wrong. Here’s the correct one from Krugman’s column Friday:

House Republicans, in particular, are literally stealing food from the mouths of babes — nutritional aid to pregnant women and very young children is one of the items on their cutting block — so they can pose, falsely, as deficit hawks.

But I digress:

CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER: Let me explain to you what these cuts are, the so-called cuts. Obama increased the baseline budget of all of the departments by an average of 24 percent in two years. If you add in stimulus, it’s over 80 percent. The cuts are from this artificially inflated, hugely inflated, baseline he created it. If you compare, for example, the home heating oil subsidy, it is cut in half, that’s the worst. It’s a barbarian measure?

NINA TOTENBERG, NPR: It’s his cut, too.

Noel Sheppard is the Associate Editor of NewsBusters.

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By Noel Sheppard

It’s a metaphysical certitude that whenever anything happens in the Middle East, the media will quickly blame former President George W. Bush and the war in Iraq.

Not missing the opportunity to do so, Chris Matthews began the 5PM installment of “Hardball” Friday connecting the riots in Egypt to a man that has been out of office for two years:

CHRIS MATTHEWS, HOST: Trouble on the Nile.

Let`s play HARDBALL.

Good evening. I’m Chris Matthews in Washington.

Leading off tonight: Unrest in Egypt. Proving the Iraq war wasn’t needed, these protests in Egypt, as well as in Yemen and Tunisia, are all aimed at dictators supported by the U.S. The demonstrations have not yet turned anti-American, but they could. These are the events the Bush administration hoped to encourage by lying about weapons of mass destruction and invading Iraq. A live report from Richard Engel at the scene coming up. And we`ll stay on this story throughout the hour as events warrant.

Riots and a potential revolution in Egypt prove the Iraq war wasn’t needed?

How does one come to that conclusion? Who on Matthews’ staff decided that the perfect way to lead off Friday’s program was by linking the unrest in Egypt to Bush and Iraq?

Didn’t these folks learn anything from their rush to judgment over this month’s shootings in Tucson?

This seems especially important as Matthews’ guest through much of the program – NBC’s Richard Engel reporting from Cairo – didn’t say anything about these riots being in any way related to Iraq, anti-Americanism, or Bush.

From what Engel could tell, this is all about the high poverty and unemployment rates in Egypt along with continued disgust with the corruption of the government.

Matthews himself said, “The demonstrations have not yet turned anti-American.”

So why suggest they are or will? Are viewers to believe that if Saddam Hussein was still in power in Iraq, folks in Egypt would be happy with the corruption in their country as well as the high unemployment and poverty?

Beyond this, Egypt is and has been a strong ally of the United States and plays a pivotal role in keeping peace in the region as a result of its treaty with Israel. Why would Bush or any President want to see a revolution in this country that could tremendously destabilize this entire part of the world sending oil prices to all-time highs and undermining the economy?

As it turned out, Matthews never got to answer such a question or elaborate on his absurd opening as breaking events out of Egypt, including an address by President Hosni Mubarak, dominated the entire hour.

But one has to wonder what if anything the folks at MSNBC learned from their rush to judgment when they incorrectly blamed the Tucson shootings on conservatives.

Are these people capable of toning down their own rhetoric and avoiding jumping the accusation shark every time news breaks, or is advancing their agenda the only thing that matters and all this civility talk was just a smokescreen to silence the Right?

Maybe more importantly, has Matthews foreshadowed what we should expect from so-called journalists in the coming days and that despite all evidence to the contrary, whatever happens in Egypt is going to be blamed on Bush?

Stay tuned.

Noel Sheppard is the Associate Editor of NewsBusters.

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By Tim Graham

Tim Graham contributes at NewsBusters. He is Director of  Media Analysis at the Media Research Center and is the author of the book “Pattern Of Deception: The Media’s Role In The Clinton Presidency”.

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GORDON PETERSON, HOST: That’s Ken Cuccinelli. He’s the attorney general of Virginia. He brought the challenge to ObamaCare. The federal court and judge Henry Hudson of Virginia ruled it’s un-Constitutional to force Americans to buy health insurance, as the law mandates. Why is it constitutional to require Americans to buy automobile insurance but un-Constitutional to force them to buy health insurance?

Noel Sheppard is the Associate Editor of NewsBusters.

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By Noel Sheppard

Noel Sheppard is the Associate Editor of NewsBusters.

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By Andrew Bolt

So, let me see if I’ve got this right. The upsurge in al Qaeda activity in Yemen can be put down to…..Climate Change. What the!…..TonyfromOz.

Here we go again, focusing on the fashionable rather than the real.

Australian ABC TV’s Lateline current affairs program host Leigh Sales last night gave the friendliest of interviews to Britain’s Rear Admiral Neil Morisetti, who has been diverted from his real job to act instead as the United Kingdom’s Special Envoy on Climate and Energy Security.

Observe the example both choose to illustrate what he’s up to when he talks of having to tackle “the implications of climate change … (on) the likelihood of conflict” :

LEIGH SALES: OK, so if we can take a case study and use the example of Yemen, which is near the top of the global security agenda because of its instability and a strong Al Qaeda presence, how is climate change relevant to Yemen’s security?

NEIL MORISETTI: Well if you look at where – the stresses that Yemen are facing, in addition to what you’ve talked about there are water shortages etc., and that places challenges on the population, it places challenges on the government.

If you add further complications to that by the fact that the impact of climate change could well be felt there – you could accentuate those water shortage problems for example – then that adds greater challenges and greater risk to the possibility of climate change… To a greater or lesser extent important, and therefore the risks come as loss of land, loss of livelihood, people looking to alternatives, but also from that loss of land, the potential risk of – or the possibility of migration, both of within countries and between countries and the pressures that might add.

So Yemen can be explained as a trick of the climate.

It’s true, like the admiral and like the Australian premiers in the post below, Yemeni politicians eagerly bought the climate change fear-mongering, so useful for explaining why you are not to blame:

Like many countries, the agricultural sector in Yemen faces serious challenges as a result of changes in rainfall patterns, and the extended low temperature seasons seen in recent years, say experts.

In Yemen climate change is dramatically affecting three areas – water resources, agriculture and coastal areas. A March 2008 UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) report on the Near East said: “Yemen is particularly at risk because of its existing low income levels, rapidly growing population and acute water shortage.”

“Climate change has caused Yemen’s production of grains this year to decline after reaching around one million in 2007,” said Mansour al-Haushabi, Minister of Agriculture and Irrigation during the World Food Day celebration.

Here’s the Yemen Times last year feeding the fear:

Climate change during the last few years and especially in 2009 is a real concern for Yemen, particularly if the frequency of precipitation events continues to diminish, putting agriculture in peril and potentially leading to a catastrophic drought.

The very next year, the rains return and expose the real reasons for Yemen’s instability – along with rising Islamic militancy:

Despite record rainfall in the Yemeni capital Sanaa and other areas this summer, very little is being done to harvest this water to mitigate water shortages, experts say.

In May at least seven people were killed in what officials described as the worst flooding to hit Sanaa in a decade….

Attempts by the government to harvest rainwater are very limited, according to Ramon Scoble, a consultant for Germany’s Technical Cooperation Committee (GTZ).

“The government is doing very little,” he said. “…There are a number of ineffective dams in Yemen and none are supplying significant water to cities, agriculture or groundwater recharge.”

Sanaa is predicted to be the first capital in the world to run out of economically viable water supplies by 2017. Experts say this is due to a rapid increase in Sanaa’s population in recent years because of rural-urban migration, and the widespread planting; and inefficient irrigation of `qat’, a water-thirsty plant believed to consume 40 percent of all irrigated water.

Hmm! No new dam there, either.

In fact, it’s the rapid rise in population throughout the dirt-poor country that’s perhaps, along with Islamisation, the greatest source of instability – far greater than “climate change”:

Yemen is facing multiple agricultural problems caused by drought, shortage of water for irrigation, rising temperatures, and a high population growth at 3% annually… Yemen imports 70% of its food commodities, and the rising prices of these commodities could increase the tensions in a society where weapons are widespread and where half the population lives on less than $2 a day.

In just 50 years the population has quadrupled in a poor country with cheap weapons and a newly militant us-versus-them faith. Or let me put the problem very graphically:

Undeterred, Sales and the admiral go on to discuss two more examples:

NEIL MORISETTI:  Will we find ourselves being involved in an increasing number of humanitarian activities as a result of extreme weather events and natural disasters? Or will we find ourselves helping other agencies and other government departments and international organisations to try and build the capacity and resilience in those countries that are most likely to be affected by climate change in order that they can cope with the challenges and look after their citizens.

LEIGH SALES: That’s already happening a lot isn’t it? The increasing use of militaries to deal with humanitarian and other disasters.

NEIL MORISETTI: Yes. We find ourselves on a number of occasions – we saw it recently in Haiti with Canadian forces and with American forces and from many other nations providing support. We saw it in Pakistan after the floods.

So the second example is an earthquake – nothing at all to do with climate change. And the third is the floods in Pakistan, which may be “climate change” at work – or just a once-in-a-generation heavy monsoonal flood.

I think the admiral has better things to do with his time than talk up this tosh.

Andrew Bolt is a journalist and columnist writing for The Herald Sun in Melbourne Victoria Australia.

Read more excellent articles from Andrew Bolt’s Blog

Andrew Bolt’s columns appear in Melbourne’s Herald Sun, Sydney’s Daily Telegraph and Adelaide’s Advertiser. He runs the most-read political blog in Australia and is a regular commentator on Channel 9′s Today show and ABC TV’s Insiders. He will be heard from Monday to Friday at 8am on the breakfast show of new radio station MTR 1377, and his book Still Not Sorry remains very widely read.

By Andrew Bolt

President Barack Obama mercilessly hyped the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico:

Already, this oil spill is the worst environmental disaster America has ever faced.  And unlike an earthquake or a hurricane, it’s not a single event that does its damage in a matter of minutes or days.  The millions of gallons of oil that have spilled into the Gulf of Mexico are more like an epidemic, one that we will be fighting for months and even years.

I’ve written here and also here of the grotesque scaremongering by the President, media and environmentalists, but now comes news that the spill was actually good for the fish there:

The catastrophists were wrong (again) about the Deep Water Horizon oil spill. There have been no major fish die-offs. On the contrary, a comprehensive new study says that in some of the most heavily fished areas of the Gulf of Mexico, various forms of sea life, from shrimp to sharks, have seen their populations triple since before the spill. Some species, including shrimp and croaker, did even better.

And meanwhile, the media has greatly exaggerated damage found in studies about coral, which is in some ways more vulnerable to oil and dispersant. Most of it is doing fine.

The growth of the fish population is not occurring because oil is good for fish. Rather, it is occurring because fishing is bad for fish. When fishing was banned for months during the spill, the Gulf of Mexico experienced an unprecedented marine renaissance that overwhelmed any negative environmental consequences the oil may have had, researchers say.

Andrew Bolt is a journalist and columnist writing for The Herald Sun in Melbourne Victoria Australia.

Read more excellent articles from Andrew Bolt’s Blog

Andrew Bolt’s columns appear in Melbourne’s Herald Sun, Sydney’s Daily Telegraph and Adelaide’s Advertiser. He runs the most-read political blog in Australia and is a regular commentator on Channel 9′s Today show and ABC TV’s Insiders. He will be heard from Monday to Friday at 8am on the breakfast show of new radio station MTR 1377, and his book Still Not Sorry remains very widely read.

I was going to write an article today about Hamid Karzai and his history of corruption and receiving money from Iran, but something else caught my eye. I regularly visit a news aggregator and saw a title: “Gail Kerr: Muslim bashers aren’t new to art of hate for profit.” Afghan corruption is not going to go away: Karzai can wait. The opinion piece came from the Nashville newspaper, the Tennesseean.

Gail Kerr, (pictured at right), described by one Tennessee blogger as “the queen of puffery” is a woman whose size outweighs her analytical skills. Her opinion piece made reference to a front page article on the newspaper by Bob Smietana which, she claims: “shone the bright light of truth on the people who are making millions of dollars perpetuating the current trend to hate Muslims.”

Kerr refers to people who “make a financial killing spreading fear” and “skirt facts and intellectual investigation by making stuff up.” Intrigued, I wondered who these well-funded and dishonest hate-mongers might be. The answers came soon enough.

According to Ms. Kerr, Steve Emerson’s SAE Productions gained

$3.39 million in 2008 for “researching” alleged ties between American Muslims and terrorists.

Her quotation marks are used, not mine. She maintains that Emerson’s non-profit group appears to be “a blatant violation of IRS laws” and opines that Emerson “may end up paying a goodly part of his Muslim-hating windfall to attorneys.”

Kerr goes on to savage the founder of a Nashville-based organization called “The Center for The Study of Political Islam,” a former physics professor named Bill French. Though she makes no claims about his receiving money or acting in any way illegally, Kerr claims that French

leads a revival-like presentation outlining what he calls an ideology that undermines America. He points to a book as proof. He wrote the book. He made up the so-called Muslim ideology. He sells the book.

Kerr attacks Frank Gaffney of the Center for Security Policy who

made a cool $288,300 in salary in 2008. He was a witness in the anti-mosque lawsuit in Murfreesboro, accusing local Muslims of having ties to terrorism. His evidence? His own report. Under oath, he admitted that he is no expert in Islamic law.

Kerr concludes her op-ed with the following statements:

Smietana’s fine reporting pointed out a similar set of circumstances, when the Ku Klux Klan stirred up hate and fear about Catholics moving to the Murfreesboro area in 1929.
There’s another obvious comparison: Hitler’s Germany, which declared all Jews had to be eradicated from the Earth. At every phase of the world, every religion — including Christianity — has had a set of extremist nut cakes who preached hate.

It’s just hard to fathom that we’re still seeing this in 2010. How, I wondered out loud, do these people go to sleep at night?

On very nice sheets and down pillows.

Has it come to this, when people who attempt to highlight the dangers of the political spread of Islamism are compared to the racists of the Ku Klux Klan or the manufacturers of the genocidal hatred of the Nazis?

There is something that is deeply disturbing about such comparisons. Living where she does, Kerr should be aware that the original founders of the KKK were six former confederates of Pulaski, Tennessee who gathered on Christmas Eve 1865 to oppose Reconstruction. The KKK spread to other states and was tied to lynchings. Its mainly Democrat members in various states strove to make the Jim Crow laws. These made it impossible for many black people to enjoy the political freedoms, such as the right to vote, that had ensued from Reconstruction.

There are currently at least four KKK chapters in Tennessee – the Great Tennessee Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, Knights of Bedford Forest, Knights of the Golden Circle and Knights of Yahweh. Perhaps Kerr could do some proper journalistic research and start naming and shaming these groups’ members?

The stupidity of Kerr’s arguments derive from her apparent inability to separate Islam or Islamism (the ideologies) from Muslims (the people). Such a ridiculous conflation is dangerous. It serves to occlude the truth and is the argument used by numerous people on the left, or from within the Muslim Brotherhood itself, to stifle criticism of their insidious political ambitions.

Kerr is wrong on so many levels. There was no black “ideology” that the KKK attacked – they just resented and feared black people. Klansmen had accepted black people while they were enslaved and created wealth, but hated the notion that once liberated these blacks could appropriate some of the exclusive “rights” and enfranchisements of the whites.

People who are critical of Islam are critical of it for many reasons – most notably for the iniquities contained in Sharia law and for the Koranic support of hatred for Christians and Jews, treating women as objects to be beaten, and urging violence against unbelievers. The criticism is aimed at the anti-democratic and anti-liberty aspects of the ideology.

So far, no Muslim has been publicly lynched by anyone from the Center for Security Policy or the IPT. Emerson and Gaffney certainly do not “make stuff up.” They have no need to. Evidence of the spread of Islamism is all around, even within the White House where members of the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood attend Iftar dinners.

Why is the specter of Nazism invoked? Has Godwin’s law spread to newspaper op-eds? Islamism, and not Islam, is the main focus of the efforts of Steve Emerson and Frank Gaffney. They do not call for hatred of Muslims, and they do not condemn Muslims for believing in Islam. Kerr’s crass comparisons of their work with the hatreds of Hitler’s Germany are deeply disingenuous. The false claim that Muslims are treated like Jews under HItler have been made by members of the Muslim Brotherhood, with no sense of irony.

In 2006 Muhamad Abdul Bari, the head of the Islamist group called the Muslim Council of Britain (co-founded by leading Muslim Brotherhood member Kemal el-Helbawy) made the claim that the British government was “unfairly targeting Muslims.” The only unfair targeting the government was doing was to fund Bari’s group. He added: “What is the degree of xenophobia that tipped Germany in the 1930s towards a murderous ethnic and cultural racism?” Bari was Chairman of the East London Mosque in 2004 when it had invited Sheikh Abdur-Rahman Al-Sudais, the Jew-hating imam of the Kaaba at Mecca as a “special guest.” When confronted about this, Bari refused to acknowledge the manner in which Sudais had said words such as:

“The worst … of the enemies of Islam are those… whom he… made monkeys and pigs, the aggressive Jews and oppressive Zionists and those that follow them: the callers of the trinity and the cross worshippers… those influenced by the rottenness of their ideas, and the poison of their cultures the followers of secularism… How can we talk sweetly when the Hindus and the idol worshippers indulge in their overwhelming hatred against our brothers… in Muslim Kashmir…”

Sudais (pictured at left) is not even an Islamist, but merely the “devout” imam at Islam’s holiest site. And it should be noted that Bari’s mosque was a place where the underwear bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab attended, before he tried to murder the passengers of a plane on Christmas Day 2009.

I am sure that Gail Kerr would not like to admit that during the Second World War, a Palestinian Muslim called Amin al-Husseini went to Germany and linked up with both Hitler and Adolph Eichmann. In Bosnia Husseini set up the 13th “Handschar” division of the Waffen SS, comprised entirely of Muslims who supported Nazism. Many Nazis fled to Egypt after the war and found sanctuary with the Islamists of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood.

In today’s times, when Israel is being compared to Nazi Germany, the pronouncements of vacuous commentators like Gail Kerr are as dangerous as they are ill-informed and ignorant. Kerr apparently believes that there is no global jihad, be it a stealth jihad or a jihad of active terror. She would rather vilify people who are prepared to investigate and disseminate the truth about the spread of Islamism as those who “skirt facts and intellectual investigation by making stuff up.” Skirting facts, if this op-ed is representative of her work, is Ms Kerr’s speciality.

When it comes to making things up, what about her claims that Emerson and Gaffney sleep on “very nice sheets and down pillows” when she thinks they should be having problems sleeping at night?

Kerr makes reference to claims made by Bob Smietana in a series of articles. One of these, entitled “Muslims made unwelcome as times toughen,” has a semblance of rationality about it, discussing the roots of uncertainty amongst the people in Tennessee to the influx of migrants to the region. Recently, the planning of a large mosque at Murfreesboro has attracted concerns. Smietana’s article tries to establish some sort of perspective on the climate of rising distrust between communities.

However, in a subsequent article that he has written for the Tennessean, a twoparter entitled “Anti-Muslim crusaders make millions spreading fear,” Smietana loses the plot, implying that were it not for people like Emerson and Gaffney, there would be less “Islamophobia,” and suggesting that they spread hate for money:

Emerson is a leading member of a multimillion-dollar industry of self-proclaimed experts who spread hate toward Muslims in books and movies, on websites and through speaking appearances.

Smietana – in the manner of a socialist – cites donated income to anti-jihad groups as a means to attack them, even though in many cases there is a need to provide security to protect members of these organizations. He writes:

The list of people on the anti-Islam circuit goes on. IRS filings from 2008 show that Robert Spencer, who runs the Jihadwatch.org blog, earned $132,537 from the David Horowitz Freedom Center, a conservative nonprofit.

Brigitte Tudor, who runs the anti-Islam groups ACT! For America and the American Congress for Truth, earned $152,810, while her colleague Guy Rogers collected $154,900.

Smietana includes downloadable pdf files in his article, of the tax returns for the Investigative Project on Terrorism from 2008, its application for tax-exempt status, a tax return for the Center for Security Policy, one from David Horowitz’ Freedom Center, from ACT for America, from American Congress for Truth and from New English Review.

Despite the vacuous prattlings and innuendo of Gail Kerr, there is nothing there that would see Emerson “paying a goodly part of his Muslim-hating windfall to attorneys” unless he decided to pay them to sue Smietana, Kerr and the proprietors of the Tennessean for libel.

The recent publication by the Center for Security Policy’s Team B on Shariah, is used to attack Gaffney, with an implication that there is no such thing as a comprehensive system of sharia.

In 2008, the Tennessean was owned by Gannett Co. Inc, which is based in Virginia and also owns USA Today, and in Tennessee it owns The Daily News Journal in Murfreesboro, and the Clarksville Leaf-Chronicle. Indeed, on October 24, USA Today appeared to have reproduced a version of Smietana’s hatchet-job on Steve Emerson, in an article by him entitled “Some profit from Muslim fear” but the link for the online version now returns the statement: “The requested document was not found.”

The CEO of Gannett is Craig A. Dubow whose annual income is many times greater than the voluntary donations that provide the incomes of the organizations smeared in the pages of the Tennessean. The senior editor of the Tennessean is Deborah Fisher, who is quick to point out the “ethical failings” of other news outlets, but seems to believe that such ethical concerns should not affect the content of what she publishes.

Like dung-dunked dominos, there is always a knock-on effect from malicious reports. Philanthropy Today parrots the false claims, along with the Huffington Post, the Non-Profit Quarterly, M. J. Rosenberg in TPM Cafe, and the Salon who repeat the claims as if they are factual. There is much to be said for the aphorism created by Winston Churchill: “A lie travels half way around the world before the truth has got its pants on.”

Perhaps the group that has been maligned the most by the Tennessean’s crack team of writers should have the last word. Steve Emerson’s Investigative Project on Terrorism, contains the following:

There’s a price that comes with erroneous reporting and we’re seeing it register already. The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) issued a news release calling for an IRS investigation into our status as a non-profit organization. We believe we can withstand any scrutiny.

This isn’t a surprise. Groups have been stung repeatedly by our ability to pierce their fog of deception and show their ties to radical Islam, including support for Hamas and other terrorist groups.

The IPT article continues:

Beyond the tax-exempt issue, Smietana’s article smears Emerson as “a leading member of a multimillion-dollar industry of self-proclaimed experts who spread hate toward Muslims in books and movies, on websites and through speaking appearances.”
The 2,147-word article offers no examples of Emerson or the IPT spreading hate and it ignores evidence to the contrary. It is patently false.

The article also says IPT is “telling donors they’re in imminent danger from Muslims.” Again, there is no source for this claim or any example cited. IPT’s clearly stated role is to identify potential terrorist threats, particularly those coming from people who hide their true leanings. Our track record is clear: From members of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad working at a university think tank in Florida to Hamas supporters using a charity to support terrorism, IPT has been ahead of the curve. Many of the subjects of our work are either in prison or have been deported. That speaks to our track record.

Our record is the reason we’ve earned accolades from lawmakers from both parties, such as Rep. Pete Hoekstra, R-Mich., the former chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, and Rep. Brad Sherman, D-Calif., another congressional terrorism expert. Our researchers and experts have shared their expertise with Congress as recently as last month.

There is a difference between Islam and Islamism – between people’s practice of a faith and attempts to mix that faith with a radical political agenda. The IPT exists to combat Islamism and the often violent extremism carried out in its name.

Journalistic integrity is important. Sadly some websites do not attempt to follow standards of probity, confusing libel and deliberate disinformation with the tenets of the First Amendment. I have witnessed journalistic dishonesty at first hand, from web-based groups and from “legitimate” newspapers such as the St. Petersburg Times. The Tennessean is only the latest news body to have joined the ranks of the “Dark Side” by peddling disinformation, falsely smearing critics of the hate-filled ideology of Islamism as “haters” and bigots, and then attempting to wrap itself in the mantle of “morality.”

There is no morality in manufacturing unfounded character assassination.

Adrian Morgan

Read more excellent articles from Family Security Matters

By Alan Caruba

The headline on the National Public Radio website said, “NPR Ends Williams’ Contract After Muslim Remarks”, but it should have said, “NPR Fires Williams for Telling the Truth.”

I am familiar with Juan Williams as Fox News Channel’s designated liberal. I have often wondered how Williams found time for NPR because he is on Fox morning, noon and night. The other night he was on with the incredibly popular Bill O’Reilly discussing the way the ladies of “The View” had thrown a hissy-fit over Bill’s comment that “Muslims killed Americans” on 9/11.

Well, yes, Muslims had planned it, funded it, and were the perpetrators. Not all Muslims, but all those involved in the terrorist act that involved hijacking four commercial airliners. Muslims have been killing people in London, Madrid, Moscow, Bali, Mumbai, and other places for a very long time when not killing other Muslims in Iraq, Pakistan, and Afghanistan. In the aftermath of 9/11 some Muslims were dancing in the streets to celebrate the attack on the Great Satan.

So, when Juan Williams said “Look, Bill, I’m not a bigot. You know the kind of books I’ve written about the civil rights movement in this country. But when I get on a plane, I got to tell you, if I see people who are in Muslim garb and I think, you know, they are identifying themselves first and foremost as Muslims, I get worried. I get nervous”, NPR thought that was “inconsistent with our editorial standards and practices, and undermined his credibility as a news analyst with NPR.”

You do not have to be a NPR news analyst to worry about sharing a plane with self-identified Muslims. In December 2009, nothing but luck saved a plane from being blown to pieces by the Nigerian “underwear bomber” over Detroit. Nothing but luck saved an untold number of lives when another Muslim made a car bomb and parked it in Times Square. The Muslim Fort Hood shooter is still awaiting trial.

Telling the truth while exercising his First Amendment right of free speech was why NPR fired Juan Williams.

It happens that on October 19, Rasmussen Reports published the results of a telephone poll that asked respondents their opinion about political correctness. The conclusion was that “Some people think that government officials too often override the facts and common sense in the name of political correctness, and 74% regard political correctness as a problem in America today.”

The poll found that “57% of adults believe America today has become too politically correct” while 23% said it was not a problem. The Caruba Rule of Political Percentages says there is a hardcore of about 25% of Americans who are too stupid to walk and chew gum at the same time.

It is to Fox’s credit that Juan Williams was their “go-to guy” whenever they needed a liberal opinion on the events and issues of the day. I rarely agreed with anything he said, but I understood his contribution to the discussions because one could always gain an insight to the warped liberal point of view on matters great and small.

Recently in New Jersey, Gov. Chris Christie let it be known he saw little reason for the state to be funding its own television news channel and it has always struck me as strange that the federal or state governments should be doing this.

Founded in 1970, NPR has always been a propaganda arm of the government and has always been liberal in its news reportage and analysis no matter what party was in power. About 10% of its funding comes from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, a federally funded organization. The rest comes from local and state governments, government-funded universities, along with member station’s fees, foundation grants, and corporate underwriting.

In 2008, NPR programming reached a record 27.5 million people weekly, according to Arbitron ratings figures. NPR stations reach 32.7 million listeners overall according to Wikipedia.

While it is true that the mainstream media has for decades rendered itself unable to provide reasonably unbiased news coverage, outlets such as C-SPAN, The Wall Street Journal, and Fox News Channel have filled the gap along with a plethora of Internet news and opinion websites for anyone seeking information and analysis.

No doubt Williams will find a permanent home at Fox News Channel, but his firing is a warning to everyone that anything they hear on NPR is filtered through its liberal “editorial standards and practices.”

© Alan Caruba, 2010   Alan Caruba blogs daily at Warning Signs . An author, business and science writer, he is the founder of National Anxiety Center.

Kyle Drennen is an MRC News Analyst and contributes posts at NewsBusters.

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By Jeff Poor

Jeff Poor writes at the NewsBusters site.

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By Julia A Seymour

WARNING – VIDEO IS GRAPHIC.

Julia A. Seymour Contributes posts at the NewsBusters site where she is an Assistant Editor/Analyst for the Business & Media Institute of the Media Research Center.

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A group in the UK called 10:10 shelled out a lot of money to make a short video to promote the cause of reducing Carbon emissions.

Note how these people cannot even get the correct title of their own cause right.

That should be not stated as Carbon Emissions, but as Carbon Dioxide emissions, and even though that may seem picky, there is a very definite differentiation between the two, a differentiation that these people, and by extrapolation, everyone who has jumped on this bandwagon, cannot seem to get right, and the erroneous term ‘Carbon Emissions’ is what they have all resorted to calling it. It’s supposedly about Carbon Dioxide, not Carbon.

This video that these people have made is extreme in the way it seeks to make its point.

Watch the video, and then read on for some observations I have on all of this.

Be fully aware that this video has some quite graphic content, so caution is advised for all who do watch.

This video was originally titled No Pressure. —ed

Put aside that this supposed to be an attempt at humour.

Imagine for one second if something of this nature was produced by the other side. The condemnation would have been so resounding and deafening from every corner of the globe who saw it. As it was, the condemnation was deafening anyway.

However, look at the mindset here.

No group on that side of the argument who are euphemistically called ‘deniers’ would have even considered for one second that they could get away with something like this, so if something like this was proposed, it would have never have seen the light of day, because even had it been discussed, those people would be fully aware of the negative imapact it would have had, and if the truth be told, there is every chance it would never have even been thought about, let alone proposed for the possibility of acceptance.

So then, let’s look at what this group has done.

Not only did someone think it up in the first place, it would have had to have been discussed at length by this group, going over all the options, and in depth as well. They would have even discussed the probability of negative impact as well. They would also have then put it to their legal opinion to see if in fact they could do something like this. At every turn, it was then, quite obviously approved.

Then someone wrote the script.

Then they even got high profile people to play the roles in this short video. That football team towards the end is one of the highest profile Football (Soccer) teams in England. Then there was the high profile actress in the last clip. All these high profile people don’t work, or even appear, for nothing. Then notice the actors in the other two clips. It’s hard to imagine so many actors, keeping in mind that they would need people playing the parts who actually knew how to act, and I cannot imagine all of them doing this out of altruism. Then there was all the production crew, also who would not be working for nothing. Then there’s post production, editing etc, all, again, a costly enterprise.

Then, when it’s finally finished, they release it to the public.

At no stage it seems was there a dissenting voice.

It got all the way through this long involved, and time consuming process, and no one thought about it for a minute.

All this would have cost an awful lot of money to do.

But hey, there’s no problem whatsoever with all of that.

Another of our correspondents here at this site, James Delingpole, from the UK, is all over this, and he found out the following.

Now you’ve seen the video, prepare not to be surprised that your taxes helped pay for it.

The 10:10 Campaign is supported by:
ActionAid (Govt of UK 2nd largest funder in 2009);
The Carbon Trust (surely #1 on the list of quangos-to-go);
The Energy Saving Trust.

So it seems that none of this was in fact all their own money. It was all funded by the taxpayer through the awarding of Grant money from the Government. Groups like this are notorious for receiving Government money. It seems that you only need put the term Climate Change or Global Warming in the application for a grant and it’s a dead set certainty that you’ll get approval, and the money. Makes you wonder if these groups are doing this for ‘the cause’ as they perceive it, or just to get their hands on all that free money.

So, the video gets released.

Then, surprise surprise, the condemnation doesn’t sporadically come, it flows over them like a huge rolling Tsunami. All of it is bad. Even those who support this so called Climate Change/Global Warming ’cause’ condemn it, and not politely, but with almost outright rage.

So, within ten hours of its release, this group (ironic, considering the Group calls itself 10:10) pull the video from release, at first without anything to say about it. Then, after another ten hours or so, they release a statement at their site:

It seems that this was the only time any thought went into this whole long and involved process.

After the fact. After the complaints. After the condemnation. After the bad press. After everything.

I saw the original reference to all of this just after the video was posted, and it could not be seen anywhere as all copies came with an error message, and the video would not show.

I tried to find it at their site. Nothing.

I went to You Tube. Nothing. Removed from there too.

Some of the sites that ran with this early also had their copy removed with an error message.

The only thing I could find was a short ‘Trailer’ at their own 10:10 site. That trailer showed some of the people taking part in the making of this short video. It showed some of the students rolling past camera showing their excitement. One young girl looked directly at camera and said how excited she was, adding, ‘I’m getting blown up.’

That video has also since been removed from their site, as has any reference whatsoever to the video, except for the lame apology above.

Two of our correspondents here. Andrew Bolt, and James Delingpole, have also commented and posted renewed versions of the video. They are at the following links.

Andrew Bolt Post, and the James Delinpole Post

Evidently, what happened was that when the video was first released, some people saved it, and then reposted it to the You Tube site. This was in fact quite a lucky thing, if something as disgusting as all this can indeed be called lucky, because this is indeed something that people should see and also hear about. Not for the ’cause’ as they would think, but to show that the people who do produce something like this should be condemned for doing so.

Having said that, the simple exercise then was to go to You Tube and chase up a copy of that video.

Good luck with that.

I found six of them. Five had error messages, and the video would not play. Read that statement above from the 10:10 group. They categorically say that they pulled their own video from their own site and from the You Tube site, but that if people did save it and then repost, they would not be censoring those copies.

Well, someone is.

You can only deduce from this that the people removing those copies are those who believe this ’cause’ and can quite obviously see that this video in fact harms that cause, so, not wanting people to see the video, they are removing them from that source. To remove a video from You Tube, you either need to be the one who posted it, or have editing approval, and administration approval to actually remove it.

It would seem that censorship is indeed alive and rampant, especially when it’s something you don’t want people to see.

Then, go back to the above statement from the 10:10 group and read it again. They have removed every reference to the video under their own aegis, but will not censor others who do post it.

Besides being lame, this actually looks to be calculated. They have, and quite obviously so, received legal opinion that under their name they might be liable, but if anyone else posts a copy, then they cannot be held to account for that.

See how clever they have been, at every turn.

They still get their video out there, but they legally cover their own, er, fundament.

They’re not really sorry at all if that is the case, otherwise they would be accepting all responsibility, thus giving that apology more sincerity than this lame attempt.

Here’s the link to the 10:10 site, and unlike my previous visit to their site, nearly every reference to this video has been erased, except for the lame excuse. It would seem that it’s business as usual for these people, almost as if it never really happened at all. Sort of like rubbing their hands together for a couple of seconds, and then saying, “Next!”

We can hope for one thing from all of this however.

We can actually hope that this despicable video achieves its cause.

That of setting back this Climate Change/Global Warming debate by at least ten years.

WHAT WERE THESE PEOPLE THINKING?

I suppose some diabolical person could think this was funny if it was their finger on the button. Or is this the general attitude of the Greenies/Tree Huggers?   —ed

Please see related article: Another Epic Global Warming Fail – Hanged Children?

Noel Sheppard

Chris Matthews thinks American businesses are refusing to spend money in order to intentionally harm the economy as part of a long-term plot to “screw” President Obama.

Such political paranoia was actually uttered on Monday’s “Hardball” as the host chatted with Eugene Robinson of the Washington Post and Charles Mahtesian of Politico.

Readers are strongly advised to prepare themselves for the kind of conspiracy theory normally reserved for the likes of Michael Moore, Oliver Stone, and members of the far-left who actually believe George W. Bush and Dick Cheney had a hand in the 9/11 attacks (video follows with partial transcript and commentary):

CHRIS MATTHEWS, HOST: You know, a great question, Charles, that wasn’t on my list to ask but I’m going to ask you because you seem like a sophisticated guy of many parts. You think business can sit on those billions and trillions of dollars for two more years after they screw Obama this time? Are they going to keep sitting on their money so they don’t invest and help the economy for two long years to get Mr. Excitement Mitt Romney elected president? Will they do that to the country?

Yeah, Chris, business owners and corporate executives across the fruited plain are intentionally undermining their companies and their personal fortunes in order to impact an election that is 25 months away.

Certainly, they’re not keeping stockpiles of cash out of fear of: rising taxes, increased healthcare costs, the creation of carbon emissions targets, a double-dip recession, or the next regulatory shoe to drop from the current administration.

No.

They’re just remaining uncharacteristically liquid to harm the man that gives you a thrill up your leg.

Now that we’ve settled that Mr. Matthews, could I interest you in some waterfront property in southern Florida?

Noel Sheppard is the Associate Editor of NewsBusters.

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