A Reporter's Bias -- Hidden in Plain Sight

No one will likely catch much about the following in any New Jersey news or media coverage, but Rutgers University graduate James O'Keefe is at it again with his Project Veritas. His focus this time -- the political bias of news reporters, and a video example of out-and-out partisan bias of a reporter, posted on his YouTube channel, veritasvisuals (embed below).

On October 4th of this year, one of O'Keefe's staff attended a journalism event focusing on the Pulitzer Prize, and entitled, "HIDING IN PLAIN SIGHT," which was held up at the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism. There he managed to catch reporter Amy Ellis Nutt, a very recent Pulitzer-Prize winner (the "Feature Writing Prize, 2010") for the Star-Ledger in New Jersey, enthusiastically sharing her political views with someone she apparently thought was a journalism student. The camera was rolling. Nutt can be heard voicing her agreement with the "student" that President Obama needs to be re-elected, and then she adds, in the context of their discussion of the Presidential race this coming year, a string of pejorative epithets, ones specifically aimed at Governor Chris Christie, calling him in turn an "ass,"an "asshole," a "bully," and a "liar."


(ht: NewsAlert, here.)

So, armed with the fresh tape, O'Keefe first then went up to the Star-Ledger offices to ask editor Kevin Whitmer his reaction to the appropriateness of a reporter for his paper harboring such obvious partisan biases. Whitmer was not in his office and therefore did not meet with O'Keefe.

Then, James went over to New York and up to Morningside Heights to the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, in order to try to meet with Amy Nutt herself. She is a teacher in that Graduate School. And, of course, when confronted with the information she vigorously objected to having been taped, at one point saying, "and so I absolutely have no comment to make to you." Having refused to meet with O'Keefe, she finally hung up the phone on him when he began asking about her expressed views on the need to reelect President Obama.

So, O'Keefe then walked around and spoke to some of her colleagues at the school, including reporters Jay Rosen and Dale Maharidge, who each in turn refused to comment on her openly partisan and disparaging comments.

Maharidge even sent O'Keefe and his group an email calling them "shitheads," citing a lengthy Facebook posting of his about them, and closing with, "Fuck you, man. Bring it on."

But save a chuckle for the short clip at the end . . . the one featuring Amy Nutt, up on the panel dais, pontificating as she spoke to the group of students, telling them that pursuit is important, saying:

"It taught me how important is is to keep asking the same questions, 'cause you get more information."

Priceless!

In The Media Tank

Update: More from Ed Morrissey at HotAir.
Also, see below.

Since election day, there have been a few thoughtful articles, and even a Washington Post mea culpa by their ombudsperson, Deborah Howell, about the bias in critical media coverage during this year's Presidential campaign, especially focusing on uncritical coverage of the Obama Campaign. Day by Day Cartoonist, Chris Muir (above), has been all over the post election trend.

And also at the WaPo, media critic Howard Kurtz has uncomfortably pointed out that, post election, the bias has continued unabated, which now risks being turned into a merchandizing bonanza of "mythmaking" by a complicit and corrupted press, eager, and perhaps desperate to turn their own waning fortunes around!

Are the media capable of merchandizing the moment, packaging a president-elect for profit? Yes, they are.

What's troubling here goes beyond the clanging of cash registers. Media outlets have always tried to make a few bucks off the next big thing. The endless campaign is over, and there's nothing wrong with the country pulling together, however briefly, behind its new leader. But we seem to have crossed a cultural line into mythmaking.

Will more and more in the press and media become, like MSNBC's gushing weeper, Chris Matthews, little more than sententious Obamaites? It was he who early on sprang himself free of any form of bipartisanship, by announcing a "furrowing" running up his leg. And he now insists that his job is to make Barack Obama's Presidency successful! Note that in the same sentence that he revealed his "furrowing feeling" Chris actually called what he does "reporting!"

A Pew Research Center poll-based study, released in the waning days of the campaign (Oct. 22nd), correctly identified that there was considerable media cheer-leading that favored Senator Obama during this campaign. Respondents said so by 70% - 9%, a considerably higher percentage during this Presidential election year, than the consistent media favoritism that has been shown for the Democrat candidate in prior Presidential campaigns.

From the opening graf of their release accompanying the study:

Voters overwhelmingly believe that the media wants Barack Obama to win the presidential election. By a margin of 70%-9%, Americans say most journalists want to see Obama, not John McCain, win on Nov. 4. Another 8% say journalists don't favor either candidate, and 13% say they don't know which candidate most reporters support.

Now, I know the clip (below) only includes 12 people Obama voters interviewed right after voting. But this little preview of a "Documentary Finds Media Coverage Left Obama Voters Uneducated About Campaign Issues," which was posted by John Zeigler (of "The Path to 9/11" fame) at http://www.howobamagotelected.com/. It tracks closely with a post-election Zogby poll of Obama voters, the results of which will likely stun you. For example, in the Zogby poll, over half of the Obama voters (57.4%) could not correctly identify which party currently controls congress. A wild 50/50 guess would have yielded slightly better results! It gets worse.

The descriptive statement accompanying this Ziegler clip says:

"On Election day, twelve Obama voters were interviewed extensively right after they voted to learn how the news media impacted their knowledge of what occurred during the campaign. These voters were chosen for their apparent intelligence/verbal abilities and willingness to express their opinions to a large audience. The rather shocking video seeks to provide some insight into which information broke through the news media clutter and which did not."

Please, watch it all the way through.



If the press and other mainstream media in our country have so willingly thrown in with the new mantra of uncritical views as news, from whence will come actual tempered and tested news on which the voters, in the future, can draw on as a basis for their own views?

Even the senior correspondent at taxpayer-subsidized PBS, Ray Suarez, kept a straight face while he gave a speech in Michigan in early October, during which he seriously declared that virtually any criticism at all of Barack Obama, was really hidden racism. What crap!

What are we in for? Is the clip posted above our future?

Update: Tom McLaughlin, teacher & frequent commenter at HotAir noted the trend with his class about a week ago, in a guest column at Accuracy In Media.

AP Waxes Indignant Over "Altered" Army Photo
AP Awarded Our First "Log In Yer Own Eye File!" Citation

11/15/2008 -- On the occasion Friday of the first woman in the United States Army, General Ann E. Dunwoody, to be awarded a fourth star, and thereby elevated to the rank of General,* here is the AP video of the actual ceremony.



Unfortunately, someone at the Associated Press also chose to mark the occasion by publicly suspending, until further notice, their use of any images provided to them by the entire Defense Department. They say the action is based on two incidents, ones that are obvioulsy unrelated. One had to do with the digital alteration of the face and shoulders of a soldier who has been killed in action in Iraq two months ago. The altered picture had been used in his unit for a memorial service, and was inadvertently released pubicly, according to the Army.

Regarding the so-called incident related to General Dunwoody, on Thursday the Army had given the AP a cropped image of the general, dressed in fatigues and with a flag backdrop, one that was taken before her current elevation. Here was the Army's release, issued on November 12th. The full shot would have shown her prior rank of Lieutenant General, or three stars, but the cropping eliminated that.

To the right, the smaller image (on top) is the cropped image the Army initially supplied to the press. And then, below that image, the larger image is the full picture that it was
taken from. Because the official elevation in rank took place at a ceremony on Friday, the Army obviously did not have a current shot showing her with her four star rank.

So, they supplied the press with a cropped image that did not show her prior rank, no doubt because by the time the story appeared, they knew she would be a "four-star." Well, big deal!

Sniffed Santiago Lyon of the AP, soon after the "evidence" of the prior image was "discovered" by the deputy director of photography with the San Antonio Express-News, Bob Owen, and reported to AP:

"For us, there's a zero-tolerance policy of adding or subtracting actual content from an image," said Santiago Lyon, the AP's director of photography.

Zero-tolerance? Really? Okay. So what's next? A change in policy over the actual content of AP stories?

Who knows!

Gee, maybe the AP will begin by giving similar exacting consideration to the "altered reality" aspects replete in the content of many of their stories -- like publishing such complete rubbish during the Presidential election, as a piece alleging that Sarah Palin's criticisms of Barack Obama over his years long relationship with unrepentant domestic terrorist Bill Ayers, was really racist on her part!

Or, perhaps in light of their anger over what was left out of the photo, they will begin including key information they omit from stories about Barack Obama appointees -- such as background about Valerie Jarrett -- including any details about her past connections to Tony Rezko and real estate scandals in Chicago. Here was more on the connections from the Boston Globe that the AP might have referenced, but chose not to include.

Somehow, that seems a teeny-weeny little bit more serious than an over-reaching indignation, including an actual banning of all DOD photos, over a cropped rank insignia from an officer's fatigues, no?

So will AP change their content policy on their stories?

"Hope springs eternal in the human breast . . ." intoned Alexander Pope, the noted 18th century poet and satirist.

Anyway, congratulations to General Ann E. Dunwoody on her notable achievement. As commander of the U.S. Army Material Command, she will in essence be the army's "premier provider of materiel readiness." Or, as they also say, "If a Soldier shoots it, drives it, flies it, wears it, or eats it, AMC provides it."

The AP coverage of the story itself was fine. But as for the obnoxious AP sidebar trashing the Army and the DOD over a lousy cropped photo, well, they've accordingly been awarded our first Log In Yer Own Eye File! citation.

* (corrected) The General officer ranks in the United States Army include "Brigadier General" (one star) BG; "Major General" (two stars) MG; "Lieutenant General" (three stars) LTG; and "General" (four stars) GEN.

Throughout American history, there have only been two men - George Washington and John T. "Black Jack" Pershing, who achieved the preeminent rank of "General of the Armies" and only Pershing did so during his lifetime. A few others, some during the Civil War, and several others during World War II, achieved the rank of "General of the Army" (five star), although the Civil War rank of General of the Army was intended to correspond more closely with that rank (General of the Armies) that had been intended to be awarded to Washington in 1799, in anticipation of a war with France. He died before that final title was conferred, and thus only held the rank of Lieutenant-General in his later lifetime. Washington had been "General and Commander in Chief of the United Colonies" during the revolutionary period, a commission he resigned in 1783. That interesting history is traced here, and can also be found in the "note" here, noting that the intent, for the period while the ranks existed following WW II, was to have three top grades in decending order, General of the Armies, General of the Army, and General. The first linked history interestingly concludes:

Joint Resolution of Congress, Public Law 94-479, dated 11 October 1976 provided for the posthumous appointment of George Washington to the grade of General of the Armies of the United States, such appointment to take effect on July 4, 1976. This resolution stated that "it is considered fitting and proper that no officer of the United States Army should outrank Lieutenant General George Washington."

A Liberal Entrée of Media Dish

Thomas F. Roeser is the chairman of the editorial board of The Chicago Daily Observer, and a regular columnist there of some considerable talent.

He has served up a generous course of media dish with his latest column, "How the Liberal Media Stonewalled the Edwards Story." (h.t., Newsalert, here).

Roeser simply left no large stones undisturbed. None.

Addressing the general and perennial accusation of "progressive" bias in the media, as manifested by to the failure to pursue this story, Roeser pegged that right off with two equally harsh and unequivocal diagnoses, each one having spilled, scent and all, right from an offending source:

Two journalistic liberals now attest to the fact. Howard Kurtz, media critic for The Washington Post last week blasted his mainline journalistic colleagues for trying to snuff out the truth because Edwards is a fellow liberal. He wrote, "the widespread allegations…were an open secret that was debated in every newsroom and reported by almost none." He was joined by Clark Hoyt, ombudsman for The New York Times whose job is to determine how impartial his newspaper is. He wrote, "The John Edwards 'love child' story finally made the national news media and made the front page of yesterday’s Times. For weeks, Jay Leno joked about it, the internet was abuzz and readers wondered why The Times and most of the mainstream media seemed to be studiously ignoring a story of sex and betrayal involving a former Democratic presidential candidate who remains prominent on the political stage."

Hoyt harshly condemned his employer: "Before Edwards' admission, The Times never made a serious effort to investigate the story, even as [The National Enquirer] wrote one sensational report after another."

Whence, "The Only Serious Book . . . ?" *

John McCain had a great opening line, which he delivered at a Lance Armstrong Livestrong Foundation event for cancer survivors yesterday, held at Ohio State University in Columbus, Ohio. The occasion was billed as a Presidential Townhall meeting. Both candidates had been invited. Multi-year Tour de France champion, Lance Armstrong is a cancer survivor, as is John McCain, who has had a few bouts with skin melanoma.

Said McCain, after being warmly introduced by Lance Armstrong:

My opponent, of course, is traveling in Europe, and tomorrow his tour takes him to France. In a scene that Lance would recognize, a throng of adoring fans awaits Senator Obama in Paris -- and that's just the American press.

According to Jonathan Martin on Politico, however, he said he heard the delivery was followed by an awkward laugh. Well, having seen it on NECN video, I'm not so sure awkward is correct. It was a pretty full laugh, to be sure. But the audience laughed and applauded as well. That's not awkward.

The point McCain made is certainly well taken. If Barack Obama has suffered any lasting damage by exposure at all on this whirlwind tour of Europe, it seems quite clear that it has been entirely self-induced -- such as, by abruptly cancelling a planned visit to wounded American troops at a hospital in Germany, and offering an inexcusable and lame explanation for doing so.

Many commentators have correctly noted that McCain used to enjoy excellent press coverage himself, even joking that the press was his "base." But more recently, he has found himself out in the cold.

Now comes word from The New Republic reporter Gabriel Sherman, who strongly suggests that the American press affair with Barack Obama is officially yesterday's news.

End of the Affair details several recent incidents that suggest that the heart of the matter from the press perspective is the Obama campaign's defensiveness over reporters queries regarding two primary issues: the Barack Obama biography, and problems that he has with certain groups of voters.

Reporters who have covered Obama's biography or his problems with certain voter blocs have been challenged the most aggressively. "They're terrified of people poking around Obama's life," one reporter says. "The whole Obama narrative is built around this narrative that Obama and David Axelrod built, and, like all stories, it's not entirely true. So they have to be protective of the crown jewels." Another reporter notes that, during the last year, Obama's old friends and Harvard classmates were requested not to talk to the press without permission.

If it true, as Sherman claims in this TNR piece, that the affair is indeed over, one immediate question comes to mind -- who will be the one to say, "Look, I think it would be best if we both began seeing other people."

And, Bob Barr hardly fits the bill as anyone's likely "rebounder" candidate!

For those who has been around since Neil Sedaka was burning up the pop charts, back in the mid-sixties, let's just remember that indeed Breakin' Up Is Hard to Do. Ed Morrissey at HotAir quite appropriately plucked that song title as the header for his take on the subject of the TNR piece. There is simply a basic truth to that sentiment, which probably explains why few songs in pop history have been more recorded (or parodied), and by a broader array of artists.

So, both Ed and Allapundit at Hot Air are taking the cynics view of the likelihood this TNR article portends any sort final break, or even much more than a temporary a cold shoulder from the media. Agreed.

Says Ed:

However, as as Allahpundit said last night, I’d doubt that the media will suddenly send a Dear Barack letter to the campaign and rediscover their amorous passion for McCain, and for a simple reason — Obama’s younger and better looking, and has better sound bites. Obama sells, and the media’s passion will follow both the money and their own progressive biases. Besides, they have to compete with their European counterparts, who clearly haven’t become jaded with the Obamessiah yet:

He's got that right! Just read the clip he quoted from the article by German magazine reporter for Bild, Judith Bonesky! Matt Drudge has posted the original today!

No, I am not kidding -- that is the name of the reporter, who quite openly flirted in a touchy-feely sort of way with Senator Obama during a workout in a German gym, and who then actually concluded her piece breathlessly following his workout . . . "What a man!" Some people -- and not just reporters -- cannot get anywhere near a person with perceived power without literally losing their minds. Glenn Beck correctly anticipated that one, as he was noting the depth of media fascination with everything Obama!

And, there is one more important reason to treat the TNR article with a grain of salt.

The public itself is currently focusing with a gimlet eye on the obvious political bias in the news media.

That is clearly reflected in a recent Rasmussen poll indicating that an increasing percentage of Americans believe that reporters are actively trying to help Obama win election; in stories about lopsided political contributions by new media figures going to Democrats; by the sheer magnitude of the "major media extravaganza" response to Senator Obama's trip; and by the specific New York Times refusal to print an Op-Ed on the subject of Iraq written by Senator McCain, though they had just fully printed one written by Senator Obama.

Today's Drudge Report is rife with links to media bias stories. For example, Howard Kurtz's "Obama Abroad: We Get the Picture," in the Washington Post.

To the extent that that the public recognizes and sees through the mainstream media bias, including, in some very recent instances, actual censoring filters, it is in the strong interest of those whose bias leans left to at least try to counteract that perception, or to at least try and throw up some sort of smokescreen.

What better than a story formally announcing that the Obama flirtation by the media is now officially over? Let's not forget that in the relatively recent past, TNR, a left-leaning publication, was certainly not above enabling the wholesale manufacture of a story in order to press an agenda -- remember Scott Thomas Beauchamp -- and even sticking with it when they got caught.

No, the media affair with Barack does not appear to be done with. As I recall, Hud Bannon once contradicted Homer, saying, "Well . . . it may be over. But it's not done with, not by a long shot!"


*Walter Lippman once said that that newspapers were the "Bible of democracy," and, further that a newspaper, "is the only serious book most people read."