Informing Americans Who Love Freedom
I don’t think Piers Morgan’s viewers are smart enough to know, or proud enough to admit, that he and all talking heads on cable news are being fed talking points. Is anyone naïve enough to believe that CNN, Fox, or MSNBC are in business to actually inform us? Cable news networks are corporate entities as well as special interest mouthpieces.
Since the tragedy in Connecticut, news networks are out in full force pushing their agendas in order to cause us to have selective outrage. The unhinged and easily manipulated Piers Morgan is a perfect puppet for this task. And to network executive’s luck, the Sandy Hook school massacre couldn’t have happened at a more perfect time. It’s the holiday season, and networks charge companies more for primetime advertising.
The ruling establishment in Washington sees this situation as an opening too. It’s a holiday sweeps week, and networks are busy sensationalizing the massacre. The nation is still overly emotional, and progressives are moving faster to take away more liberties from Americans. The best way a tyrannical government can avoid a threat of an overthrow, is to disarm its citizens. We already have drones, satellites, the NSA, and internet search engines watching and recording our every move. A lot of us are fooled into thinking it’s better for our safety. We recently gave the establishment more power over us and our bodies with government-controlled healthcare. We also just saw the government fight back against citizens fighting against harmful drugs, vaccines, genetically-modified foods, and fluoridation of our water supply. A lot of us were fooled into thinking it’s better for our health. We recently watched the establishment buy up our financial institutions and auto industries. We were fooled into thinking it’s to protect us from corporate greed.
Why were we fooled? We’re being spoon-fed government propaganda by puppets like Piers Morgan, Sean Hannity, Rachel Maddow, and John Stewart. If everyone was in agreement, there’d be no need for political commentary, and the government would have a harder time taking down the Republic. A commentator’s job is to confuse the public into thinking the other side is at fault, when in reality, both sides are the establishment. Government is the problem. It’s never been a Right/Left thing. Why do you think lifelong bureaucrats are against term limits, debt ceilings, and balanced budget amendments?
It’s time to start paying more attention to citizen journalism. It’s sad that local newspapers and television news have also been swallowed up by bigger companies which have government influence. Sites like Western Journalism have plenty of knowledgeable people who are talented enough to start our own news reporting organizations that are free from bias or corporate and government influence.
Photo credit: Great Beyond (Creative Commons)
Leave it to the Illinois General Assembly to do the wrong thing again. This week they voted down House Bill 3944, a bill to amend the state’s brutally antiquated Eavesdropping Act. The Illinois Eavesdropping Act makes it a Class 1 Felony that carries a penalty of up to 15 years in prison if you record police officers on duty (as well as some other state officials, such as judges, state’s attorneys, etc.)
Earlier this month, Judge Stanley Sacks, assigned to the Criminal Courts Building in Cook County, became the second county judge to recently rule the law unconstitutional. However, that in addition to the recent acquittals of Illinois residents Tiwanda Moore andMichael Allison who violated the act, was not good enough to convince 59 representatives in the Illinois House. Only 45 voted in favor it. The amendment would have modified the exemptions under the current act to allow citizens to record police on public duty on public property. It states:
A person who is not a law enforcement officer acting at the direction of a law enforcement officer may record the conversation of a law enforcement officer who is performing a public duty in a public place and any other person who is having a conversation with that law enforcement officer if the conversation is at a volume audible to the unassisted ear of the person who is making the recording. For purposes of this subsection (q), “public place” means any place to which the public has access and includes, but is not limited to, streets, sidewalks, parks, and highways (including inside motor vehicles), and the common areas of public and private facilities and buildings.
Read more at Breitbart.com. By Rebel Pundit.
Image Courtesy Of Breitbart.com
Back when rumors about President Obama being a Muslim raised their head momentarily in the mainstream media, Obama blamed the 24/7 news cycle and all the “noise” that is disseminated via the media.
Translation: America is too stupid to differentiate truth from fiction.
Of course it had nothing to do with the fact that his Indonesian grammar school records said he was a Muslim. That he had travelled to a Muslim country—Pakistan—while in between terms of Occidental and Columbia University (more than likely with an Indonesian passport) and happened to omit this until August of 2008 as part of his life narrative. Or that he said he was a Muslim, and if Obama operative George Stephanopoulos hadn’t been on hand to correct his “mistake,” it would have gone on the official record. Or that as soon as he ascended to the presidency he went on an American apology tour to Muslim countries. Of course the answer to why America believes Obama is a Muslim is that, America has, like anything else, looked at the facts, and has come to a decision. That this “noise” exists whereby rational people can’t make reasonable decisions could be translated into: America consists of extremely stupid, extremely gullible people, who will believe whatever they hear. This comes as no surprise to those who believe Mr. Obama is, along with being a Muslim, a socialist.
One of the premises of the brand of socialism that Obama subscribes to—incremental socialism—is that stupid people need to be helped by elites. Other premises: 1. That people are oppressed by the rich. 2. That they are too stupid to realize they are being oppressed. 3. That even if most of the masses did realize they were being oppressed, they are too stupid to do anything about it. 4. An enlightened group of intellectuals, politicians, and union officials will have to, through spoon feeding a series of reforms in government form the basis for an eventual socialist utopia after an economic collapse (more on this in a moment).
Of course these elites must have a general. Enter Barack Hussein Obama, presented to the American people as a moderate, as a savant in all things political, economic, and theological. Behind the curtain is Obama the radical, who has surrounded himself, since at least the mid-1980s with socialists and communists; has surrounded himself with individuals, like Peter Dreier and Frances Fox Piven, not to mention people in ACORN, that subscribe to a “break the bank” theory, whereby socialism/communism is ushered in not by revolution, but by a huge entitlement (and now bailout/Green loan) society, with the “progressive” policies in place, that collapses the economic system. And when those entitlements and bailouts are cut off, the beneficiaries are cut off, and the elites, bureaucrats and unions step in to appease the rioting mob, and create a system of perfect economic equality.
This is what is happening in Greece and this is what Obama and his cronies want to happen in the United States. America has tipped over the $16 trillion debt cliff with endless Stimulus,“Green” loans, bailouts and entitlement expansion, and is now calling for more of the same. The Stimulus is nothing more than money laundering, whereby “Stimulus” money and bailouts, given to the states and GM, goes back into the coffers of the unions, which then come back to Obama in the form of Democrat donation. We also now know the Green loans have been shown to have gone primarily to 2008 Obama bundlers.
But a strange thing happened. For those of us who live on Twitter, and for those of us who saw the Obama HHS mandate against the Catholic Church explode on Twitter over a four day period, growing from America’s mild irritation of Obama’s mandate, to an absolute rage and calls for civil disobedience—we, living on the lifeblood of Twitter, again went on another roller coaster ride. On the evening of March 4, a Sunday, while what Andrew Breitbart called the citizen journalists were doing the job the mainstream media wouldn’t do, we were quietly minding are own business, tweeting things, writing things, using the hashtag #IamAndrewBreitbart to honor Andrew as our fallen general, when a single tweet appeared. Something about the “Bigs” (a reference to Andrew Breitbart’s Big Government, Big Journalism, etc. Then, within seconds, there were more tweets. Many more. I clicked one of the links, which brought me to a strange incarnation of “the Bigs”—Breitbart.com—which was a complete revamped version of Breitbart’s websites all in one place, but more importantly, an announcement was made that the vetting of Barack Hussein Obama had begun. With an article entitled, “The Vetting, Part I: Barack’s Love Song to Alinsky,” and the accompanying articles, the spigot was turned on, where it was detailed that one Senator “Baracka” Obama in 1998 had taken part in a panel after a play whose subject was the hagiography of one Saul Alinsky, hero of the Left. This slow dripping of the spigot which has been partially turned on began the vetting process of “Baraka” Obama, the vetting that Andrew Breitbart prophesied of at the CPAC Conference:
“I have videos, this election we’re going to vet him. We are going to vet him from his college days to show you why racial division and class warfare are central to what hope and change was sold in 2008. The videos are going to come out, the narrative is going to come out, that Barack Obama met a bunch of silver ponytails in the 1980s, like Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn, who said one day we would have the presidency, and the rest of us slept as they plotted, and they plotted, and they plotted and they oversaw hundreds of millions of dollars in the Annenberg Challenge and they had real money, from real capitalists. Then they became communists. We got to work on that. That is a parenthesis. Barack Obama is a radical, we should not be afraid to say that! Okay? And Barack Obama was launched from Bill and Bernadine’s salon. I’ve been there.”
In two hours’ time, Twitter and the Internet were saturated with “Barack’s Love Song” (it has been been tweeted 150,000 times as of March 12), and, in true Andrew Breitbart fashion, as he had done with the ACORN video tapes, accompanying articles from March 4 to the present have been slowly spoon fed out (to keep the Left off balance and to anticipate their myopic, predictable strategy), so that the Internet is literally on fire with the topic, not to mention the other thousands of citizen journalists (I include myself) doing the work the mainstream media refuses to do.
Like a wounded animal the Left has reacted with their characteristic strategy: change the subject, demonize, and use a double standard. Change the subject didn’t work because the Breitbart army, when confronted with blandly calling Obama’s radical connections simply moderates, in one case the Breitbart team went on CNN, where Obama lapdog Soledad O’Brien almost had a cardiac arrest trying to take the stones away from those who wanted to break Obama’s glass house, and at one point in this strange interview, O’Brien had her producer stream into her ear a Wikipedia article about the “moderate” critical theory of the Obama radical in question, Derrick Bell.
What the citizen journalists of the world have learned in a very short period of time—a kind of crash course in battle—is that continually being on defense does not work with the Left. I like to make the analogy of Abraham Lincoln searching for a general during the Civil War. Lincoln went through a handful of generals that would attack the Confederate Army, win a battle, then retreat to wait for more reinforcements, supplies, etc. Attacking relentlessly, which Lincoln believed would be the only way to end the war, was repeatedly ignored by the series generals he went through, who thought Lincoln naive in military strategy. Lincoln finally found a general in U.S. Grant that agreed with his strategy, and the war fairly quickly came to an end, albeit, as both Lincoln and Grant knew, it required a great loss of life.
Today, I think, we are in the same battle. Not of guns and cannons but ideas and words. The Left believes a huge welfare state and centralized planning is the answer to the world’s ills. That the “outdated” Constitution should be put on the shelf, or in the least modified. That borders and countries are impediments to freedom and economic stability. That are group of elitist bureaucrats can better make decisions than the mindless masses.
That “free speech” should no longer mean the free expression of ideas, but that those statements labeled homophobic, Islamophobic, anti-women, or the ridiculously general “hate speech” should be stamped out, crushed, silenced. Of course “hate speech” is the code for the Obama Brown Shirts’ identification of something that doesn’t tow the party line. Whereby we have what Breitbart called “totalitarian freaks,” in which their definition of free speech is: We shout, you listen. You speak, we shout you down or muzzle you.
Of course enter the double standard.
This is exemplified in the recent Rush Limbaugh/Sandra Fluke debacle, where Big Mouth Obama said Rush Limbaugh’s remarks have “no place in the public discourse,” and like a good papa protecting his brood, invoked the virgin ears of his daughters. Except Rush Limbaugh’s comments were mild compared to potty mouth Bill Maher’s comments against Sarah Palin. To add flame to the fire, Maher gave Obama’s PAC a cool one million dollars, of which Obama skillfully avoided making mention of.
Before March 4, and I think the death of Andrew Breitbart, most of us conservatives would have bent over and taken this like a man, blandly citing double standards, hypocrisy, etc. When calls for Rush Limbaugh to apologize occurred, which he did, and this not placating the Left (we knew it wouldn’t, as they have been trying to get him and his 15 million listeners off the airwaves for years), and when Obama’s Brown Shirts began to call for the FCC to revoke Limbaugh’s license, then the Citizen Journalists, along with a little help from Fox News, like the Breitbart Army, went into attack mode. We knew Fluke was simply a poster girl for the Left to change the subject of Obama’s attack on religious freedom to the false narrative of the Republican “attack on women.” We knew that Leftists had said things ten times worse than Limbaugh not only against Sarah Palin, but Michele Bachmann, Laura Ingraham, Michelle Malkin, just to name a few. From bloggers, to “progressive” radio hosts, to MSNBC, to “comedians” like Maher. Except this time the Orwellian memory holes weren’t available for the Left to hide their abject hypocrisy, for with that amazing thing made possible by ones and zeros—the Internet—we had it “all on tape,” so to speak. That we found out the Sandra Fluke TV series was being orchestrated by the White House and its propaganda machine Media Matters, and Fluke being personally handled by former Obama mouthpiece and lover of all things Mao Tse Tung Anita Dunn was simply icing on the cake.
But the Left, this wounded animal, dripping blood, after, as Breitbart said, planning for years to put a radical in the White House, will not give up so easily. The socialist front ThinkProgress.org began the recent attack on Limbaugh with a “petition” for an apology to Sandra Fluke, but from a cursory search of their site, they want nothing more than a silencing of dissent—specifically dissent against Obama, of which Limbaugh is relentless. They are engaged in the same tactic utilized to silence Glenn Beck on Fox News: relentlessly go after the sponsors.
Phase Two of the Silence Rush campaign has been taken up by former Vietcong Cheerleader and US soldier backstabber “Hanoi” Jane Fonda, calling for the FCC to pull Limbaugh’s license. Translation: We want Rush (and by extension everyone else) to have free speech, just as long as it is not contrary to our totalitarian views, and as long as it’s not done in public.
But now the difference is we, the Citizen Journalists, the Tea Partiers, and conservatives in general, that have been called everything from racists to domestic terrorists for simply stating our opinions, following Andrew Breitbart and Rush Limbaugh’s lead, are now going on offense. As Andrew Breitbart said at CPAC:
“I bought a dog whistle. I bought a dog whistle factory, and I’m giving you dog whistles, and we’re gonna listen to every word that comes out of your mouth and we’re gonna hold you to the same standard that you hold us which is an impossible one and you’re gonna have a hell of a time in 2012 because America’s finally awakened to your Saul Alinsky bullshit tactics and we’re coming to get you.”
Here is just one example our dog whistle strategy, and many, many more will follow:
Obama, ThinkProgress, Democrat party, you decry the evil of Limbaugh? What about Bill Maher? What about the $1M that Big Mouth Obama took from Maher? We, like you, will be relentless. We will follow the lead of our general, Andrew Breitbart, and attack and attack and attack. But unlike you, our attacks will be based in truth, not lies; not deceptions; not double standards.
Here is a video compilation showing the absolute vileness of Maher and Big Mouth Obama’s hypocrisy in phoning Sandra Fluke and, like a psychopath, using his daughters to advance his radical ideology:
“I thought about Malia and Sasha, and one of the things I want them to do as they get older is to engage in issues they care about; even ones I may not agree with them on…And I don’t want them attacked or called horrible names because they’re being good citizens.”
Shame on you, Obama. If you will put your own daughters on the altar of your radical ideology, what will you do to the American people?
As our hero Andrew Breitbart said, This is WAR. And like the Civil War, the side of right, the side of truth will win, because the Truth always wins.
For those of us that spend hours online, writing, blogging and reporting this judges decision is a serious additional threat to our freedom of expression. Citizen journalism, blogging, micro-blogging, it doesn’t matter what you call it. It is a form of journalism that isn’t controllable by the elite establishment. Expect more attacks as we continue to tear down the corrupt infrastructure known as the lame stream media. Here is the a wire service report about the decision:
A federal judge in Portland, Ore., has ruled that a Montana blogger was not a journalist when she posted online that an Oregon lawyer acted criminally while a trustee in a real estate bankruptcy case.
Media observers said Wednesday the ruling points out how state shield laws and other laws protecting journalists have lagged behind developments in online media.
U.S. District Judge Marco Hernandez ruled last week that Crystal Cox of Eureka, Mont., cannot claim the protections afforded to mainstream reporters and news outlets. He also found that Bend attorney Kevin Padrick was not a public figure, and the bankruptcy case was not in the public interest.
The ruling opened the way for a jury to award $2.5 million to Padrick and Obsidian Finance Group LLC from Cox for defamation.
Read More at Official Wire By Jeff Barnard, Official Wire
One of CNN’s citizen reporters, Sean Loftis, also happens to be a gay porn personality named “Collin O’Neal.” In a drastic career change, he left the business to become a Miami-Dade county substitute schoolteacher, but was fired when school officials found out about his former life as a porn actor. So what did CNN’s racy citizen journalist do? Went back to making porn films, naturally.
Gawker gives us the details:
O’Neal, who first came to my attention on his (NSFW) website World of Men, has covered floods and crocodile attacks for CNN’s iReport, the section that allows citizen journalists to send in their photos and videos of news events. He gave up porn (and maybe citizen journalism) last spring when he decided to pursue teaching full time and worked as a substitute teacher in the Miami-Dade county public school system.
Read More: TheBlaze.com
When I was a reporter years ago in Ocean City, Maryland, I learned the hard way that freedom of the press can be expensive.
In the dark days of winter, ad revenue was scarce. Both weekly papers lived to a great extent off the city’s legal ads. Our editorials regularly chided Mayor Harry Kelley, while our competitor paper remained mayor-friendly. So when Kelley got teed off, he yanked our legal ads but not theirs. I can still recall racing with our staff to the local bank before paychecks started bouncing.
Today, the “legacy” media –newspapers, magazines and broadcasters – face more than ornery public officials. The Internet is wreaking havoc with traditional funding streams while opening countless opportunities for more voices, citizen journalism and the end of the Big Three TV networks’ dominance. The latter actually began with the debut of CNN in 1980, and Fox News Channel in 1996, but the Internet and talk radio have speeded the decline of ABC, CBS and NBC as well as scores of newspapers and magazines.
With 13,400 journalists laid off in the last four years, reporting has become a mile wide and an inch deep. There are more sources and stories than ever, but fewer in-depth pieces except for interminable, public interest thumb-suckers that editors like in order to win Pulitzers.
The winnowing out presents major problems, including less scrutiny of the ever-growing government. Still, the “legacy” media anchor the whole information network, since even bloggers have to quote reliable sources to be credible. But everything is changing with lightening speed.
Read More at Townhall.com by Robert Knight, Townhall.com
Gerry Storch quotes some people who miss the point in his Feb. 26 column, The pros and cons of newspapers partnering with ‘citizen journalism’ networks. Four sources who cited “The Negative” about citizen journalism do not understand what it truly is and does. Even the five professionals quoted for “The Positive” disparage the credibility and integrity of citizens who choose – as did those at the founding of our nation — to make journalism their chosen field and passion.
The point all of them miss is traditional news media reporters and editors are being devastated by a financial crisis, not a journalism crisis. Somebody has to fill the void.
Those of us who work with citizen journalists in online news ventures know better than anyone what a tough, disciplined calling it is. That is why we hire professionals and rigorously train citizens.
We also know the future is online. And online news produced by citizen journalists can toss traditional media the lifeline they so desperately need.
Face facts: Traditional media have put journalism last for at least a decade, cutting thousands of jobs and wondering why readers, viewers and listeners flee. America lost a generation of professional journalists. That is a serious threat to self-government. How will we replace them?
Read More: By Jason Stverak, Online Journalism Review
As violence flared Sunday between anti-government protesters and Iranian security forces, the world witnessed a second surge in Iranian “citizen journalism” via Internet platforms such as YouTube, Twitter and Facebook.
It has been years since a Western news organization has been able to operate a news bureau out of Tehran. Reporters Without Borders and The Associated Press have reported that a number of journalists and editors have been arrested in Iran since Sunday. Reporters Without Borders also reported that computers were confiscated from the offices of a weekly newspaper and that yesterday “most independent or opposition Web sites were rendered inaccessible within Iran.”
The Associated Press has reported that cell phone and text messaging services within Iran have been restricted.
It’s clear the Iranian government is attempting to keep professional journalists from documenting the turmoil in the country’s streets. It’s also apparent that the more the Iranian government tries to suppress the mainstream press, the more active the Iranian citizenry becomes in filling journalists’ shoes, broadcasting to the world scenes of Iranian unrest.
Read More: By ANJALI KHOSLA MULLANY, New York Daily News
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The Media: Keeping Americans Uninformed (Part 1)
The majority of Americans don’t believe that the mainstream media reports accurately and fairly. Polls also show that distrust of today’s media is at a record high. It is important to understand where their loyalty lies; and by their reporting, it’s extremely easy to see that the elite media has an anti-Christian, secular-progressive worldview. Pay attention to how they report the news, especially when it comes to religion, politics, and social issues.
Does the media monitor the power of the United States government, regardless of whether there is a Republican or Democrat in the White House? Do they report on subjects such as abortion or same-sex marriage with no bias, and do they treat conservatives differently than they do liberals? Do they omit certain stories if the facts don’t support their narrative? Most of us already know the answers to these questions.
We’re going to examine the growing March for Life movement and look at the actual numbers, but let’s first look at a few basic Principles of Journalism:
1. Journalism’s first obligation is to tell the truth
2. Its first loyalty is to citizens
3. Its essence is a discipline of verification
4. Its practitioners must maintain an independence from those they cover
5. It must serve as an independent monitor of power
Has the media reported in detail on the hundreds of executive orders President Obama has signed – more than any other president – in just his first four years in office? He recently signed 23 executive orders on gun control alone. Today, however, we’re talking about life.
Approximately 83% of Americans feel abortion should have some restrictions placed on it by law, but only 3% of media elites do. Translation: the media often believe or support the exact opposite of the majority of citizens to whom they report the news. The president’s abortion views are extreme. On last year’s Roe V. Wade anniversary, Obama said he intends to “continue our efforts to ensure that our daughters have the same rights, freedoms, and opportunities as our sons to fulfill their dreams.”
According to Life Site News, the 2012 March for Life was estimated at around 400,000 participants, likely putting this year’s event at the half million mark. At what other time in America do a half a million people rally for the same cause every single year? The event was promoted and shared by many on social media through blogs, photos, status updates, and tweets; but the major media outlets either downplayed the story or ignored it altogether.
Instead, they preferred to report on Beyoncé lip-syncing the National Anthem, a college football player with an imaginary girlfriend, Hollywood liberals handing out more awards, gun control, and the First Lady’s new hairstyle. Instead of holding State Department officials accountable for the Benghazi assassination scandal, the media chose to swoon over Hillary Clinton, even though her testimony was calculated, masterfully evasive, and uninformative.
Polls have shown that a majority of Americans believe abortion is morally wrong. According to one Gallup poll, 61% say abortion should be illegal. Next to preaching the gospel/free speech, this is the most important Christian battle in the public arena. We rarely hear much about abortion in the news media.
As a general rule of thumb, estimated numbers at pro-abortion marches are doubled or multiplied while numbers at pro-life events – if mentioned at all – are cut in half, minimized, or ignored. This is interesting, given that the pro-life movement is much larger than the civil rights movement ever was.
The culture war in America often intensifies whenever liberals feel outnumbered or threatened. Remember Chick-Fil-A Day last summer? The battle for life is no different.
One of the biggest battlefields in the country is the media. Think about this for a minute: you can search the Internet for, watch on television, or read about nearly everything imaginable under the sun. However, isn’t it peculiar and suspicious that it can be extremely difficult to find detailed, factual information on the truth about abortion?
We’re talking about one of the most common, frequent ‘medical procedures’ in America. Try finding helpful, biological, and medical specifics about exactly how abortion is performed as well as any possible cautions, repercussions, and side effects. Last week, I wrote about the anguish of abortion, including verifiable symptoms a woman may experience as well as many cases that resulted in death.
Celebrated and sold as choice, freedom, privacy, and rights, abortion has been covered up by the mainstream media or re-framed as a fight for birth control. Sadly, the message to kids and young single adults is sex without consequences. What a disservice, especially to women who’ve gone through the grief, guilt, or regret of their decision.
The new normal where journalism is concerned is if a story doesn’t fit their narrative and their politics, the mainstream media with their anti-biblical worldview simply refuse to report the honest facts to citizens they’re supposedly informing. Rather than telling people about problems in America that affect us, they ARE part of the problem in America.
The media has too much power: power to influence people, affect public opinion, and sway elections – and they do. Know the truth, share information, and help change culture.
If you’re concerned like I am about the lack of truth in journalism today, know what news outlets you can trust and share those sources with others. Talk to friends, write, blog, email, and, most importantly, pray for this nation! We should be asking God to open people’s eyes to what’s really happening in this country. Maybe He will still have mercy on America.