Tag Archives: Media Bias

News

Did Christine Ford name Kavanaugh as her attacker before his Supreme Court nomination?

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Brett Kavanaugh, his wife, and his two daughters
Brett Kavanaugh, his wife, and his two daughters

I wanted to post something that collects together what we know about Christine Ford’s accusation against Kavanaugh. She released her opening statement for the Thursday hearing on Wednesday night. I read various articles from conservative and liberal sources to ferret out the most interesting details of this case for you. I hope you will enjoy it.

National Review posted about it:

Ford repeats her accusations against Kavanaugh but names no new witnesses and gives no new information. She also confirms that she did not name Kavanaugh as the alleged assailant to anyone “outside of therapy” “until July 2018” when she “saw press reports stating that Brett Kavanaugh was on the “short list” of potential Supreme Court nominees”:

I do not recall each person I spoke to about Brett’s assault, and some friends have reminded me of these conversations since the publication of The Washington Post story on September 16, 2018. But until July 2018, I had never named Mr. Kavanaugh as my attacker outside of therapy.

This all changed in early July 2018. I saw press reports stating that Brett Kavanaugh was on the “short list” of potential Supreme Court nominees. I thought it was my civic duty to relay the information I had about Mr. Kavanaugh’s conduct so that those considering his potential nomination would know about the assault.

This part is important:

Per the Washington Post, Kavanaugh’s name is not in the therapist’s notes:

The therapist’s notes, portions of which were provided by Ford and reviewed by The Washington Post, do not mention Kavanaugh’s name but say she reported that she was attacked by students “from an elitist boys’ school” who went on to become “highly respected and high-ranking members of society in Washington.”

And it concludes:

Which is to say that we have an accusation that has not been corroborated by any of the named witnesses, all of whom have either said that it categorically did not happen, or that they do not know Brett Kavanaugh, or that they have no memory of any such party or event; that is strenuously denied by the accused; and that was not fleshed out to anyone other than the accuser’s husband until the day Kavanaugh’s name became national news.

Ford’s only support comes from sworn affidavits of people who say that she TOLD THEM that she was assaulted. Did she name Kavanaugh to them? I looked over the affidavits. Her husband’s affidavit says that she named Kavanaugh in 2012 to the therapist. But we KNOW from the Washington Post that the therapist’s notes don’t name Kavanaugh, so we don’t have evidence that her husband told the truth. And he’s hardly an unbiased witness. The Keith Koegler affidavit names Kavanaugh, but only from an e-mail he got from Ford on or after June 29, 2018. And two others (Adela Gildo-Mazzon and Rebecca White) don’t mention Kavanaugh by name AT ALL. Just that she said she was attacked.

Remember, all these affidavits prove is that she TOLD THEM about an attack, NOT that the attack actually happened the way she is telling now.

Something else she claimed was also falsified.

The Daily Caller reports:

Ford’s claim that there were “4 boys and a couple of girls” at the party contradicts Ford and her lawyer’s other accounts of how many people were present.

In her letter to Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein, Ford claimed that there were “four others” present. She also told The Washington Post that there were “four boys at the party” and two — Kavanaugh and his friend, Mark Judge — in the room where the assault allegedly occurred.

Ford’s lawyer, Debra Katz, later told CNN that there were four guys and one other girl at the party.

[…]Since Ford’s allegations were first made public, there have been three different accounts of how many people were at the party she claims to have been assaulted at: four boys, four boys and one girl, and four boys and a couple of girls.

Kavanaugh, Judge and two other alleged party attendees all say they do not recall the party in question or any assault.

One of her named witnesses is her lifelong friend Leland Keyser.

The anti-Trump Weekly Standard notes:

On Saturday night, Leland Ingham Keyser, a classmate of Ford’s at the all-girls school Holton-Arms and her final named witness, denied any recollection of attending a party with Brett Kavanaugh.

“Simply put, Ms. Keyser does not know Mr. Kavanaugh and she has no recollection of ever being at a party or gathering where he was present, with, or without, Dr. Ford,” lawyer Howard J. Walsh said in a statement sent to the Senate Judiciary Committee.

CNN reports that “Keyser is a lifelong friend of Ford’s.”

Keyser previously coached golf at Georgetown University and is now executive producer of Bob Beckel’s podcast. Keyser is the ex-wife of Beckel, a former Democratic operative and commentator. A search on OpenSecrets.org reveals Keyser’s only political donation has been to former Democratic senator Byron Dorgan.

What about the polygraph? Well, her lawyers administered a polygraph in August 2018, that consisted of only two questions.

CBS News explains:

Following Ford’s interview she was given a polygraph examination with the following two questions:

  1. Is any part of your statement false?
  2. Did you make up any part of your statement?

Ford answered “no” to both questions.

Kavanaugh was not named in the two-question polygraph test.

Ford’s lawyers are refusing to release details about the polygraph to the Senate Judiciary Committee.

A Wall Street Journal columnist tweets:

Kimberley Strassel @KimStrassel Potomac Watch columnist for Wall Street Journal.
Kimberley Strassel is a columnist for Wall Street Journal.

Polygraphs are inadmissible in court because they are considered to be unreliable as evidence.

Could Ford have gotten Kavanaugh mixed up with a different man? Yes! In fact, two men have come forward claiming to be Ford’s attacker.

The Daily Wire reports:

Politico congressional reporter Burgess Everett reported the summary from the Judiciary Committee, which stated: “Committee staff have a second interview with a man who believes he, not Judge Kavanaugh, had the encounter with Dr. Ford in the summer of 1982 that is the basis of her allegation. He described his recollection of their interaction in some detail.”

A second Politico reporter, Elana Schor, added that the Judiciary also had a phone interview with a second man who also believed that he may have assaulted Ford in the summer of 1982.

That would explain why she told the people in her affidavits about the attack, but only recently named Kavanaugh as the attacker.

News

Are the Washington Post and the New York Times trustworthy or fake news?

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Why do people think that CNN are biased leftist clowns?
Why do people think that CNN are biased leftist clowns?

If someone asked you to name the most prestigious national newspapers, you might be tempted to name the Washington Post and the New York Times. Both papers enjoy wide circulation, and they both used to have a reputation for honest journalism. But lately, people have been accusing them of publishing fake news stories in order to benefit the Democrat party. What is the truth?

Well, consider this article from The Federalist about two recent news stories, one from each paper.

Excerpt:

The Washington Post is standing by its August 29 report that the Trump administration is cracking down on potentially fraudulent passports, although it is marked by a stunning number of reporting failures, detailed most thoroughly by The Huffington Post on Monday. Reporters and editors on the story got facts wrong, misled readers, left out key data contradicting the premise of the article, and failed to reach out to the family of a deceased man accused of fraud in the story.

The initial story claimed the Trump administration is taking unprecedented action against thousands of Hispanic people living near the southern border suspected of having obtained false U.S. birth certificates. It was based largely on anecdotal evidence from immigration lawyers working in the area who said they are seeing a surge in the number of passports under scrutiny.

Within hours of its publication, a Slate reporter pointed out the practice of denying passports to people issued birth certificates from midwives suspected of fraud began under the George W. Bush administration, and continued through the Barack Obama administration. The story was corrected Aug. 31 to reflect this error. The story also asserted the Trump administration is newly targeting people delivered by a Texas doctor suspected of fraud, but HuffPo reports that practice also predates this administration.

After the State Department released numbers contradicting the story’s premise a few days after publication, editors added a new claim — that the Trump administration was newly denying passports to people living far from the border. HuffPo found this too was a practice that predates the Trump administration.

Those numbers provided by the State Department showed that not only has the rate of passport denials declined under Trump, but the number of passports under scrutiny has also declined. Editors issued a Sept. 1 correction to reflect that the rate was lower, but left out the numbers indicating the total number of passports under scrutiny is also lower.

Following these two major corrections, reporters continued to find problems with the paper’s handling of the facts and new contradictory information, particularly about the deceased doctor named in the story. The reporter did not reach out to the doctor’s family for his side of the story, although he is named as under suspicion of fraud by the government. And he was wrongly identified as a gynecologist, when he is in fact a general practitioner.

The family reached out to the paper immediately after the story was published, hoping to correct the record, but the paper ignored them for nearly two weeks, until HuffPo asked about the inquiries. Finally, the paper issued a third correction on Sept. 13 incorporating the family’s perspective.

And what about the New York Times?

On the same day Washington Post issued its third correction to this story, The New York Times published a hit on Nikki Haley that was problematic in a less complicated way, but more brazen in its disregard for the basics of reporting. The remains of this report are comically banal. It was initially a “bombshell” implying Haley should be potentially removed from her post as ambassador for needlessly lavish spending as the State Department implements budget cuts, but is now a toothless report on the Obama State Department’s years-old decision to buy pricey curtains for a new ambassador residence.

The first headline read, “Nikki Haley’s View of New York Is Priceless. Her Curtains? $52,701,” and was splashed next to a photo of Haley. Buried in the piece, however, was a line contradicting the impression the article was framed to create — “A spokesman for Ms. Haley said plans to buy the curtains were made in 2016, during the Obama administration. Ms. Haley had no say in the purchase, he said.”

After initial criticism, editors moved that line up several paragraphs, but eventually rechecked the facts and overhauled the entire frame of the story. One Obama administration official said the curtains were chosen in part for security reasons.

Now, if you look at all the corrections made by the progressive mainstream media, what you’ll find is that their mistakes almost always punish the Republican party, and almost always benefit the Democrat party. No exceptions. These newspapers are allies of the Democrat party, and they know that for every 100 people who see the fake news story, only 1 person will see the correction. And this is how they sway public opinion. Fake news now, correction in a few weeks, to keep up a patina of respectability.

What do the studies show?

Here’s a UCLA study on media bias.

Excerpt:

Of the 20 major media outlets studied, 18 scored left of center, with CBS’ “Evening News,” The New York Times and the Los Angeles Times ranking second, third and fourth most liberal behind the news pages of The Wall Street Journal.

Only Fox News’ “Special Report With Brit Hume” and The Washington Times scored right of the average U.S. voter.

The most centrist outlet proved to be the “NewsHour With Jim Lehrer.” CNN’s “NewsNight With Aaron Brown” and ABC’s “Good Morning America” were a close second and third.

“Our estimates for these outlets, we feel, give particular credibility to our efforts, as three of the four moderators for the 2004 presidential and vice-presidential debates came from these three news outlets — Jim Lehrer, Charlie Gibson and Gwen Ifill,” Groseclose said. “If these newscasters weren’t centrist, staffers for one of the campaign teams would have objected and insisted on other moderators.”

The fourth most centrist outlet was “Special Report With Brit Hume” on Fox News, which often is cited by liberals as an egregious example of a right-wing outlet. While this news program proved to be right of center, the study found ABC’s “World News Tonight” and NBC’s “Nightly News” to be left of center. All three outlets were approximately equidistant from the center, the report found.

“If viewers spent an equal amount of time watching Fox’s ‘Special Report’ as ABC’s ‘World News’ and NBC’s ‘Nightly News,’ then they would receive a nearly perfectly balanced version of the news,” said Milyo, an associate professor of economics and public affairs at the University of Missouri at Columbia.”

Here’s a Harvard University study on media bias.

Excerpt:

The programming studied on Fox News offered a somewhat more positive picture… of Republicans and more negative one of Democrats compared with other media outlets. Fox News stories about a Republican candidate were most likely to be neutral (47%), with the remainder more positive than negative (32% vs. 21% negative). The bulk of that positive coverage went to Giuliani (44% positive), while McCain still suffered from unflattering coverage (20% positive vs. 35% negative).

When it came to Democratic candidates, the picture was more negative. Again, neutral stories had a slight edge (39%), followed by 37% negative and 24% positive. And, in marked contrast from the rest of the media, coverage of Obama was twice as negative as positive: 32% negative vs. 16% positive and 52% neutral.

But any sense here that the news channel was uniformly positive about Republicans or negative about Democrats is not manifest in the data.”

From the Washington Examiner, a study of the political contributions made by the mainstream media.

Excerpt:

Senior executives, on-air personalities, producers, reporters, editors, writers and other self-identifying employees of ABC, CBS and NBC contributed more than $1 million to Democratic candidates and campaign committees in 2008, according to an analysis by The Examiner of data compiled by the Center for Responsive Politics.

The Democratic total of $1,020,816 was given by 1,160 employees of the three major broadcast television networks, with an average contribution of $880.

By contrast, only 193 of the employees contributed to Republican candidates and campaign committees, for a total of $142,863. The average Republican contribution was $744.

[…]The data on contributions by broadcast network employees was compiled by CRP at the request of The Examiner and included all 2008 contributions by individuals who identified their employer as one of the three networks or subsidiaries. The data does not include contributions by employees of the three networks who did not identify their employer.

The CRP is the organization behind OpenSecrets.org, the web site that for more than a decade has put campaign finance data within reach of anybody with an Internet connection.

President Obama received 710 such contributions worth a total of $461,898, for an average contribution of $651 from the network employees. Republican presidential nominee Sen. John McCain received only 39 contributions totaling $26,926, for an average donation of $709.

Those are the facts about media bias. 

So when you read stories in conservative news media, such as The Federalist, Daily Caller, Daily Wire, Daily Signal, Washington Free Beacon, etc. about how the leftist mainstream media printed fake news again, and have to correct it, you understand why this is happening.

News

Gosnell movie set to open in October 2018 in 100 theaters

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Empty benches where the mainstream media was supposed to be during the trial
Empty benches where the mainstream media ought to be during the Gosnell trial

At the time of the Gosnell story, I remember that there was a nationwide, wall-to-wall media blackout. Every single mainstream media source was colluding with the others not to report on the story. It was impossible to get news for weeks, until finally the mainstream media’s pro-abortion, pro-infanticide bias became the story, and they had to start reporting on the trial.

For example, Life News reported that it took ABC News 56 days to begin covering the story, and they only did it because pro-lifers marched on their headquarters:

Fifty six days after the grisly trial of abortionist Kermit Gosnell began, ABC broke its self-imposed blackout and finally offered coverage.

World News anchor Diane Sawyer belatedly told viewers that Gosnell was convicted on three counts of first degree murder against newborn babies, as well as on a slew of other charges. Terry Moran explained, “For two months, jurors heard often shocking, grisly testimony.” He described the details as a “house of horrors.” A house of horrors that ABC took 56 days to notice.

As the Media Research Center has aggressively documented, ABC went from March 18, 2013 (the trial’s start) through Monday afternoon with no coverage. Yet during the same time, the network devoted a staggering 187 minutes (or 70 segments) to other shocking criminal cases, such as Jodi Arias and Amanda Knox.

CNS News did a comparison between the Gosnell murder trial and the coverage of the gay NBA player:

In the eight days since NBA player Jason Collins announced he was gay, the news media have covered the story in 2,381 places. But in the first eight days of the trial of Dr. Kermit Gosnell and his “House of Horrors” abortion business, the media covered the story in 115 places, meaning that Collins’ “gay” news received more than 1,970.4% more news coverage.

Given the media blackout, I wanted to blog about the new movie about the Gosnell murders. Although the Gosnell movie was filmed in 2015, it’s only being released next month. It turns out that the same sort of people who covered up for Gosnell in the mainstream media also got the release of the movie delayed.

A National Review story by the director explains what the movie is about and why its release was delayed.

Excerpt:

The film has a gritty “just the facts, ma’am” style, is well acted, with powerful, moving performances by Dean Cain, Sarah Jane Morris, and Michael Beach, among many others, and moves like a bullet train. So why has it taken three years to be released?

I realize, looking back, that I was quite naïve about how this film would be received. I truly believed that if we did it the right way, even the so-called Hollywood Left would appreciate our fairness in telling the story, see its value, and, furthermore, share our goals in getting this important story before the public.

Sadly, I was wrong. As I said, this town runs on fear — the fear not only of failure but, more insidiously, of being shunned because of your political opinions. […]More than once, I was asked questions like “Are you crazy?” or “Are you sure you want to do this?”

[…]Fear is destructive and dangerous. Fear is what allowed Gosnell to commit multiple murders. The powers-that-be were afraid to allow inspections of his clinic, even after multiple complaints, for fear of being called racist or “anti-woman.”

I was looking for some background on the two people behind the Gosnell movie, and I found an article by Terrell Clemmons over on the Salvo magazine web site. It turns out that the filmmakers were neutral on abortion before they looked into investigation of the Gosnell abortion clinic.

Excerpt:

Phelim McAleer was in Pennsylvania in early 2013 doing a series of screenings of his film FrackNation. As he often did when travelling, he checked the local paper for interesting court cases underway, and a case concerning a doctor in Philadelphia caught his attention. And so it happened that on one of his days off, he walked into the courtroom where abortionist Kermit Gosnell was standing trial for a slew of charges including (but not limited to) murder, infanticide, and multiple violations of state abortion law.

Phelim had seen a lot in his twenty-five years in journalism (he started his career in a part of Northern Ireland known as “Bandit Country”), but the evidence he saw that day in Room 304 of the Philadelphia Justice Center surpassed anything he’d previously encountered. The photos displayed up on a big screen—pictures of well-formed babies, some of whose necks had been snipped with scissors after live birth—were more horrific than anything he’d ever seen. All of this was shocking in itself, but what was even more astounding to him as a journalist was that the press gallery behind him was completely empty. There were no national journalists covering this case. Not one. How could this be?

He returned home to Los Angeles and told his journalist partner and wife, Ann McElhinney, that he had found the next project they would work on. At first, Ann wanted nothing to do with it. This subject was foreign territory for them, way outside their wheelhouse. Besides, both she and Phelim had always considered themselves neutral on abortion. Why venture into such a hornet’s nest?

Phelim ordered the court transcripts anyway, and Ann read them. Afterward, she agreed, Yes, they would make this film. It was more than an assent or a shared inclination. It was a conviction. Here was information of significant public interest, and it was shameful that no one was putting it out. A film about this had to be made; therefore, they would make it.

The film will open in 100 theaters, and when I looked, I saw that it was actually going to be a drive for me to get to the closest one.

It’s not surprising to me that the atheists in the mainstream media would seek to suppress the Gosnell story by not covering it. When you jettison objective morality from your worldview, you tend to fall back on a definition of morality that is more like “peer approval”. The mainstream media probably just thinks, if fewer people know the truth about this story, then they’ll still think I’m a good person for being pro-abortion. They lied and covered-up because their personal sense of moral goodness was at stake.